No, I Am Not A Brony, Get Me Outta Equestria!

by BronyWriter

First published 26th of September, 2012

A non-brony is transported to Equestria

I'd heard about the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic from my college roommate who is way too into the show. Disturbingly so, actually, but good gravy I would never watch the darned thing! What am I, five? I've got better things to do with my time than watch a silly little girl's show. However, that didn't stop... something from transporting me into the world of the show, so here I am... in Equestria... trying to get home. This is gonna be interesting.

Special thanks to GuyFace, Jack Kellar, Storm Shaker, Spiffy McSquee, and Goober Trooper for helping me with this one!

Prologue

In one of the highest towers of Canterlot Castle, there was a room where few ever trod. It was a private chamber, filled with trinkets and baubles whose purpose escaped the understanding of many. It was a place where no mere mortal would enter of their own volition, at least without supervision.

A small but bright light flickered on, illuminating the room as a tall, white alicorn stepped inside. As she closed the door behind her with a rear hoof, she twisted her neck to relax the hints of kinks in it and fired up her impressive horn, bathing the walls in a gentle white light. A satisfied smile graced her complexion as the ornate regalia floated off of her body. This wasn't the place for that. Here she could be alone.

A large notebook sat on a nearby desk. Upon seeing it, Princess Celestia picked it up and turned to a middle page. The pages were inscribed with a series of symbols and runes, each signifying a numeric value or mathematical sentence that, when coupled with the extensive scrawls, detailed specific properties of magical fields and flow dynamics. To the normal pony – and even to the most intelligent ones – it would all look like a mess of letter-and-number shaped babbling. It seemed as understandable as a splotch of spilled ink.

Princess Celestia was no normal pony. She had powers beyond the understanding of her subjects. As such, she felt that it was her duty to try and expand all knowledge on magic, all in hope that she could better the lives of her subjects and friends.

And right at this moment, she was close to a breakthrough.

A second spell was cast by the alicorn, and the room around her faded away, rushing by in an oblong blur of color. The dark blue expanse around her would be normal to the untrained eye – it just looked like the Equestrian night sky, after all – but to somepony like her, this was a whole new plane of perspective.

As she wandered further into what she had dubbed 'the Limbo', she began to sense the anomalies. Tears in the dimensional fabrics that made up her surroundings. This was far from an unusual feeling, as she had been here many times, and was familiar with them. In fact, it was for those that she had come here. Each one was notably different. The individual tears radiated their own magical aura. Beyond each of the individual rips was a different universe. Each one was unexplored and unique to the Equestrian viewpoint.

Celestia had discovered the Limbo quite by accident, but ever since she had, she felt that it would be a waste not to explore and study the phenomenon, and reap the intellectual rewards it could offer. If traveling to another realm proved beneficial, it would behoove her to attempt some exploration.

As she continued on her way, she began to sense the precise locations of a number of individual tears. She could not see what was beyond them without actually looking herself, but knowing the locations would help her find out. She let her magic flow through her, powering her presence's movement until it homed in by itself on the closest one. It would be just as good as any.

She stopped just in front of the event and reached out with her magic, attempting to penetrate a small dirty smudge that was almost invisible when viewed against the crispness of the dark and starry landscape. Slowly, the smudge became bigger and more noticeable, until a pinprick of light appeared in front of her.

She grinned to herself. She was getting better at this.

With the expenditure of more energy, the point became steadily larger. When it was twice the size of Celestia herself, she stopped. By then, the image was not merely light any longer. It was a full-blown picture. One of an entirely new world.

To describe what lay in front of her eyes would take more brainpower and a larger vernacular than she likely possessed at the moment. However, this did not faze her as she could always write down what she saw when she powered down to go back to Equestria.

She tentatively reached out a hoof to touch the barrier between worlds, but as soon as it made physical contact, her head was wracked with a jolt of pain. The image wobbled alarmingly even after the headache dulled. A ripple ran through the picture, threatening to erase the portal from existence. With a grunt, Celestia weaved her powers into a stabilizing frame around the edges of the portal. It stopped vibrating.

For now, it seemed that the immortal Princess of the Sun would have to demote herself to a mere spectator.

Author's Notes:

A new microchapter? What?!

For those of you just joining me with this story, welcome. I hope you enjoy.

For those of you who saw this updating expecting TD and the Mirror Pool, I apologize but that's not it. I Pinkie Promise that it's still coming. I added this to add a better hook to the story. Hope you like(d) it!

Uh-oh

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEE—

SLAM.

Good morning to you too.

Yawn…

I hate Mondays.

I pull my thick blue comforter off of me and sit up, stretching my arms behind my back to ease some of the stiffness out of them. My trusty black laptop lies dormant on the desk, right where I left it. I scratch the back of my neck, and I reach over to it to begin my morning internet ritual.

Oh that's right, you all probably want to know who the heck I am and why I'm telling you my morning routine, right? Well, if you insist.

My name is TD. Simple as that. Both letters stand for absolutely nothing at all. They're just letters. I'm a twenty year old Elementary Education major in a small-town college. I'm a W.A.S.P. Er... White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, as my Sociology professor so lovingly puts it, and... well, that's it, really. I'm not dating anybody, I'm not special, and I’m not particularly successful. I'm kind of boring when I think about it. I'll probably end up marrying someone in a few years, pop out a few kids, and end up teaching fifth graders in a small town not unlike the one I currently live in. That's purely speculation on my part, though. The present is more important, as my father would say.

Speaking of the present, my computer powers on, and I immediately open up the internet to begin my site browsing. It's just all part of the routine, and my life is all about routine. I don't really expect this to change.

I glance over at my alarm clock after idly surfing the web for a few minutes, and see that it is nine-thirty. Well, time to get ready for work.

I hop out of bed and walk over to my closet, where I pick a work shirt off of the rack, as well as a pair of black jeans. As I finish putting them on, I look up at my dear roommate, who is awake and currently surfing the web on his own laptop.

I roll my eyes when I see where he is: Ponychan.

Yep, my roommate is a brony, and boy does it get annoying sometimes. Don't get me wrong, he's a cool enough guy most of the time. He goes to his classes, he does his homework, and he plays video games on the Xbox he brought up. Heck, he's even an amateur stand-up comedian, and not a half-bad one at that, I have to admit.

But the ponies... oh man, the ponies. He loves that show more than most things in his life right now, I swear. He has a pair of My Little Pony dolls that he keeps on his desk, and a pair of plushies on his bed, Flutter something-or-other and Pinkie Pie. I only know the latter because of a drawing of Pinkie Pie that he has over his desk in our room with her name scrawled under it. I swear, I'll never understand why on Earth he likes shows like that, or takes his love to that extreme.

He keeps insisting that I'll like the show myself if I just give it a shot. Well, I did give it one. If a bunch of adult men like it, then maybe there is something in the show that guys like myself can like. It's certainly not impossible for adults to enjoy a kid's show. There are definitely animated kid's shows I've seen that I find hysterical.

Well, as I was saying, I did eventually sit down and watch the first two episodes and... I didn't get it. From the very first minute when the bright images and the cheerful music appeared, I could tell that something was seriously wrong. The narrating voice was far too happy and girly, and the story she told was just… bleagh. It made my skin crawl from the sheer un-manliness of it all. They didn't even give the villain a good backstory! It was just 'she's evil because she's jealous'. That story became cliché in the bible.

Well, after watching the pilot and voicing my well-reasoned and intelligent argument to my roommate that the show was utterly ridiculous and that he should be ashamed of himself for liking it, he admitted that the first two were pretty weak. Without missing a beat, he insisted that I watch past the first few to really get a grasp on what the show is like. Okay, fair enough, I did that too. I watched the one where the purple-haired diva goes to the big city and spends twenty-two minutes lying to everyone before she gets away with it in the end. I also watched the one where the diva manipulates the fire ruby away from the baby dragon who then goes on a rampage and nearly kills everything. Uh huh, I can definitely see the appeal.

It took a while, but my roommate did accept that I wouldn't 'join the herd', yeesh , and he has since stopped bugging me about it. Still, I know he secretly thinks that I'll cave in and love the show as much as he does. Yeah right. Granted, I'm not going to become some troll who goes online just looking to be a jerk to every Brony he finds, either. We at least compromised there.

At any rate, I grab my trusty scooter from its perch inside my closet. My laptop goes in my computer bag, which I then sling over my shoulder before putting my wallet and cellphone, as well as a pen, in my pockets. I have class directly after work and I don't have time to go back to my room between the two.

The warm spring wind hits me as I push open the door to my residence hall, and the omnipresent smell of cows smacks me directly in the face. It's just something that you have to get used to around here. I continue to ignore the cow smell as I adjust my bag once more and hop on the scooter. My left leg propels me forward, and I steadily scoot along towards my place of employment: one of the small take-out places in the University Center, where I work as a dishwasher.

As my destination draws nearer, I look ahead of me to see, of all people, my sister Kristen walking down the sidewalk. This isn't exactly an odd occurrence, since we both go to this school, but she lives in a completely different dorm than I do. We don't see each other that often. I call out to her and she turns around. We give each other subdued greeting nods, and she slows down slightly while I hop off my scooter so we can walk next to each other.

"'Sup," she says.

"Eh, nothin' much. How about you?"

"I'm fine." Kristen motions towards one of the upcoming buildings. "I'm just heading to class."

"Old English Lit or Grammar Nazi?" I ask.

She gives a small smirk and rolls her eyes slightly. "Grammar Nazi."

I copy her smirk and add a chuckle to it. "I'm surprised you haven't dropped out of his class based on the horror stories I hear from you about his rules."

She shoves me to the side as an unspoken ‘oh, come on!’. "It's because I actually work on my research papers,” she snarks, “unlike someone I know who just does them at the last minute!"

"Oh, really? Because last time I heard, you got a little help from that dude who sits next to you in German.” I laugh. “Isn't it sad that a foreigner has a better grasp of our beloved language than you do?"

"He's not actually German, he just lived there for three years,” she grumbles. “Besides, he didn't help me at all. I actually helped him out more than he helped me."

"Ooh, sounds racy," I reply with a snicker.

"Isn't it funny that you make the most fun out of me, and I still do better romantically than you do?" She mock-thoughtfully taps her chin. "When was the last time you had a steady girlfriend?"

"At least Mom doesn't lie awake at night wondering if I'm going to get knocked up when I'm drunk at a party."

She stops at this and shoots me a piercing death glare that I have absolutely no trouble returning. Our staring contest goes on for a while until, as always, we break out into laughter. To an outsider, it may seem like we are seriously arguing, but ripping into each other is just our way of joking around.

"'Sounds racy.’ You're in top form today," she says with a grin.

"You started it with that 'last minute' crack. You didn't expect me to take that lying down, did you?"

She chuckles and shakes her head. "Nope."

The two of us fall silent, and I remember the upcoming weekend. "So, Dad’s coming to get us Friday at five then, yeah?"

Kristen nods. "Yeah, and he's taking us back up after football."

"Nice," I reply with a grin. It used to be a Sunday tradition amongst my sister, father, and and I to set ourselves on the couch in the basement to watch football until there was no more football to watch, while my mom has a day to herself. Of course, that all changed when Kristen and I came up to college, but we still do it when we can.

After we talk football for a minute or so, Kristen motions that she has to be off. I hop back on my scooter, and we part ways.

I screech to a halt right at the four-way crosswalk and stand restlessly as I wait for the sign to cut across the street. A small group of fellow students converges behind me, waiting for the green light themselves. I drum on the handlebars restlessly, looking onwards as the traffic light finally changes to red and the pedestrian sign changes. Thankfully, that only takes three or four seconds. When it does, I’m off. I need to eat before my shift or else I'm going to be miserable all day. A hungry TD is an irritable TD.

However, the dreams of mediocre, but satisfying, food dancing in my head are interrupted by a screeching noise that is getting steadily louder as the fractions of seconds tick on. It seems somebody didn't notice the red light because, when I look to my right, I find myself just about to get really friendly with the front bumper of an oncoming car.

And Jesus wept.

Okay, maybe not Jesus, but I know I sure am about to. Holy moley, I have not been in so much pain since my appendectomy! The side of my head feels like it's on fire, my right elbow refuses to move, and I can already feel bruises forming all over my body.

But hey, if I'm in excruciating pain then that means I'm alive, right?

I swallow the bile that has been building up in my throat and give a small groan of pain. Trying to gauge my immediate surroundings doesn't do me much good.

"Oh my gosh, I think it's alive!" says a young feminine voice beside me.

It, what a flattering thing to be called as you lay in the middle of the pavement. Pavement that feels like... Grass?

Whoa, did the car fling me that far? I'd be impressed if I wasn't in so much pain. Oh well, it'll make a good story later.

"What should we do?" asks another voice, this one slightly gruffer but still young, and unmistakably feminine.

Uh, calling 911 would be a good place to start. I mean, if that's not too much trouble, that is.

"Ah think we should call Fluttershy," says another one, this one with a heavy southern accent. "Y'all know how good she is with animals. Maybe she could help us!"

...What did she just say?!

"That's a good idea," says the second voice. "You two wait here and guard it, and I'll go get Fluttershy."

"Got it!"

Okay, what the heck is going on?! Forget going to get ‘Fluttershy’, whoever that is, just call 911 and get me to a freaking hospital!

"You think it'll be alright, Apple Bloom?"

Again with the 'it'! I'm not an 'it'!

"Ah don't know Sweetie Belle, Ah ain't never seen nothin' like it before."

Did the car propel me straight into an all-female section of town? If not, that is just a downright ridiculous thing to say. However, that is quite unlikely, so the more reasonable explanation is... uh... actually, that's the most reasonable explanation that I can come up with right now.

I groan once more and begin trying to open my eyes.

"Ah think it's wakin' up!" says the Apple Bloom voice… I think.

"Mgrflm," I mumble.

"Whoa, I've never heard an animal make that noise before!" Is that... Sweetie Belle?

"Stoppit," I mumble thickly.

The duo gasps. "Did it just... talk?" Sweetie Belle asks.

"No duh," I say, my strength slowly returning. "’Course I talk."

"Oh boy," Apple Bloom mumbles. "This... Ah-Ah don't even know what this means!"

"Hey look, Scootaloo's coming back!" I hear the pitter-patter of footsteps on the grass, and Sweetie Belle's voice sounds farther away when she speaks next. "Fluttershy's with her!"

"Oh thank goodness! She'll know what to do!"

I try to open my eyes again, but the pain in my head means that I should just give up on this foolish endeavor. Great, maybe I have a concussion.

I hear the two move away from me for a brief moment before eight sets of footsteps approach. Wait, eight sets? Is Fluttershy a medical team? Well, that would be quite nice.

Wait a second... Fluttershy. Fluttershy? I think I've heard that name somewhere before…

"...And we just found it lying there, sprawled out like that," says the second voice. I think that’s Scootaloo, but it’s hard to tell.

"It talks, too!" Sweetie Belle announces excitedly.

"Oh... my," says a nervous fourth voice.

"Aww, I missed it! What did it say?"

"It said 'stop it', ‘no duh', and 'course Ah talk’," Apple Bloom explains.

"What do you think, Fluttershy?" I feel something poke my chest. "Can you heal it up?"

"I'm not an ‘it’, I'm a ‘he’," I mumble, hoping that they can understand me.

I hear Fluttershy gasp. "I... I... I... I gotta go get Twilight."

Twilight? Where have I heard that name before? Come to think of it, 'Apple Bloom' sounds vaguely familiar too, almost as if...

All of a sudden, it hits me like a car running a red light.

Oh no, oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no.

That can't be the explanation. There has to be some other reason for this! Maybe I'm hallucinating. Maybe I'm dead! Heck, maybe I ate too many blueberry bagels for dinner last night and now I'm paying the price, but the explanation has to be something other than what my brain is telling me is the true answer! What are the freaking odds that what I'm guessing is actually right?! This kind of thing only happens in fan fiction or something like that!

"Noooooooo!!" I say with the most drama and conviction that my battered form can muster before I fade into darkness once more.

Beep.

Well, that was quite the shocking dream…

Beep.

At least, I hope it was a dream.

Beep.

Thanks to the piercing beeping of a heart monitor thingie and the distinctive smell of a dozen different kinds of disinfectants that only belong in a hospital, I'm going to guess that the incident with the car wasn't quite as fake as my 'died and went to Equestria' dream.

Beep.

"Is he gonna be alright, Doc?" asks an accented voice. No doubt that said voice belongs to a nurse, or some kind passerby, who saw my accident and took interest in my recovery.

"I... I think so. I've certainly never seen anything like this before," says a male.

Well, that is certainly a comforting thought. Usually when you end up in a hospital and your condition is something that the doctors haven't seen before, that's a cause for concern.

"Ugh," I say weakly.

"Oh my, the Crusaders were right, he does talk!" another female exclaims.

Wait... Dang it! Okay, it's high time I opened my eyes and saw exactly what the heck is going on here. I've had enough with just hearing what is going on.

The sheer amount of willpower it takes me to convince my stubborn body to do something as simple as open my eyes would allow me to beat a snake in a staring contest, but eventually my body gives in and my heavy eyelids begin to flutter open.

"He's awake!" yells someone I can tell is hyperactive just from those two words.

My eyes fully snap open and I am greeted with the sights of my surroundings for the first time. There, standing around me with wide eyes and fascinated expressions, are the six main characters of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, as well as a male pony who I unconsciously surmise is a hospital doctor, if the lab coat is any indication. The seven of them stare at me for a few moments, without so much as blinking.

I stare back, also unblinking and unmoving, wondering who should make the first move here. Should... should I say something?

Finally, the purple one, Twilight I remember, clears her throat and speaks up. "Ah... hello. My name is Twilight Sparkle. Can you understand me?"

I blink four times and nod, hoping that I will wake up and this will all be just a nightmare. It still might be just a nightmare. Or that’s what I hope it is.

Nothing happens. They’re still there and still staring. "Uh, hi," I reply with a bit of unease.

Even in my pained state, I can see the gears turning in Twilight's head. No doubt she has ten million questions that she wants to ask at that moment, if her character in the show is anything to go by, but she can't think of the right one to lead with. She opens her mouth once more. "What's your name?"

"TD," I answer evenly.

"Okay, TD," she nods. "It's nice to meet you."

"Uh-huh," I respond. Am I really happy to meet Twilight? No, I can’t say I am, because that means that I am not on Earth! Why I am not on Earth, I have no idea. I have to admit, it’s freaking me out a little bit.

The room is silent for a moment before the rainbow one clears her throat. "Uh... what are you?"

Ah-ha! There's the ten-million-dollar question. "I'm a human."

"A what?" asks Twilight.

"A human."

"What is a human exactly?" the diva asks.

"Uh..." I begin. How do I contextualize this for them? "I'm just that: a human, I guess."

"Okay, then..." Twilight responds carefully. "What are you doing here in Ponyville?"

"That is an excellent question." My eyes look around the sterile, white room as if the walls will hold some clue to why I am where I am. It just looks like a hospital room, though. "I don't really know. I know for darned sure that I'm not from here, so let's begin there."

Twilight's already comically large eyes grow a bit larger. "What?"

“Well, I don’t remember my world being this..." I motion around the room, looking for the right word. "Animated.” I decide to refrain from telling them that in my world they are fictional characters in a stupid fictional TV show designed for four year olds and yet loved by grown men. I don't know what that would do to them.

"Then how did you get here?" the rainbow one asks.

I raise my arm in a weak shrug. "I don't know. The last thing I remember is being hit by a car."

Now it's Twilight's turn to cock her head and give me a confused look. "A what?"

"A car. You know..." I stop right there. Of course they don't know what a car is. "Uh... a mechanical carriage."

"Okay," says Twilight. "That would explain the injuries, then."

I try to shift in the bed a bit and, as if to prove her point, my body screams in pain, which I do myself in response. I tense up until it goes away. Great, so not only am I in this stupid fictional world, I am also in a ton of pain. Gee, this day just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?

"Are you alright?" asks Pinkie Pie.

"You tell me, I just got here," I say through clenched teeth.

"I suppose that's my department," says the doctor in a business-like tone as he opens up a manila folder. "You dislocated your right foreleg at the joint and had a minor concussion, plus a hairline fracture in your other foreleg. On top of that, you've been in a coma for the past four days."

My mouth drops open and I stare at the doctor in shock. "Four days?!"

“Indeed, four days." The doctor bites his lip and lifts up one of the pages. It almost looks like he's not even sure of what he's looking at. "We've done our best to patch you up, but frankly, we don't know much about your anatomy."

I look down at my broken body and discover that they've taken my shirt off. I would be irritated at this, except for the fact that a people hospital would have done the same thing. Still... “What did you do with my shirt?"

"Your what?" asks the doc.

I motion to my chest. "My shirt. You know, that dark blue thing I was wearing on my upper half?"

"That was a piece of clothing?" the diva asks with a note of disgust.

I nod, and she gives a small shudder. I roll my eyes at her antics. "Come on, it's not that bad! But seriously, where is it?"

"We removed it when we examined you." The doctor points towards a chair in the room a few feet from my bed. "We put it there with the rest of your stuff."

I stare in horror for a few moments when I see what used to be my shirt hanging off the back of the chair. What was once a decently well-maintained piece of clothing is now a mangled mess of dark blue fabric that no one in any dimension would ever recognize as a shirt.

I shoot the doctor an angry glare. "What did you do to it?!"

The doctor glances uneasily at the clothing. "Well, we had to take it off to examine your injuries fully…"

I angrily motion over to my destroyed work shirt. "So you went at it with a weed eater?!"

"No, nothing like that. We simply cut it off."

I groan and facepalm. It occurs to me that I should try to get over it though, because hey, why bother focusing on small things when there is the bigger issue of me freaking being in ponyland?! I examine the chair once more to see my computer bag is also sitting on it. My scooter is also leaning against the side. At least they aren't totally unrecognizable messes, so that’s good.

I look down at my arms. "How well do they work?" I ask the doctor. "Can I move them?"

The doctor opens up the folder once again and scans the inside for a brief moment. "I wouldn't bother trying to move your left foreleg for a few days. The fracture isn't one hundred percent healed. Your right foreleg should be fine, though. The luxation’s had time to heal already."

I gingerly begin to move my right arm, testing it for any pain or stiffness. It's a bit stiff, but it doesn't hurt when I move it. I reach over and grab my computer bag off of the chair. "They're called ‘arms’, by the way," I declare, doing my best to open up the bag with one arm.

"Huh?"

"You're calling them forelegs; they're actually arms."

"Ah." His horn glows and a pencil floats from his coat pocket to the folder, where he jots down some notes. Normally I would have been surprised by a power like this, but since I had seen the show, I was expecting it. "That was one of our theories, but we couldn't really know for sure. I take it you’re bipedal then?"

I nod, finally unzipping the front pocket of my computer bag. The seven ponies watch in interest as I flip the laptop open and turn it on. I breathe a huge sigh of relief when the screen turns blue and begins powering up. No damage as far as I can see.

Twilight's eyes widen in curiosity and the first hints of a fascinated smile appear on her face, as she leans forward to examine my computer. "What's that?"

"My computer," I reply as I close it and stuff it back into my bag. "I was just making sure that it wasn't damaged."

"Was it?" asks Fluttershy.

I shake my head. "It seems fine." I put the bag down beside my bed and look back at the seven ponies. "So, what now?"

"Well," the stallion begins. "I don't see any reason why you need to stay here. You can go home in the morning."

"That would be wonderful," I snark, "but how can I get home?"

The doctor opens up his mouth for a brief moment, and then closes it again. "I... I don't know. Where do you live?"

"Again, not here," I say. "I don't think I even live in this universe!"

"Well then how did you end up here?" asks Fluttershy.

"Once more, I don't know."

"How do we get you back?" asks Twilight.

"I don't know!" I snarl, frustration slowly rising in my voice. "I was hoping you could tell me!"

"We don't even know where you are from!" Rainbow points out.

"Hence the problem.”

I see Twilight's brow furrow and she taps her lower jaw with her left hoof, deep in thought. I have to admit, the way she bites her lip and taps her jaw makes her look kind of comical. "We could try to ask Princess Celestia about it," she says finally.

I raise an eyebrow at her and cock my head ever so slightly. "Haven't you told her I'm here already? I mean, don't you two tell each other everything? Did you seriously not tell her that a... ‘thing’ is now on Ponyville’s hospital?"

"Well yeah," she admits. "And you should be thanking her, quite frankly. She's done some serious covering up around here."

"What do you mean?"

"She didn't want knowledge about you to get out until we really knew what was going on. She thought it would be for the best if your existence was kept quiet."

"How very thoughtful," I say sarcastically.

Twilight frowns. "She didn't have to do that, you know."

"Oh, I think she did," I retort acidly. "She doesn't strike me as the type to do something for no reason, even if that reason is incredibly ridiculous."

Twilight's scowl deepens. "How do you know anything about Princess Celestia anyway?"

I open my mouth to reply, but then I close it again. I've already decided that I can't tell them that they're fake. It's an already tense situation, and I don't fancy seeing where that goes right now. Having said that, it would no doubt create an interesting reaction.

"I guess I'm just... uh..." There I go again, showcasing how eloquent and well-spoken I am under pressure.

"Well?"

I opt for shrugging. "Rulers are all pretty much the same motivation-wise."

Twilight seems to realize that she isn't going to get anything more elaborate out of me, so she walks out of the room to go contact her puppeteer. The two pilot episodes didn't teach me much about this world, but gosh darn it if the end didn't show how manipulative Celestia could be. I sigh and look back at the doctor. "Can I walk?"

He frowns and checks the folder once more. "I don't see why not," he says after an once-over of one of the documents inside. "Your hind legs weren't damaged in the..." He motions towards me. "Whatever caused your injuries."

"Legs, doc. They’re not hind legs, just legs.”

Using my one good arm to throw the thin hospital blanket off of me, I gingerly sit up. My left arm screams at me to stop being foolish and just lie back down, but I'm determined to actually get out of bed. I don't want to be lying around all day after all. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, and the ponies take a step back as I stand up to my full height. As far as humans go, five-foot-ten is nothing too impressive, but to them I must be a little intimidating. Their heads hardly come up to my chest.

Thankfully, they have kept my pants and my shoes on. My wallet and cell phone seem to still be in my pockets as well. I don't fancy trying to get reception in this place, but it is still a nice thing to have around, if for no other reason than it can play the music I have stored on it.

I take a few uneasy steps and am glad to discover that my legs seem to have retained enough strength that I don’t collapse immediately. I should have no problems walking around.

"You doin' alright, sugarcube?" asks the accented one.

"I think so," I respond as I stretch my legs out. "What are all of your names again?"

It doesn't take me too long before I have all of their names down. They're nothing too complex. With the names in mind, I walk over to the chair to fully examine my work shirt. Yeah, they totally destroyed it. I know a hospital will cut clothing off if they have to, they cut off a jersey I was wearing when I broke my arm once, but this wasn't cutting it off. It was hacking it to pieces. I count myself lucky that whatever means they used to get it off didn't get my skin as well. I would have woken up as a bloody mess.

I open my computer bag and stuff the destroyed cloth inside, then hang the bag back on the chair. I want to take everything back with me once I find a way back, even the shirt. Hopefully the car crash wasn't actually fatal. If not, things will get really... afterlife-y the moment I return.

I turn back to the ponies, who are watching my every move with interest. I take a deep breath, something that aggravates my fractured arm a bit, and try to think of something to say. "So, how long before Twilight gets Celestia?"

"Ah think you'd better call her 'Princess Celestia', if ya don't mind," Applejack reprimands with a hint of sternness dotting her voice.

My glower returns her sternness. "Why? She's not my princess."

"Well, just outta plain respect!" Rainbow Dash reinforces.

I’m about to explain to her why I don't have to respect a darned thing about her, but the door to my room opens up and in walks Twilight followed by none other than the object of our conversation. That was quick, wasn't it? A little too quick. Almost as if she was waiting nearby for me to wake up. Immediately the six ponies bow low to the ground. I stay on my feet. I don't like where this is going.

The two of us lock gazes and examine each other. As ponies go, I can definitely see why they respect her. She does admittedly look a tad daunting, if nothing else than for her size. She’s at least two or three inches taller than I am.

After a few moments of her staring at the new creature in her world and me staring back at the pure white quadruped god-thing, I begin to feel a bit uncomfortable. "So," I say, hoping that will get the ball rolling.

"So," she replies in kind. Dang, her voice is even more corny and girly in 'reality' than on the show. "You are the result of the spell."

I recoil a bit in shock at her statement. Spell? What spell? "Uh... what?"

Instead of responding directly to my reasonable question, she turns back to the doctor and gives a slight nod. The doctor nods back and leaves the room, closing the door behind him. Only then does she turn back to the rest of us. "I want all of you to listen carefully. What I am about to explain is not to leave this room."

"We understand, Princess," Twilight says for the others.

I narrow my eyes slightly. Now I really don't like where this is going.

She looks back at me and sighs. "It comes to my understanding that you are an intelligent creature. Am I correct?"

"Eh..." I shrug. "Close enough."

She nods at the confirmation. "Good. Hopefully, you will take what I am about to say with quiet dignity and grace, then."

Uh-oh.

"Now, before anything, you must understand that not even I am fully aware of what magic is capable of. I do not have total control over it and, like the best of us, I make mistakes sometimes."

Oh, this is not going to be pretty, is it?

"During an experiment, I stumbled upon something."

"What do you mean?" I ask suspiciously. The other six are listening to her with rapt attention.

"Like I said, some things about magic escape my understanding. In simple terms, it was a strong magical pull that began sucking the magic out of my room. I do not understand its nature, nor what caused it to appear, it just did."

This is so not going to be good.

"I used all of my powers to stop the outflow, and I succeeded… in a sense. The pull became a push, if you will, and all of the magic it was absorbing was released all over Equestria.

“I was, unfortunately, unaware of what the ramifications were at the moment."

"So what you're saying is..."

A presumably rare look of discomfort crosses the monarch's face, and it causes a similar feeling to creep up on me as well. Where is she going with this? "Basically, what I think happened is that portal between our two worlds was formed and pulled you here when the portal on my end collapsed. That is my best guess."

My eyes narrow some more at the revelation and the first hints of anger begin bubbling up inside of me. "So, in layman’s terms, you were messing around with magic, and thanks to that, you accidentally dragged me here?"

"I believe so," she says simply.

I give a slight nod at the information and walk up closer to her. She is admittedly a little more daunting this close up, but I don't really care about that right now.

Now, before I explain what happens, I must say that I have never been good at handling bad news, particularly the ‘I got in trouble over someone else’s mistake’ kind. Well, this was that situation to the extreme. Her messing around with magic meant that I was pulled into a world full of girlish talking cartoon ponies. Yeah, I was pulled into a little girl's show because she wasn't as good at magic as she thought she was. See, as pissed off and kind of freaked out as I am right now, I've been doing my best to keep that from getting out. I mean, even in situations like this, there’s no need to go freaking out and not acting like a civilized human being. Even situations like this can be looked at rationally.

At any rate, I take this bit of news exactly like I thought I would.

With all of the ‘quiet dignity and grace’ that I can muster, I walk up to Celestia and punch her in the face.

We All Make Mistakes...

There are times in everybody’s life where they react to something that happens to them, and based on the reactions of the others involved, the person may or may not know that the reaction they just had wasn’t the wisest one.

I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say that this may or may not be one of those times.

As I lay in a freshly-made crater in the room next to the one I recently occupied, the thought begins to go through my mind.

“Uh… hbuluhgh,” I say as I attempt to get out of the large dent in the cracked linoleum floor. My one good arm is shaking like crazy, and my attempt to push myself off of the ground is met with no success. The last remaining reserves of my strength 'pull a Judas' on me, and I am on the floor once more seconds later.

Surprisingly, I’m not in as much pain as I thought it would be. Sure, my left arm still hurts like crazy, and I feel like someone is driving nails through my skull, but I’m surprised that I’m not more… dead. Having said that, maybe whatever happened destroyed every nerve ending in my body save for the ones I know are going off, and I am actually in even more excruciating pain than I originally thought, but can’t feel it.

As I lie like an invalid on the cold linoleum that presses against my skin – it’s actually doing a side job of cooling me off, which is nice – I wonder if they aren’t just going to lock the door of the room and wall me in like that one drunk dude in The Cask of Amontillado. Goodness knows that if Celestia is sadistic enough to send her sister to the moon for a whole millennium, she’s certainly capable of that.

The seconds tick on, and my mind tells my body that it should probably roll over and beg for mercy from the ponies if I want to keep this whole ‘living’ schtick going. Perish that last thought, but I don’t see why I can’t at least roll over. That’s still a skill I possess, right?

Groaning, I place my right hand on the floor and, grabbing my last bit of strength by the collar to prevent its escape, I push off and roll over so I face the ceiling. Ah, popcorn ceiling, how charming. Didn’t that go out of style in the… was it ever in style? Even when it’s animated, the popcorn ceiling looks absolutely ridiculous.

My senses are slowly returning, which the the metallic taste filling my mouth proves, and I realize I bit my tongue in the beat down. Geez, if that’s the only repercussion, then I got off easier than I thought. Still, I can’t lie here forever, waiting for them to concoct some other form of sadistic revenge for my completely justified reaction to Celestia’s jerk move. I can only imagine the horrors that the seven of them, nay, the whole country, have in store for me. I just punched their goddess in the face. Unless you live in Stalinist Russia, people don’t tend to like it when you punch powerful beings in the face for being morons.

At that moment, I hear the door to my right open and, mustering more strength than I thought I had in me at the moment, I turn my head and look. To my utter lack of surprise, in walk the six ponies and their ‘oh so beloved by me at this moment’ leader. Each one of them has a unique look to them.

Fluttershy appears to be hiding behind her hair, not even daring to look at anyone in the room for fear of what the reaction to this situation will be from the parties involved.

Applejack, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash are absolutely livid; their faces are masks of anger that I am not sure will ever come off as long as I’m the object of their attention. Ah ha, Watson, we now have three more suspects for the beings responsible for my current predicament!

Rarity and Pinkie Pie both merely look uncomfortably at me. I don't know whether they're mad or sorry, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that ‘a bit of both’ is an acceptable answer.

However, the expression that surprises me the most is that of Princess Celestia. I see that I did absolutely nothing to her. To her credit, though, she does at least look a little concerned. Sort of. "Are you okay?" she asks in that irritatingly serene voice.

Oh, how desperately I wish I could stand up and flip her the bird, though I imagine my situation is a bit… delicate at the moment. So, I opt instead for a far more intelligent answer. "No."

She chuckles. Oh that's nice to see: my pain brings her joy. How delightful. "Of course. I would imagine you don't feel completely healthy at the moment."

I roll my eyes at her – thank goodness I haven't been robbed of my ability to do that! – and look around at the other ponies again. "Okay, spill it. Who exactly did what?"

To my surprise, a look of excitement plasters itself on Pinkie Pie's face."Oh, oh, you wouldn't believe what they did! First you hit the Princess and then Twilight put you in a spell and pulled you back through the walls but Rainbow Dash and Applejack both kicked you in the legs but I think Princess Celestia put you under some kind of spell so that Applejack and Twilight and Rainbow Dash didn't break every bone in your body and put you in one of those ‘FOREVER!’ comas and–"

She only stops when Rarity puts a hoof in her mouth. Holy Hitchcock, Batman, did she ever pause or take a breath throughout that entire thing? "I think he gets the idea, darling."

"Indeed," I reply stiffly.

"That's about the extent of it," Celestia admits. "I put that protection spell over you so that you wouldn't be harmed while they..." She motions over to the hyperactive pink pony. “Well, you heard Pinkie Pie."

"Why?” I raise an eyebrow at her. “Not that I’m unappreciative, but I'm surprised that you didn't join right in with the beating of the insolent human that just smacked your snout."

At this, Celestia's face falls a bit. "Well, as much of a surprise as it was to be so blatantly attacked as I was, I still see more coming out of your appearance here. Yes, I cast a spell that brought you here. Yes, you're angry and you lashed out. No, I didn’t appreciate that. But I still want to answer the ‘why’s’ in this equation: why you, why now, why here, etcetera.

“Besides, I do not imagine that Twilight and her friends would have benefited emotionally from your death."

"Thanks for that," I spit. "Now you just gotta teach your lapdogs how far their chains actually go and you’re golden."

Celestia's face darkens ever so slightly, but she says nothing. She’s probably realized I am perfectly justified in saying that; or she figured that I've just been through enough hell and could use some slack.

I don’t wait for her answer. "Did it hurt? When I hit you, I mean," I explain at her puzzled look.

She breaks back out into her contented smile. Gosh darn it, Celestia, stop that! This is not a smiling situation! "If you could ever strike me hard enough to hurt me even a little, I'd hand over rule of Equestria to you."

"It was worth a shot, I guess," I mumble.

"No, it was not 'worth a shot'!" Twilight snarls. "What in Equestria possessed you?!"

Celestia frowns and puts a hoof on her student's shoulder. "Twilight–"

"How do you justify attacking Princess Celestia, let alone in the face, huh?!” Twilight just cut Celestia off. Wow. I didn't think she would ever do that. “What made you think that was okay?!"

"Twilight–"

"You're so lucky–"

"Twilight!" Celestia interrupts with a little more force, and Twilight turns to look. She instantly pales and deflates under the stern look she’s getting.

I decide that now is as good of a time as any to speak up. "To answer your question, I punched your ruler because I am still rather mad that she ripped me from my world. A world where I was perfectly happy and content with how things were going.” I take the time to spit out a mouthful of saliva mixed with blood at the floor. When I speak again, I can’t hide the anger anymore. “I had plans, goals, and ambitions, and now because of her fooling around with stuff she doesn’t know, all of that is gone! I might as well not exist!"

My outburst disarms Applejack, Twilight, and even Rainbow Dash, the one that looked the closest to charging at me again. Their ears wilt and they get out of attack mode. Yeah, they’d better feel embarrassed!

"I had loving parents, cool friends, a pleasant life, and things I was looking forward to! I was going to go down to see my parents for the first time in a month this upcoming weekend! Now I can't do that because of your irresponsible Princess, who has me sitting in a room full of ridiculous talking ponies that have just finished beating the bagels out of me! Does that answer your question, Sparkle?"

The minutes pass without response, though, and the silence is getting kind of awkward. Enough with the self-pity party already, would you? I'm not healing any faster just lying here on the floor! Having said that, though, if Celestia did cast a spell to protect me from the abuse that would have reduced a terminator to nothing more than a weeping pile of junk, maybe I'm not broken all over after all. I try once more to push myself up off of the ground, and I’m delighted to discover that while my joints are stiff, I can stand up just fine. My fractured arm means that I am still in excruciating pain, but hey, nothing more than that is something I can deal with.

The seven snap out of their fit of depression when they notice me on my feet. All they do is stare, until Fluttershy slowly begins walking up to me, hiding in her hair the entire time, and nuzzles my arm in an apology. "I'm sorry," she mumbles sadly.

I so desperately want to grimace at the display, but I simply can't. I know she genuinely feels sorry for what the others did. I realize that I can't be mad at either her, Pinkie, or Rarity – all three are guilt-free in this.

I rub my temples a bit and sigh. "Don't worry about it," I grunt back.

"Oh but we must, Darling!" said Rarity earnestly. "You must let us make it up to you!"

"Unless you can retur–"

"We simply can't let you wander around Equestria when we are the ones who brought you here in the first place!"

"She brought me here,” I retort, with my index finger almost poking Celestia’s snout. Out of the corner of my eye, I see she’s surprised for a tenth of a second as she looks cross-eyed at the tip, but I’m interrupted again before I can process that.

"You have to let us help you through this!" Twilight begs.

Oh dear, this isn't good. I'm going to have to live with them now, aren't I? "N...No, I can find–"

"You must!" Rarity’s eyes grow very large and pleading. "You must, you must, you must!"

"No, really," I press, "I can–"

"You must!"

"OKAY, FINE, I MUST!" I yell out in frustration. Dang it!

Rarity's face breaks out in a wide grin and she walks over to me. In turn, I take a few steps back. I've seen that kind of look before: she has plans. "Perfect! You can start by staying with me!"

"Uh..."

Her smile widens. "Oh, it’s no trouble at all, darling."

"I think that sounds like a wonderful idea," Celestia adds her two cents. I shoot a glare her way, but she simply returns it with her trademark cool face.

I desperately want to shout out that I’m sure she is only offering me board so she can get me for some nefarious purpose; I only don’t because I doubt they'll listen. Their expectant smiles reveal as much. Short of punting Rarity out a window, I don't think that I'm going to get out of this. "Fine," I mumble dejectedly.

"Wonderful! You can come over and move in right now!"

"Didn’t the doctor say that I wouldn’t be discharged until morning?"

"Oh, based on that right hook, I think I can get you discharged right now," Celestia jokes. "I don't see any reason to keep you here."

"Of course you don't," I grumble.

True to her word, the doctor comes in and examines me for a brief moment, signing a discharge right afterwards. The Princess tells him that she will foot the bill for the property damage, something that makes him look rather relieved. I wonder if he was doing the math of how much it’ll cost to fix the holes in the building before she soothed him.

I gingerly walk back to the room I woke up in to collect my scooter and computer bag, and reach into my pockets to check my cell phone, hoping it was also protected by Celestia's spell. Good, it was – at least I can listen to my music. Provided the battery holds, that is... which it won't forever. That is a sobering thought for sure. My hospital bill is also covered by Celestia, which is something I wonder whether she’ll hold against me at some point in the future.

After signing a few papers, I’m out. Man, it feels really great to be out of there. I never liked hospitals to begin with. They're always so quiet, so... subdued. I'm not a huge fan of how white and sterile everything is either, and let's not forget the ever-present sense that death is leaning against the wall in your room, watching you, waiting...

I struggle to hold out against a very un-manly shiver. Now I know why so many horror movies take place in abandoned hospitals. At any rate, the sun shining down on me scares off the chill.

The temperature outside is pretty nice, something I think I would never experience consistently back where I come from. The smell of cows is gone as well, something that I appreciate beyond measure. In fact, as I take a deep breath, I notice the air is clean... very clean. Air pollution feels like an alien concept right now. Caricaturisms aside, I imagine that, if you put this place back to back against Earth, it would still look far more lush, green, and peaceful than anywhere I’ve ever been.

However, the feeling of relaxation slowly gives way to icy dread when we get into the town proper. My goodness, the ponies are everywhere! Sure, I realized the moment when I would be bombarded with the sight of more ponies then I could ever imagine in my life would come even before I got out of the hospital, but that doesn’t make it any less unnerving.

Immediately, I miss the sight of college students bustling about like rambling cattle to their next class or off to their rooms. Sure, it may sound similar to what I’m going through now, but at least they’re humans. It certainly makes for a far less alien experience than this.

I take a small step back, only to get nudged forward mid-step by Twilight’s head. "Easy now," she whispers soothingly. "They're not going to hurt you."

"That's not the issue," I whisper back. "The issue is that they're all ponies!"

"Err… yeah, we are kind of all ponies here," says Rainbow Dash, who is flying alongside us.

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, I kind of got that. It’s just weird for me is all."

"Oh well, in any case it’s only a few more blocks to my house, darling," Rarity reassures me. "You can hide in there once we arrive."

Oh, how I resent the word 'hide' in this situation. On the other hand, better keep my mouth shut for now. They'll all know all about me soon enough.

In fact, look, they're finding out about me right now! Yep, I am getting the first of many collective stares as I walk down the street. Each and every resident of Ponyville that I can see is paying me their undivided attention, and boy is it awkward. I don't think I've had so many beings focused on me since my birth.

Nobody does anything but stare. They've stopped walking, they've stopped talking to each other, they've stopped buying and selling, they’ve stopped literally everything just to stare. All attention is focused on me and me alone, the shirtless being walking on two legs surrounded by the six most famous ponies in Ponyville. Thank goodness Celestia returned to Canterlot not long after I was discharged. I didn’t need any more attention than this.

"I take it they always do that?" I whisper to Twilight.

She laughs nervously, which doesn't sound encouraging. "They'll get used to you…”

"I sure hope not," I retort. "I really don’t want to be here long enough for that."

"I'm sure everything will be fine," Rarity repeats herself. Of course it will be. "Oh, here we are!"

True to her word, we have arrived at a tacky-looking building that I can only assume is Rarity's home, since she has the key to unlock it and all. Fancy that being the indicator. She happily steps into her not-so-humble abode, which haunts me with the terrors within. It is the home of a fashion designer from a little girls’ show after all.

Letting myself get roped into this is sounding like an even worse idea than before.

What her home actually looks like isn't nearly as frightening or gag-inducing as I imagined, as I see when she flips on the lights. It looks like... a house. I mean, yeah, there is definitely a room where she showcases her stuff, but it's not too shabby, to be honest. "Nice place," I say as I walk in, followed by the others.

"Why thank you, darling. I've done my best to make it comfortable."

"Yeah... I can see that," I tip-toe verbally. "It does look very... comfortable."

Rarity looks proudly around her abode. "It's a simple enough dwelling place. Nothing more than I need on the whole."

As if she wouldn't move to Canterlot to become royalty the minute she got the chance. Still, she hasn’t been anything but nice so far and pointing that out would be very rude of me, so I restrain myself from becoming the new Element of Honesty. I instead opt for another compliment, and then another one. She eats them all up. Maybe that’s something I can possibly use to my advantage if I find myself in a tight spot with her…

"So," she says. "Is the basement okay? I'm afraid that I haven't had any time to prepare anything for you."

"The basement's fine," I confirm. "It's where my room was when I was in high school. It'll be just like home."

She grins. "I'll be sure to make it extra comfortable, then."

I nod, but we realize that we don't really have much to say at that point, and the place goes quiet. I want to go home, not make small talk. However, I know that isn't going to happen anytime soon, so, like the rest of them, I try to think of something to say.

However, the situation goes from bad to worse when Twilight speaks up. "Well, girls, it's been a fun day, but I really think I have to go. I have a lot of work to catch up on. I'll see you later."

"Yeah, same goes for me," says Rainbow Dash. "Gotta clear those clouds up."

My heart sinks as each one of the ponies gives reasons to leave. Not because they sound like excuses – all of them are legitimate ones, as far as I can tell – but because I do not want to be left alone with Rarity. The fact that she was so eager to take me in is still worrying me. Does she have some kind of sadistic plan? However, I don't bother trying to stop the other five ponies as they say their goodbyes and leave the boutique. I may be stronger than Rarity and able to resist whatever she throws at me. I know I will try if I have to.

I set my pack on a couch and fold up my scooter, stretching out a bit afterwards. As uneasy as my current situation makes me feel, it’s good to be up and about again.

"So," Rarity opens up. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine."

Her eyes scan my chest. "How is your upper half? It's not too cold in here for you, is it?"

"Not really."

"Is it usual for males of your species to go around without a shirt on? You didn’t seem to like it when you found out your own was cut up, but haven’t said a thing otherwise."

I shake my head. Where is she going with this? "Some guys do it every now and then, but on the whole, we keep most of us clothed."

"Oh then you must let me make you a new shirt!" she explodes. “I don’t want you going around town feeling nude!”

"Er,” I stumble. She’s almost unnaturally eager to do things for me, and I don’t know how to react properly. “I'm good for right now, thanks."

"Oh, but you aren't! You need your clothes if you're going to stay here! You can't wear the same thing every day after all."

I uneasily rub the back of my neck and raise one leg in the air as if to take a half-step backwards. "True, but-"

"You have to let me make you some clothes!" I grow even more uneasy when I see a mad glint in her eye. "It would be no problem at all, darling, I assure you."

"Seriously, I'll just-"

“Oh, don't worry about it." She begins pushing me towards what I assume is a workroom. "Now, I haven't designed anything for humans before, so I'll need you to stand still while I take your measurements."

"Don't you just have dressmaking materials here?"

Rarity chuckles. "Oh, I'm sure I can make them work for you. You'll be the talk of the town with your stylish new clothes!"

I realize she’s going to be really insistent about all of this, and my heart sinks. She shoves me into the workroom, which is even worse than I thought: ruffles and frills and pink items strewn all over. Nothing here gives any indication that she even knows what a male is, much less designed clothes for them before. The sheer amount of girliness in this room would make even the most die-hard brony reconsider getting an outfit by this pony.

I gulp as I turn back to Rarity. "Have you ever even designed anything for males before? You seem to only do dresses."

Rarity scoffs and waves her hoof. "Oh please, dear, of course I've designed outfits for males before." She walks up to a closet and opens it up. "Just look at this outfit I created for Spike! Isn't it just dashing?"

My eyes widen as I stare at the abomination before me. She made that?! I thought she was supposedly a good fashion designer! It looks like something that a 16th century noble would wear… if they lost a bet. It is very frilly, the colors are gaudy, the designs on the outfit are garish, and the whole thing is just an affront to everything that everyone ever stood for.
She smiles, looking fondly at the outfit. "One of my better designs, I think. I can make one for you just like this if you want!"

I stare at the outfit, and then do the only sensible thing I can think of: run for my life and fashion sense. I make it a whole three feet out the doorway.

New Clothes

"Fun fact: when I get out of here, I'm going to get a job and spend every cent of my first paycheck on gasoline so I can burn this wretched place down."

"Uh-huh."

"Just so you know, when you let me out I'm going to bribe whoever I must to get you name legally changed to Slartibartfast."

"Uh-huh."

With every second that passes as I stand in the middle of the dressing room, I rue the decision to agree to stay with Rarity a little more. She hit me with some sort of freezing spell when I attempted to run, and now here I am being a girly pony’s first human mannequin.

She’s only taking my measurements now; it’s been an hour so far, though, and I'm starting to get really uncomfortable. That probably has something to do with the fact that I can't move anything below my neck except for the muscles I breathe with. I have long since decided that I was not going to take this with the submissive ‘dignity’ that she intended, and as such, I’ve spent this past hour complaining and thinking up various threats.

However, they aren't really fazing her.

"When this freezing spell is lifted I'm going to buy as much dye as I can, and then I'm going to dye your coat mustard yellow while you sleep."

"That's nice," she says nonchalantly.

"On a different subject, when I'm free, I'm going to take your cat and punt it so hard I'm going to rip a hole in reality and create the entire Colquitt family, as well as change the Cleveland Browns into a curling team."

"Won't that be interesting?" she responds blankly, however I see a slight look of confusion cross her face at this one. I'll take this small victory.

"On an unrelated note–"

"Would you please just give this up?" she asks with a hint of irritation. "I'm not letting you go until you have a new set of fashionable clothes to wear!"

"Are you doing that as the Element of Generosity or because I'm a new challenge for you?"

She gives me a small smirk at the question. "A little of both."

"More of the latter, I wager?"

She scoffs and shakes her head. "Honestly, darling, your opinion of me can't be that low."

Oh yeah, after the two episodes I watched that were centered on you, it totally can be.

"After seeing what you made for Spike, yeah, it totally can be."

"Oh hush up about that," she says as she brings a tape measure up to my right forearm. "I promise you, what I will make for you will be far more casual than that. That was formal wear, after all."

"Was it now?" I ask, noting myself to never let her design formal wear for me.

"Of course it was!"

I look around the room. "Aren't all of your clothes formal wear since, you know, you don't wear clothes most of the time and all that?"

She shrugs. "For the most part, yes, but that certainly doesn't mean I can't create some wonderful casual clothes for you!"

"With what materials, exactly?" I ask as I look around at all of the dress fabrics. "If you make me anything out of this, I'm not wearing it. I’m serious on that one."

"Oh, hush," she repeats. "I'm not so foolish as to think you'll be wearing dresses."

I breathe a small sigh of relief at that. Okay then, even if she is a bit narcissistic, she's not a total moron. "So, what do your evil plans entail?" I ask. "You've sure taken your sweet time taking my measurements."

"That's because you're so oddly proportioned!" she says with a slight frown and a little poke on my leg. "I mean, really, you're such a thin being, and your legs are so long, and–"

"Y’know, if you want to spend the day trading insults about looks, it's going to be a while before I run out of the actual nasty ones I have for you. It’s not a road you want to walk down."

Rarity frowns fully and harrumphs, while I sigh in turn. I would have gone back to my habit of rubbing my temples a long time ago if I wasn't frozen in place. We’re going nowhere with this, and fast. "Look, I'm sorry if I'm being sort of snappy today,” I apologize, being the bigger adult. “It's just that, well, I'm sure you can guess what I'm feeling right now."

"Oh of course I can, darling!" she exclaims earnestly as she wraps the tape measure around my left thigh for what must be the sixth time now. "I've been places where it seems like it's a whole different world! For example, there was Appleloosa, and my goodness was it dry and messy and... bleagh." To my amusement, she actually mocks a gag.

"It must have been hard for you," I reply. "Being around all of that icky dirt sure does sound taxing."

"Oh, it was, dear, it was!" She either didn't notice my sarcasm or simply isn’t caring anymore. I can believe either possibility.

A few more minutes of torture later, she sighs and I feel the freezing spell lift. "I think I've gotten everything I need to make you some new clothes," she announces.

I stretch my right arm and move my legs around. Man that sure stiffened up my joints. Go figure.

"That wasn't so taxing, now was it, darling?" she asks sweetly.

It takes every gram of my willpower to prevent myself from presenting her with a death glare that would have told her exactly how taxing that was. "Have you ever been under a freezing spell?"

She grins and nods. "Of course! It's all part of growing up! One truly isn't an adult until they have been placed under a freezing spell at least once."

Ah, she's trying to beat me at my own game of sarcasm. A duel of wit and snark with this pony would surely be an interesting thing to see.

She chuckles to herself and begins putting her supplies away. "But in all seriousness, yes, I have."

"And you still chose to do it to me?"

She nods as she begins clearing up her supplies from her measuring assault. "How else would I keep you still?" she retorts matter-of-factly.

Why, you little…

I shake my head at her so I don’t do it with my fist, and she begins to work on the designs. I can tell she's going to be out of it for hours… leaving me to my own devices… which, now that I think of it, may not be a bad thing! Where is that stupid cat anyway?

Since it’s not in sight, I walk over to my computer and flip it open instead of creating a family of punters. I know that Equestria doesn't have any internet, so that's out. However, I still have some stuff on here to do: I have my music and my entire collection of films – vaguely pitiful as it is – onto the hard drive, and I have solitaire. Problem is, I also have nowhere to plug it into and no spare batteries. The ninety-two percent power left doesn’t look good at all now.

I take my cell phone and headphones out of my pocket and put the phones into my computer so I can listen to something without distracting her. I don't fancy bothering her while she's in the zone. I click on the music folder while opening up solitaire on my computer, scroll down my list of tracks, click on one of my songs, and begin my game.

Two aces right off, that’s good.

I have to admit, I can actually feel some of the stress of my current predicament melting away as I immerse myself in the world of virtual gaming and loud music. No more moves, game lost, no matter, I simply move on to singing along. The game goes completely ignored by this point; I’m too busy focusing on the wicked instrumental part of the song. What should I pick, air guitar or air drums? Heck, I'll switch off.

I grab an air guitar and start doing my best to rock out with the music. I'm getting really into it – this is one of my favorite songs after all – and I'm sure that, if anyone was watching, they would surmise that I am having a seizure or something like that. I couldn’t care less; I just let the music take total control and forget about the world as I bang on invisible drums and play wicked cords on a guitar that isn’t there.

Oh yeah, this is definitely the best moment I've since waking up! It's great to unwind with a little music.

The song eventually ends and I open my eyes. Man that was relax– oh boy. Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash have all walked in while I was zoned out, and are now staring at me like I've lost my mind. Rarity, on the other hand, is still working. I doubt she would even care about what I was doing if she did look up. "Oh, hi there," I say in the most casual way I can muster – which, I must admit, isn't very casual.

It’s Rainbow Dash who tries to start a dialogue. "Uh, dude, are you okay?"

"Yeah, you looked like you were being attacked by invisible wasps," Twilight reinforces.

"Are you sick?” Fluttershy asks with worry. “Did something bite you?"

"No, no, nothing like that," I wave it all off. "I was just listening to my music."

Twilight's eyes widen as if activated by a switch, and an excited look crosses her face that mirrors the one that she got when she saw my laptop at the hospital. "Music?! You have your music here?!"

"Well, yeah, since I just said I was listening to it."

She claps her front hooves together. "This is amazing! Who knows what kinds of styles that you listen to that we have no idea even exist! I bet I could learn a lot about both you and your culture by listening to some of your music!"

"I'll bet you could," I deadpan.

She pulls a quill and paper out of her backpack that she has resting on her back. "Then let’s listen to it!”

I'm a tad unnerved by the sheer unbridled curiosity, but I shrug it off and go through my computer to see if there is anything the three of them would like. I doubt that I have something all three will appreciate at the same time, but hey, you never know. "Well... this one here is my personal favorite song," I say as I click on the file. "It's easily one of the best of all time."

Twilight just claps in anticipation.

I take my headphones out of the jack, and the song begins. The opening guitar riff gets me lost in the melody almost instantly, and I begin playing the air guitar one more time.

"He's doing that thing again," whispers Fluttershy, right before Twilight holds up her hoof to quiet her as she listens intently to the awesomeness that is Nirvana.

I'm pretty sure that the two who aren't engrossed in the music are giving me looks like I'm a complete nutter, but hey, if they don't like it, then they don't like it. They're free to be as wrong about their taste in music as they want. I become aware that Rarity has gotten up from – or finished – her work and is now listening to Teen Spirit with the rest of us. My convulsions, as I dance along, become more violent as the song comes to a close. I have long since stopped caring about what the other four think about what I’m doing. I have Nirvana to listen to, dang it!

However, the thrill passes once the song ends and, I become acutely aware that there still are, in fact, four ponies in the room who have watched this entire performance, and I’m quick to drop the pose. Sure enough, they don't seem to have any positive emotions about either the song or my singing along to it. Silence is the ruler of the room until Rarity speaks up. "What's wrong with you, darling?"

"What do you mean?" I reply indignantly.

"What I mean is, I have never seen such a garish display before! I can understand dancing to music, but that was… that was almost embarrassing to watch."

"Well I'll give you that one, I'm sure it was," I concede. "But what did you think about the song itself?"

"Um...” Fluttershy looks at me uncomfortably, “what's libido?"

D’oy! I wasn't quite prepared for that question. "Uh, I don't know," I lie.

Rainbow Dash smirks at me. "I think you know full well what it means."

She gets a pointed look from me. "And do you?"

She nods mischievously. "Oh yeah. It's one of those words that make immature sixth graders giggle when they hear it."

Fluttershy’s eyes widen after a brief second of thought. "Oh... my..."

I clear my throat. "Okay, aside from that, what did you think?"

Twilight has a scowl on her face that shows how deep in thought she currently is. "I don't know. I don't see how you can enjoy the song when you can't so much as understand the lead singer."

"I can understand it all right,” I retort. “It’s a matter of getting used to it. But that aside, I like it more for the tune, the instrumental part of it. What did you think of that?"

"It was very... loud," Fluttershy mutters.

"It was kinda cool, I guess," says Rainbow Dash with a shrug. "But nothing too amazing."

I am about to explain to her that Kurt Cobain revolutionized the music industry with Smells Like Teen Spirit, thank you very much, when Rarity speaks up over me. "It was perfectly brutish, that’s what it was,” she declares snootily. “I'm not sure I want ‘music’ of that nature to be played in my house."

I glare at her. "It's my music, and I can listen to it in a way that only I can hear it. That said, I'll listen to it if, and when, I want to."

She shrugs. "Perhaps, but while you're here, I'm going to have to indoctrinate you with some of our best classical composers!"

"And I'll secretly indoctrinate you with Andrew W.K. and Deep Purple," I snark back.

"I doubt that, darling. You really need to absorb more classical culture."

A sarcastic smirk crosses my face. "I've watched The Great Train Robbery, does that count?"

"What's that?" Twilight asks.

"A movie," I respond without looking. "Now, Rarity, if we're going to tolerate each other, I–"

Twilight's face lights up again. "You have movies in your world too?"

I sigh and go back to rubbing my temples. "You're not going to stop asking me questions, are you?"

Twilight gets angry at that. "Well excuse me for being curious about a whole new culture that nopony’s ever had contact with before!"

"Yeah, but it's kind of overwhelming. I don't know how to describe what a movie is to you, and I don't think any examples I have on my computer are things that you would find enjoyable!"

"Like your music?" jabs Rarity.

"My music is awesome, thank you very much. But at any rate, I don't know how to answer a lot of stuff, Twilight. I can't describe my whole universe to you!"

Said unicorn looks down, muttering, "I'm not asking you to do that."

"I know you're not, but can't the interrogation wait until I feel good enough to give you decent answers? Give me a few days to get settled at least."

Twilight sighs and nods. "Fair enough."

"Speaking of getting settled,” Rarity interrupts again, “I have some preliminary sketches of your new outfits. If you'll follow me, please."

My stomach clenches into a knot, but I follow her to my fashion-based doom regardless. It can't be any worse than what she made for Spike, can it? As I slowly trek forward, hoping hell will not be revealed, she uses her magic to levitate half a dozen pieces of paper in front of me. Slowly, I reach out and flip them over.

I flinch physically at the first design. It’s… a bit too intricate for my tastes. The second is better, but it looks kind of like a watered down tuxedo, way too formal to use every day.

I glance up at Rarity when a shift of her legs catches my eye. Wow, she’s so stressed out she looks like she's about to have a heart attack. I hold back the urge to roll my eyes at the melodrama and continue scanning her work.

Design three… the pants are better but she made the shoulders really poofy for whatever reason. I suppose I like retro, but this is taking it way too many years back. I raise an eyebrow at design four, which is a tight T-shirt and very short-shorts. Heck no. Design five still has a tight shirt, but the pants are kind of weird, like she's going to sew a carpet to my legs.

Design six is a simple combination of jeans and a simple t-shirt. I blink at it, not quite sure I'm seeing it correctly, or my brain is under self-suggestion after so many tacky outfits. I flip the paper around so Rarity can see the one I'm looking at. "It's just this?" I question. "No frilly designs or gaudy accessories?"

"I based it off of what you already have,” she answers nervously. “Is that not acceptable?” Her voice goes down some twenty decibels. “… Are none of them any good?"

I flip the paper back over again and scrutinize it a second time. Then, I nod. "I like this one. It's pretty much what I wore when I was back home, and the only one where I don't look like a total doonkus "

Her eyes widen and she breathes a huge sigh of relief when she realizes I've just given at least one of her designs a thumbs up. "Oh, you can't believe how happy that makes me feel, darling!"

"It's mutual, let me assure you.”

"What about the rest of them?" she asks, now more curiously than anything. "Are they okay too?"

"Uh, let's just stick with this one. I prefer simpler clothes." Maybe I should keep my real opinions on that issue to myself…

"Very well," she says as she uses her magic to take the papers away from me, already scribbling on the sixth sheet.

"I'm glad we got that settled," Twilight says happily.

I agree. "I was worried, I must admit." And with good reason.

"Thank you for letting me know how much faith you put in me," says an annoyed Rarity.

"You're welcome."

She rolls her eyes and gets back to work on my clothes.

"I take it I'll have to get a job to pay you back?" I ask.

She waves a hoof. "No, of course not. I am the Element of Generosity, and my intention is to help. You certainly do not need to worry yourself about things of that nature."

"I really would rather pay you back," I insist. I don't quite want to risk owing this mare a favor.

"I really would rather that you didn't," she replies, a little more forcefully this time.

My brow furrows and I look back at Twilight, who merely shrugs. What marvelous help she is…

"Well,” I finally say, “regardless, I’d like to get a job. After all, I can't lounge around all day and mooch off other people… or ponies."

Twilight frowns in thought. "I'm not totally sure where you could find employment."

“Oh! Oh!” Pinkie Pie chooses that exact moment to pop out of a nearby flower pot with a huge grin on her face. "How about working at Sugarcube Corner with me?!" she asks with an unnatural amount of unbridled enthusiasm.

I jump back with a loud yelp of shock at the sudden appearance of the hyperactive pony. Thanks to that maneuver, I lose my balance and fall to the floor with a loud crash, smacking my injured arm on the ground as I do. As pain shoots through my whole body, I let out a combination of swear words that I had perfected over the years. It was my go-to string of cusses, though I preferred to think of it as eloquent profanity.

However, my foul tongue earns the shock of the five ponies that were unfortunate enough to be in yelling range. They stare at me with their mouths hanging open as I rub my injured shoulder with an embarrassed grin.

Pinkie Pie is the first to snap out of it. "Okay then," she says mildly, turning back to Twilight, her normal demeanor returning in an instant. "Like I was saying, he should totally come to work with me at Sugarcube Corner!"

"I don’t know, Pinkie Pie," says Twilight as she watches me slowly stand up, careful not to jostle my bones even more. "Does he even know how to bake?"

"I dunno," I say, "but the guy you’re talking about is standing right here, so maybe you should ask him directly."

This doesn’t amuse Twilight. "Well then, do you?"

"Not in the slightest," I respond proudly. "I set cold cereal on fire the last time I made it."

"Really?" asks Rainbow Dash with surprise clear in her face.

"Well, not really," I answer, "but I do burn grilled cheese on a regular basis."

"Aw that's okay," Pinkie Pie dismisses the thought with a wave of her hoof. "These are cupcakes, not grilled cheese. I'm sure you'll do fine."

"No, no, what I'm saying is–"

"You start tomorrow!” she continues like I haven’t spoken. “I've already asked the Cakes about it, and they said they'd love to have you on our team!"

"But they know nothing about me!"

"I vouched for you.”

"... You know nothing about me either."

Pinkie gasps. "Of course I do!" she exclaims, slightly scandalized. "I know all about you, because my Pinkie Sense told me!"

"Y...your what?"

"My Pinkie Sense!" She bounces up and down happily as she explains. "Basically what happens is that I get random twitches in my body and they tell me different things. So, for example, if my eyes flutter, my tail straightens, and my appendix folds in like an accordion, that means that I'm gonna meet a trustworthy stranger!"

Appendix? "Oookay… And that happened today?"

She responds with a vigorous nod. “Yeppers-peppers! It happened right after I saw you in that hospital bed for the first time!"

"S...sure, whatever you say."

Her grin expands and she leans in uncomfortably close to me. "So you'll come in tomorrow?"

"Like I said, I can't–"

Pinkie giggles and waves my objections away. "That's when you learn things, silly, when you practice them because you don't know them!"

"Well yeah–"

"I betcha you'll be really good at it by the end of the day!"

I bite my lip and glance uneasily at the floor. "You've clearly never seen me burn orange juice before–"

"Come on, just try!" she implores.

"I–"

"Pretty please with a cherry on top!"

I groan, realizing already that she is going to be very insistent about this. “Fine," I mumble. I gotta learn how to set boundaries with these ponies, or else I'm gonna have a stroke.

Pinkie’s eyes widen with joy. "You'll come in tomorrow?"

"Yeah," I grumble again.

Then, to my surprise, she becomes solemn. "Pinkie Promise?"

"Yeah, sure, Pinkie Promise." I have no idea what a Pinkie Promise even is, but after seeing her jump out of a flower pot like that, I'm not too sure how much I want to know about the inner workings of this pony's mind.

The serious air vanishes from her as she replaces it with a face-splitting grin. "Okie dokie lokie! Try to be there before ten in the morning!"

"Sure thing."

"Excellent!" Twilight says approvingly. "That settles your job problem!"

"So it does," I sigh.

"So, this is turning out to be a pretty good day for you, huh?" says Pinkie Pie.

"Uh, no, it really hasn't. I still got ripped from my world today, and that kind of makes everything else a little... not as good."

Pinkie Pie stares at me, perplexed expression, but soon she breaks out into that large grin of hers. "Just look at the bright side: you could have ended up in the middle of the Everfree Forest!"

Always look on the bright side of life… *whistle*

I look at my watch, another action that draws curious stares from the group, and see that it is nine-thirty PM. I don't normally go to bed this early, but... "Uh, I think I'm going to hit the hay now, guys. It's been a long day for me already, and I'm really gonna need the energy if I am actually going to spend all day burning cupcakes tomorrow."

"Okie dokie lokie!" says Pinkie Pie as she walks to the door. "See ya tomorrow!"

"Have a good night, dude," says Rainbow Dash, who then promptly flies out the door right after Pinkie Pie.

"We're sorry we ripped you into our world," Fluttershy whispers timidly. "We won't do it again."

What? "Yeah, uh... okay…"

She flies up to me and nuzzles my arm before she, too, is off. Twilight is the last to leave. She stands where she is for a while, looking at me in a way that’s becoming increasingly awkward. "Can I help you with something?"

Twilight shakes her head and sighs, looking mildly happy for some reason. "I'm sorry for staring, it's just that... well, my scholar part is really excited about all of this!” Oh, so that’s why. “I get the opportunity to learn about a whole new species with a whole new culture! How great is that?"

"I suppose..."

"But,” and then her mood plummets, “the other half of me is sad that you're here just because of everything that's happened to you. I would rather you be here of your own free will than by force of events."

"Same here, obviously," I agree.

She nods politely and begins walking out the door, but midway through, she stops and turns around. "If there's anything you need, just let one of us know. We're here for you, TD. Remember that, okay?"

"Thanks, Twilight," I say with a wave, quietly hoping I won't have to ask them for things. I'm uncomfortable enough as it is staying in Rarity's house.

"Well, you better get to bed then," she says with a hint of advice. "You wouldn't want to sleep in too late and break your Pinkie Promise."

"I guess so." I briefly consider asking her what a Pinkie Promise even is, but I think I can figure it out based on the title. It's a promise to Pinkie Pie, simple as that. "Goodnight… I guess."

"Goodnight," she says with a smile. That said, she leaves.

I sigh and gather my stuff, moving it down to the basement to find the guest room. It’s already furnished and made up, so I assume Rarity has visitors every now and then. The bed seems to be a bit small, but nothing I can’t deal with. It has a plain purple comforter on it and two fluffy pillows at the head. The room itself is plain white, with a small nightstand on the left hand side of the bed. It's simple enough, really, which is strange considering who owns this place.

I lean the scooter next to the nightstand and put my computer on the furniture itself before I climb onto the bed. It's far more comfortable than it looks, which is nice. Way better than the hospital bed, at any rate.

As I close my eyes, my mind sluggishly begins to wonder if this is just a dream and if by falling asleep here, I'll wake up back home. It's kind of a comforting thought, but it’s pleasant enough to make me relax.

YOU PINKIE PROMISED!!!

My brain wakes up before my eyes open, and I keep them shut as I try to gauge my surroundings. I had a theory last night that maybe this whole experience in Equestria was a total dream on my part and that, if I went to sleep here, I would wake up on Earth. So now that I've woken up, I try to get a feel for the environment I'm currently in.

Inhale… Exhale. No, the air doesn't smell of cows. Not a good sign. Granted, the air doesn't always smell like cows at home, anyway.

I strain my ears to hear if there is any traffic going past my window. I hear nothing but birds chirping happily, welcoming the day. Again, not a good indicator of this being Earth.

I decide that I've had enough of playing this silly game and my eyes snap open. I gingerly sit up and discover that yes, I am still in Equestria, lying in the same small bed in the same plain guest room in the same house I went to sleep in. Dang it.

I give a disappointed grunt before reaching for my computer. Old habits die hard, it seems. I flip it open and move the mouse over to Firefox before I remember that, since this is Equestria, there’s no internet anywhere, no matter how hard I wish. I instead opt to pull up solitaire and music once more.

I take a second to fluff up my pillow before I glance at my watch. It’s nine oh-two AM; I have plenty of time for a little solitaire before my first day of failure at work. I'll just keep playing until I win and then I'll head right out. Simple as that, right?

Except it isn't.

I end up playing for a long time, something I realize when I glance at my watch after a while and see that it is thirteen past ten. Uh-oh, I should have been at work fifteen minutes ago. However, I have another dilemma: I haven't quite won at solitaire yet! I promised myself that I would win a game before I left, and that's just what I'm going to do. I mean, come on; it can't be too long before I win one! When I show up I can just say I got lost around town. No big deal. She won't know I broke my Pinkie Promise – whatever that even means – and I'll be on time tomorrow.

However, the more I play, the more I realize the amount of winnable hands in computer solitaire is a solid zero. I mean, my goodness, I cannot win for the life of me! The clock is ticking, and still no signs of winning. It's kind of getting frustrating to be honest.

However, all bad things do come to an end. I finally win a stupid game, though my losing streak means I’m over a thousand bucks in the red. Further proof that I should never have anything to do with real gambling. Man, I failed at this.

I shut the computer and stretch out. Hopefully I'm not so late that Pinkie Pie won't buy my 'got lost in town' excuse. I mean, how late can I...

ELEVEN FIFTY-SIX?!!

My mouth drops open as I stare at the watch’s face, hoping it is off by a good two hours… even though I know it isn’t. Oh dear…

I get out of bed as fast as my sore arm will let me and jog up the stairs to the main level, hoping every step of the way that breaking a Pinkie Promise won't get me anything more humiliating than a scolding. Because come on, she's a character from a little girl's cartoon! How violent and sadistic can she be?

As I reach the top floor I see Rarity deeply engrossed in making something, which I realize means my shirts. It actually looks like she's completed one. Temporarily pushing my lateness aside, I go up to her. "Is that one of my shirts?" I ask, pointing towards the folded fabric resting on a chair.

She looks up from her sewing machine and gives me a smile. "Indeed it is," she says. "I finished it just a few minutes ago." She lifts it up in the air with her magic, letting me see that it is a plain cotton, solid black t-shirt. "Here, try it on!"

I nab the shirt straight out of the air and put it on in a jiffy. It fits perfectly, and I nod happily to convey that to her. "Nice work. It fits perfectly."

"I'm happy to hear that, darling," she says, beaming. "I'm working on a few more right now, so I'm glad to see that I've got the measurements right." She turns back to her sewing machine and begins stitching another shirt. "So, how was your first day at work? Are you on a break right now or something?"

I shift uncomfortably. "Uh, yeah, about that... I… kind of lost track of time and... haven't actually gone yet."

As if by a button press, Rarity's pupils expand to the point where they are the only part of her eyes that I see. Her mouth drops open. “You...you broke a Pinkie Promise?" she asks in a horrified whisper.

I scratch the back of my head a little nervously. "Uh, yeah, I guess I did."

"What have you done?" she asks in the same terrified whispering, but even quieter.

"Uh..."

All of a sudden I hear a loud bang on Rarity's front door, one that suggests that the contents of the first through ninth circles of Hell are attempting to breach it in attempt to get to... guess who. Rarity's face contorts with fear, and she backs up into a corner until her rump touches the wall. My body agrees with her, backing away from the door all on its own.

"What...what is that?" I ask.

"Pinkie Pie," Rarity whispers grimly.

"TD!!!!!" screeches a voice that is unmistakably Pinkie Pie's, but with a hint of Reagan from The Exorcist in there.

I have to find a back exit. It's my only chance of survival. To my relief, I do see a back door to the building as soon as I enter Rarity’s kitchen. I don't hesitate to run through it, hoping that Pinkie Pie will focus on the front door for a while, and maybe even kill Rarity in my place if she succeeds in slamming it open. I really imagine that only the gruesome death of a sapient being will quench her bloodlust at this point.

Against my better judgment, I peek around the corner and see Pinkie Pie banging on the door of the boutique, hoping to gain entry so that she can rip out everything I hold dear. "I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!" she yells out, much louder than I thought a pony could.

Since she’s so engrossed with the door, I should have time to escape my impending doom. Theoretically.

I silently turn around and tiptoe away, hoping that my movements will go unnoticed by Pinkie Pie. The minute that I feel I'm far enough away that she won’t hear a running man’s footsteps, I sprint off for all my legs are worth, towards anywhere but where the fluffy fuchsia-maned ball of fell fury stands waiting for me to turn myself in.

I have to get somewhere where Pinkie Pie won't find me… but where? Where can I go that she wouldn't dare follow? I already know that the answer is 'nowhere', as I'm pretty sure she would follow me into the Afterlife Express, just so that she could resurrect me to kill me again herself.

The only option remaining to me is to hide somewhere until her wrath has subsided. Maybe then she’s calm enough to accept an apology.

During my sprint, I see a large tree house in the distance. My mind pulls open the “MLP:FiM information” file and it tells me that the tree house belongs to Twilight. That's it! She can hide me until Pinkie Pie stops hunting me!

I immediately pick up my pace and rush towards my hypothesized sanctuary. When I arrive, I bang on the door several times, hoping that Twilight is home, and I’m rewarded when the unicorn in question opens the door, greeting me with a smile. "Oh, hey, TD! How are you doing to–"

I don't bother to let her finish her greeting. Instead, I nudge her aside and run into her house.

I know it's rude but hey, it's that or death.

Twilight follows me, shutting her door behind me after she turns. "What's wrong?" she asks in a tone that's half worried, half irritated.

"You gotta hide me!" I breathed out. "I think I'm in terrible danger!"

She immediately takes on a tenser stance. "What?! What happened?"

Before I can answer, the very incarnation of infernal fury pops out of one of the bookshelves. I jump back with an undignified scream as Pinkie Pie lands on the floor in front of me.

"YOU PINKIE PROMISED!!!"

With a second yell I scamper back towards the door of the tree house, without so much as bothering to turn around and look – I know she's behind me, breathing down my neck while she can’t sink her fangs into it. Metaphorical fangs, but still. I’m more determined than ever to give her a workout for that, though, I assure you.

Outside, I only pause to slam the door behind me in the – probably vain – hope that it will delay Pinkie Pie for a few precious seconds. Since I don't hear her behind me after I don’t know how long running like a fugitive, it seems like it worked.

Oh good gracious, I'm never going to break a Pinkie Promise again if I ever get out of this alive... which I won't if she catches me.

I continue running for minutes more, until I see what appears to be some kind of farm in front of me, which I recognize as the abode of Applejack. Sweet Apple something or other, I'm not too sure of the name. It doesn't actually matter to me at this point. I'm only interested in it for the theoretical sanctuary it provides.

I run through the main entrance of the farm and spot a house a small distance in front of me. Perfect. Now, normally, I'd hate breaking into a stranger’s house, but self-preservation is a very convincing factor at the moment, and so I have no trouble running in. There’s still the ever-present feeling that Pinkie Pie is right behind me, even though I can't see her. I have to find somewhere to hide in here, and fast!

I run up the stairs of the house, to the floor where all of the rooms seem to be. I randomly pick a room and fling it open. Great, it's empty! The bed is large enough for me to hide under, and that's exactly what I do: I dive under it and curl up into as small a ball as I can, hoping, praying, imploring for Pinkie Pie not to have followed me this far.

"Dear lord, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. Please send thy angels to protect me, your humble servant TD Harrison Powell, from the wrath of the evil one. I do offer up this humble prayer in the hopes that you will protect your flock from–"

My mutterings are interrupted when I hear the door to the house bang open. I am relieved to hear Applejack talking. Maybe it's just her.

"Now slow down there sugar cube and just tell me what happened."

"He broke it, he broke his Pinkie Promise!" Reagan MacPinkie Pie yells.

I can hear Applejack gasp in shock. "He didn't!"

It horrifies me to hear their voices get louder as their hoofsteps clack on the stairs.

"He Pinkie Promised he would be at Sugarcube Corner at ten in the morning, and he didn't show up!"

I'm never going to play solitaire ever again if I make it out of this. Even with real cards.

"You sure he's here?"

I hear the door to the room open up. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

"He's in here somewhere. I can feel him, he's definitely here."

I cover my mouth with one hand, hoping that they won't be able to hear my breathing from under the bed. My pupils dilate when I see four bright pink legs standing in front of the bed. Oh gosh, she's going to look under the bed.

"Ah don't think he's in here sugar cube," Applejack tries to placate her. Yes, good, talk her out of this! "Maybe he's somewhere else."

"Just give me a second to check under the bed.”

Oh dear.

Sure enough, a furious pink head shows up mere inches from mine. Its eyes drill a new hole in my very soul. "I found him!" she hollers triumphantly.

I immediately crawl out from under the bed as fast as I can, hoping that maybe there will be a window in the room that I can jump out of. Yes, I'm perfectly willing to take my chances with gravity over Pinkie. However, as I stand up, I find myself blocked by the mare herself. "There is no escape," she snarls, venom dripping from every word. "You broke a Pinkie Promise!"

I look up at Applejack, who seems just as afraid as I am. She has even taken off her hat and is now holding it close to her chest. It’s clear that I am left to face my fate alone. I back into a corner, and Pinkie advances with every step back that I take.

This is the end, I'm sure of it.

"Nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise!"

My back hits the wall, and I know I'm trapped. "Uh... uh..."

"Nopony!"

"Y...yeah, nopony," I whimper. "...please don't kill me."

For a brief moment, her expression changes to mild bewilderment. Then she looks angry again. "I'm not gonna kill you, I want you to apologize!" she says a lot more calmly than before.

As you might expect, I'm taken aback by this. "Okay... how do you want me to do that? Do you want me to chop off a finger, or commit ritual suicide or what?" I ask very seriously.

Now Pinkie does look dumbfounded… and a bit green in the face. I take that as a good sign. "I don't know how you apologize in your world, TD, but here we say 'I'm sorry'!"

"That's it? You don't want to see me in any physical or psychological pain?"

Aaand she’s mad again. "APOLOGIZE!!!"

I flinch. "I'm sorry, alright?! I’m sorry! I lost track of time!"

Her face comes uncomfortably close to mine. "Do you mean that?" she asks, this time quietly.

It doesn’t help my panic.

"Of course I mean it!" I insist. "Why wouldn't I?"

Pinkie Pie's eyes narrow so much, I'm pretty sure that she's still going to kill me right here in front of Applejack with just her glare. I won’t be the only one, either: Applejack is herself about to at least pass out.

However, to my utter astonishment, the rage melts off from Pinkie Pie's face, replaced by her trademark grin. "Okie Dokie Loki! Apology accepted!"

I dunno if I am more unnerved about her sudden change in mood than her anger. The two are in a tie. “That's it? You're not mad at me anymore?" I ask, hardly able to believe this pony.

"Of course not, silly!" she says happily. "You apologized, didn't you? If a pony is really truly sorry, then you're supposed to forgive them! We don't want hard feelings between us, right?"

I shake my head vigorously. Never, under any circumstances, will I ever do anything to piss her off ever again.

"Now that’s enough of that, we have some baking to do!" With that, she turns around and bounces out the door of the room, leaving Applejack and I to stare at her retreating form. Both of us only move when we hear the door to the house slam shut downstairs.

"So... just what happened exactly?" I ask. "I didn't expect such a sudden mood change from her."

Applejack snaps out of her own stupor, shakes her head and clears her throat. "It's just Pinkie Pie bein' Pinkie Pie."

"But that doesn't make any–"

"Ah have to get back to the orchards now," she states flatly. "You too, best be goin' on to Sugarcube Corner. I don't fancy the thought of you keepin' her waitin', not after what just happened.” She shrugs. “Who knows? This may not be over."

"You don't know for sure?"

She shakes her head. "Nopony knows. Nopony around here would ever dare outright break a Pinkie Promise."

"Gee, I wonder why…"

Applejack gives me a faint little smile and walks out of the room. I follow closely behind her, with every intention of getting to Sugarcube Corner as fast as I reasonably can.

Cupcakes

Pinkie Promises.

Oh good gracious, Pinkie Promises are going to kill me one of these days. Very soon, as a matter of fact. I mean, holy cow was that pony out for blood. I don't think even for a minute that she's done with me, not by a long shot. I'll be begging for death before the end, and she still won't lead me to its sweet embrace until she is good and satisfied. That begs the question of whether or not I should still go to Sugarcube Corner today. I mean, why go willingly to my doom if I can avoid it?

Still, she is a character from a little girl's show, so how insane can she really be? It's not like she has split-personality disorder or anything; that would be ridiculous!

Walking through town, I notice that the stares are coming back again. If anything, they're worse, because I don't have the Mane Six around to deflect them. Oh, and let's not forget the whispers too.

“What is that thing?”

“What's he doing here?”

"Is he dangerous?”

“I just follow the crowd!”

Yeah, that kind of thing. I admit I'm at a loss for what to do about it. I mean, I can see where they're coming from: nothing like me has been in their town before. I would have a reaction like this myself if an alien started living around my neighborhood.

On the other hand, though, it's kind of rude to stare!

I glance around me at all of the ponies who are staring at me. Like before, they have all dropped all they were doing in favor of watching me. Seriously, it’s getting kind of annoying here!

Okay, you know what? Pinkie Pie can wait. I have an example to set here. I look around to see who is staring at me the hardest, and my eyes land on a light-green unicorn with a harp on her flank. Her eyes are so wide that they're about to roll out of their sockets.

I grin to myself. Bingo.

A quick change of direction and I’m walking up to her. She sees me coming, her eyes widening that much more as the idea sinks in, and she looks around as if expecting somebody to come help her. I have her now; she's not getting away until I've made her feel really uncomfortable for staring. She continues to look wildly around her, but nobody comes. They're all too busy watching me with their breaths held.

Having to hold back a chuckle at the look of sheer terror or her face, I come to a halt directly in front of the unicorn. She only has eyes for me now, and for a second, the two of us stare at each other, unblinking and unmoving.

"Hi there," I say casually, suddenly breaking the face-off.

The pony flinches back as if I've struck her, but she doesn't run. She simply continues scrutinizing me with those wide eyes of hers.

"Why are you staring at me?" I've decided to be blunt with these ponies. We’re getting nowhere as it is.

In response, she shakily raises a hoof to point at my hands. "W-what are those?" she asks in an awed whisper.

I frown and look down at my hands. Shouldn't she know what they are? I mean, doesn't Twilight's buddy have them? "Uh... hands," I respond simply, stretching and flexing my fingers in front of her.

"Hands," she repeats slowly, almost munching on the word.

"Yeah, hands." You know, I've started kind of regretting coming up to this one. Maybe she's the town sociopath and I've just reserved myself a spot in her fridge.

The situation goes from bad to worse when she suddenly lunges out and grabs my right hand between her hooves. I try to pull away, but her grip is surprisingly strong.

Wait, grip? How can she be gripping me?! she doesn't even have fingers!

"You have hands." Her voice is loving, and not in a good way. In fact, it’s pretty creepy.

"Yes I do," I repeat, trying to pull away from this madpony. "Now can I have this one back?"

"Hands…" she sighs. "Aren't they the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

What the heck is her problem? Why is she so obsessed with my hands?

I finally get fed up and shout, "Seriously, can I have my freaking hand back?!"

Thankfully she seems to snap out of her reverie at that, and she lets go. I stumble back a bit so as to keep my hands out of her reach, and she seems to realize what she's done. A look of horror crosses her expression. "Oh... erm..." And with that, the unicorn runs off. She does screech her hooves against the ground briefly so that she can get one last gawk at me, but after that, she’s off on her way.

Dude... what the heck just happened?

I stare at the retreating pony, silently promising myself to never do anything like that ever again, then I turn around myself towards Sugarcube Corner. As soon as the bakery comes into view, my thoughts of the odd unicorn get punted out of my mind. Holy cow, this place looks like a real, giant gingerbread house, with a cupcake on top. Pinkie Pie works lives in a gingerbread bakery with the Cakes. No wonder she seems to be on a sugar high all the time, she practically has roots on the stuff!

Hm… If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that Pinkie lives inside the cupcake. It just suits her.

I walk up to the door and see that the building is actually empty and dark. In fact, the building looks... closed. Wait, why would it be closed if I'm supposed to be here? Did my incident with that weird unicorn take longer than I thought, and Pinkie's given up on me coming by? No, she wouldn't drag me down from the ends of the Earth to this place just to slam the door in my face.

I test the door and find that it is unlocked, so I suppose I’m still ‘invited’ and come inside. One look around the dark bakery and I almost have a sugar overload right then and there: for one, the smell alone is so sugary sweet that I can feel my arteries clogging up to ‘fatal heart attack’ levels. One display case near a counter has icing in it. That's it, just gigantic towers of icing. I imagine that there is, in fact, some sort of pastry-like construct underneath said icing, but Lord knows I would need a funded expedition and top-of-the-line digging tools to find it.

How are none of these ponies dead from pure sugar overdose if Pinkie Pie makes stuff like this here? Seriously!

Oh, speak of the devil... Pinkie Pie walks down the stairs from where I presume is her room and sees me standing there having a mental sucrose overload. She widens her trademark smile and begins bouncing up and down. "Yay, you're here! I've been waiting aaaaaall day!" says the jumping pony.

"Sorry if I'm a little late, Pinkie. I ran into some townspe... ponies that kept me for a bit," I apologize.

Pinkie giggles and responds in a gleefully reassuring tone, "Oh that's ok, you're here now. What's a few more minutes? I've been sooo excited here thinking about all the fun stuff we're gonna do, I haven't stopped bouncing since I woke up! I've almost forgotten to breathe I've been so happy."

Well, that isn't creepy and ominous at all, is it? What on Earth could she possibly have planned that could be so exciting that she can hardly breathe? What sense is there in that?

Maybe I should be a little more nervous.

"So,” Pinkie tosses my train of thought off its rails, “you ready to get started, TD? I've got everything all ready!"

I try to get a little more psyched up about this. I mean, maybe this could be fun, right? On the other hand, she could murder me here in retribution for the failed Pinkie Promise, so that no one else finds out. Maybe that's part of her code.

"That's cool," is my final answer. Better go with the flow, I suppose. “So what do you have planned?"

"MAKING CUPCAKES!" Pinkie happily announces.

"Baking?" I repeat timidly. "Pinkie Pie, I've told you I'm no good at baking. You should hear about my last time."

“Oh, that’s not a problem at all. I only need your help making them. I’ll be doing most of the work,” Pinkie explains.

I think about it for a second. “Well, alright, I guess that’s OK. What exactly do you need me to do?”

"That's the spirit! Here you go."

She hands me a cupcake with rainbow icing. I look at it without understanding the joke. "I thought I was helping you bake."

"You will be,” she reaffirms it. “I just made this one just for you before you got here."

I nod. "So, this is like taste testing or something?"

"Sorta."

I shrug and pop the cupcake in my mouth. Huh, it actually isn't all that bad… Although, there is a weird flavor in there that I can't quite pinpoint. “Okay, now what?" I ask when my mouth is free.

"Now we’ll go to the basement. If you're gonna be working here, you’re gonna need to know the super-secret ingredient for my Equestria-famous cupcakes!"

"Uh... okay…" Ugh, who turned on the heat? It suddenly feels like it's eight hundred Celsius in here! As I follow Pinkie Pie towards the basement, I shake my head to regain some clarity, to little success.

She bounces, unfazed, towards a trapdoor hiding the stairs to the lower level. "Nopony but me ever comes down here, so even the Cakes don’t know what the super-special ingredient is! I'm not too sure how much longer I can keep the secret from them, though."

"Uh-huh," I agree, a little out of it. I'm beginning to feel the strength in my legs fade away; each step presents a new challenge. I almost feel like throwing up, but my throat is so clogged, even my breathing is beginning to become more labored; I don’t think anything would come out even if I wanted to barf.

Lord Almighty, what did this pony put in that cupcake?!

"Come on down!" Pinkie calls me from the stairs. Wait, why are there two sets of stairs? Why are there two trapdoors? Am I seeing double? What did she put in that thiiiing…?

I stumble but force myself to stand back up, hoping this is just a spell. It’s got to be.

"You coming or what?" I hear Pinkie Pie ask. Her voice… it seems so far away, like she's shouting it at me from several towns over.

"Uhbrhluh," I utter as I begin to step down to her level. If I can get her to see my state, maybe she'll help me out a bit, yeah?

As I reach the bottom stair, my leg falters completely and I collapse ungracefully on the floor. "Pinkiiie…" I slur weakly. As my vision blurs, I weakly raise my hand up towards the ceiling.

Black.

After who knows how long, my eyes gingerly flutter open. I feel my jaw hanging open dumbly. It takes me quite an effort to close it.

What just happened to me? I remember eating a cupcake… and after that, everything just went south. Pinkie drugged me, didn't she?! I should have known it!

I become aware that I’m lying on a cold metal table, still in the basement. I can't move my arms and legs…

… why can't I move my arms and legs?!

"Pinkie," I try to say. My voice comes out syrupy.

"Goody, you're awake!" a familiar hyperactive voice responds to my right. it's not as enthusiastic as before, but it's no less high-pitched.

"What happened? Why can't I move? What's going on?" Why does it have to be so hard to talk, darn it?!

"I believe that's my department," says another familiar voice to my left.

I sluggishly turn my head to the left and find out that the one who just spoke is the stallion doctor that treated me at the hospital. He gives me an amused smirk. "You know, we really should stop seeing each other like this."

"What happened?" I ask again. "Why am I on the table like this?"

"Pinkie put you there," said the doctor. "She didn't see you lying on the basement floor as a good thing."

"Okay... so what happened?" I ask for the third time.

The doctor looks at Pinkie Pie, and I do the same. To my astonishment, she is staring at me, with a look of horror etched on her face. "P...Pinkie?"

"I'm so sorry," she mutters. "I didn't... I didn't know!"

With that, she rushes over to me, wraps her forelegs around me and begins sobbing violently.

Oh good, I hadn't showered yet today anyway.

Despite my confusion I pat Pinkie Pie's head. She's still crying hysterically into my chest, soaking my new shirt, and it doesn’t look like she’s going to calm down by herself anytime soon. Guess it falls on me to soothe her somehow. "Ugh... Pinkie, listen: whatever you did, I forgive you for it." This had better work.

Her head shoots up, and I get stared at by a pair of wide, watery eyes. "You do?"

"Yes, I do," I nod weakly. "But, um... you better tell me what you did wrong first."

She wipes her eyes, sniffling as she does so. "I... I put hay sprinkles in the cupcake I gave you,” she explains with a frail voice. “It's just such a common ingredient in pony food that I didn't think anything of it. It was just for a dash of extra flavor!"

I turn to the doctor. "Is that all?"

He nods. "It seems like you have quite the allergy to hay, my friend. Frankly, if your friend here hadn't come and gotten me right away, I'm not sure you'd be alive right now. It was the worst case of glottis edema I’ve ever seen in my career."

I frown and look back at Pinkie Pie. "You saved my life?"

She nods.

"Whoa," I utter quietly.

"Whoa indeed," the stallion says with a smile, before he begins walking back towards the basement stairs. "I have to go now, TD, but you should be fine. I gave you an epinephrine shot for the reaction, and you’ve been stable for a while, so I don’t think it’ll come back. Though I'd avoid foods with hay in them myself from now on."

"Will do doc," I say gingerly as I sit up.

The doctor nods once. "By the way, your arm is healing up quite nicely. You shouldn't feel any pain after another day or two if you don’t go to lengths to really aggravate it. It should be fully healed a few days after that."

"Really? That fast?"

"It is amazing what we can do with magic these days, isn't it?" he jokes with a wink. "The healing process goes much faster with a good spell."

"Well, whaddya know…" I mutter in awe.

"I have to get going now," he repeated. "I hope to see you again under better circumstances, Mr. Powell."

"TD is fine," I toss back dismissively. "Mr. Powell is my father."

The doctor smirks in amusement one final time before he leaves our company. I gingerly stand up off of the table; it takes a few seconds for me to regain my balance.

Pinkie Pie is immediately at my side, offering her back for me to support myself on, but thankfully, I don't have to. I'm not even sure if she could keep me up if I collapsed again. "Are you okay?" she asks.

I nod while stretching my legs. Whatever was in that shot pretty much got me back to a hundred percent. "I'm doing fine now." After making sure I won’t trip over my own stiff feet, I take a few moments to look around the basement, trying to get a clue of what it is we came down here for. "So... what's the secret ingredient?"

Pinkie Pie's eyes light up and she beckons me closer. I lean down and she puts her muzzle right next to my ear. "Sodium and iron enriched flour with a hint of red dye number seventeen."

Sugarcube Corner

"You're doing a great job, TD! This batch was much better than the last six!"

"Right." Well, it's technically true. Yeah, the first batch wasn't amazing, but I have been steadily improving under Pinkie Pie's watchful eye. Sure, they aren't nearly as good as the ones that she has been making, and I don't quite have the flair for multi-tasking that she does, but they're, at the very least, passably edible.

Pinkie Pie begins icing the cupcakes while I start gathering ingredients together for some more. Based on what Pinkie has been telling me, Sugarcube Corner sees a lot of business, so we're going to need a lot of them. However, she stops me before I can.

"Actually, TD, we're about to open." Pinkie begins scooping icing into a plastic bag. "If you could start working the cash register that would be superrific!"

I nod and put the mixing bowl down. "Yeah, I can do that."

"Goody!” She grins. “I've left a note by the cash register detailing all of the prices, so you shouldn't have any problems there. Let me know if you need anything!"

"Sure."

With that, I exit the kitchen and walk up to the counter. There is already a line of ponies eagerly awaiting their next fructosian assault.

Before I beckon the first pony towards me, I take a deep breath and crack my neck. Let's get dangerous. "Hello and welcome to Sugarcube Corner! What can I get for you?" I ask, trying to be as polite and friendly as possible.

Instantly, as each of the roughly one dozen ponies in line realizes that there is something strange behind the counter, the cozy atmosphere blows out like a burned out lamp. The staring picks back up from before, and I'm left there, standing like a carnival’s freak show star doing a surprise number on the main tent. "That wasn't a rhetorical question, you know," I say to the pony in front of me, a cream-colored earth pony mare.

Her mouth quivers a bit, but she cannot say a thing. It’s like her brain has stalled.

With a sigh and a brief massage of my temples, I decide 'screw it' and stand up on a nearby table. It's time for a little speech. "Alright, you primitive screwheads, listen up! I am a HUMAN!" I end up causing the crowd to jump a foot back. "I was brought here from an alternate dimension when your Princess’ tampering with magic ended up ripping me from my world and dropping me into yours. I am not a dangerous creature, a cruel warlord or a fearsome warrior; I am just a normal person.

“My name is TD Powell, but you can all just call me TD, and if you have any questions about that, just ask me. I'll be working here at Sugarcube Corner until further notice, so that's why I'm here right now. If any of you know any black magic or any other way to get me back to my world, please speak up. Otherwise..." At that point I hop off the table and back behind the counter. "...What can I get for you?"

The crowd is silent for a few awkward seconds, until the mare at the front end of the line snaps out of it. "… just a vanilla cupcake with chocolate icing."

I nod at the request and pull the corresponding pastry from under the counter. She pays for it and leaves without another word.

I grin to myself. That wasn't so hard, was it? "Okay, then, who's the next customer?"

I huff out a tired sigh as I flip the light switch to the main room of Sugarcube Corner. It's been a long day. I don't think most bronies can even begin to imagine how popular this venue is during dinner rush. I mean, the line was out the door and extending all the way back to Twilight's house… or so I think. It's not like I could see the end of the line from behind the counter, so that’s not a very wild guess.

At any rate, the half-day in which I was chased down by pink rage incarnate, was given a tainted cupcake by said rage, and worked with her at the bakery was far more taxing and demanding than my old job at the good ol' Mac and Don's Steak House, as my family jokingly called it. I am quite ready for a good night's sleep.

The clock tower chimes 10 PM exactly at the time I begin sweeping the floor. Man I can't wait to get out of here… but with Pinkie Pie cleaning up in the kitchen, it’s better than closing down in my old job. That one took a little more of a while.

I neatly sweep the pile of dirt that has accumulated during the day into the dustpan right as the front door of the bakery opens. I groan a bit. I’ve had to tell at least half a dozen ponies that we are closed so far.

I straighten up to greet the new intruders, leaning the broom against a table. "'sup, guys. We’re closed for today, so if you could come back tomorrow…"

The ponies in question turn out to be a duo of earth ponies, each with a sleeping young pony lying on their backs – foals, that’s what they call them, or something like that. I’m not sure. "Erm, good evening… sir," the male hesitantly says to me. "I'm Carrot Cake, and may I ask why you’re cleaning my home?"

Wait a second: Cakes? "Oh!" I rush to dump out the dustpan. Gotta make sure things look the best for the bosses! "H-hi there, I'm TD. Pinkie talked about me working here… remember?"

I extend a hand, and Mr. Cake hesitantly shakes it. The two of them are looking at me with an uncomfortable degree of uncertainty. Best to call in the backup. "Hey, Pinkie Pie! The Cakes are here!"

There’s a squeal of delight, followed by several animated bouncing noises as she exits the kitchen, with her usual gigantic grin on her face. Somehow, it widens when she sees the family. "Goody goody, you're all here! How was your day off?"

"It was fine, dearie. The twins had a delightful time, and we did as well," Mrs. Cake explains. Her small talk is a bit forced – she's nervous around me, I can already tell. Actually, that goes for both of them.

"Isn't that wonderful?" Pinkie leans in to examine one of the sleeping foals. "I'll bet they're both really tired out."

"Yes, Pinkie," Mr. Cake whispered, "and we really would appreciate it if–"

Aaaand he’s cut off by a baby noise. There we go, she woke them up. I flinch back, expecting to hear an ear-piercing shriek split the air…

… but there is none. Instead, the duo seems rather happy, now circling Pinkie and giggling like maniacs, something they share with Pinkie. The three rational adults stare at the giggle trio until one of the foals, the pegasus one, notices me and stops in his tracks. He stares at me with wide curious eyes, and I stare back, half expecting him to pounce on me.

I become aware that the whole room is pin-drop silent now, with everybody else watching my face-off with the baby. I feel like I should reach for a gun or something; it’s like he's going to draw at any moment.

He doesn't draw a gun, but his wings do flap out, and I take a step back as he takes flight. He comes up really close to my face, leaving me to I return his suddenly very, very close quarters gaze.

The words of Quint flash through my mind, perfectly describing this baby pony (with a few small alterations): ‘And, you know, the thing about a baby pony... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white, and then... ah, then you hear that terrible, high-pitched screamin'. The floor turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces.’

Yep, that's what went through my mind while I look into the eyes of this young child. I can't even imagine what it would be like if he was indeed evil. Maybe then I can dye his body black and hide him in a dark room somewhere.

No, that would be wrong. Funny, but wrong.

Feeling a little uncomfortable from being under the piercingly judgmental scrutiny of this tiny little thing that probably isn't even sure what his own name is – not that I am either –, I begin to cautiously back away.

To my horror, not only does the boy follow me, but his sister levitates herself towards me, and now I have two pairs of lifeless eyes to contend with. "Uh... hi?" I say quietly, hoping that trying some verbal communication will work in my favor.

It does nothing to faze them.

I glance worriedly over at the Cakes. "Do something!" I hiss to them through clenched teeth.

Thankfully, that snaps them both out of their own contemplations, and they grab the twins out of the air. "Now now, Pound Cake, it's rude to stare," Mr. Cake the pony he caught.

Tad hypocritical, don’tcha think, boss?

Mrs. Cake nods in approval of her husband’s words. "We do not stare at strangers, Pumpkin Cake."

Yes you do, I've seen you both do it. I've seen this whole town do it! It's practically tradition!

"We're sorry about that," my stallion boss mutters contritely.

I just shake my head and shrug – it’s not like there’s anything else for me to really say or do. He nods back to me and the duo walks up the stairs to put the two of them to bed.

"That was weird," I comment to Pinkie when the Cakes are done climbing. "Do they always to that?"

"Do what? Stare?"

"Yeah. In fact, does the town always stare like that?"

"Well, sometimes, I guess" she shrugs. "I take it that was why you referenced Army of Darkness earlier today?"

I begin to nod, but stop hallway through as the penny drops. She just returns my gaping at her with her trademark happy face. "H...How do you know what Army of Darkness is?"

"Ooh, have you met Gummy yet?" she interrupts. "I think you two would be the best of friends!"

Aaaand she's moved on. I really can't see Pinkie Pie as the kind of pony that can be forced back onto another topic, so I decide to let the issue drop just as the Cakes walk back downstairs. "Are the twins asleep?" Pinkie asks.

Mr. Cake nods. "Out like a light, the both of them. Thank Celestia." He sighs. "They'll hopefully sleep through the night…"

"I know that feeling," I speak out. " I'll probably sleep through all of tonight myself."

The stallion smirks in amusement. "It gets worse when you get foals of your own." He stretches out and yawns. "Well, I'm headed off to bed too. Pinkie, are you still okay to babysit tomorrow?"

Pinkie's eyes widen and she lets out a dramatic gasp. "Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about that! I Pinkie Promised Fluttershy that I'd help her with her animals tomorrow!"

The eyes of both Cakes go wide as well. Apparently having no babysitters is a real big deal for them. "B-but who's going to watch the foals?!"

“Hmmm...” Pinke rubs her chin dramatically, complete with looking up at the ceiling with a one-eyebrow scowl. Two seconds later, that pensive moment is broken when she breaks into a proud grin "Ah-ha, I know! TD can do it!"

I jump back a bit when I see that she's pointing to me. "Wha... Me?!"

"You!" Pinkie Pie replies with an energetic nod.

Oh no, oh no, this is not good... "But I don't know anything about babysitting kids!"

"It'd only be for two hours and they'd probably be asleep through all of it."

I, in turn, gape at Mr. Cake, who seems surprisingly okay with the idea of a stranger from an alternate dimension watching his children for someone who was distressed just being in said stranger's presence. Pinkie Vouches have a lot of weight, apparently.

"But–"

Pinkie nudges my shoulder. "Aw, come on, you'll be fine!"

"But..." I'm not going to get out of this, am I? I groan and facepalm, but nod all the same. At least I have nothing else to do that day. "Fine," I mumble with pause.

"Awesome!" Pinkie Pie cheers. "I know you'll do just great!"

"Uh-huh..." I reply, catching a glance of the dark sky outside. "Uh, look, I gotta go now, but I'll see you guys tomorrow, yeah?"

The three ponies nod happily, and with that settled, I walk out of the shop. As I trudge down the dark streets towards Rarity's house, I begin to wonder if there isn't something that I could have done to get me out of watching the kids. I mean, I'm good with kids and all, but not kids that young. I'm an Elementary Ed major, not a preschool teacher.

I sigh as the boutique comes into view. "Who knows though," I mumble to myself. "Maybe it won't be so bad."

Author's Notes:

(1Editor’s note: I added “Fructosian” to my computer’s dictionary. Quite surprised it isn’t a real word yet.)

The Cake Twins

"I'm telling you, these aren't going to be as good as Pinkie's!"

"Honestly, darling, they can't be all that bad! Besides, if you're going to be working at Sugarcube Corner, it's imperative that you learn how to bake."

As Rarity and I look at the tray of practice cupcakes that I have pulled out of the oven, I begin to wonder how much I'm improving. "Look, I know these ones aren't burnt, but that doesn't mean they're suddenly amazing."

"Oh, come now, darling," Rarity says lightly as she levitates a cupcake over to her. "I'm sure they're perfectly delightful."

I watch uneasily as she takes a very classy bite out of my recent attempt. She freezes, and slowly chews the bite of cupcake before swallowing. Her face is expressionless, which makes me nervous. "Uh, Rarity... are you okay?"

She doesn't respond. She only levitates one of my cupcakes over to me. I sigh and, realizing that I'm not getting out of it, take a bite.

Huh... not half bad.

I look over at Rarity who has actually finished the entire cupcake, and is smirking at me. "See? With enough practice, you can actually succeed."

I snort and roll my eyes. "I'm sure there's a friendship letter in there, or something like that."

Rarity returns my snort and glances up at the clock. "Well, now, TD, it's time for you to go, at any rate. Do be sure to be careful when watching the Cakes. I heard they made Pinkie Pie cry the first time she watched them."

My mouth drops open at this new development. Maybe agreeing to watch them was not a great idea. "Uh... so would you have any advice on dealing with them?"

Rarity shakes her head as she puts the dishes in the sink. "Honestly, no. I've never actually done it myself. Pinkie Pie said something about flour, but I don't know what she was talking about."

I frown and tilt my head a little. "She told you her secret ingredient?"

"No, she just said something about how the twins like something about it. You know yourself she isn't exactly the clearest communicator around, yes?"

"Ah..." I shrug in acceptance and peek around at the mess I made in making my practice cupcakes before turning back to Rarity. "You can just leave this and I'll clean it up when I get back."

"Oh, nonsense," she replies, waving a hoof as her horn glows, already sweeping up the remains of the experiment. "You go and watch the Cakes; I'll deal with this."

I would argue but I wasn’t running a little late. So, with that said and done, I rush out the door – only stopping briefly to change shirts – towards the confectionery.

The walk over is much faster now that I am not calling ponies out on bad behavior. Even with my recently aggravated arm, it takes me no more than fifteen minutes from ‘home’ to the job; in fact, it’s more than enough time for the trip. At any rate, I make it early enough that I get to merely lean against a counter, watching the goings on in the bakery. The Cakes are baking something or other in one oven, and Pinkie Pie is baking cupcakes for the day in the other.

I'd help, but the wholly justified 'I know what my nightmares would taste like' crack convinces me of the contrary.

"Now, TD, are you sure you know how to take care of foals?" Mr. Cake asks as he rushes around, trying to figure out what goes where for some order or another.

"I already said I don't, but practice makes perfect, right?"

It’s enough for Mr. Cake to screech to a halt and give me a look of sheer appall.

"It'll be fine, dearie," tranquilizes Mrs. Cake. "We'll only be gone two hours; the twins should be asleep for all of it."

"Exactly," Pinkie Pie, who just finished putting a batch of cupcakes in the oven and is bouncing over to join the conversation, pipes in. "He'll do fine!"

"If you girls say so." I shrug. "Anyway, when should I take the cupcakes out?"

"The timer should go off in about twenty minutes,” answers Pinkie. “Be sure to take them out right when it does!"

"Twenty minutes...” Mr. Cake repeats. His pupils shrink. “Twenty minutes! Honey bun, we have to be there in twenty minutes!"

Panic mode. Yeah, that's the only term I can use to describe the state both Cakes are in right now. I don't think I've ever seen a duo load so many cake tiers and so many cake boxes in the span of thirty seconds! They’re out the door before Pinkie Pie can so much as say goodbye.

"Well, that was interesting," I remark.

"Yeah, the Cakes sure can move fast when they're catering for a big party."

I nod and straighten up. "So, any advice on dealing with the twins if they wake up?"

Pinkie grins at the question, something that makes me uneasy. "If they begin crying, all you gotta do is dump an entire bag of flour on your head and they'll stop!"

I blink. "I have to what?"

"Dump an entire bag of flour on your head," she repeats. "Sometimes I go through about five in an hour!"

"Five an hour?"

"Gotta go now," she says as she puts her bag thingies on her back. "I should get back not long after the Cakes do."

I raise my hand in a sort of wave. "Well, cool then. Good luck."

"You too!"

As she walks out the door, I reflect on the slightly ominous way she said that last part, but that's probably just my nerves getting the better of me.

I put my hands in my pocket and pull out my long dead cell phone – it died sometime yesterday, and I don't know what it’s still doing in my pocket. Maybe I can get Twilight to re-charge it or something, if unicorns can even do that kind of thing. As it is now, though, I have nothing but an expensive brick in my pocket. I rue the fact that my laptop is not far behind.

I glance at the timer in the kitchen. Ten minutes left before the cupcakes are ready. Hopefully it’s the only thing I have to do today, as long as the twins don’t…

… and now I’m hearing baby noises coming from the upstairs room. The twins are awake. Right as I thought it! Dude, how does that work?!

I groan quietly as I rationalize that just because they're awake, it doesn't mean that they need to be checked on. I mean, they're in a closed room; what kind of trouble can they get into in their own cribs?

At that exact moment, a loud crash alerts me to how wrong I am.

I bolt up the stairs, hoping not to walk in on two baby corpses crushed under something heavy. I don't much fancy being lynched for negligence, especially by Pinkie Pie.

I throw open to door, and Hell is revealed. Well, the closest thing that I can think of at the moment that is.

Both twins are not only up and about, but they have turned their crib on its side and are now both zooming around the room at speeds improper for minors. My mouth drops wide open when I see that not only is the pegasus one flying around, the unicorn one is doing the same via self-levitation.

How does that even work?! Sure, I saw them do it last night, but they’re babies! The effort those actions must take is not supposed to be normal for toddler-age kids, let alone at this speed!

The babies both stop their racing contest in favor of staring down the intruder with those dead eyes that I’ve come to associate them with. They can smell the unease that I am feeling, I'm sure of it. I can only stand as I am, wondering how to get them back into their crib for the next two hours.

Fate is not so kind, and the situation soon goes from bizarre to outright painful. After a few short seconds of peering at me, the twins both rocket towards the open door, which has only one thing in the way: a non-athletic human college student with a healing arm.

Yeah, guess who won that struggle.

With only one arm to speak of, I only have the opportunity to grab one of them. As luck – or rather lack thereof – would have it, I am so out of shape that my pitiful attempt at a spectacular one armed catch ends with less success than I’d probably have if I tried with my legs instead. Both ponies zoom past me and out the door, leaving me only about a half-second to attempt a turnaround catch. Thankfully, the unicorn pony is close enough that I get to wrap my healthy arm around her. "Gotcha!" I yelled triumphantly. "Now, let's get you–"

Her horn fires up and before I can so much as think of the next literal step, she start to pull me around the room, wakeboard style, to the laughs and cheers of her amused brother as he eggs her on in his own baby way. I do my best to reel the thing in, but seriously, this baby is absurdly strong!

As we go out the door, it hits me how not in charge I am here. I see with wide eyes as the stairs come closer with each passing second, and I’m forced to make a choice: either let go of the pony and risk not catching her later, or get at the very least sore as I can be as I bounce down the stairs, but not losing my grip on her. As it turns out, I foolishly go with option 'B', and more than pain is gained – the pony doesn't care that I'm currently bouncing down the stairs, oh no; she just wants to drag me along like a shark would drag a river canoe.

I am aware that the pegasus kid has been following us throughout my painful journey down to the lower floor. I figure he might be easier to reign in, since he has no unicorn magic to give him torque, so, with all of the agility I can muster by this point, I let go of his sister and latch on to his legs. He shoots me a not exactly satisfied glare, but it’s as I predicted: without magic, he has nowhere the power necessary to move a human being several times heavier than he is.

I allow myself a victorious grin as the baby pony struggles to get out of my grasp to no effect. I reel him in and use my sides to trap his wings thus putting him completely under my control. "Okay," I mutter to myself. "Next time, just leave them in the room, TD."

I look up at the ceiling, where the female is flying around without a care in the world. Her brother gives a sad grunt as he reaches towards her, something I’m having none of. "Oh no, ya don't! You're going back into your room."

I rush back up the stairs with the increasingly angry pegasus oh hand towards the door that leads to his room. When I arrive, I quickly push the crib back to its proper upright position before I deposit the now wailing foal inside. I rush out the door and slam it shut behind me, not having the time to care about how his cries can be heard for miles around the bakery – if I'm going to survive my mistake, I’m gonna have to focus on the other one before I do something about him.

I am not surprised to see the unicorn still blitzing up high in the main room, just beyond my reach. I groan and grab a chair over to try and catch her. However, before I can do that I hear the one noise that I simply do not need to hear right now

Ding!

The cupcakes are ready.

I look in horror over at the oven, and from it, back at the unicorn. Why did that have to happen now?!

It’s not really a choice, so with a groan, I direct myself to the oven, grabbing a towel on my way so that I can take the cupcakes out of it. I peer back at the unicorn, with the intention of giving her the harshest glare she’s ever had in her short life… that is, it is my intention until I realize that more things can go wrong than the inconvenient timing of the baked goods. Either because the baby has run out of magical power or because the spell expired on its own, she is now dropping like a stone towards the floor.

Without thinking, I dive towards the little shape with one arm outstretched in hopes of a last second save. Adrenaline pumps through me, and my perception of time seems to slow down as my outstretched arm reaches to intercept her trajectory. If I can't catch her, then who knows what kind of day I'll have.

You know, because it hasn't been stressful already.

In the heat of the moment, I don’t realize I overreached, and instead of landing on my hand, the baby bounces off of my forearm and lands not too gently on the floor.

Great, now both of them are crying.

I scoop up the wailing unicorn and run up to her room, where her brother is crying in the crib. When he sees us come in, he stops, but promptly starts up again when he sees his sister crying. I swear my eardrums are going to burst if they keep this up.

I don't know what to do with them so for now I put them in their crib and just wait for them to get over it. I can't help them, really, and if the pegasus wants to cry just for the heck of it, then I can't stop him.

I exit the room and shut the door, thankful to be out of the room full of noises of discontent babies. Sure, the racket reverberates throughout the whole building, but at least I'm not standing right next to the source anymore.

I sigh as I walk down the stairs, the cries of the twins ringing in my ears. I think I'm gonna pass if the Cakes ever ask me to do this again.

Wait, there's something else I had to do, wasn't there? I recall... a burning smell?

Oh no, the cupcakes!!

I rush over to the oven and pull out the pastries. Okay, they’re not totally burnt, but they are a tad singed. I don't know if I should leave them or if it would be better to bake new ones to make up for these.

However, before I can muse on that some more, the twins’ wails somehow get ten decibels louder, and I realize I can't simply ignore that situation anymore. I go back into their bedroom, pick them up – thankfully to no real resistance this time – and put each on one of my knees, proceeding to bounce them up and down, hoping that the motion soothes them. No such luck.

"Please stop crying," I whimper. "I'll give you each ten bucks every day for the rest of your life if you and just stop crying for the next hour and a half!"

Let it be known that bribery never works on a living thing that doesn't completely understand the concept of sanity.

"Shut up little babies, don't say a word,
TD's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
I don't know the rest of the words to this song,
Please don't make me... uh...make up words."

I swear I'm going to have permanent ear damage from this. The twins haven’t piped down at all in the past half hour, and I'm completely at a loss for what to do by this point. All nursery songs I knew of fell flat, distracting them with toys was futile at best, and the less said about how I tried to convince them to play little baby games, the better. I've tried everything short of feeding them or changing them – they don't need either, as far as I can tell –, so for now, I’ve resigned myself to waiting for the Cakes, or Pinkie Pie, to come back home.

I rack my brains for the n-th time, desperately trying to figure out what it was that Pinkie Pie said for me to do to. She did say that there is some secret or other to make them shut up for a few minutes, but for the life of me I can't remember what!

"Please just kill me now…" I’m rambling to nobody in particular by now. "If I’d known that I would end up here in this God-forsaken noise factory, I would have hit Celestia in her ovaries. See how she likes that." If only I knew where her ovaries are in her body. "Please, for the love of whatever you hold dear, stop crying!"

No dice, they're still going.

Currently, I'm walking around with them on my arms, hoping that the rhythmic movement of walking will calm them down, but it's not working that well: the two of them are still as upset as they were half an hour ago. I lean against a cabinet with a groan, trying to puzzle out what deity out there has a beef with me and why, and I feel a slight tickling sensation on the back of my neck. I frown – I really could go without having an itch of all things – and do my best to rub my shoulder against the furniture to scratch the spot. It doesn't get any better, like there's something actively brushing against me.

I turn around to see the source of the irritation, which turns out to be a small stream of flour coming out of a large sack placed on the top of the cabinet. I examine it for a brief moment before my eyes light up.

Flour! That's what Pinkie told me to use!

It is with renewed vigor that I place the screeching twins down on the floor and grab the flour from up above. To my delight, since their cries aren't as loud now that they see what I'm up to, it seems to be working already. I grit my teeth and, with a great degree of difficulty, seeing as how I only have one arm worth its weight, I upend the bag.

I drown in the flour. I cannot see two feet in front of me thanks to the flour. My world is flour, my reason is flour, I am flour. All hail the flour.

However, being in a flour shower has obvious disadvantages, particularly when it comes to breathing. I found myself in need to inhale right in the middle of my flour shower, and predictably, upon me doing so, a decent amount of flour comes in through my nose instead of the sweet sweet air that I need.

The end result is that, instead of striking a silly pose as I had originally planned, I find myself bent over, hacking out a piece or three of my right lung.

I am vaguely aware that the twins have stopped crying, which is a plus, but that doesn't really do me much good if I'm passed out from asphyxiation! I continue to cough for what is a solid minute for sure before my respiratory system decides that it's in the right condition to work properly again.

I breathe deeply, relishing the feeling of oxygen in my lungs as opposed to unprocessed starch. "Gosh darn it, that was not pleasant..." I wheeze, and since there are still traces of flour in my throat along with the dryness of my throat, my words come out sounding more like Clint Eastwood than TD Powell. Sure, it's cool as it can be, but getting to this point is not a trick I'm not going to emulate ever again.

Suddenly, though, I hear a sound that I haven't heard in eons. A sound I thought I would never hear again. A child's laugh! Or, well, two children's laughs if you apply basic math to the situation.

I look over quizzically at the twins, only to see them rolling on the floor at my funny voice. I raise an eyebrow at their joy and say, "Get off my lawn," in my Clint Eastwood voice. I am rewarded with a second uproarious bout of chortles, and find I myself managing a small smile at this revelation. Bingo.

"Well, he should have armed himself if he was going to decorate his saloon with my friend." The twins think that this one is the funniest line yet. I don't really see why, but hey, they're laughing at the voice, not the line.

I have spent the last hour quoting every Clint Eastwood line I can think of in an attempt to stay on their good side, and I'm extremely glad to say that it has been a complete success thus far: they are having the times of their lives with hearing their babysitter's chatterbox acting silly. I have to admit myself that this little stand-up is kind of fun, if a bit grating on the vocal cords.

"Decorating? Who said something about decorating?" My heart leaps and sings a Disney song at jet engine volumes when I see Pinkie Pie come inside.

I put the twins in their crib and breathe a huge sigh of relief, something that causes trace wisps of flour to come out of my mouth. "That was just me doing some quotes," I explain to the slightly confused pony. Then, I sigh. "You would not believe how rough this day was... I can still hear the crying."

"Oh, I know all about that," she giggles. "Before you came along, I babysat these two all the time!"

“I suppose,” is my reply. "Thank for the flour tip, by the way. It really helped me out."

"No problem at all!"

I slowly stand up, feeling some of my joints pop back in place, and discover that the activities of the past two hours have been really quite tiring on more than just my larynx. It seems that hearing nothing but screams for a solid half hour could substitute physical exercise if you want to feel spent. "Sorry if I burned the cupcakes down there," I say as I rub my sides. “I got a big fright at the time, and I couldn't get to them in time.”

"Aw it's fine," Pinkie says calmly with a waving hoof in dismissal. "We'll just go down to the basement and get some more ingredients to make some more!"

"Uh-huh..." I answer numbly.

In a few moments, we were in her basement for a second time.

"Okay," she says after she places a bag of flour on her back. "I need you to go to that top shelf over there and grab that large jug."

I look up at the shelf and see a really big jug filled with a blue liquid of sorts. I shrug and reach up to grab it, but fail to take into account just how tired I am. One second I am controlling the jug's movement well enough, the next, it's out of my grasp and turned on its side, drenching me to the bone with its contents.

I let out a few swear words on accident before I regain my bearings. "Shoot, sorry I spilled that," I say humbly.

"Aw it's okay!" Wait, why is she sounding so upbeat all of a sudden? "We just gotta get you washed up is all. We'd better do it soon, though, that's highly flammable!”

With a surprised yelp at the idea of being covered in what pretty much sounds and looks like premium unleaded gasoline, I quickly make my way to the basement door...

… which promptly slams shut, encasing the whole basement in total darkness.

"Ooh, it's really dark in here! I'd better light a candle if we're going to find our way out!”

Light a...

A match scrapes against the side of a matchbox, and next thing I know, I'm seeing Pinkie holding the match in her mouth as she attempts to light the candle. "Pinkie, no..." I whisper in full alert, very conscious that I'm dressed in–

And that's when Pinkie Pie tosses the match aside, and by aside, I mean directly at me.

The small embers of death are a SCUD missile from my point of view. I do my best to move out of the way, but it's far too late.

The match hits me.

If the flour shower meant that all was flour, well, now my whole universe is fire. I scream as I get engulfed in a fraction of a second, dropping to the ground in a roll. I don't care that I can't feel any pain, I more care about the fact that I am a human torch right now!!!

I writhe around on the ground, the stop-drop-and roll thing we were taught in grade school the only coherent action my brain is processing. Oh Gosh, I hope it works before I'm to a mirror image of the cupcakes I so frequently failed at baking!

However, before I can extinguish myself, I feel a splash of water hit me directly. I find myself lying on the ground, barely daring to move.

"How are you doing?" I hear Pinkie Pie ask in that same bizarrely cheerful voice.

All I can do is cough. The last few seconds just beat my already sore throat into submission with a police baton.

"That was really cool, that effect just now! Some hot stuff for certain!"

More coughs. Please don't let me catch bronchitis, the burns are bad enough already!

"Good thing it wasn't real fire, huh? Can you imagine what you'd be like right now if it was?"

… wait... "Not real?" I ask weakly.

"Of course not, silly! Why would I set you on fire for real?"

"You... did that on purpose?!"

"I sure did! I had you watch the twins so you'd be really, really tired when I asked you to get the jug of cold flame down from the top shelf, so you'd be too weak to hold it up and would spill it all over yourself! Why, were you really, really scared?"

I nod dumbly, making a titanic effort to sit up. However, my efforts are blocked when a pink hoof nonchalantly slams into my chest and pins me to the floor. My eyes widen in fear as Pinkie Pie puts her mouth really close to my ear and says eight words in a tone so filled with malice it would make a convicted criminal on Earth flinch back.

"That's why you never break a Pinkie Promise!"

Show and Tell

"Allow me to see if I understand: Pinkie Pie had you watch the Cake twins so you would be tired at the end of the day, and spill a faux-flammable liquid on yourself, before she ignited it, and you, as punishment for breaking a Pinkie Promise?"

"That about sums it up."

Rarity shakes her head in disbelief as she works on a new shirt for me. "I simply cannot believe that. I adore Pinkie Pie and know she would never harm anypony intentionally, but even I think she went entirely too far."

"Oh, ya think? I'm not going back there if I can help it! I don't even want to see the color pink ever again!” I sigh. “I'll find my hands dirty somewhere else."

"Who can blame you?" she says sympathetically. "And don't you worry; I'll talk to Pinkie Pie about it."

"You really don't have to do that. The two of us are permanently done with each other."

"Well, admittedly, no, I don’t," she shakes her head, "but I want to all the same."

I groan and rub my temples. Of course she does. I sigh and stand up from the chair I had been sitting in.

It has been a few days since the Pinkie Promise incident, and I haven’t been anywhere near Sugarcube Corner since then. Heck, I was out of that basement before Pinkie could so much as breathe in to say another thing, and there was a supremely ratty resignation letter on the counter top about six seconds after the flames went out. I was a block away from there by the time I heard my name being called by the maniac.

If I never see that pony again, it'll be too soon. The only reason I didn't begin wailing on her, right then and there, is... well, Demon Pinkie Pie is scary Pinkie Pie. She got me more focused on flight than fight.

I stretch a bit as I look out the window. "Are there any places you know of that would hire a human?"

Rarity sighs with a shake of her head. "Honestly, I don’t know. I know Twilight vouches for you, so I'm sure she can find you something to do, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head."

I grimace at the news. "Well, I gotta find something! I mean, I kinda want to find my own place here soon."

Rarity nods. "Yes, I can see how you would want to. It must be difficult living with a pair of ponies."

"Uh...yeah, yeah it is."

I think the thing I'm going to love the most about having my own place is having a bathroom all for myself. Rarity's twelve trillion beauty products don't really leave a lot of space for, well, anything else… including my toiletries.

I shake my head at the wasteland that is her bathroom just as Sweetie Belle, Rarity's kid sister who I'm admittedly slightly fond of, comes downstairs for school. "Hey sis, hey TD, how's it going?"

I shrug at the question. "It goes."

"TD had a rather rough day at Sugarcube Corner the other day," Rarity explains. "Apparently Pinkie Pie attacked him in retaliation for breaking a Pinkie Promise."

Sweetie Belle gives a small gasp after I give a small conformation nod. "That's terrible!"

I snort in half amusement. "Ya think?"

"I do think!"

"Yes, it was,” Rarity nods, “and I will be talking to Pinkie Pie about it later today. In the meantime, it's time for a certain little filly to get to school. Do you have your show and tell object ready?"

A look of pure horror crosses Sweetie Belle's face. "Oh no, show and tell is today!" she squeaks out.

Rarity groans and face...uh, hoofs...facehoofs at her sister. "Sweetie Belle, how many times have I told you to prepare your schoolwork before it’s due?"

"I'm sorry sis, I forgot!"

"Clearly. So what are you going to do about it now?"

A contemplative look crosses Sweetie Belle's face, right before she lights up and points at me. "Him! I can take him for show and tell!"

My eyes widen and I back up a step. "Uh, I don't know if that's such a good idea, Sweetie. I'm not really a 'thing' so much as a 'person'. Wouldn't it be awkward to bring a living thing for show and tell?"

"No way!" she responds. "I brought Rarity a few weeks ago!'

I go from surprised to deadpan in half a second. A new record. "You brought your big sister for show and tell."

"Yep," she says proudly. "And she had a lot of fun, didn't you, sis?"

To my confusion, Rarity nods. "It wasn't a chore to be there, and I did get some enjoyment out of being in the classroom setting once again."

"But won't they be freaked out by me?" I ask doubtfully.

"We can't know until we try!" Sweetie Belle insists. "I know Apple Bloom and Scootaloo already like you, so the others can’t be too far behind!"

I am about to flat out say no, but a thought crosses my mind: I legitimately don't have anything better to do today now that I am unemployed, and on top of that, elementary education was my major in college. Maybe it won't be so bad. "Okay, I’ll go."

Sweetie Belle's eyes light up and she promptly rushes up to give me a gigantic hug. "Thank you so much, TD!"

"Uh, yeah, sure, kid." Frankly, I'm beginning to regret it already.

A few steps away, Rarity is smiling. "That was a very generous thing of you to do."

I frown ever so slightly, as I don't quite want to be generous like that right now. But again, maybe it'll be enjoyable.

Minutes later, Rarity gives me a new set of clothes that she completed the previous night, Sweetie Belle puts her saddlebags on, and we're out the door. Since I am the one walking Sweetie Belle to school, Rarity has told us that she will not accompany us, since she has a lot of orders to fill and she wants to make up for the lost time. Uh-huh, sure. She's just glad that someone else could do dirty work that she wanted to avoid.

At any rate, it is kind of amusing to see Sweetie Belle prancing happily forward, leading me eagerly to her school. If her expression is any indication, I'm one of her best show and tell subjects ever. To be fair, if an inter-dimensional being was living in my house when I was her age, I'd take it to show and tell, too. I mean, wouldn’t we all?

As we approach the schoolhouse, which is about ten minutes from Rarity's at walking speed, the first word that comes to my mind is... quaint. It looks like a stereotypical schoolhouse, like one would see in a cheesy TV show...

Oh, right.

At any rate, it looks quite simplistic and almost inviting, if a bit childish. In the schoolyard, there are a bunch of happy kids, or whatever young ponies are called, playing whatever kid games the few precious minutes of their recess allow. I manage a smile at the sight. It brings back memories.

Sweetie Belle and I walk up to the schoolyard where, surprise surprise, the kids all stop playing and instead move on to staring at me.

Gosh darn it, not again. "Uh, hi," I said with a nervous half-wave to the collection of kids.

Their comically large eyes continue to stare at me, all of them unblinking. However, there are exceptions to every rule: I see that Scootaloo and Apple Bloom both have happy looks on their faces. The duo comes up to us. "Hey there, TD,” Apple Bloom greets me. “How's it goin'?"

"I've been better…"

"Pinkie Pie getting you down?" asks Scootaloo.

Sweetie Belle huddles up to them and whispers, "She set him on fire yesterday for breaking a Pinkie Promise."

Apple Bloom is awed by this. "Whoa! Ah knew she didn't like it when you broke a Pinkie Promise, but Ah didn't think she would do that!"

"That makes two of us," I mumble.

She opens her mouth to respond, but instead a highly cheerful voice cuts her off. "All right, class, recess is over! It's time to... oh, hello there."

I turn to the source of the voice to see an adult pony whom I can only assume is the teacher. She walks up to the four of us with a friendly grin on her face.

"Hi," I greet her back.

"You must be TD, right?” she asks curiously. “I've heard a lot about you from Sweetie Belle."

My eyebrow curls a little. "Have you now?"

"Indeed. But where are my manners?” she asks herself with a shake of her head. “My name is Cheerilee. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

She extends a hoof in greeting, which I am quick to shake. Finally, a pony who isn't a total sociopath. I just can't see this one snapping and murdering a bunch of ponies like Pinkie Pie might. "Nice to meet you, too, Cheerilee.”

She pulls her hoof back when I let it go. "I take it Sweetie Belle brought you in for show and tell day?"

"Such is the case," I confirm.

The mare beams. "That is simply wonderful."

"Hope so."

Satisfied, she turns back to her students. "Alright class, it's time to get the day started! If everypony could go inside, we can begin the show and tell!"

The class sluggishly files into the building, with me and Cheerilee not far behind them. It takes a few minutes for them to get settled in their desks, and when they’re done, Cheerilee motions for me to sit down on the chair behind her desk, which, while still a bit small for me, is better than the desks themselves.

"Good afternoon, class!"

"Good afternoon, Ms. Cheerilee!" they respond in unison.

"As you all know, today is show and tell day, so I hope you all brought something from home that you can give an at least three-minute-long oral report on."

I look around the classroom and see that the students all have various knick-knacks on their desks. Every one of them looks immensely proud of their various items, something that amuses me. Children will be children, regardless of species.
"Alright then, who's first?" Cheerilee asks and, almost instantly, a dozen forelegs shoot up into the air. She stares thoughtfully at them, lingering on a few until she stops on one. "Okay, Diamond Tiara, you can go first."

One of the kids stands up with the most obnoxiously smug look I’ve seen so far on her face. It seems that being chosen as first is a great honor for her.

That’s one I already dislike.

She stands up in front of the class and pulls her namesake, a diamond-encrusted tiara, off of her head. "This is my diamond tiara," she begins, and boy is her voice even more obnoxious than her smug grin. "My daddy bought it for me three years ago because I was the first in the class to get my cutie mark. It's very expensive and it's my prized possession."
She points her hoof at the stones in the front. "These are all real diamonds here on the front, and each one of them proves that my daddy is the best dad in Ponyville, much better than all of your dads!"

"Diamond Tiara,” Cheerilee interrupts sternly, “let's not dissolve into petty insults, please."

"Sorry, Ms. Cheerilee." Her voice proves she’s anything but.

The snooty brat continues talking about her stupid headgear, which is actually something that I've taken a slight interest in after a more in-depth look. Something seems… off about it.

I tune back in just in time to hear her finish her obnoxious rant. "Any questions?" she says.

I raise my hand and she gives me a confused look. "Can I see that?" I ask, pointing to the tiara.

"Absolutely not!" she complains, hugging the item close to her chest. "You're gonna break it with those clumsy hands of yours!"

"Diamond Tiara, this is not how we treat guests at our school.” Thanks, Cheerilee. “He's not going to break it, are you, TD?"

“Why should I?” Aside from taking this nuisance down a peg, that is.

The kid downright growls in frustration, but she lets me take the so-called ‘diamond’ tiara, and I begin to examine it. I look at it from above, then spin for a check from below, but I can't quite put my finger on what’s wrong with it. Now all that’s left is to look at the diamonds themselves.

The big, central one… Ah-ha, that's the issue.

Despite myself, I break out into a gigantic grin, something that doesn’t go by unnoticed. "What's so funny about my tiara?" Diamond Tiara asks nasally. I do a thorough once-over on the other ‘diamonds’ on the tiara as well, hoping to back up my hypothesis.

I’m right.

Rhinestones, every last one of them. I wouldn’t be able to see the bedding behind the stones otherwise; a real diamond isn’t that perfectly clear.

"Oh, nothing," I said as I hand the tiara back to her. "Nothing at all."

She shoots me an arrogant glare before she moves back to her seat. I chuckle quietly to myself as she leans in to whisper to an equally snooty pony next to her. Bless her. If only she knew just how much the 'best dad in Ponyville' spends on his daughter’s personal treasures…

The next bunch of kids is far nicer that Diamond Tiara. Unlike her, they don't use the show and tell to prove that they have better stuff than the rest of the class; they are genuinely proud of their prized possessions.

Scootaloo shows off her scooter and the class even gets to go outside for a minute for her to give a demonstration, which turns out rather impressive – I know I certainly wouldn't be able to do what she does on my scooter on my best adventurous day. Apple Bloom presents a hammer that she got from her sister for her last birthday. Some boy named Snips shows off a drawing he made. Another one, Snails, shows off his pet – surprise surprise – snail.

Show and tell continues like that, and I find myself enjoying it. It's interesting to see how these kids act; it reminds me of why I was an Elementary Ed major back home in the first place.

And then, finally, Sweetie Belle's turn comes. She stands up in front of the class and beckons me to stand next to her.
The class looks at me with awed expressions, like I wasn’t there for the whole day.

"This is TD," she declares proudly. "He's an inter-dimensional being called a 'human' that was brought into our world somehow."

"Somehow?" asks a colt in the back row.

Sweetie Belle grimaces. "Rarity won't tell me how he got here…” She blinks twice. “Anyway, he walks on his two rear legs and wears clothes all of the time. He has some devices that came with him. He calls them 'computer' and 'cellphone'. But they’re out of batteries right now, so we can’t show them."

They all ‘oooooh’ in unison, much to my amusement.

"He's living with me and my sister Rarity at Carousel Boutique while he gets on his hooves and gets his own place."

"Uh,” I cut her off, “if I may interject, I don't have hooves. These are hands, and those are feet." The explanation, complete with pointing out the corresponding appendages, elicits another awed chorus from the class. I smirk to myself at their interest. It's a nice change from the way the Mane Six have treated me.

"What's your cutie mark?" one of the kids in the front row asks, stopping my introspection episode.

“My what?"

"Your cutie mark. You know, this." The kid points to her flank, which has a kind of tattoo thing plastered on it. "We all get them when we discover our special talents. What's yours?"

"… I don't have a cutie mark," I state with a raised eyebrow.

Immediately the two snobbish kids break out into smug grins and point their hooves at me, chanting "Ha, blank flank!" in unison.

"That's enough!" Cheerilee angrily quiets them down.

I sneer hostilely at the two of them. "I don't have a cutie mark because humans can't get them. I've never met a person who magically got a tattoo when they discovered who they were meant to be. I know I didn't."

"What is your special talent, then?" Scootaloo asks.

"Well, I was going to college to become a grade school teacher before I came here."

Apple Bloom seemingly gets excited at that. "You wanted to teach kids like Ms. Cheerilee does?"

I nod. "That was the plan."

Cheerilee raises her own eyebrow in interest. "That’s very interesting. In this case, would you consider coming back sometime to give the class a full lesson?"

I shrug and nod at the same time. "I can’t see why not. I don't have anything better to do anyway."

Saying that earns me a smile from Cheerilee. "It's settled, then. We'll talk later about the details."

"Cool."

Cheerilee opens her mouth to continue, but gets cut off by the piercing cry of a ringing bell and the following stampede of kids running out of the room. "That's recess time," Cheerilee explains to me. "They'll be back here in about twenty minutes for the second half of the day."

"Ah yes, recess…" I mutter fondly. "I have nice memories of them."

"You had recess back home?"

I nod. "It was the highlight of my day back when I was a kid. It seems that doesn't change between dimensions."
"It does seem like it," she says with a quiet laugh. "You can go out there with them if you want. I need to get things organized for the next few classes."

I nod and follow the class out of the building. As I walk out to the schoolyard, I see the entire class all standing in a circle. They seem to be arguing about something.

Curious, I move to see what the commotion is about.

"I say we play tag!" someone says.

"But we played tag yesterday," Apple Bloom complains. "Why don't we play hide and seek instead?"

Diamond Tiara groans. "Not that stupid game again!"

"Hey, I like that game!" That’s Scootaloo.

"But I wanna play tag today!" Snips. I realize he was the first voice.

"Why not both?" I interject.

The crowd of kids looks up at me, unanimously confused. "How can we play both?" asks Diamond Tiara.

"You can play hide-and-seek-tag," I answer matter-of-factly.

"Hide-and-seek-tag?” Sweetie Belle parrots. “What's that?"

"Oh, really?” I utter in disbelief. “Come on, you can't tell me you don't know what hide-and-seek-tag is! Isn't that game, like, required knowledge?"

"How do you play?" another kid asks.

A faint grimace grows in my expression. How on Earth can a bunch of kids not know what hide-and-seek-tag is?! It was my favorite game at their age! Well, guess I’m gonna have to be the one to break it out to them. "Okay, the rules are quite simple. One person is 'it', just like in tag, and they have to cover their eyes while everybody hides, just like in hide and seek. When the person who is 'it' has counted to thirty, they have to go find the people – or ponies in your case – who are hiding.
“Now, the job of the ponies who are hiding is to get to the home base, where they are safe from the person who is ‘it’. The job of the ‘it’ is to tag as many of the hiders as possible. The first person he or she tags is ‘it’ for the next round."

Scootaloo is beaming by the time I finish speaking. "That sounds really fun!"

"Yeah, let's play that!" Sweetie Belle agrees. "And you can be 'it' first, TD!"

I shrug. "Sounds good to me. In that case, home base is that tree right there,” I say, lifting a finger to show the place. “Don't go finding a hiding spot right next to it: you gotta give yourself a little challenge."

The kids all nod, eager to start, and I limber up a bit before covering my eyes. "Alright, here goes. One... two... three..."

I hear the group of kids scatter like leaves in the wind. It only takes a few moments for the surroundings to go completely silent. I allow myself a smile.

"Twenty eight... twenty nine... thirty! Ready or not, here I come!"

I open my eyes to see a completely deserted schoolyard. Dang, these kids sure can hide when they want to. I crack my neck and begin the hunt.

Unfortunately for them, there aren't too many good hiding spots. Case in point, I aim for a large bush that no doubt houses at least one of them.

As I approach the plant, I hear a rustling noise behind me. I turn around, only to see Snips and Snails desperately bolting towards the tree, and with an amused battle cry, I give chase. It becomes clear that I am the faster being right as I tag both of them, Snips first, before they make it even halfway to safety. The two of them walk dejectedly over to an out of the way spot, but I can see smiles on their faces all the same. They had fun while it lasted for them.

I set my sights once more on the bush, but this time I jog over to it not to waste time. Sure enough, I see Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon hiding behind it, and they see me, too; with twin squeals of fear, they bolt in the opposite direction, with me giving chase. Unfortunately for them, they’re even slower than Snips and Snails, and much to their irritation, I catch the slowpoke duo quite readily.

However, in my haste, I fail to notice two of the students that take me chasing the girls as the perfect opportunity to run off themselves, and I turn around just in time to see them touch home base. They high-five each other with their hooves, and I shrug; a fair defeat’s a fair defeat. Besides, there’s still half of the class for me to catch, and oh they're all close. I can feel it.
I glance towards the sign in front of the school and see four pairs of hooves behind it. I grin like a predator as I run towards it, and sure enough, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom are both hiding behind it. They give more playful shrieks than the others when they see me coming, and, also unlike the others, they do the smart thing and split up.

I dive to the left to try and catch Sweetie Belle, but she jumps over my outstretched arm in a surprising display of agility, and all my fingers close around is grass. I quickly push myself off of the ground and run towards her; she’s definitely faster than her counterparts, too. Apple Bloom has made it to the tree by this point, but I am closing in fast behind my target.

It's going to be close.

I pick up the pace and reach for Sweetie Belle just as her outstretched leg touches the safe point. There’s only enough time for me to move my hand away so that it simply glances her mane instead of shoving her muzzle into the bark. That would have hurt.

"She's safe!" Apple Bloom hollers gleefully.

"Curses!" I yell theatrically, and they giggle.

However, I don't have time to dwell on it, as the last kid has just come out of her hiding spot. I grin evilly as I sneak up to her. "It's over, Scootaloo. Surrender now and I will tag you out quickly," I ham in my best Bond villain voice.

She narrows her eyes as she turns to face me. "You'll never catch me! I am far too fast for the likes of you!" Heh, she's getting into the dramatic side of this too. That’s pretty cool, actually.

"We shall see, my dear. We shall see."

She grins smugly. "I'm standing right here! Come and get me!"

I grin back, accepting the challenge. "Easy money."

"Why don't you put your bits where your mouth is and give it your best shot, slowpoke?" She’s limbering up herself by now.
"Slowpoke?” I mock frown. “Oh, that does it, you're going down!"

I zoom towards the orange pegasus with outstretched arms. Scootaloo licks her lips in anticipation… and dodges to the left just as I swipe at her. She's even more agile than Sweetie Belle.

Good, I like a challenge.

I recover quickly from catching air and swipe at her again, just in time for her to slide between my legs. I wheel around to see her zooming towards the tree with a speed that only someone being chased by a monster is capable of. But instead of dwelling on my memories of a certain pink menace, I book it after Scootaloo with a dramatic war cry.

I make a head first dive towards the retreating form of Scootaloo, fully expecting to catch her like the others. However, it seems like that girl has a sixth sense of some sort: she actually side rolls from a running position, something I never thought possible, and it makes me miss her by a mile. I end up sliding on the ground – on my good shoulder, thankfully – with a distinct lack of Scootaloo on my hand.

By the time I stand back up, she’s casually leaning against the tree with her friends. "Grrr, curse you, Scootaloo! I'll get you next time!" I say with a comical shake of my fist.

"In your dreams, maybe,” she boasts, “but even then, I wouldn't count on it!"

As the class excitedly cheers and chatters, setting up for the next round, I dust off my shirt while looking around the schoolyard for a good hiding spot. One is not what catches my eye, though: instead, that honor goes to a familiar bookworm unicorn with her purple forelegs draped over the fence. I don’t see why she would come to the schoolhouse other than to talk to me, so, with a resigned sigh, I walk over to Twilight Sparkle.

"That looked like it was a lot of fun," she says when I get close enough.

"Some of those little buggers are agile, I'll give them that."

"You really seem to be adjusting to your life here quite well."

The grin that I had been wearing so far fades fast into a neutral almost-grimace. "There's a difference between ‘I’m having a fun game of hide-and-seek-tag with a bunch of innocent kids’ and ‘I've resigned to stay away from home’, you know. I still want nothing else than to go back to my world."

Me saying that completely dismantles Twilight’s smile, and she looks down. "I know… and I'm sure the Princess is working on it."

"Uh-huh, yeah, sure."

Twilight frowns at my disbelief. "You do know she feels bad about it, right?"

"Maybe she does," I state, “but I can't shake the feeling that she sees me as some chess piece right now. Remember when she said she wants to figure out why I'm here, like I have some sort of purpose to her? I don't think she wants to send me back just yet, Twilight."

Twilight keeps silent for a few seconds. "Anyway, I didn't come here to talk about that. I came to ask you to come with me back to Rarity's. We have some important things to discuss."

"Of course we do," I say flatly.

She accepts the answer and beckons me to follow. I give a brief glance back to the schoolyard. The second round has already started without me, but they’re having fun nonetheless. I smile to myself for a moment before I move to follow Twilight back to Rarity's house. They should be fine without me for a little while.

As we get close, I start to get an increasing vibe of dread. Something is up, I just know it. I don't foresee this talk going very well.

The minute she opens the door, I see all of the other mane six standing in the main room… including Miss Pink Menace. Speaking of her, as soon as Twilight shuts the door behind us, as if by a signal, she starts to approach me in a slow gait, but stops dead in her tracks when I brusquely lift up a finger pointed to her face. "Don't you dare come any closer to me." It’s not a surprise to me that I’m pretty much snarling by this point.

Her ears curl back. "But I just wanted to–"

"No, you don't get to say anything to me, you lunatic.” I feel my voice begin to rise. “You freaking torched me! I don't give a rat’s tail what kind of promise I broke, that’s not something you do!"

One of her forelegs lifts up in front of her like a shield. "But I–"

"But freaking nothing! Stay away from me!" I jab the finger in her direction, and she takes a step back. Good for her.

"TD, darling,” Rarity politely interjects, “just let her talk her part, please."

I glare at her in turn. "I don't want this psycho to talk, I want her out of my sight!"

Pinkie's eyes begin to water. "I didn’t mean to hurt you!" she cries out. “In any way!”

"That doesn't change the fact that what you did was FUBAR like a war crime!"

"FUBAR?"

"That’s German, Dash," I say, waving the pony off without looking directly at her. "But that's not important. What is important is that I do not want to be around your friend Pinkie Pyromaniac over there anymore. My days are already messed up as it is without a loon to scare me stiff."

I get a second dose of pleading, teary puppy dog eyes, along with a quiet whimper.

Rarity clears her throat. "TD, we know you are upset with Pinkie Pie, and you have every right to be, but she is legitimately sorry for what she did."

"Yeah, just like I was legitimately sorry for breaking the Pinkie Promise and still got lit up!" A second of silence later, I stare pointedly at the unicorn playing peacekeeper. “You said you’re upset with her, but you’re still taking her side.”

"We're not taking sides!" Rainbow Dash butts in. "We're mad at her, too!"

"Yeah? Doesn’t seem like it.” I scoff. “You know what, I shouldn’t be surprised. It's not like any of you have any moral ground whatsoever."

"What do you mean?" Twilight asks, genuinely baffled.

I have been waiting to say this for a really long time. This train is on a roll, and not about to stop. Oh, this is gonna feel great! "What do I mean?” I deadpan. “I mean that, in my first day in Equestria, you,” I jab a finger almost into Twilight’s nose, “threw me around like a rag doll with every intention of causing me more bodily harm than I already was sustaining, and you and you,” I point to Applejack and Rainbow Dash, “joined right in on the fun!"

Applejack steps up. "You attacked Princess Celestia!"

I don’t back down. "And I'd do it again! Notice how she didn't atomize me to the bone at the time, or any time afterwards?"

"We were just tryin' ta–"

"Trying to what, protect her?” I spit out acidly. “You thought the immortal sun goddess of Equestria needed protecting from a half dead human?!"

"But–"

"But nothing!” I cut her off. “You had no need to do that; you did it because you wanted to!"

"So we lost our tempers!" Twilight yells as well. "It's not like you didn't lose yours!"

I give her a withering glare. “Oh, so now you did it because I did?! Rich excuse!”

Before any of us can continue the shouting contest, somepony who’s feeling the tempers rise from outside the argument speaks up. "Please, darlings, must we really do this?” Rarity pleads, trying to calm us down. “There’s no need to be bad blood between us!"

I move my head to stare doom into her eyes. "Too late for that, miss! You already raised the bad blood when you thought using me as a dang mannequin without my permission was a good idea!"

She looks taken aback, most likely because of how her appeasing attempt got turned on its head. "What was I supposed to do?!” she protests. “You ran away from me!"

"I sure did, because for all I knew, you were gonna shove me into a get-up too ridiculous for even a costume party! Of course I’d panic!” She bristles and deflates at the exact same time, but I don’t stop to wonder how she can do that. “You didn't tell me that you would try to make something fitting my tastes; you just froze me instead of trying to explain! All you needed to do was tell me that you would just show me your designs before you would make anything definitive, and we would have been fine! But no, instead you preferred to use me like a talking object!"

Rarity purses her lips in a tight frown, but doesn't say anything.

"The only one out of all of you that I am not remotely mad at is Fluttershy,” I continue, back to a less loud voice. “In fact, she is the only one who really seems sorry for what I went through. But the rest of you? All you kept doing was trying to justify both your actions and Celestia's.” I tap my chest with my index and middle fingers, feeling my mood flare up again. “But you haven't stopped to think about what I am going through here! So put yourselves in my shoes for just one measly second and see how you like the calluses!"

I have to take a moment to wind down after the rant ends, and a lot less straining, too. When I look back ahead, I have no eye contact with anyone; all I see are six pairs of droopy ears on the heads of six sullen ponies that are facing everywhere but my way. Okay, now I do feel that I’ve gone overboard. It makes me rub my temples to relieve the headache that is forming under them.

"Anyway,” I say much more calmly, which prompts most of them to look back up, “Rarity.”

She faces me, a little unwillingly.

“Look, despite our falling out episodes, I appreciate the fact that you gave me a roof for these past few days. But I'm going to be moving out as soon as I can find a job and a place of my own. Especially after… this," I finish, a little guiltily.

She nods a little stiffly. "I always assumed that was the plan, darling."

"That's actually one of the things I wanted to tell you," an uncharacteristically humble voice speaks.

I have to look twice to confirm it’s not Fluttershy speaking. No, that would be another pony with pink hair.

I shoot Pinkie a surprised look. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well,” she explains, “when Rarity came to talk to me about how you were super-duper mad at me for the fire prank, she mentioned that you wanted to have a place of your own. So I...” she hesitates for a fraction of a second, and I have the impression that she’s not used to talking slowly. “I went down to the Town Hall to see if there were any empty houses around here."

She walks over to a saddlebag with her cutie mark on it and gently pulls out a piece of paper with her mouth. "I found this one."

I take the sheet from her, and my eyes widen as soon as I begin giving it a once-over. “Pinkie Pie… this is a lease agreement. You got me a place to stay?"

Said pony nods a few times. "I paid the down payment on the house, too."

I have to admit, she just left me utterly speechless. This is far from any expectations I had for… well, ever. "I'll, er… I'll pay you back when I can," is all I can speak.

"Okay,” she says back with a faint smile. “No rush, though, I know you don't have a job yet. Unless…” then, she goes back to being unusually meek and hesitant. “… unless you want to come back to Sugarcube Corner?"

Those last two words bring me back to reality faster than a bucket of icy water. "Heck no, forget that. I'm not going back to working with you, house or no house."

Pinkie winces just a little, but looks me in the eyes. Her expression tells me she must have been expecting my answer. "Do you still hate me?" she asks with a hint of resignation.

It’s a very simple question, but one that increases the pounding in my head. "’Hate’ is a bit of a strong word, Pinkie. I didn’t forget that you saved me from the hay allergy, or that the fire didn’t burn. Heck, I can’t even feel that mad at you for all this. But,” I say with a lifted index finger before a grin can grow on her mug, “that doesn’t mean I trust you… at least, not right now. I mean, it’s all a little too recent."

She sighs. "That's fair..."

"Then I think that settles it,” I say with a lame attempt at finality. Why do I have to feel so bad for giving them a deserved chew out, darn it? “Now, I don’t really think we want to be close to each other now, so if you don’t mind, I'd rather get out and go see my new house. What’s the way to this address, Pinkie?"

Author's Notes:

(Editor’s note: Sad Pinkie is worst Pinkie)

Lord I was Born A Ramblin' Man

"So wait, what exactly is your job title again?" asks Apple Bloom.

I finish tying a hook to a piece of string and reach for a large stick before I answer. "Twilight got me a job working for the city. Basically, I'm an all-around worker: it's my job to make sure Ponyville looks nice, while, at the same time, I help out the townsponies that need a hand. For example, if Quills and Sofas is slammed one day, they call me and I help them out until the rush dies down. Stuff like that."

"Gotcha," she says as she watches me begin tying the string to the stick. "So what are ya doin' right now?"

"I am catching food." I finish tying the rope job and proudly present my makeshift fishing pole.

Apple Bloom looks at it, confused. "How are ya supposed to catch fish with that?"

"Well, I'm going to put these worms here on this hook, and then I'm going to put the hook in the water and wait for the fish to go after the worms. When they eat the worms they'll be snagged, and I'll finally have some meat to eat."

As soon as I found out there were fish at the lake we’re in, I ran to get a fishing permit. Finally, after two weeks, something fleshy to munch on! Apple Bloom, being the herbivore her species is, turns a little green at the idea of eating another living thing. I just roll my eyes at her and put a worm on the hook. "I'm not going to eat veggies for the rest of my time here," I say.

"Can't ya try?"

I put the line in the water and lean back on a nearby tree. "No can do. I love meat too much to go full-on vegetarian, plus I need it to balance my diet."

"Are ya sure you know how to catch fish?"

"My dad used to take me fishing all the time," I say with a slight smile. "He was way better than I was at it. It was always him that brought back the real catch: three or four of the biggest fish you could ever lay eyes on. Meanwhile, my older sister and I would be tagging along with pathetic little things that wouldn't make a good meal for any adult human. I remember I caught a bigger one than him once. Man, he was so proud of me that day. He kept talking about it like I had won some kind of grand fishing prize and all. My mom cooked it up for dinner and it fed three of us easily. It was the best tasting fish I've ever had."

I adjust my position on the ground and keep talking. "Once I actually tried to say a 'Hail Mary' before casting out my line in the hopes that I would catch a big fish just like my dad always did."

"Did it work?"

A small smirk creeps up on my face with that question. "That was the one time I caught nothing. I prefer chalking it up to coincidence, though."

The lake is dead silent for a few moments while Apple Bloom and I wait for the fish to bite. I can tell she's getting a bit bored; I personally find the silence relaxing, but it tends to have that effect on some people. "So," I begin, wanting to break the silence for her sake, "how was crusading today?"

"We didn't get our cutie marks," she says sadly. "And Ah really thought today would be the day!"

"When do the kids around here normally get theirs?"

"Most of the fillies and colts at our school already have theirs! It's just me, Scoots, and Sweetie Belle now."

"Must be tough," I sympathize. The filly nods.

After a while, she asks, "Do you have anythin' like that back in your world?"

"Nothing quite like that. Sure, there is some stuff like driver’s licenses, academic degrees, stuff that shows our accomplishments, but something that indicates our special talent? Not a chance. So take solace in the fact that, no matter how late you get yours, you'll still get yours before I do."

Apple Bloom giggles and gives me a playful nudge. "But that's because you can't get one!"

"Exactly! That means you'll definitely get one before me."

"Ah guess…"

"Let me guess," I say as I pull the line in a bit. "You've gotten a metric ton of advice on your cutie mark already."

"Have Ah ever!" she answers with another vigorous nod. "Everypony keeps telling me that it'll come with time and Ah should just be patient."

"I imagine they're right, but hey, what I do I know, I'm just a human from another dimension who won't get one himself."

The pony nods slowly, and the lake is graced with silence once more. "TD," she asks some time later.

"Hmm?"

"Do ya really hate mah sister and her friends?"

I frown slightly and let out a bit more line. "It's... complicated."

"That's what all grownups say!" she groans in frustration.

"Well, yeah," I say. "Well I don't hate them in the full sense of the word, but saying we’re in good terms is a bit of a stretch."

"Even Fluttershy?"

I smirk at this. "Nah, Fluttershy is cool enough. She didn't do anything bad. She's kinda like the kids at your school in that she didn't wrong me, and she actually likes me for me – you know, she cares about what I'm feeling and going through. All that just makes her impossible to dislike on any level."

"But the others, they did bad stuff to ya?"

"Well, let's see.” I stretch a finger. “Pinkie Pie tricked me into watching the Cake twins as part of an elaborate plan to set me on fire.” I stretch another. “Rarity put me under a freezing spell just because we disagreed on my clothing, then she used me as a mannequin.”

The third finger goes up. “Twilight, Rainbow, and Applejack figured I’d be a good training dummy just because I threw a half-excuse of a punch at Celestia."

The last part is new to Apple Bloom, and her eyes widen at the info. "So y’all did hit the Princess in the face!"

I nod proudly. "Despite the fallout, I'd probably do it again if I had the chance."

Apple Bloom gasps. "Would ya really?"

Her calling me out on my boast causes me to deflate slightly and I scratch the back of my head a bit and sigh. "No, no I don't actually think that I would. I mean, the three of them would have killed me if Celestia hadn't stepped in. Even if she wasn't the sun goddess, It was still wrong of me to do." I switch arms holding the fishing pole and move the recently freed one to loosen it up a bit. "I still think she's worse than the other five put together, though."

Apple Bloom cocks her head slightly. "Why do ya say that?"

"I just can't shake the feeling that she thinks I’m free to be used like a chess piece. When I first saw her, she said she wanted to figure out how I got here, why, things like that. Plus, I don't think she feels even the remotest bit of sorrow or regret for what she did. She just keeps smiling and assuring everyone that everything is gonna be alright."

"Well, we gotta remember that she's been alive for thousands of years, so she doesn't see the world the same way that we do. And since she has to rule Equestria, she has to think about the effects of events, not just here and now, but also what effect they'll have in the future, and who they will affect."

My mouth drops open and I turn to look at Apple Bloom. Surprisingly, she looks a bit sheepish. "Uh, Twilight told me that once," she deflects.

"Ah," I respond. "That makes sense."

"What do ya mean?"

"That's just something I can imagine Twilight saying is all."

She is about to respond when there’s a tug on my line. I immediately spring into action, pulling the string back as fast as I can. "Hold that thought and throw another shrimp on the barbie, Apple Bloom, I think I got something!" Apple Bloom jumps up and down excitedly next to me, cheering me on. Seconds later, I have my fish.

I pick the flopping animal up and hold it up excitedly almost like I expect my mom to be there to snap a picture and my dad to pat me on the back for a job well done. For a second, I pretend that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Apple Bloom notices. "What's with the pose there?"

I snap back to reality and put the fish in a nearby cooler. "Never mind me," I mumble.

"Is that all you're gonna get?" she asks. "How long can you survive just eatin' that one fish?"

"Not very long," I say with a chuckle as I sit back down and throw the line again. "I'll have one meal with that fish."

"Just one?"

"We eat a lot."

I lean back against the tree and Apple Bloom sits down next to me. We both share a moment, looking out at the water.

"TD."

"Yeah?"

"Do ya like it here?"

I sigh and put a hand on her head. "I don't know yet."

"And would you like a wafer thin mint for dessert, sir?"

"NO! I'm full."

"Very well, sir."

I stand back up – turns out you have to squat down until you’re almost sitting if you want to get at eye level with a sitting pony – and turn back to my current boss. "Is that it for the lunch rush?" The pony in question nods, and I tear off my ill-fitting apron. I’m glad to be free from that particular job. I hate that one the most of all. Seriously, even Ponyville’s “high class” ponies are snobs.

I am about to go back to my house to get some cleaning supplies when I see a familiar purple shape from across the street. She flashes me a big grin when she sees me looking at her, and it doesn't take too long for her to walk over. "Hello, TD," says the happy unicorn.

"’Sup, Twilight," I greet her without as much enthusiasm.

"How has your day been going?" she asks.

I shrug and continue walking to my house. "It goes,” I answer without looking at her. “I just got off of the lunch rush at that restaurant back there. Now I'm gonna go get some stuff to clean the windows of town hall."

"Oh, well, do you mind if I walk with you then? I've been meaning to talk with you for the past few weeks."

I nod and she falls in pace beside me.

"So, how's your arm?" she asks.

"I'll say one thing, magic healing does wonders for me. It's back at 100%."

"Congratulations!" she exclaims. "I expect Pinkie Pie will want to throw a party for that."

"Yeah? Well, have a good one, then.”

Twilight looks up at my face with a frown. "Don't tell me you're still mad at her."

"Okay, I won’t tell, but there’s a little voice whispering in my ear that you're going to come to that conclusion independently."

"Why?" she asks simply, losing her cool.

"She lit me up like a matchstick!"

"She also apologized and bought you a house!" says the exasperated unicorn.

"Yeah, and I admit that did help a lot," I say as the building in question comes into view. It’s a simple house: one story, box shape, dull brown colors, and one tiny window that looks out towards the town. Still, it’s my home, and I kinda like it. "And don't get me wrong, I won't be mad at her forever, at least I don’t think so. But getting over the trauma of being the victim of a pyromaniac is a bit of a hard hurdle to jump over."

"She didn't do it to be cruel, you know. It was just a prank."

I pull the key out of my pocket. "That doesn't make it any less cruel than it was."

I open the door. "You don't have much, do you?" she observes as I stand aside to give her room to pass.

It’s true, I don't have much. A bed a bit too small for my size, a comforter and pillow set that Rarity made for me – I’m proud to say that I paid for it –, a small fridge with a few basics inside, mostly my fish and some fruit, and finally, there’s the small table where my laptop, cellphone, computer bag and scooter reside. "What you see is what you get."

"Are you sure you don't want us to help you furnish the place?" asked Twilight. "I'm sure it's no trouble at-"

"I know it would be no trouble for you," I cut her off, "but it sure is for me. I really don't want to accept more charity than I have to to get on my feet."

"But-"

"Were you in my shoes, would you accept everyone making and buying your stuff for you?"

Twilight is silent for a moment before she shakes her head.

"Precisely.”

She walks over to the table while I open up the closet I keep the cleaning supplies in. "It's too bad your objects broke," she says sadly. "We could have gotten a lot of data about your culture if they were working."

"Eh, they're not broken," I say as I grab some window cleaner. "They're just out of juice."

"Not sure what that means…"

"They have a power source that needs recharging." I grab a rag and sling it over my shoulder.

I stand up to see Twilight staring at my electronics with interest. "What?" I ask.

"They’re electric, right? I think I may have a spell to recharge them."

My eyes widen and I move up next to her. "You do?!"

She nods. I can’t move my computer bag away from the rest fast enough. "Like, in a sort of 'you could get them to work again' kind of way?"

She nods again, cheerfully. "If you want me to try, I can!"

"Heck yeah!" I miss my music and movies!

"Okay then, here it goes!" Her horn fires up with the purple glow that I've come to associate with her magic, and she spends a few moments charging it up before she fires a beam that hits the laptop directly.

The whole machine glows bright purple for a second before the glow fades and I rush up to my precious computer. After checking for possible damage, of which there isn’t any, I flip it open, and to my sheer delight, I see the spell worked like a charm. I instantly become lost in the crystal clear sound that is the opening guitar riff of Smoke on the Water.

All of a sudden, Twilight is hidden from sight by two arms wrapped around her. "Thank you so much, Twilight! Thank you!"

The unicorn smiles at me and looks at my cellphone. "I can try that one, too.”

"Yeah!" I say eagerly. That way I can listen to my music while I work! “Do it!”

Twilight nods and her horn begins powering up once more. I watch expectantly as the beam of magic hits the cellphone, expecting to see it enveloped in a magical glow like my computer was.

Instead, I get a loud *POP*, the kind of noise that an electronic like a cellphone makes when someone tries to charge it at the wrong voltage. Twilight and I can only stare open mouthed at the wreckage that was once my precious cell phone, which now looks like someone put a lit firecracker in it.

Twilight manages to speak up after a few moments of awkward silence. "Maybe if I-"

"No," I say as I hold up my hand to stop her. "It’s too soon."

"Sorry," she mumbles with her head down. I can’t get mad with her, seeing how disheartened she is, but losing my phone is still a big sting.

"... thanks for recharging my computer. You can have the cellphone if you want to study it or something like that."

"Uh..."

I put the cleaning supplies in my computer bag and begin walking out the door. "See ya later."

"Dang it, dang, it, dang, it! Of all of the lame brained, miserable things she could’ve done, she had to overload my phone?!"

I squirt copious amounts of cleaner on the window in front of me before I attack it with the rag I have in my hand. I growl in frustration, and the window becomes steadily neater.

"I mean, I know it's not her fault and all since she didn’t know it was a different voltage, but GRAFFRABALFHERIBA!!!"

Yeah, that about sums up my feelings right now.

I remove the rag from the window to see my thoroughly irritated face staring back at me from where I stand.

Have you ever looked into a mirror and used it to reflect about yourself as a person, like you're seeing yourself from a different perspective? Well, that's what I'm doing right now. I stare at this person, who has been sucked into an alternate dimension filled with cartoon talking ponies, who is currently working for the local pony government, washing windows and serving fat ponies wafer thin mints, when the lunch rush is too busy for the normal staff while all powerful sun goddesses plot his fate and her unicorn lapdog makes his stuff into bombs!

Gosh. Freaking. Darn. It.

I climb down from the step ladder I was previously perched on and examine my work. The windows of town hall look much more sparkly than when I arrived. At least I can get some sense of accomplishment from my work.

"Hey, TD," says a young voice from behind me.

I turn around to see Cheerilee and the Crusaders standing behind me, watching me work. "Hey guys," I say as I put my cleaning supplies back in my bag. "How's it hangin'?"

"We were just out crusading for our cutie marks! Ms. Cheerilee was watching us!"

"Cool. Any successes?"

The Crusaders shake their heads.

"No dice, huh?"

"No dice," Sweetie Belle repeats.

"Hey, TD,” Cheerilee pipes in, “while I have you here, would you like to come and guest lecture at school tomorrow? I know the children would just love to have you around again!"

I actually perk up slightly at this. I really did have a good time with the kids the last time around, so why not? "I'd love to."
The Crusaders look up at me with wide grins of their own.

"Ya mean it?" Apple Bloom asks.

"Sure I do. I like you guys."

"Cool!" Scootaloo says. "I can't wait to tell Rainbow Dash!”

"Speaking of which," says yet another familiar voice to my right. I turn to see the mare in question leaning casually against the podium next to town hall.

Scootaloo rushes up to her idol and Rainbow affectionately pats her head. "Rainbow Dash!"

"Hey squirt. I'm just here to tell TD that Twilight wants the six of us and you to meet in the library. She says it's important."

"Oh goody," I grumble as I put my computer bag over my shoulder. "I'm coming."

"Cool, see ya in a few."

With that, she flies up in the air and zooms off.

"Well, I guess I'll see you four tomorrow for school then," I say.

"Very well," says Cheerilee. "I'll see you tomorrow.”

"Bye, TD!" the three fillies say.

"See ya."

I wave goodbye to the only four ponies that I legitimately like in this whole crazy town, then I turn to go towards the abode of one of the ponies that I tolerate at best. It’s a short walk to the library, a matter of minutes.

When I open the door, there are six elated ponies bouncing around happily inside. I admit that I'm a little off put by all of their energy and excitement, something that is unfortunately turned in my direction when I walk in.

Pinkie Pie is the first to approach. "TD, TD, TD, you'll never guess what Princess Celestia just told us!"

"You're right, I can’t guess so you might as well tell me."

"We're going to organize the Grand Galloping Gala!" all six of them say in unison, looking at me with gigantic grins, as if they expect me to understand what that means.

I feel the confused frown on my face, and it causes their smiles to falter ever so slightly. "Uh...cool. What's the Grand Galloping Gala anyway?"

"Oh, it is simply the biggest high society event of the year!" explains Rarity. "Everypony who is important goes to the Gala."

I fail to see the appeal. "So, it's just a giant party for a bunch of snobby rich people?"

“Well, that's what it was last year when we went," Applejack agrees a little reluctantly.

"And why are you so excited this time?"

Rainbow Dash answered that. "Now that we're going to be organizing it, it's going to be a heck of a lot more awesome!"

"I guess.” Time for the million dollar question. “And what does that have to do with me?"

I was dreading the answer even before I say the last word.

"Princess Celestia invited you to go as well!" Twilight fires up her horn and places a large golden ticket in my hand. I look at it and sure enough, it is a ticket to this Gala thing of theirs.

Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be more like that one Hellraiser sequel with Lance Henriksen than Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? If Celestia is going to be there then... wait...Celestia will be there? As in, the one pony who can get me out of here?

“TD?” I look back at Twilight, who is staring at me uneasily. I must have spent some time staring at that ticket, enough to unnerve them at the very least.

“Yeah, sounds good.”

It really didn’t, but maybe I could get at least some answers out of tall-white-and-mighty.

They Find Out

"Okay class, settle down," Cheerilee says. "I'm sure you all remember TD here from show and tell a few weeks ago."

"Hi, TD!" chants the class happily.

"Hey," I respond.

"Now, I know how much you all enjoyed getting to know him, so I thought it would be interesting to have him guest lecture today on a foreigner’s life, what it’s like, where he lives and so forth. If you could all give him your undivided attention, that would be great. Be sure to take notes, as you may or may not be tested on some of the information he gives you,” she adds with a wink. “TD, the floor is yours."

As I stand up in front of the class, I have to admit that I have a cheesy grin on my face. I have been looking forward to doing something like this ever since the first time Cheerilee suggested it. I was going to be an elementary school teacher back on Earth; this opportunity, of working with children of a culture so radically departed from anything anyone on Earth has ever worked with, is absolutely priceless.

I am just about to open my mouth when the door to the school bursts open and in walks one frazzled unicorn carrying more writing supplies than I have ever seen. "Have you started yet?” Twilight asks while she sits in a chair in the back. “Please tell me you haven't started yet!"

"Uh... I haven't started yet?"

She relaxes a bit with a look of relief.

"Um, well, class, it seems we have another guest with us today," Cheerilee announces a little surprised.

"Y-yeah... quite," I say with a shake of my head. "Anyway, my culture has a lot of history to it, so what do you want to know?"

"EVERYTHING!"

"Uh, Twilight, I don’t have the time or knowledge of everything. That won’t be possible. Why don’t we start with some basic questions and work from there?"

Instantly everypony in the room, except the only rational adult pony, shoots a foreleg onto the air.

I tap my hand on my chin before I point to Apple Bloom. "What was your life like when you were back in your world?" she asks.

"Good question," I say. "Well, it was pretty simple, really: I was studying elementary education with an emphasis in History back on Earth before I came here. I... yes, Twilight?"

"What is Earth? Is it the country you lived in, the continent or what?"

"The planet. It's the name of the planet I live on. The country I lived in is called United States of America."

"America, got it," says Twilight. "So, were both of your parents from America too?"

I groan inwardly. I imagine that she is going to be asking every question today. Maybe I should have her write me an essay on what I've lectured on... No. I am going to do that.

"American father, Canadian mother. Canada being the country to the north of mine."

"Ooh."

"Anyway, I worked at my school's cafeteria, I didn't have a special somepony, and my life, to sum it up, revolved around school, work and TV."

"What's a TV?" Sweetie Belle asks, and with that I launch into the particulars of television. I was never the most technologically minded person, but I think I explain it well enough to give them an accurate idea.

"This is so amazing!" Twilight says, to my irritation. She’s been parroting that same line for over five minutes. "This 'television' sounds absolutely fascinating! What genres did you watch on TV?"

I groan inside. That’s another thing that’s been happening for over five minutes: I didn't come here to answer her questions, yet it is exactly what is happening. "I mostly watched shows like Dexter and cartoons like South Park."

"Cartoons, got..."

She freezes at the word 'cartoons' and begins mouthing it to herself over and over again. That can't be good.

"Uh, Twilight? You okay?"

"I remember when you first got here. You called our world 'cartoony'."

Oh crap, tell me she didn't.

"Does our world look like a cartoon from your world?"

"Uh... yeah," I say after a little hesitation. No point in lying; she seems to have figured out something at any rate.

She frowns at me and examines my face for a few seconds before the ultimate question comes. "Is our world a TV show in your world?"

I stand there, gaping in total shock, and my mind begins to wonder just how to answer this completely fair question. I try to babble out an answer that would satisfy them, but I was never a good enough liar. "Yes, yes it is. It's a TV show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."

The whole class stares at me with open mouthed shock for a few seconds. Dang it, I just broke an entire class of students and two adults, didn't I? Not again.

The ultimate reaction is, however, something that I have to admit I did not foresee. A few seconds after the class finds out that they are fictional somewhere else, each and every one of them opens their mouths and says the same word:

"AWESOME!!!"

Wait, what?

The foals explode into excited chatter. "Ah wonder if Ah'm a main character," Apple Bloom says.

"As if," shoots Diamond Tiara. "Nopony would make a silly blank flank like you the star of her own show. I am quite sure that the show is about how amazing I am!"

Well, to be fair to Diamond Tiara, we do have a lot of TV shows about stuck up brats, so, maybe in enough time...

"Hey, do you think they know about when we brought the Ursa to town?" Snips wonders.

"I wonder if they saw me when I got my cutie mark!" Twist says.

"As if," repeats Diamond Tiara. "I'm sure that--"

"The show's about Twilight!" I interject loudly.

All noise is sucked out of the classroom like air out a spaceship’s airlock. "No. Way," Scootaloo whispers to the other Crusaders.

"M-me?" Twilight blurts out after a second. "The show is about... me?"

"Well, you and your friends, but yes, you are the protagonist as far as I gathered. I didn't actually watch the show aside from the first few episodes."

Twilight closes her eyes for a moment, deep in thought. "That explains how you knew about the princess," she says after a moment. "This explains so much."

"So much?" I respond. "What do you mean? I hardly watched the show and I hardly know anything about you guys!"

"Well I guess you seemed to have a good grasp of our personalities from the very beginning that I found perplexing. It came out in the way you interacted with us from the very start."

I open my mouth to respond but I close it again when I realize that I don't actually have a response. Still, I feel like I should say something. "Uh...I didn't just shatter your whole reality, did I?"

"Of course not," declares a white colt in the back of the room – Featherweight, if I remember. To my surprise, he sounds exactly how I always imagined a young Alan Rickman would. "If there truly are parallel universes, then there would be a lot of them, yes? Possibly infinite. Taking that hypothesis into account, I find it hard to believe that our perception of reality could change that drastically based on what you have just told us.

“If somepony from your world can imagine our world exactly like it is and believe it is fictional, then that still doesn't make our world any less real to us even if it is fictional to you, much in the same way that if somepony switched the roles and imagined your world down to a T, and called it fictional, it is still reality to you. If not, all the infinite parallel universes would be fake, because they would be featured as fiction in another infinite number of parallel universes.

“And if they, including us, are fake, how can we exist?”

A cricket chirps outside. "Yeah, what he said," Sweetie Belle nods.

"Upbuhwha?" I respond oh-so-wisely.

The colt sighs but resumes his insight without a hitch. "What I'm saying is, just because our world is fictional to you, that does not mean that we see it as any less real. If your world was fictional to us, would you see it as any less real?"

"Uh...I guess not." I turn to Cheerilee with a look of utter bewilderment on my face.

She gives me a bit of a smirk. "He does that."

I rub my temples a bit to clear my head. Why is is that I give them an existential bombshell but I am the one who ends up more confused about the nature of reality than they are?

"Well, that gets that out of the way. So, shall we move on?"

I have to hand it to those kids; they are pretty darned well-behaved for the most part. I have to imagine that a normal class of youngsters would want to just focus on the fact that there is a TV show about them out there, but these kids accepted that and moved on to the next topic. Don't get me wrong, I imagine that I'll get a lot of questioning about it later, but they accepted that the time for talking about it had moved on and that there would be other times to discuss it. The time for the next topic came along even if we didn't get as much of a chance to talk about it as we liked.

Overall, I definitely have to call the day a resounding success. They all absolutely adored everything that I had to say, and to be completely honest, I really enjoyed it too. We played hide-and-go-seek-tag a few more times during recess – turns out I have just as hard of a time avoiding some of them as I do catching them – and they ate up everything about my world that I told them to the point where Cheerilee and I are going to get together to discuss plans for more lessons, especially specific events. There's only so much about the moon landing that I can stuff into one class day. I’m happy to oblige, of course.
Twilight is bound to get involved again. I know she already wrote a letter to Celestia about today.

At any rate, I find myself currently watching the parents and siblings of the students coming to pick them up after the day; I actually manage to meet a few more townsponies that way. They all seem nice enough – one promised to bake me some 'hello I just met you' muffins –, or maybe that’s me learning to relax a bit around large crowds of ponies.

Eventually though, the crowd of parents and students disperses for the day. I can’t blame them; as much as I enjoyed the field day, the idea is quite appealing to me as well. I need a nap.

Before I can achieve that particular goal, I feel a poke on my right leg and a pony behind me clears her throat. I turn around to see Scootaloo standing behind me, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.

"Hi there. Do you need something?"

Scootaloo remains embarrassed look for a few more moments before she finally works up the courage to respond. "I was wondering... I was wondering if you could walk me home today, TD. My scooter needs to get fixed, it’s a bit far to walk and, well, my parents can’t come get me."

"Oh, sure, kid, just point me in the right direction and we'll get going."

She nods and points to the left. I begin walking in that direction with her right behind me. The journey is mostly a quiet affair, me in front and the filly trotting by my side.

We enter a part of Ponyville I've never seen before. Some buildings have clearly seen better days, others are in even worse disarray; a few are practically ruins, where only squatters would even think of settling. The streets have so many cracks and potholes, it looks like it would take years to fix all of them, even with magic. Inside every other house we pass, there are ponies inside, arguing, yelling or something along those lines.

This is clearly a lower-class neighborhood – scratch that, it's an outright slum, almost a favela. Does Scootaloo really live here? If so, I'm not sure I'm going to like her parents, even if we do meet in a nice day like today. These are no conditions to raise a child, no matter what. "Is your house close?"

"Around here,” she mumbles. “Just through these trees."

"Trees?" Sure enough, we have come to a wall of trees surrounding a small pathway. It's not the Everfree Forest, that's on the other side of town, but it still looks dangerous for a filly to be living in. Still, bringing that up with her at the moment won't solve anything, so I keep quiet as we move down the path.

To my surprise, Scootaloo's mood improves vastly now that the slum is behind us. She's smiling and her minute wings are happily spread like she doesn't have a single care in the world. I frown in confusion at her sudden shift. "Sorry I was so down back there," she justified, "I just don't like walking through that part of town. It depresses me, seeing ponies living like that."

"Uh..."

My witty reply is cut off by the birds chirping happily in the trees and the sounds of a charming little brook cutting the land. After a few more steps, Scootaloo and I come up to a bridge that allows us to cross.

“Here we are!” she announces.

I have to admit: based on the neighborhood we just went through, I wasn't expecting this. This house looks like something out of an old fairy tale, like one would imagine the Dwarves' house in Snow White would be. "This...this is your home?"
"Yep," Scoots says with a gigantic grin. “Mom and Dad bought it a few years before I was born. They said that they wanted to get a place close to nature or something."

"Only the best for our darling Scootaloo!" says a male voice to my left.

I turn and end up facing an orange pegasus stallion with blue hair and a football (or I think they call it ‘hoofball) cutie mark standing next to a yellow mare, a pegasus as well, with jet black hair and a trio of bumblebees as a cutie mark. "Hello there, you must be TD.” The stallion smiles at me and extends a hoof. “It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I'm Hard Hitter, and this is my wife, Busy Bee." She waves amiably.

Good gravy, ponies can have some...unique names at times. "Pleasure to meet you," I respond, taking the hoof and shaking it.

"I'm sorry for the trouble," Busy Bee apologizes. "We were both swamped today; as you can see for yourself, we didn't even make it home ourselves until just now."

"I get it," I say with a nod. "Work does that to people. Just what do you two do?"

"Mom and Dad run a fitness company for professional sports teams!" Scootaloo beams proudly.

"Indeed we do," Hard Hitter says with a grin. "Everypony, from the Canterlot Hoofball team to the Wonderbolts, comes to see us."

"Wait, the Wonderbolts? You're the fitness trainers for the Wonderbolts?" I may not have hung around Rainbow Dash too often, but even the little contact we had was enough for me to know their reputation.

"Amongst others," Busy Bee says, wiping a hoof in good-natured dismissal. She turns to her daughter. "Of course, that's not something to be proud of when it interferes with our family life..."

"Mom, don't get sappy," Scootaloo whispers, embarassed. I can tell she appreciates the affection all the same.

“Thank you again for walking her home," Hard Hitter resumes. "Can we get you a drink or something before you hit the road again?"

"Uh...I'm good, thanks," I respond. "Right now, what I need is a power nap."

"We understand," Busy Bee smiles knowingly. "We know all about long workdays. You just go home and get some rest, then; we thank you properly when you're up for it."

“Uh, sure," I nod before looking back down at Scootaloo. "I'll see ya later then, kid."

"See ya, TD!" she says happily.

"Have a good day," says Hard Hitter after I turn my back.

I give the trio a small wave before starting the journey back to Ponyville. My bed is waiting for me.

Going to the Gala

It is time. Or it will be shortly, at the very least.

I am currently standing in Carousel Boutique, hoping that I can drop the current pose that I am in so I can take a little lunch break before we head off to Canterlot. Currently, Rarity is adjusting my tuxedo for the Gala itself, something that she has been doing for a few hours now; frankly, I'm starting to get a little impatient about it. She's worse than my dad and a camera – seriously, that man has to take a dozen pictures before he gets one he likes – and I'm getting a little sore just standing here. "Are you almost done?" I ask.

Rarity gives a slight harrumph and maneuvers a few more pins around the jacket. "I probably would be if you weren't so oddly proportioned. Do your legs really have to be so long?"

"Yes, yes they do," I respond.

Rarity rolls her eyes at me and measures my arm for the 50th time. "I'm almost done, darling, so you'll just have to be patient for a little while longer."

"Our train leaves in five hours. You'd better be done by then."

"Oh ha ha." she mock laughs dryly.

"Seriously, though, when--"

"All finished!" she announces.

I breathe a sigh of relief and Rarity uses her magic to remove my jacket. I jump off of the stool that she's been having me stand on and go to change back to my normal work clothes before she changes her mind and says that she needs to adjust the length of my pants a few millimeters or something like that. Once I'm changed, I sling my bag over my shoulder and walk back to Rarity's workroom. She is adjusting something or other on the jacket. I fold the shirt and pants and place them back on the stool.

Frankly I'm not so sure why she's making such a big deal out of my tuxedo. I don't really care about looking nice at the Gala tomorrow. If everything goes super perfectly, I'm not coming back to Ponyville – Celestia will just send me back to Earth from there, these ponies will go back to being fictional, and I'll go back to being a normal human in a normal human world.

Of course I'm aware that nothing ever goes that perfectly. But hey, a man can dream, can't he?

I see that Rarity is in 'the zone', but I clear my throat a bit to get her attention anyway.

"What do I owe you for the tuxedo?"

"Oh, nothing at all, darling," she says with a wave of her hoof. "I made my friends their Gala dresses last year for no charge."

"Uh, wouldn't that mean you lost a decent amount of money on materials and such?"

Rarity shakes her head with a small smile. "With the fashion show I put on and the backing of Hoity Toity, I more than made up for my losses with commissions from the publicity."

"I see."

I stretch out before checking the bag to see if I put my lunch in there like I originally planned. Good, I have; No need to go back to my house to get it. I say goodbye to Rarity and walk out the door towards the Everfree Forest. Normally I wouldn't go there, what with the locals' tales of how dangerous it is and all, but I was walking by one day and I noticed a clearing that wasn't too far in; A perfect place to have a meal alone without the risk of intrusion by a nosy pony or the like. Suffice to say, I need an hour to myself every day, and these ponies don't help.

In about fifteen minutes, I reach the clearing with every intention of relaxing for an hour or so. However, when I reach the place, I find that somebody else apparently had the same idea. A pink, hyperactive somebody, as a matter of fact. It's one of the strangest sights I have seen during my time in Ponyville: Pinkie Pie reclining on a rock eating a sandwich.

Much to my surprise, it looks like it isn't loaded with sugar like everything else she eats all the time. It looks like a decently healthy sandwich, to be honest. Not only that, but I've never seen her so... calm.

She looks relaxed.

Well, Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie means I'm not observing her for more than a few seconds before she notices. When she sees me, she sits up and flashes me a smile like she always does; However, true to her current demeanor, it's more reserved than the normal smiles. "Hey, TD," she says. Gosh, even her voice is less squeaky.

"Uh, hi," I say. "What'cha doing?"

"Oh, just relaxing for a bit during my lunch break."

"Gotcha," I respond.

The clearing is dead silent until I ask the question that has been burning in my mind. "Is something wrong? You seem a bit more reserved than normal."

Pinkie Pie lets out a quiet little giggle and turns to face me. "Nothing's wrong," she reassures me. "I'm just here to recharge a bit. You see, I come here every so often to be alone for an hour or two; It helps me stay focused and energized for the day."

"Really?"

"Yep," she nods. "Don't get me wrong, I love being around other ponies making them smile is something I adore, but do you know how much energy that takes? A pony can burn out very quickly if they're not properly rested. That's why I take a few hours out of every day to be alone for a while; It helps me organize my thoughts a little and just be me, Pinkie Pie. It can get tiring to be around other ponies all the time. If I can be alone for a bit, then I can be the happy Pinkie Pie that the ponies around here know and love."

"So, is the overly hyper and random personality an act to make other ponies smile?" I ask.

Pinkie shakes her head. "No, that's still the real me. If I was being fake around other ponies, then my element wouldn't work very well, would it?” She giggles a bit at her own joke. “Besides, ponies like me for being me, and I want to give them the most genuine version of me that I can. It's just that, to support that part of me, I need some alone time every now and then."

"I get that,” I admit. “I came here for pretty much the same reason."

Pinkie's eyes widen, and she's quick to put her sandwich back down on the paper bag she brought it in. "Well I can go find somewhere else to eat if you want to--"

I cut her off with a wave of my hand and a shake of my head. "No need, I'll just go home to eat. You were here first, and even if this was my rightful spot, I wouldn't kick you out."

She smiles gently and picks her sandwich up again. "Thanks, TD."

"Don't mention it."

I notice that an uncomfortable look crosses Pinkie Pie's face. "Something wrong?" I ask.

She sighs and looks down at the ground. "I just...I dunno..."

"You can tell me if you want," I say.

Pinkie sighs again, but she makes eye contact this time. "TD, I'm just worried that you're still mad at me for when I set you on fire, like you don't really know how sorry I am for crossing that line."

Ah, this again. "Well, you did buy me a house,” I say with a snicker, “and you send me hayless 'I'm super-duper sorry' cupcakes every week, so–"

"But I'm worried that you don't see that as me saying that I'm really super-duper sorry! I'm worried that you see that as me trying to make myself feel better. You know how some ponies – humans too, I guess –, sometimes they say that they're sorry so that they feel better about themselves instead of making the other person feel better!" Her voice doesn't waver, but I feel like she's fighting back tears.

I lean back on a tree, stunned for real. "Yeah, I get that," I finally respond. "And to be honest, yeah, I was probably mad at you for longer than I should have been."

Pinkie's ears flatten and she looks dejectedly at the ground once more. "I know you were mad at me for that and I deserve it, but I didn't want you to be mad at me when I did it," she whimpers.

"Well, nobody likes it when somebody is mad at them."

"But what I did was very wrong!” She almost yells as she looks back up. “I was only thinking about how it would only hurt you physically and I forgot to think that even thinking you're on fire is a really scary thing. Besides, you didn't know what a Pinkie Promise is or how sacred they are!” Then, her eyes shoot back down to the dirt. “I guess I should have realized that you wouldn't understand that right from the start just because you'd seen a few episodes of the show before getting here..."

"You know about that?"

Pinkie manages a smile at this. "Twilight told me.”

"Ah."

"She told all five of us, actually, but she made us Pinkie Promise not to spread it around town until she talked to the Princess and figured out what to do with what you told her and the foals."

I nod. "Good."

"But that aside," she resumes. "I shouldn't have assumed that you'd understand how serious a Pinkie Promise is."

"Well, it's not like I'm completely clean on that, either," I say. "A promise is a promise, even if it isn't a Pinkie Promise. I still shouldn't have skipped it like that. So yeah, I'm sorry for that too."

Pinkie's smile returns at the apology part. "Aw, thanks TD, but I've already forgiven you for that. We all make mistakes."

"Yeah, guess we do."

As both of us mull over what to say, there's no sound to speak of. It is Pinkie that breaks it. "TD?"

"Yeah?"

"I... well, I know that the only reason you agreed to go to the Gala is because you want to see if Princess Celestia can send you home, so I just want to tell you that... Well, if she can send you home and we don't get a chance to see each other before she does, then I want you to know that it was super-duper awesome getting to know you, even if we had some rocky parts in our friendship."

I grow a smile of my own. "Thanks, Pinkie, thanks."

"I do have one question, though."

"Shoot."

"If Princess Celestia can't send you home, what would you think about that?"

I let out a sigh and begin rubbing my temples. "Pinkie, before I answer that, I want you to know that I don't hate any of you anymore. Maybe Celestia, but if she does send me home, then I'll forgive her because she did right by me in the end. But I want to make it perfectly clear that getting back to Earth is my number one priority. I'd choose Earth over even the best life I could ever have here any time.

“When it comes down to it, I don't belong here. I can't have a family, I can't relate culturally to anyone and the last thing I want is to die before going back. Whatever happens here, I know that I belong on Earth with the rest of humanity.

“Don't take that personally, but... you know," I finish awkwardly. Even with the sugarcoat, those are harsh words.

Pinkie takes a deep breath, then she nods. "I understand."

Neither of us says anything for a moment.

"Well, I guess I'll let you have your alone time, then,” I say. “I'll see you at five for the trip to Canterlot."

"See you then," she waves.

I wave back and turn around to go back to my house, but I don't make it more than a few steps before Pinkie Pie stops me once again. "I hope you don't think I mean to be rude by wanting some alone time. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about this: you're my friend and I like spending time with you."

I shake my head once more, amusedly this time. “I thought we'd cleared that out already, Pinkie: I have no problem with someone wanting their alone time." I reassure the little pony. "Like I said, I get the need to be alone for a while myself. You go ahead and hang out here, and I'll see you later."

"Thanks TD, you're a real pal," she says.

As I walk back to my house for lunch, I reflect on the rather unique experience I've just had.

The rest of the day goes by pretty quickly. Once I finished my lunch I began packing for the few days we'll spend in Canterlot, making sure to pack everything I have from home – pretty much just the laptop and the scooter now that my cellphone is a donated asset to Twilight's research, as well as a few changes of clothes and my toothbrush. I've always packed pretty light.

It doesn't take long before I'm ready to go with the crew to set up this Gala. From what I've gleaned during my interactions with them, they've got some pretty elaborate stuff planned. Come 4:00PM, I head out for Twilight's house, where the seven of us have agreed to meet beforehand to get everything settled. We'll be talking a lot on the train about what we're going to do, but just from the preliminary stuff that I've heard, I know I'm just going to be a helping hand. I'm going to be drafted by Rarity the most for sure, but Pinkie Pie might get me to help too.

At any rate, I arrive at Twilight's tree house about five minutes later. I knock on the door, greeted after a few seconds by the unicorn herself, and let in. The other five are already there as well, chatting away excitedly about this and that. I walk over to them and sit down on the floor.

"Okay, now that we're all here, let's go over everything," Twilight commands. "The train leaves in forty-five minutes, so let's make sure that everyone is all packed and ready to go."

"I'm ready," I say, pointing to the satchel currently slung over my shoulder. The other five give their confirmations as well.

"Good," Twilight says as she jots something down on a piece of parchment. "I still have a few things left to pack before I'm ready, but it shouldn't take me more than ten minutes. Once I'm ready, we'll be off to the train station!"

"Sounds good to me," Applejack nods. I copy the gesture, while the other five start up their excited chatter once again, I lean back a bit on the floor.

As I look around Twilight's library, I see a trash can nearby with what looks like several dozen letters overflowing out of it. Normally I don't snoop around, but knowing Twilight, it might be something mildly amusing. Besides, I have nothing else to do right now; I don't really have the knowledge to contribute to the conversations the others are having.

The first letter is, to say the least, interesting.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Today I shadowed Cheerilee's class where TD was lecturing and, long story short, I found out that we are an entertainment show in his world. I don't know how that's possible, but I kind of want to question him a little more about it.

The letter ends here. I imagine Twilight didn't like what she had written thus far.

I sigh and put the letter back in the trash can. Apparently she didn't take the news as well as it seemed; Maybe I should question her on it later. Right now, I'm going to let her focus on organizing the Gala. No need to exacerbate an existential crisis right in the middle of one of the biggest events of the year.

At any rate, Twilight takes another five minutes, then the seven of us, plus Spike, are off to the train station.

As the six of us are walking, I turn to Pinkie Pie. "Hey, Pinkie, how long is the train ride to Canterlot anyway?"

"As long or short as it needs to be," she replies simply.

Wait... What?

She giggles a bit, noting my confusion. "I think it'll be about four or five hours on this line."

"Gotcha."

Shortly after I receive that bit of bizarre information, we arrive at the station. The place is so packed with ponies of all colors and sizes, I have difficulty in keeping track of where we're going. Thankfully, Twilight leads us towards the proper line. Somehow I've been drafted as Rarity's official luggage carrier: I'm carrying so many bags and suitcases, I swear a Navy SEAL would flinch in sympathy. They're all pretty light, which makes me wonder what the heck she has in them anyway.

It takes about a half hour before we actually get everything loaded onto the train, thanks to Rarity feeling the need to take the contents of her whole house for the trip. I silently thank the Lord that I pack light enough that the other six members of our party aren't irritated with how long it takes me to load everything. It's not like my baggage is an issue; I can just carry my pack on the train at any rate.

Our ride pulls out of the station at 5:45 PM – trust trains in Ponyville to be late like that. It's not like Earth trains don't leave late sometimes, unless they're in a society run by a fascist dictatorship... which means I'm not sure why the trains here don't run on time. Huh.

The eight of us have all settled in a private train car at this point, paid for by Celestia as far as I know, and the chat swerves back to the preparations. From what the others have been telling me so far, Applejack is in charge of the buffet, Fluttershy of bird choirs and music in general, Rarity will take care of decorations and somehow Pinkie Pie got put in charge of entertainment, games and such. Based on what they've told me about the Gala last time, I'm not entirely sure that it will go over so well, what with the main attendees being snobby, rich socialites – gee, I can't wait to interact with them –, but I keep quiet. They're having too much of a blast for me to feel good about being a party pooper.

Finally, Twilight and Spike are the managers, the people in charge of making sure everything runs smoothly. Celestia would do it herself, they say, but being the sun goddess of all of Equestria means that she's too busy for it.

That tidbit makes me doubt that I'll have too much time to talk to her beforehand, if any at all. However, this does not dissuade me from my goal. I will talk to Celestia and I will get her to tell me if she can send me home or not. I don't really care if it's dangerous at this point; I'm willing to risk whatever I have to, to get home. I just hope that she can confirm my theory about reversing my translocation, because... In truth, it's all that is keeping me going by now.

The six ponies and dragon chatter excitedly about their plans while pouring over diagrams that Twilight, in her perpetual perfectionism, has drawn out to organize everything. The conversation doesn't really interest me, so as I tune them out, I stretch out with a yawn before leaning back on my slightly too small seat on the train. I don't know why I'm tired all of a sudden, but now seems as good a time as any for a short nap.

With a few adjustments to make myself more comfortable, I lean my head against a nearby window and let the sandman take hold.

The Gala

As usual for me, I wake up without opening my eyes. I guess you could say that my mind wakes up before my body does. At any rate, I'm aware of my surroundings and the seven other beings that I am sharing a car with, whom are still talking to each other. It doesn't sound like they are talking about the Gala anymore. I crack one eye open to see Twilight, Applejack, and Spike all having a subdued, casual conversation in a corner of the car, nothing out of the ordinary there. Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash are having a rather animated discussion about something or other, while Fluttershy simply looks on, content with being in the presence of her friends.

I open my other eye and stretch my arms over my head to get them moving again. Unsurprisingly, the movement draws the attention of the other beings in the car. "Well, I guess somepony finally paid your ransom to the sandpony," Twilight teases.

"Uh, sure, if you want to put it like that...but I really wouldn't," I respond groggily.

"Well somepony sure made sure that you were really asleep," says Pinkie Pie. "You were snoring like crazy for a little bit there!"

"I do not snore!" I say with as much indignity as I can muster in my still half-asleep condition.

"Y'all sure 'bout that?" Applejack asks with a small grin. "Ah think Ah could have heard ya snorin' if Ah was still on the farm back in Ponyville!"

I grumble a few retorts that I would really like to say out loud. "Anyway,” I say out loud, changing the topic, “how long was I asleep for?"

"About two hours," says Rainbow Dash.

"We'll be in Canterlot in three or so more," announces Twilight.

I nod and reach down for my computer bag. I am both surprised and pleased that it is right where I left it; the ponies have not moved it as a prank during my slumber. The other seven go back to their conversations while I take out my laptop. Twilight was gracious enough to charge it for me before we left, so it has full battery capabilities. It will serve me well, Smithers, it will serve me well indeed.

I open the videos folder, where I have my movies stored. It's strange, in the two months that I have been here I have not actually had as much time for watching movies as I would like. Well, a three-hour train ride should be ample opportunity to get my human culture fix. Lord knows I need a binge as soon and often as possible.

I am looking over the half-dozen movies that I currently have for about ten minutes before I finally decide on Wolf Creek. Sue me, it's one of my guilty pleasures, okay?

I hardly move at all during the course of the movie, as is often the case with me. My focus becomes unbreakable when I'm watching something. However, I must admit that the 'head on a stick' scene makes me squirm in my seat a little. I mean...gah, what a way to go, yeah?

However, the second that Mick Taylor plays 'head on a stick' with Liz, I hear a frightened squeal behind me. I frown and pause the movie to see the source of the noise.

Oh crap.

Behind me are Spike, Applejack, and Twilight. Twilight's right foreleg is planted firmly over Spike's eyes, and both she and Applejack have looks of pure horror on their faces. Not good. "Uh... can I get anyone some brain bleach?" I ask sheepishly.

Smooth, TD, real smooth.

"What...what was that?" asks a horrified Twilight.

"How long have you been watching?"

"'bout two minutes," Applejack whispers. I breathe a sigh of relief at this – at least they didn't learn any new words, as far as I can tell. I watch all of my movies with subtitles on, so even with my headphones in... yeah.

"What happened?" questions a slightly irritated Spike. "I wasn't even watching for two seconds before Twilight covered my eyes! What did he do?"

The nastily mischievous side of my brain told me to explain to Spike just what 'head on a stick' is, but thankfully for everyone, I am not quite that cruel. I respond with a more diffusing statement instead. "You're too young to know."

Spike groans and does his best to remove Twilight's hoof. "Not you too," he growls.

I promptly 'X' out of the movie, which Twilight reacts to by removing her leg from Spike's face. She and Applejack are still horrified, though.

"Sorry, I wasn't thinking," I mumble. “I should've known better.

The two shake their heads, and I decide to go for music instead. I'd much rather have a movie to watch, since that passes the time faster for me, but with what just happened, I doubt that any of my other movies would do any better. I only have six of them, and they would all draw similar reactions from the ponies if they snuck a look.

"Why'd you watch a movie like that, sugar cube?" Applejack asks with a sliver of her normal voice. "Ah can't see the appeal..."

Phew, a question I can answer. "Well, in the case of that specific movie, it's the performance of the antagonist, but horror movies in general? I just like the suspense and being scared."

"Why would you like being scared durin' a movie?"

"Yeah, is fear really a healthy emotion to feel?" Twilight reinforces the doubt.

I shrug. "It doesn't bother me."

"Well, I guess we all have our different tastes," Twilight says very stiffly. "I personally prefer movies that either make me laugh or cry."

"Laugh or cry, huh?" I say.

Twilight nods vigorously. "Of course! I mean, you can't deny that funny movies can really brighten your day, and movies that make you cry... well, everypony cries at a movie every now and again. I'm sure even you do."

A church choir begins singing, drawing a group of patrons from a local speakeasy towards them, led by a repentant wayward daughter. They all begin singing along too. The patrons enter the church and the daughter tearfully sees her father for the first time in years. They share a hug and the daughter tearfully says, "See, daddy, sinners have souls too."

After a few seconds, I snap out of the daydream I fell into and smirk at her. "As if," I say. "I don't cry during movies."

Twilight rolls her eyes and turns back to begin a new conversation with Applejack and Spike. She shoots me a suspicious glance before she starts talking, though. I decide to ignore it and start listening while playing solitaire. That should pass the time nicely. And, again, I find that the number of winnable hands in computer solitaire is pretty low: I'm 600 in the red by the time the train arrives in Canterlot at midnight or so, about an hour and a half later.

The train pulls into the station and the eight of us begin unpacking for our trip to Canterlot Castle. I am, unsurprisingly, saddled one more time with the responsibility of carrying the contents of Rarity's house. I don't have to do for too long, however, as five taxi carriages sent by Celestia are waiting for us just outside of the train station. After we load all of the luggage onto one of them, the other four are filled with us; I myself take a cart with Rainbow Dash. The ride to Canterlot Castle is largely uneventful in our car, as Rainbow Dash, who didn't sleep on the train, uses the time to catch a quick nap... which leaves me sitting there, bored out of my mind.

I try to use this time to think about my upcoming meeting with Celestia: from what I've been told, Celestia won't be doing any checkups on us, because, despite the fact that this is the biggest party of the year, she is still the ruler of all of Equestria and very busy. I, personally, find that a little irritating and more than a little unsettling. Could she be using that as an excuse to avoid me questioning her?

Pretty much my whole time in this land has been building up to this confrontation between us, the time where she tells me whether she can send me back to Earth or not. If she can't send me home, if she tells me that I have to stay in Equestria for the rest of my life... I don't really know what I'll do. On the other hand, maybe she'll just tell me that she's working on it. I've only been here for a few months now, who says she's gotten an answer in that time?

I sigh and put my head in my hands. Why does this have to be so complicated?

We arrive some thirty minutes later, to a few servants who – I praise God for small miracles – apply for luggage duty. I don't let them take my bag, though. I don't trust these ponies to treat it delicately, and really, what is in it is pretty much the only reason I'm still sane.

One of the plus sides of Canterlot Castle being so large is that I get my own room. And to be honest, what a room it is. I swear it's almost as large as the entire main floor of my parent's house. It's decorated in what I imagine is typical Celestia fare: the room is painted with very sky and sun centered colors, while the gigantic bed in the back of the room has a sky blue and yellow color scheme. It makes me nostalgic for the color scheme in my room on my parents' house, which reflects my favorite football team. The carpets are soft, which does feel rather nice on my feet, too, but... All in all, it's kind of overwhelming for me. I don't really see the point of all this; I'm just one dude.

Still, I guess it is a castle. I should have expected it.

I take a deep breath, place my faithful satchel on a nearby recliner and move over to the bed, taking off my shoes before I plop down on it. I sink into the sheets. Okay, the room is too much, but the bed I enjoy, a lot. This thing is even more comfortable than it looks.

It isn't too long before I am out.

I am awoken sometime later by a voice that I am going to guess is Pinkie Pie's. "TD...TD...it's time to wake up, TD."

"Grfhmbrm," I respond thickly.

Despite how tired I sound, Pinkie Pie does not let up. "Come on, TD, the early bird gets the worm!"

"The second mouse gets the cheese..."

"TD, it's time to wake up now! We've gotta get ready for the gala!"

"Buzz off," I mumble. "I'm not awake yet."

Pinkie Pie giggles at this perfectly reasonable statement. "Well that's silly! If you're not awake, then how are you talking to me right now? Ooh, are you a sleeptalker? Mr. and Mrs. Cake say that I'm a sleeptalker but I don't really know if they're right because I'm always asleep when I sleep talk, do your family members tell you that you sleeptalk or do you–"

"Alright, alright, I'm awake!" I can only take her talking my ear off for so long, even if I am half asleep.

I open my eyes and see Pinkie Pie standing above me with her usual gigantic smile. I would be unsettled by how close her face is to mine when I wake up but I'm used to it by now. It's Pinkie Pie.

I push her off of my face and sit up, before glancing at my watch. I groan and rub my temples after seeing the hour. "Pinkie Pie, it's 6:30 in the morning. This is not a reasonable time to be awake."

"But how can you sleep when we get to set up the Grand Galloping Gala today?! Aren't you excited?!"

I plop back down on my pillow and turn my body away from the hyperactive pony, which only leads to me being poked in the back with a hoof that I don't have to see to determine its pink color. "What?" I growl.

"I was also gonna say that all the others are awake too. We have to get started now if we're gonna have the Gala all ready to go when the guests arrive!"

I sit back up. "Fine," I groan. "I'm up."

Pinkie Pie's smile widens and she bounces off of my bed. "Okie dokie loki!" she says happily. "There's a dining room just down the hall and to the left. We're meeting there for breakfast in ten minutes."

"Alright," I mumble. "I'll be there."

Pinkie Pie bounces out of my room, satisfied. I really want to go back to bed at this point – remember, the mattress is crazy comfortable and it's 6:30 in the gosh darn morning. Nobody should have to be up this early, it's just not fair. However, I don't quite like the idea of having all seven of them coming in to wake me back up, so, with a great deal of effort, I break free of the amazingness that is this bed. I wish I had a little time to take a quick shower. Maybe I'll have some time before the gala.

I take a brief moment to change my clothes before I open the ornate door that leads to the hallway. True to form, the hall is just as decorated as the rest of the castle, something that I didn't notice when I walked down them before, sleepy and in the dark. It only takes me a few minutes before I reach the dining room, and when I walk in, the others are already inside, chattering away quietly. I imagine they're all half asleep too, well, most of them. Pinkie Pie is as perky as ever.

I plop down on a seat next to Applejack, who gives me a tired little nod of greeting, which I return. I look at the table, which is absolutely loaded with food, very little of which is safe for human consumption. I decide to go the safe route and grab a plate of eggs. It's a bit curious to think that ponies eat eggs, but when I remember that Pinkie Pie uses eggs all the time in her baking, I don't think anything of it.

As I chew my eggs, Twilight clears her throat and the other seven of us turn our attention towards her. "Okay, everypony, dragon, and human," she begins. "I've drawn out the schedule for today so we can get this Gala going as quickly as ponily possible! The Gala starts at 7:30 tonight, so I'd like to get everything all ready at 6:00 if at all possible, to make sure we have some time in case something goes wrong."

The other six at the table nod in agreement.

"Okay, Applejack, the setup for you will be the same as when you catered my brother's wedding. You'll get as much space in the royal kitchens as you need and two dozen of Celestia's chefs and sous-chefs to help you with whatever you need."

"Got it," says the farmer.

"Fluttershy, most of the animals will be asleep for another hour and a half or so, so if you could help Rarity with the decor until then, that would be wonderful."

Fluttershy nods and Twilight moves on. "Rarity, the Gala will take place primarily in the main hall and the royal ballroom, so those two areas are the priority. The entrance hall can use a touch up when you get the time, but those two areas must be done first."

"Of course," the other unicorn agrees.

"Pinkie Pie, you'll have a section of the main ballroom to set up your games and activities. That shouldn't take too long if you focus, so when you're done, you can go help Applejack with the baking."

Pinkie Pie smiles and nods, and Twilight finally turns to me. "TD, you'll be primarily helping out Rarity wherever she needs you. I'll let you know if anypony else needs anything from you. If they do, I'll draft you to go help them out."

I nod and she turns to Rainbow Dash. "Rainbow, the Wonderbolts aren't going to arrive until 3:00, so you can't collaborate any moves for the guests until then. Help out where you're needed." RD nods, and Twilight drops her four-star general demeanor. "Okay, everypony, you can get started when you're done here. Celestia has all-purpose servants around that you can call upon whenever you need them. So, good luck and let's hope that this Gala really is the best night ever!"

The next six hours are absolutely frantic, so much that, I swear, I begin to long for the times when I was Rarity's mannequin. When she is in the zone but still has to socialize with other beings to get her orders out, she can be downright unpleasant: she has absolutely no patience for anything that does not go her way, and there is no margin for error whatsoever. I mean, I almost got my head bitten off because I tried to tie banner 26A on pillar 43, when I should have tied banner 26A on pillar 34 and banner 26B on pillar 43! Who can work under these conditions?! When Twilight walks into the room to get me to help someone else, I almost feel the need to kiss her. Unfortunately for me, that doesn't happen until four hours of working with Rarity, so I'm pretty frazzled by the time I switch jobs.

Thankfully, what I am switched to first – helping Applejack – is relatively straightforward. Since I am not quite top chef material, I get the job of organizing the food when Applejack and her sous-chefs finish baking the portions. You know, things like tally the amount of each item, put them on their proper trays, and best of all, I would also taste test a few items here and there to make sure they came out right. Naturally, the ones with hay they have to check out themselves.

Overall, the first half of my day is spent switching off between helping Applejack and Rarity with their respective jobs, nothing too stressful when I get everything right. However, when Twilight walks into the ballroom, where Rarity is deciding if she should put blue ribbons on pillar 11C or red with sparkles, I still find myself absolutely exhausted.

"Wow, the ballroom looks absolutely amazing!" says Twilight.

Rarity sighs at the interruption but she smiles at her friend all the same. "Why thank you, darling," she says amiably. "I've managed to get quite a bit done thanks to the help of this gentlehuman here."

I half expect her to mumble something about 'when he's not messing up my beautiful plans with his ineptitude', but Rarity avoids making snide remarks like that. Twilight flashes me a smile before turning back to Rarity. "Well, work is good, but it's 1:00 right now. The rest of us are going for lunch. You guys up for that?"

I realize my stomach is complaining about how empty it is at the thought of food, and nod like a disturbed bobblehead. Rarity herself sighs and uses her magic to put a decoration back in its proper box. "I do admit that I'm rather famished myself. Very well then, I suppose I can take a break."

"Great! We'll meet back here in an hour for a status check. I'm afraid that we'll have to go out on the town to eat, though, since the kitchens are being used for the Gala..."

"I have money," I say. "Are the restaurants around here relatively reasonable, compared to Ponyville?"

Twilight nods and points out of a nearby window. "About a block that way is a restaurant called The Sweet Elite. I think they have some stuff that you might like."

"Cool." With that, I am finally out of the ballroom. I pop by my room briefly to collect my bag of bits before I hit the town. As I am walking out of the castle, I try and get a rough estimate of how much money I have. Hm, 200 or so should be plenty for lunch.

As I walk down the crowded streets of Canterlot, I notice that I am getting those irritating stares again... only this time, I'm getting it from snobbish, rich ponies. I swear, if I shot a bullet above their heads I'd hit a nose. But the staring has ceased to bother me by this point. I will hopefully be back on Earth later today, so what's the point of getting worked up about it?

I follow Twilight's directions pretty well and arrive at the restaurant that she has directed me to. I don't have too much trouble getting seated, as the place isn't very busy. I don't get too many stares here either, so that's good. I love it when ponies mind their own business like these are doing. As I sit at the table, I open up the menu that a waiter has put in front of me and scan it. I don't expect them to have anything meat-based, but if Twilight told me that I'm gonna find something that I'd want to eat here, then I'm inclined to believe her. And indeed, before too long, a unicorn waiter sporting a nifty mustache comes up to me and takes my order of eggs and water.

The food arrives fairly quickly: in twenty minutes, I've already fed myself, paid the bill and left. I feel surprisingly full as I exit the place, and with another half-hour to spare before going back to the castle to boot. Well, Canterlot is a big place, so I imagine I can find some interesting shops or something to peruse while I wait. Surely there has to be something.

With that in mind, I walk down the sidewalk a few blocks, always making sure to keep the castle in sight so as to not lose my way, and glance at the shops I pass along the way. Nothing is really catching my interest as far as trinkets go, but it is still kind of entertaining to pony-watch as I go along.

My amusement is cut short when I hear a pony nearby call out to me. "You, alien being!" says the voice. Figuring that whoever she is can only be talking to me, I turn to the source to see a middle-aged teal unicorn mare with an eye for a cutie mark beckoning me close. I cock my head slightly at the sight of her and she gives a frustrated groan. "Yes, you," she hisses. "Come here!"

Seeing as how when someone in a large city beckons you, it usually means that they're either trying to get your wallet or your kidney, I would normally just walk away. But this is Equestria, and Twilight has repeatedly told me that crime is next to none with Celestia ruling, so I walk over to her, albeit a tad cautiously. "Yeah, what's up?"

"You will have a life changing experience soon," she says gravely.

I raise my eyebrow slightly. "Uh, yeah, you're a bit late on that prediction. I'm already having one, being on an alien world an all."

"Then you'll have another one!" she snaps. "You will take an important journey!"

"Uh-huh," I respond flatly. "And how do you know that?"

"I don't know. Doesn't everypony take an important journey at some point? I didn't exactly say when you would have one."

"Ah, you're playing the odds with your predictions," I say with a sly grin. “Smooth.”

The unicorn smirks and points to a nearby shop. "I was really just trying to sound mystical to get you in my shop there. You know, ponies tend to respond positively to the unknown."

"Well, who can argue with that logic?" I quip. "What are you selling?"

The unicorn smiles and waves me in, and I sigh and follow her inside. The interior of the shop is pretty simplistic, actually – so simple, there is nothing in there. It's just a plain white room with a door in the back wall. "I must say, you have quite the selection," I snark.

The unicorn rolls her eyes and begins walking towards the door. "Stay here," she says. "I think I have something you'll like."

I decide to humor her for the moment. If she brings out something absolutely ridiculous I can just say 'no thank you' and be on my way. If she tries something funny... well, she's a unicorn, so I imagine she has some magical skill, but I think I can take her out of I go for the horn. Either way, the subject of who would win in a fight between a human and a unicorn should be solved after this if things go that way.

The mare comes back after a few minutes with what seems to be a stick about half her size resting on her back. Ooh, yeah, a stick does sound pretty cool. The unicorn seems rather pleased with it as she presents it to me, though.

"A stick," I observe. "How wonderful."

She glares at me but doesn't snark back. "It's not just a stick," she corrects me. "It's a walking stick."

"Ah, my mistake. And why would I need a walking stick?"

"As a reminder," she says simply.

"Of what?"

"Major events.”

"Can you just stop being cryptic and explain?"

The unicorn ignores my perfectly reasonable request and instead fires up her horn, which has me taking an uneasy step back. Her horn begins glowing brighter and brighter, focusing on the stick, and in a few seconds, the crude excuse for a staff is enveloped in a bright blue glow.

I have to admit that, when it's not being used on me, demonstrations of unique unicorn magic are pretty cool. We don't have anything like it at home, so seeing something like this is darn sweet.

After a few moments, her horn's glow dulls and the walking stick falls to the floor. To my surprise, though, it has changed considerably: instead of being fit for a pony, it has grown to something that a human can use. Not only that, but there seem to be drawings of some sort dotting the upper half of it. I pick it up and examine them closely. "What are these?" I ask.

The unicorn smiles and begins examining the drawings in the wood herself. "I chiseled some of your significant memories onto this walking stick. It's something that unicorns back in the day used to do as a reminder of important times in their lives. Since you're not from here, I stuck to memories of Equestria, so you'll have something to remember this place by if you ever go back to your homeland. I–"

Suddenly, she stops dead in the middle of her sentence, gazing in bewilderment at the uppermost carving. "Is this a carving of you attacking Princess Celestia?"

I lean in close and, sure enough, the carving portrays just that. "I guess it is," I say. “Not just attacking, I'm giving her the fist lollipop.”

"Did you really do that?" she asks in awe. "Sure, I've messed up on a few of these before, I have to admit, but..."

"It was pretty much the first thing I did when I got here," I declare, feeling a bit proud of myself.

The unicorn gives me a look of utter disbelief, but she shakes her head without answering. She looks over the other carvings. "Anyway," she says. "I've also enchanted it to make it next to impossible to break. Besides that, when a new event pops up it'll appear on the stick."

Unicorn magic; who'da thunk it could do stuff like that?

"How much?" I ask. No way am I not taking this home with me!

"Ten bits," she declares.

I nod and hand her the proper amount. "If I find this thing is defective, I'll come down here and bop you over the head with it myself," I threaten her half-seriously.

The pony smirks again. "If it's defective, I'll let you," she announces cockily.

I give her a friendly amused scoff and walk out the door with my purchase. The sun hits the face of my watch, and I discover I have exactly five minutes to get back to the castle before Rarity begins beating me over the head with the walking stick I've purchased from a random magician mare. I rush to get back to the castle in time.

I'm just glad I actually manage to get back in time. I even have a few seconds to drop the stick off in my room before heading back to the ballroom. When I arrive, the mane six and Spike are already there waiting for me; Twilight promptly smiles and levitates a list in front of her. "Okay, now that we're all here, let's get the mid-setup meeting started." She glances at a nearby clock and checks it against my watch before turning back to the group. "It is now 2:04 on the dot. That means we only have three hours and fifty-six minutes if we're going to be done by six, which means that we have to work really hard at this if we're going to be done in time. Now, how are you all doing?"

"Oh, I'm definitely going to need until six at the very least to finish my preparations," says Rarity. "I only just finished the main hall before you arrived."

"Yeah, same here," agrees Applejack. "We got a lotta stuff to get cooked before all them hungry ponies arrive."

"Well, I'm all set," says Pinkie Pie with her usual grin. "I can help out Applejack in the kitchen if she needs me!"

"Um, the birds and I need another rehearsal or two,” mutters Fluttershy, “but when we're done I think I can help Rarity with the decorations."

"I'll see what I can do before the Wonderbolts get here," an unusually serious Rainbow Dash contributes to the discussion, “but when they're here, I'll have my hooves full. If everything goes well, we should be done a bit before six, but I can't promise anything.”

Twilight gives a satisfied nod at the information and jots down a few more notes. "Good. Well, everypony, I think we can make this work if we give it one final push over the next three or four hours. Once we're done we'll meet up at Doughnut Joe's for a snack before we get ready ourselves!"

The other five cheered. We split up to start that final push.

I fasten the final button on my brand new tuxedo just as Twilight walks into my room. "Ready to go?" she asks with a smile. "The others are already on their way to Doughnut Joe's."

"I'm just finished."

"You look very nice," she compliments.

"... thanks," I say. "You don't look bad yourself."

Twilight looks over her own Gala dress fondly and poses a bit. "Thanks. It's my Gala dress from last time. Rarity repaired it after we got back. I figured that it would be easiest just to keep the same one for this year. I mean, why only wear a dress like this once?" she asks with a twirl.

I agree with her, it's too nice for it to be a single-use. "Makes sense to me," I say. "Alright, ready when you are, doc."

Twilight leads me out of the castle and through the streets, to where the other six are indeed waiting. We sit down at the large table that they're all occupying and a stallion promptly puts a large plate of delectable doughnuts, as well as several mugs of hot chocolate, in front of us. They don't take longer than a polite 'thanks' before we're digging in.

"These don't have any hay in them, do they?" I ask, grabbing a doughnut with icing and sprinkles both made of chocolate that have been shoved onto one side of the treat. Twilight shakes her head, and I take a very careful bite.

The rich chocolate-y taste of the frosting, combined with the softness of the doughnut itself is, needless to say, freaking delicious. I gobble up the whole thing quickly. The others seem to be enjoying their shares as well, and Pinkie and Rainbow are even trying to see who can eat the most, much to Rarity's chagrin. I grab a second one, but this time, I take the time to savor just how good this stuff is.

The evening continues on like that, with all of us making small talk to each other about how our days went. From what I can gather, everyone had relatively smooth sailing when it came to whatever they had to do for the Gala; Rainbow Dash in particular seems to have enjoyed getting to work with the Wonderbolts, given how she talked about how she gushed practically nonstop. Within an hour or so, the plate is empty and the mugs can be turned upside down without a drop falling off them.

I glance at my watch. Oh, 7:22. Time for us to go. I alert Twilight of the time and while she quickly tosses ten bits on the table, we all stand up to go.

Twilight and her gang are chattering excitedly about the prospect of getting to not only go to the Gala again, but to one they have planned and prepared themselves. I've heard the stories about last year... they weren't pleasant. I can see why they don't want to relive them. I admit, I'm rather looking forward to this as well, not only because I get to see if Celestia can send me home. Based on what the six have been up to, it looks like it'll be a legitimately good party, and having had a hand in in, I'm eager to see the results. Hopefully, it'll go better than the last one.

Within a few minutes of walking, we find ourselves in a large crowd of elegantly dressed ponies who are themselves going to the Gala. To my surprise, not all of them look like Canterlot elite; some of them seem to be more middle class, and I even recognize some ponies from Ponyville in the crowd too. I guess Celestia tried to make it less of a snobbish event this year. We'll see how that goes.

As we walk up towards the entrance, I hear music. It wouldn't surprise me if it was coming from the castle... which it isn't. I turn towards the crew I'm accompanying, and see that they all have gigantic grins on their faces. Pinkie Pie looks like she's about to burst into song, something I've noticed she does quite often.

In fact...they all do...

What?

The music grows louder and Twilight begins talking.

"I can't believe we're at the Gala again!"

"It'll sure be somethin' special this time," agrees Applejack. "I can feel it."

"We've learned from our mistakes," says Rarity. "We'll capitalize on tonight's wonders!"

"Tonight, we're gonna PAAARRRTAY!" shouts Pinkie Pie.

And suddenly: singing.

"At the Gala," sings Twilight.

"At the Gala," echoes Rarity.

Fluttershy butts in.

"At the Gala, they will sing, all my animal friends.
All the birdies, and the critters, tonight we will make amends.
They will sing, for the ponies, all their wonderful songs.
We will make wonderful music, right here at the Gala!".

Immediately the other guests in line begin marching towards the castle in rhythm with the music that is coming from... somewhere.

"This Grand Gala will not be a total disaster, like the last Gala, like that Gala," they sing.

"Okay, what's going on here?"

I remain completely ignored. Applejack starts her own verse.

"At this Gala, ponies will eat them,
all the Apple family treats.
Their fancy taste buds, will not withstand them,
all my apple-based sweets.
They will fall in love with apples, right here at the Gala!"

"Oh joy, oh joy, its nearly time for us at the Grand Gala. At the Gala."

At this point a few of the guests have started a basic dance routine. I feel like I'm watching a practiced routine. "Seriously, guys, did I miss a rehearsal or something?"

As Rarity starts her verse, I feel I might as well be talking to a wall.

"At this Gala, I will meet them, some perfectly nice ponies.
I'll make dresses, for new clients, that I will meet at the Grand Gala.
And the best part, is that I'll ignore him, my dumb faux-Prince Charming.
I won't see any of Blueblood, right here at the Gala!"

"Ignoring Prince Blueblood sounds like the best thing ever, at the Gala, at the Gala."

"You know what? I'm not even going to ask," I grumble. "If you're not going to–"

I am cut off by Rainbow Dash.

"I've been waiting, I've been dying, to fly with those awesome ponies,
The Wonderbolts will see how truly great I am.
I'll fly with them and we'll wow the crowd just like we will when I finally join them
I get to fly with the Wonderbolts, right here at the Gala!"

"Flying with the Wonderbolts, oh joy that sounds just awesome, at the Gala, at the Gala."

At this point, I'm quiet, just waiting for the song to be over. I can stand Pinkie's songs every once in a while, but this... I don't know what to make of this.

The rest of the guests begin a marching line behind Pinkie Pie as she begins her verse.

"I have organized the Gala, it will be my best party.
That's saying a lot coming from a pony like Pinkie.
for parties are too awesome, to not be shared by one and all.
Many ponies will be smiling, right here at the Gala!" sings Pinkie Pie.

"Smiling ponies does sound fun, right here at the Gala, at the Gala."

'Okay, TD, you just have to get through Twilight's verse and then we can forget that this bizarre occurrence ever happened', I thought to myself.

"At the Gala, nothing can go wrong,
I've planned details big and small.
Princess Celestia, will be proud of me,
she will see all my hard work
I will pull off a big job, right here at the Gala!" sings Twilight.

"We're sure you've done an adequate job, right here at the Gala, at the Gala."

I am relieved that all of the verses are done so we can finally wrap up this song. Oh, alright, everyone has already stopped singing. Well, that's fine with me. I'm not sure why they burst out into song in the...in the...

Why in the name of Earth is everyone staring at me?

A look around the crowd, and literally everyone going to the Gala has their eyes fixed on me. What's more baffling is the multitude of utterly confused looks in their faces. I glance over at Twilight; for some reason, she looks just as confused as the rest of them. I stare back at her, and it spreads over to me, too. "Well?" she says finally.

"Well what?"

"It's your turn, sugar cube," says Applejack.

"My turn for what...my turn to sing a verse?"

"Well yeah," says Fluttershy like it should be obvious. "We all did one, now it's your turn."

"My turn?" I say incredulously. "What do you mean my turn?!"

"Well, we all went, so it's your turn," says Twilight. "I don't get where you're confused."

I sustain my look of utter bewilderment, but the crowd is beginning to whisper amongst themselves. I give myself a frustrated sigh and wrack my brains for something to mollify these insanely musical beings.

"Uh, okay," I say. I clear my throat. “Here goes.”
"Uh, At the Gala, I will confront her,
your celestial goddess.
I will ask her, to send me home,
so I can play on my...old NES?
Or just maybe, I'll just get drunk,
that sounds really fine too.
At least something will get done...uh, right here at the Gala."

Immediately the entire group starts their song back up again with as much energy, if not even more.

"Sending trans-dimensional beings home is what we do at the Gala, at the Gala."

Everyone is now marching towards the castle like a military platoon... one that is from a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. Naturally, I don't keep the cadence.

"Into the Gala we must go, we're ready now we're all aglow.
Into the Gala lets go in and have the best night ever
Into the Gala, now it’s time we're ready and we look divine!"

"My birds will sing."

"My food they'll eat."

"I'll avoid Blueblood"

"I'll bounce and laugh.

"I'll fly real fast."

"I've planned it all."

More silence. I groan.

"I'll smack a wall!"

"Right here at the Gala, at the Gala!"

And with that, the music from absolutely nowhere comes to an end and the ponies begin filing into the castle. The pony crew is in line beside me, seemingly oblivious as to how weird that occurrence was. "Uh, Twilight..." I blurt out. "What just happened?"

Twilight looks at me and frowns. "What do you mean?"

“That song and dance number... what the heck was that?"

Twilight's frown turns upside-down. She chuckles. "The Creator absolutely loved song," she lectures, "so when she created Equestria, she made it so that anyone who ever lived here had the magic of music inside of them. Whenever emotions are at their highest, those who are here join in a big musical number."

I stare at her with eyebrow-quirking disbelief. I thought singing like that was just a Pinkie Pie thing. "So...your creator made it so that anyone born in Equestria randomly bursts into song?"

"I didn't say 'born in Equestria', I said 'lived in Equestria'," she explains.

I scowl at the discrepancy until I get what she's saying. My eyes widen and I back a foot away from her. "Oh no, I'm not breaking out into some silly song and dance routine!"

"Well, ya sure did a decent job with your verse!" says Applejack. "Where do you think those words came from, sugar cube?"

"Not the magic of music inside of me, that's for sure," I deadpan.

She simply shrugs. "If you say so...”

I grumble to myself how, if I ever break out into song without being strong-armed into it, I'll re-invent Life Boy soap just to wash my mouth out with. Hmm, well, maybe if I could get a good villain's song it would be okay...

As the line of ponies waiting to get in gets steadily smaller, the others become steadily more excited. Based on what they're saying, we don't have to do anything by this point – Celestia's 'student athletes' will take care of everything.

Good, I don't want to be stuck serving drinks to snobby ponies.

Thanks to the long line, it takes about fifteen minutes before we are actually inside the Gala itself. Ha, we don't have to show tickets or anything! We set up the darned thing! However, I am horrified to see that even when we're inside the castle, there is still a line to get in or something. I mean...wait...no, there's a line to...

To see Princess Celestia. A grin forms on my face at the sight of the sun goddess of Equestria.

"Sorry about the long line, TD," Twilight mutters. “I should have warned you...”

"It's quite alright," I say with a wave of my hand. She's here. She's here and if I wait in line long enough, she'll have to talk to me at least for a moment, at least so we can set up a real meeting. I don't care at all if I have to wait a bit more, I've been waiting for weeks already.

Standing next to her is a slightly smaller alicorn pony, only this one is bluish and her hair looks like the night sky. Based on what Twilight has told me of the royal sisters, I can only assume this is Princess Luna. She seems like an alright sort... or at the very least, she seems far less pretentious than Celestia does. I might actually like her if what Twilight has told me about her is true.

We have to wait for another ten minutes before it is our turn to see Celestia, but I feel it is well worth the wait. She smiles warmly at us when we walk up and Luna sends a small smile Twilight's way. "It's so wonderful to see you all," Celestia says happily. "You all did a spectacular job with everything. I'm so proud of you."

Twilight positively glows at the compliments from Celestia. In turn, I roll my eyes.

"Indeed, the decorations and the food seem most delightful," agrees Luna. "If Our sister has any more of dear Applejack's apple fritters, she will have to go on a diet to keep The Royal Plot in a shapely form."

Yep, I like Luna already. Anyone who causes Celestia to look even a tad uncomfortable is alright in my book.

Celestia recovers from the embarrassment after a mere moment and turns her attention to me. "Yes, well, I hope you enjoy yourselves. You too, TD: I know how much you helped out with the setup as well. For that, my sister and I are most grateful."

"I'll bet you are," I say, walking closer to her as soon as she speaks her last syllable, "but I think we both know the main reason I'm here, Celestia.” The glares I get from not using the P-word could burn into my back if they were energy beams, but they don't, so I press on. “You and I need to have a good talk later about getting me back to Earth." As I mention Earth, I tap the tip of her horn to drive my point home.

Celestia's eyebrows knit slightly. On the third tap, she sends a slight bolt of static electricity through her horn, shocking me a bit, just enough for a quick retreat of my finger. I hear the mane six gasp behind me and I see that Luna looks quite livid at my display. I look at her confusedly. "Did he just... hit second base with the Princess?" I hear Rarity whisper.

...oh. I understand why Celestia looks a tad uncomfortable and Luna is so angry now.

"How dare thee," growls Luna. "How dare thou violate Our sister's personal space in such a manner!"

"Luna, it's fine," Celestia pacifies the scene. "He didn't know."

Luna does not seem pacified by Celestia's words and she continues staring daggers at me. "How doth thou consider this 'fine', dear sister? If thy words are correct, then this is also the creature that assaulted you upon entry into our world!"

"Yeah, on that note... sorry for... uh, doing what I just did," I stutter, searching for the words my astonishment has buried six feet under. I am just as uncomfortable about the whole thing as they are, but I'm doing my best to show a little remorse.

"Sorry shall not be sufficient in this most heinous of offenses!" insists Luna. "We–"

"Luna, that's enough," says Celestia with a tone that imagine that she doesn't like taking with her sister, but is the only tone that will prevent a trip to Hotel Moon, based on Luna's expression. "He apologized already, and I know that he did not know better. He meant no offense."

"Very well," Luna grumbles, unsatisfied.

"Well, cool. Now that that's settled, you and I still need to have a talk, Celestia."

Celestia sighs and nods. "I agree. If you wish you can stay another day so we can get our business settled."

"I was thinking tonight, actually," I retort. "I want to get this settled as soon as possible."

An expression of unease crosses Celestia's face. She hides it after a moment, which doesn't make me any less disturbed. "Very well, if you insist."

"In my standing, wouldn't you?" I ask with more sincerity than I thought I could have in me.

Celestia doesn't respond for a moment. Instead, she looks behind me. "There are many more guests for me to greet tonight," she declares with finality. "We shall meet when I can."

Good enough for me. With a nod from me, we organizers walk past the sisters into the ballroom, and immediately the other seven forget my intentional faux-pas. Their eyes are filled with wonder and joy at seeing the ponies at the Gala, enjoying themselves and appreciating all the preparations we made. I imagine I'm not going to get much interaction out of them right now, so I excuse myself to the bar we set up earlier. The drinks are pretty lightweight when it comes to alcohol, but it's something at least.

As I walk to the counter, I reflect on how the drinking age back home is 21, which means I can't drink if they have the same rules, me being only 20 and all. Having said that, I'm half-Canadian, and the drinking age there is 18 if I recall. I grin slightly as I sit down on a stool in front of the bar. Time to emulate the rules of the Provinces.

The bartender, an earth pony, looks at me with a relatively blank face as I order hard cider, made by the Apple family. With that, I begin my slow descent into intoxication. A tipsy TD is an interesting TD, and if I'm going to have to socialize with high-class snobs for a few hours before I see Celestia, I want to be more relaxed.

As I sip my cider, I pony-watch the crowd to pass the time. The rich snobs are hanging out with each other, while the more common ponies are doing pretty much the same. If Celestia expanded the Gala's invitation range to encourage interaction between the classes, welp, I can sure say it didn't work at all. Figures that the snobs would see themselves as too good for the 'lower classes'.

I am not watching for more than a few minutes before I hear an unfamiliar voice from behind me. "Hey there."

I turn around to see a lavender pegasus with blonde hair, one I've seen around Ponyville a few times. "'sup, " I respond.

The pegasus grins at me and extends her hoof. "I'm Cloud Kicker. I've seen you around Ponyville a few times, but never actually had the chance to say hi to you."

"TD," I respond while shaking her hoof.

"Cool," she says. I raise my mug at her and move to take another gulp of cider.

Big mistake, TD. Big mistake.

"Now that we've gotten to know each other,” she says matter-of-factly, “we should bang."

I almost choke to death on my cider right then and there – as it is I just barely avoid doing a perfect spit-take right in her face. “Upbrrrfhbwha?!"

"You know, bang," she repeats impatiently. "We go in whatever room you're staying in right now – or mine, I don't care –, I take off this ridiculous dress and you'll get out of that dashing tux, we both plop onto the bed and–"

"Okay, Cloud Kicker, enough with embarrassing the human!" says a watermelon-haired pony that has just walked up. Boy she looks peeved.

Cloud Kicker turns to the new arrival with that same gigantic grin on her face. "Oh, hey there, Blossomforth! The human and I were just about to go up to his room. Wanna join?"

"Y-you're not gonna m-m-mate with him!" is the angry response. "Even if you were, look at him! He looks like he's about to die of embarrassment and shock right now!

Do I? I think I do...

Cloud Kicker clicks her tongue in dismissal, but she does hop off the stool. She walks over to Blossomforth. "Yeah, well, I guess I can let him think about it for a moment," she says before turning back to me. "I'll see you later, okay, stud?"

She winks at me and the duo walks off, with Blossomforth chewing out her friend. I can only watch the two of them disappear into the crowd of ponies, still trying to process what the heck just went on here.

The bartender has watched the whole thing: the guy is laughing so hard he is having trouble standing. I glare at him after I turn to face the counter. "Shut up and get me another cider."

You know, after three ciders, pony-watching gets kind of boring. It's not like they're actually doing anything interesting, they're just standing around and talking for the most part. I can't even really get tipsy because of how little alcohol this stuff has in it.

However, my night may just get a little more interesting. One of the ponies in the crowd, an all white stallion who I can only imagine is really high society because his nose his higher in the air than the others, notices me watching the guests and begins walking over to me. If I recall Twilight's explanation well enough, his name is Blueblood, and he's a prince.

Great, more royalty to deal with.

"You there, peasant!” he calls. Jeez, he sounds even snootier than he looks. “Why are you staring at me in such a manner?"

"I'm just crowd-watching," I respond. "No offense intended."

Blueblood raises an eyebrow before coming over to stand next to me.

"You are the human that Auntie Tia brought into this world, aren't you?"

"Do you know of any other humans in Equestria?" is my dry-witted reply.

Blueblood harrumphs and looks me over. "I must say, your species looks rather odd. Your legs surely don't need to be the size of your upper half, now do they?" His voice alone is annoying me to no end. I remember Rarity's story from last year's Gala; he shouldn't get much better than this.

"Careful there, Bluey... If you want to make cracks about appearances, I can point out how your horn is much smaller than those of many other unicorn stallions I've seen."

Blueblood's eyes widen and he tries to sputter out a response. The bartender behind me resumes his silent laughter.

The paper prince does eventually give up on a retort and just glares at me. "My horn is perfectly natural, thank you very much. As a matter of fact, I do not see the truth of your statement, which means that my assessment of your person was more correct. I believe I win this battle of quips.” To my complete amusement, Blueblood raises his hoof. “You may kiss the royal hoof."

Ha. No dice, cupcake. "Why, Bluey, I didn't know you swung that way! Is this what you consider foreplay?"

Blueblood puts down his hoof with a look of utter shock and outrage across his face. The bartender lets out an audible giggle. "Why...I...buh...you...how dare you!" he sputters. "I am royalty and I expect to be addressed with the respect I deserve!"

I roll my eyes and place six bits on the counter. "I am giving you the respect you deserve," I insist. "In fact, I think I’m being generous."

Blueblood's eyes narrow and he opens his mouth to begin speaking once more, but I decide to walk away. As mildly amusing as this was, he's not worth it in the end. I decide to see what the ponies are doing in the ballroom, seeing as how Pinkie Pie set up a corner for games and such. Who knows? Maybe 'pin the tail on the pony' is more fun than it sounds.

In the ballroom, a four-pony orchestra plays a slow waltz tune while and a bunch of ponies in the middle of the dance floor do a very boringly refined dance. It's just the kind of thing I can imagine nobles doing. The more common ponies are looking at the scene with boredom or distaste, but they're keeping the peace. I sigh when I see that Pinkie's station is packed with ponies playing the games she set up. No nobles among them, I'll wager.

The song ends. The ponies stomp the floor semi-quietly in applause, and a few of the dancers bow to their partners. I golf clap along with them, making plans to leave the ballroom and go back to the bar.

However, within a few seconds, I don't find myself in a position to do that any longer. As I turn to my left to leave, I see a most amusing sight: an absolutely livid Blueblood is standing next to Celestia and Luna, pointing in my direction. Celestia looks exasperated, while Luna looks like she's about to begin laughing.

The crowd looks to the source of the noise too.

"And he accused me of instigating foreplay with him when I insisted that he kiss the royal hoof!" complains Blueblood. "I demand that he be arrested and sent to the moon at once!"

"Blueblood, that's enough," says Celestia. "We're not sending him to the moon for something like that."

"The sun then, if the moon is not adequate!"

I can't help but chuckle a little bit. Celestia is clearly using all of her willpower to stop herself from facehoofing right then and there. However, Luna's amused expression has shifted to one of slight anger at the mere idea that the moon might not be adequate for anything.

"We're not sending him to the sun either," she says as the three stop in front of me. "I'm sure he's sorry for what he said."

I respond with a shrug and a "not really".

"See, see!" shouts Blueblood, pointing a hoof at me. "He's a ghastly being who must be arrested at once!"

I sigh and rub my temples. Remember, TD, this guy is more trouble than he's worth. “Fine, fine. I apologize for offending you."

Blueblood scoffs but nods all the same. "Very well, then. You may kiss the royal hoof now."

That does it: both Celestia and Luna slap him in the back of the head.

A wide grin cracks my face. Some ponies just don’t learn. "Why Bluey, I didn't know you swung that way. Is this what you–"

"TD, we get the point," groans Celestia.

Fair enough, I suppose. Blueblood looks like he's about to have a stroke right then and there, his face red with anger. I can tell that the three cogs in his head are trying to formulate a proper response.

"Sorry," I say without an inkling of honesty while keeping my grin up.

Celestia sighs and shakes her head before turning to the crowd. "I'm sorry to be disruptive," she announces to the public. "TD and Prince Blueblood merely had a misunderstanding. Please, continue with your merriment."

The cellist of the band, a gray earth pony who is wearing a bow tie for some reason, clears her throat. "Actually, your highness, we were just about to take the planned ten minute respite, if that is alright with you."

Celestia gives her a warm smile and a nod. "That is perfectly okay with me," she says, and much to my surprise, she turns to me. "TD, I know that you have your music here on your… what did you call it, computer? Are there any songs there that form the basis of any traditional dances from your world?"

I am about to shake my head when a thought strikes me. A wonderfully evil thought, my favorite kind. I smile and nod. "Yes, actually," I say.

Celestia widens her smile and uses her magic to transport my computer onto a nearby table. "Very well, do show us," she says.

I nod and pull up the music folder. Thankfully, there is enough battery life so that it won't die in the middle of the performance. When I find the song in question, my smile widens and I turn back to Celestia. "For this dance, I will need only a chair and Prince Blueblood."

The crowd raises their eyebrows and Blueblood looks at me with the same look of anger as ever. "Absolutely not!" he says. "I will not–"

"Oh give it a rest, Blueblood," says Celestia. I can tell she’s suppressing a groan. "He's not going to hurt you … right?" she asks me with a tilted head and a mildly suspicious look. I shake my head no, and Celestia uses her wing to push the stallion forward. "Be a good sport."

He grumbles a bit, but he does eventually sit down on the chair that is provided for him. I turn around and fire up the song in question. I can hardly contain my grin as the music begins. I clap along to the music, and to my utter delight, the ponies in the crowd stomp their hooves along as well.

Blueblood is a nervous wreck when I begin my dance. Any human would recognize it as the dance Mr. Blonde did in Reservoir Dogs with the cop, but everyone here is totally oblivious.

"Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feelin' that somethin' ain't right."
I sing as I move back and forth to the rhythm of the song. Blueblood seems to be relaxing a bit, unsure of how the song concerns him.

I smile as the penultimate lyrics come up and when they do, I begin miming slicing his ear off with a razor blade. Is that too mean spirited? Maybe, but this dude is seriously annoying. Besides, it's not like I'm actually doing it. I'm also exaggerating the movements so they look more dance-like than actual actions so that should throw them off too.

The ponies in the crowd are swaying along to the music as sing the lyrics out loud, miming on Blueblood the torture that Mr. Blonde put the cop through during the movie. His look of confusion grows as I get the imaginary gasoline from the trunk of my fictional car and then pour it all over him. He seems a bit uncomfortable when I do so, but as long as he doesn't pick up on what I'm actually mimicking, then I'm okay.

I walk five paces away from him as the song comes to a close and light my nonexistent Zippo. The back of my mind tells me that I'm being a little too mean, but hey, it isn't actually hurting him, right? The song ends and I pretend to drop the lighter in the make-believe puddle of gasoline leading up to Blueblood. I don't actually imagine him writhing in pain as fire consumes him – that’s way beyond the line, even for him – but the dance is fun nonetheless.

I receive uproarious hoof stomping, even from Celestia and Luna. I take it the ponies in the crowd enjoyed the show, but I wonder if Celestia is clapping because she knows what I was miming. I doubt it, but it's fun to think about all the same.

However, there is one pony that hasn’t appreciated the dance as much, and he wastes no time in letting me know.

"You are a disgrace!" Blueblood whines. "You joke about me instigating foreplay, but then you turn around and come on to me with that suggestive dance!"

I groan and facepalm. "That was ‘Reservoir Dogs’, Bluey, not a seductive dance. Besides, I like human women, not pony stallions."

"You cannot fool me!" he insists. "I–"

"We demand that thou grant Us the favor of shutting thy royal lips at once!" Luna interrupts. "Your whining is causing Us much annoyance!"

Blueblood opens his mouth to retort, but decides that he has better things to do than mouth off to the goddess of the night. Instead, he opts for stomping away in a huff. Luna looks like she’s going to go after him, but Celestia shakes her head and Luna nods. Those two have an impressive bond, let me tell you.

At that moment, one of the Wonderbolts, Spitfire, I think, walks up on the stage and taps the microphone. "Attention, everypony. The performance of the Wonderbolts and Rainbow Dash is about to begin. If you would all please follow me out onto the grounds, we may begin at once."

The ponies in the crowd murmur excitedly amongst themselves as they begin filing out of the ballroom. Now's my chance. I quickly walk up to Celestia. "I don’t think we’ll have a better chance than this."

Celestia sighs and turns to me. "I suppose so," she whispers.

"Thank you," I say with a nod. Celestia beckons me to follow, and I exit the ballroom behind her.

The walk to wherever she is leading me is silent; that probably has a lot to do with the fact that the castle is watching the aerial performance, but it could also be the nervousness that both of us are bearing. I'm already nervous because this is where she tells me whether I can go back or not, but her being unsettled by the idea of this meeting makes it much worse. Wouldn't she be happy if she could just send me home right away? Or, maybe she's nervous because the magic involved is really complicated or something? Yeah...that's it, I'm sure of it. If she can bring me here she can send me home… right?

Within five minutes, the two of us reach a large door that I can only guess leads to her quarters, and my suspicions are confirmed when she opens the door to reveal a titanic bedroom. Seriously, I know she's the big cheese of the land and all, but who needs a bed bigger than three hummers side by side?!

I shake my head and ignore my surroundings. They're not important.

Celestia uses her magic to shut and lock the door behind me. She turns to face me for what I hope will be our final confrontation. "So," I begin.

"So," she parrots.

"We're here at last."

Celestia nods and moves over to a large desk. "I imagine you have a lot of questions for me," she says as she uses her magic to pull up a stack of papers.

"Just one." My insides feel like ice right now. "Can you send me home now?"

Celestia keeps silent for a moment as she scans the papers in front of her. She puts them back down on the desk. "TD, before I answer that question, I must admit to you that there is more to you coming here than I originally admitted to you and Twilight."

"I figured. Me coming here like you said is a bit too random, don't you think?" I don’t ask so much as I make a statement.

The Princess nods. "Your coming here was still partially random, but not to the extent I led you to believe. I told you that the energy I conjured randomly pulled you into this world… but I'm afraid that is, for the most part, a fabrication."

"How so?" I ask suspiciously.

Celestia doesn’t say a thing for a moment, before she takes a deep breath and delves into her story. "When I told you I created the ball of energy, I said it sucked the magic out of my room and it took all of my power to stop it, correct?"

"Yeah," I nod.

"The truth is, when the energy started being sucked out, it made the ball of energy more powerful, and much more unstable. The instability did not concern me at the moment it began happening… but what happened with the ball, well, that is a different story."

"Why?” I scratch my head. “What happened with the ball?"

"It created a portal,” she explains. “A highly volatile and unstable one, but a portal nonetheless. I used all of my magical powers to sustain it so that my surroundings would not be damaged, and it took me a lot of magic and skill, but I did manage to get it to manageable levels.

“When I did that, it allowed me to look inside. And what I saw... it was truly a sight to behold."

Celestia, if you were intending on making me curious, consider your goal accomplished. "What did you see?"

"I saw your world. I don't know why, but for whatever reason, the portal chose to open up on the exact spot where you were. I saw many members of your species, and I observed their habits. I noticed that they would always wait in the same spots for a series of lights to turn red before a white symbol flashed, as a warning that crossing was safe, or authorized. I noted the objects you call 'cars' stopping whenever their respective lights turned red, and that they drove off when they turned green.

“I watched for about twenty minutes, and ended up with a pretty good idea of the routine of that area."

"That's very interesting," I interrupt, "but it still doesn't answer my question."

"I'm getting there," she assures me. "I continued to observe the goings on of your species with great interest. You truly are an interesting people."

"Celestia… what does this have to do with me?" I ask out of the irritation rising inside of me.

Celestia sighs and begins nervously shuffling the papers on the desk. "Do you remember the accident that brought you here?" she asks without looking at me.

"I was hit by a car. I’m pretty sure I'll remember that forever."

"No, no you weren't," she says quietly.

My jaw drops slightly. "What do you mean? I woke up after a four day coma with a ton of injuries: that sounds like getting hit by a car to me all right."

The Princess looks back up. "The injuries you sustained were not caused by your collision with the car, TD… that collision never actually happened. When I saw the car speed towards you, I knew that if it collided with you it would cause great injury, maybe even death. I couldn't stand by and let that happen.

“In the heat of the moment, I called upon the last reserves of my magic and attempted to pull you backwards, out of the way of the car. But, unfortunately, I used too much magic. I did not just pull you backwards… I pulled you through the portal by mistake."

My jaw is practically on the floor by this point. My mind is a blank – I want to say something… but what on Earth can I say to this?

Celestia sighs one more time before moving on. "The strain of pulling a being as large as yourself through an already unstable portal was far too much for it to handle. It collapsed. You were through by that point, lying unconscious on the ground. I would have tended to you right there and then… but what happened next prevented that.

“When the portal collapsed it created an energy outflow that increased the air pressure. It began crushing you, TD; that's why you woke up with broken bones. I knew that you would die unless I took drastic action, so I did the only thing I could think of at that moment: I sent you to Ponyville. I didn't want you to cause a stir around Canterlot, so I sent you to a more remote part of Equestria, where my student could take care of you until I figured out what to do about it all."

I continue to stare at Celestia. I don’t know what to think, or even what to feel. I wasn’t pulled in just because of a random portal, she pulled me in to avoid seeing me get hit by that car. She... she...

Okay, TD, calm the heck down!

I take a few deep breaths and ask the first question that comes to my mind. "Why didn't you just tell me when we first saw each other? Why this ‘random portal’ nonsense?"

Celestia looked at me with sorrowful eyes that I don’t see. "I didn't tell you then because I didn't want Twilight to know about this kind of magic. I fear her curiosity would have led to her abusing it, or at least attempting an imitation… I didn’t want that to happen, it was almost uncontrollable when I myself did it. If I told her you coming here was a failure of mine, as opposed to a deliberate action that would have been viewed as a success by her, then she would not have tried to replicate it… exactly like, to my knowledge, she hasn't."

By this point, my confusion is turning to anger at this mare. "So you kick her out of the room, talk to me in private later, order her to not try anything under threat of heavy punishment, do anything but what you did!” I yell. “You're the freaking immortal sun-goddess of Equestria, can't you keep tabs on your own student?!"

Celestia doesn’t react to my outburst. "TD, I have my reasons for not letting Twilight know about what I did. Please respect them. I have known her far longer than you have."

Ah yes, the 'I have the power, my motives are infallible' technique. Don't you just love it?

That aside, how I got here really isn't as important as can I get home. I have to keep this on the right track. "Okay, so you brought me here to save my life, and you have your big mystic reasons for having lied to the Elements of Harmony and me when I first woke up,” I state as I pace around the room. “Fine, whatever, I really don’t care. What I care about is, can I go home now?"

To my horror, Celestia doesn’t move a muscle. She doesn't even breathe for a moment.

Oh no.

"TD, from the very moment I came back to the castle after seeing you in the hospital, I've been trying to re-create the portal. Every time I do, I open up to another world, but I’m certain it’s not the one you belong to. In fifty-six attempts, never once have I found Earth again… and even if I have, I can't be sure I can find it for a third time."

Oh no.

"There's more," she plows on regardless of me. "I also began experimenting with sending things back through the portals I made. I had to be sure I could make it stable enough to send a living being through all the way to the end. But the results... weren't encouraging. From the small objects I started with, I have yet to progress beyond a roll of parchment.

“Each and every time, the portal collapses whenever I try to push the object past about the halfway point. At best, it leaves me with half of whatever I tried to send through."

"So…" My voice cracks and I have to clear my throat to continue. "So what you're saying is..."

"I'm sorry, TD, but it is impossible for me to send you home. Even if I managed to find your Earth again, the journey would kill you."

I am unable to hear how hurt Celestia looks and sounds as she says those words. I can only stare at her for a few seconds before I turn around, twist the key on the lock, throw the door open and walk out of the room.