My Little Klay World: Klay is Magic

Chapter Two - An Awkward Start To Things.

In Twilight Sparkle's time, she had witnessed a great many strange things. When she first came to Ponyville, she had met, and later befriended, the hyperactive and bizarre Pinkie Pie, who would soon afterwards become the Element of Laughter. Then, there was the whole crisis with the spirit of chaos, Discord, which was a hectic event indeed. And then of course there was the Changeling invasion of Canterlot, the return of King Sombre and the Crystal Empire, and a month and few weeks ago, the trip to the human world.

Life seemed to have a way of throwing stranger and stranger things at her, and now it had thrown a large group of blue-coloured humanoid figures lacking facial features right into her private study chamber.

The collection of klaymen stood there staring at her - or at least she thought they were staring at her. It was hard to tell when they had no eyes. Twilight Sparkle was unable to speak or bring herself to say anything. She never expected to summon something so...weird-looking. She wasn't expecting whatever living thing she found through her spell to be normal, but neither did she expect anything something so un-normal.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, a voice broke the awkwardness. ''Hey, guys! We're alive! The bomb didn't kill us!''

Twilight jumped upon hearing the voice, and looked around trying to find the source, but saw nopony. Then she noticed the klaymen turning their...heads?...towards one of their own. Twilight Sparkle quickly managed to piece together what was going on; it was one of the blue creatures that had spoken. She didn't notice at first because they did not have mouths, but at least now she knew that these things - whatever they were - were capable of verbal communication. Perhaps this meant they had some level of intelligence?

One of the other klaymen rose his arm and scratched his head. ''I saw a bright light. Was it Heaven? Or the sun?''

Another klayman, this one holding what looked like some sort of sandwich, turned his head to the one who had scratched his head. ''If this is Heaven, I'm glad my sandwich got up here as well.'' He then started...stroking the sandwich, as though it were a cat. ''I love my sandwich. All I ever think about is my sandwich. It's the best sandwich in the whole wide world!''

''Sandwiches are nice, but I want a hotdog!'' piped in another one of the figures, who raised his arm, and to Twilight's astonishment, a thin 'finger' grew out of it, but disappeared back into the stubby arm when the klayman had finished speaking.

Each one of the klaymen suddenly broke out into conversation with one another, apparently seeming to not even care that they were not in their own world any more. Twilight just stared at each of them. Of all the strange things that had happened in her life, seeing a group of blue figures talking about salads, Nerf Darts (whatever in Equestria that was), and something along the lines of the Funky Chicken. all the while oblivious about the fact that they were someplace else, was without a doubt the weirdest thing she would probably ever see in her life.

''Hey, you're a different coloured klayman!'' Twilight Sparkle snapped out of her deadpanned state and turned her head to the klayman standing in front of her. Although he, like the rest of these strange creatures, had no face she could tell that he was talking to her. The clue was in the fact that he was pointing at her.

''Um...Excuse me?''

''You're a different coloured klayman!'' the figure said again. ''I've never seen a purple klayman before. You must be special!'' The figure turned its head to the others. ''Hey, guys! This guy's different!''

The other klaymen suddenly ceased their conversation and looked in Twilight's direction. They raised their arms to their heads in unison. ''Oh my Gott!'', they gasped together, their voices sounding oddly muffled. ''A different coloured klayma-Bah!''. They removed their arms from their 'mouths' just before they finished their sentences, making a strange sound as they did. A few of the klaymen put their arms back to their 'mouths' just so they could make that sound again.

They all moved a little closer to Twilight, which made her feel nervous. The klayman who had approached her spoke again, this time widening his arms out, as though he was going to give her a hug. ''Are there other purple klaymen like yourself? Where are they? I wanna meet them!''

Twilight stared at the klayman. He still had his arms open wide. She shook her head, and cleared her throat. ''Er...I'm not, um, a 'klayman'. I'm a pony.''

The group of klaymen exchanged looks - was that even possible without a face? - between one another, before one of them spoke, though which one Twilight couldn't tell. ''You're not a pony. Ponies don't have wings or horns. They have saddles and pew-pew guns.''

''I think you mean - cough, cough! - I think you mean laser guns, Marty'', another klayman said, bringing his arm up to his head when he coughed.

Twilight Sparkle had not noticed it beforehoof, having been trying to comprehend what this strange creatures were, but now that she wasn't gawking at them while in a dumbfounded state of mind, she noticed that at first glance each of the 'klaymen', as she recalled hearing them say, only appeared to look exactly the same. A second, closer inspection revealed this was not the case. Each klayman actually had something different about them, such as a slightly larger arm or leg, and more or less patterns on their bodies, which Twilight almost swore looked like slight indentations made by fingers. After her adventures in the human world, Twilight was quite familiar with the concept of fingers, those strange tentacle-like appendages that grew from out of the ends of an arm.

Twilight shook her head as she realised she was going way off the subject at hand. Her spell had both succeeded and failed at the same time - it had succeeded in bringing life-forms from another world into her world, but it had failed to bring life-forms that actually, well, looked more alive than like badly modelled characters out of some popular animation.

''Excuse me, er, klaymen'', Twilight Sparkle said aloud, gaining the attention of all of the klaymen, who ceased their talking and looked her way, ''but I don't think we have, um, really been properly introduced to each other. My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I would like to welcome you all to the land of Equestria!''. She finished her sentence with a smile.

The room was filled with silence. Awkward, quiet, tense silence.

Then one of the klaymen raised his arm. Twilight looked in his direction. ''Er...Yes? Do you...have a question?'' the alicorn asked, awkwardly.

''Er, yeah. My name is Henry, and I was wondering why we're in a room filled with books and stuff?'' the klayman asked.

Twilight fidgeted with her hooves and gave a short nervous chuckle. ''Well, you see. The thing is that, um...'' Twilight realized that she had not prepared a proper speech before casting the spell, aside from the earlier introduction. What with having dozens and dozens of blue creatures in the room with her, all without faces and, now she thought about it, perhaps not so much intelligence as she had initially assumed, the whole thing had pretty much taken her by surprise. ''I kinda casted a spell that, well, brought you all into another world. My world.'' Twilight gestured broadly to the room around them. ''You're all standing in my private study, where I research spell books and conduct experiments. You were all brought here by one of such spells; one I created myself to bring life-forms into this world, so that I could learn more about other universes beyond this one. And that is pretty much why you are all here today.'' Twilight looked to the group, waiting to see how they would react upon hearing they were no longer in their own world.

The next minute was, once more, filled with awkward silence.

Which was broken by the sound of a shotgun going off, and what appeared to be the head of one of the klaymen - albeit stained red with blood - flying across the room, right towards the alicorn princess, smacking her in the face. Somehow, Twilight managed to hold back a scream, but wasn't able to keep herself from expressing a look of horror and confusion as the bloodied klayman head fell from her muzzle.

All the klaymen turned around to look at the klayman holding a shotgun, the smoke rising from out of the barrel from its recent use. Next to him, the headless body of a klayman lay on the floor, the white of his spinal bone visible in the pool of blood that began oozing out of the corpse.

The shotgun-wielding fool looked at the rest of the group, before raising his arm into a shrug.

''What? Why are you looking at me like that?''