Red Claw's Journey.

Red Claw’s journey.

Chapter 1: In which I am literally punched into Equestria.

Who am I? Well, I’m an average guy really. I’m about six foot tall, brown scruffy hair, slightly tanned- just average. I’m pretty sociable, and I enjoy talking to other people- well, as much as I meet other people that aren’t on the Internet. I’m an anime geek and brony as well, and amazingly enough, I actually exercise- bet you’ve never heard about a geek doing exercise before, right? I do a Personal Training session about once a week, and you can really see it. Generally, I look big enough that people leave me alone, which suits me well enough.

“Bitchin.”

That was my response to an awesome piece of furniture that I just found lying on the side of the road. It was a large writing desk, with only a couple of scratches in it, not a big deal in other words. My friend and I were currently examining it.

“Man, who’d throw out an awesome desk like this one? You could sell this for a couple of hundred bucks.” My friend, Mick, doesn’t really appreciate the beauty of a good scavenge as much as I do. People just throw out awesome stuff for anyone to get, and for what? Because it doesn’t match their imagined colour scheme. Well, I don’t have a colour scheme, so I just gather up random shit off the side of the road and I’m doing just fine. If they leave it out there, people will take it, as I always say. Maybe I just like collecting furniture too much.

“Dude, you’re not selling this. I’m taking this back to the lair.” I’m generally a pretty sensible guy, but when it comes to stuff on the side of the road, I go all crazy and want to keep it. Thanks to this I’ve picked up an awesome free spin chair, a new table, a couple of cabinets and end tables, and now an amazing writing desk.  Never sofas or chairs though. Thank you, Big Bang Theory, now I don’t want any old chairs.

“Whatever, just put it in the truck.” As we manhandled it into the truck, we got to talking about the same random discussion that people talk about when lifting heavy loads.

“So, who would win in a fight, Yumichika or Rarity?” The Discussion About Who Would Win In a Fight, that most quintessential nerd argument. What can I say; I’m a huge anime and manga fan, and a brony (like there aren’t thousands of those on the Internet.) I paused to consider this. I didn’t really like either character much, but Rarity was slightly more likeable by sheer value of her dramatic personality. On the other hand, Yumichika had a sword, kido abilities and flash step, so there was really no contest- magic might help Rarity out a little bit, but not enough to really beat a guy who was used to fighting soul-eating monsters with only a sword.

“Yumichika would definitely win.” Mick looked affronted.

“Come on, he might not win.”

“Sword. That is all. Rarity would become French meat.” After we got it loaded up, we got into the car and continued driving back to my lair, still bickering about who would win in a fight like the universe depended on our stupid argument. Eventually, we dragged it into the house, and set it up in my study. Yes I have a study; it’s where I keep my computer. I booted it up and started my usual activity on the computer- I looked at pony stories.

While grim dark is very well written, life’s depressing enough, so I just want a good laugh?  It’s this viewpoint that makes my first check on FIMFiction on the comedy section. I know how to have a good time, but I’m usually more serious. I enjoy being serious; it was how I survived being in school. Even so, I get a good chuckle out of the stories. Some of them were pretty decent, and a couple were good enough to favourite and leave an encouraging comment to. I then checked my favourites, looking for anything that might have updated. A couple of stories had a new chapter, and I browsed through, wearing a serious face here, and laughing at something there. And thus, my timewasting continued until I eventually had to start working.

“Enjoying yourself on there?” I whirled around on my spin chair to look at the creepy guy who had just snuck up on me without me noticing. Usually, I’ve got decent hearing, and I wasn’t listening to music, so I should’ve heard footsteps, or the door opening. It was like he’d just appeared out of thin air.

The guy who had so impossibly snuck into my house was extremely tall- almost inhumanly so- about seven foot tall. He didn’t look too unusual- tanned, muscular body, not a rarity in Australia. What was a bit odd was his choice of footwear- sandals with a red business suit, with a yellow shirt and orange tie. He looked kind of handsome, with a sharp nose and bright red hair tied back into a ponytail. His eyes were red, making him look like an albino with hair dye and a tan. We just stared at each other- well, I stared, and he just looked at me with a blank expression. Finally, I broke the silence.

“Who the hell are you and why are you in my house?” He didn’t answer, instead looking at his iPhone- covered in a plain red plastic shell. He tapped on the screen a couple of times, then turned it off, and put it back into his suit.

“I have chosen you for a very important role, boy.” That voice was pretty weird. His voice was deep and commanding, but also extremely raspy, like he’d hadn’t drunk for days. “ I wanted to ignore this game, but now my hand is forced.” He started to ball his hands into fists as he continued. “Still, I’ve got to hand it to the mismatched bastard- he knows which buttons he has to press to get what he wants. So, boy, how would you like to go to Equestria? And before you answer, think about what I’m asking. I dislike people who are too hasty.”

I was too shocked to say anything. I then actually thought about what he was offering. On the one hand, the man had managed to break into my house without me noticing, which is a bit unusual, as I’d locked the door and I didn’t hear any windows shatter, and he was offering for me to go to Equestria, which was, as stated before, unusual and completely unexpected. On the other hand, he was a crazy man who was too rich for his own good, who had broken into my house and wanted me to go to a fictional land of ponies, rainbows and happiness. Not only that, he didn’t say whether I would be going to Canon Equestria, or whether I would be going elsewhere, like Cupcakes Equestria or somewhere even worse. Eventually, I came up with my answer.

“Are there any strings attached?” Not exactly yes but not exactly no either, the best kind of answer to give to strange, alien-looking men who break into your house uninvited like they’re bloody Pinkie Pie or something. He seemed pleased by my answer.

“Excellent, excellent. Most humans wouldn’t even think about the drawbacks, but you actually thought about it. You will be an interesting one. The drawbacks are these: you will not be in human form, you do not choose what body you are in and I will not be able to help you beyond dreams and portents. Got all that?” I shook my head. While that was pretty detailed, I wanted more information before I committed to it.

“Any more details-“ He cut me off with a wave of his hand.

“No, that’s all I can tell you at the moment. There are rules about this kind of thing. Now, off you go!” Before I could even form a response to that, he literally punched me in the face. The last thing that I heard before falling unconscious was, “You’d better win this, boy. Because if you don’t, I’ll make you pay.”

When I was knocked unconscious, I had a weird dream. Well, dreams are weird anyway (I remember one dream where my chair grew a mouth and chased me around the house screaming for bacon while I fought it off with a baguette) but this one took the cake.

I was standing in a huge, empty mansion, which for some reason I knew was mine despite me having never owned or seen it in all my life. I turned around, enjoying it all, thinking that it was a pretty cool dream even though there was nothing there.

“That is your reward if you win, boy.” I turned around to the creepy dude who sent me here. I didn’t know what I was seeing when I turned to him.

On one level, he was the same tanned man with the red suit and yellow shirt. But on another level, I saw him as even taller- easily twelve feet tall, wearing a red dressing gown and a pair of yellow slippers. But he was also a king; regal and proud, red eyes shining out from a tanned, regal face, with a bare chest, an Egyptian toga and sandals. And in another form he was even taller still, easily twenty feet tall, with his toga and sandals, and his head was some kind of animal, that looked like no animal on earth- a curved snout, almost rectangular ears, and those cruel red eyes shining at me. The form after that was even stranger- a huge, crimson beast, with the same head, skinny like a jackal, with a straight, forked tail. But his final form was the worst- a spiralling mass of sand and… blackness, I guess I could say. I wasn’t even surprised- dream logic again. You see something like this and you automatically know what is going on, even though there is no logical progression. If he wants to be loads of things at once then he can do that.

“If you win this Game, than you have a free pass into the afterlife, and I’ll even give you a divine pardon for any sins that you commit while you’re killing for me. If you fail, however…”

We were now standing somewhere completely different. Some sort of chamber, with walls covered in hieroglyphs, and a creature just sitting in the middle of it all. It had the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and the hindlegs of a hippo.

“Then you will have your heart eaten and never again be born into this world, or any other world.”

“Who, or what, are you?”

He laughed at that statement, a laugh like a skeleton’s bones rattling.

“Well, I can’t blame you for not recognising me. You mortals have forgotten the old ways of the gods, after all.” I had to agree- other than the ‘appear out of nowhere’ trick, and then I would have just assumed that he was a guy with a bad taste in clothing.

“I am Set, the Egyptian god of chaos, darkness and the desert. You may have heard of me.” I couldn’t believe it. A god had broken into my fucking house, punched me out and was now threatening me. Wait a moment...

"Alright. Can I get some help now? You sadi that you'd help me through dreams and portents." I was faintly pleased with remembering that vague detail.

“Well, I’m helping you now. I’m going to give you a bit of information about your competition. First of all, most of them are weak- no problem with the body you’re getting. But there are three pawns who I will admit will be problematic.”

“Could I get some names and descriptions? It’ll help with avoiding them.”

“Adam is a long-time pawn- he’s been around for the last 5 or so games. He’s experienced, and currently in a powerful body wandering around aimlessly. Hades knows him well- in fact, his daughter was the one who gave him immortality.” I looked at him, and decided to ask a question.

“Hades has a daughter?”

“Skeleton Jack, she calls herself. Goddess. Fully divine parentage. Even gods have to make the beast with two backs, as Hathor so eloquently puts it.” He started muttering about ‘troublesome children,’ but I wanted him on track.

“What about the other pawns.” He looked up again.

“Oh yes, there are a couple of dragons on the battlefield, but watch out for one in particular. Very powerful one, that one.”

“Dragon. You’re kidding me.” Great, there’s a pawn out there the size of Godzilla. I pictured myself climbing up their back and poking them in the eye.

“No, only a juvenile black dragon, name’s Ember. From what I’ve seen of her, she’s got daddy issues, and as long as your name isn’t Griffin, you’ll be safe. Very powerful magically- in fact, I don’t think that there’s a pawn out there currently with the skill to match her. If you see her, try to get on her good side. If you can’t, then run.” I wanted to ask about why there was a dragon doing magic, but I wanted information on the last one that he was worried about.

“And the third?”

“Griffin the Griffin. Red feathers around the eyes, big griffin with a black dragon scale sword.” I mulled his name over. I decided that this guy was a lazy bastard who couldn’t come up with a half decent name.

“I’m not calling him that. That’s just confusing. How about ‘Peter?’” He had to chuckle at that. This Griffin guy was going to regret his lazy name choice.

“He’s an extremely influential pawn who’s killed about 20 dragons for magical diabetes. He’s violent, unstable and a troll, as well as possessing magic. But you’ll be able to take him and Ember out with not many problems.” The dream started to fade away. I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted more information about them, like where they were and what weaknesses they had, and most importantly, what body I was getting. However, despite my best efforts to stay asleep, I woke up.

When I woke up, I was lying under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds floating overhead. I seemed to be lying on hard rock, which isn’t very good for anyone’s back. I pushed myself up and looked around. I was surrounded by dark grey rock, like I was in some kind of volcanic area.

‘Well, this sucks ass.’ I drummed my three fingers on the rock surrounding me, hoping that it was some kind of illusion. It seemed pretty solid and un-dreamlike, so I decided to accept that I was now in volcano land.

Hold up there, cowboy. Three fingers…

When I looked at my hand, I almost screamed. Instead of a thin, slightly hairy hand with four fingers, I was looking at a VERY hairy hand with three long fingers and claws. My hand was now much larger, covered in dark red, almost black sleek fur and now clawed. The weird thing was that I had an outline- a dark grey outline, like I was in My Little Pony.

Hoping it was just my hands, I examined the rest of my body. My legs were now canid-like, a bit odd considering that I was still bipedal.  My physical build wasn’t anything special- I was a little buffer than normal and the same height, and covered in the same black fur as my hands. My arms looked like normal arms, except for the covering of dark red fur that was across my entire body. I was wearing what looked like a simple sleeveless vest in dull yellow. Finally, I felt along my face, only to hit myself in the muzzle. Muzzle? Right, I’m a dog furry. I have a muzzle now. Feeling along the top of my head, I found that I now possess two long ears, sticking up like a rabbits, with what felt like square tips. Since there was no convenient water puddle around for me to look at, I decided to make what I actually looked like my next priority, after finding some shelter first and avoiding people named Adam, Ember and Griffin (stupid lazily named griffin). I got up, fell down, got up again with more success, stepped forwards majestically…

And fell flat on my face like a moron, causing me to howl in pain and clutch at my much-abused muzzle.

Make learning how to walk my first priority.