The Life and Times of Zeke

Chapters

The Day I (Almost) Died
Meet the Ponies
Happy Birthday
So What Does A Princess's Bedroom Look Like?

The Day I (Almost) Died

It was on a tranquil, sunny spring day when I died a horrifyingly gruesome death.

...Yeah, I guess that sounds just little too cheesy for the heading sentence of my tale. Plus, that isn't necessarily all true... Dammit. That line certainly sounded a lot more poetic in my head now that I think about it, and now that I've said it out loud it really does sound like the beginning of a horribly corny pulp fiction...

Ah well, I might as well just roll with it.

As I was saying, my everyday life came to a bloody smear on the side of a dull grey concrete wall one fine April afternoon. A few minutes earlier to this and you would have found me sitting on a bench, perfectly healthy... Well as healthy in the sense that I was still alive and had all my bodily fluids contained inside me at any rate. I'll admit that in my current shape I'd never win any marathons in the foreseeable future, and I was in dire need of a diet, but I was as healthy as any other fifty year old. Admittedly that wasn't saying much, but I digress.

At the moment I had just gotten off a nine hour long trans-Atlantic flight riding economy; which had finally come to a merciful end when my plane had touched down on the tarmac of London Heathrow. I was exhausted from everything that had happened over the past day and a half of traveling, but I was relieved that I finally wasn't a Human sardine anymore; traveling in economy really makes you appreciate the simple things, such as elbow room and not being surrounded by more than a hundred people and their screaming babies in a confined space thousands of meters above the Atlantic.

Exiting the Boeing 747 I had noticed that the sun was shining outside the gigantic walls of glass and only a few puffy clouds hung above the old English city, though I didn't get much of a chance to sight see as I was quickly pushed through security and into the world's longest conga line. A few hours later and I had finally escaped the maze of terminals belonging to one of Europe's largest airports and had retreated underground to wait for my shuttle into London.

The flight had taken quite a bit out of my middle aged bones, and I felt like if I didn't get some rest soon I'd probably fall apart right where I stood.

An acidic burp followed up my thought of taking a seat; it scorched my throat on it's way up and was soon followed by an ominous rumble from my gut. I knew that if I didn't look into popping down a bottle of pepto bismol soon my nausea would only get worse; though I'd probably have to buy one since I used the last of my supply on the flight already. Me and my stomach never liked being any higher than two stories, fear of heights you see.

Yeah, you heard me; it's a rational and quite common fear! So what if I feel like shitting myself if I ever looked over the side of a cliff?! I'm the kind of person that would happily stay on ground floor for the rest of my life, thank you very much.

Sadly I had to face this fear every, single, day of the week because my office had been on the twenty-seventh floor back in New York...I couldn't help but wonder if I had pissed someone off at one point in my life and that was their little revenge; odd to think of scientists as being the vindictive sort.

And that brings me to why I'm busy trying not to vomit up my last meal in an underground train station half a world away. My little trans-Atlantic jaunt was for a special conference being held here in the old country.

I bet you just thought "Well that sounds as interesting as watching paint dry. How could this possibly be worth another second of my time?" Well, first of all to answer that, this is my sub-conscious and I can say whatever the hell I want! Mariachi Mole-Men from Mars! See, I can say whatever I want, and if you don't like it then you can sod off! Secondly this "Boring" conference was being held by this brilliant Swedish chap that had actually invented a way to transcribe those electrical pulses your spongy wrinkled grey matter emits into solid images! I shit you not; this Viking of Science had actually looked at a person's thought!

Granted, similar technology and techniques had been done before, but the most anyone had gotten out of it was a blurred smudge. This on the other hand was a highly detailed picture. Imagine it like a HD television while the previous method was like that black and white box that sat in your grandma's living room.

Beautiful raw science aside I guess I should explain more about who I actually am before I venture further, though since this is my dying brain cells that I'm talking too so it would really worry me if those little buggers didn't already know all this.

Ahem, let's start with a name shall we? My name is Marcus T. Longbottom. Before you say anything; yes I know that last name is the same as a character from Harry Potter, and no I don't care. I got enough crap from having a name for a derrière crammed into mine back in Elementary School.

The "T" stands Thatch by the way; normally I use that as a surname due to obvious reasons.

I was 56 when I met my end. I had been married once, but after a few difficult loveless years Elise and I had to break it up with a divorce paper and a lawyer. I never remarried after that. It was for the best I suppose; I always loved my work more... I hope that didn't sound callus of me. Damn, I'm pretty sure it did.

Let me clarify on that: I'm a Neuroscientist by trade, been poking around brains for near on two decades now and I loved my job! Now, before you get the impression that I'm some sort of creepy Frankenstein, who just goes around harvesting people's brains like some sort of collector zombie, stabbing them with a rusty knife for shits and giggles I'll have you know that I did all the stabby stabby with electrodes for the sake of improving all of Humanity! And Science! Seriously, if it wasn't for people like me who wondered what would happen if I poked someone's living brain with a metal stick while it was still stuck to a person modern medicine would still be back in the dark ages!

Would you want your cancerous tumor treated with leaches and an exorcism? I think not!

I didn't limit my fetish to simple cranial pursuits though, oh no, I did a bit of it all! Robotics, Particle Physics, Astronomy, heck, I even had a minor degree in Geology under my belt. To say that I loved all things science was a bit of an understatement; I seduced it, French-kissed it, and made hard shameful love it!

Some people would call me weird or a total nerd like they did back in High School, but I didn't care, there was just so much out there that we didn't understand; and I wanted to know it all! What can I say, I'm a curious bastard.

Anyways, so as you can probably tell once you add that little job description/almost criminal lust for scientific answers, and that tidbit of info on mind-blowing science (You see what I did there? Because Brains, and stuff... Yes…? No? O-oh, okay then, I guess that was a pretty bad pun… I'll just continue on with the story then,) together you get why I was sitting on a bench at an underground station half a world away from home, green in the face and desperately trying not to think about the flight I had just suffered through.

Great, you got that all down? Because I'm not going to repeat this butt-load of exposition. I'm serious, I won't.

* ~ * ~ *

So there I was, resting on that bench next to the station's platform with my luggage sitting next to me, regretting even thinking of eating that trash the airline's call 'food'. Even if the broadest definition of edible had been used to describe that horrid chunk of rubbery turkey and side of something green that I had absolutely no clue what it had been, you could have hardly called that a meal. At the present moment my stomach was busy contemplating whether or not it was poisoned with a shard of uranium, or empty enough to call out for something else to fill the void. It also didn't help that my gut was still recovering from my fear induced nausea from my flight.

Damn it, what I wouldn't give for a jug of Pepto-Bismol right about now!

As I sat there trying to get a hold of my bowls several trains had already come and gone. I could have already left the platform and have been half way to my hotel by now, but I played it safe and waited until my gut had silenced itself. I didn't feel like adding another mess for the janitors to clean up off the floor. Those poor souls, I remember working as a “Sanitation Engineer” for one of my first part time jobs in High School, it was still by far one of the worst jobs I had ever had.

"Spike, just look at this place! It's simply amazing!" I heard a girly voice yell out in the station all of a sudden.

Normally I didn't pay the noisy tourists any attention, but having nothing better to do I welcomed the new distraction from the civil war in my stomach. As I looked up I noticed that there was now a young lady standing front of me. She didn't look too old, perhaps in her last year in high school or even freshmen year of College or University. Her hair was dyed a rather vibrant shade of violet with a streak or two of magenta thrown into the mix. She wore a purple skirt, shirt, green wool vest, and something that I had honestly thought shriveled up and died in a dark corner a quarter of a century ago: purple leg warmers.

From her colour scheme I could tell that she really, and I mean REALLY, loved purple; enough so that she'd attempted to become its avatar and spread the good word of purple to everyone on Earth, telling the masses that their savior the God of Purple had marked their spot in the soft afterlife of Purple Heaven.

God I hated that colour.

Seriously, the only people who wore it were ether in love with themselves to the point that their narcissistic ego had declared that they should wear the colour that Royalty and Emperors normally wore since they considered themselves as such. Or that they couldn't decide whether they like red or blue more, so they just went for the middle ground. To be fair, this was my totally biased opinion... Though the several hundred twats and frat boys I saw almost daily wearing that colour on my way to work it didn't help Purple's plead of innocence.

Now back to reality. The girl had begun swinging her head back and forth as if she had been trying out for a spot as the leading role in some exorcist horror flick. Her long hair swung around madly as she attempted to look in every single direction at once. I had to duck a few times to prevent the strands from slapping me in the face.

"Oh my gosh!" The girl gushed as she peered down at the tracks, "This world's Humans have such advanced methods of construction and transportation; not even Canterlot has this level of technology! The machine power needed to even run a train such as this underground is simply amazing!"

What's amazing to me is how totally off your rocker you are. I mean come on, it's just a subway! How could you possible call this anything other than ordinary? Also, what's the deal with you talking about Humanity in a third person perspective?

It was then that I noticed that nestled inside her tote bag -purple yet again- was a small dog. To my horror I saw that even that poor little creature couldn't escape the dreaded grasp of purple's evil. She had dyed her own dog freaking PURPLE! Who does that?! WHO?!

That's when I had decided that I couldn't just sit back and let this bimbo nut job be. She had crossed the line with the puppy. I liked dogs too much to allow her to abuse it any further.

Now, as anyone who knew me would testify, I had a very short fuse. At this point the powder keg had been primed, and I was ready to unleash hellfire on this poor excuse for a Human being!

"Miss, could I have a word with you?" I said evenly as I stood up from the bench, my rogue belly all but forgotten as I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. The girl, noticing for the first time that there was someone behind her, whipped around to face the man that was addressing her. For a brief moment her eyes widened as her pupils shrank into pin pricks. Yeah, that's right, I'm talking to you vile purple fiend!

For a second her mouth dropped to the floor and flopped around as if she was attempting to say something. When she didn't say anything after half a minute of acting like a trout I decided to take the initiative. "May I ask you something?"

She closed her jaw and began nodding slowly, not really sure what it was that that I had wanted from her; she was obviously stunned for whatever reason, maybe she was one of those overly shy types. I hadn't gotten this kind of reaction since my days as a University professor back in Chicago a few years ago, it was the same look that students had given me when I'd snuck up behind them in class and had asked them as question about something that they had been too busy texting to have known about. Damn was that feeling ever satisfying!

"Why did you dye your dog's fur like that?" I asked as I pointed at her bag where the poor thing was now attempting to hide himself in. I coolly smiled as I tilted my head to the side, my eyes boring down into the shorter girl.

For an instant the girl was taken aback, yet it wasn't from fear so much as from puzzlement.

"Excuse me?" She asked, her sing-songy voice replaced by incredulous bewilderment.

I rolled my eyes at her, as if she could feign ignorance about changing another creature's coat to something so unnatural and cruel. "I asked why you'd force your preferred colour of the rainbow on a helpless dog for your sick and twisted idea of fashion." Yeah, maybe I was overstepping myself here, but the look of fear on the pup only reinforced my steel.

A look of irritation mixed in with some confusion appeared on the long haired purple girl as she crumpled her brow into a frown, probably wondering why an old man with steel grey hair and an equally grey suit was harassing her like this.

"...Um, Sir? I have no clue as to what you're even talking about; Spike's always been this colour." She started to back away, a hand now on her tote as if she was trying to protect her victim.

"Don't be daft, dog's don't have purple fur!" I snapped, I was probably still irritated from the flight and horrid in-flight food, maybe I should have calmed down a notch before something bad happens... Whoops, too late, something just happened...

By this point the girl had a look of pure fear in her eyes. I couldn't blame her; when I got angry about something even I scared myself shitless sometimes. This next part was why I should have just kept my cool, bad things usually happen when you lose your cool.

With a squeak of fright the girl backed up from me and my now red face of fury even further than before, and wouldn't you know? There was an edge to a train platform. Before my eyes could register what had just happened I heard a scream, a thud, and a groan of pain, three things you do not want to hear at a train station.

Oh shit son! I just forced a girl onto the tracks!

As fast as I could I ran over to the edge and peered over the side to find the purple dressed girl curled up between the rails. Thank god that these tracks weren't electrified; otherwise she'd have been a charred to a crisp right about now.

"Get out of there!" I shouted, "A train'll come any second!"

The girl looked up at me with fear written all over her face, "W-weren't you just yelling at me a second ago?"

"Aye, but that's not important right this second, if you don't get out of there you'll get crushed!" I hollered as I bent down on a knee and reached out with one of my arms for her.

By now the other transit users had ventured over to see what the commotion was all about, a few old ladies gasped and held their hands over their mouths in shock as they realized what was happening. An alarm went off somewhere as the station was filled with the deafening sound of a claxon. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a pin prick of light enter the tunnel.

Oh crap.

I snapped my other arm out and beckoned for the young lady to reach up for them, "Get out NOW!

"I-I can't, I think I twisted my leg!" She said as she attempted to reach up for my arms, she barely even reached my fingers. A horn from down in the tunnel drew her attention away from me and to her right; she instantly was paralyzed with fear at what she saw. Her whole body shook and trembled as she stared at the oncoming light, like a deer caught in the headlights of an eighteen wheeler. Her eyes began to tear up as she quietly sobbed.

Damn it all to hell! All I wanted was to teach her not to abuse a dog like that, not murder her!

Thinking fast I realized that she'd never be able to get out in time to escape the oncoming train, she seemed to have lost touch with reality and had been hypnotized by the sights and sounds of her imminent death. She wasn't getting out of there by herself, and in that brief moment I knew what I had to do. I didn't like it one bit.

Like a lightning bolt I dived into the tracks beside her cowering form. Normally I'd never do anything like this, I wasn’t a hero kinda guy, but since I had been responsible for this disaster I knew that I had to fix it. My old body wouldn't be able to get out in time, but I could save the girl.

I bent down behind the girl and hoisted her up from under her arms. I bent my knees and with all my might I rudely chucked the girl over the edge of the platform. With a startled yelp her body landed well and clear of the tracks. Once she realized what had happened she spun around in a flash to stare with rapt horror at what I had just done.

With a bit of added satisfaction I noticed that her bag still held the purple dyed dog. It looked at me with the same terrified eyes that its master was staring at me with. I heard a woman's scream followed by a rough horn, I guessed from how close it sounded that it was nearly on top of me. I didn't have the agility or strength left in my body to make it clear at this point.

I felt a weird calm wash over me, as if I knew that everything was alright, even though it probably wasn’t. I had lived a good, long life, and sure I regretted a lot of things but somehow those things didn't matter anymore. It was the end. I looked to my right and I saw that the train was hurtling towards me; I could even see the terrified expression on the train driver's face through his small window.

One thought went through my brain at that very last second.

Well fuck.

* ~ * ~ *

Everything happened in such a short period of time that it took Twilight several moments to process what had just happened. One moment, she was standing on the train station under the Human city, admiring the engineering marvel, and then the next she found that she was sitting on the floor surrounded by a crowd of anxious and spooked Humans.

It all slowly came back to her; she had been on another excursion through one of the gateways to other worlds, researching more about what was on the other side of the many mirrors that Canterlot housed in storage. She had wanted to finish Star Swirl the Bearded’s research on each of the worlds that he’d came across in the making of the spell necessary to bridge separate universes.

When Twilight and her faithful assistant Spike had come across this particular portal she had been surprised to find herself in a subterranean network of tunnels, filled with Humans of all things, the same creatures she had found on her first venture across to alternate realities. This world seemed much less colourful, yet at the same time much more highly advanced than even the Canterlot High School.

It had been a shock to see that Humans were in more than one universe, but that only drove the bookish Alicorn to discover why this parallel was so.

After she had entered the station proper she had been met with the sight of something shooting into more of the tunnels. She had only seen a glimpse of it before it disappeared down its dark hole, but she could hardly believe it: she had just seen a train that ran underground!

As she gaped slack-jawed at the empty space that the Human train had occupied only moments ago another train car zipped into the platform and began unloading its passengers. A few of the Humans gave her a look that told Twilight that they thought that she was being weird, but she didn’t care all that much, she was just in silent awe at the machine that stood in front of her. The sleek white and black exterior giving off a slight reflection, the windows with the illuminated interior giving off a slight glow.

“Woah! This place is so cool!” Twilight heard Spike say from inside a Human’s version of a saddle bag on her shoulder. Apparently still a dog in this world as well. "Take a look at this!"

He was staring wide eyed at a poster on one of the walls, both he and Twilight yelped as it suddenly morphed into a completely different picture with miniature figures walking across it. Twilight nodded in agreement with her companion's opinion and wiped out a scroll and quill, taking note of the advertisement which had told her about some to do with reducing some sort of “Emissions” by walking to work.

For the next hour or so Twilight whizzed around from one corner of the station to the next, studying the facilities and the numerous transit users, there must have been thousands of Humans passing through the station while Twilight had been there. Ponyville only had a few hundred residents and seeing the flow of alien bodies exit and enter the trains Twilight realized just how large the community these Humans must have.

After nearly half the scrolls she had taken with her had been filled with all the knowledge she had gained from her stay in the station Twilight decided that it was finally time: She was going to board one of those trains when it came to the station.

Sure, it was reckless of her, but she doubted that she’d get too lost. From what she could tell she could just hop a returning tram and be back by the portal before dinner.

Then she had met him, or rather, he had met Twilight.

She had been standing at the part of the platform that the train docked at when she had been confronted by an elderly Human stallion in a dull grey suit. He had been mad at her for some reason that she didn’t understand, yelling about how she had changed Spike’s colour as if it was a crime of some sort. It might have been for all she had known, but there was little she could do to disprove that. Perhaps this land wasn’t so colourful as Equestria, and the animals never had any colour? Regardless, Twilight didn’t really know what to do with the stallion that had come furiously out of nowhere, and so she opted to back away… In the wrong direction…

As soon as her shoe had left the concrete flooring a sense of vertigo grabbed hold of the Equestrian, sending Twilight tumbling onto the dangerous tracks. In her short fall Twilight managed to let out a shriek before she crashed into the ground below.

A sharp, searing pain began burning up Twilights leg, causing the temporary Human to whimper.

“Twilight, we need to get off the tracks!” Spike said as he started to panic from inside the bag, thankfully not crushed underneath Twilight when she fell.

“…I-I know Spike…” Twilight grunted as she began to stand, only to fall back down again onto the grimy floor between the rails, as soon as she began moving her leg the pain only became that much more unbearable.

“Get out of there!” It was that Human stallion once again. He was leaning over the tracks and reaching down to Twilight with one of his arms, offering to rescue her. “A train’ll come any second!” He yelled, but this time more in panic and worry than anger.

Twilight gulped, still shaken up by the way that the Human had acted towards her, "W-weren't you just y-yelling at me a second ago?" Twilight stuttered, how could things have gotten so out of hoof like this?

"Aye, but that's not important right this second, if you don't get out of there you'll get crushed!" The stallion barked, a small crowd had formed behind him, jostling to see what had happened and turning away in horror once they saw what had happened to Twilight... or what might happen to her if she stayed on the tracts.

An alarm went off somewhere and the noise reached the point where if Twilight still had her Pony ears she'd have them pressed hard against her head.

The elderly Human had noticed something in the corner of his vision and twisted his head to get a better look at it. His face paled in an instant as the blood rushed away from his face, taking away his beetroot complexion. He snapped his attention back to Twilight, and shot out another arm for her to grab onto. "Get out of there NOW!"

The panic in his voice only made Twilight do more of the same, "I-I can't, I think I twisted my leg!"

With both of her arms Twilight desperately reached out to the man, her hopes were dashed to pieces when she realized that she couldn't reach him. Right then a honk of a train's emergency horn blared; it was then that Twilight realized that there was no hope left.

She slumped back down onto her back legs when all the life left her body. She turned and watched as the heavy machine rocketed towards where she sat on the tracks. That was it, she was going to die. After all she had gone through, all the times that she had risked her life to rescue her land she was going to die here in this alien world, and the worst part was that it wasn't at the hands of some villain like Chrysalis or Sombra, but because of an unfortunate accident.

Why did things have to go so wrong?

For a brief moment she wondered what her friends were doing back in Equestria; Applejack tending to her crop, Rarity planning her next fashion revolution, and Rainbow Dash working hard to become a Wonderbolt. Celestia would be heart broken when she found out that her student had passed on like this. A tear slowly fell down her cheek as she realized that she'd never see her friends and family again.

After this point Twilight didn't know exactly what had happened. One moment she was about to get crushed by the oncoming train, then the next she found herself being tossed onto the air. Her body slammed into the concrete, the course flooring ripping the skin on her elbows, the pain was well enough to bring her to her senses.

What?! H-how? Twilight's mind raced for an answer before her eyes found it for her.

There on the tracks stood the old man. He was looking at her with a small sad smile, his suit covered in a light coat of dust and his tie was crooked. Then he was gone. Just gone. One moment he was there, and then the next there was only a speeding train. There were quite a few shrill screams as the crowd saw what had happened to the man.

Twilight shivered there on the floor. Spike had hopped out of the bag and was trying to say something... Or maybe that was the crowd that was trying to talk to her, Twilight couldn't tell. She couldn't see the faces of the Humans, they all had blank faces. But that Human had a face on him, the memory of his almost apologetic smile still there in her memory.

Twilight felt like she was about to throw up.

A single thought filled Twilight's mind; I need to get home.

Slowly she stood up and dusted herself off, now numb to the voices and actions of the crowd. Her injured leg throbbed, and as she put some pressure on it she wanted to let out an ear splitting scream. She didn't though; instead she picked Spike up and ran out of the station. She wanted to get away from the train, she wanted to escape the eyes of the crowd, she wanted to get to the mirror and get back home.

Twilight dashed past a surprised woman and ran into the tunnel's Mare's Room, leaving the slightly miffed lady to shout out how careless she had been. Twilight noticed with some relief that there wasn't anypony inside the room. The mirror stretched out before her, it ran from one end to the other above the sinks.

Without a moment's hesitation Twilight leaped into the reflective glass and found herself back in her world. She was back in her old body once more too. There were several Royal guards standing watch over the Mirror and as soon as Twilight had crashed through on her belly they sprang to her side. At this point Twilight didn't care anymore; she was home, and safe.

The first thing the bruised purple Alicorn did before the guards could even ask what had happened was cry.

* ~ * ~ *

You thought that was the end of my side of the story, didn't you? Well sorry to say that's not exactly the case. Despite being slammed into by a several ton train car with enough force to paint the walls red with most of my blood I survived that meeting of face-to-train. By some miracle I was alive!

That's a good thing... Right? Wrong.

It would have been a mercy if I had actually died back there on the tracks, do you honestly think a Human being could return to their everyday life after being in a fustercluck like that? I think not.

After the paramedics scraped what remained of me off the tracks and onto a stretcher I was shipped off to a hospital where I had my squishy bits shoved back into me. I don't remember all that much from all this except two things: The colour red, and that my soul had been opened up to an entire universe of pain that mortal men were never meant to know of.

All this had happened a month ago.

At the present moment I was laying under the white and bluish sheets of a hospital bed. From what I could gather from the doctors talking to my family the collision had pulverized every bone in my body, snapped my spine, ruptured several important fleshy organs which ranged from my lungs to my kidneys, and to top it off most of my limbs were ether a crumpled heap of mince meat or completely gone. Great.

The ambient soft pings and blips of all the machines holding me afloat were practically the only sounds I ever knew for my stay in that small bleak room. Every now and then my brother and sister would pop in and say hi. It was a real shame that I couldn't say the same. Apparently after hearing of my accident they had rushed over to the UK from Chicago just in time to fill out the insurance forms; see, this is why you get travel insurance kiddos.

Bill was silent for the most part, staring at me from where he sat in the corner of the room, quietly holding his head in hands. He never spoke much other than to talk to the doctors or my little sister in a futile attempt to comfort her.

Jenny on the other hand usually was bawling her eyes out at my side, saying things like she should have been there and all that. And that she was somehow to blame for this; she never was, and I desperately wanted to tell her that things were going to be okay.

It was relatively easy for Bill to make it over, since he was an industrial plant owner, and he could excuse himself for his visit; Jenny however had a family of four to deal with back home and I was both touched and concerned that she had left them to see me like this.

We all rarely saw eye to eye, choosing the path of a man of science never really sat well with a family that had spent several generations in the Chicago factories; yet I was glad to have them there with me all the same.

Now up to this point my mind could handle everything, including accepting the accident that I had made and atoned for, but here's the kicker that really makes my mind spin: I was in a coma. So by all logic I shouldn't be thinking like this, right? I mean, in real life when you go into a coma your brain doesn't have any activity, you don't even dream. In fact, judging by the EEG at my side I could tell that not even a spark was left inside my wrinkled lobes.

I was a vegetable.

So, how do you explain rational thought and the ability to sense your surroundings when your brain has less life in it than that of a Sea Cucumber? Simple, you don't. Not with any sanity at least.

The best explanation I could come up with was that I was Astral Projecting... By Odin's mighty beard, I was having an out of body experience!

Sure, I had entertained the thought about such a thing being possible a long time ago, like, when I was nine! But I couldn't describe this as anything less than that. I was standing in the suit that I had 'died' in right beside the chair that Bill was moping around in, watching Jenny soak the sheets in a flood of tears with a transparent second body.

I had found myself in this state a week after I had been admitted into the care of the Charring Cross Hospital. At first I had done what any ration and sane person would have done in that situation: I panicked!

It wasn't until I had ran screaming through my twentieth orderly that I stopped and paused to think, only to come to a conclusion that I wasn't entirely of this world anymore.

I soon began applying Occam's Razor as my ethereal brain came up with explanations to my current predicament. I eliminated the theory that this was all just a dream right off the bat. None of my dreams were ever this detailed, as most of the time they were as if Van Gough had tried to paint a Picasso imitation, only to have a stroke halfway through (The kind that deprives your brain of blood, not the kind with the brush).

My second theory was that I was drugged out of my mind from all the pain killers. Though I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't be stuck here in this drab hospital of I was high on morphine; I'd probably be riding a gigantic armored wolf while dressed as a Viking fighting an army of robot zombie pirates. But since I didn't see any dinosaurs shooting lasers I guess that rules out that theory. Plus everything still looked as normal as ever, so that's another strike against tripping balls, not that I ever had any experience with that to begin with anyways as you can probably tell.

The third theory I had of being dead was thrown aside when I had found out to my surprise -and mortification- that my body was still alive, just barely at least. It had been an odd sight, seeing yourself being rushed off into an operating room like you were in some sort of TV hospital drama.

That had only left me with one more theory; that all that hippy hocus-pocus nonsense of out of body experiences actually held some weight after all. That train must have knocked more than my bones out of my body. It was certainly the only theory that seemed to fit at the time.

With my new grasp on my situation I proceeded to do what any mature, and responsible, adult would do when presented with being turned invisible and immune to the mortal realm: I peeked up the nurses skirts!

After the fun and perverseness of voyeurism had passed, (and finding out that every one of the nurses here didn't even have a shred of good taste in undergarments), I decided to look for where the doctors had carted my body off to after they were done with the fifth operation that day.

What I found in my room wasn't pretty.

"Come on Jen, it's getting late... We should head back to the hotel," Billy said as he rose from his chair, the purple bags under each of his eyes told me that he sorely need some rest.

Jenny wiped away as much of her tears as she could with her sleeves and glumly nodded back. I silently watched them leave, my heart breaking at the sight of how much pain I was causing each of them.

So, that's the story so far. I've taken to talking to my sub-consciousness like this, since I can't really talk to anyone else here. I'm not even sure if displaced souls have one, but I might as well exercise my mind while I still have it right? Who knows, maybe this little internal dialog might just help reboot my real brain and start a healing process... I'm really just throwing hopes at the wall and hoping that it'll stick, but it's worth a shot I suppose.

* ~ * ~ *

Later that night, as I was busy watching the city lights of London through my window, something rather unexpected happened in my room.

The lights were out and only a night shift of nurses and staff roamed the halls. It was well past midnight, and the entire hospital had been cloaked in deep shadows. No one really made a sound in the darkness, well, except for maybe the life support systems that made Darth Vader sound as quiet as a ninja by comparison.

Since apparitions didn't sleep I had to quite the boring time; it was a shame that I couldn't touch anything, because if that were the case I would have made good use of the television stuck in the corner. For a brief moment I wondered what the BBC aired at two in the morning before tucking that thought away, no sense getting my hopes up on anything interesting that was beyond my current reach.

I had been busying myself with counting the cars that passed by on the road below when I noticed a light flash behind me, normally that would have been the patrolling security guard with his flash light making his rounds, but this time the light had been more bluish than I had remembered, that, and it was constantly shining instead of simply passing by.

With my curiosity perked with the chance at something new I turned around from the window to search for the light.

Had some angel of death stopped by to finally release me from mine and my family's torment?

Nope, guess again! It was that girl from the station, the one that I nearly brutally murdered!... Or at least that's what I first thought when I saw her disgustingly purple hair (Yeah, I still hated that colour, even more so now that I'd practically died for fighting it.) Instead of a young bookish girl though, I found a horse...

Well I'm disappointed; I really had this mental image of the great reaper of souls being a tall skeleton, with a razor sharp scythe as tall as or taller than him, and wearing a black flowing cloak that flowed like the mighty tentacles of Cthulhu.

What? I'm a sucker for the classics. The purple unicorn was a rather large let down.

Oh well, I guess it's time to get sent to the deepest depths of hell regardless of my preference in soul harvesters. I held no illusions of a spot up beyond any pearly golden gates, not after all the bat-shit insane things I did in my half century of life.

I'll never forget that amazing night in Rio; there was so much tequila and unholy screaming that long and humid night. Ah, those were good times, good times... Though, I'm pretty sure that the cartel thug never got over the mental and emotional trauma, even if his scars would be healed by now.

Don't look at me like that; he'd tried to rape my baby sister! Nobody, and I damn well mean NOBODY harms my family and gets away with it! I had caught him in the act of trying to force himself onto a then nineteen year old Jenny after he had ran off with her from the bar. By the next morning I had finished playing doctor and left him dangling upside down from a lamp post, bound and gagged with the words "Scum" burned into his chest with an acetylene torch. I had enough of a heart to sow his chest cavity back up again at the very least; that and I had called for an ambulance for the bastard.

As I was saying, I now had a purple pony thing in my room, probably here to collect my soul or something. I mean, how else could something that colourful make it past security if it wasn't some kind of supernatural being. I wondered briefly if it had taken on the same likeness of that girl as some sort of cruel cosmic joke.

Then to my continued surprise, another larger flash appeared and this time the light lasted as it formed a white circular disk about two meters in diameter. This time a taller version of the horse popped into the room. At least this time this one looked more intimidating, aside from it being taller its colour pallet was much darker; consisting mainly of navy and royal blue. It's mane and tail even had a freaking constellation of stars in them! Plus I had to admit that the black chest piece and crown looked badass.

The second taller horse trotted up next the first, staring at me (My body, not my soul) like I was the most tragic thing in existence. "This creature has suffered greatly, his fate was most unfortunate." One of her blue ears twitched backwards, I could only guess that this was some kind of body language, but I suppose it meant something along the lines of pity.

Normally, I didn't appreciate being treated like some kind of abused kitten, and I would have shouted out that I was actually not in that much pain if I hadn't just realized that they hadn't seen me quite yet. Being see-through kinda does that to a person. So, until I got a grasp on what the heck was actually going down I decided to lay low back in the darker corner of the room.

The shorter purple one seemed rather glum at seeing me and my casts, her eyes were drawn close to the floor and her ears were flat against her head, as if she thought she was guilty of something. She trotted up closer to my bed and eventually sat right next to me, her head just reached above the edge of the bedding with a front row seat to take in the ghastly array of bandages and raw flesh. Even I had to admit that I looked like a cancerous growth on Satan's left ass cheek, so I couldn't blame her when the miniature horse flinched as she looked at me.

"I... I'm so, so sorry that you to ended up like this..." She said in a low whisper, "I-I shouldn't have f-fallen off that platform..."

And then the ball dropped, not only did it smash through the floor, but it tunneled down through the Earth's crust and into the molten Mantle. I even felt my jaw falling closely behind it.

WHAT?! So this purple unicorn had been that girl all along!? I couldn't believe it; this was just way too unrealistic and totally insane. Sure, I could handle most things, up to and including that Death was actually a horse; at least that I could tie in with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse literally being horses... But this colourful fantasy creature being the whole reason for what had happened was too much.

For a moment I wondered if this all was just a dream and what would Sigmund Freud have to say about any of this; probably that I had repressed childhood memories, a lust for bestiality, mother issues, and that the horns on both the horses heads were a phallic symbol... Yeah, that didn't help at all; in fact I think it only made my mental state even worse. Thanks Freud, you're a real dick.

In the moments that I stared wide eyed and slack jawed the second pony thing walked up and sat next to her companion. She lifted a silver-shod hoof and rested on the purple one's shoulders, though it probably wasn't used to the act and it came off as a little awkward, "Tis not your fault dear Twilight, this... Human had instigated those events and had been largely responsible for its own undoing."

Yeah, I had to agree with blue butt here, this had been pretty much my fault since I was the one that had gotten up in arms about that dog being dyed a shade of purple. Now that I think about it that had been rather immature and stupid of me...

"I-I Know...it's just that I still can't get it out of my head that somehow I had caused this... That I did this to him..." Twilight, as it appeared to be her name, hunched over further and I could swear that she was crying.

"Damn it all to hell! It's not your freaking fault, you shape-shifting purple pony unicorn thing!" I yelled out at the two ponies. Whoops, there you go again Marcus, always letting your temper get the better of you.

The two horses whipped their heads behind them with a look of utter shock. When they saw that in the corner stood the very human that they had been addressing on the bed I could swear I heard their eyes dilate to pin pricks as if they were some kind of camera lens. They both snapped their head back in unison to the body beside them and then back to me.

I waved and nervously kicked my shoe, "Hi."

Their reaction would have been rather comical, had it not been for the ear drum rupturing shrieks that filled the hospital. In a flash of fur, and feathers apparently, both Twilight and the other pony thing ran past me and straight into the bright portal from whence they came.

"Hey, wait up! I still need to apologize for causing you severe emotional trauma!" I hollered back at them as I ran into the white portal after them.

* ~ * ~ *

Author's Note

Yay! Another story has been created! Now I only have to deal with updating yet one more of my creations! *Silently crawls into dingy hole and sobs.* But in all seriousness, I really like this new style, I think first person works better for me than third. Maybe I'll actually become a better writer if I work on this. Also, if your wondering why Zeke isn't mentioned anywhere in here, well... Let's just say that we meet him in the next chapter.

Editor's Note:
Hello, I am Nihatclodra, Editor and Proof-Reader of this Fanfic. Sorry if you see any spelling/grammatical errors left over, Yuri wanted to Publish before I was finished... so feel free to point them out as you see fit, and yell at Yuri for them.

- Sadistically Satire, Nihatclodra

Author's Second Note:
I heard that.

Editor's Second Note:
Your point?

Author's Third Note:
That this means war.

Meet the Ponies

Things got really, really, weird that night. I mean, is it strange that two colourful miniature horses rip apart the fabric of the universe, trot into your hospital room, and drop drama bombs left and right on your catatonic, dying body? Do you think that's weird? I thought it was weird all right.

And oh boy, I swear if that purple pony revealed any more plot twists I'd swear that I was in some sort of third rate movie or something... Which would explain quite a lot actually... The revelations went along the lines of "Oh hey, you remember me? You might not recognize me at the moment, since I'm a purple winged unicorn and all, but I was that girl that you nearly killed about a month ago by scaring me onto the tracks!" and "Somehow, I think that I'm responsible for you and your sudden outburst of rage at me, and now I think I murdered you!"

That last one made me feel like a complete scum bag; I mean seeing me get smashed like a piñata by that subway train must have really done a number on her because she had actually broken down into tears beside my bed.

Have you ever seen a fluffy purple unicorn cry? No? Good, because watching that pony was like watching an adorable puppy after it got kicked by its owner, only for it to plead for forgiveness like it had been the one at fault. It was awful.

Seeing those misguided tears being shed by something that looked like one of my niece's plushies really twisted my gut the wrong way. The guilt I felt from her guilt begun bouncing around in my stomach like a red hot coal, and it really hurt. It was my fault that everything had happened the way it did, dammit!

It was then that I had to open my big mouth and let my temper get the better of me, yet again; though this time for the sake of good and not to condemn. I yelled out at them exactly what my opinion was on their misunderstanding on who exactly won the blame game; which was clearly me.

Unfortunately, apologizing while looking like Casper the Vengeful ghost doesn't really work out so well.

Up until this point I hadn't found anyone alive in this hospital that could see me, for a whole month I had been mute and non-existent to the world around me; but these two ponies heard my shout clear as crystal, given the shocked looks they had given me as they had whipped their heads around to face me.

The ponies acted like any intelligent, rational being in that kind of situation: they panicked. I couldn't blame them, but it still did hurt my feelings a bit when I saw them evacuate in a blur of fur and feathers screaming bloody murder.

Now, let me be clear; as a man of science I may be able to tell you the inner-workings of a brain cell's dendrite, and even how to program your very own personal robot, but I'd be damned if I told you that I was a clever man.

Yep, I ran straight after them into the portal, belting out apologies. I guess it was some kind of primordial instinct to chase after those two, like the one a dog has when it sees a rabbit run it feels compelled to run after it.

So I ran after the screams of two terror-stricken alien creatures into a glowing white portal, not really thinking about what I was doing other than feeling a bit dejected that I'd scared them away.

My experience of crossing through a rift of pure energy was actually rather disappointing; there was no soul-rending pain, not even a sensation of resistance as I went though; instead it felt like I had just pushed through a fine silk curtain and into another room. Which, gathering from my new surroundings, was pretty much what happened.

I stopped my yelling instantly and instead I came to a full stop as my jaw dropped at what I saw.

Well, I never expected anything quite like this from an alien civilization...

I had to rub my eyes several times before I felt like I could trust them once again. I mean, sure my eyesight wasn't getting any better, and lord knows what other kind of side effects there were to being removed from your body; but I could swear that everything was now cell shaded...

I blinked my eyes a few more times and took another look at the world I had just leaped into: Yep, everything now looks like a Saturday morning cartoon. That settles it, if I'm not dead or dying, then I'm certainly going insane...

I mentally shrugged at these ideas, if I really was dead and in some sort of afterlife then there wasn't much I could do about it, the same went for losing my sanity.

Oh well, since I'm already down the rabbit hole I might as well take a look around and find the tea party.

I stood inside a large hall of some sort; actually, scratch that, this place was HUGE! You could easily fit a soccer-field in here! When I looked up I saw that it wasn't just the width that this room had, it was also height; the ceiling soared above in a checkerboard pattern in a hue similar to the room's pinkish tones.

It wasn't just the volume of space that amazed me, but also the furnishings too. My god, whoever built this place sure loved their stained glass; the walls were practically all glass as the colourful murals made up more than half of the side's of the room, though they weren't sending out a rainbow of colours since it was still night outside on this side of the portal.

Long tapestries hung from the ceiling, some of them blue and some gold. Beneath my feet ran a length of fuchsia carpet that ran from two heavy golden doors ahead of me to an elevated dais to my rear with some sort of high-backed throne resting on it.

This whole place looked like a set from a Disney film, or some sort of gigantic doll house from the pink aisle of Toy's-R-Us.

That's when I noticed the mirror directly behind me; it was housed inside a giant brass horse shoe at about two meters in height. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the reflective surface had been the portal, especially since when I had entered this place it'd been at my back.

Needless to say that whatever this thing really was it had certainly grabbed a hold of my attention. I mean, it looked so simple, yet for better or worse this polished looking glass had just teleported me from a ward in Charring Cross Hospital to god-knows-where. If this place was indeed not Kansas anymore, then I could only begin to imagine the power necessary to even make such a feat as instant-teleportation possible.

My examination of a device that defied common sense would have to wait though, since it seemed like I still had the company of those two talking horses to deal with, I had nearly forgotten about them.

"P-Princess Luna, w-w-was that what I-I thought it was?" I heard Twilight speak through jittering teeth. As I peered around the hall I noticed that the two equines sitting in a heap close to the massive double doors. They must have been fifty meters away, yet I could hear them as if they were right next to me; this chamber must have some sort of acoustic effect to it.

By the looks of it, after they had left my room in a flurry of terror they hadn't bothered to stop their charge once they had reached the other side; the center carpet was bunched and crumpled where those two must have tripped and tumbled to where they were now.

The tall and darker one calmed herself down from her panic mode and back to her regal self. She nodded gravely, "Thou art correct Twilight Sparkle; what we hath just witnessed was indeed a phantom."

From the way Luna had said that being a 'phantom' or whatever was like I was some sort of demonic monster; I guess that would partially explain their reaction when they had come face to muzzle with me back in that dark room. I couldn't blame them; I'd probably react the same way if a ghost popped up behind me and started yelling at me too.

"B-but those things are only formed around immense anger or pain!" Twilight wailed, her rounded violet hooves clamping down like a vice on her head. "What have I done!?"

Again with the self inflicted guilt? I'm not sure what exactly a 'Phantom' really is, but I'm certain that this was somehow my fault yet again, and just like last time this Twilight creature had taken it upon herself to be responsible for this mess. My first impression of her being some sort of air head with a fetish for purple was soon being replaced by a respect at her earnestness; I still didn't like the fact that she was accusing herself though.

Now, unlike the last two times I had been in the same space as this girl, pony thing, I managed to keep my damn mouth shut. (See? I learn.) And since I could tell that they hadn't noticed me tag along behind them I did the most sensible thing I could think of: I ran the heck out of there! I ran as if I had just heard that there was a nuclear warhead set to blow somewhere in the cavernous hall.

* ~ * ~ *

Twilight didn't know what to think anymore. Her mind had fried after everything that kept on happening. If Princess Luna hadn't been there by her side Twilight would probably have broken down into hysterical laughter and crying. She'd created a phantom with that elderly Human.

Phantoms were rare manifestations of the souls of tortured ponies, their spirit being ripped from their dying bodies or corpses by immense pain and suffering. Normally this only happened to ponies and other creatures in Equestria, but it seemed that it wasn't just limited to Twilight's homeland.

"Twilight? Are you quite alright?" Twilight was snapped from her brittle state of mind as she found Princess Luna staring at her with a worried frown.

The newest Royal sighed and gave a small hollow chuckle, "...No, Princess, I'm not alright. I just- I just did something unspeakably horrible to that Human!" Twilight almost shouted.

For a moment the Princess of the Night didn't know what to do, the art of consolation was never one of her strong suits. She momentarily flattened her ears as she thought of a way to comfort her first friend in a thousand years. Then she remembered something, something that the Phantom had yelled out at them back in the Human realm.

A small smile appeared on her lips as she knelt down to where Twilight was curled up on the floor. "Twilight, dost thou not recall what the apparition was trying to tell thou? I believe that it was trying to clarify thine innocence, not to bring you harm."

Twilight's ears perked up at this, she lifted her head off her hooves to look straight into Luna's. The sight of Twilight's bloodshot watery eyes made Luna momentarily flinch back, but ether Twilight didn't notice or didn't care. "Princess, are you trying to say that the Phantom was... Actually trying to be nice? Phantoms are almost feral, and in most cases when confronted with the object of their death they become violent."

"Indeed, yet this one was neither of those. Angry perhaps, but not truly hostile," A silver slipper reached up and rubbed the back of Luna's neck as she looked to the side, slightly red in the face, "We must admit that the phantom had taken us... by surprise, inducing our rout, but now that I recall it I don't believe it meant us any harm."

As Twilight mulled over Luna's words in her head she found that she had to agree with the other Alicorn. Slowly, Twilight pulled herself off the waxed marble floor and dusted herself off with her wings, "I suppose you're right Luna, but that doesn't change that the Human is now a Phantom and I had a part in it."

At Twilight's reasoning, Luna had to concede that fact. She nodded and started trotting towards the mirror. "We shall discuss this further dear Twilight, for now we have an obligation of sealing this portal."

* ~ * ~ *

I was lost. My plan had been so simple it was elegant; instead of letting my high blood pressure get the better of me like the last two times, I'd remove myself from the equation and do a little recon. It was a perfect plan... except for one glaringly large problem; I had no idea where the heck I was or where I was going!

Oh well, it's not like I was driven to get back to the hospital and my half dead meat sack after all. Plus, if I distanced myself from my body perhaps it'd shut itself down; I didn't like the thought of dying, but being stuck in limbo like this certainly made me question if whether or not passing on was such a bad thing. If my other half ceased to be back on Earth it'd also mean that my family could also begin to move on...

Well, there's no use going back now anyways, not with those two magical horses still in the same room as the portal at any rate.

With all that in mind I focused my attention elsewhere to distract myself from my depressing reality, namely figuring out where the fuck I was and what kinds of creatures these aliens were. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but since I'm practically dead I don't think that applies anymore, which means that I could indulge my curiosity to the fullest! So, instead of retreating like a coward I put on my imaginary monocle and pith helmet for the adventure I was going to have! You can't go on a quest without those, especially the monocle.

As I strode down the thousandth hall that night, identical to almost every single other hall that I walked down, I began to doubt that this was anything but another horrible idea though. I had just past that large painting of a sleeping dragon only minutes ago for Christ sake! I mean, come on! Just how many halls does a castle even need anyways!? This place was like a cursed labyrinth and I was so lost.

Speaking of this place, I'd actually made some progress on finding out where on Earth I was, or to be correct, not on it; I was in some sort of alien Buckingham palace... Don't worry; I'll slap myself silly later for that terrible pun...

Anyways; combining the altered cell shaded look on everything, along with the fact that there were talking pastel miniature horses walking around gave me the impression that I wasn't even in the same reality as my tiny blue home world!

Aside from being lost, and probably trapped in an alien environment, my curiosity still stuck with me thankfully. The more I got lost in the never ending corridors, the more I wanted to see what was behind each and every wooden or metal door! This place was like a virtual treasure trove of neat little odds and ends; there was enough here to keep me ~~distracted~~ preoccupied for a very long time.

The first room had been in was the throne room, probably some unicorn overlord. All these other wings housed the other essentials that you'd find in a medieval European stronghold fit for a king; you know, treasure troves, opulent rooms fit for Royalty to rest their head in, those kinds of things. There were also the guard's barracks, filled with snoring bodies of the day watch, as well as the standard hanger sized kitchens that seemed to work non-stop for next day's meal; both of these areas I avoided like the plague, since it appeared that these sentient quadrupeds seemed to be able to sense my bodiless form and I really didn't want that to happen.

My first contact with this new alien race hadn't gone so well once they had seen me, and the memory of their screams still lingered painfully in my ears.

Now, remember how I had just mentioned that painting of a dragon not a minute ago? The one that seemed to have its own singularity around that drew me back to it somehow? Well, as I found out when I rested my back against it trying to regain my bearings the painting turned out to be one of those hidden doors. No castle is complete without one or two hidden passageways!.

Unfortunately this hidden passageway didn't have anything solid behind the painting, this meant that as soon as I had put pressure on the canvas with my aching ecoplasmic back it had caved in and threw me ass over tea kettle into the concealed space. With a painful thud I landed in a darkened narrow passageway.

Well now, what do we have here? I asked no one in particular as I righted myself and patted the dust off me.

Aside from the pain, my non-existent heart began to race a hundred miles an hour in excitement; I had stumbled upon something definitely worth my time!

But, there are rules to things like this; in this case two crossed my mind: One rule of hidey-holes was that such a ruse exists to hide something, most likely treasure. The second rule was that whoever had made this secret passageway had a reason for it; maybe it was an escape tunnel, or a hidden panic room, ether of which could tell me a lot about what kind of mess I was diving headlong into.

There was also something strange about that narrow passageway; it was odd, but it wasn't only my curiosity that I felt pulling me into the darkness, it was something hard to describe... I guess the closest I could relate to this feeling I had was like as if there was some sort of harpy was luring me towards it with a sweet song.

A chill went down my back and I shuddered at the disturbing thought; curious as I may be I wasn't exactly willing to find out what it felt like to be eaten my some hideous monstrosity.

Meh, I think this place has already reached it's daily limit on the weirdness scale, there couldn't possibly be anything stranger than a what I've already seen so far down there.

Getting back to my feet I began inching my way deeper into the hidden passageway. Fifteen or so paces into the unlit narrow walkway and I smashed my face into a solid wooden wall. Damn that smarts! So, not only could I be seen in this world and interact with objects, but I could feel pain too. Interesting.

After I recovered from the collision I began feeling out what was blocking my path, there was no way this short passage was all there was; it certainly didn't warrant being concealed behind a painting.

Aha! A latch, now we're going places!

With a tug on the small indentation I felt something click from inside the door. The soft metallic sound of clockwork springs met my ears as things began to shift and unlock themselves. Then with the sound of a bolt being drawn back I felt all the resistance from the hard wooden surface disappear, allowing me to push the barrier aside.

As the door opened up I could feel a wave of warm and humid air wash over me and into the hidden corridor. The smell of sulfur and hay reached my nostrils as I walked into a darkened chamber. Much like the passageway behind me there wasn't any light inside.

Darn, I was hoping that there'd be some light at the end of the tunnel, but I guessed wrong. Maybe there was a light switch or something around here? I had noticed that there were electric lighting features scattered around the palace, so it wouldn't be too far of a stretch for some to be set up in here. I just needed to find a wall switch or something...

I then noticed something else about the room; there was a low humming noise all around me, as if the room was filled with a swarm of insects; hopefully it wasn't, but with how my luck had been going since last month I couldn't be too cautious.

I pushed past the door and eased myself into the gloom of the room. The universe must have had some kind of grudge against me, or perhaps I had been cruel to puppies in a previous life, because the second I stepped through that door I tripped over some sort of cable that ran along the floor. I yelped as I lost my balance and started flailing forwards; a snarkier part of my mind shouted out "Timber!" as I began to tumble

Halfway through the fall my body slammed into something solid. I must have knocked my head pretty hard because not soon after I fell unconscious.

* ~ * ~ *

Tender Care was having a pleasant dream. In it she was enjoying a nice romantic date with a dashingly handsome stallion at one of the local cafes. They were both laughing at some adorably silly thing one of them had said, pausing their giggles only to take a sip from their steaming cups. Celestia's sun was shining, the sky was clear, and everything was perfect. Then everything came crashing down when one of the Royal Guards ripped her from her bunk.

With a squeak of surprise the mare landed face first into the hard tiled surface of her bedroom floor.

"Mother buck!" Tender yelled out.

Groggily the mare focused her attention and anger at whoever had knocker her over the side of her mattress. From where her face had been planted into the floor she could see a silhouette of somepony on the other side of her bunk. "Is that any way to wake a pony up?!" Quickly righting herself back up again the young adult unicorn began rubbing her jaw.

"Sorry Ma'am, but this is an urgent matter," A gruff male voice said from the blurry gloom, "Pardon me saying so, but you were all but dead to the world; not even a few jabs to your sides did anything... Sorry about that by the way."

Sure enough, a dull throb in the mare's sides confirmed the blows had indeed landed on her cream-coloured ribs. A bruise had even started to form a hoof's distance ahead of Tender Care's cutiemark, which was a red cross with a white ribbon wrapped around the top portion.

After Tender Care was done whipping away the sleep from her eyes she noticed exactly who it was that she was talking to; it was one of the Night Sentinels, Princess Luna's personal guard. His leathery bat-like wings were folded over his lavender suit of armour. Oh geez, not these night-crawlers.

Tender was ashamed to admit it, but the bat ponies unnerved her; she wasn't really afraid of them per say, she just didn't like those sharp predator eyes they had; they made her feel like whenever one looked at her they were sizing her up and judging if she was snack material or not. She knew this wasn't the case, but whoever said fear was rational?

"That reminds me," Tender growled slowly as she picked herself up and locked the Night Sentinel with a harsh glare. She strode up next to the guard and shot out a pink hoof into his midsection. True to his training, the bat ponies didn't collapse onto the bedroom floor as the hoof impacted his right kidney, but the wince and grunt of pain was enough to satisfy the vindictive mare. Tender blew out a strand of honey-yellow mane from her eyes and threw the stallion a smug grin, "Now we're even."

"I-I said I was sorry Ma'am," the guard grumbled as he nodded towards the open door and motioned for Tender to follow.

Leveling her olive eyes with the stallion in front of her Tender did as the guard directed. But, before she left though she noticed the time on her wall clock "So, what brings one of the Moon Goddess's finest to my room at three in the bloody morning?"

Without looking behind him the guard answered her question in a hushed tone, "Why else would I wake the 'Caretaker' unless something had happened to the 'Crib'?" That got Tender's full undivided attention. Mentioning ether of the code words out the open only meant one thing: trouble.

Tender Care gulped down a lump in her throat, "Then let's hurry, we can't waste any more time!" All jokes were tossed aside as the two ponies rushed down the halls and corridors of Canterlot Castle.

Then Tender saw it; as she rounded a corner she saw the cover for the hatchery had an enormous hole ripped into it, almost like a Minotaur had charged right through it. Several other Night Guards stood at attention on either side of ruined hidden entrance, there were even a few of Celestia's own guard standing at positions to cordon off the area from prying eyes.

Oh no.

"I see you've just made it in time to join the party Miss Care," a flat voice called out from directly behind Tender, causing her to jump into the air with a screech.

The grey stallion stared on with emotionless eyes as he watched the pony he nearly scared to death flounder about as she tried to slow her racing heart. Turning to his brother the Night Guard broke into a smile smile, "I'm glad you could fetch her on such short notice Meadowlark."

"Oh, it wasn't too much of a hassle, I just had to pay a pound of flesh to get her rump out of bed," the guard that had escorted Tender from her room snickered, gesturing to a hoof shaped bruise on his side. "Though, next time we need to wake up somepony who hits as hard as a Minotaur you'll be the one to do it Sunshine."

After a good dose of hyperventilation, Tender Care's heart began to slow down its rapid fire tempo; she wasn't sure her heart could take much more of all this! "What the blueberry buck is wrong with everypony?!" Tender practically wailed.

Snapping her glaring eyes over her shoulder she noticed that yet another bat pony had arrived on the scene, though this one sported an eye patch over his left eye and seemed to be constantly scowling, even when he smiled at Meadowlark. Tender remembered now where she had heard those names before; they were the two Captains of the Lunar Guard.

The cold stare he was giving Tender was soon shifted away from her to the broken entrance, “Come on then, we need to secure the interior. Hopefully we can catch the trespasser red-hooved.”

Everypony nodded in agreement and followed Sunshine's orders.

The three gingerly stepped through the tear in the oil canvas and entered the passageway leading to the Royal Dragon Hatchery. Tender Care used her horn to light up the pitch-black passage with a spell while the two captains each picked up a spear that was passed to them from the guards keeping watch outside. They all silently nodded to each other and Sunshine and Meadowlark took point with their weapons facing into the gloom.

It was no secret that castle housed one of the only dragon hatcheries in the world, but the immense value of just one egg forced the Princesses to keep the location and existence as hidden as possible. Multiple attempts at finding the hatchery had been made by spies and thieves alike, but none had actually managed to find the location or breach it for that matter... Until tonight that is.

Aside from the secrecy, Canterlot housed the largest out of any known hatcheries, let alone one of the only ones. The reason for this was due to the annual Dragon Migration that crossed over the nation; due to the nature of the creatures, they laid their eggs deep in the forests or inside the caves of mountains, leaving them to fend for themselves so only the strongest would survive their adolescence.

Since the Sister’s had found out about this rite of passage over a two millennium ago they had decided to intervene on the ritual. At first it had caused some incidents with the Dragon hierarchy since the sister's actions tampered with their sacred traditions; but in the end things sort of smoothed themselves over. The dragons started countering the Equestian's efforts at "rescuing" their eggs by being more crafty with their hiding spots, which slowed down the Princesses' efforts. In the end though, a portion of those clutches was found every year and sent directly to Canterlot for safe keeping.

Ever since its foundation, the Royal Hatchery had only managed to successfully hatch only a dozen or so dragons, but that didn't stop the several thousand year old order from stopping their work. At the very least, it prevented the eggs from falling into the wrong hooves; If anypony with less-than-noble goals had their hooves on one of the eggs it could spell disaster for the land. A single dragon could easily level an entire village, and having one on a villain's leash was something that no one wanted.

So, suffice to say this break in was a complete disaster, and Tender Care, the current caretaker and specialist for the dormant eggs, was having a hard time keeping herself from panicking, especially when she noticed that the door to the room containing the incubators was ajar.

“Hold up,” Sunshine ordered when they reached the wooden door, “Do you hear anything?”

“Nope, should I?” Meadowlark asked, trying to peak past the door.

Tender gasped as she picked up on what the eye patch toting guard was implying, “The heaters aren't running!”

With that revelation all three ponies decided that getting the drop on any intruder was less important than getting the equipment up and running again. Each second without heat meant that the odds of an egg hatching plummeted.

With a grunt Meadowlark shoved aside the door as Sunshine leaped into the room, scanning the dark with his one good eye for any signs of movement. When it seemed that nothing was about to retaliate, Tender rushed into the room behind the two stallions and quickly found the cause for the power failure; one of the main cables that ran along the floor had been ripped from its socket in the wall.

Mentally cursing why their new electrical heating system had to have its source of power laying out in the open like this the mare reattached the cable into its socket with a quick burst of her magic. These kinds of problems didn't happen with the good old magical heaters; she was sure that she’d have a few choice words for the unicorn twins that had invented this supposedly safer and more efficient set of machines.

When the electricity began to flow back into the heaters the steady hum of the coils returned to the hatchery.

"I can't find any trace of the criminal scum," Meadowlark clicked his tongue in disappointment as he made his way over to his brother.

Sunshine's scowl deepened even further at the oddity of this case. As he looked around the medium sized room with the help of a lantern that was brought in with some of the other guards he couldn't find neither hide nor hair of the would-be saboteur. Aside from the cable everything seemed to be in order, none of the colourful reptilian eggs seemed to be damaged or missing, and judging by the still intact cabinets and drawers no documents had been touched either.

"Kevin," Sunshine addressed one of his lieutenants that had just entered the scene, the bat pony stallion swiveled his head at the mention of his name, his ears perked; he saluted and trotted over.

"Yes sir? Oh, and by the way, that's isn't really my-" Kevin was cut of with a raise hoof from his commanding officer.

"Inform their majesties of what has just occurred; tell them that an intruder had found the location and proceeded to breach the Hatchery. Nothing seems to be tampered with, so I'm assuming it might just be a maid that happened upon this secret by happenstance and fled."

"Will do!" Kevin saluted with gusto and ran out of the room to deliver the message to the Princess, entirely forgetting about his irritation at having his name mixed up once again.

Meadowlark trotted up beside his co-commander and brother, shaking his head in bemusement, "That new guy always seems way too into his job. I gotta feel bad for the poor schmuck though, when the Princess hears about this she'll likely use the RCV on him."

"I'll give him two weeks tops before he starts thinking about handing in his resignation letter," It was almost unperceivable to the standard onlooker but Sunshine's mouth began to curl up into a ghost of a smile.

"Fine then, I'll bet you he'll last at least three," Meadowlark's smug smile sealed the deal for Sunshine.

"You're on," Sunshine gave his brother a toothy grin, "The loser buys the winner a box of moon pies."

"Deal."

* ~ * ~ *

It had been a few days since the events in the Human hospital. Luna had gone back several times to that ward since then, only to find no trace of the Human's Phantom; there wasn't even any magical residue that would have been left by the soul. It seemed the Human stallion had all but passed on; even his body had been put to rest and had been removed.

Twilight's mental state on the other hoof hadn't improved all that much, if anything else the scholarly Alicorn seemed to become more and more withdrawn from the world around her; the only times Luna had seen Twilight leave her room and study was to make an appearance at the Royal dining hall for her meals. The last time Luna had seen Twilight she had noticed that dark shadows had made camp under each Amethyst eye, and from the dreams Luna had observed the Human's death had delivered a heavy blow to Twilight's psyche.

It had been over a thousand years since the Night Princess had a friend such as Twilight, and she doubted that she'd have any such luck with making any more in the near future. Most of the ponies seemed to still fear her, given her Coup d'état when she had become Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago, and even those that had gone past their fear had replaced their terror with a distanced respect not unlike the kind that Celestia seemed to receive from everypony else.

Twilight Sparkle hadn't been like those other ponies; instead she had been the first pony other than Luna's elder sister to have ever reached their hoof in true friendship, as equals even.

Now it was Luna's turn to do the same in return, and yet she couldn't. The art of mending an injured soul was a tricky matter, and doubly so in Twilight's case; thanks to her sister's work the land rarely had such traumatic events, which actually hindered things since there was little professional experience with Twilight's level of mental trauma. The only thing Luna knew to do was to be there for her friend, yet that had little effect since it seemed that Twilight had started shutting out everything and everyone around her. The feeling of her uselessness in the matter, at being unable to help, always ebbed at the back of Luna's mind.

"So, that's the reason for waking me up at four in the morning, Lulu? You want my advice on how to help my student?" Celestia said from around a steaming cup of camelmile tea. The millennium old mare frowned slightly; irritated that her sleep had been disturbed. The two now sat on large velvet cushions in the Sun Goddess's bedroom, looking out at the pleasant nightscape of Canterlot.

Luna nodded back in confirmation, she felt a bit guilty as she looked at Celestia's bathrobes, there was even a laced pink sleep mask resting just under Celestia's horn. "Indeed, we wish to- How does the peasantry say it?- 'Lend a Helping Hoof'?"

Despite her sister's antics and awkwardness, Celestia couldn't help but feel proud of her little sister and how much she had grown; give or take a few years and Celestia was certain that Luna would become a model ruler. Now if only you could stop waking me up at ungodly hours...

Celestia lowered her cup and saucer and released a heavy sigh, "Lulu, we've been over this before, we've done as much as we can for Twilight, she needs to carry the rest of the weight if she wants to recover. Twilight can't dwell in the fact of what has happened in the past for long, eventually she'll overcome this and move forwards. After all, once she recalls things in a much more rational way she'll come to understand that she's quite innocent and simply an unfortunate bystander in these matters."

"Still..."

"Don't fret, Twilight it a lot stronger than you give her credit for. She'll be alright in the end," Celestia said as she took another sip from her amber tea.

"None the less Tia, it worries me so to see her in such a mess," Luna picked up her own cup in her magical grasp and took a tentative sip, it was bitter and not like any tea she'd tasted before. It wasn't bad, but it was rather strong. "Sister, what is this drink? ...I've never tasted any herbal tea such as this before."

The corners of Celestia's face turned up in a grin, "That would be coffee Lulu; it's made from a bean found in Zebrica. It helped me stay awake for the thousand years that you had been away and I had to take over the night in your stead."

Luna inwardly cringed at the friendly euphemism for her banishment, but she didn't let it show, instead she took another sip from her 'Coffee'. Whatever it was, it was quickly becoming her favorite beverage. "I like this," Luna said as she downed the cup and nearly crushed it as she placed it back on the table. Luna felt like she'd been hit with an energization spell and was now completely wide awake, "Could I have another?"

Celestia chuckled as she refilled the porcelain cup, "That you may."

There was a squawk as a fiery red bird swooped into the room through the open balcony. Celestia raised a hoof into the air and with an elegant sweep of her feathers Philomena landed on the white outstretched foreleg. The phoenix gently cooed as Celestia began affectionately rubbing the downy feathers on the creature's neck.

A frown slowly appeared on Luna's brow as she watched her sister interact affectionately with her pet; an acidic and empty feeling began to bubble inside the mare as she watched the two in front of her enjoy each others company. Celestia was quick to notice this and she stopped petting Philomena to tilt her head in Luna's direction, "What's the matter?"

Luna let out a huff as she averted her eyes from the master and servant, "It's... Nothing, really."

The Goddess of the Sun and ruler over one of the largest nations on Equis raised an eyebrow at her sister's sudden abrasiveness. "It's obviously not 'nothing'."

"F-fine, I'll tell you." There was no point in hiding it, since Celestia was bound to find out sooner or later, "It's just that, I don't have my own minion since Tiberius left..."

Tiberius had been a Opossum that Luna had found on one of her nightly jaunts through the woods. The small grey mammal had been friendly enough and had even followed Luna around as they went on a few adventures, yet it had been discovered later on that Tiberius had to eventually return to the Everfree Forest when his wife had tracked him down and had 'Persuaded' the possum to return to being a father to their kids with the end of a rolling pin. There had been a tearful farewell between Luna and her short lived companion, but Luna knew that was how things had to be.

"You have Philomena, and Twilight has Spike. Even Cadence has Captain Shining Armor, yet I have none to call my own servant."

I don't think that Shining would be happy at being referred to like that, but I'm sure Cadence would say otherwise. Celestia did her very best to hide her snickers at the mental image of the Captain of the Royal Guard and Prince running around doing Cadence's bidding while the ruler of the Crystal Empire used a whip on her husband like a slave-driver.

Celestia put a fuzzy slipper covered hoof to her chin as she meditated on Luna's problem. With a smile she came to a satisfactory conclusion, "Why not a dragon?"

"Pardon?" Luna asked, her second cup of coffee already drained.

"Why not take a dragon as a familiar?" Celestia said with more enthusiasm, "Twilight seems happy enough with Spike, and they can easily last for at least a thousand years or so. I also heard that none of the eggs in the hatchery were damaged during the break in a few days ago. I'm sure you could find one out of the clutch that would be suitable"

"Perhaps you have a point there dear sister, yet I'm still at unease with that mysterious intrusion..."

"I also think if you have one as a friend then maybe you won't feel jealous or left out." And maybe you won't keep waking me up like this.

"Jealous?!" Luna cried, offended at the thought, "We assure you that we hath no such emotions!"

Celestia calmly took another sip of her tea and refilled Luna's coffee. Sure you aren't... With her blue star filled magical cloud Luna shakily picked the cup back up again and proceeded to down it in one shot. And oh my, what have I done? I think I might have started an addiction...

Placing her cup down with a little more force than she had meant Luna sprang to her hooves. "I thank you dear sister for accommodating me this fine night, and for assisting Twilight and I with these troubles. I shall also consider your proposal for a minion."

"Your welcome Lulu... But please, next time let's have tea when I'm not in my night gown." Luna flashed a sheepish grin as she retreated from Celestia's bedroom.

Predawn light had already started to fill up the sky, and Celestia could only sigh as she knew that there wasn't any hope of getting any more sleep under the covers before it was her turn at ruling the heavens.

* ~ * ~ *

Day 37, and I'm still stuck. For over five weeks I've been crammed into some god damn sort of container, almost like a sardine in fact. I could feel the walls pressing down on me as the seconds fly by, every day it seems as though I'm getting more and larger while my prison is getting smaller. My predicament reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland, when Alice took that pill that made her grow to the point where she had filled the entire room; except there was no medicine to make me shrink.

Let me back up and explain some things for a bit; after I had tripped over a cord and knocked my head on some sort of wall knocking myself out (I'm not going to call it fainting, fainting is for sissies), I had woken up to find myself in a space just large enough to cram me into, maybe about the size of an oil drum. Those horses must have found me sprawled out on the floor and had thrown me in some sort of Pony equivalent of a Ghostbuster's Storage Facility.

After calmly and collectively attempting all solutions to my imprisonment, by which I mean I started panicking as I started smashing my head against the walls until I had a crushing headache, I had decided to conserve my energy.

And so I waited, sure it wasn't a very proactive approach, but waiting for someone to come along and interrogate me was pretty much my only option. I sat there with my head between my knees in utter darkness for a full month. Shit got boring fast, it was even worse than the hospital, there I could at least move around and watch things but in this tiny prison cell I had nothing. At least it's warm in here, so things could be a lot worse I suppose.

You may be wondering how I can tell time; I mean it's not like I have a clock in here or anything. The simple answer was that I could hear what was happening outside the walls of my cage; I couldn't hear anything being said, since it sounded like one of the adults from Charlie Brown was talking to me through a wall, but I could hear that they were there. Every day a pony would pop their head into the same room as me and estimating the time between the shifts the guard would make I could tell time.

God, if you exist and you can hear me, let me tell you something from the bottom of my heart: You're a jerk! I was hit by a train, had my soul extracted, met magical space horses, and got trapped in this mess; this has godly intervention written all over it, I can't come up with a logical explanation other than you did this to me for shits and giggles. That, or you didn't help, which makes you also kinda a jerk... Unless you don't exist or can't help me, leaving me ranting to myself, so all this is pointless...

Oh that's just great, now I need to add a theological crisis to the list.

The walls began to shudder and it felt like this hellish prison was getting even smaller. I'm not sure how much more my body could take, any more and I'm sure my soul would be crushed like a tin can in a garbage compressor. That was not a pleasant mental image.

I could hear muffled voices outside now, their normal soft whispering replaced with frantic shouting. Not a good sign.

The pressure was too much by now, and I had to get out or else I'd die in this darkness. "Hey, let me out guys! I can't take much more of this!" I began banging on the walls with my fists, "Seriously, if you want to torture me that's fine, just don't kill me like this!"

A crack of light broke through the wall in front of me, with the minuscule beam of light came a bit of hope that I could make it out; I turned this hope into a fuel for my arms as I renewed my assault against the crack. After each blow the light grew in size, "Just... a bit... more!"

With one final fist strike the cell I was trapped in began to crack like a spider web, bits of plaster raining down on me as more holes opened up.

Then I was free.

The florescent light from the overhead light fixtures seared my eyes as I head butted my way through the weakened container; it never felt so good to be blinded. "Freedom!!!" I bellowed to the heavens at my triumph.

"My, it seems like this one is a spirited little guy! What do you think Princess Luna?" A cheery female voice said, I didn't recognize who the speaker was, and I couldn't see anything other than the painfully bright white all around me.

"Indeed, this little one seems to have much 'spirit' in him. He shall do nicely as our familiar," Now this voice I did remember, it was the one that belonged to the tall blue unicorn thing that came along with Twibright Sporkle to my world...

... Hold up, what's with all this talk of me being anyone's pet?! That's not going to happen there lady! My eyes had started to adjust to the world around me and I was able to pick the horse's blurry form out from the other blurry forms, I locked my glare onto her smudged features as I creased my brow and bared my teeth.

"I didn't hold my breath in that stinking prison for a whole month just to be treated like a slave!" I yelled at her, "If you so much as think about doing anything funny I'll walk over there and wreck your face with my bare hands!"

Luna giggled at what I had said, as if I had said something adorably cute, "What dost thou think he's saying? We can't fathom what this hatchling drake is trying to say." As my sight slowly returned I took note that Luna had grown three times since I last saw her, which was strange.

"What?! Now listen here you supersized kid's toy, I'm going to count to ten and you're going to apologize for imprisoning me! Otherwise I'll send you back to the hellish toy department from once you came as shredded plastic!"

The other voice spoke up, and as it walked into my view I found that it turned out to belong to a peachy pink unicorn. "Don't pay it much attention your Highness, it's simply testing it's vocal cords, much like when a foal babbles." The mare giggled as I threw her a seething death glare, she reached out with a hoof and began patting me on the head like I was some kind of dog.

Well, you asked for it. On reflex I snapped out with my jaw and bit into the extended appendage. The pony shrieked and recoiled to the other side of the room, whimpering something about how she couldn't believe that I'd bitten her like that. Really, what did she expect?

As I was adjusting more and more to the world around me I began to notice some key things about myself, namely that I was now denim blue. I also had claws instead of hands. What. The. Heck!? My heart began thumping a mile a minute from fear as I started finding other mutations on my body.

...

... I am now a gecko...

...

I couldn't process anymore. I just couldn't. I was now a blue gecko in a land full of talking ponies. This was insane. My brain must have shattered along with my sanity and I just sat there in what looked like an egg shell, looking down at myself as all my thoughts came to a screeching halt.

"Do not fret my little pony; thou needn't be afraid of Ezekiel. Soon, he shall be groomed to become a worthy assistant for us."

My mind could only come up with two words in a brilliant retort to what the gigantic pony before me, it had been used as a witty counter for hundreds of generations and it's simplicity was only matched by it's effectiveness at communicating raw emotion. "Fuck. You."

Author's Note

Aha! Another chapter down! We also now have a proper cast of characters to boot! Though, just because I don't want to be that guy, I'm not going to have any of the cameos as major characters, instead I'll have them pop in here and there every once in awhile as tribute to them and their creator's sheer awesomeness. Tender Care however is OC, so she'll be part of the crew and a main character. I did not create nor own the rights to these following characters: Sunshine and Meadowlark are from the classic Moonstuck by Egophiliac, and Kevin is from the ever amazing Luna Afterdark by Ed (I think... Maybe it's Henry... I'm not quite sure what to call him..)
If any of them find that they don't want to have their character's in my story that's cool, I'll just edit them out.
Anywho, things are going to get interesting from here on out... I hope... Also, as you can tell from that last little bit from Luna you now know where the title comes from.

Editor's Notes:
So, I just found out from Yuri that the fanon name for Equestria's planet is "Equis"... Which is latin for "Indeed". I had taken it unto myself to change that to "Equus" (the latin word for Equine Species) seeing as the name would make far more sense.

After a long argument with Yuri over the fact that he doesn't care for my logical naming sense simply because he doesn't like there being 2 u's side-by-side; I begrudgingly changed it back to Equis, only due to the fact that he would change it to Equis first chance he got anyway.

Well Yuuri, I'll make sure to subtly poke and prod at you for your naming sense... just one more daily ritual added to the list for me to drive you mad; slowly, and surely.

Lethargically Latin, Nihatclodra

Author's Second Note:
Yeah, as you can see my editor has just a liiittlle OCD problem, especially when it comes to names and other such and such things. Also, between you and me, he got his translations a tad wrong: 'Equus' does indeed mean horse in Latin, but at the same time 'Equis' is just the plural form of 'Equus'. This just means that Equis is the better name for an entire world filled with ponies. Welp, he'll figure it out sooner later.

Oh, and since I know that you're going to read this Nihat, I'll just say it; you gotta try harder if you want to poke me into insanity.

Editor's Second Note:
Okay, I was apparently misinformed; after checking with a quick google-search... well fuck. Still holding the grudge though.

And you were perfectly normal a few years ago, what happened? Come to think of it, how long have we been friends again? :trollestia:

Happy Birthday

The early morning sun shone throughout Canterlot Castle, pushing away the darkness of the night to make way for the day ahead. As beams of sunlight pierced the stain glass murals, a rainbow of colours started dancing along the polished marble floors of the palace. Along with the sounds of songbirds chirping in their morning chorus there was a distant sound of a wind chime being rustled by a soft breeze. Things were peaceful, and Luna felt rather relaxed as she trotted down the halls.

The Night Court had recently just finished, and Luna was rather glad that her sister had retaken her place on the throne; the inane bickering of the nobles often gave the Lunar Goddess a migraine. Some of it was important of course, like taxes and tariffs on imported or exported goods, but for each valid use of her court Luna found that there were ten more cases of a noble trying to bend the nation for his own personal greed or political gain.

Some things never change, ever after a thousand years, Luna quietly sighed to herself.

Soon enough Luna had reached her destination; the dining hall. It was high time for breakfast, or rather dinner in Luna’s case. After tending to the night and ruling the Night Court her stomach had started to plead for something to eat and the Princess was eager to silence it's grumbles.

Pushing aside the solid wooden doors Luna found herself where her hunger led her. The Royal dining hall wasn’t particularly large, since it was mainly reserved for the resident Royals and any visiting diplomat, yet it still managed to feel as though it could easily house several thousand ponies. Perhaps this was because only one or two bodies ever sat at the long table in the center of the room.

It appeared that Luna wasn’t alone in the hall; on the opposite side of the empty table sat Twilight Sparkle and her adopted brother and assistant Spike. Both of them looked over at the Lunar Princess as they halted their conversation, they smiled and waved Luna over. It was too early to say, but Luna felt that Twilight was making a recovery if the broad smile on her face was any indicator.

“Salutations Princess Twilight Sparkle, and Spike the Dragon,” Luna greeted them with a smile of her own as she approached them from the other side of the room.

The purple Alicorn’s smile faded just a bit as her ears swiveled back just a bit, “Luna, you know how I don’t like being called like that. Just call me Twilight instead.”

Luna’s own smile became tinged with uncertainty as she took a seat next to the mare, “O-oh, well then ‘Twilight’, how doth this particular morning fair you?”

“Sorry to be nag here Princess,” Spike said as he leaned past Twilight to give Luna a concerned frown, “But did you forget our lessons on how to not talk so formally?”

“Pardon my- I mean, sorry about that. We- I mean, I’m not quite used to speaking like how these modern ponies do. I fear that my habit of formality will cause my subjects to dislike me,” at this admission Luna grew downcast as she stared at the white table cloth before her. Twilight slammed a hoof into Spike’s ribs and shot him a death glare. Spike frowned as he rubbed his side, realizing what he’d done.

“Oh, don’t worry about it too much Luna. You’ve made some amazing progress in adapting to life in Equestria! And besides, I don’t think anyone would dislike you for something as silly as the way you speak.” Twilight grinned as she patted Luna on the shoulder.

Twilight’s words seemed to have worked as Luna felt a bit better at her social awkwardness, her lips turned up in a small smile.

One of the stewards appeared at the table and asked for everypony’s order, Twilight asked for scrambled eggs and hay fries, Spike placed an order for a stack of jeweled pancakes, and for Luna she had only a single blueberry muffin and a full pitcher of coffee. Twilight raised an eyebrow at Luna’s choice, but decided to say nothing about it.

"Twilight, w-would you mind if I asked a favor of you?" Luna spoke from around the sill of her mug, the slight quiver in her voice and hesitance to look at Twilight directly in the eye told the Purple mare that whatever it was that Luna was about to ask had her a little more than anxious.

"Sure! Ask away!" Twilight happily grinned at her friend as she took a sip from her glass of orange juice.

"W-would you mind helping us give birth to an egg?" And then there was orange juice everywhere.

It took several minutes after her spit-take for Twilight to finally stop hacking up her lungs, the sting of the fruit juice stung her nostrils where it had somehow managed to spry out of. Spike needed only one glimpse at Twilight's misery before he fell off his chair laughing his head off, which only added even more crimson to the purple Alicorn's flustered expression. "WHAT!?"

Luna took a mental step back as she realized what she'd mistakenly implied, her own cheeks reddening at the horrid thought, "Oh no, no no no! I didn't mean it as anything like THAT dear Twilight! I simply meant to ask you if thou would like to be present later this morrow when we hatch a dragon's egg, much like how thou didst with Spike!"

After taking a napkin and blowing into it Twilight felt much better, yet she could still taste the pulp... "Oooh! Heh heh, sorry about that, it really came out of left field, and- well you can see how that would be misunderstood right?"

"A thousand pardons, I didn't mean for-" Luna stopped herself from carrying on that rather distasteful subject, "Regardless, would you care to accompany me to such an event? I haven't hatched a drake before, and thou art the only pony that we know of that hath preformed such a feat."

"Well... I was just a filly at the time, so I'm not sure if I can recall the correct spell that I used; maybe if you give me an hour or so I'm certain that I'd be more than able to find my notes for you!" Twilight smiled back; Spike was still having a hoot at his guardian's expression that he only stopped after Twilight turned on him and swatted him across the back of the head, leaving the small chubby dragon grumbling on the floor instead.

Luna grinned at her friend's helpfulness, "Thank you Twilight, we shall meet once again within the hour then," with that the mare pardoned herself from the table and started to leave, only to stop dead in her tracks as a thought occurred to her. "Oh, I nearly forgot, you probably don't know where the Hatchery is. Find Tender Care, she will most likely be found in the servant's quarters where she resides."

"Alright, thanks!" Twilight waved goodbye as another waiter carted in a second helping of Sapphire Pancakes for a small drooling dragon.

* ~ * ~ *

That morning started much like every other morning for Tender; she got up, had a shower, and ate a blueberry muffin. If it hadn't been for the 'incident' that happened well over a month ago the peachy pink unicorn could have claimed that every morning of her entire life had followed practically the same routine. It was a simple way to get up and greet the day, and Tender liked it.

However, something new happened on her way to her secretive work; Princess Twilight had came barreling around a corner, carrying what looked like an entire library's worth of books and paper in her magical grasp. When Twilight saw Tender in the middle of the hall her eyes widened in surprise, she even made a valiant effort to halt, but her momentum was too strong. With a startled scream both mares collided in a hail storm of parchment.

"Oww!" Tender moaned as she wiped a heavy text the size of her pillow off her head. "Are you alright Miss Sparkle?"

Twilight's eyes rolled around in her head for a second until she shook her head a few times to recover from the dizziness. She gave an embarrassed grin to the mare she just ran over as she started to pick up belongings. "I-I'm okay! I was just running a little tardy and I was told to meet this mare, but if I don't within the next eleven minutes and fifty three seconds then I'll be late!" Twilight all but wailed.

Tender put on a grin and helped pick up a few of the papers; internally she was more than a little annoyed at being knocked over like a bowling pin by a somepony that she was supposed to serve. Honestly, you didn't see the other Princesses charging around like their mane was on fire; in fact Twilight's antics only made her seem like any other pony and not at all inspiring like the way Luna or Celestia held themselves. Even Cadence, the easier going of the Alicorns at least had more control over herself.

The peachy unicorn kept these thoughts hidden behind her false smile as she passed the last tome over to a frantic Twilight. "Oh, and who might you be looking for Princess? Maybe I could help?" She really didn't, she had her own job to think about, but it was an unspoken rule amongst the servants, staff, and especially the guards that if any of their Royal Highnesses needed a hoof you had better drop whatever it was that you were doing, no matter how important it was, and attend to them and their need.

From around the corner casually strode an adolescent dragon, he nonchalantly scratched one of his emerald green frills with a chubby purple claw. "Yeah, we're looking for a mare named 'Bender Tear'... I think. She was supposed to help us find the Royal Hatchery according to Princess Luna." Spike stifled a large yawn as he walked up next to Twilight.

Tender let out a heavy sigh as she knew that her morning just got a bit more eventful, "That would be me your Highness. Though, I don't remember the Princess ever mentioning any of this to me..." Typical Royals, never caring about the details.

For a moment Tender thought that Twilight might just drop her levitated personal library as her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, "Oh my gosh! This is so incredibly lucky!" Twilight practically bounced as she put on a massive grin on her muzzle.

"I suppose so," Tender said in a level tone. By Celestia's mane, she could feel the beginning of headache cropping up in the front of her head.

"Well then, there's no time to lose! We need to head to the hatchery right away!" Twilgiht declared as she struck a pose, as if she had declared the start of some grand adventure fit for a Daring Do novel. Her posture slumped a bit and smile faded when she realized that she still didn't know where that was. "Umm, would you mind showing us the way then Ms. Care? Oh, and by the way I'd really like to know more about the facilities and techniques involved in hatching a Dragon's egg!"

Tender care internally groaned as she could only imagine the tidal wave of questions she would be forced to answer for the rest of the day.

* ~ * ~ *

Luna paced the humid room as her gaze drifted over each of the multicoloured spheres, each of them sat on individual nests of straw on top of a heater. The heat generated from the electric heaters made being inside the room rather uncomfortable, especially since there wasn't any windows and the vents could only do so much. Another bane of the hatchery was the constant smell of sulfur each egg produced. As another bead of sweat rolled down Luna's forehead she could only wonder how Tender Care could stand her working condition like this.

The night Princess didn't want to be in the room any more than she needed to, but she couldn't decide which of the unborn drakes she should pick as her assistant and familiar.

As the trio passed a nest with a yellow egg sporting orange spots for the fifth time, the caretaker moved in front of the two Princesses. Luna noticed a slight twitch in the pony's left eye as she regarded both Luna and Twilight with an obviously forced smile. "Might I suggest your highness that you tell me what you're looking for in your desired pet?"

Luna stopped and put a hoof to her chin as she pondered a bit, "Hmmm, We'd prefer a companion that would be loyal and courteous."

"Then why not an Ember Dragon? They're one of the most loyal and trustworthy," Tender pointed to the yellow egg that they had just past, "Though they tend to be more rowdy than the rest..."

"I'd rather not have one with a temper," Luna frowned at the thought of a hot-headed dragon rampaging around the castle.

The group came up to a white and blue speckled sphere, Twilight stopped in front of it as she studied its colour pallet. After flipping through several of her notes she found out what race of dragon it belonged to. "How about a Glacial Dragon Luna? They may be highly introverted and Equestria isn't as cold as the Northern wastes, but I'm sure it'll make a great companion," Twilight beamed at the taller mare as she offered her help. "I'm sure you two would make a great match, especially given you socia-" Twilight stopped herself as both Luna and Spike gave her a harsh stare, "I-I suppose that wouldn't work out too well..."

Suddenly Spike's eyes went wide as he had an imaginary light-bulb pop up over his head, "Oh! I just thought of something!" Spike said as she rushed over to Tender care with an anxious smile. "Excuse me for asking Ms. Care, but you don't happen to have any other eggs like mine, do you?"

The peachy pink mare shook her head and tossed the purple kid a sad smile, "Sorry, but we don't. Your egg was the only one that we've ever found."

"Oh..." Spike's enthusiasm and hope was knocked down a few notches; he still wondered about his family and origins, though not enough to go on another quest like last time he went searching.

Luna trotted up to one of the only other eggs in the room; it sat on its bed of straw and emitted a faint heat like the others. The shell was a cerulean blue with several lemon yellow stripes zig-zagging across its surface like bolts of lightning. With one of her hooves Luna reached out cautiously and touched the shell gently; what she didn't expect was the wave of electricity to shoot straight out from the egg and into her body, sending her flying backwards into a file drawer.

"Princess!" Every pony and dragon yelled as they rushed to her side. The world around Luna swam in as if reality had been turned into molasses; which actually had happened once before back when Discord had his bout of chaos. For a moment Luna's limbs felt extremely heavy as several bolts of lightning danced along her hooves and barrel. There was also the smell of singed mane floating around in the air. What happened?

"Princess Luna! Are you alright?!" Twilight was staring over Luna with a worried grimace, in the background Luna could make out the drumming of hooves on the floor as several guards entered the confined space.

With a small cough that blew out a tiny cloud of dust the Night Princess rose to her hooves, once she was standing shakily on all fours again Luna whet about easing everypony's worries. "I'm fine, that just took me by surprise is all..." She shook her head once more to clear away the dizziness, giving everypony around her an embarrassed grin. As a lock of her mane fell onto her muzzle Luna noticed that the ends were slightly seared; with a miniscule amount of magic and thought the blackened charred hairs were returned back to their starry former state.

The unexpected electrocution of the Princess didn't seem to faze Spike all that much, what with seeing Twilight go through the same experience almost daily with her experiments. A mischievous smile danced upon his lips, "Well, I guess you could say that was quite the shock!"

Tender Care simply facehooved as Twilight smacked Spike over his head with her wing giving him a disapproving scowl.

After recovering from the horrible joke, Tender moved over to inspect the living battery of an egg. "Hmm," the mare hummed with a as she squinted at the shell design, she recalled where she'd seen the same pattern. "I think I know how this happened; this is a Thunder Drake's egg." The expert and care taker nodded to herself in agreement as she looked over the egg once more.

The Lunar Princess hummed as well as she turned her gaze at the thing that had thrown her across the room. It didn't look all that dangerous, but as a spark or two danced along the shell Luna couldn't help but cringe at the memory of the pain it had inflicted only a moment ago. "Why would such a tiny egg hold that many volts?" Spike asked nopony in particular.

"I'd hazard a guess that what we just saw happen to our fair lady was a defense mechanism of some sort," Tender Care's voice was calm yet slightly cold as she powered up her horn to levitate a clipboard over to her. With her grass green magical grasp she flipped through several papers until she found what she was looking for, "I've read about this before, apparently this indicates that the embryo is now fully developed and functional."

Spike scratched the violet scales on his forehead with a claw, a confused frown plastered on his face, "Umm, if you don't mind, could you repeat that in Equestrian?"

Rolling her eyes in mild frustration, Tender turned and faced the smaller creature, "It means that this egg is almost ready to hatch."

"Splendid!" Luna shouted, stepping in between Tender and Spike as she examined the object of everypony's interest, "Then we might as well take this egg as my own."

"Uh, that may not be such a good idea Princess," the hatchery's caretaker said with some concern in her voice. The mare's dark green eyes switched from facing Luna to regarded the egg sitting on top of the incubator like it was some kind of bomb, "Aside from the shock it just gave you, Thunder Dragons are notorious for having anger issues, and they can be highly volatile. I'd recommend a more mild servant Princess."

Luna huffed at this, maybe the mare was right, but now that the Princess had set her sights on this particular egg there wasn't a whole lot that could be said to change her mind. "This drake shall do as our servant. You said that it was nearing it's time of hatching, no?"

Tender shuffled on her forehooves nervously, "Well I did, but-"

"No further 'But's my little pony, prepare this little one so that I may give it some assistance in entering into this world." Tender was about to protest further, but she stopped when she saw the look in the thousand year old goddess; it was the look that said that if she didn't get her way soon somepony may soon be out of a job and her flank being tossed into the street.

"Very well then your majesty," with a bow the mare began the preparations.

* ~ * ~ *

Twilight moved to stand next to Luna to stare along with her at the egg, out of the corner of her eye Twilight noticed that the normally stoic and unemotional Luna had a rather large grin cracked across her features and a sparkle in her emerald eyes. "So, you seem happy about this."

Luna gave a small nod but never shifted her eyes from the blue and yellow egg, "Indeed I am Twilight; I'm finally going to have a companion to call my own!" It was as if the several-millennium-old mare was a filly on Hearth's Warming Eve unwrapping a present.

At this uncommon sight Twilight couldn't help but giggle, "Have you thought of a name yet?"

The question made Luna pause for a moment in thought. She raised a silver shod hoof to rub her chin as she contemplated. Now that she thought about it she never did plan a name, and now she only had minutes before she had to give the new living creature one. It wasn't until maybe a full five minutes later that she snapped out of her thoughts and made a decision.

"I think I shall name this new life Ezekiel Von Zigmire," Luna said with pride at coming up with the name. Twilight on the other hoof didn't share the Princess's sentiments on the choice of name.

"Umm... Well that's..." Twilight looked away from her friend as she grimaced, "That's something alright. Are there any other names you can come up with? Perhaps something a bit more... Normal?"

Luna snorted at the thought of choosing something else for a name, "We think it is suitable for a name. Dost thou have a quarrel with the choice?" At the challenging tone in the other Princess's voice Twilight rapidly shook her head a few times.

"No! No, no, no. It's... Just different, that's all."

Before Luna could ask just why Twilight disagreed with the name they were interrupted by a cough from Tender Care. The mare had put on a surgeons smock and coat; she levitated a clipboard next to her, probably holding some notes regarding the targeted egg. "The preparations are all set; all that needs to be done now is the spell to be cast."

"Excellent! Now Twilight, do you have any advice for the spell?" Luna turned to her friend next to her with a soft smile. Twilight's previous anxiety and stress vanished as the familiar rush of magical science entered her brain. The look on her face was the same that you'd have found on a colt in candy store.

"Oh yes! I even have my notes with me," Turning to the purple scaled assistant standing in the back of the room Twilight plucked the folder that was sitting beside Spike on the floor. It was filled nearly to bursting with paper and Luna wasn't quite sure the twine could hold it shut any longer. The file was floated over to the three ponies in a sparkling indigo cloud.

Flipping it open Twilight sifted through the contents until she found the page she was looking for, "Aha! Found it!" Twilight cheered as she lifted an old piece of parchment from the others. The writing on it looked slightly crooked and there were more than one crease on it, but when you considered that this paper was for an advanced spell involving complicated magic, and then taking into account that this had been written by a filly...

"Sorry if it's a little messy, but I hope my old notes will be of some help," Twilight said as she hooved them over to Luna. The midnight blue mare looked them over, though they have not been the clearest they did offer some added tips that she hadn't know about before.

"Do not fret Princess Twilight, these are most useful. In fact, I think I'm ready."

All the others in the room moved to the outer rim of the enclosed room as Luna stepped up to the egg. As Luna closed her eyes she could sense the magic reserves held inside her body and in the room all around her, she could even sense the strong magical energy of the land all around Canterlot as well as her moon, but the task she was about to perform required a more delicate touch so she ignored the stronger bodies of energy.

Concentrating on the magical signature of the dragon's egg in front of her, Luna found that she now had full grasp upon the object of her desire. With a bit of focus, Luna began tapping into her own supply of magic in order to cast her spell. The magic stored inside Princess Luna's body and soul was more dark and illusive by contrast to her sisters, but thanks to Twilight and her friends there wasn't any trace of malevolence or hatred from when Luna had been corrupted by her jealousy and anger. Now it was more of a calm and relaxing energy, perfectly suited for the spell.

With the magic ready, and her focus set, Luna began charging up her horn in a cloud of navy blue with some off-white swirls mixed in. As she opened her eyes the other could see that a blinding white light had replaced the Princess's eyes, sending out rays of light into the room; the others covered their eyes or turned away as the flare grew larger and larger, eventually the whole room filled with magical energy.

This was the first time Tender had ever seen a spell of this magnitude being cast before. She trembled where she stood, too afraid to even move a muscle as she heard the air snap and crackle all around her. The smell of Ozone wafted in the room as static electricity buzzed on every hair on the young mare's body. From documents and first hoof accounts she had imagined the spell to be much tamer than this.

Then the light slowly started to fade, the eddies of light pooled in the center of the room and soon vanished into the dragon's egg, much like water going down a drain. Luna closed her eyes and when she opened them once more they returned to their normal emerald green.

Silence reigned as all traces of the spell disappeared from sight; nothing seemed to be different in the room. All the gathered ponies didn't move so much as a muscle as they all stared at the egg, most of them half expecting a monstrously large beast to have taken it's like how Twilight's spell had worked.

After a full minute of nothing Tender, Spike, and even Twilight began to think that maybe the spell had failed, "It's not your fault Princess, I'm sure you could get it right next ti-" Spike cut his consolation short as he noticed something small and rounded move.

Everypony's attention was latched to the sight of the aqua and gold reptilian egg as it began rocking from side to side. "HUZZAH! OUR TASK HATH BEEN A GRAND SUCCESS!" Luna shouted out in glee as she shot a hoof into the air in triumph, her smile grew larger and larger as cracks started to etch themselves across the shell.

The cracks soon covered most of the egg as whatever was inside pounded against its shell; a small layer of dust had even formed at the base of the egg inside its nest of straw. Twilight gasped as a piece of the shell collapsed inwards, revealing a patch of sky blue scales beneath. The creature beneath stilled and another portion of the surface covering it disintegrated.

Everypony in the room stared with rapt excitement as one final crack brought the whole top off the egg, revealing a tiny blue lizard claw. The claw then began pushing the rest of the remaining shell away from the crack, once the hole was large enough a head poked out. The soft scales on the newborn were a robin's egg blue that contrasted with a cerulean blue frill running along its spine. It's lemon yellow eyes blinked several times as it adjusted to the light.

The baby dragon chirped as it squinted out into a new world, the sound reminded Twilight of the family of robins and their chicks that Fluttershy took care of a month ago. Twilight could barely contain her 'Daws' as she watched the cute little hatchling chirp noisily to itself.

"My, it seems like this one is a spirited little guy!" Tender care genuinely smiled as she looked over the Royalty in the room, "What do you think Princess Luna?"

"Indeed, this little one seems to have much 'spirit' in him. He shall do nicely as our familiar," Luna nodded back, despite her archaic vocabulary Luna was probably the happiest pony in the room; her lips were drawn back in a massive grin as she beamed at the new life she had help bring into the world.

As the baby Thunder Drake began chirping up a storm everypony in the room couldn't resist smiling at the cute sight, except for a certain purple dragon in the room whose jaw dropped instantly as Spike's eyes bugged out in shock.

Luna giggled at the adorable sight as her new minion babbled on, "What dost thou think he's saying? We can't fathom what this hatchling drake is trying to say." As she said this the infant continued on in its unintelligible language. Spike however gapped even more at the other dragon in what appeared to be shock and horror. Twilight noticed Spike's strange behavior and cocked her head to the side as she raised an eyebrow in slight puzzlement.

"Don't pay it much attention your Highness, it's simply testing it's vocal cords, much like when a foal babbles." Tender Care said with a smile. The mare trotted over to the newly hatched dragon and started patting it on the head fondly. What happened next came as much of a shock to Twilight and the rest as it did for the blonde and peach cream mare; in a flash the infant dragon lunged forwards and snapped it's toothless jaws around Tender's outstretched forehoof.

With a high pitched scream Tender retracted her hoof back and backpedaled to the other side of the room. Princess Luna's smile faded somewhat as she saw her minion act violently; but then something the young creature did caught her attention, it paused and looked down at itself, almost like it was questioning why it had done what it had. The look of fear and confusion held in its tiny eyes tugged at Luna's heart strings, she knew how it felt to hurt somepony and then regret it afterwards.

"Do not fret my little pony; thou needn't be afraid of Ezekiel." Luna said to a whimpering Tender Care, who had taken a blow to both her hoof and her ego, "Soon, he shall be groomed to become a worthy assistant for us."

As Luna spoke the dragon she had just named looked back up at her and locked onto her eyes, it then chirped twice as if it was trying to say something.

"How dare you say that!" Spike suddenly roared, he'd overcome his shock and had immediately replaced it with anger. He snarled as he charged at his day old cousin. There was a collective gasp as everypony heard the pudgy little dragon's unexpected shout, even Luna was taken aback by the sudden turn of events.

Before the slightly larger reptile could even make it another hoof step Twilight plucked Spike off his feet and hovered him in front of her face. The sudden outburst of rage wasn't like Spike at all, normally he wouldn't even hurt a fly, but the way he had hissed at the newborn was totally out of line, "What the hay Spike?!" Twilight spoke in a stern voice that reminded her of one of her nasty old teachers back as a filly, "What in Celestia's Mane are you thinking?! How could you yell at a newborn like that?!" Although her mind was still racing Twilight felt both anger and shame at Spike's display.

Spike's eyes widened in realization at what he just did, the anger he had felt just a second ago was washed away under his guardian's stern glare. A lump of cold lead replaced the fire and indignation he had felt just a moment ago. Spike swallowed a lump in his throat before he replied. "B-But... He was insulting the P-princess! He even swore just now straight to her face!"

"That's enough!" Luna commanded as she regarded Spike with a stern frown, she too was just as disappointed in Spike as Twilight was but this wasn't the time or place to reprimand the child, "Twilight, I shall ask of thee to escort Spike away from the hatchery at once."

Twilight traded looks with Luna and Tender before she nodded in agreement, "Come on Spike, I've got a library for you to sort as punishment," Spike was about to protest before he saw the look in Twilight's eyes, she didn't use that look very often, but when she did it was undoubtedly because she was pissed at whoever was on the receiving end.

"O-Okay..." And with that Twilight silently marched her assistant and adoptive brother out of the room.

Tender Care shook her head from side to side as she watched the duo leave, "Well... That was odd..."

"Indeed," Luna agreed as she turned her attention back to the broken egg and reptilian child sitting before her, "Perhaps it's a natural reaction for the young to fight as such?"

"I've never seen anything like that before... but then again I've never seen two baby dragons in the same room before..." Tender pursed her lips as she thought of any cases that she had read about before, "Let me look through the records your majesty and I might be able to find an explanation. For now however I think we need to deal with this little guy before anything else."

"Thou art correct, we can focus on such matters on a later date; let us be off with dear Ezekiel then," The smile that Luna had before returned as she regarded her new companion, who had taken to chirping up a storm as his head swiveled to take in his surroundings once more. The mewing increased even more as Luna lit up her horn and levitated the infant dragon into the air, almost as if it was protesting what was being done to it, "Now Ezekiel, let us be off; I need to show you your new home."

Author's Note

Yes, I know this is essentially re-running the previous chapter, but I felt that this chapter was needed for context for the Pony side of things. Don't worry, I won't be doing chapters like this often or at all in the upcoming chapters, especially since Marcus's and the Pony sides of the story are going to come together from now on. Also as a little side note my collage course has taken up most of my life, so don't expect any new releases soon; though I will start my winter break on the 19th so expect at least a new chapter around then, though I think I can still manage a chapter or two in between now and then.

Editor's Note:
Umm... Yuri, the 19th is only a week and a half away, making your heads-up kind of pointless: considering getting "a chapter or two" written and published in that time would be normal, if not an improvement from your usual speed.

Staggeringly Sovereign, Nihatclodra

Author's Second Note:
I can always try.

So What Does A Princess's Bedroom Look Like?

So... after everything that has happened to me over the past two months, what do you think my reaction is at this point? Am I freaked out of my mind? Scared at the impossibility of every single event? Angry at being tossed around like some sort of cosmic chew toy? The answer is D) None of the above. Quite frankly I had given up on trying to understand anything that was happening to me. It would've been a waste of my remaining shards of sanity to try and think or care about anything.

I mean, was turned into a ghost, traveled through a portal to an alien world populated by talking colourful mythical horses, and to top it all off I was now a small blue gecko... If I went back to Earth and told anyone about this I'd be pumped full of drugs and sent off to a mad house before you could say "Raving Lunatic".

As I was encased in a strange sparkling dark blue mist I found myself being lifted from the eggshell and into the air where I floated in front of the horse that matched the colour of the haze. An Anti-Gravity field. My mind said in a dull and uninterested voice; not even another bizarre power these aliens seemed to be pulling out of their metaphorical sleeves could break me from my funk. I could barely cope with things as they were so my curiosity could wait until after my brain had rebooted and had a solid grip on reality, especially considering that I might have crashed into an alternate reality.

Luna smiled and said something, probably directed at me but I wasn't paying any attention.

My mind barely registered that the scenery had started to move out into the grand halls of the castle. With glazed over eyes I took in the sight of the colourful pony palace; once again pink reigned supreme over the colour pallet, pink walls, pink ceilings, pink furniture and so on and so forth. It was a blessing that at least the light red that dominated almost everything were in soft tones, often accented with a different colour like soft violet or spaced with some white marble columns.

The last time I had been in these halls was well over a month ago, yet nothing really seemed to change; not that I had expected an extreme interior reconstruction, but they could have at least changed the drapes or those tacky banners that hung from above.

Though nothing physical had changed to the place something else had, it was much brighter, and admittedly even more colourful. It had been well into the night when I had roamed the halls, but now it was probably early afternoon judging by the sun light that seared into my retinas as it passed through the endless series of stain glass murals. My new tiny arms couldn't really move, so I had to squint to see past the burning orb's radiation.

My mind wasn't really ready to perform any higher level thinking than what I was currently using, yet I still managed to ask myself a question that had started to nibble at the back of my brain ever since her horsy majesty decided to drag my mutated butt out into the corridor: Where was everyone? I mean, I may be new here, but surly I should have seen a noble or even a maid or two. This place was deserted, except for Luna, that smaller blonde pony, and me of course.

As if expecting my slight puzzlement the unnamed pony voiced my thoughts on my behalf, "So, where is everypony? I can't see hide nor horseshoe of the servants or guards since the Hatchery." The creature said with a slight nervousness in her voice, her eyes flicked from corner to corner as the three of us moved forwards. Though these aliens may be able to talk, act in a civilized manner, and somehow be capable of rending a tear through space and time, they seemed to have one thing in common so far with their grass bound cousins aside from similar looks; they're more panicky than a pack of lemmings.

Good god, I hope this place doesn't bombard me with terrible puns; they might just kill me a second time.

Figuring that this was the best time to get some useful info on these ponies I decided to eaves drop on the two equines...

...You know what? I keep on changing what to call them, don't I? I mean, I am dealing with an a sentient alien species from an alternate universe here, so I'm not even sure if they're remotely related to the ones on Earth, but I should try and find the right name to call their species, especially if I want to try and talk to them in hopes that they can set things right again.

Well, since the smaller ones look about the same height as a Shetland pony; I suppose I should call them ponies, and it seemed to fit in with all those horrible horse jokes they seem to have a knack for. Though the one called Luna seemed much too large to be considered a pony as she towered over all the rest that I've seen, so I guess it's alright if I call her a horse then. I'll probably have to fix this observation later, but for now I'll just call every creature here a pony.

Resolving that tiny issue I returned my attention to the outside world. I kept very still as I aimed my hearing at Luna and the mare.

"Do not worry my little pony, I've ordered my guards to keep the path to my chambers clear," Luna spoke, though in a slightly hushed voice, "We thought that if a servant witnessed their Princess of the Night carting off a hatchling dragon they might spread rumour and misinformation."

Tender paused in her tracks as her face scrunched up in confusion, "But... I don't see how that's a bad thing really."

Luna turned her head back and let out a small chuckle, "Trust me on this one, though they may not mean for it to happen a great deal of chaos can be spread through simple gossip as it becomes twisted and different each time it's passed on."

The blue mare shifted her attention back to me and let her mouth curl up in a small smile, "I intend to introduce Ezekiel soon, but not at the moment. I'd prefer to have things under control before I announce his presence to Canterlot."

"I suppose that's reasonable enough... though I still think it's a little overboard your highness."

There was a pause in the conversation as Luna regarded the mare trotting beside her with an evaluating eye; the smaller pony had to take a few extra steps in order to keep up with the Princess that was probably twice as tall as she was. In an effort to keep pace, Luna had slowed down her normal canter.

"It's odd for a commoner such as thyself to be so open and forthright with Royalty," Luna raised an eyebrow down at the pony.

Tender Care instantly regretted opening her damn muzzle, a few beads of sweat rolled down the back of her neck and forehead as she realized that she'd stepped out of line. "S-sorry your Majesty! I didn't mean to-" She was cut off as Luna raised a hoof for silence, which was quite impressive since they were still moving.

"Do not fret my little pony, I did not say that it wasn't welcome," At Tender's befuddled expression Luna giggled.

"It's been far too long since I've had a normal conversation with anypony aside from my sister or one of my far too few friends. So, please feel free to speak your mind." The friendly grin Luna returned to Tender caught her off guard, she had imagined that the Princess of the Night was more of a hard flank than... this...

"O-okay," Tender said cautiously, "I also need to fill you in on how to take care of Ezekiel"

The two mares quickly lapsed into a much more relaxed conversation on supposedly how to raise me as some sort of pet. Eyugh, as if I'm going to go along with that!

Well, at least that little chat answered quite a few of my questions that I had piling up on a mental list. First of all, apparently I did get it right on pegging Luna as some sort of Royalty, though it seems she's just a princess which begs the question on who the King or Queen are; she also had some sort of title: "The Princess of the Night". What, does she watch a lot of Batman or something?

Secondly on the list was that she had called me a dragon... Really? Last time I checked I was a normal Human being, not the Dovakin. Even if that's what they had mutated my body into I really didn't get the whole Dragon vibe, I looked more like a stuffed plushy than a fire breathing monster...

Lastly, though it wasn't as important, that room I had just left was the Hatchery. It really didn't take that many brain cells to guess what they hatched in there, though a shiver went down my spine at the thought that these creepy space horses might be abducting others and repeating the same process like they had on me.

Speaking of which, I was still the blue gecko that these equines turned me into. As the other two strode down the hall on four hooves each I decided to take a evaluation as to what in the name of Darwin I was.

First off, I had scales; Instead of my lightly tanned skin that had been aged with wrinkles and calluses I was now covered from head to toe with tiny sky-blue scales. At a glance their weave made the surface of my body look solid, yet as I felt with a newly acquired claw I was mildly surprised to find that they were actually quite plush; kinda like the underbelly of a snake.

My claws where next on the inspection; each hand only had three fingers and a thumb, if you could call them that. The digits acted much like fingers, except for where the ends tapered into hard and stubbly little point, which I guessed was a talon. When I poked one tip with another on the opposite hand they made a small clicking noise. I further tested the sharpness as I poked my arm a little and found that they were indeed sharp enough to prick myself. I could even still feel a phantom of my pinkie, which felt really weird when I tried to open and close my fists.

Alright, what's next on the list? Legs, that's what. Also the tail, can't forget about that.

I had to curl myself up into a ball to get a good look at them. The other two women didn't seem to notice my zero gravity areal stunts from up ahead; which was a good thing since I wanted as little attention on myself as possible.

God, I hope they don't do anything else to me, at the moment my DNA feels like a ball of yarn that's been violated by a kitten.

My legs had suffered the same fate as my hands and arms; they'd shrunk, been turned a light blue, and my toes had been replaced by a cloned set of my claws, though these appendages seemed to have a thicker hide on the soles of my feet.

The tail was new, especially since I never had a tail to begin with. The pointed and stubby thing sprouted from my rump somewhere above my hips. The spines that now decorated my back carried along the vertebrae until they disappeared near the tip of my tail. My fifth appendage didn't respond the same way my arms did; instead it seemed to be content with not moving all that much at all. If it wasn't for the occasional flick from side to side I could have sworn that it might have just been tacked onto my ass.

I grunted internally in disgust and anger at what had been done to me, and as I wrapped up my self evaluation my eyes drifted back to the two equines walking in front of me.

It really wasn't their fault I suppose; I had caused that girl/pony to fall onto the tracks, I was the one who had followed those horses back through the inter-dimensional rift, and I was the one who had poked his nose where it didn't belong and ended up in this current fustercluck.

Yet despite all this evidence that I was to blame for all this I couldn't help but be irritated by the present situation; mainly being treated like a helpless puppy by some blue magical horse thing that speaks like she popped straight out of a third rate rendition of a Shakespearean play. Worst of all they couldn't understand me; all I got for my efforts to try and let them know who I really was by being rewarded with an "Aww, wook at da little cutie! Isn't he just precious!"

Our little freak show parade rounded a corner and I noticed a sudden change to my surroundings; instead of the vibrant colours of the hallways I had passed through before the hall before me had a much darker vibe to its pallet. The wallpaper was a bluish grey while the ceiling was the colour of an evening sky, I could even see small specks of yellow above me made to resemble constellations. Below me was a chessboard marble floor with each square of stone about a meter squared in diameter. Even the curtains, which were presently drawn halfway closed to only allow a few shafts of light through, fit into the whole midnight mood of the corridor with their purple hues.

"Ah ha! There's my quarters," Luna spoke up suddenly. I followed her gaze and saw a door before us that was flanked by two more horses on either side; though these ones seemed to be wearing medieval armour as well as a pair of bat like wings attached to their backs. They continued to stare stoically ahead as we passed by them and into the room they guarded.

* ~ * ~ *

"For the last time Spike, there's no way a baby dragon could even say those things," Twilight repeated for the hundredth time from behind a book on advanced magical harmonics. "Now get back to sorting, you're still being punished."

Spike threw a death-glare at the Alicorn who was content to just sit there on her cushion and ignore whatever Spike had to say. As punishment for acting out at Luna's new 'companion' Twilight had ordered Spike to re-shelve the entire Canterlot Castle library, a task that would probably take several days to finish.

"But it's true! That Tartarus-spawn swore at Princess Luna!" The pudgy little dragon protested for the hundred and first time.

With a grunt of frustration Twilight placed a bookmark on the page she was on and set it aside. The purple mare furrowed her brow up at Spike as he placed yet another tome back in its rightful home, "You're really not going to let that little delusion go, are you?"

Spike jumped off the ladder and crossed his arms as he met Twilight's exasperated gaze, "I know what I heard, and I'm telling you that baby dragon said 'Buck you' straight to Luna's face!"

"Suuuure he did Spike," Twilight rolled her eyes and gave a hollow laugh, "But there's two things wrong with that: First of all, how can something that's only been out of his shell for a minute know those words and what they mean? Next, why would he even say those things to the Princess? As far as I can tell Luna's done nothing to him that would make the little guy angry at her. And last of all, how can he even be able to speak? The last time I heard him make any noise it was just babbling."

Spike simply shrugged at the end, "I'm not sure about the other stuff, but I can tell you for certain that what you may think is gibberish actually makes perfect sense to me. Heck, even Pound and Pumpkin talk to each other."

"The Cake Twins?" Twilight raised an eyebrow, "Don't be ridicules Spike, they can't talk yet either. You must have spent too much time around Pinkie if you really believe that."

For a moment Spike worked his jaw in frustration, why couldn't Twilight just believe him on this?! Crazier things have happened in Equestria, especially around Twilight. "Fine, I guess you won't believe me, no matter what I say. But mark my words; Zeke isn't what he appears to be!"

"Yeah, yeah, if it makes you feel any better I'll talk with Luna about this later," Twilight rolled her eyes once more and sat back down on her cushion and picked up where she left off in her studies, "But right now you still have books to sort, and they won't do that by themselves."

* ~ * ~ *

So this is what the bedroom of a pony princess looks like. I half expected half to room to be covered in lace and sparkles, but surprisingly it looked rather simple and ordinary. It was larger than the bedroom I had back home, yet still smaller than a bachelor's apartment.

The patterns of the hall outside had repeated themselves inside the moderately large bedroom. Dark blues and purples reigned supreme in the room, yet they surprisingly didn't make the place feel dingy or depressive, instead the rich hues almost made the room seem larger than it really was and they added a mysterious quality to the living space.

In the center of the room and seated up against a wall that was flanked by two large windows stood a queen sized bed, complete with a indigo shaded canopy to match the cobalt blue sheets. It also didn't come as much of a surprise when I noticed that the pillows actually had craters and were made to look like miniature moons.

Other than the bed however everything else seemed pretty bland; a wooden dresser with a few socks hanging out, a knee high table that was surrounded by a few cushions with a few books and magazines piled on top, and a few paintings depicting something night related hung on the walls. The only noteworthy item in the room was a brass telescope that stood near one of the windows.

"Wow," Tended gasped as she did the same as me and looked around the room, "So this is what a Princess's room looks like, it looks rather dull actua-“ With a sudden yelp Tended Care immediately clamped down on her mouth, a look of terror in her eyes as she stared at Luna wide eyed

Luna looked over her shoulder at her guest with a slightly confused expression; it turned into a smile once she realized what the mare had meant, and what she had been upset by. "Do not fret my little pony, I take no offense," Luna giggled as she levitated me further into the room and sat me down on the mattress.

Now since I never asked for any of this in the first place, and not wanting to stick around the space horses any longer than need be, the second my deformed limbs touched the surface of the sheets I made an attempt to escape. Attempt is the right word here, since I barely made it a step before I crashed down face first into the plush duvet covers. The two horses watched my failure with broad smiles and giggled like school girls at the sight of my rump and trail sticking into the air.

This is humiliating.

"Sorry... It's just that I had imagined that there'd be more, well, Princessy stuff in your room. You know: lace doilies with tea sets, enough jewellery and gold to make a dragon's horde look like pocket change, or maybe even a trophy or two from over a thousand years ago," the pink mare shrugged her shoulders as she took in the sight of the almost ordinary bedroom once more.

"Oh, well," Luna rubbed the back of her neck as she began to look a bit sheepish, "We never had any such tastes in decorum, nor do we posses any such things like thou had just described. This room is primarily reserved for slumber and not much else."

I cringed as I listened to every syllable Luna had said, she really was into the whole 'Ye Oldie English' vernacular. Her voice wasn't irritating to be honest; so much as I got a headache every time I tried to translate what she had to say.

"Well I suppose that's all going to change with the little guy staying in here from now on, right?" Tender Care asked as she smiled in my direction. That was odd, I could have sworn that she was faking her smile an hour ago, but now I wasn't so sure if it was a false mask or not...

"Indeed, though I'm unfamiliar with what an infant dragon and how to take care of one such as Ezekiel, so I haven't the faintest idea as to what he may need," A tired sigh escaped from Luna as her shoulders slumped down a bit... Or would that be withers? Animal biology was never my strong suit.

"Twilight had offered her assistance, but I fear she may be unable to lend a helping hoof until she has finished with Spike's... Task... Speaking of which, don't you think it odd that our normally docile and peaceful Spike lashed out like that? And I don't think it has anything to do with simple jealousy, it seemed like Spike was adamant about something..."

Tender Care hummed as she placed a hoof to her chin in thought; I hadn't had much of a chance to take a closer look at my captors, but looking at the hoof made me think it was made of strawberry flavoured marshmallows.

"Well, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but maybe there was a documented case from before my time back at the hatchery that could help. I could take a look if you want your highness."

"That would be for the best," Luna nodded in agreement, sounding much more relieved.

"Alright then your highness, I'll be back in a few minutes, hopefully with something that can clear everything up!" The mare smiled once more as she quickly darted out of the room.

"Wait!" Luna abruptly shouted after the other pony, "What should I do in with-" It was too late, the golden tail of the mare had already disappeared around the corner of the door without the slightest hint that Tender Care had heard Luna's shout, "-Ezekiel in the mean time?"

There was a silent moment as Luna stood staring out the door and into the hall, almost as if she half expected the pony to return any moment. When the pink and honey yellow pony didn't return after a minute of staring Luna sighed and turned to face me on the bed.

Now, what was I doing all this time you might ask? Well, the answer is jack all nothing. You see, over a month of having your body shrunk and mangled really does a number on your ability to, well, do anything. My arms were only strong enough to push me up to sit, but that's where their usefulness ends. So all I could do was stare terrif- I mean, defiantly up at the creature that was easily five times my height and probably could crush my skull under one of her hooves.

Instead of the nightmarish tortures my overactive imagination was currently coming up with something far worse happened; Luna began her attempt at trying to "Raise" me.

Several beads of sweat began to roll down Luna’s forehead as she continued to lock her emerald eyes on me from across the room. We must have been over a minute or so before the more mobile one of us broke the stare down. Luna slowly inched her way over to the foot of the bed, her face scrunched up in a look of uncertainty that clearly said, “Oh gods, what have I gotten myself into?”

“W-well,” Luna began hesitantly, “Now what should I do with you?”

Well for starters you can turn me back into a Human, I thought, Also if it’s not too much to ask I’d like to get back to Kansas.

Apparently mind reading wasn’t Luna’s specialty so she came up with something completely different. “Oh, I know!” The blue horse exclaimed as an imaginary light bulb seemed to have turned on above her head, but this wasn’t the only thing that began to shine above her cranium as her horn began to shine in the same glow that had carried me not a few minutes ago.

With wide eyes I witnessed something impossible; a stuffed teddy bear materialize out of thin air and then plop down on the bed in front of me.

Not only did these ponies possess telekinesis, the ability to transform living things like myself and that girl into something completely different, and they had the power to cross from one universe to another, but now they could create matter out of nothing… This was simply fascinating! I could practically hear Einstein rolling in his grave, yet I couldn’t help but be amazed by what these creatures could do!

I mean, she just created the very atoms that made up the fabric of the stuffed animal out of nothing! That was impossible since matter can’t be created or destroyed; yet somehow it was possible!

Luna must have taken my sudden change in mood as a good sign and then completely misread it; she thought that I was happy with by being given a teddy, when actually I wasn’t all that interested in the stuffed critter and instead enthralled with the impossibility taking place. Though that’s understandable, I mean I do look like Barney’s bastard child right now, so at the moment any facial expressions I made wouldn’t be any more complex than your run of the mill infant’s.

“Oh, so the replica bear stuffed with cotton doth amuse thee? Then I shall say more the merrier!” With a much more cheerful smile and a soft laugh Luna then proceeded to materialize a whole zoo of plushies and stuffed animals.

Unfortunately she made a bit too many of the fuzzy anomalies, and much like their cousin that now sat before me on the sheets the horde of fluff fell down to the bed below. My smile vanished as I saw the oncoming avalanche; I let out a startled yelp as I was crushed under the weight of a stuffed elephant.

“Oh dear…” Luna winced as a long eared rabbit was the last to fall onto the pile squeak from an internal noise maker. “We… Might have over done it just a tad…”

* ~ * ~ *

It was at this moment that Tender Care had returned to Luna’s room carrying a pile of manila folders in her lime green magic. Luna noticed the door opening behind her and she spun around to stare sheepishly at the medical pony. The light pink mare put on a deadpanned expression as she looked from Luna to the newly created pile of plushies that seemed to jiggle about, as if something was alive amongst the otherwise inanimate objects.

Tender let out an exasperated sigh as she cancelled her spell on her files, allowing them to fall to the floor. She then powered back up her horn once more and as the green magic encased her horn so did the something under the pile. From under the pile the light moved its way to the top, a ripple of fabric indicating where the target was; the stuffed animals where pushed aside until a small glowing lizard was sprung loose.

Ezekiel was panting for air after nearly suffocating under those toys, but from the looks of it he seemed no worse for wear.

“We… We thought that-“ Luna began telling her excuse but she was quickly cut off when Tender shot the Princess a harsh glare.

“I’m going to assume that what you were thinking, your highness, was that if you smothered your new companion with toys that he’d enjoy that! You could have killed the little guy!” Tender Care shouted.

Luna winced at the words and recoiled slightly. She stared back into the mare’s angered dark green eyes, “I-I’m sorry…”

“Don’t say that to me, it’s Ezekiel that you need to apologize to.” The expression on Tender’s face softened somewhat though, “You’re going to need to learn to be more careful from now on if you’re going to be responsible for raising him.”

Returning her attention back to the floating baby dragon Tender Care carefully maneuvered him down to the floor with her magic and then set about inspecting the infant for any injuries. Luna however slumped her head in shame, her mood still soured from the guilt of accidentally hurting her companion… And in the first hour no less.

“He seems fine, just a little dazed,” Tender reported as she stood back up again and faced one of her rulers, who was by now well and deep into her own little dark cloud to even notice that she was being talked to.

When Tender stomped her hoof on the wooden floor she got Luna’s attention as she snapped back into reality by the loud thump, “I said he’s fine,” The mare repeated.

“A-ah, that’s excellent to hear. Ooh, why did I even do that?”

Tender care sat down on her haunches and gave a gentle smile back up at Luna, “You probably acted on impulse; you were so excited about your new dragon that you rushed ahead and tried to win him over as soon as you could. Don’t worry, my cousin in Manehatten did the same thing when she got a puppy a few years ago; she kept on feeding him dog biscuits one after another so many times that the poor pup vomited everything back up and onto her.” Tender chuckled as she remembered her little cousin’s horrified screams as she galloped down the hall to the shower.

When Luna joined in and giggled at the mental image Tender was pleasantly surprised and glad that her story had done the trick.

From beside the two mares a light snoring broke up their soft laughter, each of them looked down and found that Ezekiel had curled himself up into a ball and was fast asleep. Both of the mares quietly shared a collective ‘daww!’ at the cute little fire-breathing reptile as it yawned in its slumber, revealing two sets of gums without any teeth to fill them in yet. Though, from her studies Tender knew that would soon change within a few weeks or so, by then they would be filled with razor sharp fangs designed to crush crystals.

“So, why don’t we let the young prince sleep while we go over the documents together?” Tender Care whispered over to Luna, who nodded in return. The two placed the sleeping young dragon onto the bed next to the mound of stuffed animals and quietly left the room.

Author's Note

Yeah... I'm such a liar, I can never, EVER keep to a schedule... Oh well, at least I got this done and over with eventually...

Editor's Note:
At this point, I'm suspecting that the words "Schedule" and "Punctual" were removed from your dictionary...