Of Rifts and Ponies

The new stallion opened his eyes.  He appeared to be in some sort of bed so his first thought was that he was in a hospital. He looked around and took in his surroundings. There was nothing to note except for the open door through which he could see a thin yellow pegasus that appeared to be asleep on a couch. The lack of any kind of equipment ruled out any kind of hospital or lab (thank God) so he was left curious as to his whereabouts.

He felt an absence of his blue golf bag on his back and looked worried for a moment before looking down and seeing that the metal band on what had been his left arm was still intact. He tapped it a few times but was unable to garner any results. He looked down at his hands and for the first time noticed that they were hooves. He raised an eyebrow and thought to himself "Well this is certainly new, I hope that this is supposed to happen and its not just another experiment by some nut" He failed to notice the yellow pegasus had woken up and was watching him nervously.

Fluttershy decided she should speak up, "Ummm mister, I-"the newcomer cut her off with a wave of his hoof.

"My name is Jared, I feel really weird being called mister so lets just get the names out of the way, what's yours?"

Fluttershy was startled by his sudden interruption but considering how ponies normally treated her it was nothing new. "Oh well, I'm Fluttershy and, um, its nice to meet you," she said while looking down at her hooves.

"Well, Fluttershy would you care to tell me where I am exactly? Because I appear to be in a lovely little cottage in a very comfortable bed and generally I don't get welcomes quite this nice."

A new voice suddenly spoke up, "You're in Fluttershy's cottage at the edge of the Everfree forest." Jared looked for the source of the voice and saw that a group of ponies had just walked in the door. They had an incredible variety in color, there was a purple unicorn and white unicorn with a purple mane, a light blue Pegasus that had a rainbow colored mane that could not be natural who was constantly hovering, and orange pony and pink pony that appeared to lack any kind of "extras", the orange one had a large Stetson hat on and the pink one's mane was so unkempt it looked as though it had never been brushed, she also appeared to be bouncing up and down. The purple unicorn spoke up, "I'm Twilight Sparkle, we brought you here after you passed out, how much do you remember?"

Jared thoughtfully rubbed his chin, "Well I was just looking over a job I had finished but before I could I got sucked into that blue energy ball and found myself here," he looked back at her, "I don't suppose you could tell me where here is could you?"

Twilight gave a slight smile, this along with "OH GOD, WHY AM I A PONY?!" were by far the two most common questions that new arrivals asked, "You are in Equestria, it is a land that is mostly inhabited by ponies like us but there are some other species like buffalo or zebras. A lot of things have changed from whatever world you came from, starting with you." At this she handed him a small hoof mirror, being sure not to use magic until its existence was explained, she had found out the hard way that most of the visitors did not know what magic was.

Jared took the mirror awkwardly and looked at it. He turned to Twilight with a grin on his face, "Well I never was that good-looking but I'm not that ugly am I?" he began to chuckle, "Come on, if you were expecting me to panic from being a pony don't you think I would have by now?" He turned back to the mirror and began to examine his new face.

Twilight was about concede the point when the pink pony suddenly let loose a torrent of noise, "Where did you come from? What's it like there? Did anyone else there come here too? Is that why you are not panicking like most of the others did?" Jared suddenly snapped his head away from the mirror at this, "Oh I'm Pin-"she got no further than that as the brown hoof in her mouth prevented her from talking.

Jared turned to Twilight and snapped out, "What did she mean others?!"

Taken aback by his sudden outburst Twilight answered without thinking, "T-there have been several ponies that claimed to be from other worlds and most of them were extremely disoriented upon first appearing which leads me to question: why weren't you?"

Jared seemed to consider something for a few moments then sighed, "This isn't the first time that I have woken up in a strange place with inhabitants of a different species or at least different cultures than me," he smirked, "Although I guess this time you aren't. Anyway I seem to have a knack for getting myself pulled into other worlds and I always manage to get wrapped up in whatever events are going on at the time. I decided a few years ago that as long as my life is completely screwed up I may as well help prevent it from happening to other people, so whenever I find someone or thing that is out of place in a world I do my best to help them get back where they came from or if they can't I try to help them make a new life."

Twilight smiled, "In that case you will be a big help to us if you already have experience with it, that is pretty much what we do with any of our visitors, I'm sure the Princesses will be happy to let you help us."

Jared looked a bit hesitant, "I don't know, In the past I haven't had the best of luck  working with the local rulers, they usually try to use the tools at my disposal for their own purposes. Then people get hurt and I cause a lot of suffering that I don't want or need on my conscious."

The orange hatted pony came forward then with a bit of a glare on her face, she looked down at Jared (who was still laying in Fluttershy's bed) and said, "Hang on there, what kind of tools? And why do people get hurt if somepony tries to use them?"

Jared looked sheepish and rubbed his hoof on the back of his head, "Well, a good amount of them really are just tools although some are rather fancy, but after a series of painful and scarring events early on in my little 'journey,'" he said the word "journey" with a short and bitter laugh, "I decided that I needed a way to defend myself. I would rather just leave it at that for now though, I can tell you my whole life story whenever we go see these Princesses of yours, I assume that you are going to take me there?"

Twilight smiled , "Yep! she always wants to meet you ponies, she calls you 'Visitors', in fact, I already sent her a letter telling her you are here so I'm sure that the royal guard will be here soon to escort you to her."

Two things about that rubbed Jared the wrong way, the first was "royal guard escort" which did not sound good at all, the second was that Twilight had said letter which implied paper mail but she had said they would be here soon, so depending on the distance to said Princesses could mean that he had been unconscious for a number of days. He voiced his concerns, "Ummm, if you already had time for a letter to get there and get one back that means they either live really close to you or I have been out for a couple of days at least, which is it?" he wasn't quite sure why this bothered him but it did.

Twilight mentally scolded herself, she shouldn't have expected him to overlook the speed at which they communicated with the Princesses given the level of intelligence he displayed in their conversation, "Well, they do live about a day away by train but you have only been unconscious for about an hour and a half. The reason I was able to communicate with them so easily is that in Equestria unicorns such as myself are able to manipulate an energy known as magic." She remained silent for a moment to let it sink in.

"Magic," Jared said with a blank look on his face. He looked back at her and said with a bit of a glare, "I swear Twilight if I find out you are making this up I'm going to-"

"No no no its the truth look." Twilight frantically spluttered and with those words she levitated the mirror he was still trying to hold correctly out of his hooves and into the air.

Jared looked at the mirror and then waved his hoof around it searching for wires, he glanced down at the metal band on his arm and raised his eyebrows. "Magic," he repeated, "honest to God magic." He began to wriggle his way out from under the blankets on the bed and said, "We have a lot to discuss when I meet your Princesses Twilight," he managed to extricate himself from the sheets and promptly fell flat on his face. When he staggered to his hooves he noticed an odd feeling of weight on his back. He looked back and saw a pair of large feathered wings sticking from his back. "I have wings?!" was all he managed to get out.