"Hello ... I trust you slept well?"

The voice crept steadily into Double Beat's head, starting off soft before growing gradually louder. It got so loud his ears felt they were about to bleed before it got softer again. He could hear the sound blur and distort briefly after the hello and guessed a name was meant to be there. Groaning and sitting up, he felt smooth, cold stone beneath his hooves that turned into a soft, warm and spongy substance.

'Not this again...' He groaned inwardly, this had to make the third time he had this dream in a week.

"Of course it was on such short notice that we called you away I guess you'd be a little groggy."

D.B. grumbled something unintelligible as he climbed to all fours and looked around the darkness.

"What? Where am I?" He heard a second familiar voice start.

"I suppose that'll be your choice."

"What the he-!" The second began to exclaim as it always did.

"It would be appreciated if you ended that with 'hay'," the first interrupted.

A single orb of light winked into existence about ten feet away from Double Beat, illuminating an empty world around him. He yawned and quickly looked around; no ground, no walls, no roof, absolute emptiness.

"Remain calm..., this is merely a test."

There it was again, a blur that was clearly meant to be a name. Double groaned and massaged the back of his head, hoping that the dream would be over quickly this time.

"Test?"

"Yes, a test. Now picture a room, any room will do."

There was a snapping sound and a room began to assemble itself. Walls sprung up and a floor and roof sprouted from them to close everything in. When all was done, Double was standing in the corner of a cement interrogation room, complete with a bright lamp, steel table and painful metal chairs. On the other side of the room, between the giant mirror and the door stood a tall, wiry creature.

Double Beat ran his blue eyes over the other, measuring the thing up. Like last time an unsightly and messy long brown mane dropped to his waist, otherwise he was hairless, and an old, ratty and long sleeveless coat covered a fine buttoned white shirt. Well cleaned pants covered large, muddy hard cloth and metal coverings for his feet. This was only the second time Double had seen this creature, last time being a full two moons ago.

"Who're you, my personal tormentor?" The second voice sounded behind the pony, but when he turned around there was only a corner.

"I prefer the term Deus Ex Machina."

"So a book nerd?"

The pony sighed at the corner, he had hoped to see the second for once this time. The thing behind the pony smiled warmly.

"I guess you could say that, but please pay attention."

"Who are you?"

"Considering current company we are not obliged to say," Dues winked at the small pony, but soon turned his full attention away and resumed ignoring him.

"We?"

"Our apologies, I tend to slip in and out of what is viewed as 'normal' speech."

As he was talking, Double Beat saw Dues's hair start to take an ethereal form, and a similar tail sprouted between his legs, edges flicking hungrily like a fire, and colors changing to suit it. This was the first time Double had seen that detail.

'I thought only alicorns could have a mane and tail like that.' As he pondered it, Double Beat felt the world slipping away. He must've been waking up, the conversation between Dues and the invisible man seemed to speed up, only letting him catch snippets like 'main races,' 'Pegasi, unicorns and ponies,' and a few other commonly known things about Equestria.

Then the pain set in.

"Oh my goodness darling, you look absolutely horrid!"

Ohcrapohcrapohcrap, who did I hurt?! Doublebeat tried to jump to his hooves in urgency, but before he could push more than a foot off the ground he crumpled back under a heavy and mysterious weight. Cracking open his eyes and wincing at the sun that peaked brightly through the leaves, the brown coated pegasus stared frightfully at the three ponies towering over him. Well two towering, one blue pegasus was standing on top of him while the orange earthpony and white unicorn stood off to the side, the former giving the other an incredulous look.

"Calm down there Rares, we need to see if he's okay before we start fussin' about his fashion sense."

The orange pony drawled tiredly as the unicorn levitated and inspected his wings. 'Rares,' apparently the unicorn's name, rolled her eyes at the earthponies comment.

"Please Applejack, I was not talking about his hair. I merely implied his feathers may be a little... out of place, after that fall."

"Ya mean ruffled? Once again, I think we should be more worried about his health than how presentable he is!"

The pair kept arguing like that while Doublebeat groaned and rolled out from under the other pegasus, ignoring her indignant cry as she fell down, shaking his head to try and clear the grogginess away as he stood up. He had crashed, again, obviously there were others involved this time.

"Ponyfeathers," He growled beneath his breath. Why did he always fall asleep during the day and not the night, when he was meant to? It definitely didn't help that all his flight instructors kept scolding him for sleeping during class. He had shifted flight camps five times before he finally got the hang of the sport. And now as he was warned he was injuring other ponies with his mistakes.

"What was that darling?" The unicorn stepped foreword. Beat looked carefully at her for a moment, noting expensive perfume and a purple mane, then something else hit him about who he was laying next to.

"Whoa!" Once he recognized just who he was waking up next to, Doublebeat began backing off a couple feet and sat down wide eyed.

"Careful partner, we don't know if you hurt your wings or not." This was Applejack, a plain looking earthpony to the casual eye, but anypony who went to Guardian Academy or lived in the nearby town Ponyville knew that she came from the mane family of the Apple Clan And was one of the top ten students in the entire school.

"Wh- where am I?" Beat mumbled, trying not to let his awestruck emotions be known, and rubbed his eyes. Last thing he knew he was flying over the Everfree to have lunch after morning classes got out. When he opened his eyes, sure enough he was on the forest floor of the second most dangerous place in the known world.

"How long was I out?! I'm gonna miss my classes!" I've got to get back! Doublebeat's voice grew more an more hysterical as he tried to stand until a fast moving hoof from an annoyed pegasus plugged it up.

"Ugh, just shut up alright? It's still lunch hour so you don't have to worry about dumb stuff like that."

"Rainbow, that ain't no way to treat anypony, 'specially one that just plumb crashed into the ground!"

"But it's his fault! He shouldn't have been sleeping and flying!"

The orange cowponies eyebrows raised.

"Fine," Rainbowdash, fastest pegasus and lead weathermare for the area, rolled her eyes before 'apologizing', "Sorry mister, do you need any help?"

Doublebeat quickly pretended to check his wings so he distract himself from one of his idols bearing down on him.

"No, no I'm fine, just a little sprain is all!" He stretched his wings out, wincing slightly at a bruise halfway down, but nothing was broken from the crash.

"What were you doing up there?" A.J. asked.

The shy pegasus began backing away slowly, crashing for anypony was embarrassing, but for somepony with his history it was just tragic.

"Is everypony okay? I just saw something come falling from the sky!" A frantic looking unicorn popped up behind a tree and stared at the four in the clearing.

Twilight Sparkle, student hand picked and paid for by Celestia herself, top in both academics and magic classes. What am I going to do now?!

"We're just fine, but this punk came out of nowhere and messed up my practicing." Rainbowdash explained and Twilight tilted her head curiously.

"Really? What's his name?"

There was a pause.

"What is your name?" A.J. repeated and all heads turned to the pegasus.

"Er..." Beat began, They couldn't learn his real name, they'd start laughing. But if he used the name he gave himself for writing stories, it would likely end the same. But then, they might not recognize it- nopony would recognize the name of some half bit author, and if he told them his original name the teasing would start again. There was only two options left. "Hey, Rainbowdash right? Are your wings okay? I could take you to the medical wing if you need help."

The prismatic haired pegasus' mouth dropped in confusion, she flexed her wings curiously.

"No, I'm all good, why?"

Drat. Plan B then.

"Wellgreattoseeyou'reallrightIgottagotolunchnowbye!"

Double bolted as fast as he ever had through the forest to the enormous group of buildings he knew as the Guardian Academy, hoping against hope that the other four wouldn't bother to follow him. He couldn't let his heroes remember him as a mere clutz.

Author's Note

"Well, I intended to write more than this, about twice as much (with the other half including the rest of the main characters of this story.) But alas, this chapter took far too long a time to write for such excellent and admirable hobbits. I wrote half of it half as well as I should like, and I know less than half of it half as well as you deserve."

"I, uh, I h-have things to do, and I've put them off for far too long. I regret to announce — this is it. I am going to write more now. I bid you all a very fond good-reading."

"Goodbye."

(Dear goodness, I am doomed.)