The collision had sent many of the passengers flying, their bones jarred and minds shaken. The plane had been reverted to a junkyard pile of twisted metal near the nose, and its cabin was burst at the belly where it had pounded against the grassy clearing. The sixteen adventurers scattered in the mangled metal remains and on the nearly iridescent green grass they were sprawled across.

Observer had hit his head on the plane ceiling pretty hard before falling back into his seat with a bullet-speeded jolt. His vision was still swimming as he tottered to his legs through the clearing cloud of mingled dust and fog.

“Is everybody okay?” He shouted through the thick smoke, but couldn’t hear it himself through the loud annoying ringing in his eardrums. “Anybody?”

Observer turned on his weak legs looking for somebody to come forward, praying to God, or Celestia, or whoever else might be listening that he wasn’t the only one walking from this.

He thought he heard movement to his left and swung around facing only an unbroken fog, and through it, he saw nothing, straining his ears for some kind of sound.

Benjamin was staring in awe at the sight of his hands. He had dropped his fez in the crash, picked it up, and then what he saw had no explanation. “I’m going crazy,” he kept muttering to himself. “I’m going crazy.”

His hands were… flat, they were hard. They were solid and dark. They were, well… they were hooves.

He wanted to scream, to shout, to say something. But all Ben could manage to do was laugh. Not only had he survived a death-defying plane crash, but once emerged, he was a pony.

He struggled to get on all fours. Having an extra pair of legs and losing a pair of arms was quite the change to get used to. Bending one knee and then the other was something completely new to him, and walking, once so basic, had to be completely relearned. Moving his legs in this new way was so out of sync with every instinct in his body, and he giggled to himself as his muscles fit into this new system of movement, like fitting into a new shoe. He wobbled his knees for a moment, and lost balance, his new body plopping to the floor.

The body was blue, a deep blue that fit right in with the impending gloom surrounding the crash sight. He was shaking, not knowing where they were, and he sat on the moist ground, his blue flank and dark brown tail soaked with mud. He had—were those wings?—stuck to the side of his body. Through the mud, he saw a symbol of crossing lines on the side of what used to be his back thigh. As he peered closer, he realized it to be his cutie mark, the image of the number 4.

“The hell does that mean?” he muttered to himself, trying once again, to rise out of the mud. He peered through the fog, looking for anyone, or if they had reached the same fate as him, anypony. He heard a yelp of fear and stared off into the direction, where he could only make out a dark shape.

Carlos was staring at what were once his hands, mouth agape in terror.

“MY HANDS! MY HANDS! SOMEONE’S CUT OFF MY HANDS! I’m going to die of blood loss! Oh my Luna! Holy bucking mother of Celestia! I’M GOING TO BLEED TO DEATH! Oh Luna, Why is there no blood! Oh no, I’ve already RAN OUT OF BLOOD! Tell my mother I love her…and she needs to stop cooking; she’s going to poison someone one day! Goodbye cruel world! Oh, look at my hands… they’re… they’re… hard. They’re… hooves? Um… Oh. I’m a pony… Well… That makes relatively more sense.”

Brony Pony’s blazing red coat gleamed in the few splatters of sunlight streaming through the coverage of leaves above them. His mane and tail were a pure obsidian, the exact same as when he had been a human.  A horn protruded through his mane on his forehead and his eyes twinkled with the realization of the dream come true. A pony, he thought to himself, numbly and dumbly. The shock was almost too much, but not nearly as much as the overwhelming excitement boiling over inside. “I’m a pony!” Carlos screamed, bouncing in place in a giggling fit. He leapt to his feet immediately; for him, the transition from two feet to four hooves was effortless. In fact, if anything, he felt more like himself like ever before.

He spotted the navy blue pegasus with a ruffled brown mane just feet away from him, his image faded in the fog. “Oh my Luna, Oh my Luna! My first pony encounter!” He cleared his throat and slowly approached the stallion. Okay, BP, he thought to himself, his smile so large it verged on the creepy side, teeth taking up the majority of his new face. Don’t overwhelm him, just keep calm, stay cool. It’s only the most awesome thing in the universe. Be chill about it.

Ben yelped as the glaring red pony leaped on his back in a vice gripped hug, shouting, “Oh my Luna! My first pony friend! I’m Carlos. But you can just call me Brony Pony. Or just Brony! Or just BP! It might as well be BF, though, ‘cause we’re gonna be BEST FRIENDS, and this is gonna be the most magicky-perfecty-wonderfultastic friendship EVER! And I’m going to always be there for you and never let you down and love you FOREVER!... So what’s your name?”

Ben pushed the bubbly brony off his back with a struggle, the hug probably more of a hassle to escape than the grip of a boa constrictor. “It’s me, BP. It’s Ben. God, I’m happy to see you’re okay, too, BP, but you might want to, I dunno, NOT strangle the ponies on sight!”

But BP was already out of ear’s reach, leaping through the fog, and his cries of “I’m a pony! Ben’s a pony! Pony, pony, pony!” echoed through the gloom.

The shouts were heard by Observer, who stared blindly at the thick fog surrounding him.

“Brony Pony? Is that you? Ben? Anyone? Can you—” Did BP just say he was a pony?!

He had heard the words, but their meaning only just barely registered. And a thought pushed its way through the worries and curiosities of him buzzing mind. No… it can’t be…

He didn’t feel his legs move across the mud as the shock set in—it seemed as though he was floating through the fog in an astonished daze. Before he looked up at the plane window, he knew what he was going to see.

Instead of the Michigander with skin so pale it probably tanned in front of the television, Observer saw in his reflection a grey unicorn with blue eyes, dark and deep and intense with a mix of amazement and fear. Around his horn, his brown and gold mane grew out long and shaggy. The cheesy and obnoxious Hawaiian shirt hung loosely over his pony frame. “Well, shit.”

His head moved to the left. So did the unicorn. He lifted a hand. A hoof entered the image. Observer took a gulp and looked behind him at his new body. He saw his flanks, where the image of two overlapping eyes with a shared pupil stood out in white against his gray fur. He didn’t understand how this had happened, how it was possible. His hands, his beloved hands he had once used to bake and pet his dog and beat men to an inch of their lives in bar fights… they were gone, and the replacing horseshoes felt like such a handicap.

Wait a second… “Pig?!”

He looked around the mud for his dog, listening intently for the familiar bark of his best friend.

He leaned closer to the reflection his mind still wouldn’t acknowledge as his own—a whimpering noise could be just barely heard through the inch thick glass.

He ducked back in the hole in the underside of the plane, shouting Pig’s name up and down the aisles. He passed a pony or two, rubbing their heads with hooves they still didn’t know they had, but his mind just overlooked what it knew it couldn’t process, and he ran past them as though they were strangers at a bus stop. He halted at the seat he was sitting in before the crash had thrown him out.

Beneath the seat, shaking in fear, his beloved best friend was curled up, whimpering and cold.

“Oh, Pig.” He reached down, realizing that he was now unable to grab gentle hold of her with the hard hooves, instead settling for rubbing her back. “Pig, it’s me. It’s okay now. Come on out.”

At the sound of her owner’s voice, Pig’s eyes shined and she ventured out, tail wagging with recognition of the pony in front of her, and she glowed with understanding.

As Ob strolled out, Pig at his side, he noticed a dark purple unicorn with a blood red mane and tail sitting where Tenebrae was just minutes before. “I knew this trip was a bad idea”, the unicorn muttered to himself as he gazed into the cracked window next to him. “‘Let’s go to Equestria’, they said. ‘It’ll be fun’, they said”, he grumbled to himself, annoyed with the concept of finding his footing on the unlevel ground when he no longer had feet.

Feet away, a beautiful unicorn, with a lavender mane and light blue coat shook her head as she made her way out of the luggage she had landed in. On her flank was the image of a pen and scroll. A white unicorn with a mane and tail of gray helped her out, muttering something in Latvian. To their left, a golden yellow Unicorn with a clean cut, light blonde mane and was digging, muttering something about needing to find a camera.

From the bathroom, Ob heard the grunts of Sean, who unfortunately had the runs at the time of the crash. “Oh God, it’s everywhere! Aw man, that’s disgusting. Aw, the smell is terrible... Oh God, there’s no more toilet paper! Come on! What the fuck just happened? Did we hit turbulence? And- HOLY FUCKING MOTHER OF SHIT, I’M A PONY!”

                Outside the plane, Matilda lay in the mud, her head in so much pain it seemed to burn.  It was a miracle that she was breathing, being the only one to attempt jump from the plane in time and float safely to Equestria with the parachute she had so conveniently packed, only to be thwarted by Steve and land in a tree before falling in the puddle. Her head felt light, as though someone had bitten a chunk out of it. And something, something alive and moving, was on her back, pinning her face-down in the mud.

Well, hu-frickin’-zzah.

Something was wrong with her hands. She couldn’t feel them. She fought off the instinct to look at them, preparing herself for the image of them being cut off, or crushed completely beneath rubble. Just then, she heard a familiar bark, one that sounded like the cute white dog she had seen before take-off, and the voice of the dog’s creepy owner, calling if anyone needed help. “Over here!” She responded, hardly believing her good luck. “Someone else is here too, but he’s out cold and pinning me down!” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the bushes to her left part, and out trotted a unicorn.

                Oh schizophrenia, you’re wonders never cease to amaze me.

                The unicorn was tall and grey, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

                My subconscious has a very odd sense in fashion.

                Observer heard the girl to his left, and saw the pony on top of her, a pony he couldn’t recognize. But then again, he could barely recognized himself.

“Umm, yeah, not really breathing. A little help here!” Matilda shouted out from the mud.

                As Observer was about to push the pony off of her back, a thought came to him and he stopped. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, his eyes shut tight and he concentrated. A silvery aura surrounded the pony on top of her, and it slowly rose off of her back. Observer felt his energy deplete dramatically Well, he thought, that’s gonna take some practice.

Matilda rose and took a look at him, puzzled. “So… um… imaginary pony. Can you tell me something?”

“Um… sure,” Observer said, staring back, deciding to humor her.

“What’s wrong with my hands?”

“Well”, he said back calmly, as Pig sniffed the unconscious pony on the floor. “You don’t have hands anymore. “

Her face contorted in a grim fear. No, she thought, I was right—they are gone.

He noticed the look on her face and gave a reassuring grin.  “It’s okay... they’re just… have a look for yourself.”

She looked down, noticing that her hands were indeed gone, but there was no blood, no bones, nothing. Just… stubs. Stubs with black material stretched over them, like felt or cotton or…. Fur.

Slowly, she stood up, her legs all shaky… all four of them.

She looked back and realized that there was something even odder than her hands. She had wings. Flaring open above her grey silky tail, was a pair of black wings with light grey inner feathers.  The outer feathers were a darker gray, like her mane and tail. She hesitantly tried flapping them, and they obeyed; the entirety of their existence was so alien to her, that it didn’t match up in her mind that it was HER doing it. She was a pegasus. A full-fledged pegasus, wings and all.

“So… you really are the creepy guy with the dog?”

Observer rolled his eyes. “Yep.”

“Did this happen to everyone? Is… is Steve okay?”

“As far as I could tell, yup, we’re all ponies now. As for Steve, we’ve yet to find him…. Now… who’s this fellow?”

Stumbling, Matilda got closer to the pony on the ground, and just about had a heart attack.

Before her lay a light gray earth pony with a white stripe running through his black mane. He was tall with a bushy black tail, wearing a specially tailored vest. Stitches ran across the route of his throat, and on his flank was the picture of a razor blade. A cutie mark that signified, very well, his special ability.

The pony was Tod. She didn’t know how it was possible, but it was. She had turned into a pegasus, and her imaginary friend was now not so imaginary.

She walked up to him and shook him gently. “Tod? Come on, wake up.”

Observer gave her a strange look. “Todd? I don’t remember a Todd being with us..”

“You wouldn’t. But he was there the whole time. None of you could see him then…but you can now. Tod was my imaginary friend back home. I don’t know how, but now he’s real.” I explained.

“Hold on a moment….you’re telling me that this pony-“

“Tod.” she interrupted. “His name is Tod. With only one D.”

“-that Tod used to be just a figment of your imagination? And now he’s real?”

“Yep, God help you all.”

Tod groaned and twitched. Matilda backed up. Personal experience taught her that he was going to be one angry pony when he got up. His dark brown eyes slowly slid open, and he stared up at them blankly for a second.

Then, as she predicted, he sprung to his feet with a howl that would send all but the bravest of men running. He pulled out his razor blade from the secret pocket he kept it in and swung at the pegasus and unicorn. The white dog ran behind its ponified owner, whimpering. The blade hissed through the air, and Matilda and Observer barely leapt out of the way in time.

“BACK!” he roared. Surprisingly, his deep cockney accent that she knew and loved now sounded pretty damn scary. “GET BACK!”

They backed up as far as they could. He followed suit, his razor clutched tightly in his teeth.

“Who are you!?” he growled. “Where’s Matilda?”

“Right here.” The Observer said, bravely, gesturing to Matilda. “Now, could you please drop the sharp pointy thing and chill the fuck out?”

Tod’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not Matilda, you blithering idiot. Matilda’s a human! That’s a pegasus!”

He advanced, eyes narrowed into cold, heartless slits. Daddy pony has come out to play, she thought. And he thinks we've hurt his little filly.

“Tod, it’s me! I’m Matilda, honest! Here, look at my shirt!” She stretched the shirt that hung off her pony form and stretched it out so he could see it. Sure enough he recognized it. That plus the sound of her voice made it obvious that she wasn’t lying. He dropped his blade, completely shocked. “Ma-Mattie? That’s really you?”

She grumbled at the fact that he had used that embarrassing nickname in front of someone she barely knew but said “Yep. It’s me. Don’t bother asking what happened; I’m just as clueless as you are. And that statement also includes your new body.”

He looked confused. “My new body?” He looked himself over. “What’s so new about it? Looks the same to me…”

“Well, um….our friend here—”

“Observer.” He interrupted.

“Observer can see you too.”

There was a very pregnant pause as Tod considered what was just said. Then he grinned. It wasn’t his usual “I’m going to kill you and use your skull as a urinal” smile. This one really was happy. He winked at Matilda. “Finally, someone let me out of my cage.”

Observer watched the friends hug and catch up. Indeed it was odd; this whole thing was odd. It made no sense. He stared at the terrifying pony hugging the pegasus. Had she really thought him up? What kind of imagination did she have?!

He stared at them in a trance that was broken by the hopeless cries of a young girl.

“Reuben! Reuben, wake up! Come on!”

Observer looked to his right and through the fog, saw the midnight-blue mare leaning over the black stallion, fear in her golden eyes, and tears dripping into her gold and purple mane. “Reuben, please!”

The black unicorn lay on the floor, unconscious and obviously injured. His waist appeared bent oddly and he lay completely limp. His purple and gray mane rubbed against the dirt as the mare shook him frantically, desperate for him to wake up.

Observer raced to the mare’s side. “Glitternight?”

Hana glanced up at the sound of her nickname. She wasn’t just scared; she was running on pure terror right now. The fact that she was a pony didn’t even remotely bother her. She was shaking her boyfriend with her forehooves, as though they had always been there. All she worried about at the moment was if the man she loved, the pony she loved, was okay.

“What happened?” Observer asked, avoiding the cold fear in her eyes.

“During the crash, he threw himself on top of me, it was like the wall was caving in where we were sitting… it was going to crush me, but he jumped and… I just couldn’t get my seatbelt off in time, it’s my fault… I’m sorry… sorry….” Her voice trailed off in quiet apologies and self-blame, as she cried shamelessly into her hooves. She didn’t understand how she could have let this happen. Hana had a way of pushing every bit of blame on herself, even when it had nothing to do with her. But this time… she would rather be crushed, be dead, than be alive with Reuben hurt the way he was. “He… his breathing… it’s….” Unable to go on, she held his hoof with a tight grip, fighting to hold back the sobs.

Observer leaned over the stallion and heard the breaths, uneven and labored.

“Omega? Come on, kid, wake up.”

Omega turned a little, but didn’t yet regain consciousness.

“He’s alive, but how hard did he hit his head?”

“It wasn’t just his head,” she muttered, not taking her eyes off the way her boyfriend’s chest struggled to rise and fall. “His whole body hit the ceiling and then he just...” She shook her head trying to shake the memory out

.

Just then, Omega muttered something, slowly coming back to the world of the living.

“Hana?” he muttered quietly, turning his head and groaning in pain.

“Reuben! Thank God!”

He opened his violet eyes carefully and slowly, and blinked a few times at the sight of his girlfriend’s new body.

“Hana? Is that you?”

“Yeah.” She smiled through the tears as he held her hoof tighter in his own.

“You… you’re a pony.”

“Yeah, I know. Reuben, you hit your head really hard…”

He stared at his hooves. “… I… I’m a pony too.”

He said it numbly, shock rendering him void of emotion.

“Yes, Reuben, we know.”

“You scared your girl nearly to death, Omega.” Observer smiled a little.

“Reuben, are you alright?” She was on the edge of sobbing uncontrollably.

He blinked twice and then looked Glitternight square in the eye. “Woman, please! I’m a fucking pony! I’ve never been better!”

He laughed before shuddering as pain enveloped his chest.

“Reuben?!” Her golden eyes grew wide. “Reuben, stay still!” She pressed a hoof gently against his chest, against a rib, and he convulsed in pain.

“It’s his ribs, he probably broke a few of them.” Observer pushed down on Omega’s shoulder as he tried to lift himself up, jaw clenched in pain.

“Omega, don’t get up.”

“I can walk,” he groaned stubbornly, fighting to rise against the broken bones.

“No you can’t!” She looked at him with such a gaze of sadness that he was defeated. He lay back down against the mud and looked at her with a smile.

“Okay”, he muttered.

Observer turned to Hana, who avoided his gaze. “We’re going to need to carry him.”

She nodded, the tears dripping off her muzzle into Reuben’s mane. “You ready, Love?” she asked him, shakily.

“Yeah. How bad could it be?”

That question was answered as Glitternight lifted him carefully and every bone in his chest screamed in protest with pain. “Agh! Shit! Fuck! Shit’n’Fuck!”

She lay him back down immediately and he strained to control his breaths; the bigger they were, the more they hurt. She looked at her hoof and an instinct took over. An instinct she didn’t know of or understand. Gently, with a touch light as a feather, she ran her hand over the bruises she knew to be on Omega’s black hide. Her hoof glowed with a golden gleam and he relaxed as she pressed against the painful broken bones. His breathing evened out, and while she didn’t understand it, she knew that somehow, she had healed him; or at least, she had stifled the pain.

Reuben was rather large, about the size of Big Mac in pony terms, and his weight was a struggle for Hana to support. She held him up, allowing him to lean most of her weight on her, and pushed him along as he fought against the pain to walk.

Observer noticed the struggle for both of them, and ran to Omega’s other side, and closed his eyes shut. Just… just focus, he thought to himself.

Like before, the silvery aura surrounded his horn, and surrounded Reuben. He couldn’t take all the weight, but his magic held Reuben enough to help Hana out.

Just a few feet away, Matthew was contemplating what had just happened to change not only the world they were in, but his species as well. He stared into the pool of water. If not for the sounds of the other passengers crying and laughing, he would think this was some insane dream. But it wasn’t. He had opened his eyes near the remains of the plane, collapsed next to the body of a green mare. Matt seemed to have been catapulted by the crash. The mare next to him was green, very pretty, very dead, and vaguely familiar. She lay in an equally familiar bush of blue flowers, which Matt barely recalled, as though he had seen this once upon a dream.

He peered in the water. A black and green Changeling stared back at him, eyes open wide with astonishment. Matt yelped and threw himself from the pool in fear. This can’t be happening, he thought to himself. This can’t be happening.

As he began to slowly comprehend what had happened to himself, a thought came to him. “Steve?”

He shouted his friend’s name into the distance. “Stephen, where are you? Suke? Steve?!”

His eyes strolled down to the body of the green mare with cerulean in its mane, the same blue as the flowers in the bush.

Matthew’s eyes grew wide with realization.

“Poison Joke.”

He ran next to the mare he now knew to be his friend, or what was left of him.

“Stephen? Oh my God! Steve! No! No!”

Matthew leaned before his best friend. It was tragic- the first time Stephen had ever truly decided to live, he dies. And with female genitalia for Christ’s sake!

He went down the thorned pathway of memories with his friend (most of which consisted of drunken shenanigans) and tears came to his eyes.

“It’s so sad.” He muttered to himself, the sobs now overwhelming his usually calm demeanor. “Why God, why? He was still a virgin!”

At that exact second, as though the word “virgin” was sleeping beauty’s kiss, the mare burst to life, panting.

Matt screamed, walking backwards away from the pony. No, he thought to himself, as the mare rose to its feet. She was dead. I saw her! She was DEAD!

In his shock, he picked up a rather large rock in his forehooves and threw it, screaming, “DIE ZOMBIE!”

The mare did a double take at the British accent coming from the changeling, at the voice that she knew so well.

“Matthew?” she shouted incredulously, dodging the rocks he was throwing, and cursing loudly as one hit her front forehoof. “Matthew, is that you? What’s… what’s wrong with my voice?”

“Stephen?” Mathew stopped throwing rocks at the mare, eyes open wide with fear of a zompony apocalypse.

“Yes! It’s me! Is that you, Matt? You look… well… different.”

“I look different?!” Matt laughed and guided his friend to a nearby puddle.

Suke looked in the pool and fell silent, barely breathing in his shock.

He was a pony. No. Not just a pony. A mare. A silky green mare, the shade of baby grass. His mane waved out against his new face, thick and curly, in two colors, a dark brown, and a contrasting bright cerulean blue. He was quite pretty. Dude looks like a lady, he (or she, if you will) thought to himself.

He walked over the pool of water, staring at his underneath parts. It was true. He was female. He analyzed his new genitalia, thinking about how this was the longest period of time ever spent by him staring at a female private—and it was his own.

“Well,” he muttered curiously. “That’s rather odd.” He then ran off screaming in a fit of hysteria.

After Stephen had bolted when he realized his new condition, Matthew felt it was probably best to do the same. Sneaking away whilst everyone else picked themselves up from the plane's wreckage, he went a little further into the forest for a place to sit and think. After stumbling upon a clearing in the forest next to a river Matthew moved closer to the waters edge. He’d already seen his reflection once before just after regaining consciousness but he was now mesmerized by it. What used to be a taller than average guy with a tiny little patch of hair under his bottom lip was now a God knows how tall compared to the average whatever he was without a tiny little patch of hair under his now absent lips. The thing in the reflection staring back was a cross between a stag beetle and a pony.

“Damn” He cursed aloud. “That means Stephen was right, and that rainbow thingy was more than just a rainbow thingy. I hope he’s too traumatized to remember the bet...”

Matthew began to study his reflection a little closer now. He could remember seeing something like this somewhere before. A text book? Documentary? No... that wasn’t it. He flared his wings and studied them.

“They’re all full of holes, what even happened?!” He then noticed that all of his extremities seemed to be full of holes. Something in his mind clicked. He remembered where he’d seen himself before. Why hadn’t he realized sooner, it made sense when you looked at how everyone else had been affected by the blue flowers(That must have been poison joke). He’d been turned into a changeling. The most universally hated creature in the ‘Fictional’ land of Equestria.

Far behind him, where the stumbling passengers were still rising and realizing their fates, he heard a high pitched shout.

“Help!... HELP! ARKY NEEDS HELP, GUYS!”

Nearly all the passengers heard the cry, and they gathered around the nose of the plane, the source of the shout.

A small royal blue pegasus, stood near the tip of the nose, now crumpled like a giant paper pall, steel dents and sharp edges of broken metal disfiguring the once great aircraft.

Ben and BP were there first, followed by a dark brown pegasus with a black mane, who they knew to be Wolfy. Tenebrae made his way out of the plane with Shadowed Rainbow, Quylaa, and (a very smelly) Sean at his heels. Observer and Hana raced there as fast as they could, supporting the wincing Reuben, and Matilda and Tod raced out of the woods to answer the cries for help.

“Silver Sea?” Ben asked as he approached. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I guess you can all tell what happened.”

A few of them nodded silently in response.

“You guys, it’s Tyler,” Silver Sea said quietly, pointing at the crumpled nose of the plane. “He’s… he’s trapped in there! I don’t think he can hear me.”

Ben climbed up, scratching himself on the edge of the twisted metal. “Arky?! Archangel!” He peered through the cracked windscreen, and saw a splatter of blood against the glass, but not much else.  

Observer saw the expression on Ben’s face, and raced up after him, laying Reuben down next to Hana before climbing up and staring through the glass. Brony Pony followed, along with Quylaa and Shadowed, and they all grabbed hold of one of the sharp edges of steel, trying with a painful struggle to bend it just enough to reach in there and grab whatever Tyler had turned into. Observer, Quylaa, and Shadowed all winced, trying to use as much of their physical strength, combined with their unicorn magic, to budge the metal blocking the cockpit entrance. Ben grabbed the metal edge and flew with a newfound struggle—wings were hard to use, and the breeze blew him to the left. He used his wingpower to help along, to move the bent metal.

Slowly, with a creak, it moved back enough for Observer to jump in, and he dragged out Archangel, surprise evident on his face. “Well, if it isn’t the last of our kind?” he muttered, and one moment later, they all knew why.

Tyler had no horn. Or wings. Or horseshoes. He didn’t have hooves or a mane or a silky long tail. He was a human. He was injured almost beyond recognition.

His face was bloodied and bludgeoned, probably against the glass where it had slammed before he slipped into unconsciousness. His nose was bent to the right dramatically, crimson blood pouring from his nostrils. His forehead was scraped, cut and bruised, blackened and blued.

Silver approached his close friend with sadness. “Arky?”

Archangel moaned in pain, groaning muttering something under his breath. “Kayla?...” He muttered it so quietly it was indiscernible.

“Arky, wake up. Come on, Archangel.” Ben shook his shoulder lightly, and Tyler sat up off the ground, roaring in pain.

“AGH!”  He gripped his shoulder in agony, and Ben backed up.

“Archangel, calm down!”

“It… fuck…” Tyler muttered to himself, holding his left shoulder tightly, jaw clenched and eyes watering. Hana stepped forward towards Archangel, knowing what she had to do. She gripped the shoulder he was holding, and he winced. “Trust me,” she muttered with a maternal tone. Her hoof glowed once more and he exhaled as the pain lessened. He laid back, his head swimming, and eyes unfocused in the agony.

“What... what happened?”

“We landed… er—crashed. We’re ponies, Ty. All of us.” Observer answered.

“Wh-Wh-Where…?” Archangel was slipping back to unconsciousness, and he struggled to keep his eyes open.

“We’re in the Everfree,” Thor replied, his Latvian accent still intact.

The white and gray unicorn was already fumbling through the luggage for his sketchbook. He was going to get a drawing of that Poison Joke if it killed him.

“Is everyone… okay? Did you… is everyone… counted for… 17 of us?”

“18 of us,” corrected Matilda.

“But… makes…. no sense…” he muttered through the exhaustion and pain.

“And I’m a pony. Can you tell me how that makes sense?”

He shrugged with his good shoulder and Ben raced to his side to help him up carefully. “So… we… we need to stick together, guys.” Archangel felt delirious, and his head felt so heavy. It throbbed in pain and the scrape burned in the wind.

“Halt! In the name of Celestia!” A couple of white earth ponies approached the group and the twisted chunk of metal that was once the glorious plane. They headed straight for Tyler.

Even in his injured state, he was so easily recognized as the leader, his authoritative demeanor strong, even through the pain.

One of the guards took a gulp and addressed Tyler, nodding and saying curtly, “You have been asked by her Royal Highness Princess Celestia to come with us to the castle. If you so refuse, you will be taken by force.”

Tyler struggled to his feet, Ben and BP helping him up carefully. “Well, folks.” He said, his full height towering above them all. “We got an invitation to accept."

“But let’s get one thing clear…” he reached into his prized jacket retrieving a sleek looking revolver, he pointed it skywards pulling the trigger...

*BANG!*

The guards jumped back in fear of this unknown weapon. The report echoing loudly throughout the woods around them, as Tyler glared menacingly at the guards. One which they returned.

“So help me God, if any harm comes to my passengers, I’ll personally see to it that your brains paint the dirt a lovely fuckin’ shade of red. Do I make myself fuckin’ clear b’ys? Or shall I provide a demonstration...” His bloody thumb pulled the hammer back, eliciting a sharp click as it locked into place.

An older guard stepped forward, his eyes locked with Tyler's.

“There’ll be no need, as no harm shall come to them. Now if you’re done, we’ll be off.”

“Then lets go...”

Next Chapter: Canadians and Royalty Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 55 Minutes