17
« on: March 27, 2013, 02:25:02 PM »
HAHAHAHA PUNS THANKS GEARY
The sun was overjoyed to stab at my eyes with its beautiful rays of sunshine that morning. I mumbled a curse, my voice raw and sounding odd, and tried to blink away the bright light burning on me. Sadly, today wasn’t the day it would work.
That helped me realized that the sun was up before I was. Meaning I was late. Again.
With a loud grunt, I tried to heft myself out of bed to get ready for work. Or school, whichever it was today. As per usual my body rebelled and refused to get out of my bed (which seemed warmer and softer than I remembered), so I tried to remind my body I needed an education and money to feed myself. Y’know, both physically and mentally, since that’s the thing they tell you from an early age. Or something.
The refusal to get up seemed to be more deeply rooted than I thought. Maybe my mind was in control and forcing the rest of me to wake up, but my body could not comply. And I don’t know how I realized that. Maybe it was the jerky movements in my stiff joints, the numbness in my face, or the lack of feeling in my fingers and toes. And the utter lack of those last two things.
At first I thought, Oh, it must just be them sleeping. But then I shoved my hand into my face and found a large lack of phalanges.
And there was a change of color in my hand. My utterly flat palm, colored pink, now led to a pink forearm.
Now that was finally enough shock to jar my mind and body both. The latter of the two tried to push itself out of bed, while the former just kept thinking stupid thoughts, such as restating the fact that what I had seen of myself was pink, that I had no fingers, and that I was going to be really, really late now. With no help from motor control, I managed to push off the covers of the bed, and tried to sit up, with little success. My neck was aching like hell, and now it got to enjoy being propped up on a pillow that suddenly felt like hot steel. I managed to get a look down at myself, rechecking that lack of fingers. And, you know, the pinkness.
After rechecking, I checked again. And again. Just to make sure that I was really seeing an entirely pink body, covered in coarse hair, attached to my now pink neck, attached to whatever I was seeing with. Not just any pink body, no – a pink pony one.
Most of my head was focused on freaking out, making me hyperventilate in a higher pitched voice and widen my eyes, which, come to think of it, already seemed really wide. Yes, I was looking at some pink pony’s body, and I tried to move my right leg. The leg on the right gave a twitch. I tried to blink my eyes, and my sight switched off and on briefly.
Dear God, was I really looking at Pinkie Pie – no, no, don’t draw conclusions. Look, I don’t even know all that much about the whole pony thing. Yes, I have seen every episode, and that’s the extent, I swear. Okay, so maybe I dabbled in reading some stories, or listened to some music. Sure, maybe I was more involved than most teenage men would normally be, but I didn’t expect ponies to invade my life or dreams, let alone my body.
Wait, there it was. This entire thing could just be a dream. I’d had worse, much more convincing dreams, so this couldn’t be anything bad or too hard to get over. I pulled up an arm awkwardly and pinched myself –
Well. Would have pinched myself, anyway. But the lack of fingers made that hard. And besides, when has that ever worked for anyone before? I had a much better plan: A good headbutt to my hoof – er, no, THE hoof, not mine. So I held out the hoof, focusing on that bit at the front which, yes, I had no idea about because I wasn’t that obsessed with ponies to study them. Anyway, I held it out and rammed my head hard against it.
One bruised forehead and sore hoof later, I rediscovered that I could feel everything this pink pony felt and I probably wasn’t dreaming. But in TV shows they never tried twice, did they? It couldn’t hurt, right?
With a complementary lump now on my forehead I groaned and lie in bed. Now I had a 95% chance of not dreaming, but I knew I wasn’t going to test it for a while now. I felt up at the tender spot on my head, expecting to just make myself hurt even more, but before I even reached where I thought my head would normally be I felt a bump. I gave it a slightly harder jab and felt spikes of pain shoot through it down into my body. I sucked in a gasp of air.
Did I really have a literal lump sticking out of my head?
A knocking noise came from somewhere in the room. I whirled my head around, trying to find the door. The sun, though, decided it should glare in my eyes instead and refused to let me see in the center of my vision for a while.
The knocking came again, followed by a soft squeaking of what I assumed to be the door. “Pinkie?” a female voice asked. “Are you feeling alright?”
I was horrified, happy, and shocked that I could recognize the voice as Mrs. Cake. Or maybe it was because she was referring to me, the only other person in the room, as Pinkie. Presumably, Pinkie Pie. Heh, say that a few times fast! I couldn’t help but snigger a little, and immediately blinked at myself. That giggling… that was exactly like it was from the show. Sure, now it was in perfect surround sound, but it just came from ME.
But I wasn’t really Pinkie Pie! I mean, come on. You don’t wake up one morning and feel, look, or sound like a completely different species, especially not the talking, pink, bouncing type!
Also, Pinkie was a girl. Which I wasn’t. I had been missing something down there, hadn’t I?
Mrs. Cake hadn’t moved from her spot in the doorway, I realized, after she cleared her throat. My vision clear of annoying blurry green circles, I looked over at her. She looked like she did in the show, too; all light blue with a cotton-candy sorta mane and tail. Her cutie mark, the three cupcakes, stood out against the background of her hair. Or fur. I don’t know what it’s called on horses, alright?
“Pinkie,” she repeated, “are you feeling alright? You all here this morning? You were making some odd noises.”
Yes, I was, wasn’t I? I couldn’t really help being shocked over being turned into a pink equine from a cartoon. Sure, some people would undoubtedly handle this better than me, even if Pinkie was… well, my favorite pony.
But Pinkie was the odd pony! So making noises wasn’t too weird for her. I guess gasping and groaning wasn’t exactly the norm for cartoon characters in bed, for a number of reasons.
Mrs. Cake continued to stare over at me. “I’m not going to repeat myself this time. I’ll just bring you to the hospital at this rate.”
Right. Time for excuses. That was the rational thing to do.
“Mrs. Cake I swapped bodies with Pinkie Pie I’m not actually her please tell me you can get me back!”
I stared down at my snout. Muzzle. Whatever it is for horses. Did I really just spew that kinda crap to Pinkie’s boss and expect to blend in?
The mare didn’t care, though, or at least her face didn’t show it. She gave a little smile and shook her head. “Yeah, that’s the Pinkie Pie I know and love. Just wanted to check up on you.” She turned around and ambled away, presumably downstairs, if things were still applying to the show.
So, I had told the truth, no matter how odd it might seem (or really was), and Mrs. Cake dismissed it as a joke. And I looked and had acted like her one employee, the Element of Laughter. I was nowhere closer to discerning why in the however-many-hells I was… geez, it was really hard for my brain to click that fact in.
Right now, I looked, spoke, and by all outside accounts, was Pinkie Pie. Might as well check the other senses, right?
I sighed and tried to climb out of bed, still feeling groggy and now pretty overwhelmed with the most ridiculous thing I could think of. Of course, standing on two legs wasn’t a good idea. That just sent me down onto four quicker, hitting my nose on the hardwood floor.
Down there, apart from getting a little bruised, it caught a whiff of the floor there. It… well, I don’t know what I was really expecting. It sure smelled like wood. Maybe ash wood. When I finally picked up my head and sniffed around again, I could smell something sweet. No, scratch that, a lot of somethings sweet. Things like cake, spice, pumpkin pie, apple, blueberries, blackberries, fresh bread…
Wowee, it smelled good!
Woah, woah, woah, when in the last 10 years have I said “wowee?”
I shrugged that off, dismissing it as some childish glee in being in a cartoon, something I’d imagined since I was a kid. The smell wasn’t just from the baking sweets that undoubtedly came from Sugarcube Corner beneath me; it was coming from me, too.
That was just… weird.
There was really only one thing left to check. So I lifted up that sore hoof that had hit me in the face (it wasn’t so hard to balance on three legs, I found) and licked it.
It had pretty predictable results.
“Tastes like… cotton candy,” I murmured, in that voice that so very clearly would never belong to a growing male. It probably didn’t help that I thought the voice was incredibly cute, and decided to repeat that obvious statement again. And again, louder.
A loud CLANG echoed from downstairs, sounding like it was from some pots or pans, or whatever it is that you use to bake sweets. Whisks, I guess. Anyway, it was really loud and made me jolt up into the air.
“PINKIE!” came a call from a stallion, I supposed, since it sure didn’t sound like the Mrs.
Now that finally caused a click in my brain. “Coming!” I called down, still reveling in my own voice, and tried to rush down the stairs through the open door.
Hooves aren’t that hard to stand on. They’re just like flat platforms or sandals, glued to your feet and hands, and your back doesn’t ache nearly as much to stand on them all at once. The arms don’t feel too different, either. I didn’t know anything about horses’ joints, but they probably weren’t quite elbows or knees.
Standing is one thing. Running, on the other hand – or was it hoof, now? Ugh, stop with the stupid internal dialogues – that was another matter.
I tried to tell my legs to move forward like I normally would, but I hadn’t factored in my arms. Ever stopped up your bike (though someone else could have done it, too) in the front wheel and still tried to pedal it? That was exactly how it felt, and it had the exact same results. Landing on my nose and forehead for the second time, I grunted in an incredibly unmanly sort of way and tried to move forward on just my arms this time. It didn’t look quite as stupid as landing and hitting myself, but it still looked ridiculous, basically looking like a stretching cat.
How would ponies even react to someone acting like a pet? Or… wait, no, Dashie stretched like this sometimes.
I could figure out public appearances after I could walk. How did animals do it? Or how did they do it in the show? Wasn’t it one hoof there, the opposite in the back, then the other in the front… ugh, double the limbs is not easy to get used to!
Turns out that the front-back-opposite thing was right. I managed to get to the stairs… and realized they would be a completely type of movement, yet again. So I tried to put just one hoof down, then the other in the front…
I’d like to say it went well. Instead, I landed on my face for the third time that morning, Mrs. Cake staring down at me with a yellow stallion in a silly hat next to her. I glanced up at her and gave my best nervous grin. “What can I say? I was head over heels to get down here.”
I expected to get at least a groan for that one or maybe a laugh if this really was a cartoon, but they both just stared at me. “Heels?” Mr. Cake asked.
Why was he confused? I didn’t mess the joke up, it was pretty simple… Oh. Hooves, heels. Darn pony terminology.
“Uhh… sorry, must be the head bonk!” I said, widening that fake grin. Which seemed rather infectious, since the Cakes smiled right back at me.
Mrs. Cake’s, though, turned to a frown, and she pointed over at the counter. “Pinkie, the twins are throwing around knives and pans!” she yelled, throwing her head into the motion.
“What?!” I yelled back, more shocked than I was when waking up. Those two were adorable! Why in the world would they do such a dangerous thing? So I got up onto all fours and tried to rush over at the counter in question, briefly realizing that there were no ponies on it.
I was a little interrupted by the flour that covered me from above.
Somehow my entire vision went white for a second, and I could have sworn the flour got straight into my wide eyes. But it didn’t do anything besides that… and wait, why in the world did I just get flour thrown onto me? And how was I so certain what it was right away?
Giggling came from right in front of me, behind the counter. Two little ponies walked out, a tan and yellow one, a boy and girl, respectively. They looked an awful lot like the Cake twins, actually… but they were so much older!
“So much older” is probably around a year or two for children, anyway.
“Hehehehe!” they both continued to giggle, moving closer and circling around me. The flour gig was what made them laugh in the show, wasn’t it? And they were pretty dang adorable right now. Being dyed white for a while suddenly just seemed like a good joke…
So I laughed. And I laughed really hard! I laughed enough that I started to make a bunch of other silly sounds, making some snorting noise, a hiccup, a little squeal, and before I could realize much else I was, quite literally, rolling on the floor laughing!
I didn’t really pay attention to time while I was laughing. I just remember that everyone was laughing for a long time, and felt like there were even more people I wasn’t aware of that were laughing too. However long it was, I stopped and the sun was setting, sending red rays through the window in the kitchen.
“…you’re kidding me!” I shouted to the sky, grumbling some. Sure, I had just passed the entire day away with laughter with friends, but the day was almost over! Soon, I’d have to go back upstairs and rest in bed until the next day, and then do it all again!
No, no, I was forgetting something. Wasn’t something wrong this morning? Like, the reason I got up out of bed to go downstairs and…
Duh; I WAS NOT PINKIE PIE!
But who would I even talk to? Mrs. Cake hadn’t believed me, and given that Pinkie pranked plenty of paranoid ponies with countless ridiculous things, who would believe such a weird thing as becoming a pony from something else? It was magic, maybe, or a curse…
There was a knock at the main door, and I twisted to face it. I fell to the floor again, though, since I had put my hoof to my chin to help out my thinking, and probably ended up bruising that too.
Whoever it was let themselves in and carried in a big purple book – no, it wasn’t purple; there was just some purple aura all over it that looked super funky. The pony behind it was purple, too, with highlights of pink and a big sparkle thingy on her flanks. “Pinkie!” she called out, not seeing me on the floor. “Where were you today? You were supposed to come get this recipe book back from me!”
“Down here, Twi,” I muttered through the tile beneath me.
She glanced down and made a little sniggering noise. “Hi, Pinkie. What was up today? Weren’t you going to help Applejack with some apple-bucking, or something? And Dashie was asking for help with pranks all day!”
“Oh, well, see, I woke up and kinda fell down the stairs and –“ wait, here was the answer! Magic, curse, whatever, Twilight must have known it! I stammered and tried to get to the important part, but just ended up telling the day and then my fandom brain took over. “HOLY CRAP! You’re Twilight Sparkle! Ohmygoshohmygosh it’s Twilight in front of me and I can’t even take a picture oh what people would say!”
The pony arched an eyebrow and leaned her head down to me. “Of course it’s me, Pinkie. And do you mean what ponies would say? I’m not really that famous, you know…”
“NOT THAT FAMOUS?!” I shouted back at her, somehow lifting off the ground. “You are too SO famous! I know tons of folks who would give their liver to just see you once!”
Twilight, demonstrating that extreme intellect, backed up. Intelligently. “Okay, something is wrong. You been sleeping out in the Everfree again?”
“Everfree! Oh man that’s right! You have the Everfree Forest too! Oh think of what I could find in there! If I could just take a picture and show everyone and and and –“
“Okay, Pinkie, something’s up. You’re coming with me,” Twilight stated, and suddenly I was floating in something that felt an awful lot like jello, hovering behind her. There was a purple tint to it and everything that I could see. It must have been…
“Your magic! Holy, oh, oh my gosh you just used your MAGIC on me! Just now! And it feels so funny! Hahahaha!”
Twilight shook her head and started walking out, my little jello puddle around me forcing me out with her. She shut the door with a back hoof and kept walking. I guess I kept talking for that entire time, because whenever we passed a pony they glanced over at me and listened. And when we got to Twilight’s tree-library-house-thing, my throat was kinda starting to hurt. Maybe I needed some water or something. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, had I?
It’s cliché to say, but Twilight’s tree-brary was much larger on the inside. Even with the shelves lining the walls wherever I looked, even with the occasional piece of furniture lying around, and even with the bedroom Twilight must have had upstairs, there was still just so much empty space in the main room.
The books on those countless shelves were odd, too. There were so many differently colored ones, like a giant rainbow spread out through the entire place. I couldn’t read the titles, either, even though the words looked just like English. Following exactly what I expected, the books seemed organized, though I couldn’t tell how.
I suppose Twilight had let me down sometime while I was gaping around the room since she ambled over and pushed my dropped jaw back up. “Okay, Pinkie,” she began, moving to a convenient table and drinking from a cup with magic. “What joke are you trying to pull today?”
“I’m not joking here!” I told her, quite clearly. “I’m not Pinkie Pie and I’ve never met you before or been inside this place! I have no idea what happened!”
Twilight frowned and walked back over, tapping a single hoof against my head. Really, really painfully. “Owww! What was that for?!”
Her frown deepened, and she backed off. She pulled down a book from the top shelf in the room (which was dangerously close to the roof, by the way) with her magic and started paging through it. “That really wasn’t that hard. Looks to me like you’ve just bumped your head hard enough to develop amnesia. I’ll see if I can’t find something to help out.”
I sighed and shook my head at her, which was still kinda painful. “Twilight, I’m serious! I just woke up like this! I only hit it after I realized I wasn’t really Pinkie Pie! I… I guess I body swapped with her while we slept!”
Twilight just kept reading and poured something that was floating down the stairs into a cup that followed after it. “Body swap? How would you even know that kind of magic? If it really was that kind of magic, anyway, you’d know how to switch back into whatever pony you really are.”
“I didn’t do it!” I yelled, which probably seemed a little suspicious. “I don’t know who did it! Me and Pinkie are both victims, okay?”
“Pinkie and I,” she corrected, mixing something that looked like a carrot into the cup.
“Look, right now I d – Wait, did Twilight just correct my grammar? Hahaha, oh this is awesome!” And besides, I didn’t really need to get back yet. No, no, I did, that was the… the Pinkie body speaking! Or just some part of me that didn’t want to go back, which I couldn’t really blame. But she’s the owner of this body, not me!
The purple pony in front of me tilted her head at me. “Okay, maybe you aren’t Pinkie Pie. If I believe you, then who are you? Because everypony in Ponyville knows what the library looks like, and almost all of them know me personally.”
“Oh, I’m…” Wait. Who was I? I was trying to dig into my memory, to pull out everything that I had been worried about that morning. Late, right, late for work. But where did I work? A game store, I thought. Or some fast food joint. Or was it that book store, B and N or something like that… And school. Didn’t I graduate a couple of weeks ago? Or maybe that was someone else. And it was five weeks ago. Maybe.
“Ugh, my aching head!” I blurted out. I tried to rub at my temples, or whatever they were now, with those awkward forehooves. My name… I had a name, I knew, but it stung like hell to try and even think about that. It started with P, I maybe…
“Pinkie?”
“Shhhhhh, I’m trying to remember my name!” P, I, N, what else?
“Pinkie.”
“Gimme a sec!” I almost had it. It was like one of those Pacman ghosts, and I knew it certainly wasn’t Clyde.
“Pinkie!” Twilight snapped.
“Pinkie! That’s it! Wait. No. No, no, I’m not Pinkie Pie, stupid brain! Come on!”
A porcelain cup covered in purple magicy-stuff dropped onto my nose, balancing perfectly. “Just drink that, Pinkie. It should clear up your amnesia.”
Whatever was in that cup smelled pretty good, but I had no idea how to pick something up with two hooves! I fumbled with them and managed to get a sort of pincer hold over the cup. I pulled it down to my weird mouth and drank as much as I could at once.
It smelled good, but the taste left a lot to be desired. I did the reasonable thing and spit most of it out over Twilight and her books. “BLECH! What did you put in that?!”
“Pinkie,” she muttered angrily, “didn’t you Pinkie Promise about not getting food or drink on my books?”
“I keep telling you, I’m not –“ Some weird feeling, like my sinuses suddenly opening up, happened further up in my head, right around my brain. Normally that kind of feeling is relieving, but instead of letting the flow of air through my body, it let memories out, in painful bursts. At first it was just my own memories; meaningless things, like eating a burrito for breakfast, going to buy a book that morning, me glancing over at the painted Warhammer models I’d had from a few years ago at 12:14 the day before, and so on. But then memories that weren’t mine, like running around with ponies, eating tons and tons of cakes and pastries, pranks that Pinkie had pulled on other ponies, joined in too, and if it weren’t for the obviously different body types that the memories came from, I might not have been able to differentiate them. My brain just seemed to consider them both right, even though one was from a human, and the other from Pinkie.
Something stood out from the others, though. I remembered glancing up at the moon last night. But Pinkie had done it too, and she’d seen something else. There was a face in the moon – a horse’s face - and it turned to meet her gaze as she went to sleep.
But wasn’t that something Luna did? As in, Princess Luna, sister to Celestia that had once been evil, exiled to the moon, but decided to be good after… well, something. The memory-tea hadn’t bothered to give me that memory back.
“Well, Pinkie? Got your memory back?” Twilight shook my shoulder a little to take me out from my thoughts.
“T-Twilight! Yes! I mean… no! I’m not really Pinkie, but I do have her memory now! Most of it, anyway!” That probably didn’t help my case, but it was the truth. “Look, I think I know why we swapped bodies. Or minds, whichever it is. Wait, does that change anything? I mean, changing bodies would be changing minds, too, since we just swap the position of them and everything, so that’s probably the same, but if we did them both at the same time then would it be like a double negative or a double positive?”
“PINKIE!” Twilight yelled. “You’re acting normal, that’s for sure, but if you have an idea of what it could be that made you act like you did before, you should probably tell me.”
“Nononono, I’m still the same! But last night, I – Pinkie – looked up at the sky, and she saw a face in it! Like Princess Luna’s! And I think it was grinning!”
Twilight stiffened a little, her mane literally straightening. “Luna? You think she did this? Why in the world…”
Come to think of it, that wouldn’t make too much sense. Luna had become good again, so why would she do something like change the mind of the Element of Laughter? The Elements were the last line of defense for Equestria, and if one suddenly didn’t know how to operate against an overwhelming enemy…
It’d be bad. Was Luna really still a bad guy? Er, girl.
I guess Twilight hit that thought before I had, because she pulled out a gold necklace with a pink balloon at the center of it from a box behind her. “Whoever you are, put this on. Quickly.”
I complied and grabbed it, wrapping a hoof around it, and tried to slip it on. Surprisingly it wasn’t very hard to do, and there was a click behind me. It seemed like everything was right, but Twilight sucked in a breath of air, her eyes widening. “What?” I asked. “What is it? Twilight?”
“Oh, great,” she muttered, and rushed up the stairs.
Well if that wasn’t cryptic and unhelpful I didn’t know what was. “Twilight!” I called up the stairs. “What is it?! Come on, I need to know!”
There was a rustling, an “Ow!” from someone who sounded young, and then the Element of Magic was back down the stairs, now wearing her fancy tiara, the gem at the top glowing brightly. A little purple dragon trailed her, carrying a quill and long piece of parchment. “You really aren’t Pinkie,” she finally said, staring up at the window in the tree-brary. “Your Element isn’t working. So I’m calling for help, right away. Something is up.”
Spike scribbled away at the parchment, while I took to enjoying being correct on something Twilight wasn’t. “If you had just listened to me when I said I wasn’t, your book wouldn’t be soaked and we’d still have a little more time to assemble the Mane 6 before something happened!”
“Mane 6?” Twilight repeated, glancing at me.
“Er… it’s a term for the Elements, back where I’m from. Long story, just go on.”
Her gaze intensified. “Back where you’re from? That tea should have cleared whatever amnesia you had. So, where are you from, and who are you?”
“…long story,” I told her again, trying to change the topic.
“Yes, you said that. But I read a lot of long books. One more story shouldn’t be too scary.” The glow on her tiara brightened further, and that scared me. It made petrifying rainbows that worked on chaotic demigods with the other elements, and I didn’t really want to find out what it could do on its own.
I swallowed my fear and nodded, starting to explain. “See, I’m a human. We walk on two legs, live on the Earth, and have this great thing called the internet. We’ve also got a…” Cartoon wouldn’t explain how I could see the ponies, so I magic-garbled my way through. “…portal sorta thing that lets us see into other worlds. It’s run by these great wizards in giant buildings, and they make money off of selling these scenes from other places to us. As for my name… I don’t think it’s too important. And to be honest, I still can’t remember. I guess you could still call me Pinkie.” I threw in a shrug, trying to seem casual and collected, even though I was pretty scared, being thrown into even more after waking up as a pony.
Twilight either bought it or just let it pass. “Human? Huh. I don’t think I’ve read of those. And you’re not lying about it. You’re not really Pinkie, though, so I’ll stick with calling you ‘Human.’”
“Isn’t that derogatory? If I just called you ‘Pony’ it’d be kinda mean.”
She didn’t listen, still staring out the window.
Yay. My one chance at being someone I wasn’t, not even in a dream, and I shot that chance down. I’d never cosplayed before, and internet personas don’t really count.
She’d said that I was lying, either. And that was true, even if I’d covered up the truth more than told it. What I’d said was really suspicious, though, and she believed me. Could she make her tiara into a lie detector? Or worse yet, read my mind.
I wasn’t sure if I caught a smile on her face as she looked out the window.
Shuddering, I tried to ignore everything that’d built up to this point. Hopefully I’d soon be back in my own bed, doing my own boring schoolwork, and… y’know, that didn’t sound so fun. But I didn’t really deserve to be in a fanciful cartoon wonderland when a character who actually lived there should be instead.
That, and I got the feeling things were starting to boil over.
A sound like a jet engine that was just as loud reverberated through the tree-house. I tried to cover my ears with my hooves, but those things were still so awkward and useless! Thinking back to those safety videos from when I was a kid, I tried to duck down and cover my head with my arms, and it worked much better, though I wasn’t sure how it would protect you from an incoming plane. At least it helped tone down the sound.
The sound seemed to get louder, and I could see a streak of color through the window near the top of the library before it swung open dramatically (and, not to be outdone, just as loudly as that jet engine noise). A cyan mare with a bright, neon-rainbow colored mane and tail dropped down from the opening, air whooshing around her. The window shut back up after that, cutting off the air and noise. “Hey Pinkie, Twi,” she said, nodding to both of us.
I’d never been much for the “cool” factor of TV shows, whether they be cartoons or documentaries. If I really cared about such a thing, I probably wouldn’t have watched what I had, like Scooby Doo or, conveniently, anything dealing with MLP.
But when freaking Rainbow Dash blurs into the room, wind howling like amp feedback for her background music, the definition of cool is rewritten.
“Holy macaroni,” I mouthed in awe. Wait, I hadn’t said that phrase in years. It was just like that… thing back in Sugarcube Corner. Maybe I’d been speaking like Pinkie a couple of times, but at least I hadn’t started thinking completely like her.
Now that was a scary thought, to be stuck like that.
Dashie grinned wildly at me. “What, Pinkie? Never seen the fastest Pegasus in Equestria before?”
“Of course not! Well, sorta. Never in person! Or is it pony, now? The whole pony term thing makes things really confusing…”
She blinked at me and looked to Twilight, who told her to wait for the others. Dash shrugged, sitting back on her haunches and looking around some of the books she was nearest to. Twilight turned to Spike and whispered to him. He began scratching down whatever on the parchment.
Before I could ask Dashie for an autograph, which I figured would be worth a whole lot to the internet, the rest of the Mane 6 began filing through the main door to the library. The first one through was an orange pony, hair and tail done up in a… well, ponytail, and with a rough leather hat shading her head. She looked pretty tough, enough muscle to look more like an actual horse, but I suppose that comes with working on a farm for your life. She didn’t have a bully-like glint to go with the muscles, though – she looked like she was much more of a caring person – no, pony. Applejack was greeted by Twilight, and sat down by her.
The second was not nearly as muscled; she was instead much more slim and pony-like in appearance. Of course, her form was mostly covered in a fancy, and dare I say, beautiful velvet dress that was decorated here and there with shining gems. Her purple mane was done up in a much more complex style than the last pony. It was flowing out in almost every direction, looking like an umbrella. It had to have been gelled, or hair-dried, or however they did it here, since it sure didn’t look natural. But I supposed it had to be fashionable if Rarity was using it. She flashed a quick smile to everypony (had to force myself less and less to remember that, finally) and sat down with Applejack.
I wouldn’t have noticed the last pony if I hadn’t been looking straight at the door. She was the smallest of the group, even including me, and she kept her head lowered down. She had a soft coat – yeah, coat, that’s what the horse’s fur was called – of light yellow. Her pink mane curved at the top. Really, there wasn’t much more than that. She was so nondescript. Though I suppose she looked pretty kind, in addition to her shyness. Trotting along quietly, she took a spot next to Rainbow Dash.
“Well, we’re all here,” Dash said once Fluttershy had sat down. Obviously the show captured her lack of patience pretty well. “What’s up now, Twilight?”
Twilight took off her tiara and looked around the room. “Well, if you’ll notice, Pinkie didn’t leap around the room in greeting,” she said.
“Yeah, and Ah also noticed she nevah showed up ta help me with some apple-buckin’,” AJ mumbled.
“What, are we really meeting because Pinkie forgot to wake up and help out today?” Dash asked. “You can’t be serious. I wanted to get in some more cloud busting for tomorrow!”
I didn’t really know if I should speak up, what with me soon to be the center of attention, but I did anyway. “It’s a great deal more serious than that,” I told them. “Twilight, I think you’d explain it better. And it probably wouldn’t sound so suspicious.”
Everypony’s gaze turned to me, all of their eyes wide.
“Since when does Pinkie speak like that?” Rarity asked.
“She doesn’t,” Twilight explained. “I’m not sure how or why, but Pinkie isn’t in her body right now. Somepony else is right there, in her place.”
“We say someone, back where I’m from,” I interrupted.
“Yes, and whoever it is, they’re no pony,” she went on. “She said she’s a human, whatever that is. They stand on two legs, and can somehow see us from whatever universe they live in.”
“Also, I’m… not a girl,” I mumbled.
Everypony did a double take on that, especially Twilight.
“Woah, you never mentioned that! How do you even go from being a stallion to being in a mare’s body?” the unicorn asked.
“Actually, it happens back where I’m from. But they’re not stallions or mares, just boys or girls. …but I don’t think my world is too important right now. I think you probably want Pinkie back.”
“Well of course we do!” Fluttershy piped up quietly. “I mean, not to forget about you or anything, but she is awfully funny. Not that you’re not. I’m sorry, am I being rude?”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. Ugh, why did I get stuck in such a bad situation in such a nice place? “No, no, you’re fine,” I said. “I understand. Not that I don’t like it here, it’s just…”
“You don’t wear dresses or anything close to what fine, upstanding mares wear?” Rarity suggested.
“Sure, that.”
Twilight spoke up again. “We do want Pinkie back, and it’s probably best if you get back home, sir. So I’m going to read up on everything I’ve got, and Spike just wrote up a letter to send to Celestia. If it gets there soon, everything could be solved quickly and peacefully.”
“It wouldn’t be peaceful otherwise?” Fluttershy asked.
“No, I just don’t want something bad to happen,” the purple pony said. “Right now, the Element of Laughter isn’t working. Presuming something big and bad did happen, we wouldn’t be able to pull off quite the same level of effectiveness.”
“Ya mean we’re a little lost without our pocketful o’ sunshine?” AJ chimed in.
Twilight nodded and jabbed at Spike with an elbow. He stumbled, but rolled up the paper he was scribbling on and huffed fire onto it, the scraps burning, flying upwards, and forcing the window near the top of the treehouse open. They flew out into the dusk.
Dashie watched them fly out and stared around. “So… what, that’s it? Pinkie got weirder, and you called us all together. And we can handle anything that wants to try and takes us on! Can we just go now?”
A yawn came from Rarity. “Yes, I’d like to leave and get some beauty sleep.”
Applejack followed it with a shrug. “Early ta bed, early ta rise,” she agreed.
Twilight was already trotting up the stairs. “Meeting adjourned. Human, if you’d stay here for a couple of nights so I could study up on whatever your background is and try and trace the body-swap magic, I’d appreciate it.”
Everypony else was filtering out through the main door, and I tried to follow Twilight, but tumbled around on my hooves. “S-sure, though I really think you should get a name other than ‘human’ for me,” I said while I struggled with the stairs. Spike, who was still behind me, tried to hide a couple of giggles as I walked up. “Hey, you ever tried walking on all fours before?”
“Once or twice,” he said. “I didn’t do quite so badly, though.”
“Hah. Well I never have, and I don’t have a choice in the – OOF!” The step above me seemed to rise to greet my face and smacked it plenty hard, sending me sprawling out. Spike snickered again and walked on top of me to get up the stairs.
Rubbing at my chin, I somehow managed to get back up and walked extremely carefully up into the bedroom of the library. Twilight already had a stack of books on her oak desk, while Spike was walking around and gathering more parchment, quills, and ink. “So what’re you going to try, Twilight? Even with that anti-amnesia tea, I still don’t remember anything specifically about swapping bodies. Just Luna’s face on the moon, and not even I saw that.”
She thumbed through the pages of a crimson book with her magic, the paper literally flowing along. “Well, first I thought we’ll try and search for traces of magic residue on Pinkie’s body, and then your mind. Hopefully this spell here should take out your mind into a sort of separate entity, though I’ve never tried it before. You’ll probably feel a sort of numbness all over if it does work, and… probably the same if it doesn’t, but I can fix that. I should be able to. If we can find some magic traces, I can follow them back to their original caster. With that, we’ll just go to them and ask them why they did it, and then get them to reverse it. And if we can’t find some residue, maybe we’ll try some meditation, and if that doesn’t help…”
She kept going on like that for a while. I was more focused on looking out the window, though, and saw that the moon was out again. There was an odd shadow on it again, like… that wasn’t a face, was it? It was grinning, it looked like, and –
It shot out of the moon, flying down and gaining a body behind it as it went. The body was equine, definitely, and dark as the night behind it. Those eyes, though, were glowing violet in a discomforting way. Those scraps of burning paper seemed to materialize beneath the horse, and she just flew into them.
Hovering in mid-air, whoever it was ripped the scraps to pieces and flew straight to the window I was looking out of, still grinning.
“Uh, Twilight, Nightmare Moon doesn’t grab your letters and tear them up before paying you a visit, does she?” I asked nervously, tapping my front hooves together.
“Nightmare Moon? I think you mean Princess Luna. She hasn’t been like that since –“
CRASH
Glass shards scattered over the room, some shredding books on the desk or shelves, along with the parchment Spike had gathered. Wind rushed in and blew the shards around, flying straight to Luna and creating a tornado around her. Her mane and tail of starry sky spun with the shards while her eyes glowed around the room.
Then she politely reformed the window behind her with her own magic, no cracks or anything appearing.
“GAH!” I said in delayed surprise.
Twilight’s books and Spike’s parchments had somehow repaired, too. Twilight looked up and locked eyes with Luna. “I’ve heard of dramatic entrances, but this is a little ridiculous,” she mumbled.
Despite my reaction, everyone (is it said like that if there’s a non-pony involved?) seemed to be perfectly calm. Luna even chuckled some. “Sorry, but I couldn’t help but see your letter to Celestia. I figured I’d save you a little bit of time by explaining what I did to your friend.”
Twilight’s book closed, but it seemed more like a slam to me. “You’re behind this?”
“I am indeed,” Luna said, looking to me specifically. I swallowed. “You see, I talked with Pinkie the past few days. She’s always up for new experiences, as I’m sure you know.” Twilight nodded, and the Princess went on. “I found this young human in his own world, watching us once and wishing constantly that he could be here in Equestria. So I asked Pinkamina if she wouldn’t mind swapping with him, and she agreed.”
“You mean… just like that?” I asked. And I’d only wished that a couple of times. Way to embarrass me in front of potential friends.
Luna murmured agreement. “And she agreed to it permanently.”
“Just like that?” Twilight repeated. “She never even told us!”
“Indeed. I know it may come as a shock, but she offered her condolences and said she would pay a visit now and then. Just like the human may do with his own world.”
Woah. It might not be so bad, then. Equestria couldn’t be a better place, really, and if I could still visit my friends and family every so often, I shouldn’t lose myself in the whole pony thing.
“But the elements aren’t working,” Twilight said. “What happens if someone or something attacks while we’re not ready? Celestia is probably busy, and we can’t always handle what attacks us, so…”
Luna grinned at that. “I wouldn’t have swapped these two if I didn’t believe the human could become the Element of Laughter. You’ll just have to give him some time.”
Twilight nodded very slowly. “I… suppose I can see your reasoning. It’s just so sudden. But thank you for explaining, Princess Luna.”
“Of course. But now I must attend to my duties. Just take care of your new friend, will you?” Luna winked to Twilight.
“Y-yes!” she blurted. “I’ll get right on it!”
The Princess nodded, this time just opening the window carefully, and flew up. She kept approaching the moon, and somehow her form melted away into the shadows upon it. It felt like a vacuum in the room had suddenly just popped out, though it could have just been the fact that I was holding my breath for most of Luna talking.
Twilight turned to me, now smiling. “Well, I suppose there’s no need for magic tonight, with what Luna just told us. And no need for a letter yet, either. Maybe you could write it after you’ve learned something about friendship?”
“H-holy crap, yes!” I shouted, louder than I should have. “Luna seemed like she was in a hurry, though.”
“Princess duties?” Twilight suggested. I shrugged.
Well, that morning had definitely been the most worrisome thing I’ve ever experienced. Yet, here I was, apparently going to be Pinkie Pie and yet still get to go back to my own friends and family from being a human sometimes. Pinkie was probably running my life better than I was.
I really wasn’t so sure it was that easy, but everyone else seemed happy about it…
Eh, I could lose myself for a little.
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