In the immortal words of Limp Bizkit, it was just one of those days. You know the ones. The days where everything is fucked, and everybody sucks.

It had started out normally enough. I woke up late, which was pretty normal for me. I'm a night owl, so getting to bed on time has always been a problem. Naturally that made getting up in a timely manner for work a constant struggle. Showering, feeding my cat - a black and gray tabby with three white mittens named Dimble - eating, and sneaking out without waking my roommate had taken the usual toll on my schedule so I had been a few minutes late to work.

Being late to work is, surprisingly enough, not one of those things. I'm one of the hardest working employees at the store, one of the most knowledgeable, and pretty easy going when it comes to scheduling overtime. My boss was willing to forgive my little morning foible as long as I kept up the good work. No, the first thing wrong with the day was the solar flare. The news, as usual, had blown the whole thing in to a big deal. Cell phones might suffer lost calls! Oh no! There could be glitches in the satellites! Our electronic world could suffer a case of the hiccups! Yeah.

I dismissed the whole thing like I always did, but this one actually seemed worse than normal. My phone, a shiny new (pre-owned) Droid 4 was on the fritz, and scaring me, barely a month in to a two year contract, that it would short out. The forty five minute commute, which was normally an enjoyable experience because I could crank up the radio and just drive, had several strategically-placed broken down cars to make everyone else on the road drive like they had caught a case of The Stupid. I noticed that each broken down car was a newer model, probably with fancy electronics that were being tortured by our fickle star. Fortunately my aging silver Mazda Millenia forged on like it always had, despite its sparse electronics, though the radio station did occasionally cut out and blast me with static. Several major stoplights on the way that were blinking warning colors, which made intersections harrowing as well.

If the flare made my drive annoying then it made the work day a nightmare. Electrical outages do very bad things to a paint store. The fancy electronics make providing paint a quick and efficient process when they work, but without them it all grinds to a screeching halt. It does not help that having the computers go down tends to erase orders and piss off customers who are spending way too much time away from their busy schedules anyways.

And don't get me started on the customers that morning. God must have had it out for me; making "Thou shalt not come to work late" the eleventh commandment. There were plenty of the standard clueless customers who had no idea what they wanted and needed me to figure it out for them. In between those customers were the customers who try to haggle over every single price - the sale ones included - and there was even one customer who I spent over half an hour on the phone with because he could not hear me, but still wanted to know how much every product in our aisles cost. The fritzing computers made every customer an exercise in patience, much less the ones who normally did it on their own. So the morning? Yeah, not fun.

The best part, and the one that made me wish I could pull a highlander and pull a hidden katana out of my pocket - too bad the police frowned on such things - was the overly nice lady who spent an hour and a half getting me to decide for her what she wanted to purchase. The lady who took her time waffling on every suggestion I made. And she had, much to my dismay, entered the store just as I was ready to sit down to lunch. Naturally.

I nearly lost it when the stupid flare smacked our computers around as I was trying to ring out her sale. I could have cried when the display fuzzed sideways several times. And then again, though in joy this time, when the computer came back and without losing all the work I had done. The text notification from the phone in my pocket went barely noticed as I thanked God, Allah, Buddha, Elune, The Unconquered Sun, Fizban, and a host of other deities, real and not, for not letting the finicky and stressed computers eat her sale.

I don't actually know whether any deity is real, but I figured that I should thank someone for my fortune. I was just covering my bases. As the lady finally left our store I hoped that whoever was out there appreciated my efforts.

So I finally got to sit down and enjoy my lunch. Sort of. Dave, my boss, stopped by the office on his way to the bathroom after finishing with one of his own customers.

"Hey Alex, I thought you were going to marry her," said the portly middle-aged man with the sausage fingers as he leaned against the doorframe.

"Fifty-something, overweight, and indecisive is my kind of woman." I rolled my eyes.

"How much time did you spend with her?" The man kept looking over his shoulder toward the glass front of the store. It was a habit we all had, though less bad than he did - always on the lookout for incoming customers. He was spastic, diabetic, and refused to lay off the sweets. Everyone knew he needed to relax, himself as well, but he seemed incapable of it.

I shrugged at him, lounging a bit in the chair and looking wistfully at my sandwich.

"Did she at least buy a lot?" He rubbed at the short beard/mustache combination that ringed his mouth.

"Oh yeah, four whole gallons. Oh, and a brush!" My excitement was not contagious and he gave me a blank look.

Shrugging, he straightened back up. "Well, if this Sun thing would just stop screwing with the computers we might be able to sell something. Franky," that's our sales rep, by the way, "has been up my ass all day to make some sales. Like it's not his job to go out and talk to customers for us. We haven't heard from Pat's today," and that is easily our biggest customer, "so they probably have something. I wonder if their phones are working." I shrugged. "I should give him a call."

"You do that. I'm eating lunch."

He gave me a glare. "Asshole. Sitting there not doing anything. Get the hell back to work."

I knew he didn't actually mean it. It was the standard ritual. I tried enjoying a few well-deserved minutes off, and he complained about it. He never actually did anything though. True to form he was shortly gone from the doorway and off to the bathroom. This left me alone with a glorious peanut butter and jelly sandwich - blueberry to be exact - some cookies, and a soda. And my phone.

My phone had added a whole new dynamic to my lunches. I used to just sit around daydreaming, but now that I had a smart phone I was beginning to enjoy the wonders of browsing while on break. I queued it on, lit it up, and noticed the text from a few minutes earlier. Putting my foray to the web on hold, I investigated my message.

Sender: unknown.

Message: illegible.

It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. Have you ever received a mistake message from someone typing in Chinese? It was like that. The message was not in an alphabet that I recognized, and I consider myself pretty proficient at knowing roughly where a language comes from. Germanic and Latin-based languages are familiar enough, Arabic ones are quite distinctive, and I had seen enough from east Asia to at least identify the symbols.

As I worked my way through my sandwich I realized that I had no idea what was on my phone. Perhaps something from Africa, though I had my doubts given its flowing shapes. I'm probably wrong, but I always imagined African languages with more angular letters.

Perhaps it was from one of the "Stans" in central Asia. I had no idea what their alphabets looked like. At least there were no links to anywhere, so I felt pretty safe investigating.

I highlighted the text, copied it, called up Google, and pasted it. One search button later gave me several dozen hits. I love Google. And then I looked at the hits. An Equestrian Primer. An Introduction to the Equestrian Language PDF. Equestrian Translator. Forum help for the Equestrian language translator.

Let me back up a bit. I'm a Brony. I love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I have favorite characters and episodes, and I even dabble in fan art. When I browse online during lunch, I'm not just piddling around with a search engine; normally I'm on Equestria Daily or Fimfiction reading stories. I know about Equestria. I know about the fans. But this? Had someone actually gone and written a fake Equestrian language? I know Tolkien did it for his books, but that guy studied languages for a living and had turned it in to an art that supported his stories. But much like Klingon, an entire fan-created language was just too deep for me.

However, I was curious about the text, so I clicked the link to the translator anyway. Would it work? The description mentioned that it was a work in progress, but it should be helpful to true fans. A quick scan of the page revealed a very basic setup; there were two boxes - one for input and one for output - a note that the translator only worked for English and Equestrian, and there was a full description of the fan's work at the bottom. It was put together by someone called BackgroundPony#1337, but it credited an AzureMare with the original PDF that laid out the language. It was vaguely interesting, but these fans were way too hardcore for me. I had no desire to follow Background's email link.

I plugged in the copy from my mysterious text.

Are you coming to my party this weekend?

Sure. I'll get right on that. I'll go to a party filled with pony fans so involved that they invented a whole language for a cartoon designed to sell toys. I bet they even spent their time talking in 'pony.' That gave me an idea though. The message was clearly not for me, and I had had a bad morning.

Sure. Where's it at?

I like to type my messages with proper grammar. So sue me if I refuse to lower myself to 'twitspeak.' Though I will admit that typing this way got a lot easier once I acquired a phone with an actual keyboard. Plugging my message back in to the translator gave me a bunch of squiggly gibberish which shortly went in to the conversation on my phone. Hitting the send button simply gave me an error message; my phone had no idea who the recipient was.

I frowned frustratedly. The stupid thing had spat out a message from this person, and now it could not send one back? I hit send again. Nothing but another error message. Stupid thing. Hitting send a third time was accompanied by a familiar popping sound and a flickering of my phone's screen. After a moment the message was marked as sent though.

"Goddamnit!" Oh right, that popping sound was the computers shutting off. Carl, my assistant boss, did not sound happy. "Fucking computers! Now I gotta' wait for them to start up again, and my order's probably gone to hell. Hey Alex! I need you to fix these computers!"

I poked my head out of the office to look at the tall, skinny, middle-aged man with spiky gray hair. At least he was not yelling while customers were in the store. Again. "What do you want me to do?"

"I dunno.' Just fix them, or something." He glared at me over the frames of his rectangular glasses.

"Yeah, let me get right on that. I'm sure hitting them a few times, or punching a couple buttons, will get the power back on."

"Fuck it, I'm going for a smoke!" came his faint, very angry call from the back.

I sighed and sat back down in my chair. The computers had already come back on, though it would take a few minutes for them to run through their reboot process. And would you look at that; while 'talking' with my coworker my phone and found another message from my mysterious texter.

It's at the castle, silly. You know, my birthday? The one you should already have presents for?

Yeah, okay. I should have expected role play. And since the weekend was only three days away I would not be surprised if this person's house was being decorated as a mock up of Canterlot's Royal Palace as we speak. Seriously, this was too much. And they hadn't figured out that I wasn't who they thought I was, so I just kept playing along.

What castle is that again?

This time my phone sent it on the first try, and without crashing the computers. Go figure. I had not even managed to get through one cookie before the next message arrived. It made me wonder what was going on for the other person. Were they having as much trouble with the solar flare as I was? They didn't seem to be since their messages came right back.

Wait, you're not Sea Breeze! Who is this? My pad just says unknown.

Busted. And they are even naming their friends pony-style. This fan was only getting worse. Well, there was nothing left to do but mess with them. Thanks to someone's convenient translator I sent back the following:

Englebert Humperdink. Who are you?

My name is actually Alexander Stepanowski, but why would I send my real name when I could be stupid? Only an idiot would send their real information to a complete stranger anyway.

And with that it was time to get back to work.

The afternoon was a lot more agreeable than the morning. Customers were fewer, so there were not as many inane questions. After getting some food in me I certainly felt less grumpy - more myself really. It somehow seemed like the solar flare was less disruptive as well. Oh, it still kicked the computers in the teeth a couple of times, but the radio DJs were sympathizing on air with us listeners, and that did help a little. Or at least they did when the radio was working.

I found myself taking frequent, short breaks to check my phone between customers or while waiting for something to finish in the shakers. As weirded-out as I was by my mysterious companion, the conversation was at least entertaining. I probably should have simply been posting in English, rather than using the translator. I am not sure why I didn't. Perhaps they would have broken character if I hadn't engaged them in their own little world.

After giving 'my name' I got this back:

What kind of name is that? Really, who are you?

It's a perfectly good name. Are you making fun of my name?!

Well, I had picked the funniest name I could think of. I just hope the real Engelbert wouldn't mind.

That's not a proper pony name! I don't know who you are, or how you got on this network, but I want you to tell me who you are now!

Oh, now they were getting angry. Could they not see the huge joke? The elephant in the room? This whole conversation was just a harmless electronic fuck up, and now they were getting bent all out of shape.

I am the duck that flaps in the night... Like a speeding freight train I found that I could not stop. It was just one of those things where you probably should take a step back, assess the situation, and then pick a better course. But this was also one of the most delusional people I had ever encountered. Talking in a made up language, renaming themselves (I assumed) and their friends, refusing to break character, and just generally living in a fantasy. How could anyone not poke at them?

This is the castle's private network and you are clearly not authorized to access it! Since you somehow have access, you must realize that I am one of your princesses! You would do well to tell me who you are!

That one I received while waiting for a custom paint sample to dry. I facepalmed hard enough that seismologists in China were probably wondering what had happened to the United States East Coast. I pulled my hand down my face in exasperation. She - I was going to call her that because it was easier - was religiously roleplaying as one of Equestria's Princesses. She could have picked a more reasonable pony to impersonate, but no, she chose one of the three alicorns. I was dealing with one of those fans. Did she like red and black as well, perhaps?

While I should not be surprised that she did not get the reference, she was probably too young after all, there was no reason that she should have completely ignored that amount of off-the-wall idiocy. I was clearly being silly. Who, in their right mind, would take this whole thing seriously. Oh wait. I don't know what came over me then. Perhaps my shitty morning was just rearing its ugly head one last time.

Just because your daddy calls you "his little princess" does not make you one. Well, I have to get back to work. ttyl!

So I do dabble in 'twitspeak.' Whatever.

And I swear that I am not normally that mean. I have even been accused of being too nice. But you know what, I was having a bad day, and if this person completely refuses to engage in reality then I had nothing better to say.

"No personal calls!" I rolled my eyes as my boss rounded the corner and I slipped my phone back in my pocket.

"Hey Dave, who was that you were talking to for about an hour this morning?"

"Uh... My wife? Hey, that was only five minutes." He waved a piece of paper under my nose. "She's been dealing with her sick aunt and won't leave me alone. She just can't deal with the whole situation, and wants me there. You're lucky I didn't leave early." Carl snorted from the other end of the counter, but said nothing else. Five minutes, my ass!

I was dreading the coming lecture about how terrible and stressful Dave's life was. A sick aunt would probably transition in to how his wife was insufferable, his kids were out to give him an aneurism, and that would eventually lead back to how much crap he had to put up with here at work. All that work being too much for him and oh so stressful. I was loathe to listen to it again, so I grabbed the paper instead.

"...and so she wants to go visit next weekend when my brothers can also..." He finally noticed that I was holding the paper he recently had. "Oh yeah. I almost forgot. I need you to make that for tomorrow morning."

Thank God for an interruption. As my boss squeezed between me and the counter to go bother Carl about something I set the order down and went back to the one I was already working on. I heard my phone go off again and checked it quickly. More messages from unknown. I put it back since I really did have work to do and didn't want to deal with her at the moment.

If there is one good thing about working in a paint store it is that keeping the place running both takes plenty of time and it will keep you in shape. My boss may be determined to disprove that, but when you are lifting and moving anywhere from twelve to seventy five pounds at a time, dozens of times per day, calories just do not stick. There is quite a bit of walking as well; surprisingly little time is spent standing at the counter waiting on customers. So I occupied myself stocking, shelving, organizing, and generally trying to avoid the more odious customers. It could only work so well, especially after my boss and assistant boss went home for the day.

That is how I found myself spending half an hour explaining to an elderly and stooped man exactly what the differences were between the different shine levels in paint. Yay. It was an exciting way to end the day, but with just a few minutes left in the store I plopped myself back in my boss' comfy chair and brought my phone back out. A half a dozen messages from unknown had arrived over the afternoon, and she was definitely angry. Most of them dealt with her denial that I would be able to ignore her, though one vented frustration with the difficulties of messaging me. It seems she also had some trouble with the flare after all.

Her last message had me rolling my eyes though. She threatened me with the Royal Guard if I did not give myself up and apologize! Yes, whoever you are, because threatening me is going to make me want to share any of my information with you. Being that kind of stupid would be a great way for me to be on the receiving end of 'Very Bad Things.' Instead I typed out a message explaining that neither of us knew who the other was, and I had to go home, so we should just drop it. And of course my phone rejected it with the same error message about being unable to find the recipient. Unwilling to wait at the store over this, I closed up and got out of there.

The drive home should have been a pleasant one. It was a warm-ish June evening and mostly clear. Once I got out of town and on to the main highway I alternated between enjoying the moonrise and tapping along with a song on the radio. I engaged in a stupid little habit that I had allowed myself, and thanked Luna for the pretty sight. I was a fan after all.

Unfortunately my ugly day was not at an end, and while thinking about the stupidity of a particular fan I found my way in to the tail end of a line of cars. Rather than just stranded cars, someone had had an actual accident and managed to block the entirety of my side of the highway. It took the better part of an hour of grumbling and cursing to get past. I should have just made a U-turn and taken the back roads, and it meant that by the time I reached home I was again more than a bit pissed.

I stomped through the front door of my ground floor two bedroom apartment, shucked my shoes, and stepped in to the kitchen area to whip up something quick. Craig, my roommate, was sitting on the couch that was on the other side of the open space between the kitchen island and the far wall of the living area, his legs stretched toward the TV. He gave me a questioning look, but went back to watching the game. I fed Dimble and set some Mac 'n Cheese to cook before taking the other side of the couch.

My roommate Craig, a tall and overly skinny guy with a penchant for wearing whatever was cleanest in his room, is a DJ and meant that most of the time he did not worry much about his appearance. It was a perfect fit for him. And being a DJ for a rock station - the one I liked in fact - it's not like he had high standards to achieve. From his jeans, open flannel shirt, scruffy beard, ratty hat, and unruly hair everything about him was casual. A casual that worked. His big thing was women, and he was good with them. His brand of casual was all about getting women. Whichever and as many as he could, so he was the polar opposite of me. I had never before seen a woman melt from a simple smile until I saw him work a bar once. He might not be the smartest cookie in the jar, but he never seemed to do the wrong thing.

That was why I tossed my phone on his lap. "Here, you can play with her for a while." Yeah, I know, it was mean of me to vent my anger by giving 'unknown' to Craig.

"Huh?" Apparently he had misplaced his usual eloquence. You would think a DJ could come up with better.

"Some girl texted me by mistake. I messed with her a little and now she won't leave me alone. She's some super fan of My Little Pony, so you'll have a field day." Craig already knew about me being a fan, so he at least knew of the show. He liked ribbing me about it being the reason I had no girlfriend. I'm pretty sure it had more to do with women being more attracted to him than to me.

"Field day? Oh, you mean I'll have fun with her? She's that big of a nut then, huh?" he said, tapping my phone on and looking it over.

"Yup." I nodded, looking at the game on the TV. It was college football, so I had no real interest.

"Is she hot?"

"Probably not. She's either a dude, or under age. Take your pick. But she's completely committed to the act."

"What the hell is this crap? Some kind of Yiddish?"

"Yiddish? Really? There's no way you even know what Yiddish is." I quickly showed him the translator. "No, it's 'Equestrian.' Some fan invented a whole language for the show."

"Woah. Okay. So she's a huge nut. Oh, and angry." he smiled. Not the win-over-your-girl smile, but a this-shit-is-hilarious one.

"Yup." I repeated.

"Dude, did you see the last message?" he turned my phone toward me.

"Nope."

The Royal Guard are aware that you broke in to the castle's network and are tracing your messages. I suggest you give yourself up before they have to come get you.

Well, I'll give her this: she was really selling the act. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss the Arabic states as her home. They probably had more than their fair share of uptight, delusional, overly-pampered princesses. Which made me wonder whether I might have pissed off one of the ruling royals of an ally of the United States. It seemed unlikely, but I could not help but feel some trepidation. And I did feel a little bad for 'unknown' since she didn't seem to know any better.

Then I remembered how stupid the whole conversation was. Maybe I really was too considerate at times.

"Well, have fun with her. Try to keep it P G thirteen though. You can do that, right?" I fixed my roommate with a stare.

"Hey, I work on the radio. You can't say shit there or you get fired."

"Right." I got back up as Craig sat up a bit, bent himself over my phone, and began typing away. My noodles were calling, and as much as it was boring to wait for water to boil, I really didn't care about the game on TV. Fortunately my grumbling stomach didn't have to wait long since Mac 'n Cheese with hotdog slices was a pretty quick meal. I did have to explain to Craig how the flare made messaging 'unknown' not always work. In response he cursed the Sun for screwing everything up. He's pretty funny if you ask me.

With food in hand I retreated down the short hallway off the living area, set up shop on my computer desk in my room, and called up World of Warcraft. I could either play that or browse more pony stuff, but after my day I really wanted to squash some newbies. Dimble followed me in and claimed my bed, like he always did; taking up nearly half of it. The gray-and-black tabby was not actually that big, but he still acted like it, and he could sprawl with the best of them. I could occasionally hear Craig laugh as I hopped from battleground to battleground in the game and slowly worked my way through my meal. At one point I swear he was hooting, though that may have been at the TV. I hoped it was. I did not want him sexting on my phone. Especially not with crazy-lady.

I must have been at my computer for an hour before I noticed that my plate was empty and getting crusty. So I finished the current round and took my dishes back to the kitchen. Craig was back to sitting stretched out with his feet toward the TV.

"So, what do you think?" I asked.

"Eh. Murtold was a bad pick. They should have left him for someone else to draft. He averages like three fumbles a game." Craig shrugged.

"No, I meant the crazy girl on my phone."

"Oh, her. I got her to shut up like fifteen minutes ago." he tossed my phone at me. Fortunately I caught it or I would have had to hurt him. I simply glared death and dismemberment at him instead.

"What?" he stared back blankly.

"Don't throw my brand new phone around."

"Right." And then we both went back to what we were doing. For me that was not my computer; it meant opening my phone and calling up the conversation with 'unknown.' Craig, had tried texting her in English, but had given in to translating to Equestrian when she continued to refuse to give up her game. I was not sure whether to be impressed or appalled. More of the latter, really.

I was curious to see what Craig had been up to, and that meant I had to do some more translating. And yeah, 'unknown' was angry. Over the last hour Craig had slowly but surely teased her in to a frenzy with witty comebacks to everything she sent. As funny as reading his messages was, it was a bit painful to read back through the conversation. Perhaps we had pushed her so far that she couldn't longer see the obvious hilarity. Her final message was really just an angry tirade.

You inconsiderate, colicky, friendless, patchy, blank-flanked, disharmonious mule! This conversation is over!

Craig's response was... brilliant.

your mom's a blankflanked disharmonius mule.

I burst out laughing. You don't often get a legitimate chance to come back like that, and of course Craig pulled it off. I couldn't help myself. It was the funniest thing I had read in a long time.

"Like that?" Craig was looking at me with an amused smile.

"Fucking brilliant, dude."

"Yeah. But then she got all quiet. It was boring, and I'm not gonna' keep sending texts like some whipped boyfriend."

"Uh huh. I feel kinda' bad though. She just doesn't get it." I looked at my phone, debating whether or not to do anything about the conversation.

"Just leave it." Craig said, stretching and looking back at the game. "You're too soft. If she doesn't get it, then she doesn't get it. It's not your fault."

Except that it kind of was. And I felt bad. It is just who I am. That made up my mind; I had been angry earlier, but now I wasn't. I slid open the keyboard and began typing another message. Hopefully my phone would let this one through just fine.

Hey. I want to apologize. My friend and I have been having some fun at your

That was as far as I got when I noticed that my phone was glowing. Not glowing as in the lights that were under the keyboard, and not from the screen either. The entire thing was surrounded in a growing pale yellow aura as though the sun were behind it and casting beams of light all around the edges.

"Oh shit!"

I let go and jumped away, the phone dropping to the floor. I knew what I was doing, and I wanted to prevent it from crashing in to the ground, but with that strange glow, despite not having hurt me, there was no way that I was going to grab for it. After it thumped on the carpet I stood over it, staring down and a little glad that it did not seem broken. And I could see the glow getting brighter. My phone was lying there on the floor with a halo of sunshafts radiating out from behind it! Weird did not begin to describe it; it made no sense!

"Dude...?" I heard Craig's high-pitched call from the couch. His worried voice was like a switch and I burst in to motion, jumping halfway across the room. He was standing now, staring at my phone, and as I came to a stop next to him he raised his hand and pointed at it.

"What...?" His way with words amazed me again.

"I don't know!" I nearly shouted.

The glow on my phone held steady, but I noticed that the air above it seemed to be shifting. Like a heat mirage, the area several feet above the floor shimmered and warped, causing the wall and hall entryway on that side of the room to take on a slightly refracted look. I had always liked looking at that kind of effect, but this was different. This was too close to me, too confined, and much too organized of an effect to be a simple mirage. And then it shifted.

The warping of the air did what I can only describe as a small loop of the area before settling in the hall entryway about three feet off the ground. It no longer hovered directly over my phone, though the small gadget still glowed. After settling in one spot, the shimmer intensified and the air seemed to roll back from the area. It was not simply the air leaving the area - I would not have been able to see that - it was more like the sci fi renderings of how the very fabric of reality bends around a black hole. My brain shut down and I stared in unashamed horror as a black hole manifested in my living room.

Then, without warning, the whole distortion collapsed back in on itself with a loud thumping noise and in the next instant there was a creature in its place. It had four long legs ending in hooves that were colored the same golden yellow of its slim body, a graceful neck, a round face with a short muzzle, and a vibrant light-blue-on-dark-blue mane that spilled down from its neck in a series of neat waves. I was staring at a pony. An honest-to-God, real life, My Little Pony pony. I blinked and my mouth fell open.

Then I started picking up the details as my eyes flicked back and forth, trying to digest what I was seeing. I could vaguely see a tail, colored and styled similarly to the mane, there were feathers laid neatly along both of its sides, a small silvery torc around the base of its neck, a long horn rising from its forehead with grooves that wound about it, and a similar silver-colored circlet resting atop its head. Its face and overall frame were fine-boned and defined by gentle curves; if Friendship is Magic was at all accurate, then I was sure this was a female pony. With the feathered wings, horn, and the regalia, it was clear that she was an alicorn, and likely royalty.

Given the messages on my phone, I was willing to bet that she was just a little bit upset with me right now. It took barely a moment to register everything and figure out that I was pretty well fucked.

I was distracted from my life flashing before my eyes by another kind of flash. A pink one. As the glowing around her horn and my phone winked out a shiny rectangular pink object, which I just now noticed, fell out of the air before her and landed on the carpet. It looked a lot like an iPad, actually. I was not sure what to make of this object, and after a moment I looked back at the face of my would-be executioner.

It was then I noticed I could not see her eyes. She had them scrunched closed. Before my poor brain could wonder at that particular piece of information - it was overloaded as is - the pony in my hall entryway opened her mouth and gave a piteous moaning whine. She wobbled a bit on her hooves, her face contorting in to a rictus of pain. The wobble quickly proved disastrous as the faux stone linoleum tiles of the hallway caused her hind hooves slip out from under her and pitch her sideways.

As much as I might have wanted to stop the unfolding horror, I was too far and there was just no time. It was like a slow motion movie as she toppled over and slightly backwards into the hallway. I flinched as her head slammed against the casing before slipping down and rebounding off the floor. Her hooves clattered against the wall in the hall as her body thudded against the floor, her legs folding up against her in the confined space. Her whole body went limp and her wings slowly slid to half-splaying about her.

I could do nothing more than stare and cringe at the sight before me. There was a pony in my apartment. She looked completely knocked out. And was that...? Yes, there was red beginning to stain her yellow coat on the side of her head that had hit the casing and floor. Great, now she was bleeding too! If I had had any chance to making it out of this situation peacefully it had now been thoroughly squashed. I doubt even Celestia, if she existed, would show much leniency after hearing how I had mauled one of her subjects.

Or maybe this was one of Celestia's family. Yeah, my brain was not helping.

Then, with flawless eloquence and a masterful grasp of the gravity of the situation, Craig turned to me and summed up both our thoughts in a single sage sentence.

"Dude, your phone just shit out a pony!"

Author's Notes:

Oh God, don't read below this line!

I'm warning you!

Seriously, you don't want to do this!

Chapter 1 original draft -

“Will there be anything else?”

I had my eyes fixed on the computer screen in front of me, the blues, tans and reds of the second-to-last menu blurring together in to a solid mass. I studiously feigned an interest in it that was well beyond my mind’s actual capability. In reality I wanted nothing more than to smash my forehead in to the computer, hopefully knocking myself completely oblivious in the process. It wasn’t that I hated my job per say, I just found myself occasionally wishing that I could pull a katana out of my pants pocket with which to behead certain odious customers, and through that act steal their unholy power. I reminded myself – again – that such a thing would not garner me ultimate power. If the average intelligence of my customers was anything to go by it would just give me something messy and incurable.

Oh, and the police probably don’t take kindly to random, though totally justified, beheadings. That could be a problem. I would have to think about…

“No, that should be all for today. Thanks!”

This woman was entirely too chipper for my taste. But that was simply another very familiar trait of the ungodly horror standing across the counter from me.

“You’ve been a big help! I really appreciate it!”

I nodded, still studying the computer screen as though it held some piece of information that would be vital within the next few minutes for my continued existence. Perhaps it did. I could only maintain the friendly smile plastered below my nose for so long. That screen was artificial heart and lungs to said smile because it distracted my brain from finally getting around to pulling the plug. I didn’t want to seem unfriendly to the customer after all.

The screen flickered as I hit a button and I read the nice lady her total. I looked up and saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Finally! She would hand me her payment, I would produce a receipt, and then we would part ways, hopefully to never see each other again. Instead, the harridan produced a check book and scrounged around my counter for a pen.

I did what I could to wait patiently, desperately shoring up the smile that was the bulwark keeping my hatred from showing. I thought of daisies and warm sunny days without a care. I thought about logging in to World of Warcraft and taking down undergeared newbies with wanton abandon. I thought about last year’s trip to the Great Lakes and the frigid water that… Never mind. At least I was distracting myself long enough for her to…

“Who do I make this out to?”

My brain faceplanted against the inside of my skull so hard I’m sure that seismometers in China were wondering what had just happened to the American East coast.

With my brain fully out of commission my body went in to autopilot. The smile remained, but my eyes likely held a dejected lifelessness. Perhaps this was how the zombie apocalypse began; one man behind a counter, his psyche obliterated by the endless inanity of modern society. Chasing her down while moaning ‘brains’ made for a pretty picture, and I felt the slightest twinge of pleasure in an otherwise depressing emotional void. I pointed over my shoulder to the giant sign we had hanging on the wall over the counter. For the love of God, it was right in front of her in bold, shiny letters. I fully expected her to ask me how to spell it...

She began to scribble instead. I breathed a sigh of relief and began searching among the remains of my brain for some semblance of personality. I looked down as the screen flickered again. The colors fuzzed, blended, and then the entire thing shifted sideways. The defibrillation I was trying on my brain failed as everything I had accomplished over the last fifteen minutes disappeared in to an electronic black hole.

I was going to scream. I could feel it in the back of my throat clawing its way out from my gut. I had just spent the better part of my morning discussing the intricate details of this lady's purchase while she waited for me to make up her mind for her. Now I would have to spend even more time talking to her; putting on a happy face and a pleasant tone just so she would not know how much I wished to be doing anything else. With my fingers carving grooves in to my palms I took several slow breaths

The Horror! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!!!!