The Equestrian Hitcher

Chapter 2:

Pinkamena Diane Pie

The first thing I was aware of was the mental image of a herd of dozens of pink ponies slam-dancing across the surface of my brain. My imagination wasn't generally that vivid, but the headache I was sporting certainly justified the thought.

My eyes cracked open and I took in the room; cheap seafoam green curtain, bed with guard rails, single chair in the corner. This was a hospital room. I'd definitely hit the truck pretty hard, but aside the headache, I didn't feel that bad.

'See, everything worked out just fine!' The voice said in my head again. 'I was wondering when you were gonna wake up! My name's Pinkie Pie, by the way.'

Apparently the drugs were making me hallucinate celebrities in my brain.

Now, I wasn't the biggest on pony culture, I'd seen a few of their movies... and maybe a TV show or two, but I couldn't name any of the actors or actresses. Important political figures? That was something else. I knew I recognized the name and the voice matched up when I thought about it.

'The Elements of Harmony' were a group of almost-royalty among the ponies, a group of six ponies rumored to have access to a power that could guarantee the safety and prosperity of the Equestrian Union. Unfortunately for them, it didn't really work on humans.

I imagine World War 2 would have worked out a lot differently if they did. For that matter, Korea and Vietnam. The whole world did, however, appreciate them managing the end of the cold war and the global nuclear disarmament. One does not pick a fight like that with a pair of entities whose moral code is the only thing stopping them from unilaterally declaring absolute control of the planet.

There were rumors that the Tunguska event in 1908 was pony-related.

"You're not real," I muttered under my breath as I reached up to pull the oxygen mask off my face.

'I'm totally real! I mean, who hasn't heard of Pinkie Pie for pete's sake!' 'Pinkie' argued back.

"Okay, you're real, but you're not actually in my head, I'm just hallucinating, better?" I said, unsure of why I was arguing with a figment of my apparent mental break. "The real Pinkie is in the Union somewhere."

'Well, actually I went with my friend Applejack to Texas because she was interested in seeing a human-run rodeo and I thought that could be really fun so I went along with her and then there was this mean black-coated unicorn and Applejack managed to get away but then he caught me and then I woke up... in your head!' Pinkie explained.

That actually almost made sense in some bizarre kind of way. Applejack was the one with the hat. 'I think.' Her wanting to see a rodeo was fairly in-character I figured. And now I was justifying the voice in my head.

'There's a voice in your head!?' Pinkie yelled into my brain with alarm.

"You are the voice in my head."

'Oh yeah!'

"So, Applejack is still out there huh? Saying that I believe you and that this isn't just me hallucinating, where should I start looking?" I asked in a whisper. I heard feet approaching the room. Feet and hooves.

'Fort Worth Stockyards Rodeo.' Pinkie answered as the door opened.

I sighed with an amused smirk on my face, "tourists..."

The door finally opened and my eyes snapped to the people entering the room. A man lead, dressed in hospital scrubs, but that was just the first lie I read on him. He carried himself with authority, not confidence. My eyes darted around his form. Shirt was too small, but only slightly, like he'd had short notice and had to improvise a uniform.

He was examining the room, scanning for threats, not something any nurse or orderly would be doing. My eyes slid down to his waist, and there was a slight irregularity in the crease of the fabric. He was armed, probably a subcompact, likely a Sig or a Glock.

I made him as a spook before he made it ten feet into the room. FBI? KGB? MI6? Tough call, but the man was confident that he was in control of the room. He wasn't with the ponies, that much was apparent at least. So the question was: is he here to help me, or to find out what I know?

The next was a slate gray unicorn wearing a lab coat and a stethoscope. That would be the doctor. I found no dishonesty on his face, so he likely knew nothing of the fake nurse right next to him. Still, I had to wonder why a unicorn would be my attending physician--possibly due to the nature of my incident? Maybe he knew about the voice in my head.

The next person to enter the room... "Hey Dad," I greeted. He smiled at me, his eyes snapped over towards the spook for an instant and then back to me. He'd made him too; I had expected nothing less.

My dad walked over to me with a limp, the limp that had ended his career a few decades before his due and landed him an early retirement. "Hey Vicky, you look pretty good for somebody that got blown up. Why'd you go and do a damn fool thing like that anyway?" he asked with a laugh.

"Well Dad, I was working a case involving unicorns, and one thing lead to another. Did you know that when unicorns explode they set the building on fire?" I asked with a smirk. I noticed the spook raise an eyebrow and the doctor's face turn into a grimace.

Dad raised his eyebrow and gave me a thoughtful look, "Really..."

"Well, as far as I can tell, yeah," I answered with a shrug. The doctor looked uncomfortable, and I couldn't really blame him, "Not that I make a habit out of making unicorns explode. Just weird cultist types."

The doctor looked at me again and started scribbling on his clipboard. Probably thought I was insane. I wasn't exactly in a position to dispute the point. 'Right pinkie?' I thought at my... tulpa?

'Nah, cohabiting consciousness maybe, a tulpa is created from your own consciousness... I think.' she replied, her 'voice' sounded uncertain.

'That helps, thanks.' I rolled my eyes.

"So anyway..." I ventured, "I actually feel pretty alright all things considered, when can I get out of here?" I felt... good. I had a headache for sure, but physically I didn't even feel that bad, especially considering how I'd been bounced off my truck. I probably had my little hitchhiker to thank for that.

"Ah, yes. Well, we still need to run you through the neurology department for scans. You'll need to be sedated for some of them, so we'll need to keep you an additional night for observation," The unicorn rattled off as his eyes drifted over his clipboard as if reading a list.

...but he wasn't reading a list at all. His eyes weren't scanning left to right, he was looking randomly all over the paper as if he was just trying to give the impression he was reading the list. Then again, I could have been being paranoid.

Still...

"If it's all the same to you, I'm going to check myself out, at least for the time being. I've got an open investigation and I need to get all of this information down while it's still fresh in my mind. A house was blown up after all, I'm sure you can understand my urgency," I offered diplomatically. I'd have to see if he'd take it or try to press the issue.

I noticed the spook was giving the doctor a curious look, and I began to wonder if I'd been worrying about the wrong guy. Not that I was worried either of them would try anything while my dad was there, or for that matter, that either would try anything while the other was watching.

"Why don't we all go back out into the hallway and give her a chance to get dressed, eh?" My dad asked the other two as he brushed against my bed.

I felt a weight drop against the mattress.

I rolled to the side, covering up the object under the guise of giving my dad a hug, "Thanks for coming to make sure I was alright, Dad." I had a good idea of what he'd dropped, and out of the corner of my eye neither the unicorn nor the potential agent seemed to have noticed.

"Alright you two, out!" My dad said with a wave of his hands as he walked towards the door, "she doesn't need us watching her get dressed!"

~~

I had been wrong. I'd expected he'd dropped a sidearm on my bed; that he'd made the spook and was giving me an edge. The truth couldn't have been further from my guess: he'd left keys. I knew exactly what they went to, I'd recognize them anywhere: the keys to a 1969 Buick Skylark. He loved that car, he'd had it longer than I'd been alive, and he had just handed it to me.

What did he know that I didn't?

'Maybe we should leave?' Pinkie asked in my head.

I rubbed my eyes with my left hand while I spun the keys around in my right. The doctor hadn't come back, nor had the orderly or my dad. No, I couldn't just leave. I put my hat on and made for the door--at the very least, I was going to find Dad before I went.

My boots clicked on the tiling as I stepped through the doorway into the hallway. My head was still a little clouded and I was a little unstable on my feet, but I managed and it was getting better with every passing minute. I scanned the hallway, saw a few human nurses, and no sign of my dad or the doctor.

My mouth tasted like cotton candy. I was pretty sure that had something to do with Pinkie, even if I couldn't prove it. My vision was tunneling again, like just before I'd passed out next to my truck. I tried to shake it out of my head. My pocket vibrated, I leaned against the wall, fished my phone out, and flipped it open as the walls started to close in.

The message flashed up immediately.

Dad: Get out, now!

I closed the phone and slipped it back into my pocket with a shaky hand. I was starting to lose my balance. I heard a door down the hallway behind me slam open, and a bright flash of light reflected off the walls in front of me, then everything winked out.

I came to in the driver's seat of my Dad's car, in the parking garage across the street from the hospital entrance and... I was certain I'd completely lost my mind. My vision came back before I was... 'normal' again, and my left hand was pink and furry--I got to watch as the fur retracted into my skin.

"What the f--" I started, when my hitchhiker interrupted.

'I'm so, so, so, sorry but I had to take over, I mean, I didn't even know I could take over but you were starting to lose it and your dad said to run so I had to run and I... kinda turned you into me for about ten minutes' she rapid-fired into my brain.

"You... turned me into a pony?" I asked hesitantly as I stared at my hand.

'Yes?' she answered.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just lost cabin pressure. Please place your tray-tables in the upright and locked positions and assume crash positions. I flipped the keys out of my pocket and slid them into the ignition. Some things are best left ignored until such a time that you can properly freak out; this was one of those things.

The engine started with a rumble. It had been years since I'd driven this car but some things you don't forget. The sound of the engine, the feel of the steering wheel; I was sixteen again, with Dad in the passenger seat teaching me the three pedal two-step.

I reached into my pocket for the phone again and flipped it open, dialed up a number and waited. It rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. No answer, no voice-mail. I slid the phone back into my pocket. He could take care of himself, but that didn't stop me from worrying, didn't stop me from wondering what happened right before Pinkie took over.

"What do I even do now?" I asked aloud as the car idled. I'd gotten involved with the ponies, against everything I'd promised myself, against every previous experience I'd had... and in less than twenty four hours I'd been attacked, blown up, hospitalized, and turned into Pinkie Pie.

I could feel my anger boiling up, not at Pinkie, hell it wasn't her fault, anger at myself, anger at my situation. Anger at that damn black unicorn, anger at whoever was pulling the strings. I wasn't stupid enough to think he was alone, not after the shifty doctor and the gun toting orderly, certainly not after the incident in the hospital, whatever the hell it was.

In for a penny... in for a pound, I was already involved, I already had this pony in my head and after what she'd just done, I had to believe her, I had to put my faith in her. She said she came with her friend, so innocents were at stake. I pulled the glovebox open--the pistol that I knew would be there greeted me, I slid it into the holster under my coat.

I wanted answers. If for no other reason, if there was nobody else involved, I'd still need to know. I pressed in the clutch, slid the car into first, and eased out of the parking spot. The four hundred cubic inch engine rumbled gently, or as gently as it could, as I eased my way down the parking structure.

I sighed. "Fuck it. Pinkie, we're going to the stockyards. I'm gonna find your friend, we're gonna figure this out, and we're gonna get you out of my head. There just isn't that much space up there," I finished with a laugh.

'Awww, and I was just getting comfortable in here! Say, Vicky, we should do something about your hair, I mean, you're plenty attractive, don't get me wrong, brown is a nice color, not putting you down... but have you thought about pink?'

"Definitely getting you out of my head."

~~

I was going to have a hard time explaining this when the time came, going off on a random investigation without telling anybody, without backup, without permission or a plan. Truth was, I couldn't trust anybody, and the people who I could trust I didn't want involved if everything turned pear shaped, like I just knew it would.

For all I knew, they'd lock me in a padded cell the instant they found out I had a pony in my head, or at the very least take my badge and gun. Well, badge anyway, I had no idea where my gun was.

I eased the car into the alley behind the stockyards arena, idling my way down the row as my eyes scanned for... something. I didn't have some super-secret sleuth methodology for finding 'clues' and then extrapolating some brilliant conclusion--most of it was hours of following hunches and turning over a lot of rocks.

And by rocks I mean garbage, because a lot of it involved sifting through trash; a disturbing amount, even.

So, it was a mixed blessing when I saw the body fly across the alley and bounce off a dumpster like a rag doll. I immediately killed the ignition and jumped out of the car. I ran over to the man, dressed in... all black. The ponies were involved. They had to be involved. Everything became cliche when they were involved, and this was a potential criminal in all black.

I checked his pulse, and he was alive. He wasn't getting up any time soon, but he wasn't dead. I turned in the direction he'd come from and... Well, it wasn't the strangest thing I'd seen in my life, but it ranked top five: the biggest damn pony I'd ever seen in my life was beating the tar out of three humans and two ponies at the same time. If not for the fire-engine red coat, I'd have thought he was a horse from this range.

And, despite being outnumbered five to one, he was not losing. Winning, if the limp body next to me was any indication.

"That is a damn big pony," I muttered, with a dumbfounded expression.

Author's Note

I wonder who that might be.