Sadly Sings Destiny

Sadly Sings Destiny
Part One: Otherland
By: Jace Arveduin

Emerald Dawn looked exhausted, but she kept working while ignoring the fact her mane was starting to fall into her eyes. The mane in question was a light orange, which contrasted with the deep green of her coat. She also had a magnifying glass for her cutie-mark, and you could just make out her horn from under her mane. To make the matters of her comfort worse, the desk was too big for her diminutive size, which she hadn't got around to replacing yet. All of this was taking place inside her house, which is in the quaint little town known as Broken Bit. It definitely wasn't a glamorous place to live, but she absolutely adored all of the little fillies and colts she taught.

As her concentration began to slip, it wandered back to her trip to Manehattan. It was a pleasant city, if a bit overwhelming. Not only from the size of all the buildings, but also from the sheer amount of ponies that inhabited the place, creating a congested mess of a city when they were all in a hurry to get somewhere. Drifting into another thought, she wondered if she really had seen the unicorns create objects with magic. Still not sure if she had, she'd spent a good deal of her time since returning to her hometown trying to unravel the mystery.

"Come on, stop getting sidetracked and keep trying..."

To her delight, she managed to replicate the spell with a pencil later that night. Celebrating her success, and almost waking the neighbors in the process, she started to wind down. At first she wanted to give something a bigger a try as soon as she could, but the huge yawn she let out stopped her.

"Maybe I should get some sleep first," she told herself in an amused tone as she reversed to go back to her room.

Sleeping peacefully, and quite like a log, through all of Saturday, she awoke early Sunday morning. Looking at her clock, which read 6:00 AM, she couldn't help but wonder how she felt so great after only sleeping a few hours.

"That's odd, I'll have to check the paper when it arrives."

Shrugging it off, she walked out of the door in search of a place to try her new conjuring spell for something larger.

"Where should I try this... I guess I'd better pick somewhere close..."

Humming a cheery tune, she began looking for a suitable place to practice. After a few minutes, she found a low hill with a relatively flat top that looked like an ideal place. After arriving, she realized she had no idea what she wanted to summon. Sitting down with her hoof raised a hoof to her chin, she pondered.

"What do I want to start with...? I know! I’ll start with a small house! Maybe something like a dog house!"

Concentrating as hard as she could, she performed the spell, and it wasn’t long before she started sweating and her legs began to shake. She finished the spell with a small smile that quickly faded as she realized she had badly misjudged the amount of power needed for the spell.

"This isn’t good." She managed to gasp before losing consciousness.

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Jesse had been up late Friday night doing his usual thing: playing games that usually ended up with him killing the fuck out of anything he came across. At about average height and slightly above average weight, he was pale with brown hair, which he kept buzzed off, a rather large nose, and a pair of clear blue eyes.

Although he was an above-average guy in an average life, he'd chosen it. With his natural intelligence and a little work, he could have been an engineer at Boeing or a researcher in most fields. The problem was he just didn’t have the drive to do it. What was the point of wasting half of your life with a high-level college education, then another quarter of it paying off the debts that you had amassed while going to said college? Hell, he actually had an aunt that worked for Boeing, and she had little time for herself and more than a little stress, which was a major factor in his decision. He was comfortable with his mid-range desktop in his small house. It actually had two rooms, but he had reinforced the smaller of the two to store his guns and other weaponry in. Most called him lazy for not fulfilling his full potential, and while he didn’t disagree on that as a fact, he did argue when they said that that was why he was where he was.

Waking up the next morning to get ready for work, he grabbed himself a bowl of cereal, finished his morning ritual, grabbed his keys from the table, and went to go to work. The sun seemed unnaturally bright for some reason, though the reason became clearer once his eyes had adapted to the morning light. On the ground before him, which was much greener than his dead lawn would ever be, was a unicorn that had been drowned in paint and tossed on his doorstep. It was dark green with a light orange mane and tail, and his subconscious told him its mane and tail were the same hue as the sky surrounding the rising sun, but his consciousness was busy with other things at the moment.

“What the... How can my house use electric here?” Jesse asked to no one in particular in his southern accent. He did have his priorities straight though -- when in a new world, don’t bother trying to figure out how you got there, just start questioning the physics to stop a mental overload. Or maybe he was slightly insane, sometimes it could be hard to tell. The unicorn continued to lay there, so he decided to wait and see if she would awake. He lasted about 5 minutes before he got bored and went inside for a bowl of water, which he tossed on her. Honestly, finesse was never something he was good or cared about.

“What, who’s there? And why am I wet?” The mare sputtered as she got to her hooves. She saw Jesse and the house behind it and her body began to tremble.

“What are you?” She probably would have ran away, but her legs kept telling her brain to just leave a message, they'd be in contact later.

“Well,” Jesse started, “I’m a human who appears to have been teleported off of his world, along with his house to, ah... Wherever this is. What is this place, anyway? It looks like someone found the contrast setting for the entire world and started playing with it.”

The poor unicorn looked faint, and a few seconds later she did exactly that, falling flat on her face. With a sigh, the human just sighed and picked her up, grunting with the effort, and dumped her on his old couch. Going to the bathroom, he brought back a towel. Drying her off as best as he could, without touching anywhere he thought might be inappropriate, he took his old Mario blanket from his bed tossed it over her. After all of that, he decided to pass the time by seeing what worked and what didn’t work in this world. Surprisingly, the only things that didn't work was the internet and phone connections.

“Well, I’m not on Earth, there’s a green talking unicorn, and everything still works... Maybe there was a gas leak and I’m dead, or maybe just high... Oh well, I’ll find out eventually.” With a shrug, he decided to worry about it later.

“Ugh, where am I?” The mare said as she slowly regained consciousness, "And why does my head hurt?"

“You’re in my house after you fainted a second time, and I decided against waking you up this time around. As for the pain, that's probably because you face-planted the last time you fainted," he told her in a matter-of-fact tone.

Emerald had been looking at the blanket with a puzzled look as Jesse spoke, staring at the odd little creatures that appeared on it. Looking up a few seconds later, she saw this human standing in a small kitchen making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“But why are you here?”

“Not a clue myself, I was kind of hoping you’d have that particular answer.”

“I... tried to create a house with my magic, and it worked on the pencil, so what went wrong with the house?”

“Did you make the pencil, or did you just bring a pencil to you?”

“I... Um... I’m not sure...” Face and ears drooping, she began to realize the spell hadn’t done what she wanted it to.

Jesse, on the other hand, had to force his face to stay impassive. There was something about the little unicorn’s pout that was trying to tug at the heart-strings he didn’t remember even having.

“Well, I’m here now, and unless you can send me back, there’s no way to change that.”

“How are you so calm? If this had happened to me, I would be scared to death." She told him, shivering at the thought.

“Like I said, I’m here, I can’t do anything about it, I don’t think you can do anything about it, and I might as well consider this a vacation. I’ll start worrying once I find a reason to worry, like when my food runs out, or the magical energy supply that I have seem to have runs out. Then, of course, there's the possibly this is a dream, or I'm hallucinating, or that I'm dead.”

“I’m really sorry about this, and I’ll try my best to fix it. I'm also alive, so you shouldn't be dead."

“Just tell me if you need any help, otherwise I’ll just stay here and try not to cause chaos. I will admit the thought of causing chaos with my mere presence would be hilarious though. Oh, and I should ask you to advise the locals to leave me alone, by the way. I usually don’t play nicely with others, especially when they begin to pester me.”

The poor mare just looked at him in shock, but it was obscured by the fact she already had a shocked look on her face from everything else.

“Okay, I’ll do that.” After a short pause, she added “I’m going to go see if I can find a way to send you back.” She got off the couch and headed toward the door, which included a few awkward steps as she tried to regain equilibrium. She had no idea what he'd do if he got angry, but she had a feeling it wouldn't be very nice.

Jesse nodded as she left, which was all of the recognition she got that he was paying attention. She really felt bad, not only because she caused somepony a problem, but also because she had no idea the effects this strange creature would have in her world. Making her way to the town library, she started looking through every book she thought might help.

"This is going to take some time," she muttered to herself as she started reading through the first book, which was titled, Dimensions and You: A Novice’s Guide to the Galaxy. She didn’t really expect to find any answers in it, but with a title like that, it had to have something of note inside. She spent the next few days going over books that looked promising and working, though she did remember to warn the town to stay away from the house on the hill.

As she left, Jesse decided he might as well do some maintenance on his guns and other assorted weapons. He walked into the last room of the house, which held a few shields and swords hanging from the walls, a workbench, and a large black gun safe, which was his destination, he opened it with a quick sequence of numbers and a turn of the handle. The collection of guns wasn't large, but it was fairly impressive. The entire bottom had been turned into two shelves, both of which were full of ammo. The guns on the custom racks included an M4A1 assault rifle, an old Russian SKS battle rifle, a Russian Dragunov sniper rifle, and his M1911 pistol. Some people seemed to think he had a gun fetish, he just replied that he liked things that go bang. Sitting at the work bench, he spent the next few hours stripping down and meticulously cleaning the guns and his favorite shield and sword. He didn’t actually use the shield and sword much, but he loved them and had a fair amount of knowledge on how to use them.

After a few days of playing video games, he began to wonder what he would do when the food ran out, but figured he'd just ask the next time Emerald dropped by. He also wondered if she had spread the word around town to leave his house alone. Because if she had, it didn’t show. The ponies tried to spy on him inconspicuously, but they were all doing a rather bad job of it. Finally losing his patience, decided to get it over with. So without ceremony, he pulled out one of his camping chairs, sit it down outside, and sat down.

“Okay, you pony things aren’t exactly great at hiding, so come on over and sate your curiosity,” he yelled.

Most of the ponies scattered, though one of the pegasi flew down and landed in front of him. She had pure white coat that had a light blue hue to it, like it was seen through ice, and a bright red mane.

“What are you? And I don’t know why the town’s scared of you, you don’t look so tough to me,” she said. Her voice wasn’t very harsh (or soft for that matter), it was somewhere in between, and her eyes were the same fiery red as her mane. It was an appropriate color, since she was currently trying to burn holes through him with her glare. Adorning her flank was a snow-flake with a pillar of fire.

“Indeed... I’m a human. Apparently there aren’t any humans in.... Wherever I happen to be right now. Though I would like to know if you ponies realize it’s rude to spy. In fact, it’s probably considered even more rude to spy badly,” Jesse told the mare, unfazed by the glare.

She looked at him like she was going to laugh. “You don’t know where you’re at? You’re in Equestria, and what else were we supposed to do? You didn’t come out, and we don’t know if you’re dangerous or not. You don’t look tough though, so how dangerous could you be?”

Jesse let out a chuckle. “You’ve no idea, and I don’t plan on sharing that particular bit of information. Anyway, the name’s Jesse.”

“Jesse? that’s a weird name, why would anypony name their foal Jesse? Anyway, my name's Frostfire”

“As you may have noticed, I’m not a pony, so your form of naming is equally odd to me. Anything else?”

“Yeah, what do I keep hearing when you’re inside? I couldn't quite hear it.”

“It’s either my music or the noise made by my games. Anyway, I’ve the odd suspicion you're going to be wanting a tour of my house, So now I just have to find a way to keep you from destroying everything and killing yourselves. Goodbye, I’ll talk to you later.” And with that, he got up and walked back inside, shutting the door behind him.

“Later? Get back here! I'm not done talking with you!” Frostfire yelled as the door closed. She tried to open it, but it was locked.

“Fine, be that way,” she yelled before she took off with an unintelligible grumble.