Twilight, expectantly, didn't run into any creatures (being so close to the forest's edge) and arrived at a clearing. Well, it wasn't so much of a clearing, as it was a large crater, smoke pouring out of it. She slowly edged towards it, wary of the many dangers that could appear at a moments notice. She tried peering over the edge, but only got a face full of smoke. While she was coughing and hacking, she noticed something stirring in the middle of the crater. Twilight, using her magic, cleared away the smoke, only to see a small (but still big for a pony), hairless and hornless minotaur emerge from the crater with a black, woollen face, with small eyes and, strangely enough, no mouth. She gazed in a mix of curiosity, amazement and fear at this new creature, as it slowly climbed the side of the crater. She watched as it looked over itself in amazement, and heard it announce: "What! I'm alive!" It started laughing, deep belly laughs of amazement, joy, confusion and madness. Twilight was slightly confused at how it could talk, seeing as it had no mouth, but dismissed the questions. She had seen weirder.

It turned around to start walking, when Twilight decided to make her presence felt (mostly because she wanted to study a creature, not yet seen by anyone, if her books were anything to go by), so she cleared her throat.

==========

[Anthony's perspective]

Pain. That one word described my whole life. Being abused by my parents growing up, being bullied by the other kids at school, and, finally, my execution. All of those things have one thing in common. Pain. And now, I was in such excruciating pain.

'Wait,' I thought. 'Pain means I can feel things, and if I can feel things, that means I'm not dead!' I realised this and tried to get up, but, like I said before, pain.

Suddenly, my sense of smell returned, and I could smell smoke. My stress addled brain stirred to life once more: where there's smoke, there's fire. I desperately tried to move, but only managed to roll around.

'Stop, drop and roll, motherfucker,' said the insane part of my brain (which is about half of it).

Suddenly the smoke dissipated and I finally found enough strength to stand. The first thing I noticed, was that I was in a ditch. I quickly (not really) scaled the hole and stood up. I looked at myself and exclaimed: "What! I'm alive!"

At this revelation, I started roaring with laughter, tears of joy rolling down my cheeks as i fell to the ground, holding my sides.

As I laughed, I saw some lights, through the trees, so I picked myself up, still chuckling, and started walking towards them, when, all of a sudden, someone cleared their throat behind me. I whirled around, pulling my knife out (which was still in it's holster, somehow) and got into a combat stance.

As I scanned the area, I saw it. Now, I've seen some real crazy shit, but this takes the cake. Standing in front of me, was a purple unicorn. I shit you not. It had a dark purple mane with a pink stripe in it. And it was so fucking adorable! It had large, very expressive, purple eyes. I snorted at it's shocked expression. I looked around for it's owner, as I was going to ask why he decided to dye his horses coat purple and attach a horn to it's head.

"Where's your owner, little guy?" I asked, obviously not expecting a response

"'Little guy?!'" It said incredulously "I'll have you know that I am a mare"

'Now I know I'm trippin', cause there's no way a horse just spoke to me' I thought, but my mouth acted faster than my brain, making me shout "Holy fucking hell! You just spoke!"

The horse (a she, if I remembered what a mare was) looked up at me and said "Of course I spoke. Are you not from here or have you just been that ignorant all your life?"

I, of course, started spouting gibberish, like: "Purple horse. Opened mouth. And words, come out"

"Oh dear" She said "I think I broke it. Here, come with me. You can stay at my place, because your obviously not from here. You can sleep in the living room, if that's fine with you?"

My brain, now nearly melted by this strange creature, could only form one response: "Ok"

She giggled and said "By the way, my name's Twilight Sparkle. What's yours?"

"Anthony" Was all I could say.

"Huh" Twilight said, as she started walking away, towards the lights I was going to head towards. "That's a weird name"

"Hey!" I said, shaking out of my brain-dead state. "My name is not weird. If anyones name is weird, it's yours!"

"No it isn't, yours is!" She shot back

"No, yours i-" I caught myself mid sentence.

I looked at her, annoyance creeping it's way into my voice

"We are not doing that" I stated

"Doing what?" She asked, confused

"Never mind" I sighed, then resigned myself to silence as I walked.

I decided to reflect on the events that had transpired in the past 24 hours or so.

So, I had planned my kill for the day, set it up perfectly, only to find out that I had been set up, getting me captured by the police and sentenced to death by electrocution. I then woke up in a smoking crater after supposedly being killed, to find myself, not only alive, but in a world where talking ponies are it's main inhabitants, if this Twilight was true to her word.

All in all, a pretty eventful day.

"We're lucky it's fairly dark, otherwise it would be hard to get you to my place without anypony seeing you" Twilight stated, interrupting my musings.

"Anypony" I deadpanned "Really?"

"Yes, really" Twilight said, while looking around for any people (ponies, whatever) that could see us. "If anypony saw you, they might act really strangely, seeing as you're a hairless, hornless and really short minotaur"

"Twilight" I said, face-palming "I'm not a minotaur. I'm a human. A male, in case you were wondering"

Twilight turned on the spot, looked up at me and exclaimed: "Whats a hyoo-min? I've never heard of that species in any of my books! Oh, maybe your a yet undiscovered species, and I found one of the last of your dying ra-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Twilight" I said, holding up my arms, cutting her off mid speech. "My race is in no danger of dying out. There are something like 7.2 billion of us, so no worries there. And we are human's, not hyoo-min's. Our scientific name is homo sapien."

After I finished saying this, Twilight looked at me incredulously.

"That's impossible." She stated "If there were that many of you, then why haven't any of you ever been seem?"

"Well..." I started, but was cut off by Twilight, who said "Oh! We're here"

I looked up and saw a large tree, still alive if the leaves were any indicator, completely hollow, with furnishings and what seemed like a good sized library inside it.

I looked around, brain near full meltdown at this blatant disregard of physics, and stated "Can I go take a nap? My brain can only take so much bullshit in one day"

Twilight giggled at my expression and said "Sure. I just need to get a blanket and pillows. You're fine with sleeping on the couch, right?"

"Yeah, sure" I said absentmindedly, gazing at my surroundings in awe.

"How is the tree still alive?" I questioned, genuinely stumped (Hah! Tree, stumped, get it?!)

"Magic" Twilight replied, no hint of a joke in her voice.

I stared at her dumbly "Come again?" I said

"Magic" She said again, a bit more cautiously. "You should know about magic. Every unicorn can do some kind of magic, but it mostly correlates with whatever their special talent is. For example, my friend Rarity, can do magic, but mostly only things to do with dressmaking and gem finding, as her special talent is making dresses. Me, however" She went on, trying not to sound boastful, and doing a pretty good job of it. "My special talent is magic. So I excel in all forms of it."

"Whoa" I said "So how do you know what your special talent is? Theres no way for us to find out back where I come from, so all we do is go to school and study in most subjects to find out if we're either: A. Good at something, B. We really like doing this, or C. (much rarer) Both of the above. In my world (I said 'my world' because I don't think I'm on Earth anymore, what with the talking ponies, and magic) we can be good at many things at once, so we're not restricted by having only one special talent."

"Oh!" Twilight exclaimed "That probably explains your lack of Cutie Mark. That's how we normally know what our talents are. See this mark?" She said, turing around, showing me a strange mark. It was of a pink, six pointed star over another six pointed star, this one white, surrounded by five, smaller, white stars. "This is a Cutie Mark. Most ponies get theirs around ages 6-10, some getting theirs earlier or later, due to chance, luck or illness. The thing is though, every race, unicorn, pegasi and earth pony alike, all get a cutie mark"

"Wait, so you're not only saying that this world has unicorns, but pegasi as well? And every type of pony gets a Cutie Mark?"

"Sure" Twilight said, sort of distant, as if she wasn't really focusing on me, or even the question.

I snorted at the name. Cutie Mark, seriously. They couldn't have thought of a better name, for something so import-.

I yawned loudly, cutting off my train of thoughts, and remembered why I agreed to come here in the first place.

"Twilight" I said, trying to get her attention. She still had that distant look on her face, probably still thinking about what I had said.

"Twilight!" I almost yelled at her, shaking her shoulder.

"Huh, wha-" She said, finally shaken out of her stupor

"Twilight, can you get me a blanket and some pillows for me, please?" I asked. "I haven't slept in nearly two days, if I remember correctly"

"Oh, sure" She said shaking her head. She started making her way up the stairs, which I just noticed, admittedly. I watched her walk up the stairs, trying to gather my thoughts. I know I had only just met her, but I was starting to like this Twilight Sparkle. She seemed a nice enough girl (mare, whatever). She said her talent was magic, so I thought about asking her to do some tricks for me, but a yawn silenced the question on my lips.

'Right' I thought 'Sleep first, ask questions tomorrow'

"Here we are" Twilight grunted as she dragged a large blanket down the stairs, followed by a pile of pillows with purple, scaly legs. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, putting it down to tired hallucinations.

Suddenly, the pillows dropped, revealing a yawning purple lizard. It had a green belly, spines and green slitted eyes. It looked tired and grumpy (probably like what I did), like if Twilight just woke it up. It sighed, and said in a tired voice "I don't know why you had to wake me up for Twil- Whoa!" It's sentence was cut off as it spotted me, sitting on the couch.

"Sup" I said, grinning.

"Spike, meet Anthony." Twilight said "Anthony, Spike"

"Uh, hey" Spike said, the uncertainty clear in his voice.

"G'day mate" I said putting on my biggest fake Aussie accent, grinning all the while.

"What?" Twilight and Spike said in unison

"Doesn't matter" I said, thinking of other ways to troll people (Fuck. Ponies, whatever!)

"Ok" Spike said, yawning again. "Well i'm tired. I'm gonna go to bed"

I found myself agreeing with his testimony. "Same here" I said. "Just drop the blanket and pillows next to the bed. I can set it up."

Twilight looked relieved and put the blankets down, next to the couch. She started her way up the stairs. 'Probably going to her room' I guessed. My left eye twitched, and I realised that I was still wearing my balaclava. I face-palmed. Sighing audibly, I reached up to the top of my head, grabbed the woollen material, and pulled, yanking off the facial garment.

I sighed in relief, the cool air refreshing on my hot face. 'Why didn't I do that earlier?' I thought. As I opened my eyes, I noticed that the sound of foot-steps (God fucking dammit, hoof-steps!) had stopped. Looking up, I saw Twilight and Spike, looking down at me, shock, concern and interest etched on their faces. Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my hand to silence her.

"I'll explain tomorrow" I said, before going to set up my makeshift bed.

I heard Twilight whisper something to Spike, before they headed to their beds as well.

I looked at the couch that I was going to be sleeping on. I sat down on it and confirmed my suspicions. It was really comfortable. I laid the blanket on the couch and put the pillows into place. I crawled in under the covers, confirming my other suspicion. It was a bit short, so my legs dangled over the edge. Now, I'm not tall, by human standards, only 5'8", but to these ponies, I was a giant! I compromised, however, by curling into a fetal position with my head pointed at the back of the couch.

I moved around, trying to get comfortable, but something kept jabbing into my thigh. I patted down my leg, trying to find the source of discomfort. I felt a hard, yet familiar shape in my right pocket. I gasped. 'No' I thought 'It couldn't be!'

But it was. I pulled my phone and headphones out of my pocket (iPhone 4s, if anyone was wondering). I gaped at them. No damage had been done to either, despite my previous endeavours. I turned on my phone to find that it had nearly full battery, and was completely unharmed (well besides the crack that I had gotten on it a while ago, but whatever). I pulled my headphones out, and decided to listen to some music while I slept, like I normally did at home.

I opened up iMusic and, looking through my songs, picked out one of my favourites. Fallen world by Dragonforce.

As the shredding guitar of the best band ever started playing, I felt another object in my other pocket. I pulled it out, and pulled it up to my face. In my hand I was holding a golden necklace, with a green crystal in the shape of a dagger in the centre. I looked at it curiously, having never seen this piece of jewellery in my life.

After a few minutes of looking at it, I shrugged and put it next to my phone.

Wouldn't be the first time I stole something, then forgot about it.

As I lay there, my focus slipping as sleep took hold over my exhausted body, I heard Twilight announce, as if she suddenly remembered, "I need to tell my friends and the Princesses!"

'Holy fuck!' I thought 'She's alerting the Princesses ('lesbians?' The weird part of my brain said) of my arrival! I could get into some serious shit if i'm not careful.'

I felt my eyes begin to droop as I realised that I'd fuck it up if I was half asleep, so I let the joy of blissful unconsciousness take my willing mind.

My final thought before I fell asleep was 'what do I tell them, if they ask about me, my past or my home? Do I lie, or do I tell them the truth? The horrible, horrible truth'.

Author's Note

I was able to get this chapter out much, much quicker than I anticipated, and i've already started on chapter 2! Should be ready, maybe about same time tomorrow, not sure though.
Again, enjoy the story, constructive criticism welcome.