Based on a True Story!

For the most part, the Everfree Forest was quieter than I remembered it, as in fewer things were trying to eat me. Surely the best kind of quiet. Unless, of course, it was because all those things had been scared off by something even worse. This perhaps best illustrates my hard-won attitude of cautious pessimism.

Five of the mares had kept silent for hours now, though I didn’t know if that lay more in a desire for stealth or just from not being able to get a word in with Pinkie around.

“...And then I said, ‘But we’re not arguing!’ And he said, “We’re doing it right now!’ And then I said ‘So we’re contradicting each other about contradicting each other?’ And then he said ‘Yes!’ And I said ‘So we’re in agreement, then?’ And he said ‘Yes!’ So I said, ‘So we’re not arguing after all?’ And then he got the straaaaangest look on his face, and had to go lie down for a while. You know, sometimes I think that I never will understand donkeys.” She paused, thoughtfully. “I wonder what makes them so weird...”

I had discovered that pony ears could lie pressed against the skull, but it wasn’t enough. By all that was holy, right, and not trying to make my brain hurt, it just wasn’t enough. I finally shot a desperate look at Twilight, who then gave Pinkie a different look and an urgent whisper. “Pinkie -- emergency maneuver Alfalfa Six Trot Roameo Five!”

Pinkie came to attention and saluted crisply. “Ready on your order, ma’am sir!”

“Implement!”

I looked from Pinkie to Twilight, curiously. “Alfalfa Six Whatsit?”

Twilight smiled conspiratorially and whispered, “It means ‘stop talking for five minutes.’”

“Thank you. Very much,” I said.

Rainbow Dash leaned close and chided me, though more gently than I would have expected. “She’s only trying to cheer us up, Drath. She knows we’re feeling bad, and that’s probably harder for her to bear than you can imagine.”

“You’ve all done this before, though, right?” I asked, my own volume instinctively low.

It was Twilight who answered. “It was different then. We didn’t know Luna, and she didn’t really know us. Now she not only knows our weaknesses, but it’s going to be more difficult to face her in battle.” She stopped scanning the forest long enough to give me a look. “I’m one of her few friends, Drath, and that’s important to me.”

I nodded to her somberly. “Maybe she’ll go easier on you?”

“Well, she is planning to end all life on Earth, a world she probably knows I’m on, so I’d be a little hesitant to assume that.”

See? Cautious pessimism: trying to expect the worst you can think of, but knowing that you can only imagine so much. Still, what’s life without surprises?

Under these circumstances? Probably longer.

Twilight smiled radiantly at me. “But expecting the best from her even now? That’s very…”

Applejack stopped and held up a hoof before Twilight could finish, though, and looked into the sky. I followed her gaze, naturally. “A couple... little bats? Tell you what, Twilight can take one of ‘em, the rest of you can handle the...” I trailed off as I looked down to find myself alone among trees and bushes. Seeing a hoof wave at me from one of the bushes and not being completely stupid (“completely” in the mathematical sense here, so 99.995% doesn’t count), I dived into the bush.

Which, unfortunately, surrounded the base of a particularly hard tree. And when I say “particularly hard,” yes, by now I considered myself an expert, having on several occasions given them a firm tap. Usually with my face. Rubbing my head as tenderly as a hoof allowed, I peeked out of the bush and saw shadows, far too big for birds, pass over the space where we’d been standing.

“Some of the pegasi are on her side?” I asked as we left cover. “Some ponies are seriously on the side of someone who wants to end all life on Earth? How do you get that? ‘Yes, I’m going to kill you and everyone you know, but first -- a hefty raise! Best spend it quickly!’ ‘Hey, I’m ending the world, but meanwhile casual Friday is back, and Wednesday’s now free donut day!’”

“It’s loyalty,” said Dash quietly. “Sometimes there’s a downside.”

“‘Casual Friday?’” asked Twilight.

“It’s when you come to work dressed, uh...” I looked at the mostly-naked ponies around me, and shrugged. “I’d explain, but there’s a lot of math.”

“I’m actually pretty good at math,” Twilight said hesitantly.

“Excellent,” I responded, and leveled an expectant look her way. “I’ll let you explain it, then.”

Twilight confidently opened her mouth, paused, and went cross-eyed.

“At least now we know we’re in the right area,” Applejack noted.

“Not really,” Fluttershy responded. “This just means she has scouts where she knew to expect us, and, tactically speaking, neutralizing us would at least be her chief secondary objective.” She caught herself, and blushed adorably -- though for her that last bit might be redundant. “But you’re, you know, probably right. Sorry.”

I looked at the gentle pegasus in amazement. Twilight, her eyes uncrossed by now, chuckled. “You get used to that, too.”

“You have very interesting friends, Twilight Sparkle.” And I was living in interesting times.

We continued on in relative silence for a while. But it turns out that a forest makes a lot of noise, and between my prior experience with forests and the noise seven ponies inevitably make going through one, every rustle in the woods scared the hell out of me. Every minute, I expected cute little ponies with very un-cute swords and spears to leap out from between the trees. I don’t know how cute little ponies could do this so fearlessly. And when Pinkie’s five minutes of silence were up, so help me I was actually grateful.

==========

I was venturing deeper into the forest, with only Fluttershy for company. It was dangerous, yes, but this was an important task. And, truth be told, only I could do what had to be done here. That wasn’t inflated ego talking. It was just a fact.

A very unpleasant fact. It’s not fair. Indiana Jones never had to pee. Captain Kirk never had to ask the Klingons for a bathroom break. Pee Wee Herman never had to use a magical, talking toilet… And wow, someone really would have had a worse life than mine.

“Any of these trees should be safe,” Fluttershy said as she stopped. “I’d avoid the bushes, though, just in case.”

I nodded my thanks and hurried off quickly, practically doing the potty dressage before reaching an out-of-sight bush. Not a tree. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Fluttershy, mind you. Don’t get the wrong idea -- being a bit… creative with the truth now and then doesn’t really mean that you automatically distrust everyone else. If anything, I think it makes you a better judge of whom you can trust, and whom you can’t. Me, I’d trust these ponies more than gravity itself. Which was way more than I’d trust, for example, myself.

The trees, though? Not a chance.

I finished with my, well, business, and was trotting back to Fluttershy when I began to feel a bit less… comfortable.

She saw it instantly. “Oh no! You went in the bushes, didn’t you?”

“Don’t tell me…”

She shook her head. “Some of these are oison oak.”

I frowned at her. “I asked you not to tell me that.” What? Petulant? Me?

“I’m sorry.” Of course she was. She’d probably apologize for a rainy day. As if a pegasus could control the weather. “If it helps,” she continued, “It might have been poison sumac instead.” Fluttershy took another long look at my expression. “That, uh, didn’t help, did it?”

I shook my head, but without real heat. This was my own fault, after all. And considering the specific anatomy involved, this was going to quickly develop into the most indelicate itch ever. Nudity taboo or no, I haven’t seen any of these ponies going around scratching themselves in public.

Her expression turned from sympathetic to subtly coy. “I have a salve I could apply to the affected area…”

And I backed away. “You know, I could just do that myself.”

“Oh, no! It has to be put on just right,” she claimed as she stalked ever-closer with, I swear, a definite hungry look.

I decided that a strategic advance to the rear was advisable. And in case there’s any doubt about what “advance to the rear” means under these rather delicate circumstances, I mean “ran like hell itself was chasing after me with a cute pink mane and waving around a jar of salve.”

I almost made it, too. If I hadn’t tripped on a nearby squirrel frozen and staring at us in apparent disbelief (it’s like they’ve never see Fluttershy chase after an alicorn before), gotten a horn stuck in a tree (which, I’m sure you’ll agree, could happen to anyone in these circumstances), and was too distracted by the pine cones dropping onto my head (et tu, gravity?) to get out quickly, I think I would have gotten back to the party, if not unscathed, then at least unsalved.

When we got back I felt used, dirty, and, unusually enough for my gender, not in a good way. Not that she’d been anything but proper, mind you -- this is Fluttershy, after all, and she stuck to what was, if I had to be reasonable, medically necessary. But being reasonable would have taken all the fun out of being annoyed, and I wasn’t about to do that.

==========

We were making very slow progress, hiding to avoid the infrequent patrols and staying off what few trails there were. With the last of the daylight, Twilight had spotted something and she wanted as few of us as possible to investigate it more closely.

Now, who do you think she picked? Go on, guess. I’ll wait.

“So what is it?” I asked, eyeing the stone building.

“Opportunity,” Twilight whispered back, a little tremor in her voice. Both of us retreated more deeply into the bushes. “It looks like the Night Guard are using an old temple as a field HQ,” she continued. “This could be unbelievably lucky for us.”

Actually, I could believe in any amount of luck at this point. It was only good luck that seemed in short supply. “‘Field HQ’? You really do know everything about everything, don’t you?”

She blushed and smiled shyly at me again. “My brother was captain of the Royal Guard. I picked up a thing or two.”

“‘Royal Guard?‘ Is that some kind of elite fighting force?”

She paused, as if searching for the right words. “...Anyway, it looks empty; her forces might be spread more thinly than I thought. If we can even find some paperwork, maybe something of their scout routes and timetables, it can give us the edge we need.”

“It ‘looks’ empty? Can’t you use magic to find out?”

She gave me a quick shake of her head. “Every mage has her own thaumic signature. If Lun... Nightmare Moon has military-trained unicorns trying to find me, it’d be like sending up a flare,” she said sadly. “Don’t feel bad that you didn’t know that. I only wish we’d had more time to apply your natural brilliance to the study of magic, Drath.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “No telling what I could have accomplished.” Or how many glasses of water I could have blown apart.

Still, if she said investigating the spooky building was a risk worth taking, well, she was probably right. She’d seemed almost annoyingly intelligent once, and not just by virtue of being smarter than I am. That’s nothing new to me, after all. But now that I was counting on her head to keep me alive, I’d become a lot more understanding.

“Time to head back to the others?”

She nodded, and we carefully and quietly started our way back.

“I appreciate your keeping my... little secret,” she said softly. “And no matter how much this situation takes priority, I don’t want you to think that my feelings have changed. I especially want to put to rest any thoughts you might have that I was just attracted to how strange you looked, or some weird thing like that.”

And for today’s special, we have one main course of awkward, served with a slice of humble pie. “I... I don’t know what to think,” I said. Hey, honesty really is the best policy this time. I guess that had to happen someday. “In this body, I’m not even sure what I want to want, if that makes any sense.”

She nodded, eyes downcast. “I think I understand. And I wouldn’t expect someone as wise as yourself to choose to remain in your current body, no matter what advantages it might have.”

“Wait,” I said as I leapt to conclusions in a single bound. “Do you mean... OK, are we asking whether I would give up my home, my family, my entire world, everything I know, and perhaps, in a very real sense, my very being as well, just because this body has over a foot of, um...?”

She began to protest, “I would never accuse you of being that shallow or juv...”

“Because that’s a decent question,” I continued. “Odd that it never occurred to me before.” Which is perhaps the best evidence for how scary all this was. If I’d been told that as a bicorn I could now pour beer out of my left ear and nachos from my right -- yes, I dream big -- it would’ve been but a footnote in the story of fear and suffering my life had become. I could only hope it wasn’t a short story. Well, now I could also hope to stop thinking about what ear-flavored beer would taste like.

She frowned at me. “Well, whatever you decide, I do have one thing to ask. Could you keep this from the girls?”

“I think I can manage that, yes.” Because that’s just the kind of guy I am; specifically, the kind that doesn’t like massive amounts of pain, and, considering what might happen to me if they did find out, this was tantamount to her asking me -- very politely -- to not set fire to my own lips. “Anything for a friend, Twilight.”

“Thanks, Drath, I appreciate it. There’s a shortage of stallions around Ponyville, and frankly I’m almost surprised none of the other bearers have approached you yet.”

“Whoda thunk it?” Technically, this wasn’t a lie. Dishonest? Yes, certainly dishonest -- but not, technically, a lie.

“It’s rough on the stallions, too. Poor Macintosh is always so exhausted that every time I see him, he can only get a couple syllables out.”

“Yeah. Poor guy.” I didn’t like to think of myself as a prude, mind you, but this conversation was starting to get just a tad uncomfortable. Admittedly, I didn’t like to think of myself at all, under the principle that the unexamined life is just a lot simpler.

Twilight’s expression showed her to be pondering imponderables. “I’m afraid to ask what happened before applebucking season a couple years back. All I know is, he was bandaged up and barely able to walk, and Carrot Top’s never been able to look at duct tape or tapioca pudding the same way since.” OK, so not imponderables; just things better off left unpondered.

And the squick-o-meter had just pegged. “Twilight, do you know what ‘too much information’ is?”

She looked at me, puzzled. “A contradiction in terms?”

“...Never change, Twilight.”

==========

The bearers, gathered together again, crept into the darkened temple. Me, I was confident. What? Not expecting that? That’s because I finally had this world figured out. It liked to go against my immediate expectations, time and again. Which meant that a raid into a darkened temple, surrounded by who knows how many roaming Night Guard but with a mysterious absence of them in their actual headquarters, was so obviously a trap that I knew it could not possibly, in a million years, in any way, shape, or form, ever actually be a trap.

Wait. I froze, as a thought occurred to me -- yeah, I hate when that happens. That means I’m not expecting an ambush, and that means... Aw, hell no. Sure enough, globes around the inside of the temple sprang into sudden brilliance, stabbing at my dark-adjusted vision and casting crazy shadows from a dozen Night Guard ponies. I’m so glad I went to the bathroom already.

I hate my life. On the plus side, right now it looked like that wasn’t going to be an issue much longer.

A coruscation of red threw back the foe. “Get out as fast as you can!” Twilight shouted in a voice strained with effort. It was an order I’d anticipated and was already doing my level best to carry out, heading for the exit as fast as my hooves would carry me. My courageous whimpers (courageous versus screaming in abject terror like I wanted to, so it counts) got louder as I saw the heavy door start to slowly close, but only a little louder. By now I figured that was just what heavy stone doors do when I’m on the wrong side of them.

I got out first, followed by Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Applejack, Twilight and, finally, Rainbow Dash. Believe it or not, we didn’t get out just barely in time; there was still plenty of room for a pony to go through the doorway. Twilight’s horn flared with its characteristic aura as she forced the Night Guards back, and it was obviously a strain for her, but she looked confident, so even that wasn’t a problem. It was all going well. Too well. Yes, any good news at all was too much good news for comfort, but this was suspiciously, conspicuously auspicious. It was like the world just wanted to watch me squirm for a while. And this time it didn’t even have the grace to be subtle about it.

Then came a cry of such despair and heart-wrenching pain that, to this very day, I remember it had not only despair, but also heart-wrenching pain. “My hat!”

“AJ, no!” Rarity cried. It was too late, and the cowpony had plunged back inside with Rainbow Dash hard on her tail, just before the door closed. We all stared at each other as scream after agonized scream erupted from within, muffled but beyond mere stone’s ability to completely quench.

The door was wrapped in a red glow that quickly flickered out. “It’s been charmed against my magic.” Twilight stamped a furious hoof. “Luna charmed it against me, personally!”

“We simply must do something,” Rarity declared. “Listen to that! Those fiends are taking their own sweet time with whatever foul tortures they’re inflicting!” And indeed, the screams, though hard to hear, hadn’t dampened down at all, merely shifted in focus. Less filled with pain and terror, they were now colored more with desperate anguish and raw hopelessness. “And when I say ‘we’ must do something, I of course mean Twilight.”

“I’ve got an idea!” Twilight’s magic enveloped Dash’s canteen and placed it next to the door. “Everypony clear! Drath, go!”

What could I do? I might have been growing a conscience, but I preferred to think of it as being blindly caught up in the moment, if only because that’s less apt to be a permanent affliction. There was really only thing I was good at in this world -- other than inadvertent self-injury -- and, once everyone was clear, I did it. The canteen erupted with enough force to blow a pony-sized hole in the heavy door. The friends were on their way in before the dust settled; sensibly enough, I suppose, as that blast might’ve disoriented anybody on the inside.

And then me. After all, with the blast we might have an advantage for a few, scant moments, and it’d better to catch them off-guard than face them after they’d had time to prepare. Following them in was really the sensible thing to do.

Besides, it was dark outside and I didn’t have anyone to hide behind.

“All right!” I roared once inside. “I’m here to kick ass and chew bubblegum!” Definitely caught up in the moment -- that was a relief.

I looked around at the assorted unconscious ponies decorating the floor, the furniture, and an overhead light. My gaze then turned to where Applejack, her ponytail in considerable disarray, was stalking closer to one cowering, bat-winged pony, and it occurred to me that I’d only assumed it was Applejack and Rainbow Dash doing the screaming we’d heard. That lone guardspony must have been a little smarter than the rest, as he held up Applejack’s hat between the advancing cowpony and his shivering self, while entirely avoiding Dash’s nearby glower of doom. No doubt that was why he was still upright while his comrades looked like advertisements for pain relievers, first aid kits, and, in one particularly unfortunate case, a dentist capable of glowing orb extraction. I guess that pony was left a little light-headed.

Sorry.

The cowpony snatched it out of his hooves and set it firmly atop her head, glaring at the minion before walking back to us. “My pa gave me that hat.”

“...And I’m all out of ass,” I finished lamely. “Anybody have some bubblegum?”

==========

Now that we were back on track to the castle, I didn’t even try to hide how impressed I was with Applejack and Rainbow Dash. But first, I had more important matters to settle.

“‘Light-headed’? Come on, Pinkie, tell me you get that one, at least.”

Pinkie chuckled. Quietly, and clearly out of pity. And, like everything else done out of pity, I’d take it.

“So… You two handled a dozen ponies between you?”

“I guess I was feelin’ a mite ornery,” Applejack said, evidently a little embarrassed. “And Dash ran into several of them.”

Dash snorted. “I told you, AJ, that’s a perfectly legitimate move in Bronc Fu. I swear, talking with you, sometimes, I might as well be talking to myself.”

And I really needed to think about a new flight instructor.

“Have you been practicing with your Element?” Twilight then asked, changing the subject while conveniently also striking dread into my soul, and doing it the same way she often does -- with innocent glee. Here I’d almost been enjoying a moment quietly walking through the forest, trying to get over my last brush with death, when she had to go exploring brand new ways for me to meet a horrible demise. Then again, what are friends for?

“Not exactly practicing. Not as such, anyway.” After my attempts at magic before, not to mention flying or even applebucking and all the relevant bruises, trying something brand new wasn’t exactly next on my list of things to do. I mean, I knew it was probably important, and it was on my list, of course. In fact, it came just after “dying of old age.”

“The Elements chose you to bear this, Drath, and yours is different from ours. The Elements we bear are something we represent, but for you that would only be true if you were able to, I don’t know, fertilize crops.” I took a quick look around, half-expecting Spike to appear out of nowhere with a ready comparison to a bag of manure, but for once the laws of physics acted as if they were on my side. “You should probably try, Drath. We don’t reach the castle today, anyway. We’ll make camp in a while, and then continue in the morning. And even then we probably won’t hit the castle until seventeen hundred hours.”

“Seventeen hundred hours, huh? There’s no rush, then, right?” I mean, at twenty-four hours a day, that’d be, like, months from now. Dagnabit, I knew I should have packed more.

She just looked at me with those incredibly big eyes, eyes holding far more confidence in me than anyone had ever had. Also more confidence than anyone had ever really had reason to have in me, and that’s what convinced me. Maybe, just maybe, I could stretch myself a little for my friends, these ponies who had done so much for me. Maybe I could try to be less the pony I was, and more the pony they saw. So I took out my bubblegum (Pinkie had some “just in case”) and concentrated. My necklace glowed, and, after a while, it felt good. It felt really, really good.

And apparently it wasn’t just me. Twilight And Dash looked more relaxed, Fluttershy and Rarity less worried, Applejack almost giddy, and Pinkie looked... Well, Pinkie Pie looked the same, but that doesn’t really prove anything.

“Something’s wrong,” I said. I felt fine. Better than fine. I felt great. And that just couldn’t be good. “Twilight, something terrible is happening, has happened, or is going to happen, or, um, something.” That should narrowed it down for her, right? Never let it be said that I didn’t do my part.

She eyed my Element and shook her head. “Stop using it, Drath. Everypony, wait where we are.” She took several deep breaths and, taking this as probably the smart thing to do, I did the same. Gradually, I could feel my head clear. “That’s better,” she said. “Drath, I’ve never been so grateful for your keen intellect. I’m not sure I would’ve recognized the effects of nitrous oxide in time.”

“Ah.” Because it sounds so much more suave and sophisticated than “Huh?”

Twilight flushed, and half-turned away. “I didn’t account for the possibility that you’d be adding nitrogen to the atmospheric oxygen as a compound instead of a mixture.” She looked down and idly dug a hoof into the dirt. “I must look like such an idiot to you. Can you ever forgive me?”

I smiled generously. “You forget, Princess, that I’m every bit as wise as I am intelligent.” It was an even trade -- I let her know all was forgiven, and her grateful smile back let me know that I wouldn’t have to admit not having the faintest idea what she was talking about.

In any case, all this had shown me two things. First, yes, I could stretch myself a little for my friends. And, second, not to.

==========

I don’t remember sleeping that night. I must have, though; I’m told that apparently being a magical fantasy pony doesn’t mean that you don’t snore. We broke camp to confront (and no doubt suffer from) a brand new day, but by mid-morning Pinkie was getting to me again. And this time she’d picked the one way to do so that I never in a million years would have expected. Not from her.

She was being quiet and sad.

“Pinkie? It’s not that bad. I honestly think we’ll be OK,” I assured her. And it was true -- except for the “honestly” part, of course. Really, though, if things were bad enough to get her this depressed…

Pinkie shook her head and gave me half a smile. “I’m not worried about that,” she said, and my spirits lifted. “Not with you along. You’ll keep us safe.” And then I held up and closely examined was left of my morale -- while being careful not to sneeze.

How did I not see that coming? “Well, what’s wrong, then? I mean, aside from the end of the world,” I appended hastily. It’s just that usually that last part goes without saying.

“Today’s Mrs. Cake’s birthday,” she said quietly while her smile, such as it was, gradually faded.

“Mrs… Who?”

“Cup Cake. She owns the bakery I work at. And live at. And she’s been really, really nice to me, especially when I needed somepony really, really nice to me.”

“Like… family?” Pie and Cake -- either that makes sense, somehow, or I’ve just been here too long.

She nodded again and turned her face from me, but her voice gave the tears away whether they’d been shed or not. “More like family than my family. And she’s going to have to settle for a non-Pinkie Pie party today.”

That was the last straw, and I mean the very last straw. Here we were, likely trekking to our doom, for some scant chance that we and the rest of this crazy world could see more than a few more crazy days to abuse me with. And this pony, this Pinka-whosis Di-something Pie, was worried. She wasn’t worried about any of the myriad ways we could suffer and die. She wasn’t worried about anyone’s survival at all. She wasn’t even worried about whether Mrs. Cake would have a party. This weird little pink chatterbox was worried that Mrs. Cake’s party might be just a little less festive. It was finally too much for me to handle.

I sighed, reached over to her, and gave her as big a hug as I could.

Yep. I’ve been here way too long. “Tell you what -- when we defeat Nightmare Moon, she can have my place at the party you’ll throw.”

She looked at me again, this time with a completely genuine smile. And, really, her face just didn’t look the same without one. “She can?”

“Absolutely.” I mean, come on. A party where I’d almost inevitably be a guest of honor? That wouldn’t be tempting fate; that’d be bending over and showing fate a “kick me” sign while juggling live piranha and wearing a jock strap made of tuna fish.

And it made Pinkie happy. If the world really was ending, I might as well get my occasional good deed done early this year.

==========

And then Darth nobly… Wait, this is italicized, isn’t it? Is it the end-of-chapter notes already?

So, story-wise what to expect next? Excitement! Peril! Raw, heart-felt emotion! Deep musings on the nature of reality and our place in it! Penguins! I’ll definitely try to fit at least one of those into the next chapter of Based on a True Story!