Chapter 1
The room
Dan Wilson was your typical school student, good grades, good friends, good times. But what made him different from his fellow students was a secret only his best friends knew about. He was a brony, a guy who watches my little pony for a living. He didn’t care about whether that made people feel less about him, the pros outweighed the cons. For Dan, there were so many pros it was unjustifiable. The only thing he didn’t like about the show was the earlier seasons unrelated to this particular version, as they gave the show a bad name, just because they were incredibly girly. Not to say this version didn’t have its girly moments, but that’s beside the point.
After a rather long day of boring lessons “Double math and Triple Science, who organised this crap!” and little to no activity on the Internet, he went to bed early. But not before he brushed his teeth and shaved of course, he did have some standards after all. Yet something seemed off, it was if he was being monitored, which he knew couldn’t have been the case. There wasn’t a window in his bathroom, so no one was watching him outside, and the door was locked, so no one could get in without him noticing. Yet still the feeling persisted, never changing, never leaving. Until he left the bathroom, then it went as soon as it came.
“Must just be the breeze or something” he figured. Which very well could’ve been the case, his house wasn’t in the best of conditions. It was old and shabby; with many of the once bleach white tiles aged into a dull grey. It was common for him to notice a small gust of wind or a small hole in the wall. However, this was not the case. In fact, it was the complete opposite. But Dan didn’t know that, and put the thought behind him.
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Dan didn’t normally have dreams, but when he did, they weren’t like what he was seeing now; a pitch-black room with nothing interesting about it. The only reason why he could tell that it resembled some kind of room was the slight light difference noticeable in specific aspects of his vision, allowing him to just make out a chair and some form of table. But after all, this was just a dream, and he just decided to deal with it, who knows what it could be leading too. Shame he didn’t have any sunglasses. They would have been so appropriate for this moment, but it wasn’t like the place could get any darker anyway even without them.
What Dan didn’t expect to happen though was a voice unlike his own to be talking to him. It couldn’t have been his; he knew what the voice in his head sounded like from all the fanfictions he reads to himself. This voice did have a sense of familiarity to it, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Must have been the sleepiness. He didn’t think straight when he was sleepy, he didn’t really think straight when he was awake either, but he put it behind him.
The voice didn’t seem to have a source though. He certainly couldn’t see one; then again, he couldn’t really see anything right now. Wherever the voice was coming from, it certainly seemed near him wherever it was.
“Hello Dan. Pleasure invading your dreams” It said rather comically, yet with a darker tone to it.
“Pleasures all mine” Dan retorted. He was quite a sarcastic person at heart, always having an answer to everything, but never the right one. He did this on purpose though; he found it fun to annoy his friends any way possible. This was probably why they often called him the ‘life troll’, which in all honesty, was a pretty accurate title for him to have burdened to him.
“No, the pleasure will be all mine when you see what I have in store” the voice replied quite menacingly. Dan had a rather brave nature at heart (+ Attack –Speed), but the way this… entity spoke, he couldn’t help but be just a little scared. “We’re going to play a game I like to call ‘alternate reality’” the voice continued, “I’m sure you’ll love it” the voice, now becoming scarier by the second, then laughed like there was no tomorrow.
Dan didn’t like where this was going, but since it was just a dream, he wasn’t scared, he wasn’t bothered, because when he woke up, it would all be gone; a mere memory of his brain doing whatever the fuck it wants. He summed up the rest of his courage, and continued to talk to whoever the voice was emanating from. “What do you have in store?”
“Oh, you’ll find out when you wake up, but for now we wait, or rather, you wait. I’m going, it’s terribly boring around here…” and without warning, the presence of the voice was gone with an “arrivederci”.
“Finally, I can think in peace” Dan sighed. He had begun to get rather annoyed by the voice by that point, and was more than glad to see him rid of. Well, he couldn’t exactly see anything, but that’s beside the point. Wait a second…Wake up? Dan hated waking up, because when you wake up you have to get out of bed and when you get out of bed you have to do stuff, and Dan didn’t like doing stuff. In fact, he’d much rather just stay in bed all day and do nothing, great role model right? Besides, he had only just gone to bed after all, or at least that’s what it felt like. He couldn’t say he was at all fazed by what the voice said. When he woke up, anything could happen, he could be anything or anyone, that’s what ‘alternate reality’ meant right? So for once in his life, maybe he actually wanted to wake up. Maybe he wouldn’t take on a different form, but instead, his surroundings would. Surely when he woke up he’d be in his bedroom where he went to sleep in the first place right? Well his answers would all be answered soon enough, as no sooner had he wondered when the hell he would wake up…
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“Wait… Mario? God damn it…” He was in his room, just as he had left it, no stone untouched, everything as it was, being awoken from his sleep by his Mario Bros. alarm clock. He checked himself for any differences in appearance, hair in a mess; check, outy bellybutton; check, hands; check. Nothing out of the ordinary. He still felt the same, just a bit hungrier. “Well that’s disappointing”
Being unsure of what the dream was implying, he stepped up to his curtains to take a look outside, just to prove a point to himself that nothing had indeed changed, he opened the curtains of this bedroom window. Dan was quite sarcastic, yes, but was also rather stubborn, always carrying out an argument until his ‘unlucky’ opponent gave up. But he didn’t get what he was expecting; instead of his back garden and neighbourly houses, what he got was very different. “What… the fuck” was all he could muster, his jaw dropping to the floor.
Chapter 2
SURPRISE
“Where the hell has all the snow gone?” This was true, only a few days ago had it snowed, quite heavily in fact, and was showing no signs of going away any time soon. It was only showing signs of getting colder anyway, so it couldn’t have just gotten extremely hot over night, he would’ve noticed. Besides, even if it did melt, the ground would be wet from the water after the snow melted. But the ground was quite dry, very earthy, perfect really. In fact, the entirety of the view looked perfect, at least in his eyes.
The way the trees had grown here, including the colour of the leaves. The fact that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which now that he thought about it was kind of odd. There was a huge blanket of the stuff yesterday, so where had it all gone? It didn’t look like there had been a cloud in the sky for a while, as if someone tucked them all away carefully. Actually, that was what the Pegasus ponies did in My Little Pony, but that was just a show. Then again, it did look like that’s what did actually happen, as strange as that sounded. The weather forecast the other day only showed it to be getting worse, so how could it have all gotten better? Then again, you can’t trust the weather forecast these days.
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It must’ve been a good 20 minutes before Dan realised he was daydreaming, but who could blame him, the view did look nice. It was certainly a change from boring old houses and his mess of a garden. But like all good things, it had to come to an end and he had to get ready for school, as much as he hated the thought.
After he got his school uniform and bag on (I’ll spare you the details, consider yourself lucky), he went downstairs for breakfast. Normally he would wake his parents up first and brush his teeth, but they both worked early shifts on Thursdays, so Dan was on his own. That and he was running late due to the transfixed stare he just had. Besides, he didn’t want to go in the bathroom any time soon, as much as he needed the toilet. Just in case that felling of being watched happened again. Dan was very paranoid when it came to his privacy. He was brave yes, especially when it came to protecting his friends, (which resulted in two fights on separate occasions, both of which he lost, horribly I might add), but not in terms of his privacy.
After heading downstairs and into the kitchen, (which also had holes and cracks in the wall, even more than the bathroom actually), he started to make his breakfast, butter on toast. Dan loved butter on toast, in fact it was his favourite meal as weird as that might sound. If he had his way, he would eat it 6 times a day, 9 days a week. But apparently, that isn’t a ‘healthy diet’ according to his parents, who insisted on him having one. In his opinion, it was at least healthier than what they ate; in fact he knew it was. Every time he was given something ‘healthy’ for his dinner, he found it hard not to upchuck it all back onto his plate. So how that was healthy, he didn’t know, but at least it made his parents happy when he ate it and didn’t puke carrots and cabbage all over the table.
Unfortunately for Dan, the toaster wasn’t working; in fact it was rather cold. It wasn’t because it was broken, it just wouldn’t turn on. In fact, neither did anything; the lights (not that he needed them, he could see perfectly fine in the daylight), the TV, nothing. “Fuse must be broken or something, heck, I’d get more use out of this toaster if it was made of wood”. Just another job for his Dad to do.
His farther did everything really, from work around the house to family matters; he would always be the one to fix it. The only thing he didn’t do was fix the holes and cracks in the wall, but Dan didn’t blame him. He was getting old now, and deserved a rest, even if it was a huge problem.
Dan would just have to deal with cereal, one of the only things he could make, that and toast, a drink and a mess. Luckily for him, he actually liked museli, although that was probably the only healthy meal he liked, that and fruit salad. Dan did like fruits; hell the only reason why he wasn’t fat was because of them. Only problem was his parents only made him dinner, as he got lunch at school with school dinners he made his own breakfast (which was always butter on toast if you couldn’t guess). Since a lot of the food they made didn’t include fruit in favour of vegetables, which he often hated, the only way he ever got fruit was by just eating it separately.
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While Dan ate his breakfast, he couldn’t help but think of what happened in his dream. His day seemed normal enough; all that had changed was the freaky weather and the outside looked different. Actually, that was a big deal. Where had all the houses gone, they couldn’t have just vanished completely, that was impossible. Perhaps that’s what the voice had meant by an ‘alternate reality’… the scenery would be changing. But that was just crazy, why change that when you could change something else instead, something a lot more fun. That’s when it occurred to him.
“Maybe it’s not my scenery that’s changed, but whoever’s I’m at now”. Well, that would be much more fun, wait, why did he care about it being fun, this was serious. He was all alone in his house in a totally different place, maybe his parents couldn’t get back to him, maybe the house was missing over there and they didn’t have anywhere to live? All those thoughts were put to one side however, as something happened that he didn’t expect, something that made him lose his train of thought, he nearly pissed himself from the shock too, he hadn’t gone to the toilet after all.
Someone was knocking at the door. Who the hell could be knocking at the door at this time of day? Well, except maybe the postman. Whoever it was, they were doing a lot of it, as if they were really impatient, either that or it was an emergency. Whoever this was, if this was an emergency, it must’ve been important if they were knocking this early. With some reluctance, (remember when I said he was brave… yeah…) Dan carefully put his bowl of museli down and slowly walked towards the door. Apparently, the one knocking heard him thanks to the creaky floorboards, and burst open the door before he got a chance to open it.
“SURPRISE!!!… who are you?” It said giggling. “You look funny”.
Dan dusted himself off, for this was the last thing he expected. Pinkie Pie, the pink Earth pony from my little pony: friendship is magic, covered in balloons and streamers, laughing at him on the floor.
“What… the fuck”, his jaw dropping to the floor for the second time that day.
