When Lightning Strikes

When Lightning Strikes

Chapter One

I coughed out a mouthful of dirt and attempted to look around. For some reason, my body didn't seem to be working the same way it always had before. I couldn't understand what was happening at all. Except of course I'm lying to you, seeing as I knew exactly why my body was all... weird.

Things were about to get so magical it would blow the Harry Potter series out of the water, pick it up, throw it back into the water, and blow it out again. What I'm saying is that things were getting extremely magical, if that fact somehow eluded you. I decided to look down at myself bracing for the 'surprise' waiting for me. Not that I hadn't already guessed what happened.

Yep. Big surprise this was. Totally unexpected. Real shocker. Is that enough sarcasm for you to find me funny? No? Didn't think so.

As you probably guessed, there it was. My new pony body. I could tell that I was a fairly tall stallion, above average height anyway, probably not 'Big Macintosh' huge, but whatever. This was sort of expected seeing as I was pretty above average in terms of height as a human as well.

My coat was a sort of a dull silvery-gray, not too light, but not, "oh look at me, I'm so emo and cool and stuff, indifferent grunt" dark either. No, that was reserved for my mane and tail. Deep, dark, slate gray. My mane was similar to Soarin the Wonderbolt's in cut, spiky and wild and awesome, but of course there was the color difference and mine had a second hue,which consisted of an upbeat, golden yellow that also added some color to my short, dull tail. What I noticed was a little weird was that I had the slate gray and yellow colors making up some sort of pattern on my wings as well. The outer sides of the feathers seemed to be striped. I lifted them experimentally, testing the new joints and winced.

"But hey, at least I ended up as a pegasus," I said to nopony in particular. Hearing myself talk would probably make me feel less lost and alone, so I decided to just do away with sanity until I re-discovered the God-send that would be civilization, "Okay, so. You're a pony, a pegasus to be more specific, and you're in Equestria. Totally haven't heard that one before. Oh, quiet you. Oh, well if that's how you want to b-DON'T LEAVE ME!" I screamed, causing every bird within a 50 foot or so radius to take flight in surprise. I blinked, "Okay, maybe staying quiet and just heading toward where my instincts tell me will do something for me."

I struggled to push myself up on four hooves, but after a few minutes of struggling, I planted them to the ground and steadied myself. So, Equestrian Achievement #1: I had mastered the art of standing still and doing nothing. Aww yeah. Next, I decided to try and work my wings a bit more. You may be wondering, 'Why didn't you try walking first?' Well you know why? Ever hear that old saying, 'Before you can walk, you've gotta learn to fly!'? No? Thought so. 'Cause I just made it up.

Well, not 'fly', necessarily, but you know what i mean. Anyway...

As I said before, these joints were new to me, so moving them was a little awkward, but after a few minutes i was comfortably flapping them in a steady beat, practicing for the inevitable flight practice I was going to have to go through. it was at this time when I first noticed that some of my smaller, inside feathers (what are they called again, primaries, or, no, wait, are those the bigger ones?) were gold as well. You know, I still to this day haven't met a pegasus with the same weird wing-patterns as me. I brushed it off at the time though, and decided to move on to what would prove to be the easiest thing I'd ever done.

Walking around as a quadruped.

At first, when I started moving my hooves I thought I was going to become increasingly familiar with the taste of grass and dirt, but surprisingly enough it came almost naturally to me. Like I was born to be a four-legged creature. It sure felt that way, and honestly, I can't remember how I walked on just two, though I can probably stay on my rear legs longer than a heck of a lot of other ponies. Like riding a bike. Except I can't do that anymore. Pony anatomy. Alright, getting off-topic, where was I?

Oh, yeah, so now that I knew how to work my new body, I decided to survey the surrounding environments, you know, to pick out anything familiar that I could follow. Unfortunately I had wound up in the middle of some random field and couldn't find anything that had been shown in the show, which was a bit of a downer. Can't win 'em all. Though what i did notice was the sun rising over some sort of pointy object some good 20 or so miles away. And that's when i saw it. Gleaming pearly white as the Princess of the Sun herself, standing gloriously over what i could only currently presume to be Canterlot.

The Canterlot Palace, built, like the city itself, into the side of a mountain.

I stood in awe for a few moments, then began jogging. I knew that if I was to get there and have that Face-to-Face Part 2 with Celestia I would need to get there sometime soon. Occasionally I lifted myself off of the ground for a few seconds with a couple of flaps of my wings but soon descended. I couldn't really keep my balance or get enough height yet. All in due time, I thought to myself.

After about 2 hours of travel, I was pretty exhausted. Not to mention I sure didn't feel that I had even closed much of the gap between me and the palace.

"GAH!" I shouted in frustration, before panting a bit. "Why... why couldn't I... have been a unicorn...? I'm sure teleporting could have come in handy here... "

I resumed my now slow, somewhat lethargic pace, continuing towards the only thing I recognized in this large, pastel-y, colorful world of stuff I can't be bothered to fully describe to you. What? What do you mean, "That's what makes a story good"? Fine, let me give you a little mental picture in the next paragraph.

I was currently walking through a forest. It wasn't like the Everfree Forest or anything, just a nice, large collection of trees. The sun shone brightly on the tall grass that reached up to my knees, the path I was travelling on looked nice and worn, a sign I was probably on some kind of well-traveled trade route. I saw a bunch of different wildlife on the way. Looking back, it was actually pretty dang beautiful, but I was a bit too exhausted to appreciate it at the time. I saw a bunch of animals there, some berries and weird plants, flowers and different types of trees.

Yeah, it was actually pretty nice. Maybe i'll go find it sometime and show it to Fluttershy. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right.

I moved through the forest as swiftly as i could in my state, which wasn't really too fast. I stopped to take a break somewhere along the line and got a good 3-hour nap in. After that I continued, slightly reinvigorated, for some time untili finally reached the gates of the great city. I approached them, ready to take my first few strides into Canterlot with all the dignity I could muster...

... And was instantly denied by two pegasus guards.

"Halt!" the one on the left ordered, extending his left wing like a blade.

"State your business, stranger," the one on the right continued as he too extended his wing.

I gulped and laughed nervously. "H-hey, guys. I, uh, just wanted to, um, get to my appointment with Princess Celestia. You know, the one at the Castle. Inside the city?"

The left guard broke his stoic expression and raised an eyebrow. "Appointment with the Princess?" he asked suspiciously.

"How can we be sure your intentions are pure? We don't know if you're even telling us the truth." asked the right one.

"Um," I started, unnerved, "I, uh, I can't really..."

"That's enough, you two," a serene voice announced.

The guards and I turned to see the Princess of the Day herself, standing before us, smiling warmly. She approached me and put her wing around me, turning to face the guards as she did so.

"Commander Sharp Wing, Lieutenant Dusty Trails, you have no need to worry. He speaks the truth. I personally invited him to the castle. Thank you very much for your concern, but alas, it was unneeded. He is harmless. Now if you two will kindly excuse us, I fear we have some important business to attend to."

Suddenly, there was a short, white flash and Celestia's wing and warm body left my side and she moved to lie down on a plush, red cushion trimmed with gold. I looked around for a few moments and realized we were in the Princess's own study. She motioned for me to take a seat on a smaller cushion position in front of her own. I complied without a word.

"So, Young One," she began, "I assume you are the young human who was propelled into our world not so long ago? If not, then please do forget everything I just said."

I laughed a little and shook my head, "No, no, you're right, Princess. It's me again. Not like you actually had any doubts, though. I guess walking up to the city gates without a reason isn't exactly too common?"

"Not particularly. Usually if ponies come to Canterlot it's on business they can prove via paperwork. Or they're accompanied by my protegee, in which case they are immediately allowed entrance in fear I would banish them to the moon."

I raised an eyebrow, feigning ignorance. "The moon, Princess?"

Her face was somber for a moment, but her radiant smile soon returned. "That, my little pony, is a story for another time. I'm sure you'd love to hear it."

I already have, actually. Probably shouldn't have asked... I thought. "So, you said we had 'important business' to discuss?"

"Yes. But I'm afraid the most important matter at hand is the most obvious question, 'How did you get here and why are you suddenly a pony?'"

"Yeah, and neither of us has any sort of answer."

"So that's one currently unresolved issue. Also, may I ask where the scar came from?"

"The scar? What do you mean, Princess?"

"The one that's across your left eye. I don't remember seeing it before when i spoke to you."

I felt my eye carefully with my hoof. I did notice there was some sort of gash that ran down my left eye, top to bottom, about the same length on both ends. I didn't really know what to make of it, so I stood and walked over to the large mirror on what appeared to be Celestia's vanity.

"Huh," I observed as I looked more closely at myself. "That definitely wasn't there this morning. Then again, I could say that for a lot of things in this mirror."

"Well, best not to dwell on it." Celestia said as she joined me at the mirror. "I'm sorry I pointed it out for no reason, I hope you don't mind."

"Oh, no, I don't care. Actually, it makes me look sort of cool! Now all I need is some sort of mustache!"

And as quickly as I said it, a large, curly mustache appeared on my upper lip. I grinned and stood there checking  myself out and posing or a few minutes before a giggling Celestia's horn glowed gold and "poofed" my glorious facial hair away.

"Hey!" I exclamied dejectedly. "Not cool, Celestia!"

"'Celestia'?" She asked,eyebrow quirked. "What happened to 'Princess'?"

I pouted and returned to the smaller cushion. "You took my mustache, that's what happened."

She rolled her eyes and came to join me once again. "Well, I suppose all this silliness has sort of derailed this entire meeting, hasn't it?"

I nodded in agreement.

"So what do you think we should do with you?"

I blinked in shock. "Do with me?" I asked, a little afraid. "Wh-why would you need to do anything with me?"

She rolled her eyes again. "No, my little pony, nothing like that. I simply meant, 'What should we do about your living arrangements and other basic needs?' You can't just go back to wherever you came from. Not as far as I know, anyway. Also, I can't keep dodging around our name. You do have one, yes?"

I relaxed and nodded. "Yeah, I've got a name. But...," I thought for a moment, and decided to use my Internet name, purely for the sake of being at least somewhat original, "...you can just call me 'Zaiker.'"

"Zaiker? Odd name,but I like it. And your living arrangements?"

"Well, um, maybe i could stay here in the palace for a few days or maybe a week or two, and then head off to some other town to settle down a bit more 'permanently'?"

She raised a hoof to her chin in thought, and after a few moments, shrugged and smiled. "I don't see why not. I'll have your room ready in an hour's time. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a bit of work I must be getting to. You know, royalty never rests."

"I understand, Princess." I said as I stood and bowed."Thank you so much."

She smiled that radiant smile at me and laughed. "Please, just call me Celestia. Oh, and... welcome to Equestria."