Caw-Caw, Motherf-----s.

Caw, Caw, Motherf-----s.

----

"Urgh," groaned the boy as he pushed himself up with his arms. "I gotta stop 'investigating' all of these random portal things in my down time. I always end up face down in some alternate universe or something else equally as stupid."

"Wow, you're shiny!" a bubbly voice called out to him, from somewhere to his right.

"Never heard that one before," the boy replied, turning to face his addresser. What he was not expecting to see was that he was apparently having a conversation with a pink horse with pink hair and super-wide blue eyes. He could have said before that he'd talked to some rather odd horse enthusiasts, but never before had he conversed with an actual horse.

"No, but you're like, really really shiny!" she said, putting an overly large amount of emphasis on the second "really." "Also orange. I don't think I've ever seen anypony as orange as you before!"

"Any... pony? Wow, alright, even I thought that was a lame pun. And I'm the master of lame puns. Well, okay, maybe not the master exactly, but I've shared my share of embarrassingly awful puns before. I bet that's what you call all of your horse friends while you're having your little horse get-togethers, huh?"

"Yeah, it is!" she replied, grinning widely. The sarcasm in the boy's voice obviously went unnoticed. "So what's up with your weird tail? I've never seen a tail like it before, either! And those wings! Why's one shorter than the other? And what's all that yellow stuff? Oh my gosh, are those bandages on your stomach? Oh my gosh, are you hurt, Mister Orange Guy!? Oh no! We need to get you to the hospital right away!" she shouted, her voice becoming increasingly panicked, in an almost comedic manner.

"Oh, uh, hey, chill out, chica, it's okay. I'm fine, honest," the boy replied, a little taken aback at the concern this horse chick seemed to be showing him, a complete stranger. "I've already done all there is to do, I'll be fine eventually. You can relax."

"Are you absolutely-positively sure about that?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and leaning in toward his face.

"Uh. Yeah, I'm... sure."

"Pinkie Promise?" she asked, leaning in even closer.

"What the h--- is a Pinkie Pro--" he said, cutting himself off abruptly. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Hear what?" the pony said, tilting her head at him.

"The way my voice just skipped like a broken record. It would honestly be kind of ironic seeing as that used to be like, my symbol thing, but it's a little bit too weird for me to even consider making that joke. Unless of course, that actually already counts as me making the joke... gah, hold up, I'm rambling. The skip, did you hear it?"

"Nope, didn't hear anything like that, but it's weird that you did! Maybe you have super special ears that are like, mega-ultra sensitive to weird noises and stuff that nopony else can hear! That would be cool, wouldn't it? Haahahaahaahah! Oh, by the way, you're still kind of on the ground. Do you want me to give you a hoof?"

"A hoof? Uh, nah, I got this," he said, noting that he was indeed, still on the ground. On further inspection, he also discovered that he now had hooves on the end of his arms... legs... whatever, instead of his usual hands. He did, however, still have his weird ghost-tail-thingy, thus making some of the pink pony's earlier interrogative inquiries seem like perfectly natural questions. He could already tell that even in this weird pastel land that looked strangely like the setting of some kind of kids' show, he was kind of the odd-one-out. 'Nothing new there,' he thought to himself.

"You seem like you're thinking about a lot of stuff," she said, sitting down in front of him. "You want somepony to talk to?"

"Um, no, no, I'm good, honestly. I just think about stuff a lot. It's kind of my thing. Well, that, self-loathing, and controversial meta jokes are my things, but I have this weird feeling that I should be trying to avoid the last two. Probably some sort of admin-set rule or something."

"Rule?" the pink pony asked, quirking her eyebrow once again at the orange pony. "Wow, you're even better at not making any sense than I am! And I've been told that I'm really good at not making any sense!"

"Uh, thanks, I guess," the boy said, rolling his eyes. "By the way, I never got your name. Pink-something, right?"

"Uh-huh!" she replied, nodding her head sporadically. "It's Pinkie Pie! I'm Ponyville's number one premier party planning pony!"

"Huh. Pinkie Pie, 'Ponyville's' party planner? That seems too alliteratorily perfect to be a coincidence."

"Alliter-what-ily?"

"Alliteration. That literary thing with the first letter being the same? Too many P's in there for your little hobby to be a coincidence, or y'know, that's what it sounds like."

"Oh, haha, you're right! That's aliiteratastic! But planning parties isn't a hobby of mine, silly! It's my special talent!" Pinkie said, her near-constant grin widening further. "See?" she continued, pointing to a picture on her flank.

"I don't get it," the boy said, looking at the triple balloon print upon the pony's side. "I mean, I get that the balloons are supposed to mean that you like parties or something, but isn't getting a tattoo on your a-- a little extreme?" he said, noting that his speech was once again skipped over, as if he was simply not allowed to speak like that in this world or something.

"Oh, come on, now you're just being super silly! You have to know that this is my Cutie Mark! It shows everypony what my special talent is! Like yours does, duh! Look at it! It obviously means you like music, right?"

He looked at the space where his pony body seemed to melt into his ghost tail (completely skipping his hind legs in the process), and saw what she was talking about. He saw a simple picture of a broken record with wings. Or, to be more precise, one point five wings. Just like the picture that he used to have printed on the chest of his favorite shirt. "Well," he said, "I do like to rap from time to time, but I wouldn't exactly call it my 'special talent' or whatever. I'm actually pretty terrible at it."

"Oh come ooon!" Pinkie said, waving her hoof dismissively. "I'm sure you're great at it! Anyway, now that I think about it, I never actually got your name, Orange Rapper Guy! I'm sure it's something really cool, like your sunglasses!" she said, smiling about as radiantly as the sun in the sky.

"Haha, nah, it's not, really," he said, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "But it's, uh... it's Davesprite. My name is Davesprite," the boy said, seeming a little unsure about it himself.

"Dave Sprite? Huh, that's a funny name! But it is super cool, just like I thought it would be! Hey, Davey, you know what would be almost as cool? If I took you to go see my friends! One of them is a princess, and I'm sure she'd be super excited to meet you! They all will, I just know it! You wanna come along?" she asked, blinking at him rapidly.

"I'm... not entirely sure I even have a choice in the matter here," Davesprite replied, smiling slightly. "So I guess I'll go with you to meet your, er, little horse friends. But hey, what do you mean, 'one of them's a princess?' Like, does she act like a princess, or is she straight up actual royalty?"

"Royalty! She has a fancy crown and everything! She even had her coronation a few months ago! It's cool because even though she's a princess now, she's still the same old Twilight! Now come on, let's go meet everypony and have ourselves a WELCOME PARTAY!" she shouted, dragging Davesprite along with her towards the small town they seemed to be on the edge of.

'Now what have I gotten myself into?' Davesprite silently asked himself, almost gliding along behind the ecstatic pink pony pulling him along.

'And why, even as a friggin' tiny horse, do I still not get to have any f-----g legs?!'