So Far...

CHAPTER TWO

“Alright wise guy, spill the beans!” Dash barked as Pinkie shined a flashlight in my eyes, temporarily blinding me. I was tied to a chair with heavy rope and my wrists bound with leather straps.

“We know you’re a spy!”

“No, damn it! I’m not a spy I’m an alien!”

“Oh yeah? Then how come you keep changing your story? What are you really? No lying this time!”

“I told you, I’m both a human and a brony at the same time, one is a subcategory of the other!”

“A likely story…” Dash exclaimed, her voice slightly cracking the way it always does. “Where are you from? Earth or America?”

I instinctively jerked my arm in an attempt to facepalm. The leather straps tightened on my wrists.

“Again, America is part of Earth.”

“So if you are part of this America, why do you speak fluent English, Russian, and Spanish, and yell random phrases in German that make no sense?”

“Because… God damn it…”

“And who is this God you speak o-“

I suddenly woke up, my face flat on the floor, my feet dangling in the air, my weight supported in this odd position by the bed, my blanket nowhere to be seen. A week had passed since I arrived.

“Oh good” said Twilight sheepishly. “You’re awake.”

I scrambled to my feet, hoping she didn’t take detailed notes on my sleeping patterns, but noticed she was up to something. Something didn’t look right. I examined her panting, sweat beading down from her mane, and a book catalog by her side.

I thought of a way to get her to explain this by herself, a much more fun way than accusing her.

“You’ve been doing heroine, haven’t you?”

She didn’t reply, just gave the same sheepish smile, with a little squee. My eyebrows lifted and I gave her my patented poopie face. Still no change, just the same exaggerated smile, but with more forcefully suppressed panting.

“I’ll… just go find me some breakfast. We can talk after” I stated.

She slowly nodded and I left, shutting the door to make her feel more secure. Went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much I found to be edible. A jar of mayo, some straw caked into a small cylinder, a half-eaten muffin, some apple cider, some sarsaparilla, and a small unmarked box. I took the sarsaparilla and the muffin and ate it on the table by Owloysius, who by now was sleeping.

After I finished the muffin and a glass of sarsaparilla, which tasted a lot like root beer, I sat by Twilight and tossed her a small bag with 30 bits in it.

“What’s this for?” she asked, slightly surprised.

“Well lets see…” I began recalling. “You took me in, became one of my first friends here, you gave me a place to stay and let me eat out of your fridge…”

She blushed.

“Does that leave you with any money?”

“Well, I earned 100 bits this past week, 45 went to taxes and 30 went to you, so I still have about 25 bits left, and so far simple arithmetic has not failed me. And also since less than half my money went to taxes, I find it hard to believe this place isn’t socialist.”

“I think 30 bits is fair for rent per week” she said. “But to be honest roofers don’t even get paid that much. Now if you would just show me your cutie mark maybe I can think of a job that suits you.”

“Um, yeah, about that. I don’t have one.”

Twilight looked at me like I was a 3 headed alien.

“You mean you haven’t gotten it yet or humans don’t get them at all?”

“The latter”

“Well, maybe you can work with Applejack bucking trees”

“Except I don’t buck.”

“Hmm…” Twilight pondered some more, looking to the top right corner of the room. “I know Octavia lives down the block; maybe she can show you how to play a musical instrument!”

“Oh, well I already play the tuba.”

“Great! Let’s go right now, I have a scroll to deliver to her anyway.”

*

We passed by Sugarcube corner, still closed, but we could clearly make out Pinkie Pie getting the store ready for opening. We passed Rainbow Dash in the sky beating the shit out of clouds. I guess she had a fight with Soarin’ or something. Or maybe that’s how she liked to clear the sky. We eventually got to a small dark blue house. We rang the doorbell and a small clip from Beethoven’s 7th symphony played. A gray mare with long black hair opened the door, first smiling at the sight of twilight, then shrieking at the sight of me.

“Hello, Octavia!” I said, and she gave a sheepish smile.

“Hello, Arthur. So, this is the ‘human’ people have been talking about?”

“Yes, and he says he plays the tuba, maybe you can get him to try out?”

“Oh, that’s quite possible”. She handed me a note that had a time and address written on it. “Meet us here at 7 o’clock tonight, sharp!”

I giggled. “I see what you did there; sharp. Music pun.”

“Uh, sure…” she said. Just don’t be late.

*

I arrived at precisely 7 o’clock at 1507 Mane St. Octavia and some other ponies had already set up. Pinkie was there too, playing the trombone. There was a light green stallion playing the timpani, two more on snare drums, a quintet of clarinets, some horns, some trumpets, some saxes, a whole band of 20-30 ponies more or less! Octavia gave me a large black case and a green folder with instruments depicted on it and led me to a small room at the back of the building. It was bright, illuminated by a fluorescent light, and the walls were covered in soundproof padding, the door plexiglass. It had a chair and a music stand in it.

“Practice in here until you think you have it, more or less. We have a concert in 4 days so we must be hasty, but you still have to sound good.”

“Alright” I said, closing the door. All sound immediately died out. I sat on the chair and opened the folder. It had a march in it, titled “St. Petersburg March” by Johnnie Vinson. I remembered this song from when I played it in my high school band, but I decided to play through it and write in the fingerings for the hard parts. After about 15 minutes a dark blue mare came in and told me we were about to start. Everyone sat quietly, except of course Pinkie, who was bouncing around and moving her slide in and out. We played through it what I considered well, but as always the conductor said we needed more tuba sound during the bass solo. I couldn’t agree more, that was my favorite part, but there was only two tuba players in the band.

*

Later that evening I came back to the library and saw Twilight in her room playing TF2. Right as I walked in, she yelled “Say goodbye ta yer head, clopper!” and shot a demoman in the head, killing him before he even got a shot off. I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around, happy to see me.

“Hey, Arthur! You’re back! How did it go?”

“Pretty good. The conductor couldn’t get enough of me! Actually he quite nearly yelled at me for that very rea-“

I was cut off by Rainbow Dash’s voice coming from the speakers. She seemed pretty pissed that she lost a domination because Twilight killed her.

“Rainbow, Arthur’s back.”

“Oh” she said, calming down a bit. “How did it go?”

“Good” I replied. “I think I might be in”.

“That is pretty cool. Those people get paid heaps!” She exclaimed, first in sincere excitement, then with a bit of jealousy in her tone.

“Not as much as the Wonderbolts I bet” I said. Rainbow seemed to get upset at me saying that, thinking I was being condescending.

“Alright, well tomorrow we have skies scheduled to be all clear. We should totally go have a picnic!”

“Sounds good” Twilight approved. “What do you think?”

“As long as there is something edible” I said.

With that, Twilight asked me something she had forgotten to ask this morning.

“By the way, we didn’t finish with my notes on you. Shall we finish?”

I reluctantly agreed, hoping there will be no more presidents questions, or worse, me being tied up and interrogated for being a spy like in my dream. We went downstairs and sat on the couch in the living room.

“Soooo… we went through um, human diet…”. She looked at me funny. “Are you some sort of primate?”

“Kind of sort of”

“But you’re not very hairy…”

“Relatively speaking, no, not really.”

She examined my hair.

“By the way, why do you wear that funny fabric all the time even if you aren’t going anywhere?”

“It’s called clothes”

“Yes, I know, but why?”

“Well, seeing as I don’t have much hair, humans generally wear clothes to make up for it.”

She seemed to understand.

“Alright, well can you take your shirt off?”

I thought about it for a moment and then decided to take it off. She had me stand spread eagle while she jotted down more notes.

“And your other clothes”

“M… my pants?”

“Yes, those too.”

I felt a wave of dilemma. Dare I look indecent? For the sake of knowledge? I guess everyone is naked anyways. But what if someone comes in? This is a library after all.

I finally decided to take my pants off. Twilight burst into laughter.

“Another layer?”

“No way, I’m not taking this off”

“Aww come on! This doesn’t help me much at all!”

I put my pants back on and went to the bedroom, burying my face in the pillow. Twilight followed me in and sat next to my bed.

“I don’t get it. Is something wrong?”

“It is just super weird not to have your clothes on”

“Is it? Humans always keep their clothes on?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“Well if you ask me, that is the weirdest thing of all.”

I thought about that for a minute. So it was weird to keep my clothes on all the time in this universe? I guess. I decided to do what I had to do.

Twilight draws detailed pictures. Very detailed pictures.

*

The next day I took a stroll through the park.The sun was beating down upon the green landscape with trees and flowers and all sorts of tasty- I mean cute creatures. As I walked further I saw Rainbow looking after the CMCs.

“Hi Rainbow!” I shouted

She turned around and saw me, smiled, and flew over.

“Hey there!” she said.

I noticed a big red hoof mark on her head.

“… Did someone hit you?”

“Not really” she replied in a quick tone. “Here, look after these 3 uh, angels for 5 minutes until Applejack comes back” she said and immediately flew away.

*

5 minutes had passed and Applejack came to pick up Applebloom.

“Hey Arthur, how’s it-“

She paused. Sure enough, there was a big red handprint across my forehead.