“So, what’s your name?”

I stood there, staring at the horse. It was talking. Talking to me. It was definitely a mare, if her voice was any indication. Her eyes were wide, like those plates that I used to eat off of. She had wings, was purple, and had this crown-thing on her head that made me wonder if she was just playing dress up, or if some poor owner of hers wanted to torture this horse. This mare.

That spoke English.

“What?”

The winged-horse snorted. “I said, what’s your name?”

I blinked. My name? Out of all things this horse wanted to know was my name? What about the extras? Y’know, this talking mare probably hasn’t seen a pale looking hairless ape before, at least, that’s what science would probably describe me as if I was part of Darwin’s theories.

Wait, why am I thinking of evolution right now? Did David invite me to one of his academic drinking parties again?

“Hello?”

I shook my head, flailing my vampire-colored hands in front of her muzzle. “Sorry, got stuck in my head. Y’know?”

Unfortunately, her muzzle scrunched up like my hopes and dreams. “I don’t think I do.”

“Oh,” I said as images of my dignity flew off into the sunset, before they burnt up into a crisp. I took a closer look at the horse. Yet again, she had wings, which was totally different from the horses back home. Was she considered a pegasus? Well, she might not be, as that horn could probably skewer me if I tried flopping on it.

I internally groaned, but externally smacked myself. My forehead probably glowed like Rudolph’s nose, but I couldn’t muster up enough to care about it. I cared way more about why this horse existed, let alone how it talked in English.

Speaking of…

“So, why do you want to know my name?”

She just tilted her head. “Well, isn’t that what you ask anypony when you first meet them?”

My brow had a spasm attack, one that threatened to prepare for liftoff off my face. “I don’t think you ask that to a completely alien species, horsey.”

Suddenly, I heard her neigh. She had snorted just like before, except it sounded like she was angry. Extremely angry.

“That’s not very nice of you to say,” she growled, her voice full of grit and disappointment.

Just like my mother—

“Sorry about that.”

And suddenly, she perked up a bit, her ear twitching. She slowly walked up towards me, talking all the while, “Okay. Just know that I’m a mare, not a whorse.”

“A whore...se?”

“Yeah, isn’t that what you said?”

That head tilted again. I wonder if that crown was super glued to her skull? “No, I said horse. You know, with an h as a starter?”

“An h? What’s that?”

I blinked hard and fast, my mind racing of all the possibilities. She spoke my language, but didn’t know what the alphabet was? What the absolute—

“What? Don’t you speak English?”

“Of course,” she replied, nodding like she totally just said she spoke English. “It’s the most common language in Equestria!”

“Well the letter h is in the alphabet and—”

“What? No it’s not!”

This horse thing stood at me with a face so confident in her words that she thought she’d have to declare war on me to settle it. Little does she know, I studied Political Science and Photography at Turbo Virgin University. That in total should give me a career path with an estimated gross income of like… 21,000 dollars a year. Unless I get lucky and score in as a campaign head…

Y’know, if she asks about that, I’ll just tell her I studied in Astrophysics. I don’t want her knowing about my Only Fans. Then again, it’s not like she’d even know what feet are.

I gave her a smile that I hoped didn’t look like my bottom lip was having an aneurysm, because it sure felt like I was having one. “Then what is it? What does your alphabet look like?”

Her wings sprung out of nowhere, like a glock being unloaded by a crazy crackhead. Each shot was another indicator: her eyes lit up, her mouth frothing like the crackhead she probably is—wait, why she frothing at the mouth?

“Uh… are you okay?”

She sat down in front of me. Her horn charged up in a purple light, before suddenly a book blinked right in front of us, unopened. She gestured a hoof towards it, as if she was telling me to open it, which I totally took the opportunity, my hand gripping onto the corner of the book and flicking it open. The execution wasn’t as cool as I was hoping, the pages flipping around like a terrible catch I got at the pond back home.

Fishing sucked for me.

I blinked away my train of thought and derailed right into the book, which stared at me with the text of…

“Uhh, what is this…?”

“Twilight.” She said it like it was matter-of-fact.

“Twilight?”

“You still haven’t told me your name,” she droned.

I rolled my eyes. “Just call me Rick.”

“Okay, Rick,” she began, giving me a smile. It was kinda… odd to see her smile like that. Horses don’t smile like that— “So, what is what?”

I pointed right at the text in front of me. “This.”

She looked like a deer-in-headlights, blinking ever-so slowly to make sure she heard me right. “What do you mean?”

Her hoof stomped on the book gently, meeting my hand. “Well look at it! That’s totally not the English alphabet!”

I removed my hand from the book, much to Twilight’s chagrin, her muzzle scrunched up once again. “I don’t get what you mean! Isn’t ✌︎ the first letter in the alphabet?”

I stared at the book. What the heck did “☼︎☜︎✌︎👎︎ 👌︎☹︎⚐︎☠︎👎︎☜︎ 💣︎⚐︎💣︎☜︎☠︎❄︎💧︎” mean?

My voice anchored what little hope I had in her hopes and dreams. “There’s no way you’re serious.”

“Of course I am! Language construction and theory was a sub-minor that I studied in and—”

“A sub minor?”

Her eyes boggled, threatening to roll right out of her skull. “Didn’t you have sub-minors in your world? A minor for your minor?”

I blinked. “I don’t know, Twilight. Astrophysics was way too hard to care about other degrees.”

She gigglesnorted her wings into a twist. “Oh, Rick, my sweet summer foal, that’s something I can do in my sleep. However, language construction is always changing. Just like Friendship!”

“What.”

“Don’t you know the Magic of Friendship?”

I nodded… slowly. “Yeah.”

She blinked like a broken strobe light at a club. “I don’t think you do.”

“Twilight, we just met,” I began, throwing my hands in the air. “You know that anything that is part of this world is completely foreign to me and—”

“I didn’t know that! I thought you looked like a malnourished diamond dog,” she said with a slight tinge of excitement lingering in her words. “I originally thought I’d have to get you some diamonds to eat from Spike’s stash, but I don’t think he’d be too happy that his aquamarine gems were gone.”

I shook my head, not even wanting to comprehend what the hell she just said. Unfortunately for me, my brain wanted to try it, causing a sudden surge of pain to course through my skull. The pounding made me hold my head, hoping that I could get past it by just propping my head up a tad. I wish I went into the medical field.

My brain disagreed, which made me wince. “I don’t even want to know about that yet.”

“Good, because I’m curious about what you are. So, care to share everything about you?”

I sighed. I hate Wingdings.

“I don’t see what the problem is.”

I sighed. Twilight wasn’t understanding why the alphabet of whatever English she spoke was completely and utterly broken. Hell, the peace sign doesn’t make any sense! She’s a pony, not a human with hands! Shouldn’t the ‘alphabet’ here be more streamlined to make the ponies relate to it more or something?

I sat there criss-crossed in my own tormented mind, struggling to comprehend the world around me. It was so hard to figure this all out, that I couldn’t count to five without imagining an emoji of a hand smacking me on my nose. I felt the urge to nurse that imaginary blunder, my hand reaching up to gently rub my nose, but that itch suddenly faded, leaving me looking like a complete moron if Twilight decided to look over at me. Luckily, she was too preoccupied, probably thinking as hard as I am, her hooves slowly creating a trench in her library.

Or was it a library? There were bookshelves surely, but they didn’t really match that library style back home. They were bigger, rocketing straight towards the ceiling at a breakneck pace, and they were filled too. To the sides of them were large plush cushions that I bet would plop me right into its comforts without much effort. The crystal chairs, however, were a bit funny looking. Who thought crystal chairs were good enough to be made into furniture? Just looking at them made me think of all the back problems I’d have.

I shivered as I walked toward one of the bookshelves. I held my hands close as I moved, looking from shelf to shelf. There were no books I wanted to read, mostly because if I tried reading them, I’d know for sure I wouldn’t understand it. Besides, I was in a completely different world, where ponies had wings and horns, and talked in a language that sounded like his but was certainly not written the same. Why should I care about reading right now?

Unconsciously, I found myself twiddling with my thumbs, particularly scratching the side of one, while I rubbed the other gently. It was a nervous tick I’ve had since I was a little boy. It wasn’t a bad one to have, better than what I’ve heard from most people, yet it reminded me of when I was five somewhere in this aging shell I called my prime.

“Five, six, seven, eight. You’re all those and more, son.”

I shook away the memory, the face that showed its pearly whites faded into the backdrop, as Twilight, the purple horned mare with wings continued her charade, pacing back and forth despite the floor’s scuffed appearance.

I pried my hands away from each other, and pushed myself off the ground. I needed to stop this before she fell through the floor. As I approached her, I tried to smile her way, but I knew I was miserably failing at it, my lips settling for an awkward smirk instead.

Shakily, I took a deep breath. “Twilight, are you—”

“Rick, why?”

“Why, what?”

The mare stopped in her tracks and stood there, her ears slung against her skull. “Why do you think we don’t know English?”

I sighed. “Because, English has actual letters, Twilight. Y’know, twenty-seven letters with real recognizable patterns?” I blinked. That didn’t sound right. “Err… twenty-six I mean.” Dear, sweet, eight pound five ounce baby Jesus, maybe I didn’t have any place to school her on language and the alphabet.

Twilight blinked, her muzzle contorted and her eyes gazing into mine. I was wondering why she was staring at me like she was, but all too-soon did she snort, completely shattering my thoughts. “And we don’t? Come on, don’t you know that 🕆︎ 🕮︎ ✋︎ are the most popular Equestrian characters and—why are you looking at me like that?”

I stared at the mare. My eyes probably looked like they were glued to her, frozen in time. Slowly, I pursed my lips, before responding to her, “What… did you say?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I said why are you looking at me like—”

“Not that!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms out in front of Twilight’s face. I was careful to not extend my arm out as I was worried I would poke her in the eye. I spun my hand in a circle, and gave her the best glare I could as I added, “Before that.”

“I said 🕆︎ 🕮︎ ✋︎—”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She wasn’t saying words, she was saying noises. They were like a cross between a bird chirping and a demented weasel begging for the sweet release of apocalypse. And her wings were dancing a bit, fluttering as each noise bounced off my eardrums like a bouncy castle. Not to mention Twilight’s horn was glowing purple as a cloud of purple lingered around her horn like a tree swaying in a breeze.

“What did you say there?”

“The letters 🕆︎ ✋︎ along with the 🕮︎ sign?”

Twilight was gazing up at me like a sad puppy that has been waiting for her treats for far too long. It reminded me of my dog I had, a pup that sat next to the door, wagging its tail at a thousand miles per hour. I didn’t expect Twilight to do that, not that she could be a pet. That’d be weird.

A weird noise maker with an optional English setting disguised as a horse.

“Well what does a snnrrrtt eeeeee and whatever that sound of a helium-huffing mouse getting caught in a bear trap mean?”

Twilight shuffled out of her makeshift trench, which, for some odd reason, had somehow not pierced through the floor. She brought a hoof to her muzzle, scraping off whatever leftover crystals were laying upon it, before she answered with polite glee:

“You and I!”

My face fell fast. “You’re kidding.”

Twilight jovially shook her head, nearly snapping her neck in two. “Nope!”

“Why don’t you just say that instead of… that?”

Twilight smirked. “Well, if Rarity has told me anything it’s that every mare has their secrets.”

I could feel my eyebrow soaring into the skies. “Really? You’re going that route?”

“Really,” Twilight said with a single curt nod. She kept that smirk on her face, her face glowing. “I have to see if you’re truly ready for what I have to tell you.”

“Ready for it? What, is this some truth bomb you have laid out for me?” I felt like a spiky-haired hero about to get a side quest that was going to take way too long for the amount of experience points you’ll get from it.

Her sidelong glance at the door wasn’t anything to sneer at, as the sound of a lock clicking into place echoed in the room. “Definitely. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure Spike comes up to drop off some snacks for us. Tell me, are you allergic to hay?”

My stomach flipped at that question. “Allergic? No, but my kind can’t digest it properly like you ponies could. I’d probably starve if I only ate hay.”

Twilight sighed. “That’s rough, you’re missing out,” she murmured, her body slowly sliding down. She laid down on the ground, her head resting on her forehooves.

Silence reigned as she sat there, closing her eyes. It felt like an opportunity to get away from her for a bit, since I didn’t want to interrupt her rest. She probably needed it after all that pacing she did.

I turned away and walked towards a nearby window. It confirmed my thoughts. Yes, I was alien, not that I needed proof from a landscape outside a window pane to get that much. Nothing looked familiar, yet everything did too. There were buildings. There were mountains. There were trees, paths, signs. But the norm was gone. The world of humans, replaced with horses that could fly, blink things into existence, and behaved like humans.

The greenery outside served as a backdrop to a nightmare he was living. It was lush. They were large. Alien.

A place not like home.

“Are you okay, Rick?”

The voice made me jolt. I thought Twilight had gone to sleep, but instead she had walked over to me somehow without me hearing those hooves of hers click-clacking against the floor. My heart started pumping out of my chest, making me take a step back from her. Unfortunately for me, I had nowhere else to go, which led me to bump my back up against the wall. I felt like I was plastered to it like I was riding on a Gravitron, my cheeks clamped against the wall while she peered at me, her hoof gently reaching out to me.

Then, it fell, leaving a soft smile on her face to greet me.

“Why are you backing away from me?”

I sighed as I tried to calm my heart down. “Sorry, you scared me. I thought you were going to sleep.”

Twilight kept that smile up as she shook her head. “No, I was just resting my eyes a bit. After all that pacing I—” As she spoke, her eyes glanced at the trench she made. “I really did that for a while, didn’t I?”

A crack in the facade left me wondering if I just lost the game, my lips curving upward. “Yeah, you did. How did you not fall through the floor?”

Twilight chuckled behind her forehoof. “The crystals in this castle are so durable that even I can’t fall through the floor at this point!”

I laughed loudly at that one. “Whoever put this floor in for you deserves a raise.”

Twilight turned her laughter up a notch. “I’ll let the Tree of Harmony know that you like the floor.” Another gigglesnort leaped out of her body before she continued, “Anyway, that’s enough about me. I’m more curious about you.”

“Me? Why do—”

“Seriously?” Twilight asked, her brow furrowed. “You’re not from here, Rick. Why wouldn’t I be curious?”

“You said I looked like a malnourished Diamond Dog!” I riposted, my eyebrow raised.

She cackled at that one, clutching her gut with a forehoof. “Hehe! Of course I did. But then I saw that you were hairless too. So unless one of those Diamond Dogs had gotten his hair shaved in the middle of the night, I don’t think you’re one of them.” She waved a hoof nonchalantly at me, as if I was to have it. “Besides, you sound way too smart to be one of them… unless you’re part of some distant intellectual Diamond Dog tribe.”

“Last time I checked, I was just Rick,” I replied. I looked down at myself. Yep, I was still wearing the same pants I had last week (the dryer was broken so this was my only pair that wasn’t a victim of a flash flood), and I still had that red and black button-up shirt that made me look like I was doing a Warped Tour at a Starbucks.

Twilight facepalm—no, facehoofed? Facehooved? Semantics were schematics, maybe.

“Yep, I’m still Rick.”

“I’m glad,” she droned through her hoof that was covering her maw. Her forehoof then fell to the wayside. Then, she backed up a tad and sat on her haunches, looking up at me with a quill and a stack of paper hovering beside her. “So, other than you looking like a… you, what exactly are you?”

Well, she was not going to give up on her little research project, which so happened to be me. I sighed, sliding down the wall and onto the floor. “Well, I’m a human.”

“Really?”

I rolled my eyes. “Is that really so shocking to you?”

“Well, yes and no. It’s a long story that I’ll hold off until you tell me a simple two-hundred page biography highlighting your life from birth all the way until this very moment, along with family trees, pictures, audio logs placed as blocked text, and even creative purple-prose depictions of your memories!” She did a cross between a squeal and the sound of a mouse being stepped on here. “I can’t wait to know all about you!”

I blinked rapidly at what she just demanded. Did she think I was some random 43andme representative? “Twilight, I don’t think I can do that. Are you sure you’re not a psychopath?”

She tilted her head all puppy-like, and her ears perked up to the point of standing at attention. “A psychopath?”

“Uhh… yeah. You’re talking like you’re one.”

She frowned. “Sorry, am I talking too much?”

I nodded. “It’s a bit much for me, since I’m not at home.”

Home.

I felt my heart shattered when I heard it again.

“I apologize, Rick. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. Trust me, I’m not going to do anything you’re not okay with.”

“Are you sure about that?”

She grinned. “Yep, I’m HIV positive!”

I blinked, and checked my ears for earwax. “Sorry, what?”

“Sorry, Rick,” Twilight began, a blush blossoming forth on her cheeks. “I’m very sure about that. You don’t have to worry. Friendship is about maintaining a level of distance, not analytics, and despite popular theory, it’s definitely not about magic. If you want, I can get rid of the quill and paper.”

I felt my heart race a bit, but it slowed when I took a deep breath. “If you could put the quill and paper down, I’d be way more comfortable to talk.”

“That bad?” Twilight asked, her voice becoming scratchy.

I bobbed my head, much to her dismay. “It looks like you’re going to attack me with malicious intent… or you’re going to violently draw a mustache above my mouth. Not sure which.”

She shook her head before blinking the two items out of existence. The purpleness around her horn faded as soon as it came. “I guess you’re right.”

Twilight sounded so hurt by my wishes, but I couldn’t help that it was for the best. She was getting way too jittery about all this. Besides, I… can’t help but feel drawn to her despite her wanting to document my entire life story. Maybe I can get away from her once she’s conked out from asking me all these questions she’s got.

“So, what do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

I gulped. I hated interrogations.

Some time passed… not that I knew how much because she was still asking me questions. The only thing I knew that the sun was no longer shining, and I was still stuck here, my stomach grumbling like a San Francisco earthquake.

“So, why did you decide to buy that album?”

I shrugged. “It was on sale at the time, and trust me, I was not going to pass up on a good deal for the first autographed Dance Gavin Dance¹ album.”

We had talked about a lot before this. From the clean vocal highs…

“What was school like for you?”

“School? You have that here?”

“Rick, if you think for a second my ponies are going to be stuck without their heads being buried in a book, then you are sorely mistaken. Celestia would’ve thought I was a poorly acted Twilight by some non-reformed changeling if I didn’t have a school system in place!” She had given me a smirk that rivaled all the ones before it. “Friendship is Magic, and it must be taught through the many books on the subject!”

I groaned. “Yeah, yeah, I get it Miss Friendshipper.” I let out the air that was staying under wraps. “Well, school was great. Had a lot of friends back there. I remember teepeeing the entire school with my friends.”

“Tea peeing?”

I smirked. “Decorating the school with the paper that all of us humans wiped our asses with. We got the school pretty good too. Too bad it ended in us getting detentions for the next three weeks.”

“D-Detentions?”

I put my hands behind my back and returned the favor. “Twilight, are you afraid of detention?”

“N-No!” she yelped, hiding behind her wing.

I smirked. “Not buying that, but I’m glad, because that makes you look way less like a psychopath, and more like…”

“Like?” Twilight asked, her ears perked up.

I blinked. “Human, I guess.”

...to the devastating low growls...

“Twilight, I eat meat.”

The mare in front of me turned even more purple than she usually did, as she gasped in enough to swallow more than just a few flies.

“Really?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry, I won’t eat you,” I replied, smiling at her.

She wiped her brow with a hoof, sighing all the while. “Good, because I was about to run—”

“You have HIV, remember?”

...and even then, everything I knew had flowed together. She knew about my family, which wasn’t much since it was just like every other nuclear family, my hobbies, and most importantly, why I was nearly about to freak out the second the conversation was over.

Wait, was that why she was asking about the album I purchased before I got here?

“Uh, Twilight, you know I’m not actually going to freak out, right?”

Her muzzle wiggled in response to that one. “You aren’t?”

“I’m sure of it.”

She searched my face, even closing the distance between us just to check to see if I wasn’t lying. Once she did her diagnostic check (this is what she had called it), she scooted back on her haunches and sighed. “Well, if you’re not going to 'freak out', I do have one more question to ask, and then we’re done, for now.”

“Promise?” I asked.

She did this weird gesture that involved her chanting something about a Pink Pie promising to not poke herself in the eye before giving me and something extra, “I Pinkie Promise!”

“Pinkie promise?”

The mare copied my move, bobbing her head rather rapidly. “It’s a promise I can’t break. If I do, I’ll have to make it up to Pinkie somehow. After all, nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise.”

Suddenly, a voice interjected, punching through the room’s atmosphere like a deranged lunatic riding a bicycle down a steep hill. I had nearly toppled over trying to dodge whatever that projectile was. Thankfully, I was able to move out the way just in time, as the pink blob screeched to a halt.

She was like Twilight, save for a horn, and had big blue eyes. She looked ten times more intimidating though, as muzzles weren’t supposed to act like a human’s mouth, her teeth all being shown in their glory.

“Uhh… Who are—”

“Never break a Pinkie Pie promise.”

“Okay?” I said in a hurry. “But wh—”

She shoved a hoof into my mouth, which made my eyes widen and my tongue begging for mercy. “Never!” the pink menace shouted.

“Pinkie, could you not put your hoof in my friend’s mouth?”

Suddenly, the pink pony yelped, letting me not taste the dirt of whatever earth she stepped on out of my mouth. I kept hacking out bits of grass and soil while she spoke, “Oops, sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! I just had this sense that someone was going to propose a Pinkie Promise and then I felt the Twilight sense as well, and I just put two and two together! Now I’m here telling you not to break it and now you’re coughing up a lung… because of me.”

The pink pony’s mane deflated upon saying that.

“Pinkie, it’s okay. He’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure, Twilight?” the pink menace… Pinkie asked.

The winged mare with a horn nodded. “Yes. Trust me, I’m the best source I know when it comes to helping humans.”

“Human? That’s what he is?”

“Yes, Pinkie, now get out so I can finish up this conversation and—”

“Oh. My. Gosh! He’s the same as Derrick then and—”

Suddenly, I watched Twilight shove a hoof in Pinkie’s muzzle. “Exactly! He’s just like Oil Derrick, the infamous oil seeker! He traveled all over Equestria to find the best oils for everypony to use! I think he’d be very much like Rick over here! Thank you for that, Pinkie!”

Pinkie shoved Twilight’s hoof aside. “But Twilight why are you—”

With a zipper, Pinkie’s mouth was closed, a purple glow hovering over the mare’s muzzle.

After finally not heaving up my lungs and my dinner (which wasn’t meat, thankfully), I was able to really see what was happening. Not that I didn’t, as Twilight clearly was hiding something from me, but I really didn’t want to say something until after Pinkie left.

Twilight must’ve had the same thought, as she made sure to say a few words, “Pinkie, not now! I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

Pinkie’s mouth unzipped itself, letting the pink mare the opportunity to breathe and her hair to inflate. “Okay! Just make sure to introduce Rick to all of us too!”

I blinked. “How did you know my name?”

Twilight facehooved. “Don’t ask her that. Let’s save it for tomorrow, please.”

“Ok—”

The rest of the word fell on deaf ears as she was blinked away to wherever she came from.

Twilight’s horn died down. “My friends are great, aren’t they?”

“What was that about?” I said, cutting to the chase. I didn’t care about the display (well, other than Pinkie, because she was about to kill me with her grass and dirt covered hoof), I cared about whatever Pinkie said. That name didn’t sound pony-like at all.

“Pinkie just wanted to surprise you and—”

“No, I mean, Derrick. Who’s he?”

Twilight’s eyes widened, her wings twitching at her sides. “That wasn’t something you were supposed to know just yet.”

“Oh? And when was I supposed to know about him?”

Twilight’s lower lip twitched, before she bolted to her desk, which was hidden conveniently in a corner. She flipped open a notebook and swiftly galloped back over to me. Flipping through it, she shoved her hoof on a page and read out loud:

“❄︎🕈︎☜︎☠︎❄︎✡︎ 👍︎☟︎✌︎🏱︎❄︎☜︎☼︎💧︎ 👎︎⚐︎🕈︎☠︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ ☹︎✋︎☠︎☜︎!”

“Twilight, translate that to me in actual English.”

She groaned, mostly because of what I demanded, but probably because that wing of hers was totally bent out of shape due to that dance she did. “Let’s just say, this wasn’t supposed to be said until I could understand you better. Unfortunately, I’m stuck here having to tell you that… that…”

My heart began to race once again. “What?”

Twilight sighed. “You’re not as alien as you seem.”

What.

Before I could even think of anything to say, my mind opened up to her. “Are you saying that—”

“Derrick was our first human. You’re the second one in Equestrian history.”

⚐︎♒︎.

“Rick, are you okay?”

I could honestly crawl into a hole right now and start a new life underground, but I wasn’t wanting to tell her that. So, I shook my head and sighed.

“Do you want me to give you some time alone?”

I shook my head hard at that one. “Stay,” I murmured.

“Even if I do speak English?”

“Don’t remind me, horny. I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible and—”

“You will not call me horny!”

Twilight’s voice reverberated in my eardrums, like if my head was a replacement snare for a drummer of a black metal band. I winced as I slammed my hands over my ears to hopefully protect them from the sudden increase in volume. Fortunately, Twilight saw my reaction and apologized profusely… at the same volume.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—” She gasped, sucking in more air than a vacuum cleaner before she continued at a bearable volume. “Sorry, I’m still not used to the royal voice after Luna taught me how to control it!”

I let my hands fall to my sides. “Wish I knew that you could do that before I had to experience it. I’m pretty sure my eardrums just ran for cover behind my brain stem.”

I could still hear the growl in her voice as it rattled in my mind. This could haunt my dreams… Hell, my nightmares would wet their pants, if I was in one, that is. Am I actually dreaming? Is this real?

I pinched my cheek.

Yep. It was.

I waited for Twilight to say something, but she didn’t look so good. She had her head hung low, and her eyes closed.

So, I took the opportunity for once. “Say, Twilight?”

“Yes?” she squeaked out, her gaze peering up at me.

“What exactly are you? A horse, a mythical creature… a weirdly shaped fish that flopped out of water by accident?”

That made her ears perk up too. She brought her head up to look at me truly. “Are you asking what type of pony I am?”

“Well, yeah,” I began, holding out my pale hand. She looked at it like she just saw something that disgusted her, but when I brought it to see if her crown was actually glued to her head, she yelped when her crown clickity-clacked to the floor. “Sorry, I wanted to see if that was glued to your head. Guess I was wrong.”

She giggled behind her hoof. “Rick, you are a very silly human.” She gave me a very soft smile, but one nonetheless. That, children, is what we call progress. “Well, I’m an alicorn, a pony that encompassed all three pony tribes in Equestria.”

“Tribes?” I asked, brow raised. I patted her on the head as I spoke, “Sounds like there’s a long-winded and overly-complicated story to that.”

“You could say that,” Twilight replied. She looked towards the door and sighed. “I could explain it to you once I go find Spike. I feel bad that we’ve been sitting here since…” her voice trailed off. Why was she?

Suddenly, Twilight attempted to suck in all the oxygen in the room. “Where’s Spike?! Did I unlock the door a couple hours ago so he could come in and give us some food and meet you? Oh, I hope he 👎︎✋︎👎︎☠︎🕯︎❄︎ ☝︎☜︎❄︎ 🏱︎⚐︎😐︎☜︎👎︎ 👌︎✡︎ ✌︎ 👍︎✌︎👍︎❄︎🕆︎💧︎!”

Twilight kept looking at the door, while I agonized over the lack of air in the room. My breathing was fast, and my mind was racing at the thought of seeing five of her. I flailed my arm around the room, desperately trying to reach a window sill to bring some life back into the room. I felt like one of those used car lot balloon men being whipped about by the wind, throwing my arms out just to push a window open. Thankfully, I was somehow able to shove the nearby window open, letting a surge of air rush into the room.

I panted heavily as I took in that juicy O₂ with glee. “Twilight, where are you—”

“I’m sorry about taking your breath away! I’ll be back once I find Spike!”

With that, the alicorn mare flew out the door, leaving me with only my mind as a company while I had now slumped back on the ground. It’s a shame that my mind wasn’t more interesting. He’s one of those friends that only talks about himself and then cries like a bitch when we don’t invite him to future social gatherings. Maybe that’s why I decided to go to Turbo Virgin University: to see how far my social awkwardness could go before I turned into an Instagram model.

Around me was that same library-thing. I was finally free from her questioning, her presence, and her complete and utter insanity.

And yet, I found myself wanting her back already. God, I was becoming a character in an 80’s song. I hate to see her go, but I love to watch her walk away.

I forcibly exhaled for the first time since Twilight took my breath away—wait why does that sound like she was trying to serenade me?

I blinked before I slapped myself silly. Whoever approved of that thought needs to be sent to the slammer with no chance of parole. She’s a horse for crying out loud, one that would be a certified psychopath back home. There’s no way she could think of me like that, let alone I with her.

“Besides, she’s not my type,” I, the Turbo Virgin University attendee, said. “She’s royalty.”

The words had flown out of my mouth before I could bring them back. Was I really considering her?

I paused.

“No, she’s a fucking horse.”

“A what?”

My gaze snapped to the door, seeing a new pony right in the doorway. A mare with a pink coat, purple-ish mane that had a light blue streak running down the middle of it, and a mark on her backside that looked like a star with a blue streak following it. The pony walked into the room, looking at me with a head tilt.

“Who are you?” the pony asked.

Her voice tickled my ears, something that I didn’t expect. I stayed where I was, even if my legs were begging to move—if anyone was in this castle, they must be like Twilight if they were living here.

“Uh…” I said, before I brought myself back to reality. “Hey, I’m Rick. I’m Twilight’s new hostage.”

“Hostage?” The mare’s ear twitched as she sat down in front of me, hoping that getting closer would change things. She let out a giggle. “Sounds about right.” She held out her hoof towards me. “My name is Starlight Glimmer, but call me Starlight. Anypony who uses the last half of my name is either Twilight when she’s disappointed in me, or my parents, who are always disappointed with me.”

I laughed hard for the first time tonight. “My parents were the same way with me! Of course, they had two good reasons for it. My educational choices and general lifestyle were enough to wage war at the dinner table. So don’t feel like that’s what makes you you, Starlight.”

“Alright. Well,” She began, before taking a moment to poke her chin with a hoof. “I’ll have to come up with a new way to introduce myself now that you’re here.” She paused to look me down. “So, what are you?”

“A human,” I replied blankly, hoping she wouldn’t go to the lengths that Twilight did. “Have you ever heard of my kind?”

Surprisingly, the mare shook her head. “Nope! I lived in the middle of nowhere long before I met Twilight. So if there was another one of your kind in Equestria, then I missed out.”

I chuckled. “Well, Starlight. You haven’t missed much. Twilight’s the first one that discovered me after I conked myself out.”

“Conked yourself out?” She laid down, splaying herself like a dog. She looked up at me with inquisitive eyes. “What does that mean?”

“Out like a light?”

Starlight stared blankly.

“Knocked by a freight train?”

Starlight cranked herself like Soulja Boy before she shook her head.

“Got sent to Heaven and then back again?”

She blinked. “Heav...end?”

“Do you ponies not go outside?”

Starlight chuckled. “Of course we do! But we have ⬧︎□︎♍︎♓︎♋︎●︎ ♍︎◆︎♏︎⬧︎ ⧫︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ⬥︎□︎◆︎●︎♎︎■︎🕯︎⧫︎ ◆︎■︎♎︎♏︎❒︎⬧︎⧫︎♋︎■︎♎︎, so that’s why—”

“Translate that for me, please,” I begged, praying for her to blink a short quick guide on this whole nonsensical version of English as well.

She must’ve gotten the trick. “We have different social cues than you most likely.”

“Yep,” I said bluntly. “And you skkrttt eeeeee differently than Twilight. What’s with that?”

Starlight giggled. “Well, I learned how to do it differently than her. I don’t know why it was mandated across Equestria to use this, but each place has a different way of showing their emotions and thoughts.”

I blinked. Wait, what? “You do this to show your emotions and thoughts differently?”

“Well,” Starlight began, her muzzle scrunched up like an accordion. “It might be hard for you to understand this, but have you ever heard of a dialect?”

I nodded. “Yep, got one myself.”

“You don’t sound like you have one,” she said, searching my voice for anything that sounded like a dialect.

“Damn, I can’t even win here!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms up. “I live in a state that makes it impossible for anyone to say, ‘Hey you’re from X location’.”

She gigglesnorted as she scooted closer to me, her head close to my leg. “Well, I may have to retract my statement. You totally sound different from us.”

“Nice.”

I smirked. Street cred gained like a champ, the only cred I’ve ever gotten. Well, besides logging two-thousand hours into Skyrim on multiple consoles. Who needs cred when you are a level 100 Argonian Nightingale?

“Anyway,” she breathed out, holding her head with her forehoof. “Why are you here?”

I frowned. “Not sure. Woke up a while ago to see horny—I mean, Twilight, looking at me like a frog being dissected in Chemistry class while it’s still alive.”

“Pffft, Twilight does do that to ponies… and test subjects during experiments. I would know, I was one.”

“Actually, you’re still one of my test subjects,” Twilight said as she pranced into the room. “You just so happened to be replaced by Rick here.”

“Replaced?” Starlight mocked. She spared a glance over at me before she turned her head to Twilight. “I’m hurt by that, Twilight. I was a student after I was done being your test subject.”

“Oh, Starlight,” Twilight said with a smirk on her muzzle. “You don’t stop being a test subject until you graduate.”

“Graduate what?” I asked, before I looked over at what had entered the room.

A small lizard with purple and green scales had walked in, its green eyes looking over at me with bated curiosity. It had this mohawk thing going on its head, and it had some fangs that the lizard was not afraid to show off to the room. It also had claws too, which were gripping onto a platter of different foods, some steaming up the room with a certain amount of angst that only Trapt could pull off, while others filled my nostrils with a sense of hunger that my stomach wanted to voice proudly for everyone to hear.

“Graduate the School of Friendship, of course! Not that you technically had to go through the rigorous hours of lectures and—”

Geerrrrgle.

Everyone paused to look at me like I was more than just an alien. “Did you just—”

“That food is distracting me so much that I’m losing focus on everything else,” I said, pointing over at the dish the lizard was carrying. “Could we pause on the introductions and what not to eat? My brain needs to recharge.”

The three laughed at my dear agony. But I will not bow to their mockery.

“Not until you meet Spike!” Twilight exclaimed happily. She fluttered to the side to let me get a good look at the new guest, before she extended her wing out towards it. “Rick, meet Spike, my dragon assistant.”

The dragon waved at me with his claw. “Nice to meet you, Rick.”

I sighed and accepted the definition of insanity. “N-Nice to meet you too, Spike.”

Why did I just stutter?

The fangs stared at me intensely.

The fangs.

Oh.

“Hey, Spike, do you mind if we talk after we eat?”

“Sure,” he replied bluntly, waving a claw. He probably saw my expression, which was a cross between ‘about to post about my mid-life crisis on Facebook’ and ‘How I realized I was a virgin by looking at my own reflection: Part One, The Early Years’. “Don’t worry too much about us, Twilight only will bite you if she gets too anxious and Starlight will only bite if you took the last muffin off the table before she could.”

“What does that mean?” Twilight said, her voice full of grit, while she glared down at the dragon.

Starlight, on the other hand, simply shrugged. “I want to say something against that, but he’s not wrong. As long as you don’t take the last muffin, I won’t bite your hand off, Rick.”

I laughed. I laughed at Starlight trying to threaten me for taking a muffin. I laughed at my fang-fear that I had. I laughed at how I was stuck in a world that spoke English but had a fixation on making sounds that could halt a fresh out of the box Karen on her way to the manager’s office in seconds. I laughed at my misfortune for ending up here.

I had let it all out. I brought my arm to my face, wiping away a stray tear that had raced down my cheek. Man, was this one of hell of a day. Hopefully I can tackle this fear I had of Spike later because right now, my stomach was demanding me to chow down on whatever they were going to serve me, and I wasn’t going to deny it.

Hopefully they won’t talk too much over dinner…

...right?

It was nice to finally leave that room for a moment. I had been locked inside with the purple psychopath for more than just a few hours. Thankfully, the blend of the pink horse that blinked in and out of existence and the purple menace came to my rescue, and taught me a valuable lesson: do not underestimate the ponies’ language. There were dialects in the absurdity they called English, let alone a completely different form of writing and speaking involved. It enticed me a lot, to the point of wanting to bring it up over dinner.

The question was: how? How could I do it without sparking a damn lecture again? I do not want to sit through another one of those. Maybe I could use Spike or Starlight at the dinner table to spark the conversation? Then, maybe, if I was careful enough, I could treat it as a normal conversation. My only roadblock was Twilight, since I wasn’t sure if her normal conversations were akin to ‘How I Edited My Painfully Strenuous Master’s Program Thesis on How Online Shooters Turn Twelve Year Olds Into Bonafide Racists’. There was only one way to find out.

I took my seat at the table. Spike was sitting across from me, while Twilight was supposed to sit beside me (My luck was as consistent as participating in the lottery for ten straight years and only having a dollar to show for it). Unfortunately, Starlight was going to sit diagonal from me, which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing so she could most likely give her mentor a stink eye from afar, and a curse because she had to also give me a stink eye due to the proximity of this all.

See, they were not sitting at one of the many tables at the library. No, none of those tables would do. Not in Twilight’s eyes. She had to make this a big spectacle, a way to prove to me, for some reason, that their species were welcoming and absolutely filthy rich. She insisted on this while using her purple stuff to create our seating arrangements out of thin air. It was like she had yanked on the universe’s gaping back pocket to spawn the long crystal table that had blinked right in front of us. I thought that she was the only pony that could do that, but Starlight followed her up on that offer, charging her blue stuff out, creating chairs out of nothing to match the décor.

All the while, Spike and I looked on as if we were frozen in place. The only thing that wasn’t frozen was my poor jaw, which was hanging so low that the floor was tickling the hairs of my chin. Luckily for me, I was able to pick my jaw off the ground due to Spike nudging my calf like a toddler who lost his or her toy and was making sure his or her father knew about said lost toy.

I groaned when he did this, rubbing my lower leg. Claws, even when balled up into a fist, made an impact on my flabby flesh. I winced in slight pain, which made Spike ask me a slew of questions that ranged from ‘Did that hurt?’, ‘Did that actually hurt?’, and ‘Wow, are all humans this weak?’ This actually hit me in my chest region, mostly because his fist did another test to see if my chest was stronger. Thankfully, he was correct, since I barely felt anything. However, he misinterpreted my lack of breathing as a victory, simply because I was still recovering from being nearly asphyxiated by a runaway lunatic with a horn and a pair of wings.

Armed with the power of broken English and universe-defying abilities, Twilight was someone who could harm me both mentally and physically. Meanwhile, Spike could only semi-harm me physically. I wasn’t going to underestimate him too much, though. He had a really nice punch.

“Say, Spike?”

The dragon was the only one sitting at the table with me. Those two mares had told us to get some fresh air and to not go roaming around the Castle, yet we stayed right in that very room after taking a few moments to breathe right outside captivity. Spike even had vouched for this ‘fresh air’ saying that we ‘wouldn’t go too far’. Twilight insisted on giving me a tour tomorrow to make up for it, because she didn’t know who else was visiting the castle. She didn’t want to scare any other ponies with my appearance—does she think I’m ugly or something? She didn’t tell me. She just told me that her luck was similar to mine, citing that it could be possible that her family, their families, and their unborn families could be visiting all at once! Starlight hadn’t bought into that nonsense, tisk-tisking her mentor with, ‘Twilight, you’re either stressed or hooked on phonics.'

Actually, Starlight didn’t say that. She just said she was stressed out and needed to take a few deep breaths, but I imagine her brain was like that audiotape years ago, except with the addition of schizophrenia, obsession with earthworms, and an imaginary friend.

I derailed my train of thought when I saw Spike had perked up when he heard my question, his eyes peering gently up at me with a smile on his face. “Yeah? What’s going on, Rick?”

I returned the gesture, even though I felt my face doing a complete two-seventy. “You ever just think that there are way too many coincidences with this whole situation?”

“What do you mean?” Spike asked, his eyes boggled. “Like, with you and I talking or something?”

I nodded. “Yep! What is the probability of us speaking somewhat the same language?”

Spike tapped his claw to his chin, while propping his head with the other. “Uhh… not sure. It’s probably not that high though, if you’re going to have a mental breakdown over it.” He chuckled here for some reason. “If you do have one, let me know. I am an expert at handling mental breakdowns.”

Gave that dragon a bit of a smirk, before prodding him with my thoughts. “Why do you say that?”

“Well,” Spike began, smirking. “There are two different types of breakdowns. Twilight having an uncontrollable feeling that she’s being followed, and the shredding from Discord’s floating metal band whenever we play our D&D games.”

Shredding. The dragon said shredding. It sounded odd, even though he could shred me with his teeth in seconds. Yet he didn’t mean shredding as in tearing to bits. He meant shredding a guitar, nailing a signature riff, creating harmonies—all that existed here in a distant land.

Another strange coincidence. The similarities were astounding to me.

“That’s cool,” I said, my hand twitching to hopefully signal to him to prod further so I can jump out of my skin and gush about all those long-winded titles from the emo-punk bands from the early 2000s.

Instead, he let me down, as he rubbed the back of his head with his claw. “Y-Yeah it is.” He shook his head and looked down at his plate for a moment. “Sorry,” he muttered before glancing back up at me. “When Twilight said she found somepony completely different, I didn’t believe her. Then when I walked in… I had to contain myself. Not only are you an alien, but you’re interested in what I do?”

“Well yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” I asked. I propped my head up with my arm, not because I was bored or anything. I was trying to keep myself contained too. Gotta sell it to him to get that conversation that’ll carry us until those two mares come back.

“It’s just,” Spike began, before he licked his lips and cast his gaze down at the centerpiece of the table. A group of flowers that had survived the kitchen, if I had to put it that way, along with a giant vase to keep them contained. The dragon’s sigh pulled me right back into the conversation as he voiced his retort, “You just got torn away from… wherever you were from, and now you’re interested in us without having a major meltdown?”

I sighed. “To be fair, I still am freaking out, you just don’t see it. Also, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather enjoy this for what it’s worth before you guys somehow zap me back to where I was. Actually, on second thought, maybe you shouldn’t zap me back to where I was exactly. I think I was in my living room re-enacting a tackle by a linebacker on da Bears. I don’t know, my memory has been a bit borked ever since I woke up. Was hoping Twilight would clear that up for me.”

Spike chuckled. “Re-enacting a tackle…? Sounds kinda like hoofball, but it’s not something I’m well-versed in due to being busy with all the friendship issues that I help Twilight and her friends with.”

“Hoofball?” I asked. Probably an equivalent to football. I couldn’t believe it. “All these coincidences and it’s still the first day. I don’t know how I’m going to wrap my mind around this.”

“Like I said, I’m surprised you haven’t had a mental breakdown yet,” Spike replied.

I shrugged. “Probably because I’ve been hard-stuck on how you all speak my language, when you all totally don't. I mean, you all have a completely different way of writing and speaking, which is totally different than what English is for me! How can you lump all of those noises with the English language?”

I felt like I was about to go cross-eyed as Spike’s eyes widened. “Wait, writing and speaking are different? What does yours look like?”

“Yeah,” I replied, nodding towards the dragon. “Twenty-six letters to choose from, and they aren’t written like updated Egyptian hieroglyphics.” I chuckled at my own stupid joke that looked like it landed way behind Spike’s head. “You got a piece of paper and a pen I can write on?”

Spike smirked. “Yep!” He slammed a pad of paper and a pen on the table, making it rattle. “Always have to have some on claw just in case Twilight wants me to write a dissertation to Celestia on the intricacies of friendship again.”

“Common subject?” I asked as I reached out to grab the pad and pen.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Spike mumbled. He twiddled with his claws and leaned back in his chair. “I was used to it when I was writing letters about it, not training manuals.”

“Training manuals for friendship? I thought that was easy to do without reading a book.”

While I scribbled illegible letters of the alphabet in the notepad, I heard Spike groan. “You’d be surprised. Some ponies don’t get it. And that’s fine, it’s hard to get friends if you don’t know how, but why look at a book when you can just go out and meet ponies? It’s practically instinctual!”

“Maybe the instinct is what needs to be taught, Spike,” I said unconsciously as I wrote how the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

“You’re right,” Spike sighed. “Maybe that’s why everypony reads Twilight’s books. Another avenue towards making friends, right?”

I laughed. “Yep!” With that, I shoved the pen and paper towards Spike, who looked like he was completely and utterly frozen by the gesture, before he tilted his head and gasped.

“Whoa, Rick! This is what your English looks like?”

“Yep. All twenty-six letters. I even wrote a sentence for you that people always encounter when they’re learning how to type, which is a totally different can of worms that I don’t want to open up just yet.”

Spike whistled before he spoke, “I can see why you’re completely shocked by how we write, or well, how they write. Everypony has a different way of speaking depending on where they’re from.”

“A different way? So like how Starlight said she had a different dialect?”

Spike’s pearly whites showed, which made me both happy and absolutely terrified to see. “Yep! Except then it gets all thrown out the window when we add entire combinations of the language and—”

“Hold up, combinations?”

“Well, yeah! There’s the English and Prench version that Fleur speaks. Some of the nobles speak that too. And then there is the English Zebra combination that… well, it’s different. A good different. Like eating ice cream for twenty-four hours while watching Daring Do at max volume different.”

I blinked rather quickly at that one. “Daring Do?”

“It’s a pretty cool series from what Rainbow says, but that’s because she’s a super-mega fan of her.”

“You could say that again, Spike.”

Twilight’s voice completely threw our conversation into a tailspin. She had come out with our food floating in her sparkly purple stuff, while Starlight trailed from behind with a jug of what looked like water was in her blue floating grasp.

I must have been staring way too long at the stuff floating on the table, since Spike broke me out of my trance saying my name. “Rick? Rick? Why are you looking at them like that?”

“Uh…” my voice trailed off, trying to pick and choose my words carefully. I didn’t want them to think they looked ugly or something. “I’m just confused as to how they’ve been lifting things without having to use their hooves.”

“Magic,” Starlight said bluntly, which made my eyes boggle at what I heard. Magic? Next they were going to tell me that pigs flew and cows spoke in English too!

“Seriously?” I asked with a head tilt. “Magic?”

Twilight nodded as she set the food on the table. “Of course. How else would the magic of friendship exist?”

“Wait, you were being serious about that?! It wasn’t some play on words?!”

The three of them burst out into laughter. I didn’t know that’s what she meant! I thought it was frou-frou description to entice people into talking to each other!

I caught my heart racing for some reason, maybe because I was finally brought into reality in that I was really not here. I’m losing my ability to control myself here, and if one more thing just comes out of nowhere, I could really lose myself.

Clutching at my chest, I brought myself out of the conversation and into what was being placed onto the table. I looked at the food, how each dish looked extremely vegan. Salad, breadsticks, pasta, a small cheese pizza, and some weird-looking soup thing. It looked like some rock was floating in it, but I couldn’t get to see what it was, as it floated away from me to be set right in front of Spike, who totally knew what it was and licked his lips.

I can’t believe I was here right now, as an empty plate encased in blue magic was set right in front of me. I needed to calm down. I needed to breathe.

I let out all that pressure built in me as I shook in my seat. I looked over to see the rest of them not focused on me, as they levitated other dishes this way and that, which made my sudden anxiousness blend into the backdrop. This was a great advantage, since I wasn’t going to get interrogated again. I was the one with the questions though, especially one for Spike, who hadn’t gotten anything else but that soup he was prepping to devour.

Letting go, I let out one final anxious breath and asked, “Spike? What are you eating?”

Spike peered over at me while his lips slurped the creamy-looking broth on his spoon. He set the spoon aside and smiled. “Cream of Sapphire Soup!”

“Cream of… Sapphire?”

“Yep! One of my favorites when I head to bed. Not going to lie, it’s an acquired taste for some dragons, but it didn’t take long for me to like it!”

I was about to say something here, but Starlight jumped in to steal the show. “Ember said that soup needed to be thrown in lava.”

The dragon glared at the mare, who promptly chuckled as she dug her fork into a bit of her salad.

Meanwhile, Twilight had levitated the salad bowl towards me during the entire foray, which I grabbed and gave her a nod. She smiled, and whispered ‘you’re welcome’. I gave her a thumbs up and went scavenging for my own food.

It took a few minutes with Starlight and Twilight’s help, but I managed to get what I wanted.

Now was the eating part… and hopefully nothing else happens—

“So, Rick.”

Of course.

“Yes, Starlight?” I asked, stabbing the salad on my plate with no remorse.

The mare had set her utensil aside and was wiping her mouth with a napkin. When she threw her napkin aside, she turned to me with a grin. “Twilight told me a lot about you.”

“Hopefully it was nothing but good things,” I said, which prompted Starlight to giggle behind her hoof. “Guess not?”

“Partially. It was a good mix.”

“Well, I’ll take my victories when I get them,” I said, chewing on my salad. It tasted… like salad. “This isn’t bad.”

“Good,” Twilight began as she gulped down whatever she had in her muzzle. “I knew you said you couldn’t digest hay, so I went for the cabbage/lettuce combo. Looks like I was right?”

“Yep!” I exclaimed.

“Besides the hay thing,” Starlight interjected, leaving me to look at her again with a bit of… worry. “You had a few other little hiccups.”

“Hiccups?”

“Yeah. What’s the deal with the whole ‘coming here knocked out in the archives’?”

“Glad you asked! I was going to talk to Twilight about it, but if we’re going to address why my head felt like I got pummeled by a pack of rampaging bulls, then let’s discuss this.”

I chomped into another bite of salad, which prompted me with a burst of vinegar taste. I swallowed it down while Twilight began her tirade.

“See, I have a feeling I know why this happened, unlike last time with Derrick.”

This earned an eyebrow raise by more than just me, as Spike paused from eating his soup to give her a head tilt.

She spurred on though, as all three of us looked on while we ate. “Well, you see, Derrick just fell through the roof when he arrived. And that was a long time ago, back when we had the Golden Oak library. Even Starlight wasn’t here when Derrick was around.”

“How long was he here?” I asked.

Twilight hummed to herself in thought. “A few months. It’s still a mystery to all of us. One day, he disappeared. We never saw him again.” The mare sighed and set her fork aside. “Anyway, we’ll talk about him sometime in the future. For now, we need to talk about you, Rick. Unlike Derrick, you just teleported into the Castle’s archives without causing much damage to anything other than to yourself. Saved me about… 25,000 bits from the last time someone crashed into this castle.”

“Sounds like something Rainbow Dash would’ve done,” Starlight said with food in her mouth. She quietly chomped the rest down before swallowing. “After all, she does have a track record.”

“Actually, Starlight, Twilight’s misremembering. The last one to cause that damage was me.”

Starlight snapped to Spike, who was uncomfortably shifted in his seat. I tilted my head at this. Unless he burnt down an entire section of the castle, there was no way he could’ve done that much damage.

“How did you—”

“Crash?” Starlight nodded, while Spike rolled his eyes and continued, “Remember those flaming hot gems you got me? Those ones in the bag?”

Starlight nodded… slowly. “Yeah… what about them?”

Suddenly she gasped.

Spike frowned. “I got indigestion so bad that night.”

I blinked. “There’s no way.”

The dragon twiddled with his claws once again. “Yep. Blew out the entirety of the castle’s toilets. And the sinks. And the stoves too, somehow. I wonder why those were hooked up to the plumbing, but…”

“So that’s why the chef I hired quit four months ago,” Twilight said, tapping her chin with a hoof. Was she going to completely ignore the fact that Spike just admitted to blowing up the castle with his a—

“Anyway, we keep getting off-track. Let’s try not to derail this conversation any further, hmm?”

The pony and the dragon nodded, while I just stared at my salad, wondering if I was going to get the same indigestion that Spike had.

“So, Rick here teleported into the archives. However, it wasn’t a normal teleport. Most unicorns have to use only a fair bit of energy from their horn to cast a normal spell. However, this energy that Rick had used was… alarmingly high. It was like he summoned an entire choir’s worth of magic and sent it into that one spell!”

“Does that mean Rick here can cast a spell?” Starlight asked, staring at me with malicious intent. Actually, it was more like she was wondering if I was actually sitting there, but I couldn’t tell. At this point, I was made a target, and I needed to make myself not look like a target.

“Well, I don’t know about that, Starlight,” Twilight replied. She pointed a hoof in my direction. “The fact that Rick didn’t even know what magic was would indicate otherwise.”

I rolled my eyes. “Magic wasn’t like what you all have. Back home it was more… fake. There were magicians that people would go to see tricks happen, but it was nothing but that. A trick. A gimmick. A way to show a cool party trick without having the party.”

“That sucks,” the three of them said in unison.

I snorted. “You all ever think that you’re one in the same?”

“Anyway!” Twilight yelped out, causing everyone except her to return back to eating their dinner plates. “If that’s the case, then no, he can’t cast any spells. Actually, when you wake up tomorrow, Rick I will need to run some tests on you, just to make sure our magic isn’t going to mess with you at all. The last alien that we had kinda fizzled up into a magical death of sparkles and rainbows because we didn’t check to see if he was allergic to poison joke.”

“Poison joke?”

Starlight interjected before Twilight could even open her mouth. “It’s a flower that can change anything about you for a short while. It’s mostly harmless, but our resident alien decided to take a bite out of one. To most species in Equestria, you’ll get a bit of a stomach ache at the worst, or maybe a magical sneeze or two, but we didn’t take into account that the guy was an alien. We found out that his stomach did a complete 360 flip just a few minutes after taking it. We had to rush him to the clinic and well—”

Twilight sighed. “Things didn’t work out for him for long. We didn’t understand what he was saying most of the time anyway. Only Fluttershy could, and she was not happy when the creature had passed. We only had him for under a few hours.”

“Okay,” I said, taking everything in. I gulped down a slice of pizza, the cheese sliding down my mouth as if it was a capsule of diabetes. “So, should I be worried?”

Twilight smiled, which might be either a good sign, or me just asking a good question. “Good question, Rick!”

It was the good question one. Damn.

The purple mare nicknamed horny continued, “You’ll most likely be fine. Derrick didn’t have any issues with magic, and if he did, he must’ve kept it to himself.”

Starlight frowned. “Wish I could’ve met that human.”

Twilight, once again, exhaled hard through her muzzle. “Well, to answer your main question, Rick, because of that spell of yours, it most likely caused you to gain momentum, which launched you square into one of my bookshelves.”

I tilted my head. “But how? I didn’t see any of your bookshelves broken whatsoever. I should’ve made at least a dent in that wooden one.”

“You didn’t hit that one,” Twilight said, smirking. “You hit one of the crystal ones.”

“Oh,” I mumbled as I held another piece of pizza in my hand. I chomped down on that slice, the sauce filling my mouth and the greasy cheese making me feel like I was devouring a Domino's pizza. “That explains the headache.”

“Wait, you have a headache?” Starlight asked.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty dull one. I just got to make sure I’m not squinting and I’m fine—”

Spike got out of his seat to look up at me. “Yeah, Twilight, that welt on his head doesn’t look the greatest.”

Twilight threw her forehooves in the air, once again. “I thought that was part of his appearance! Ugh,” she grunted here, throwing herself out of her seat to get a closer look at me. She squinted too, which made me squint and GAH— “Yeah, he looks like he did sustain some brain damage here.”

“Brain damage?!” I shouted. “Twilight, don’t tell me this is actually serious or I will—ack!”

Twilight clamped my mouth shut with her magic. It tickled my mouth like a feather rubbing up against my side. I was about to laugh at the sensation, but Twilight’s words filled my brain with all of the possibilities:

“You’re going to die.”

“I pulled an Uno reverse card, you’re actually the one with HIV, Rick.”

“✡︎⚐︎🕆︎ ☟︎✌︎✞︎☜︎ ❄︎☜︎☼︎💣︎✋︎☠︎✌︎☹︎ 💧︎☜︎✞︎☜︎☠︎📪︎ 👌︎☼︎✌︎✋︎☠︎ 👍︎✌︎☠︎👍︎☜︎☼︎📬︎ ✋︎ 👎︎⚐︎☠︎🕯︎❄︎ 😐︎☠︎⚐︎🕈︎ 🕈︎☟︎✌︎❄︎ ❄︎☟︎✌︎❄︎ 💣︎☜︎✌︎☠︎💧︎📪︎ 👌︎🕆︎❄︎ ✋︎❄︎🕯︎💧︎ 👌︎✌︎👎︎!”

Instead, all I heard was Twilight’s verdict:

“You may have a slight concussion.”

I sighed. “Better than what I was hearing. Jeez, I never want to hear that noise you made in my head ever again.”

Twilight tilted her head. Her ears were at attention when she asked, “What?”

“Yeah. It sounded like you were getting tortured in a back alley or something,” I said, shrugging. “So, should I go to the doc’s tomorrow? Maybe see if he can patch me up?”

Starlight smirked. “She could patch you up. However, Twilight, do you think we could just magick him all better?”

“Wait that’s possible?” I rattled off like a crazy auctioneer trying to sell a bottle cap that was totally not bit into.

Twilight sold me on that one. Ten golden nuggets (bits) were thrown onto the table. “Yep, however, like I said before, we need to make sure our magic isn’t toxic to you. It’s important for your life here in Equestria, that is, until we can find a way for you to return home.”

“Return home? You mean it’s possible?”

Twilight’s ears sagged as she spoke, “We don’t know if we can. However, I do know a few more time-bending spells that I didn’t know when Derrick was around. Maybe those will hold the key to your return home? Either that, or we may need to recreate how you got here in the first place. It’s a toss-up that I’m willing to experiment, if you’re willing, Rick.”

I stared at her. There was already a possibility of going home? It made my heart race even faster, if that was possible. I hope I don’t suffer a heart attack while eating the remaining food on my plate. “Twilight, if it’ll help me get home, then sure. Until then, let’s finish up eating dinner and—”

“But Twilight told me so much about you that I want to know more!” Starlight whined suddenly, which made me look at her in surprise.

I wish I hadn’t. She was acting like a dog, giving me those eyes that only men with no soul would not cave to. She had her hooves all curled up, begging me to tell her my secrets. Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t going to tell her anything I was uncomfortable with telling her, but I was terrible at resisting that look. My track record was currently 0-395 in that department.

I scooted my plate away from me and turned to her in full. “Okay, fine. But, let’s make sure it’s appropriate, though. Don’t want Spike over there to be scarred for life.”

The dragon groaned. “Why does everyone think I’m too young? I’m like… twenty in pony years!”

Twilight hummed to herself as she scooted her chair in. “That may be true, Spike, but you’re still a baby dragon, since technically, you’re not mature by dragon standards until you’re eighteen.”

“What? Since when?!” Spike growled.

Twilight blinked a book into existence and flipped through it without any second to breathe. She then stopped on a page, her eyes darting to and fro with immeasurable speed. She prattled off her decree, “‘Dragons have a much slower growth rate than what we previously had thought’, Dainty Scroll had told the Magical Inquirer. ‘We took a sample size of dragons that were willing to get stabbed by a large needle to conduct this experiment of ours. We were able to conclude that those who were older were actually around when the beginning of Equestria was formed. We presumed it was due to the clogging in their hemorrhoids, but we weren’t able to get accurate readings on that claim, since we were only there to measure magic readings, not life-threatening conditions.

“‘However, what we did find was astonishing. The magic essence that was in their systems was always fluctuating, meaning that the magic was holding them to a different rate of growth, essentially. This was our point of emphasis in our case study, which we compared to a pony’s magic reserves. Turns out that dragons keep a hold of their magic longer, hence this delay in aging, which, in turn also affects the maturity of dragons.’”

Twilight shut the book, crushing Spike’s hopes and dreams with an echoing SLAP of paper and dust.

“Noooooo!” Spike shouted. The pain of the virgin echoed in my ears, but that pain was realized fully as I too had that pain enlodged in me. Turbo Virginity did that to folks, especially professors in college. They were the pioneers of the process, and the beacons of sanctity as they trudged on in giving me, and the rest of my colleagues, the ability to resist the dreaded month of November.

Spike flopped onto the floor, giving himself what would’ve been a concussion too, but luckily, Twilight saved him from such a fate and allowed his spine to brace the impact, letting him reenact how a domino would fall on the ground.

“It’s okay, Spike,” Twilight cooed. She had bent down to check on the poor dragon, who looked like he had seen a ghost. “You’ll eventually be a very mature dragon that everypony will look up to.”

“Really?” Spike mumbled.

“Of course! Don’t the crystal ponies already look up to you?”

Spike let out a chuckle. “Yeah, they do. I don’t know if I deserve that credit—”

“You totally do, Spike!” Starlight chanted. “Anyway, Rick, could we talk before you get acupuncture treatment tomorrow morning by Twilight?”

“Wait, when did I say anything about needles—”

I ignored whatever the hell Twilight was going to say right there and brought out my hand. “Sure. Just make sure you bring breakfast in tomorrow and we can talk about it after I wake up.”

“Perfect! I’ll have Spike help me create a great feast for us to share!” Starlight said, clopping her forehooves together while she squee’d.

Meanwhile, Spike just groaned. “Am I really the guinea pig around here?”

Twilight just smiled. “Yes, yes you are!”

It was a short while before dinner we finished our dinner. Nothing else was said, since everything was needed to be said. Besides, Starlight postponed the whole gushing about what I said to Twilight until tomorrow morning, which made me spoon and fork the rest of my food with the speed of the gods.

I helped them clean up the rest of the table too, much to Twilight’s protests. She said I was the Royal Guest or something, like I cared about that. I was more focused on just getting out of the room and into a bed, as I was dead tired and really wanted to sleep. However, Twilight wasn’t having that either. She still wanted to make sure my concussion wouldn’t cause any more damage, which I agreed with her. So, she assigned Starlight as my ‘sleep aide’.

Guess that conversation was going to happen earlier than later.

As we walked into my new bedroom for the night, the door shut with a gentle click, leaving me and this mare alone.

I sighed and hopped up on the bed. It’s plush comforts wrapping around me like a warm blanket on a winter day. I was tempted to shut my eyes, but Starlight had other plans.

She smothered me with a pillow, making me squirm and thrash like I was being strangled… wait, I was being strangled! I threw the pillow away from me, the blue hue no longer enrapturing it, which caused it to sail into the air and into the wall. It slid down the wall into a depressing looking lump.

I turned to Starlight, who was smirking at me. “What are you trying to do? Kill me?!”

The mare shook her head. “Nope! I have to make sure you don’t fall off into a deep sleep, and the best way to do that was make sure you were aware that you were losing oxygen! I mean, that’s what Twilight said worked best. She saw it happen!”

Panting heavily, I decided on whether or not I should pummel this mare into the ground. Fortunately for me, I was a patient human, one that was willing to let his anger sit by the wayside until it really mattered. She wasn’t trying to kill me. She was just trying to… keep me awake. Even if her methods were unorthodox and mirrored a serial killer doesn’t mean she wanted to kill me! Right?

Right?

I sighed and kept myself arched against the headboard. It was very uncomfortable, but I was afraid to ask Starlight for that pillow, since she practically smothered me with it not too long ago.

So, I played it cool and rolled my eyes. “Remind me to tell Twilight she is an actual psychopath.”

“Noted!’ Starlight yipped cheerfully. She trotted over to my bedside to give me a once-over before she chuckled. “Alright, I’ll let you be. I know I told you I was going to talk to you about everything tomorrow, and I know you want your rest.”

“Really? Now you’re going to let me sleep after you just tried to strangle me?”

The mare tilted her head. “All’s fair in friendship and war.”

“That is totally not how that phrase goes,” I said, booping the mare on her snoot.

Starlight just went cross-eyed, and her muzzle scrunched up like a spring getting sprung. “Please don’t do that,” she muttered.

Her sidelong glance looked contrary to what she just said. And… was she blushing?

I shook my head. “As long as you don’t smother me with a pillow again, we have ourselves a deal.”

She held out her hoof, which I snatched with earnest. We made our agreement, if shaking our hoof-hand shake was anything binding. “Deal,” she said, giving me a soft smile.

She slowly backed up and rattled off a response. “Anyway, I better head out. Need to get some sleep myself. I’ll be here to wake you up bright and early!”

“Sounds good, Starlight!”

With that, the mare trotted out and quietly shut the door, leaving me to my own demise.

I hopped out of bed and quickly grabbed the pillow again. I fluffed it up and threw it on the bed before plopping into its comforts once again. I smiled and snuggled right into it, before shutting my eyes.

It shouldn’t be hard to sleep, right?

I woke up in that same room. The door was closed, yet the lights were on. All around me were the same furniture from before, a chair set beside a shelf, with, who would’ve guessed, more books. A lamp hung gently sat beside it on a small little table. Beside that was another lamp, which was taller than even me, as it soared towards the ceiling.

Okay, maybe this room was not like it was before.

I blinked as I looked around. More of the room was whacky. Tiles were missing. Walls were practically floating. I think I saw my mother’s favorite dish network dish floating outside my window. Was this an amalgamation of my prior dreams with the unfortunate view of my current situation mixed in?

Slowly I hopped out of my bed. I trudged for the door, which winked at me for some reason before flying open like I was presented with a new car from one of those gameshows.

As I walked, more and more of the place began to defragment. Chunks of the floor flew away as my feet touched them, while ponies spun around in circles like a Beyblade. I couldn’t believe how everything was so out of my control.

Then, I noticed something. The moon was out when it was daylight. That sometimes happened, but not when it was high noon. What the fu—

“I see you’ve seen through our ruse.”

Suddenly, the world fell back into shape before it disappeared, leaving me to fall endlessly into the void. I reached out to grab onto what was falling away, but it was way too late. As I fell and screamed my head off, I wondered who actually was talking to me. I didn’t see anyone around, and I was for sure not just hearing things—

“You’re right, you aren’t just hearing things. You actually are dreaming, and I just so happen to control this realm.”

Control this realm? Also why are you reading my thoughts?

“Because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to communicate with me since I just took your mouth and fed it to a pack of timberwolves.”

I felt my face. Yep, I did not have a mouth anymore. Strange. What about the controlling of the realm bit?

“I am the Princess of this realm. I will not show you my form as I do not care to give you my presence.”

Yet you’re willing to talk to me?

“Yes, because you intrigue me enough that I should pay homage to the new resident human. After all, Derrick was such a fine example, and I suspect you should be too.”

You know Derrick?

“Yes. Who wouldn’t? An alien with that was shorter than Twilight? Ah… he was such a great boy.”

What.

“Oh? Did you not know of that? Maybe you should ask Twilight, she would be happy to—”

I felt my cheeks sag. She said she wouldn’t tell me yet. Said I wasn’t ready for it.

“Fair enough. If Twilight refrains from partaking in subjecting another alien to the truth, then it would be her call to inform you, not I.”

Okay. Say, could you help me figure something out?

“You are employing my help, after all this?”

You haven’t done much to me, unlike Twilight and Starlight, who both went a bit stir crazy around me.

“Stir crazy? I do not know of this term.”

Batshit insane?

“⊘⋟ঞ⓿ ஞ⑥ ❺⑥❶ ④≽ঞ⑤?”

What the fuck did you just say to me you—

“Sorry, do you not know of the alicorn dialect?”

The alicorn dialect?

“Ah, well, Twilight must have kept that version under wraps. She mostly spits fire under the Ponyville native dialect. That mare. If only she would speak the tongues of her ancestors, then there would be no trouble in her path to becoming eternal!”

Spitting fire? Eternal? The heck are you talking about?

“Sorry, I must have stuttered, or I rambled on about the Preamble again. Which one was it this time?”

Neither. You just didn’t make sense.

“Oh, fair. You are a human after all.”

What’s that supposed to mean?

“It means several things, but the most important one of all is that you do not speak the English language—”

I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I do speak English and—

“Your thoughts do not deserve a proper response if you dare to interrupt me once more!”

My nose scrunched up at this one. I apologize, Princess…?

“Luna, but you may call me The Princess of Moon Pies.”

The what?

“Sorry, just call me Luna. Are you okay, human?”

I do not know. Am I supposed to be hearing you compare yourself to a… moon pie?

Hello?

…

She must be giving me radio silence—

Suddenly, the world turned into itself once more. The bed morphed first, then the furniture, then the door, and then the dish floating outside the window. It was all there, and I was back to being tucked into the bed. My legs were numb, and my arms felt like they were nailed to the headboard… minus the pain, of course.

The only difference that stood out to me was the pony staring at me. She was tall, wore a crown like Twilight’s, and was very blue, like the color of the midnight changing to black. It was… elusive, beautiful, and most importantly, very out of the ordinary.

Oh, and she had wings and a horn. Just like Twilight.

“So, I no longer will read your mind as I have returned your muzzle in exchange for your full attention. This is urgent, as I think you may have come down with the sickness.”

“OH WA-AH-AH!” I yelled, headbanging. I stopped myself as I realized that this was completely and utterly stpuid to do, but hey, priorities always get in the way of my fun. I tilted my head. “Why do you say that?”

She glanced over me, her magic ballooning around my face like I was a territory meant to be conquered. Once she was done prodding me with her magic, she looked at me and sighed. “I hope you don’t hate bad news.”

“Princess Luna, if you don’t mind me saying, but I have had bad news ever since I’ve gotten here, so lay it on me.”

What I heard was what I didn’t expect.

“You may need to wake up for you to understand. Before you do, tell Twilight that you need her to wear her horn ring.”

“Horn ring?”

Luna opened her muzzle, only for her words to die in her throat, as the world around us began to shake. The alicorn yelped, the shaking sweeping her off her hooves. However, I wasn’t moving. I was stuck in place, unable to move my arms, my legs… my anything.

I wanted to reach out to Luna to save her, but I was helpless.

“Quick, there’s no time to explain!” Luna shouted, scrambling towards the bed. “You are about to wake up and—”’

Her words were cut off as the walls above crushed us.

I woke up to an empty room. It was still dead in the night. I don’t know why I got ejected out of dreamland like that, since I never got to even talk to the mare about anything. All she told me was that I needed to ‘put a ring on Twilight’ for whatever reason. Now, I’m just lying here, wondering why she even said it.

I mean, putting a ring on someone has many different implications. Was that mare telling me to marry Twilight? Or was there another reason that she couldn’t get to because the dream collapsed?

Maybe she was telling me to brood over her words. I needed to sit up first.

I forced myself up, my arms feeling like they were made of jelly. I groaned out of frustration, but thankfully the headboard was comfortable enough for me to lean on.

My mind drifted to everything that has happened so far. I was here, in a land full of horses that could speak. They called themselves ponies, and they had this princess that was a legit psychopath. Her friends were similar too in their behavior and mannerisms, but on varying levels (Spike being the most tame, while Starlight was the middle ground [she nearly suffocated me with a pillow]). Not to mention these creatures had different dialects of the same language like back home, except they were not speaking the same language at the same time. Wingdings weren’t meant to be spoken, only written for specific purposes, which is kind of what they do, except they speak the noises too, and every time they speak Wingdings, it sounds like someone’s stepping on a pet gerbil.

That definitely was a good way of summarizing the randomness that was my time in this world so far. But something still felt off. Was I not looking into this enough?

I mean, the fact that they were speaking in the same language as me. How? Why? There was only a slight difference, and that slight difference made them sound like deranged lunatics that favored waterboarding over simple discussion.

I growled out in frustration. I felt like they waterboarded me with how everything has gone. They would be friendly for one moment, and then the next they would get aggressive. Like, why was Twilight pushing to get closer to me only to be distant in others? Hell, why was she so keen on keeping me hostage in her castle? Why was Spike sounding like he was okay with being a guinea pig when he’s a dragon? And why was Starlight trying to suffocate me with a pillow?

Why? Why? Why?

I stared off into a corner of the room as my brain took tabs on the situation...

That corner of the room was a guaranteed prison sentence for me.

I had been stuck in bed staring at it for six fucking hours. It has gotten to the point that I know the exact degrees that the walls intersect at (it’s not a perfect perpendicular angle for some reason). I am worried that the wall will collapse just like it did in my dreams, but oh well. All I know was that these past six hours have been nothing but being stuck in my mind. I had been contemplating whether or not dealing with horses was a good substitute for sewer sliding.

I flicked off the sheets in anger and slid out of my bed. “Why can’t I sleep!?”

I groaned and sat down. Guess my only option is to wait for Starlight to walk in with our breakfast, since the sun was peering into my window and it was only a matter of time before she walked in.

“These ponies, man. I swear.”

I kicked my leg forward, hitting nothing but air. Now I really hoped Starlight would be here soon. I needed that food right now, even if it meant going through another bout of suffocation from a mare with questionable methods.

Looking towards the door, I uttered the one phrase that stuck to my tongue like ice on a pole during the winter. With a growl, it came out with grit.

“Motherfucker.”

“Who’s mother are you fucking?”

“Oh, no one’s but if I could I’d fuck...”

My voice trailed off as I caught sight of Starlight. I expected her to bring in our breakfast today in her magic or something, but instead, she wasn’t using her magic. She had opted to cart the food in for some reason. Not that I’m complaining, as what was in the cart was way more important. The cart carried the most stereotypical breakfast foods of the gods, minus the meat of course. They were horses, after all, so bacon, sausage, and other delicious meat-eating, carnivorous-endorsing foods were out of my grubby hands.

Still, everything looked and smelled wonderful.

I took in the smells that permeated throughout the room. This food was about to make me act up, but I kept my restraint as Starlight wheeled the cart to my bedside. She pulled a huge plank thing with a leg attached under each end, and set it on the bed. I helped her scoot it over closer to me, which made her tilt her head a tad, but she shrugged and kept her cool.

While the scent of the best food I’d probably have this week tempted me to grab all it myself, I really was curious and had to prod the mare a little.

“Morning, Starlight.”

I watched as she plopped my breakfast square in the center of the plank. She smiled. “Good morning, Rick! How are you this morning?”

Honesty was my best policy, even if it meant having to divulge what I had been thinking the past six hours.

“Pretty rough, not going to lie. Still can’t comprehend everything that has happened to me.”

The mare slid a cup on it, which was full of milk. “Do you want to talk about that while we eat today?”

“You haven’t eaten yet?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yep. I wanted to eat with you since, well, sharing food with a friend is better than eating alone, right?”

“Sharing food with a friend? Are we friends?”

The words escaped my mouth faster than I could grab them, which was the complete opposite of my entire life story up until yesterday.

Fortunately for me, Starlight looked like she was fine with it, even if her ears were standing up on end. “Of course we are! At least, that’s what I thought. Do we need to talk about that too?”

“Well, if you think we are, then I’ll go with the flow and—”

Starlight waved her forehooves out in front of me. “Nah, nah, homie. Friendship is like a two way street dawg. If we going to be fam, we finna fuck some shit up. Real shit, no 🧢, y’know?”

I blinked. “What did you just say?”

“♓︎ ⬥︎♋︎⬧︎ 🙰◆︎⬧︎⧫︎ ⬧︎♋︎⍓︎♓︎■︎♑︎, ♐︎❒︎♓︎♏︎■︎♎︎⬧︎♒︎♓︎◻︎ ♓︎⬧︎ ❍︎♋︎♑︎♓︎♍︎. ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ □︎■︎ ⬧︎□︎❍︎♏︎ □︎♐︎ ⧫︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎ ❍︎◆︎⌘︎⌘︎●︎♏︎ ♎︎◆︎⬧︎⧫︎?”

“Starlight, you’re speaking in tongues again. Could I get a translator?”

Surprisingly, the mare let out a brief blow, followed by a whinny. She scuffed her forehooves against the floor, before sighing and rolling her eyes. “You know, maybe I should just teach you how to speak it.”

My eyes widened. “Teaching? How to sound like a motorboat exploding in real time?”

“Yes, whatever that means,” Starlight said. “If I teach you how to speak my dialect, then maybe it’ll help you understand me. After all, you are an alien.”

“A human, Starlight,” I said, stabbing the scrambled egg on my plate with glee.

“Right, right,” she muttered. She hooked herself up with a plate of her own food, before activating her magic, which sparkled like fireworks were going off around her plate.

I kept staring at those little exploding fireworks, wondering how Starlight’s magic worked. I mean, her and Twilight glossed over it enough to help me understand it, but it didn’t explain the realness of it, if that made sense. How does it work? How does it affect me? I don’t know how this stuff works. Magic back where I was from didn’t work like this. In fact, it was just a guise.

I blinked back into reality as I was greeted by her face once again, only it was full of shock. “Rick? What’s wrong?”

I wiped my face. I didn’t even know what to think, what to say, or what to do. All I felt was confusion, wondering why everything was so off.

Without saying another word, Starlight reached out to me, before turning her attention to the end of the bed. She hopped onto the bed, which made me frantically grab at the plank-thing to make sure I didn’t lose all my food she had just gotten me, while also making room for her to sit down with me. She promptly made herself at home at the end of my bed, her body curling like a slinky being left on its side.

Now that she was on the bed, I knew where this was going to go. She would want me to gush to her about why I thought everything was a bit of whack, so to speak. And, from what I’ve seen, she likes to talk.

I sighed.

Before I could open my mouth to say something, Starlight decided that the cart was no longer an important guest. Instead, she magically shoved it away, having it careening towards the corner of the room. It ceremoniously crashed into the lamp that was just minding its own business. Luckily, Starlight noticed her power was overwhelming, and grabbed the lamp before it could break into smithereens. With a bit of skill, she was able to fix the accidental disharmony she had caused, while also turning on the lamp. The already bright room was now just a tad bit brighter.

“Hehe,” Starlight began, her muzzle trying to feign embarrassment. “Sorry about that. Forget how strong my magic is sometimes.” She chuckled behind a hoof. “Besides, we can’t eat in the dark, can we?”

“It wasn’t that dark in here before…” I mumbled out. My voice was dry, but as I chewed and sipped on my milk, it started to get better. “As for anything that’s wrong… Besides not being able to sleep after having a dream of the century, I’ve been in my head as of late.” I looked into her eyes. “You’ve ever had that happen?”

The pone with the goods sighed. “Yeah. I get stuck a lot too. You’re not alone in that.” She paused to take a stab at her scrambled egg, only for her to gently cut into it. Coward. “Got stuck thinking about everything after Twilight offered me her friendship. I was like, ‘Why do I deserve this?’”

She took a moment to eat that piece of egg, which she chewed happily on.

“What did you do that made you think like that?”

She swallowed her food and frowned. “Well, I hope this doesn’t make you hate me.”

“Hate you? I mean, I was annoyed with you when you tried to strangle me to death but—”

“Strangle you? I didn’t do that,” Starlight said with a head tilt. She sipped a bit at her drink before plopping it back down. Licking her lips, she continued, “I just tapped you with the pillow. What…”

She was blinking rapidly, way more than I could. If what she’s saying was true, that means that something else was happening. Maybe I was right, maybe things were off—

Starlight’s sudden whiplash from her shaking her head told me otherwise. “We’ll figure out that later. Right now, it’s about you,” the mare said, pointing a forehoof in my direction.

I nodded. “Okay, so why—”

“Why do I not deserve Twilight’s friendship?” I gave her another, more chaste headbang, which spurred her onto continuing her sorrowful spiel. “Rick, it’s pretty bad. I basically enslaved an entire village for the sake of power. I used them for my own personal benefit. I made everyone equal by stripping them of their identities.”

“You stripped them of their identities? How so?”

The mare glanced over at her ass. “You see the mark there?”

I didn’t know if I was to say anything, so I just absent-mindedly bobbed my head.

“Great, because that mark was the key to removing their identities. It’s called a Cutie Mark. It’s part of growing up for everypony. It helps us figure out what we’re meant to do in life. My view was that if I took that cutie mark away, they would be equal. There wouldn’t be disharmony, only equality.”

I chewed on my food and her philosophy at the same time. “And the ponies who you ran into bought that?”

She hummed an affirmative, while also devouring her food too. “Yes. Looking back on it, I’m surprised they bought it too. But that’s not the point of this.” She sighed. “The point is that I was able to hurt so many ponies by telling them that what their cutie marks were was hurting them, when in fact, that destiny was part of what made them who they were. I ruined ponies lives by doing this, Rick. I made them hate themselves because I was selfish. How did I deserve forgiveness for what I did? You know how crazy this all is?”

“How crazy it is that you’re here now or?”

“Both, Rick. Both.” She swallowed a particularly huge bite she got before she spoke again, “I mean, do you really know how lucky I am to be here?”

“No, but from what you just told me, it’s pretty crazy that you are here.” I stabbed more of my food and shuffled it into my mouth like I was a Tonka truck dropping off some damn fine amount of dirt and gold. “Back in my world, you probably would’ve been tossed in a prison cell for eternity… or sentenced to death by any means necessary.”

Her eyes practically popped out of her skull. “Uh… wow. Guess I am lucky to be here, huh?” She smiled happily at me. “What’s even more crazy is that you’re here too. Speaking of, what are you thinking about? What’s keeping you up?”

I threw my arm into the air. “I don’t know. Mostly just what I’ve been thinking about since I got here. Why, out of all people, am I the one stuck here? Why was I the one that got suffocated by you? Why do you all speak the same language as me, but also murder it in a back alley?”

Starlight sheepishly smiled. “Well those are some pretty important questions—”

“And why this Luna character wanted me to marry Twilight and—”

“What?!”

The mare was completely and utterly shocked. Her eyes were about to roll out of her head like marbles being scattered after being dumped out of a bag, while her ears were standing at attention. I was afraid they were going to fly off her head.

“Isn’t that what ‘put a ring on Twilight’ means?”

Starlight nearly knocked her head off that neck of hers. “No! There’s something else that she meant there. Why did Luna tell you that?”

I tried to recall back to the dream, but it wasn’t as vivid as I thought it was. I still tapped my chin like I knew what I was doing, or whatever—it works for other people, right? Makes them look more sophisticated or something—Starlight stared at me, looking like she expected some type of answer.

Hope she didn’t hate me afterwards.

“I don’t particularly remember. Maybe I might’ve assumed, considering a horn ring may have a different meaning and—” I stopped to let Starlight cackle like a maniac. “Why are you…?”

She quieted down, and somehow, throughout this entire gigglefest did Starlight not spill a single damn thing. She wiped away a tear from her cheek, still trucking on that high called life. “I was laughing because you assumed immediately that getting told to ‘put a horn ring on Twilight’ meant marrying her!”

“Well what else am I supposed to assume? She didn’t tell me anything else before my dream disintegrated like my hopes and dreams!”

She nudged me with her hoof. “How about asking instead of assuming, silly.” She chuckled a bit. “Well, I can tell you that you don’t have to get married unless you want to.”

I snorted. “Real funny. So if it’s not to do that, then what did Luna mean?”

“Well, a horn ring can be used to nullify someone’s magic temporarily. As long as the ring is slipped on the unicorn’s horn, then it will not naturally leak out magic.”

“So your horn is like a magical leaky faucet?”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “If that’s how you want to visualize it, then sure.” The mare turned and held her head low. “□︎◆︎❒︎ ♒︎□︎❒︎■︎⬧︎ ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ■︎□︎⧫︎ ♎︎♓︎♍︎🙵⬧︎, ❒︎♓︎♍︎🙵...”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing, Rick.” Her voice was as flat as can be. “Nothing at all.”

“Well, I’m glad, because I have no idea what you said.”

She gigglesnorted behind her forehoof. “Good. I’ll teach you sometime, but right now… I need to help you figure this out. Why would Princess Luna tell you to just randomly stick a horn ring on Twilight to nullify her—”

Suddenly, Starlight’s eyes widened. “Rick. I think I know why Princess Luna wanted you to get a horn ring.”

“Why?”

She slid over closer to me. “It’s going to help us figure out why everything is not as it seems, because, let’s face it, I know for a fact I only tapped you with a pillow. Something else is interfering with this, and if Luna says it involves a horn ring then…” Her muzzle scrunched up as her voice trailed off.

Without any warning, Starlight blinked away from my sight and reappeared right at the foot of her bed, her magic now capturing her empty plate and mug. “I’ll be back. Don’t move.”

“Are you going to take the—”

My words fell on deaf ears. She was already out the door.

The cart stood in the corner, looking like a pissed off inanimate object.

I sighed and finished my food in silence. Hopefully, whatever Starlight realized would help me out. I did not want to get strangled again.

With her gone, my mind had begun to drag, and my heart whirred to a slow, rhythmic beat. Before, each thought was rampant like an angry ocean crashing against a coastline. Now, the only feeling I had bubbled like a very long-winded boil. I stayed upright, yet propped up against the headboard of my bed, once again wrangling with the world around me. My fingers re-enacted the mental gymnastics of my mind as they danced together in a constant lull that helped cultivate distance between me, the world around me, and the door that had been flung open, which was thankfully closed for the time being. It gave me time to shakily breathe in the noise, one that whisked forward like that boiling pot of anxiety, as white clouds fizzled into nothing.

Why? Why was I like this right now? A mess of words that I normally don’t use? Anxiousness was to blame for this one, mostly because Starlight had become a permanent resident in my mind, living rent free like your average every-day redditor, who lives in his mom’s basement well past the age of forty.

Something else is interfering with this...

What did she mean ‘with this’? With me? With us? Our interactions?

I felt my anxiety burst as it crawled up my spine and into my brain, where it took my thoughts and scribed them on a page:

I know for a fact I only tapped you with a pillow.

I only tapped you with a pillow.

I only tapped you.

You’re a virgin if you think I’d tap you and—

Wait, Starlight didn’t say that, because if she did, I’d have to do the sign of the cross while reciting my Hail Marys.

As if on queue, the door magically creaked open. It only was open enough for the expectant pink fur ball with a horn to peer her muzzle in like a groundhog poking its head out of its hidey-hole to check the weather.

“Rick, are you alive?”

I took a deep breath and frowned. “Unfortunately. I live in a constant state of existential dread and—”

My words were derailed as the mare slinked back behind the door, quietly shutting it with a rather anticlimactic click. I sighed very briefly, wondering if I just escaped Equestria’s version of hell. Once again, my thoughts were SLAMMED with the sound of a door literally shattering against its frame. The noise reverberated in my ears, and I was helpless to it. I closed my eyes and held my hands over my ears, yet I could still get lost in the echo, rendering my hands useless.

Then, as quickly as it came, it had left just the same, leaving me to take my hands off my ears to check if I could still hear.

“Sorry,” Horny said. “Magic malfunction.”

I opened my eyes again. The door was somehow not in pieces as Starlight returned with Twilight in tow. The two mares gave me some space, venturing to the end of the bed before plopping down on their keisters. Their glares burned this moment into the retina of my eye, the damage breaking through my cataracts with complete disregard for personal property, yet they treated it like this was normal, like nothing was wrong with this situation.

I blinked away the pain, before closing my eyes. The burning sensation began to fall away, and it left me no choice but to open them again.

So I did.

Their glares were no longer bearing down on me. They had disappeared, both replaced with mirrored expressions of worry.

“Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” I said, stuttering. I cursed myself inwardly, wondering how I could let that anxiousness slip, but I didn’t want them to think otherwise, so I added on, “Just worried about what you’re thinking, Starlight.”

“Oh. Well, let me elaborate, then,” the mare began. She huffed out the exhaust in her throat. ‘“You know how yesterday you told me about your dream and how the only thing that stuck out to you was that ring Luna told you to put on Twilight’s horn?”

I nodded… slowly. “Yes, why does that—”

She threw a hoof in my direction, and waved me off, effectively saying ‘shut up for a sec’. “It matters, Rick, because it’s not exactly about Twilight. I think it’s about just us in general.” She gave me a soft smile. “You know how you’re an alien, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Aliens are not prone to what we have, just like if I was an alien in your world, you would think that hearing ‘♌︎♏︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ♐︎❒︎♓︎♏︎■︎♎︎⬧︎ ⬥︎♓︎⧫︎♒︎ ♋︎ ♌︎♋︎♎︎ ♋︎♍︎⧫︎□︎❒︎ ♓︎⬧︎ ♋︎ ♐︎♓︎♐︎⧫︎⍓︎📫︎♐︎♓︎♐︎⧫︎⍓︎ ♍︎♒︎♋︎■︎♍︎♏︎ ♋︎⧫︎ ⬧︎♒︎□︎□︎⧫︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎❒︎⬧︎♏︎●︎♐︎ ♓︎■︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎ ♐︎□︎□︎⧫︎’ is a bit weird, right?”

I blinked. “Well, in general, that sounds like you just drank five gallons of gasoline with a bit of charcoal to salt the rim and you were reciting your own Miranda Rights before you eventually—”

“Great! Uh—I mean, I’m glad that you think that’s weird, Rick. Point being is that, since you’re so unfamiliar to our world, you are very susceptible to the Harmony surrounding us.”

“I don’t get it,” I said with a shrug. I scooted a bit closer to the two, the sheets wrinkling as I slugged forward. “What does sounding like a straight-to-DVD Pitch Perfect sequel have to do with this?”

“What?” Starlight groaned, facehoofing. “Harmony isn’t whatever that is! It’s… a fickle thing. It’s an entity that helps guide everypony, and it gauges how often we listen to it, or rather if we listen to it at all. That’s why Twilight is an Element because she buys into harmony more-so than others—not that those that do in that same level of adoration do not deserve the right to be an Element but—”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “What Starlight is trying to get at is that the Elements of Harmony chose me and my friends to bear them. They had given Celestia the opportunity to choose, but she ultimately listened to them and had each Element given to us, Rick.”

I felt my body chill at the sound of Twilight’s voice stuttering over my name. I took a deep breath before I spoke, “I can get that. I mean, you didn’t choose the Harmony life; the Harmony life chose you.”

Twilight gave me a bright smile. “Exactly! See, Starlight! I knew Rick was smart!”

I blinked away my hopes and dreams to register that one. Was she calling me dumb? I sighed. “Okay, so how does Harmony’s version of ‘BMT’s Gangsta Life’ relate to me?”

Starlight’s horn suddenly burst into color as a blue flame danced before my very eyes. It drifted ever-so-cautiously to the cart, before it went behind it, never to be seen again. Or so I thought, as it overwhelmed the cart. It dragged it toward the mares, before stopping just behind them. Starlight turned around and looked inside, her muzzle looking into what probably was the cold remains of breakfast.

She shocked me when she pulled out a ring.

“But—”

“Magic trick. See StarSwirl’s Beginners Guide to Magic: Volume One for the juicy details. Not that you’d be able to read it. It’s written in English.”

I rolled my eyes. “Very funny, Starlight. It’s written in your version of English, which looks like someone who was drunk out of their mind tried to recreate the Egyptian Hieroglyphics with nothing more than an Associate’s in TikTok Dance Theory, but failed immensely.”

“Egyptian what? And what’s this about ticks? How does that relate to dancing?!”

Twilight’s little questioning session fell on deaf ears, because I was not wanting to go into human history just to make sure she laughed. “Nothing, Twilight.”

“Oh,” she said softly as her muzzle wrinkled in time.

Her ears fell splayed against her head, and Starlight couldn’t give any care to her friend. She was too busy sliding the horn on her own head and—

“Wait, why are you putting it on your head? You still haven’t explained why this correlates whatsoever!”

I pointed a finger at her and watched as she just gave me a grin. A cute one, not one that creeped me out like Twilight beside her, who had her head hung low, and her lips curved downward into a frown. I felt like I needed to cheer Twilight up somehow, but Starlight was about to say something, so I focused my attention on her.

“Since you’re not from here, you don’t know that magic becomes part of us. We absorb it every day.”

“You absorb it? What are you, a walking solar panel?”

“That depends. What does a solar panel do?”

I rolled my eyes. “Absorbs the sun’s light to create electricity, essentially.”

Starlight tilted her head. “Really? You can do that?”

“How are you shocked by that when every single pony on this planet is an embodiment of that concept!”

“Figuratively, yes,” Twilight butted in, her voice sounding like she had just lost her puppy. Her words whispered anxiety through a funnel that tickled my ears. “But we don’t conduct magic, Rick. We just use it.”

Starlight turned to her friend, and shook her head. “That’s a good point, Twilight. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Through the softness of sadness came a crack in the façade: a soft smile that drifted toward Starlight and I like a faint reminder of what could’ve been. “That’s because you were an alienated delinquent who was hyped up on communism and snorted pixie dust, Starlight.”

“Exactly, Twilight! I am hyped up on equality. Aren’t you?”

The mare shook her head.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but scratch my head. What the fuck was happening here?

“Uh… what are you two talking about?”

Starlight raised a brow. “What do you think Twilight said, Rick?”

“She just said you were an alienated delinquent that’s hyped up on communism and pixie dust.”

As those words left my mouth, I kept my eyes glued to the two mares. Twilight looked absolutely miserable. Her eyes were widened, her gaze darted to-and-fro. Her mane looked suddenly out-of-whack, like someone went up to frazzle her hair and make it look like a pigsty. Her wings were sagged next to her, while her lips licked up nothing but the dryness of the room.

“I didn’t say that, Rick!” Twilight said, rattling off the words. “I said she was focused on making ponies equal, not anything that you just said!”

While Twilight made her point clear, Starlight, on the other hand, looked like she was a bit worried. She didn’t capitalize on that worry though, only sparing a glance at the disgruntled friend. Starlight only sat there, only sparking her horn enough to let a little blue essence flow.

I sighed. “Twilight, I’m glad. Because if you were trying to say anything else, I’d get a bit worried too and—”

I shut my mouth when I saw another ring blink into existence and slide right down Twilight’s horn.

It was like night and day. The depressed view of Twilight was replaced by a more, happier version of the alicorn. She wasn’t looking lost anymore, only puzzled. She also wasn’t looking like a mess, her mane not in a state of emergency any longer. What the heck happened?

“You’re probably wondering what the heck happened.”

I bobbed my head rapidly. “Do you read minds or do you just live in them rent free?”

“Actually, I just sell them on the market,” Starlight said with a sheepish smile, before she giggled to herself. “Look, have I done anything super weird this entire conversation?”

“Not exactly. I mean, you kind of do stuff a bit spontaneously but I’m not going to judge.”

“That’s because she’s like me, Rick. We’re pretty similar in that regard, although she doesn’t plan nearly as much as I do. Meticulous testing and reporting leads to discovery,” Twilight said with a smirk.

“Exactly, except you’re the only pony in Equestria that I know would fit the dictionary definition of meticulous, Twilight.” The two mares giggled away, leaving me to stare at them like I was a deer in headlights. Starlight was the first to calm down, giving her full access to the floor. “Anyway, let’s not get off track. Rick’s health is important here, and if there’s one thing you taught me, Twilight, is that we need a pinch of friendship to make any hypothesis worthy to test. Just make sure to grade me accordingly if you feel inclined.”

A burst of purple stuff exploded an inkwell and its partner into existence, while a pad of paper floated into the room. They hovered in front of Twilight as she smiled at her friend. “Starlight, I thought you’d never ask. I’ll make sure not to curve it this time, since this is a once in a lifetime opportunity where I’m asked to grade something. Not to mention that curving grades are only for Calculus classes, so I’d rather be more accurate and give you my criticism would be printed in triplicate. Sounds good?”

I sighed as I tried to unhear Twilight’s teacher-isms. “Sounds… great, Starlight. I’ll leave the grading to Twilight, though.”

She smiled at the two of us before she began, “Ponies naturally possess magic, meaning that they can do whatever they want with it, whenever they want with it. It’s pliable to us, while to Rick, it kinda stays there and bubbles up. You are able to absorb it somehow, Rick, except you can’t use it because you don’t have the attributes necessary to utilize it. This all ties into my hunch that you are experiencing possible symptoms of magic overload.”

“Magic overload?”

Starlight frowned. “Let’s just say, you’d most likely explode from the magic inside of you if we don’t get it out of you… in…”

Twilight hummed to herself, scribbling whatever she was scribbling onto the page. She, then, set it aside and said energetically, “One week!”

…

“What?!”

My lungs felt on fire as I screamed out that word. My heart was racing. My head was spinning. The room felt so much smaller. I looked like someone who’s seen some shit, heard some shit, left a shit in a toilet and forgot to flush, and an all-encompassing view of what the word ‘shit’ is in the dictionary—I was shitting myself and was not proud of it.

I scooted back the headboard again, wincing as pain slammed into my spine. “Am I going to die?”

Starlight shook her head. “If you keep doing that, you might! But, no, not exactly. All we need to do is find a way to test this hypothesis and find out whether or not you’re actually experiencing this. We just need a control group and an experimental one.”

Twilight tapped her chin. “Maybe Starlight and I could be the experimental group, while…” The mare’s eyes bugged out when she gasped. “While my friends could be the control group!”

The mare trotted in place all cutely as she squee’d high enough to crack my eardrums.

“She gets really excited when somepony offers her the ability to practice science,” Starlight put it lamely. She rolled her eyes at her friend’s antics, only to shake the hyperness out of the alicorn.

Twilight looked like she saw stars above her, her eyes spinning in her noggin. She shook her head to reset them, which cost her balance, her hooves giving out to make her lay splayed on the ground. I creeped close to the edge of the bed and looked over to get a better view, only to see that she was looking up at me, giggling to herself.

“I probably look really stupid right now.”’

“Yeah, yeah you do.”

“☠︎⚐︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎, ☼︎✋︎👍︎😐︎!”

“Translator?”

Twilight just neighed at Starlight, which prompted the pink mare to sigh. “It’s not important. Just know that she’s not thrilled by your answer.”

I chuckled and propped myself up. “So, let me get this straight. I am basically absorbing magic without being able to control it.”

“Yep. And we don’t know how much you’re absorbing, but judging by how you came into Equestria, along with all the other variables we will have to test…” Starlight’s voice trailed off, looking over at her friend, who was smirking like she knew something again.

And as soon as I thought that, Twilight let it rip. “You are probably full of magic, which is why the week estimate I provided wasn’t too far off. We’re going to need to help you find a way to fix this, and fast. Luckily for you, I could easily persuade my friends to help, since they really want to meet you anyway. I hope Pinkie isn’t going to be disappointed since we’re not going to be able to get a party for this one, especially since we’ll need to put them in this room one-by-one to make sure you don’t overload yourself!” Twilight chuckled to herself. “So I’ll try to get my friends and—”

“Twilight, are you sure we should do this experiment here?” Starlight asked, her head tilted a bit to the right.

Twilight mirrored Starlight’s expression. “What do you mean? Of course we can! It’s perfect because it’s away from everypony in the castle, meaning that nopony would just stumble in here unless they knew Rick was in here. Plus, we can easily set this room up for testing. We’ll try to minimize the amount of magic we use around you for now, Rick. Hopefully we’ll find a solution soon so you don’t die!”

All I could hear was the ever-emo music of fate in my ears as I slapped myself silly.

How could this happen to me? I made my mistakes...