2 This isn't...oh forget it!
2 This isn't...oh forget it!
Meanwhile in another part of Canterlot, Jane and Quinn had their own problems.
Jane backed away slowly from the things in front of her. The fact that she was unable to maintain her balance and was a horse didn't concern her as much as the black creatures staring her.
“What is going on?” Jane asked fearfully.
“You got in out way. That's what's going on.” one of the creatures growled as it staggered to it's perforated legs and shook its head. Its fellows, two in number, following suit.
“You can talk!” Jane gasped. Earning glares from the creatures in return, at least as far as she could tell from their fanged faces.
A familiar voice cried out in shock before a second voice Jane didn't recognise cried out in pain,
All eyes turned to the sources of the cries.
A pink horse with a red mane cut in Quinn's usual style was crawling backwards from a lavender horse with a painful looking red mark on its face. Jane pieced the events together as Quinn shakily got to her her hooves and wobbled over to Jane.
Quinn looked Jane over, lingering on her ma-hair for a moment, “Jane? What's happening?” she asked, her voice breaking slightly.
Jane looked around, the black creatures' attention having been pulled to the sound of galloping hooves in the distance.
“Quick, grab the Crown!” one of the creatures ordered.
“WHERE IS IT!” another snarled though gritted fangs as it frantically glanced around.
“Too late! We have to retreat! Now!” the third said.
The air was filled with the sound of buzzing as the creatures took flight and disappeared out the nearest window..
Jane didn't have an answer for Quinn, “we need to get out of here!” she said as she struggled to her own new legs and attempted to get use to the feeling as quickly as she could. She didn't know what was coming but if those bug-horse-things thought it was a bad thing then it was probably a good idea to leave.
They were in the hall of a building with white walls adorned with banners and tapestries. It put Jane in mind of a cathedral with its high ceiling and stained glass windows. Though there was no sign of religious iconography that Jane could identify. There was a lot of Sunbursts and Crescent Moons and a couple of other simple images that had a general equestrian theme but nothing Jane could tie to any group or organization she knew about.
Jane's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a horrified gasp, “Princess!” a light yellow horse in a maid's outfit exclaimed.
“This isn't what it looks like!” Jane said instinctively.
Jane's protest had had as much effect as she expected it to have.
“GUARDS! GUARDS, HELP! Somepony has attacked Princess Twilight Sparkle!” the yellow horse screamed.
“Great. Now guards are coming.” Jane grumbled.
Before anything else could go wrong Jane grabbed Quinn, tossed her on her back and galloped for her life.
The hall almost seeming like it didn't have an end, and then she spotted a set of double doors in the distance.
Jane was almost ready to believe there was hope...and then the doors opened revealing a huge white horse with long feathered wings and a painfully pointed horn.
The great white horse was wearing a golden necklace and tiara and two golden armoured Pegisi flanked it on either side.
Jane skidded to a halt and the guards moved quickly to put themselves between the great horse and the unknown humans-turned-ponies, “what is the meaning of this?” the white horse asked in a regal female voice.
Before Jane could stammer out an excuse one of the guards spotted something, “Princess! Look, Changelings!” The Princess turned to the window as did everypony else, save for Jane who took the opportunity to duck into a nearby room.
“How...how are those horses talking?” Quinn asked, her brain aching from all the questions. Then one shunted its way to the forefront of importance.
“Where's Daria?” Quinn asked, her voice taking on a more panicked tone.
Jane hadn't had time to think about that or anything else for that matter, “I-I don't know...yet” she said feebly.
With the time to think provided by their hiding spot Jane could properly process the situation. At least as best she could, though thinking about what was going on simply underlined the fact that Jane was as clueless as Quinn about the whole mess.
“You just had to Assault Royalty, didn't you? I mean don't get me wrong, being in a magical land of talking horses has really brought out the militant republican in me too but there's a time and a place Morgendorffer” Jane admonished.
Quinn scowled, “You're as bad as Daria!” she growled, throwing the object in her hoof to the ground in frustration.
Jane and Quinn both looked down at the object in surprise, “what's that?” Jane asked as she looked the object over. It was a gold tiara with a large star-shaped purple gem set into it.
Quinn tilted her head in confusion, “hmmm....oh yeah, I grabbed that as a weapon when I woke up and saw that freaky Unicorn-Pegasus next to me. I forgot I was holding it.” Quinn shrugged.
“You grabbed it?” Jane looked at her hooves, “...how?”
*******************
Queen Chrysalis paced back and forth as she waited for her infiltration team to return with her prize. Despite her guards protests Chrysalis had decided to meet the team as close to Equestria as she could before the risk became to great and as such her small armoured Changeling personal guard was as agitated as she was, but for different reasons.
“My Queen, you should return to the Hive. It's to dangerous here” one of the guards chimed in, earning a glare for her trouble.
“I won't wait a moment longer than I have to. Besides, once I have the Element of Magic I'll be even more powerful than I am now. Then I'll have my revenge...on all of them” Chrysalis stated imperiously.
The faint sound of buzzing filled the air, too loud to be an insect or even a Parasprite, “Infiltration Unite 1, 4th Pincer division, reporting!” The lead arriving Changeling announced as they landed and bowed.
“Well? Where is it?” Chrysalis demanded, forgoing the formalities.
“Um, well...we didn't exactly get it” The lead Changeling responded nervously, “BUT! But we did have it...then somepony got in the way. Other thieves I think since one of them kicked Twilight Sparkle in the face” The lead Changeling explained, hoping her Queen would take those mitigating circumstances into consideration.
Chrysalis chuckled at the thought of Twilight Sparkle being kicked but the fact that her troops had failed in their important mission wasn't over looked. Whether she punished them was wholly dependant on the answer to her next question, “Assuming these other thieves have the Element of Magic, all we need to do is find them. So, did you see what they looked like?”
“Yes, my Queen” The Changeling responded.
Lawndale was not what most would describe as a magical place, or a special place. It was, to those that past through, simply another town and that was true. To those that lived there it was generally regarded as home. What ever that might mean to the individual in question was another matter. For the two teenage girls walking the familiar route to their high school it meant, that place we live till we can move away.
That was about to change.
“Ok, I give up. What is it?” Jane asked dryly, mildly pleased with the break from routine.
“It's a mirror” replied Daria in a bemused monotone. The break from routine did little to lift her usual lacklustre demeanour.
“I can see that, I mean what's it doing just sitting in the middle of the road like that?”
“Reflecting.”
“While I admire the pursuit of inner clarity, it's kinda weird.”
“I try not to judge the life choices of others.”
The girls ceased their exchange when they heard familiar voices coming from behind them, “...and then I said to Sandi, of course I think bell bottoms could be worn ironically but not headbands. I mean really, who even does that?” asked the first voice.
“Gee Quinn, I don't know if I could stand all the ringing” replied the other with a distinctive squeak.
Quinn and Brittany stopped a few feet from Daria and Jane, “Huh? What are you two just standing there for? And what's with the mirror?” Quinn asked, leaning slightly to look past her sister and her friend to see the large object blocking all their paths.
The mirror was, besides its location, an unremarkable thing that looked like any other plain full length mirror one might find in a clothing store. It had a simple undecorated brown varnished wooden stand that looked sturdy enough despite appearing severely weathered. The frame held a simple rectangular sheet of reflective glass that was the mirror proper. At first glance it was perfectly reasonable to assume it was nothing more than a regular mirror. However on closer inspection one would notice that even though the weathered frame suggested the mirror was years, even decades, old and its surface was pristine and utterly untarnished in any way.
Because it was a rather sunny day, neither Quinn nor Brittany noticed the faint glow radiating from the mirror as the two girls moved closer to the oddly placed mirror to double-check their make-up.
As Quinn and Brittany preened and Daria and Jane's interest dwindled, the next couple of events seemed to happen in an instant and somehow in slow motion all at once.
The mirror was large enough for a single person to look at themselves from head to toe but it was not quite wide enough for two girls to comfortably make accurate assessments of each aspect of their meticulously applied make-up at the same time.
So they had to jostled and jockey for a prime viewing spot.
While shifting her leg to steady herself, Brittany accidentally placed her leg across Quinn's as she stepped forward to look more closely at her eye liner thus she found herself moving her weight onto a support that wasn't there and fell forward.
As Quinn fell she raised her hands to brace herself against the mirror.
Panic set in when she continued to fall forward, feeling no solid object as her hands met the surface of the mirror and passed through as if she had somehow stumbled into a gravity defying pool of water.
Then she felt the sensation of being pulled forward.
“DARIA!” she cried before her voice devolved into a scream.
Daria reached out and grabbed Quinn's waist after hearing her call her name so desperately and as she clung to Quinn, the shock of seeing her baby sister being swallowed by a mirror passed and panic set in.
Something impossible was happening and there was no time to think about how to deal with it. All she could do was hold on but she soon realised she was being sucked in as well.
Brittany and Jane both grabbed Daria but all that did was get them sucked in as well.
And then the world started to spin.
Daria wasn't sure how long she had been out but given what had happened she was, for the moment at least, just glad to be alive.
With a groan and a sigh Daria opened her eyes, “I still have my glasses. That's good” she stated to herself as the world came into focus and she could see where she was.
It wasn't Lawndale, that much was obvious.
The suburban landscape had been replaced by a city of white buildings in all directions of a design that Daria couldn't identify. The air was unusually clear for a city, or any population centre for that matter. If Daria had to guess she would have said the air seemed more like the kind you find in rural areas. The exact area Daria was in seemed to be an intersection for what she assumed was the main roads of the city but there was no traffic or signs that any car had ever driven on the roads for that matter.
“What?” Daria asked when she noticed something moving near her.
It was...it looked like...it was vaguely shaped like a horse, but it wasn't real.
No it was real. Daria just couldn't accept that it was real.
The first thing that struck Daria was that the animal was a soft pink colour with small wings with feathers the same colour as its coat. Its mane was yellow. Blonde seemed an odd term to use for a peg-hor-that thing. And it's tail had yellow and blue horizontally stripes. Its tail made Daria think of her school's football¹ team or more accurately the cheerleaders. This association was further re-enforced by the odd mark on its hindquarters² that looked like a pompom in the school's colours.
Daria lifted her hand to her face to double-check her vision and then she saw it.
Her hand wasn't there.
In it's place was a limb that seemed to end in a stump but she could feel more than see that there was a wrist-like joint close to the end and the end itself was harder than flesh. After a long moment of thought Daria came to the conclusion that she had a hoof.
“Oh god” she muttered as the implication of this and the fact that the pink horse with wings had its mane tied in pigtails sank in.
“Brittany? Is that you?” Daria asked tentatively to the pink horse that she wasn't ready to call a Pegasus yet.
Brittany, who had apparently come to her senses before Daria, was standing on all fours looking over her new body with a level of focus Daria wouldn't have believed Brittany Taylor was capable of. Brittany looked over at Daria, an odd look crossing her face upon seeing her, “Daria? Am I a pony?” Brittany asked in a very deliberate tone sans her usual squeak.
Daria was so taken back by the uncharacteristic intensity in her voice that she nodded even though she technically didn't know what she...they, were. Regardless of how accurate the conformation was it was apparently exactly what Brittany had wanted to hear judging by the squeal of delight she gave.
Brittany began trotting slowly around Daria, gradually picking up speed as she became more comfortable and confident on her new legs.
Daria sat quietly as Brittany ran her new body through it's paces, “Isn't it wonderful Daria? I know this would happen some day, I just knew it. Eee!” Brittany chimed as she came to a stop in front of Daria. A look of un-contained joy stretched across her face from ear to ear. And given her ears were now perched on the top of her head that was really saying something.
Daria felt a slight heat in her cheeks and she had to glance away, not even she was immune to such overwhelming cuteness, “Yeah...great” Daria said, her usual sarcastic tone tainted by slight embarrassment.
Then Brittany's words registered, “Wait, what? You knew this would happen? How?”
“Well I didn't know, but I always hoped it would happen. And now it has!”
“...Hoped?”
“Don't tell me you've never wanted to be a pony, Daria!”
“Can't say that I have.”
“Well I sure have...well aaccttuuaallyy, I wished I had a pony bbuutt this even better.”
Daria frowned and nodded sullenly as Brittany stopped in front of her to rest on her haun-to sit down. Evidently she had made herself dizzy and needed to rest for a moment.
“Um, that's nice Brittany but that does raise the question of why I'm here?” Daria droned, clearly unimpressed with Brittany's explanation of events.
“Don't be silly Daria. You're one of thee nicest girls I've ever known. Even if you aren't pretty or popular. That's why you and I are such good friends. So of course you'd be here too” Brittany beamed, pulling Daria into a gleeful hug.
Daria blinked as she felt herself being embraced and blushed slightly at the warm soothing sensation that suddenly washed over her.
Brittany's new body was soft and warm to the touch and she was bathed in a sweet scent Daria wasn't sure was new or had always been there but she just couldn't smell it with her human nose.
Daria couldn't deny, but would anyway, that she was enjoying the hug more than she thought she should. But she couldn't bring herself to push Brittany away though she wasn't willing to return the embrace either so she hung there limply in the other girl's grip for what felt like forever.
It wasn't until Brittany began lightly nuzzling her neck and issuing a low mmm sound that Daria pulled away, extending her forel-arms to keep Brittany at a distance.
“Was I squeezing to tight?” Brittany asked, tilting her head and giving her usual slightly confused blank expression.
Daria gasped for air, though not because Brittany had been holding her to tightly, “Where's Jane and Quinn?” she asked, partly to change the subject and partly because it was a valid question.
As Brittany glanced around the general area a neurotic twinge in the back of Daria's mind prodded her about saying Jane's name ahead of Quinn's but Daria ignored it.
Daria sighed and evaluated the facts of the matter.
She was lost in a strange place with no clue or means of finding out where she was or how to get home.
Her sister and her best friend were missing and her only companion was Brittany Taylor...so she was alone.
And she was a pony!
Yeah, should probably prioritise that last one.
Author's Note
1: Ok so I'm British but I resisted the urge to write "American" football team here but since the character is American it didn't make sense in context. Anyway, so I'll be using the American terms as best I can for the sake of accuracy, especially in dialog but if I slip then, well I slip.
2: I'm aware the term is flank in MLP but I thought I'd use the correct term when describing in regard to the human-turned-pony characters' perspective
Apologies if the formatting on the dialog for certain characters is um bad. Vocal inflection and quirks are a big part of some of Daria's characters and I'm trying to capture that. If you guys really hate it I'll drop it from new chapter. .
