Chapters View Online
Chapter One - Life Sure Is Full Of Surprises
“Welcome to my apartment!”
“Ah, you just got to love the fresh opportunities this one brings you. Just how are you paying for this, Anon?” Sandra asks, walking in and looking around the very spacious living room, barely even furnished and looking bare.
“It might have to do with finally getting that position I was applying for…”
“No way,” Sandra says with a smile, throwing off her leather jacket onto the island table in the kitchen. “I thought they weren’t looking for people to hire when you went there asking the last… four times!”
“What can I say? I’m good with words.”
Sandra walks over to the only couch in the place and plops down on it with a sigh, resting her feet on the rather large coffee table in front of it. “You definitely need some stuff in here; it feels so empty and dead. Are you going for a Spartan look this time around? It doesn’t seem like you, I’d expect more waifu material on the walls.”
Anon walks around the couch and pushes her feet off the table, only to get kicked by her and with her feet returning to the table.
“Come on; treat my stuff with some respect.” Sandra sticks her tongue out in response. Anon groans out, falling onto the opposite side of the couch. “Once I unpack my awesome collection of figures and posters, it won’t feel so dead in here.”
“Just don’t go drawing and wrecking up the walls, that’s how you got kicked out of your last apartment.”
“How was I supposed to know that the pipes were behind the exact wall I was cutting into into?”
“Why were you cutting into it anyways? Trying to hide a body in them then brick it up? A tad cliché, but why mess with a classic?”
“I wanted to add some flair to my place, so I was trying to sculpt Optimus Prime coming out of the wall, like he was crashing through it.”
“And all that extra putty was to help with that I’m guessing,” she says monotonously, pushing her long hair out of her face.
“I was lucky enough to save most of it for here, stuff’s expensive.”
“What a missed opportunity to sculpt the Kool-Aid Man coming in through the wall.”
“…I wonder if I can get permission for that—”
Sandra clamps her hand over Anon’s lips. “Don’t even think about it, you don’t want to weird out your landlord in the first week of getting this place.” She lets go before looking up at the wall to the only thing on it: a Gurren Lagann flaming skull clock. “At least we have plenty of time still.”
“For what exactly?” Anon asks, right before quickly turning to her. “No, NO! I said I didn’t want anything planned for me!”
“It’s not planned, Anon! I just wanted to take you out and get some food, and… pick up a gift for you, of course…”
Anon rubs the bridge of his nose at this. “So there’s no secret party ready to ambush me at some spot we’re going to, nothing to completely ruin my day by having to be around my family with them constantly bugging me about my life?”
Sandra snorts at that. “Hell no… I’ve learned my lesson from the last few times.”
“Then I’ve got nothing to complain about,” he says, leaning back into his couch with both hands behind his head.
Sandra mimics him, sliding further into the couch. “We’ve still got plenty of time anyways before the food place closes and we can grab some grub, I’ve got some fancy-smanshy place picked out before we head to the store.”
“Oh, thanks for reminding me!” Anon says, jumping off the couch and walking over to the clock. Sandra watches him take the clock off, turning the back dial on it, then placing the clock back on the wall. “I forgot, daylight savings happened last week and I still hadn’t set all my cl—”
He’s met with a couch cushion to the face, knocking him on his ass. “You dumbass!” Sandra screams out, now standing up. “We have to go, now!”
Sandra walks up to him, pulling up on his arm and lifting him to his feet before grabbing her coat and quickly forcing him out the door in a hurry. She pulls him down the multiple stairs and straight out the building door, all the while with Anon trying to tell her to let go.
Anon, now outside, is rushed to a car and pushed inside as the door slams shut. “You forgot to lock your doors, again.”
Sandra doesn’t answer from the driver seat as she throws her jacket in the back and starts the car up, trying to get the engine running. “Stupid pile of shit! RUN YOU UNHOLY PIECE OF GARBAGE! I SWEAR YOU COME FROM THE TUMEROUS CHEEKS OF KIM KARDASHIANS ASS FROM HOW SHITTY YOU’RE RU— there we go!”
“Sandra, calm down,” Anon says, pulling his seatbelt on.
“We barely have any time to get there and I don’t want to lose our stupid reservation!”
“Just… drive carefully, okay?”
“Pshhh, me, not careful? I’m the most at being careful.”
“Yeah… sure…”
Sandra backs up from her parking spot, doing a donut right in the middle of the parking lot, barely missing a few cars in the process before skidding forward towards the street.
“See? I was totally careful enough to not hit those cars!” Anon says nothing, holding onto his seat as Sandra blasts the music in her car. “God I LOVE this song! SHOTA! HITLER! CEREAL KILLA! GO-A T’ YOUR FUNERAL AND I’LL DRINK ALL YOUR LIQUOR!”
“Uuugh…”
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
“It was completely your fault.”
“Shut up…”
“If you hadn’t sped down that road, you wouldn’t have gotten that ticket.”
“You should’ve made kissy faces with her and confuse the lady cop with your masculinity so we could get off the hook.”
“That wouldn’t have worked, Sandra.”
“True, you don’t have much masculinity for that to work.”
“Just… we missed out on dinner, so can we just go home? It’s getting pretty dark already.”
“Hey! I picked up a whole bunch of burgers for us to eat when we get back, the least you can do is come into this shop!”
“…I paid for those,” Anon says before looking up at the sign, “Antiques & Stuff”. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously!” Sandra says while putting her jacket back on and closing the car door. “I just needed to pick something up from here and we can leave.”
“Is it my gift?” Anon asks, opening the door to the store.
“Yes—NO! Gah! Just, shut up and get in!”
Letting out a sigh, Anon walks into the darkly light building. He starts to cough, waving his hand in the air. “Good god, this place reeks of old people smell and an old library that hasn’t been dusted in centuries!”
“My kind of smell,” Anon hears from a very smooth sounding voice, making him jump back in surprise. Sandra lets out a laugh, patting Anon on the shoulder before stepping forward. “Miss Sandra, I see that you have returned, and with a friend.”
“Of course I did! You didn’t think I’d not come back and pick up my package, did you?”
An old man comes out from around a shelf, lifting an eyebrow at Sandra. He looks like one of those old sophisticated men from the eighteen-hundreds that would explore all over the world , Anon observes, looks barely in his sixties as well .
“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve said something, whereas something else just came up at the last moment,” the old man says with a British accent, staring back at Sandra with a tilt of his head while adjusting the tie on his blue suit. “Or where you forgot your cash…”
Sandra waves his words off. “Well, I’ve got money this time around! So go and get me my package!” The still unnamed old man continues to stare at Sandra without saying anything. Sandra lets out a heavy sigh. “Pleeeeease go get my package, Mr. Tiller.”
“You need to brush up on your manners, Miss Sandra,” Mr. Tiller says before turning around and walking off behind the many shelves.
Sandra motions her right hand in the air, flapping her fingers in the air as if to talk in a mocking gesture of the old man’s words before walking over to a random shelf and looking at some of the items on it.
Anon looks over to a shelf on his left, looking at some of the odd items on display as well. “This vase looks pretty old. Huh, there’s a miniature centaur too. That’s pretty neat. And… is that a dagger with blood still on it? That can’t be real…”
“It might be, a lot of this stuff comes from all over the world,” Sandra says, playing with a very fancy looking pig sculpture with odd markings embedded into it. “Mr. Tiller collects some of the weirdest stuff , has been all his life. He opened this shop to sell or trade to anyone interested, though I’d imagine it being difficult to get some of this stuff .”
“You seem to know him pretty well,” Anon says, now looking at a very impressive collection of handcuffs.
“I found this shop by complete accident many years back in highschool. I’d sometimes skip class to come here, looking at all the neat junk. It was a pretty cool place to hide out in and escape from everything.”
“That explains all those times you’d disappear,” Anon chuckles, now looking at crystal dragons. “Some of our friends would guess where you’d go, bet they’d be surprised to hear it was to come to an antique shop. I personally guessed ballet school.”
Anon feels a thump on his back, hearing a grunt coming from Sandra. “This place is cool, okay? I’m really going to miss it.”
Unsure of how to take that, Anon turns around to Sandra. “Why do you say that?”
“Mr. Tiller, he’s closing up shop and moving back home to someplace in Europe. His family has been bugging him to take more control over his businesses for a while now so…”
Anon hums to that. “The two of you can relate pretty well to that, can’t you?”
Sandra merely humphs to that, placing down an old book she was holding. Hearing the clicking of footsteps, Anon turns to the side and sees the old man coming back with a rather large wrapped package in his hands.
Seeing him struggle, Sandra steps forwards and grabs the wrapped box. Anon goes to help with the package but Sandra hisses at him, forcing Anon to step back with his hands raised.
“Thanks for everything, Mr. Tiller. You can grab my cash from my side pocket here,” she says, turning to her side so he can grab her cash.
Mr. Tiller simply smiles at her. “Think of this as a farewell gift before I leave. It’s the least I can do for you, Miss Sandra. Oh, and this,” he says, grabbing something from a side pocket on him and gently sliding it into Sandra’s pocket. “It’d be mighty difficult to use this properly without that.”
Sandra gives a chuckle. “A gift that’s meant to be a gift? Well, at least I don’t have to pay for it I suppose.”
“There’s an additional “stuff” in there for you, Miss Sandra.”
Sandra immediately perks up hearing that. “Awesome, now it’s a duo gift day!”
Mr. Tiller nods to her before turning around and slowly walking away. “It’s been delightful being in this town and knowing you, Miss Sandra. Take care.”
“…You too, Mr. Tiller.”
Sandra stands there for a few moments, staring off to where Mr. Tiller just went. Clicking her tongue, she turns around and walks toward the door. Anon opens it up for her, making sure not to get in her way as the two get back into the car.
“The two of you seem like good friends,” Anon says, buckling back into the car.
“Yeah… good friends,” Sandra replies, placing the wrapped package in the backseat. Going to her seat, she pauses, staring at something stuck under the windshield wiper. “GOD DAMN THOSE LAW-ABIDING BASTARDS!” she yells out, taking the parking ticket from the wiper and throwing it into the backseat.
“You’re having the worst luck today.”
“It happens to the best of people, Anon!”
“So why’s it happening to you?”
Sandra punches him in the arm for that remark. “Har, har. Let’s hurry back and eat our now cold burgers. The others should be by the apartment by now.”
“…Others? I said I didn’t want a party, Sandra.”
“Not a party, just Jack and Andrew. I invited them over since being just me tonight would be ultra-creepy. I did mention I was going to invite some others tonight at the apartment, remember?”
“Nnnno, I don’t. You must’ve called them back at the gas stop.”
The music immediately starts playing as the car turns on, making Sandra smile wide. “Hell yeah, great stuff here! Dark secrets, demons with a conscience, I'm the Lone Ranger LOOKING FOR POCAHONTAS!” She swerves out of her parking spot, blasting the music louder before speeding off down the empty street, singing along to the song. “Teenage zombies flying the beat, I'm dying to learn what I'm trying to be.”
“Hey, Sandra?”
“Hmm?” She tilts her head to him, turning down her music so she can actually hear Anon.
“What did that guy mean by “stuff”?”
Sandra furrows her brow for a moment before letting out a laugh. “Oh, that? He was always on about selling antiquated stuff from around the world he’d always just call “stuff”. That’s really what much of that was to him, just stuff he’d get on his travels. I mean, it was really expensive stuff that had a lot of history, but to him, it was just something to bring along on the road. I think he just opened that shop to get rid of some of that “stuff”.”
“So he was a hoarder of ancient “stuff”.”
“Exactly!”
Anon merely shakes his head in amusement as Sandra blasts her music back up to full, driving back to the apartment and singing whatever started to play with Anon sitting back and trying to enjoy the ride.
After parking, Anon and Sandra exit the vehicle only to see the two of them approaching the car, both with matching frowns. “You’re late,” the tall, lanky one says.
“The po-po arrested me for being too awesome for their streets, Andrew,” Sandra says, grabbing the package from the back seat and holding onto the bag of burgers.
“You’re just lucky this is the weekend or we’d have left by now,” the much shorter, well built one says.
“Soooorry, Mister I-Have-To-Bulk-On-A-Daily-Basis-To-Keep-My-Brick-House-Form.”
Anon snorts hearing that. “Glad to see you both here Andrew, Jack.”
“Same here,” Andrew says, patting Anon on the back before tightening his hold onto the backpack on his back.
“Couldn’t find the time to show us around your apartment?” Jack says, crossing his arms.
“I just got the place a week ago!”
“Nothing but excuses, not cool dude, not cool.”
Anon lets out a sigh as Sandra bumps into him, pushing him forward. “Let’s go guys; I don’t want to be carrying this for too long!”
“I can carry that for you,” Jack says as the four of them start walking to the apartment building.
“…Why you being so nice to me? Oh, I get it; you want to show off your mad guns, don’t you?”
“Hey, I have to give the babies some productivity!”
“Fine, fine, here,” she says, placing it in his arms. “Just be careful, there’s something that may be fragile in there.”
“May ?”
“I’m not exactly sure what’s in there just yet.”
“Whoa, hold up one second,” Anon says as he gets into the lobby of the building, walking over to a wall with locks all over it, “I have to check the mail. I’ve been waiting for something to come in.”
“New manga?” Jack asks.
“New model kit?” Andrew asks.
“Nah, I bet it’s a dakimakura,” Sandra says with a nod, “probably a yaoi character.”
“Very funny,” Anon says, going through his keys for the mailbox.
“Can one of those even fit in the mailbox?” Andrew asks.
“Darn things are so freaking large, I wouldn’t doubt it,” Jack says.
“YES!” Anon exclaims, grabbing out a box. “IT’S HERE!”
“Okay,” Andrew says, now with the four of them walking up the stairs, “what exactly is it ?”
“I got really lucky a while back in an online auction and bought some prototype toys that Hasbro was making a good while back but stopped production almost immediately, something about them wanting to work on their board game stuff over toy lines.”
“I remember that,” Andrew says, looking at the box in Anon’s arms, “that’s around the time they gobbled up Twilight Creations.”
“Dang, that must have cost an arm and a leg,” Jack says, watching his steps up the stairs. “Why the hell are we taking the stairs?”
“Elevator is out,” Sandra says, smirking at Jack. “Why? Stairs too much for you?”
“Please, my thighs are too much for the stairs.”
“So what toys are they?” Andrew asks Anon.
“Not sure, but from the size of the box, I can bet they’re likely Transformers, though it might be G.I Joes.”
“You lucky bastard,” Andrew mumbles out, “something like that would be awesome to have.”
“I’d prefer G.I Joes over Transformers myself,” Jack says.
“Please, Transformers are infinitely cooler.”
“Joes before Hoes, dude, and that’s what Transformers are.” Anon would punch him if he didn’t think he’d drop the package to punch back. “You didn’t pawn all your stuff for that did you?” Jack asks.
“No, I didn’t. They were surprisingly cheap and there were barely any bidders for it.”
“It might be due to the decline of Hasbro’s brand,” Andrew says, rubbing his chin. “They should have kept putting out more toys and shows, maybe even a few movies for their stuff.”
“You’d think something like that would go up in price though,” Jack replies back.
“They’re supposed to come out with a Transformers movie in the next week,” Anon says enthusiastically.
“It seems really odd it’s coming out,” Jack says as the four of them walk down the hall to Anon’s apartment. “It’s going to be difficult to compete up against the Pacific Rim franchise; it’s got a significant claim over the market on robot/mecha stuff.”
“I’m glad for that movie, it helped tide me over for Transformers,” Anon says. “I just hope the movie is like the original cartoon series. Hell, I’ll even take the Beast Wars version!”
“I recall hearing that Michael Bay is working on this,” Andrew says. “If anything, expect an explosion every ten minutes.” Andrew rubs his chin in though. “I Think I recall Hasbro wanting to turn some of their board games into game shows as well. Maybe they’re trying to put what they own on any type of screen they can.”
“Just what we need, more of those around,” Sandra says as Anon unlocks the door to his apartment.
Walking in, the four of them deposit their gear on the table in the living room before sitting down on the couch and two chairs.
Sandra digs into the bag before throwing some burgers at everyone and herself. “They’re cold, but it’s food.”
“How considerate of you to think of us,” Jack says, taking a bite of the burger. Anon mumbles something about payment, to which no one takes notice of. “Need some drinks; you have anything in the fridge?” Jack says getting up.
“Yeah, I’ve got a case of cola; grab some for us would you?”
“What, no liquor of any description for tonight?” Jack asks, walking to the fridge.
“Too darn expensive right now, it was either food or booze.”
“Should’ve gotten booze…”
Anon jumps in surprise at a bagged object being thrown at him, coming from Andrew. “Yo’ happy birthday dude! I knew you didn’t have this one so I got you a copy.”
Putting down his half eaten burger, Anon picks up the black bag carefully before opening it up. “Sweet! It’s Superman: Red Son! It’s even the hardback!”
“I saw that at a comic shop a month back and thought it was the perfect thing for you,” Andrew says before catching the thrown soda at him.
“Good catch,” Jack says, coming back with sodas for everyone else. He sits back down before going into Andrews backpack and pulling out a box and tossing it to Anon. “Sorry my gift isn’t as cool as that one but I thought you could try something… new.”
Staring at the completely black box in confusion, Anon slides the sleeve hiding the product, right before dropping it on the ground.
“WHAT THE HELL MAN!”
Sandra and Andrew, confused and seeing Jack amused, look down at the exposed box, seeing a fleshlight image on it. The two of them start snickering, staring at Anon in equal amusement.
“Jack’s not wrong, Anon,” Sandra says, holding back her laughter. “Pretend it’s one of your gaming girls and it’ll feel natural! “Oh Lara, I can’t wait to go spelunking in your tight cavern.””
The three of them chuckle hearing that with Anon’s face turning red. “Okay, now… look inside the box,” Jack says, grabbing another burger.
“FUCK YOU I’M NOT OPENING THAT UP!”
“Just look in the box, jackass.”
Hesitatingly, Anon leans down and grabs the box, slowly opening up right before glaring at Jack. “You’re an asshole.”
Jack shrugs at that before Anon pulls out a dvd set. “It’s Azumangah Diaoh. It may look girly but it’s not bad, though it is odd.”
“Looks like a typical school girl anime,” Andrew says, taking a sip from his cola.
“It’s from some comic online, supposedly popular. Surprised none of us have heard of it before.”
“Okay, time for my gift!” Sandra says, pulling the table closer and pushing the wrapped package over to Anon. “Now, whatever is inside is mine, don’t forget that!”
Waving her off, Anon pulls the package up to him and slowly starts to take off the wrapping paper. It doesn’t take long before it’s revealed to be a very intricate looking cupboard.
“Dang, that’s some fancy looking stuff right there,” Andrew says with a whistle with Sandra smiling.
“I knew your package was supposed to come in for your toys so I thought having a cupboard for them would be nice. Oh,” Sandra says before grabbing something from her pocket, “here’s the key for it.”
“It’s already unlocked,” Anon tells her after grabbing the key.
Opening the door, Anon sees an old book inside. Grabbing the book, he passes it over to Sandra who lets out a gasp, grabbing the book gently.
“What is it?” Jack asks, already eating his second burger.
“It’s Mr. Tiller’s expedition journal. He’d always tease me with some of his stories being around the world written in this book…”
The three of them stare at Sandra, who gives a soft smile while looking down at the book in her lap. Jack and Andrew turn to Anon in confusion. “Who’s Mr. Tiller?” Andrew asks.
“An old man that ran an antique shop, it’s apparently where she’d always run off to in highschool.”
“No way, really?!” Jack says, sitting up straighter now. “Crap, I guessed a porn shop.”
“Mine was that old abandoned warehouse.”
Sandra lets out a sigh before placing the book on the table with care, and then turning to Anon. “Well?”
“How do you know the toys are going to fit in the cupboard?” Anon asks.
“We won’t until you open the damn box!” Sandra says.
Shaking his head, Anon grabs his package before placing it on his lap. Carefully, he takes off the tape on the box before opening it up.
The smile he had turns to a shocked look of horror as he stares down at the contents of the box. The other three look at Anon in puzzlement.
“Are they broken?” Jack asks, leaning forward, trying to look into the box.
Anon reaches into the box, pulling out one of the toys in the air: it was a very colorful pony. “They aren’t Transformers… It’s… It’s My Little Pony…”
It only takes the three a few seconds before they blow up in laughter at Anon’s toys. Anon continues to look in the box, placing the toy back down and grabbing a piece of paper.
Sandra rips the paper from his hands, wiping away her mirthful tears. “Oh dear LORD this is hilarious! Okay, okay, so the paper is saying these are prototypes to a My Little Pony series they were originally going to make but cancelled for unknown reasons. It was even going to have its own cartoon series and a full on revival based around these designs.”
Having placed the box down and with the others finally calmed down, Andrew reaches in and grabs one of them. “Hmm... These aren’t actually that bad in their designs. They have some unique eyes and… their hair’s made of plastic for some reason, odd choice.”
“That one’s called Pinkie Pie,” Sandra says, looking at the paper. “And the paper says the hair is plastic to get an idea how they’d look in the cartoon, with later models supposed to have brushable hair when they mass produced the toys.”
“Yeah, that would fit more in line with a Hasbro product,” Andrew says.
“These papers say they were also designed by someone called… Lauren Faust?”
“HOLY SHIT, SERIOUSLY?!” Jack says with a mouthful of burger, now diving into the box and grabbing a toy. “She’s practically the reason the Powerpuff Girls and a whole mass of other cartoons are around!”
“Yeah, I remember she did some other cartoons as well,” Andrew says, looking at the box. “These could be pretty valuable, even more so than the Transformers, Anon.”
“…I wanted Bumblebee…” he mutters out dejectedly.
“What exactly does Lauren Faust do now?” Andrew says, grabbing a pony himself. “I only remember her going on to make some odd space-like cartoon with the Powerpuff Girl design and some cartoon series on YouTube.”
“Many years ago, and no one knows how, she somehow got some job in the higher ups in Cartoon Network and now she controls what cartoons wind up in that channel,” Jack says while inspecting an orange colored pony with a Stetson.
“I wonder if that has something to do with these being cancelled,” Sandra says, grabbing a purple unicorn.
Jack starts to grab some of the ponies, placing them into the cupboard before stopping, inspecting some of the toys a little more.
Going back over the toys a few times, he winds up placing only five of the toys in the cupboard, leaving the others in the box.
“You’re going to have to clean those other toys very carefully before placing them in the box, Anon,” Jack says, placing the box by him. “They’re pretty dirty and need some cleaning.”
“Whatever,” Anon replies back, eating a burger. Sandra slaps his head, making him choke. He coughs a few times before turning to Sandra angrily. “And that was for?”
“You didn’t even say anything on the cupboard!”
Noticing his rudeness, he lightly blushes, looking at the cupboard now with five ponies in it. “It’s a really nice cupboard, though I don’t think it deserves My Little Pony toys in it.”
“Too bad, I’m expecting those toys in it now!” Sandra says with a smirk.
Anon lets out a groan before looking at the box full of toys. Seeing the paper, he grabs it and skims it, looking back at the cupboard.
“So we have Pinkie Pie,” Anon says, pointing at the pony, “Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy… and Rainbow Dash. God, that last one looks like it was intentionally made for the “cool and hip” kids…”
“I think it looks awesome!” Sandra says, looking at the toy herself.
“Can we do something else instead of messing with these toys?” Anon asks, looking at the other three.
“Lucky for you, I brought my rule book over for just such an occasion,” Andrew says, grabbing some books and a small box from his backpack.
“I call DM!” Sandra says, trying to grab the books from Andrew.
“Hell no!” Andrew says, pulling the books from Sandra’s grasp.
“You always force us into some deathtrap that always winds up with us dead in the first half hour!” Jack says, clearing the table.
“…So? Just find a way out of the damn things you bunch of pussies!”
Anon merely watches the scene with a smile. While upset with his toys, he’s still quite happy with how everything’s turned up on his birthday with his friends.
…If only these weren’t pony toys, it’d be even better.
After several hours of playing with his friends, they all cleaned up and said their goodbyes, promising to come back sometime next week to hang out some more. Anon, now dead tired, drags his feet towards his bedroom, wanting nothing more than to sleep.
Turning off the light to his room, he lets out a loud yawn, throwing his shoes off, and foregoing stripping before making his way to the bed. He immediately stops, slowly turning his head over to the opened cupboard with the five ponies standing inside, now on the stand beside his bed.
“You stand out like a sore thumb,” Anon mumbles, looking around the room, mostly covered in his still unpacked boxes from the move over a week ago. “I really should unpack tomorrow,” he says, walking over to the cupboard and closing the door.
It creaks right back open, making Anon frown. Closing it once more, it only creaks open once again, to which Anon grumbles at.
“Darn things not even closing right,” he mutters out, inspecting the door. “Just something I need to fix as well,” he says before grabbing the key in his pocket. “But for now, I’ll just lock you up.”
Closing the door for a third time Anon sticks the key in and locks it up. He nods to himself before throwing the key someplace to his right on the computer stand and collapsing into his bed, going right to sleep.
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
Anon opens his eyes quickly, noticing something amiss. He could hear noises from somewhere, and they didn’t sound like leaky pipes. It sounds like someone trying to break into his place. Looking at the far wall, he stares at an Attack on Titan clock on it, and sees it’s four in the morning. He quickly throws the pillow off his head, throwing the sheets he was tangled in off of him before jumping out of the bed.
Reaching beside his bed, he grabs his Golden Bat, merchandise from Paranoia Agent, before making his way to his door. Looking into the living room, he sees he left the light on, helping him with his sight. Not noticing anything wrong, he walks slowly to the door, looking out the peephole of his entrance. Not seeing anything, he unlocks the door, rearing back his bat. Opening the door suddenly, he sees nothing outside it. Peeking to his left, then his right, he sees nothing there either.
“Maybe they left,” Anon mutters to himself, closing the door and relocking it. “…Or maybe they’re already inside?” he says, looking towards the bathroom, the only other place in the apartment.
Slowly walking to it, Anon gulps down a dry breathe before slamming the door open and turning on the light. Looking at the small bathroom, he sees nothing wrong.
“…Maybe they ran into my room while my back was turned,” he says, now walking towards his room.
Kicking his door down, he slams the lights on and looks around the place, but it was the same as before, with nothing out of place. After a few moments, Anon lets out a sigh, lowering his bat and placing it down against the wall.
“My mind must be playing tricks on me,” he says, wiping the cold sweat from his brow.
Walking towards the bed, ready to go back to sleep, Anon notices one thing out of place: the cupboard was now open and unlocked. Furrowing his brow, he looks at the cupboard, also noticing that the toys are gone. Anon now starts to feel paranoid at what he might have missed. There was obviously someone else in his apartment, and he somehow missed them. Maybe it was one of the guys screwing with him?
…Or maybe it’s someone after the toys? But why would they want the stupid things? Are they really that valuable? Breathing quietly, not wanting to make too much noise in fear of being heard by his intruder, Anon slowly makes his way back to the bat, only stopping from seeing something absolutely terrifying to him.
It was one of the missing ponies, the white colored one, now standing at his door, staring up at him. This is some Stephen King shit , Anon thinks, staring down at the pony that’s staring back at him.
Neither of them moves, only staring back and forth, with only them blinking at one another. Anon, empty minded at the moment, is currently having a difficult time processing the seemingly animated toy. Maybe it’s a remote controlled toy and someone’s fucking with me? Anon asks himself. But… what if I’m wrong? I could also be dreaming.
“What… in the fuck…”
“IT’S THE GIANT PONY EATING MONSTER!!!” he hears being yelled behind him.
Turning around, Anon sees a pink pony on his bed. The pony lets out a scream from being seen, jumping down into his sheets for cover. Looking back at the other pony, Anon sees it’s now got some odd purplish glow around it along with a rather large shadow on the ground surrounding it.
Slowly looking up, he now sees his Paranoia Agent bat levitating over him in a very threatening manner. Before he could react to it the bat slams down on his head in a piercing clang. He collapses towards the floor on his back from the hit in a loud thump. Letting out a groan, Anon blinks a few times, trying to clear his vision from all the duplicates around the room.
Looking up, he sees a blurred-out blue pony flapping its wings, flying above him. “HIT IT AGAIN, RARITY!”
“Oh dear, oh dear—I’M SORRY!” he hears being yelled out as the bat comes flying back towards his face once more.
“I just wanted Transformers,” is the last thing he says as the bat collides with his face, effectively knocking Anon out.
~End Chapter One~
View Online
Chapter Two - Why Can't You Be Transformers?
Running; that’s all Anon knows right now as he pants heavily from fatigue. It feels like forever with how long he’s been running down these dark streets, trying to get rid of his pursuer. Turning to look behind him, he sees something in the distance, likely the thing hunting him down currently. Loud, reverberating clicks can be heard all around Anon, slowly getting closer to him…
Trying to quicken his pace, he trips, falling flat on his face. Standing back up, he can hear the clicking of wheels loudly in the air, making its way to him. His legs feel heavy, but he continues to push them to the limit, running back down the same, dark streets.
Hoping to lose his pursuer, he rushes down an alleyway, thinking it might allow him someplace to hide or go to. After running down it, he’s met with a chain linked fence blocking his path. Grabbing onto it, he tries to climb over, only finding that his strength immediately leaves him with his arms feeling weak.
A shadow stretches down the alleyway, going past the chain linked fence and under Anon’s feet, making him nervous at how close he is to whoever this is. Turning around, Anon finally gets a good look at the person that’s been chasing him.
It was the oddest thing Anon’s ever seen: a white unicorn with rollerblades and a cap on, covering most of its face with only its unnaturally wide smile being shown. He also notices a bent, golden bat lifted in the air, almost seemingly by magic, right beside the unicorn. Standing there, Anon’s breathing starts to turn heavy, staring at whatever this is. The unicorn tilts its head, never removing the unnatural smile from its face. It starts to move slowly towards Anon down the long alleyway as the bat bounces alongside it in the air.
I’m coming for you.
There’s nothing you can do about it.
Stand there, wait, it’ll be over soon…
Pushing his back to the fence, Anon looks around for a way to escape from the madness making its way to him. The air from his lungs feel like they were punched out of him as his eyes widen in horror to what he finds. The buildings alongside the alleyway all house multiple rows of windows along the walls, with each person he’s ever met in his life in them. Every family member, friend, and people he’s disliked or just passerbies in his life are all there for him.
Their heads are turned to him, silently laugh at him with eyes closed and mouths wide. The walls feel like they were growing around him, getting tighter with every passing second, but the faces remain, forever laughing.
They knew what was going to happen. They knew that he would end up here. And they were here to witness it with glee, laughing at his demise…
Anon, unable to come to full terms with everything happening, lets out a guttural scream, wanting nothing more but to be out of this horrid scene. The unicorn now hovers over Anon, as if it had jumped the last moment, its smile even wider than before. Turning to the side, the hovering golden bat now swings full force towards Anon. He can only scream at it as the bat reaches his head in a sickening crunch.
As his vision goes dark, the very last thing he saw was the smile of the unicorn, forever smiling at him.
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
Feeling something tapping rapidly against his forehead, Anon tries to shake it off. He opens his eyes, flinching at the light being shoved into them. With his throat feeling sore and dry, he coughs a few times while blinking to regain his vision. Letting out a groan, he tries to rub his throat, only finding his hands bound to something.
Giving a tug on his arm, Anon finds it tied to what looks like his bed sheet up against his bedframe, with his other arm tied in the same manner to his computer stand. Hearing a cough, he feels something jumping off of his forehead and onto his chest. Wide-eyed, he sees that it’s one of the toys from before now glaring at him.
“Finally!” the blue toy squeaks out with its voice breaking. “You giants scream all the time or just when you go to sleep?”
Anon doesn’t answer, only staring up at the toy still standing on his chest. It lets out a grunt before jumping off, flying up to the bed above him. Looking up, he can see two of the other toys up there as well, the one who slapped him with the bat and that pink one from before, peeking from the edge.
The three of the toys start whispering to one another, gesturing towards Anon who lies there, trying to figure things out. Examining his room, he looks for two other toys, thinking that with those three there, the other two are likely around someplace nearby. He finds them up on the computer stands edge, also whispering to one another.
Grimacing at the headache that’s starting to pound away at his head, along with the injury, he lays his head back down, staring up at the ceiling, wanting all of this to go away. After a few moments of silence, he feels something thump on his chest once more. Looking down, he sees it’s the blue colored toy from before, still looking mad at him.
“Okay bub, we want to know why you took us here and how to get back!” He stares at the toy with a blank expression, not answering its question.
Seeing some movement out of the corner of his eye, he looks to his left where the other four toys somehow got to, standing there and staring at him.
“We don’t have all day!” the toy squawks out, tapping its hooves on his chest.
“I haven’t got a clue where any of you toys came from,” Anon says, unsure how to take all of this. “I just bought you from some random person online.” He looks the toys over before letting out a sigh. “You toys are the worst purchase I’ve ever made...”
The other toys look confused at that. “What do you mean by buying us?” the blue toy asks, narrowing its eyes.
“Why couldn’t you have been Transformers? At least then I’d have Optimus Prime fucking my shit up and doing the talking. THAT would have been a dream come true! Bumblebee could have been his go to man to help out with the talking, doing some double team action with Cliffjumper. But noooo! I got the castoffs of Crayola Land smacking my face into oblivion. This really sucks…”
The toys look back and forth between themselves and Anon, unsure of what to say to that. At just that moment, Anon feels something slithering down the side of his head.
A gasp can be heard from the colorful group, staring at the blood dripping down his head. “T-that’s a lot of blood,” the yellow one says, staring at Anon’s head.
“I am SO lucky I got a place with no carpeting, no blood stains to deal with.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?” the white one from before asks.
Anon stares at the unicorn, making it feel nervous. “No, I feel absolutely astounding right now so long as the pounding in my head from the crack in my skull isn’t counted into things.”
“It’s not my fault you intimidated me into hitting you! I was just… protecting myself!”
Anon sputters hearing that. “You’re kidding me, right? I intimidated you into hitting me?!” The toy, looks hesitant, but nods. “The only thing that happened was that stupid pink toy yelled out—”
“I’m not stupid, you big meanie!”
“—I turned to it, turned back to you , and then was met with a face full of bat!”
“Ehr, to be fair, your height alone intimidates us,” the one wearing a Stetson says with an odd accent, getting a murmur of agreement from the others. “You’re the tallest living thing we’ve ever seen, and that alone is a mite bit intimidating.”
“You look tall enough to even touch the moon!” the pink one says, widening its forelegs high into the sky.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Anon mutters out.
“I have a question for you,” the blue one asks. “Why do you keep calling us toys?”
“Because that’s what you all are, toys.”
“…I don’t get it.”
“When I purchased you all, you were nothing but a lump of plastic. And now you’re all lumps of talking plastic.”
The blue one blinks at you for a few seconds before looking at her shoulder and lightly biting it. “…I sure don’t taste or feel like plastic.”
“It might have been a magic spell!” the pink one says loudly, gaining the attention of everyone. “Um, at least, that’s what I would think had happened…”
“You’re telling me that some magic spell managed to turn my toys into talking toys that like to beat on its owner?”
“We’re not toys, we’re ponies!” the blue one says gruffly. “And… that’s more than likely what happened.”
“Yep, wouldn’t be the first time something like this happens to us,” Stetson pony says. “We just need to figure out how to get back.”
“The, um, box we were in might be a transporter of some kind… maybe?” the yellow one shyly mutters out.
“My cupboard magically transported you to my world…”
The five of them shrug at that. “Sounds about right,” Stetson pony says, looking up to the cupboard. “Maybe we just need to… go back into it and it’ll transport us back home.”
“Worth a try,” the blue one says right before the five of them makes their way to the stand.
The pony toys, now with something in mind on how to get back, walk over to where the cupboard is and start flying everyone up to it. Anon, hearing them talking up above, looks back at his hands, thinking with them distracted, he can get his hands free.
Examining his bindings, he feels like an idiot when he realizes he just needs to wiggle his right hand and it slips easily out of it with only a little effort. The other has no such luck, but it’s not so difficult to untie it with one hand undone. After that, he looks down, just now realizing they didn’t even bind his legs down.
Holding his aching head, he slowly stands up, feeling like he just went a few rounds with Jack all liquored up. Turning around, Anon sees the four of them staring at the cupboard with the pink one looking at them with a smile.
“Okay girls, clooooose sesameeeeeee!”
The four of them run straight at the door, slamming up against it and shoving it all the way closed.
Looking at the door, Anon can see a fairly large gouge of it gone where the lock used to be, something he missed before getting knocked out. Resisting the urge to act on seeing that, he continues to watch the ponies. Holding themselves against the door for a few seconds, the four of them back away from it, staring at the cupboard.
“…Did it work?” the quiet yellow one asks.
Without warning, the cupboard door creaks open, surprising them. The unicorn glows its horn, struggling to open the door for them to look inside better. Seeing that makes Anon curious. If the toy had trouble with the door, how did it lift the bat…?
Standing there in the middle of the cupboard is the pink pony, stiff as a board and staring straight ahead with a small smile, looking exactly as it did before it started talking.
The blue one looks at the others before walking up to the pink one hesitatingly. “I… I think it worked, girls!” it says, standing in front of the pink one.
The pink toy immediately jumps up in the air with a yell, scaring the ever loving fuck out of the blue one. It immediately drops to the ground, rolling in laughter. “I totally fooled you!”
“THAT’S NOT FUNNY, PINKIE!!!”
Anon lets out a chuckle at the scene, making the other ponies stiffen up before slowly turning around, staring at him.
“AH! THE GIANT PONY EATING MONSTER WALKS AGAIN!” the pink one yells out again, making Anon narrow his eyes at her.
“S-stay back!” the unicorn says, backing away, “o-or I’ll hit you with the bat again!”
“Do it and I’ll punt you across the room,” Anon says, making it stop in its tracks, eyes widening at his words.
Turning to his side, he looks around his unpacked boxes, seeing the one he wants, and starts going through it. Finding a small first aid kit, he grabs it and leaves the room for the bathroom to fix up his split head. Once inside, he grabs a washrag and gets it wet before cleaning up his wound, wincing at the touch.
Seeing that the cut on his head isn’t bleeding too badly any longer, he applies rubbing alcohol on the cut, hissing at the pain before wiping away any excess and putting on a large bandage.
“Stupid pony toys, bashing in my skull… It should’ve been Starscream that did it…” He inspects the bandage on the left side of his head, humming at it right before wrapping it with bandage tape to hold it better. “That should do for the time being,” he says, closing up his kit and cleaning up the blood still on the sink.
Putting the first aid kit away in the medicine cabinet for the time being, he turns to leave, stopping at seeing the pony toys on the ground at the entrance, staring up at him. Frowning at them, he starts walking out of the bathroom, forcing the ponies to make haste in retreat of his feet.
Walking past them, Anon heads straight for the fridge, opening it up and looking around. He grumbles, grabbing a cola before slamming the fridge shut and walking to the couch.
Plopping himself down onto it, he opens the can, inhaling half of the drink before letting out a loud sigh of relief. “Should’ve bought the booze over food…”
Pausing to drink some more, he notices the ponies now on the other side of the couch, currently staring at him. Still holding the can up to his lips, he lowers it, looking between each of the ponies. “What do you want?” he asks, frowning at them. “Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, teleporting home or whatever?”
“…It’s not working,” the blue one says.
“Ain’t that great to hear,” Anon mutters out, taking another gulp from his drink. “Maybe you should try harder to leave, like doing some stupid dance or whatever the hell it is your magic stuff works on.”
“There’s no reason to be grumpy about this,” the blue one remarks, making Anon glare at it.
“You’re kidding me, right? I get woken up by a bunch of Andy’s reject toys, get slugged in the face by my own bat, tied down after the fact, and now you’re telling me not to be grumpy ? I’ve got every damn right to be upset!”
The other toys ponies flinch back at that, looking down in shame.
“I’m sorry for hitting you with your bat,” the unicorn says, not looking at Anon.
“A bit late for that, don’t you think?” he asks, taking another sip from his drink. The unicorn lets out a whine, scuffing the cushion with its front hoof.
Letting out a groan, feeling a headache coming on, Anon chugs the rest of his cola throws the can on the table before getting up and going back to the bathroom. Looking around his medicine cabinet, he grabs some Tylenol before snagging another cola from the fridge and dropping back down on the couch.
Popping the pills in his mouth, he washes it down with his drink, hoping the headache goes away soon. Looking to his side, he sees the ponies are now huddled in a circle around one another talking quietly.
Anon turns away from them to drink his soda, staring at the plain, white wall. “I should’ve set up my television,” he mumbles before looking at the table in front of him.
Seeing his phone, he grabs it and looks at the signal bar: a good three out of five are glowing green. Sliding his finger to unlock it, he goes to his contacts, thinking texting the guys might help him out with this.
He immediately pauses, staring blankly at the few names in it, wondering just what he’d actually text. Oh hey, remember those pony toys? Yeah, funny story, they’re now walking around and talking, and they even managed to bash my skull in with my own bat! Hilarious, right? Could you come over and help me out with it? Just watch out, two of them can fly and another uses magic!
Shaking his head, Anon decides to try Andrew first, thinking he’d likely be up right now playing with some friends online; he’d be the most helpful.
~Hey, could you come over right now? I’ve got a little pest problem that I need help with~
Waiting a few moments while taking a sip from his drink, his phone lets out a beep and a shake.
~Sorry Anon, Jack’s my ride since my car broke down two weeks ago remember? You might have some difficulty fucking him up right now for us to come over~
Smirking, Anon starts to quickly tap away. ~I’m pretty certain Jack doesn’t swing that way, Drew. Maybe you could try it out for me and tell me how it goes~
~WAKING I MEANT WAKING STUPID TEXT!!1!1!~
Chuckling, Anon flips over to Jacks contact and starts tapping away.
~Jack~
~Jakie~
~Jaaaaack-meister~
~Yo Jack~
~JackJackJackJackJackJackJackJackJackJackJackJackJack~
Anon nods to himself, thinking the mass amount of texts would surely wake him up. Sure enough, he gets an immediate response
~wut n da fuq u want ass it fin 5~
Looking up at the wall, he does see that the clock says it’s now five-fifteen in the morning.
~Could you come over and bring Andrew right now? I’ve got a pest problem I need help with~
Drinking some more of his cola, he waits for a good few minutes for a reply.
~…Dude, you there?~
~man fuk u ass it fukin 2 erly 4 this shit we b thre next weak on weddsday now fuk off~
~Seriously man, these pests are really bugging me I need help~
~u r a pest~
After trying to text back to him to come over, Jack simply ignores him. Going back to Andrew, he starts to text quickly.
~Hey, Jack’s not coming over, can you borrow his car for now?~
It doesn’t take long for a reply. ~Told you he wasn’t going to get up, and there’s no way he’d lend me his car with how I totaled my other car~
~Thanks anyways~
~Sorry I can’t help~
Letting out a loud sigh, he reluctantly goes to Sandra’s contact, not wanting to text her but knowing she’s his last hope for some help.
~Hey Sandra, you up right now? I need you to come over if possible~
Chugging the rest of his soda, he places the can down on the table just as a text pops up.
~I am not giving you a birthday fuck~
Sputtering from reading that, his face grows bright red, typing quickly in response. ~I’ve got a pest problem I really need help with, it’s very urgent~
~I’m regretting Jack not getting you an actual fleshlight, you’re so darn needy~
Anon lets out a groan reading that. ~I’m being serious right now~
~I can’t come over until at least Tuesday to help out with whatever nasty rats are in your walls~
Screwing his face up, he slides his phone back onto the table before leaning into the couch and closing his eyes, trying to think of something to do.
Locking the toys up in something could work if they didn’t have that unicorn that can apparently use magic, Anon thinks. The pegasus ones would give me too much difficulty trying to collect anyways. I’m not interested in harming them either, no matter how fucking annoying they may be. Damn it… what in the hell do I do…?
“Um… Mister giant… whatever you are?”
Slitting his eyes open, Anon turns his head to the ponies once more who stare back at him. “Whaaaaat?”
Flinching back, the yellow one tries to speak again. “W-we were thinking of some way to get back home, you know, to, um, get out of your hair and w… i…” It slowly starts becoming harder and harder to hear, making Anon groan.
“We were wondering if you had an idea on how to get back,” the Stetson one asks in place of yellow pony.
He looks back at his open bedroom door for a moment before looking back down to them. “Did you see that nice big chunk that’s now missing from the cupboard?” The five of them look to one another, then back to him with nods. “Maybe whatever the hell that brought you five abominations here isn’t working due to the fact that it’s now missing a chunk from it. I wonder how it got like that…”
The five of them shirk, seeing him narrow his eyes at them. “I may have blasted it out to… get us free from there,” the unicorn says.
“Of course it was you…”
“It was really dark and we didn’t know what was happening, and just… wanted out and…” The pink loud one slowly stops talking, looking down at the ground. “I wish Twilight was here…” The other five sulk, hearing that name.
“…Do you know how to fix the door?” the quiet yellow one asks, gaining the attention of everyone.
“…Maaaaybe. I’m used to working on model kits though. And if this darn cupboard was actually magicked in any way, you might just need every single bit that was blown off. It might be impossible even then.” Standing up, Anon stretches his limbs before making his way to the bathroom for a third time.
The pony toys jump down off the couch, following him to the bathroom. Looking into the mirror, Anon checks out his bandage to make sure it’s still good to go for a while.
Not seeing anything majorly wrong or the bandage needing changing, he turns to go back to his bedroom. The pony toys of course follow him along, annoying him.
Standing outside his door, he turns to them. “I am now going to go back to sleep. I’m too tired to deal with this crap and a small part of me believes doing so will make you all disappear like you were nothing more than a bad dream. So go do… whatever, I don’t care.”
“W-wait!” blue pony yells out. “We need help to get home!”
“And I need some sleep.”
“Help us home and then go to sleep!”
“Figure out how to get home on your own, it’s not my problem.”
The blue one humphs at that. “He’s not going to help us; we should try getting help from someone else.”
“Yeah, good idea. I’m certain they also have an identical cupboard you all came out of too. Just watch out for anything that are bigger than you like rodents and other animals along the way, I hear they’ll give you a case of the deaths!”
“I can probably talk to them, they could also help us,” the yellow one says with confidence.
The others give out agreements to this, only making Anon look down at them like he’s staring at the village idiots.
“Look, I haven’t the slightest clue where the hell you all came from, but it’s pretty clear my world is vastly different from yours.” If you’re really not just talking toys now that is , Anon thinks. “We don’t have pets or creatures that can understand others, they’re more than likely to mess with you until they decide they’re bored and eat you bit-by-bit. You go out this door here,” he says, pointing to his apartment door, “and you’re not going to meet anything friendly out there.”
“B-but they could be reasoned with, right?” the yellow one asks in hopes that there may be something it can do to help.
Anon leans down to them. “Pony toy… thing… you’re in a new world. That means new rules, new… everything. We humans are the only true sapient creatures in this world; anything else is only going to look at you like your food. You go out there, I can’t see any of you coming out well in the end.”
The yellow one looks like it’s about to cry now, along with the others looking shocked.
“W-what about another giant if you’re not going to help us?” the blue one asks.
Anon stares blankly at that one. “Anyone else would have locked you five up with plans on getting rid of you somehow, maybe to sell and turned into exotic pets, or some other stupid thing. Hell, for all I know, the government would take you all and you’d never be heard from again. Just be lucky I’m not interested in doing that…” And now they’re all shaken up hearing that. “You can look for pieces to the cupboard after I get some sleep,” Anon says, slamming the door closed.
Taking a step, he stops and looks back at the door. Grabbing a shirt from a nearby box, he throws it on the ground and shoves it in the crack of the door, to hopefully keep them out of his room for the time being.
Making his way to the bed, he examines it, seeing it stripped with only a blanket and pillow barely hanging off of it, his sheets still down on the ground tied up.
Grabbing the blanket and pillow, he lies down on the bed and covers up, staring at the ceiling. Turning slightly to the side, he looks over at the broken cupboard.
“…Stupid toys,” he says before closing his eyes and quickly falling asleep from exhaustion.
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
Letting out a large yawn, Anon stretches his limbs. Scratching his head, he lets out a yelp, feeling the bandage on his head. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he looks up at the wall, seeing that it’s now nine in the morning, having slept less than four hours. Tempted to get more sleep, he decides it’s better to get up and make sure those stupid toys haven’t wrecked his apartment.
Getting out of bed, Anon looks down at his sheets and starts to undo them from his furniture. Throwing them on his bed, he walks to his door, taking his shirt out of the door, and throwing it on his dresser before walking out.
He looks down at the ground, making absolutely certain he doesn’t mistakenly step on them while making his way to the bathroom. Checking his bandage once again and finding nothing, he takes a quick piss before going back out to the living room.
Nothing seems particularly wrong , he thinks, looking around. Walking over to the couch, he looks around for anything the toys might have done before finding them. They’re all currently huddled in a circle on a couch cushion, sleeping quietly together. Scratching his head while taking care not to hit the wound, Anon stands there in thought of the situation.
So let’s sum everything up so far . A birthday gift from Sandra turns out to turn toys into magic talking toys. Of course for all I know, the toys turned themselves and the cupboard has nothing to do with this. Two can fly and one can use magic that I need to watch out for. They’re also claiming to have been taken from their home, just now waking up here from the sounds of things. And I’ve now got to deal with this until they turn back into toys somehow or leave…
“Why do I have to deal with this crap?” Anon asks himself, walking to his bedroom and looking at his boxes. Rubbing the back of his neck, he lets out a sigh, grabbing one of the boxes. “Might as well start unpacking…”
For the next few hours as the toys slept, Anon began to put away his boxed possessions, hoping to put some semblance of normalcy for him right then. Looking at his clothes, he simply throws them in separate drawers, planning on folding them later.
Putting the stands out to his living room, he stacks them full with his dvd’s and toys, placing posters on the wall before finally placing his television on the wall directly in the middle. Feeling a little bit better getting a lot done, he looks up at the wall and sees it’s now eleven in the afternoon. Looking at the toys, he sees they’re still soundly asleep, somewhat surprised he didn’t wake them up.
Nodding to himself, he decides a quick shower wouldn’t hurt right then. Grabbing some clothes, he takes a very fast shower, not wanting to leave the toys unattended with his stuff now out there. After drying and putting on his clean clothes, he reapplies a new bandage before walking out. Looking back at the couch, he sees the ponies are now awake, standing on the back of it and staring at him. Watching them jump down onto the cushions away from him, he waits for a few seconds, watching as they run around the couch and up to him.
Standing there, the Stetson pony walks up to him. “We were talking to one another and, well… we realized we really messed up. We probably should’ve evaluated the situation before jumping to conclusions… We’re mighty sorry about the head and all…”
The toys stare down at the ground, looking ashamed at their actions. Anon just looks to each of them on the ground.
“I’m still fairly pissed off about what happened; it’s a little hard to get over how I was beamed in the head like that and tied down.” The pony toys flinch at that. “So what’s your plan?”
“Plan?”
“Are you going to try and leave here to find a way home or whatever?”
The Stetson pony looks back at the others, then to Anon. “We don’t know anything about where we’re at, and if everything is as bad as you made it out to be, we can’t just leave…”
Anon rubs the back of his head. “Look, most people really aren’t heartless bastards, but if they saw something like you five, just out of the blue, they’d more than likely freak out and call the authorities or maybe even try to stomp you out of fear. And the very few opportunists… yeah, they’d definitely sell you or keep you as pets.”
“Why didn’t you do that to us?” Stetson pony asks.
Anon shrugs at it. “I was looking for a thief last night, my brain shut down seeing walking, talking, breathing toys. And I had time to… process this somewhat. Not all people are dicks; you just need to give them time. I’d feel like crap selling something that can talk anyways, and I’m so not interested in pets.” Especially ones that can talk and are annoying , Anon thinks.
“Um, so, we can stay for the time being?” the yellow toy asks with some hope as the others stare at Anon.
“…So long as no one tries anything, I don’t really care,” he says, looking mostly at Rarity.
The toys let out a round of sighs before whispering to one another. Anon shakes his head at the sight, hoping he’s not going to regret what he just agreed to. They immediately stop when an odd sound comes from them. Scrunching his face, Anon sees them all hold their stomachs before looking up at him.
“…You wouldn’t happen to have anything to eat, would you?” Stetson pony asks.
“You toys seriously need to eat?”
The white one walks up to you. “Whatever you thought we were, we’re ponies now, not… toys.”
Anon clicks his tongue. Turning around, he goes over to the fridge and grabs the bag from yesterday before throwing the leftover burgers in the microwave.
“Is this how you make food?” Anon hears at his feet.
Looking down, he sees the pink one staring at the microwave. “No, it’s how I reheat food that’s already made.”
“Reheating?” The pony lets out a gasp. “You know magic?!”
Anon shakes his head. “No I don’t; no one as far as I know can use magic. Magic’s something you see in fairy tales.”
“Sooooo how are you doing this?”
“Technology,” he says as the microwave beeps. Taking the burgers out, he pauses for a moment, looking at them. “Can you ponies… eat meat?”
The ponies shirk hearing that question. “Ponies can ingest meat, though it’s not something that is normally eaten, it’s more of a rare delicacy,” the yellow one says confidently. “Our normal dietary needs require fruits, vegetables, and grains of different varieties.”
“Sssssoooo, no cheeseburgers?”
“S-sorry, but it wouldn’t be a good idea for the time being changing our eating habits so suddenly.”
“More for me I suppose,” he says, taking the burgers out and placing them on a plate.
Thinking for a moment, he snaps his fingers and grabs five apples from his fruit bowl, placing them in another bowl, and walks over to his couch. The ponies follow him into the living room, getting flown up to the couch cushions just as Anon sits down.
Scooting the table closer, he places the apples individually on it for the ponies. “There you go, that should be good, or are you ponies allergic to apples?”
They all stare at the Stetson pony, who sits there, wide-eyed at them. “They’re so large…” it says, walking up to it. Taking a small bite, it sits down, tasting what’s in its mouth. “It’s… not as juicy as my apples, but not bad. I suppose the size of these things makes up for it.”
“They’re cheap-o’s, that’s why. They come in bigger sizes too, that’s not all that large.”
All the ponies immediately go to town on their apples, having some fun eating their seemingly overly large apples.
Pausing on a bite of his burger, Anon feels like he forgot something about them that might be important…
“Oh… OH! Right, hey,” he says, turning to them. “Don’t eat the seeds, they have cyanide in them. While I know horses can eat them and the small doses aren’t bad, with your size, it might not be a good idea…”
“What’s cyanide?” the blue one asks, its cheeks covered in apple juice.
“It’s a poison.”
“…Apples are poisonous?”
“To a certain degree, but it’s normally harmless. With your size though, just avoid them.”
They all turn to Applejack surprised, who looks equally surprised. “Maybe it’s just this world’s apples?”
“What if it isn’t, Applejack?”
“I… I need to check on my apples when I get back…”
Shaking his head, Anon takes a bite of his burger, trying to relax. Watching the ponies, he smirks at them when a seed pops up in the pink pony’s apple. They all let out a squeak at the seed they found, doing some small talk at needing to be more careful to this world’s “dangers”. They’re now twice as careful eating their own apples with the pink one having jumped into its own apple, now digging at the core and getting rid of the core and seeds.
Once having done that, it pops the middle of the apple out, sticking its head through it before giggling. And now all the other ponies are doing the same to their own apples, amused at the pink one’s actions. Anon soon has a table full of little ponies inside of apples, laughing and talking to one another as they eat the apples they’re currently in.
Finishing up his burger, Anon starts on his second, watching the ponies in amusement. It’s so weird, having to deal with all of this. It feels like something straight out of a cartoon or anime.
The pink one lets out a squeal, falling over on its side, and rolling around the table in a circle. The other ponies jump out of their own apples, trying to help the pink one out so it doesn’t fall off the table.
If at all possible, maybe they’ll leave soon. While all of this is sort of interesting, I’m not sure how much I can take of all this oddness.
“Mister Giant?” the yellow one quietly says below your plate.
“…Yes?”
“…I have to use the bathroom.”
“…Uuuuuuuugh.”
~End Chapter Two~
Chapter Three - More Than Toys
“And now I know you’re all girls,” Anon says, walking out of the bathroom with the fifth pony who needed help on using the toilet. “You even poop out miniature turds, how adorable!”
“T-that’s not adorable at all!” the unicorn says at his feet, running back to the couch looking red. “And couldn’t you tell we were girls in the first place?!”
Anon shrugs to that. “I’ve just been referring to you five as “its” since you’ve arrived here. I’m still having trouble thinking of you all as something other than toys.”
“This is so embarrassing,” the blue one says from the cushion with the others, who all sport matching red faces.
“It’s not like I actually looked at you all when you used the toilet.”
“Not the point!”
Shaking his head, he walks back over to the couch and sits down on it across from them. “So with that over with, before anything else happens, I think we should talk about you all being here, starting with your names.”
“Why do you need our names?” the unicorn asks without thinking.
Anon lifts an eyebrow at her. “So I can stop referring to you all by toys and have an easier time around you all. Or would you prefer it if I just called you The Murderous Unicorn?”
The white unicorn flattens its ears, looking off to the side as the pink one giggles. “It… was kind of rude of me to ask that… My name’s Rarity.”
Anon nods his head, pointing at Stetson pony. “I’m Applejack,” she says as the others line up.
“M-my name’s Fluttershy.”
“I’m Rainbow Dash, fastest pony in Equestria!”
“And IIIIII’m Pinkie Pie!”
Anon nods to them. “My name’s Anonymous, or Anon for short,” he says, taking a bite of his burger.
“So you don’t want to tell us your name?” Applejack asks. “It’s a bit rude to withhold that after asking for our own names.”
“No… that’s really my name. My mom and dad always meant good but they’d tend to… do stupid things like that. I wish they would have given me a sensible name or something better, like Logan or Clark. It’s fine, but annoying whenever I try to do something like order out for food or buy anything online. I had to personally go down to a pizza place one time and prove my name was what it was before they’d even deliver to me.”
“I… I think it’s a very nice name,” Fluttershy says, trying to not make a big deal of things.
“You have pizza here?” Rainbow Dash asks. “We could eat some of that! Giant sized pizza sounds totally awesome!” She rubs her hooves together and stares off, now in her own thoughts about how a pizza that size would be.
“If I order out, sure.” Tapping the side of his couch, he sits there in thought for another question. “…I can’t think of anything to ask you yet that can help with things so do any of you have any questions?” They all start blaring out questions quickly, making Anon flinch back at the volume. “You’re all surprisingly loud for the size you are.”
Applejack steps forward, clearly taking charge of things. “I think the first thing that needs to be asking is if you’ll be helping us get home.”
“Yes, so long as it’s not something out of my limits or anything crazy.”
“Just wanted to be clear on if you would or not. Is there anything we can look at to learn more about your world?”
Anon takes a moment to think on that one. “You could use my computer, but I’ll have to look up a website for that. I’m not exactly certain if it’ll help with this situation.”
Rainbow Dash flies up to Anon’s face, making him move back. “You said you purchased us a good while ago. Is there anything there that might be useful?”
Anon lifts his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s actually a good question!” He quickly stands up and walks into the bedroom. Looking around, he spots the box still full of toys and other things it came with. Grabbing it, he goes back to the table and plops it down. “There, that’s everything I received.”
Rainbow Dash goes up into the air, flying down to the opening of the box before looking surprised. “All our friends are here!” she says, diving down into the box.
She tries to grab onto one of the pony toys, barely managing to get it to the top of the box before falling back into it with the toy she had.
Snorting at that, Anon lifts the pony out of the box who yelps at being handled before setting her down and taking all the toys out one by one. Once everything is out along with the papers the ponies start to examine the toys on the table.
“It’s so odd seeing everypony here like this, staring straight ahead as if nothing’s wrong,” Rarity says, looking around at the toys. “It’s almost as if a cockatrice got to them all, but just freezing them instead of turning them to stone.” Rarity looks at a specific one, narrowing her eyes at it. “Is this supposed to be Berry Punch? She looks… odd for some reason.”
“She appears to be an additional pony that I’d take a guess was mostly for background work,” Anon says, looking at a stack of papers on the characters, “a generic design perhaps?”
Rarity gives Anon a confused look before looking back at Berry Punch.
“Girls, Twilight’s here!” Pinkie Pie says, getting the attention of everyone.
Now standing in a circle, the girls all look at the purple colored unicorn looking up at nothing with a smile.
Rainbow Dash pushes the toy lightly, then looking down at her hoof where some dirt now lays on it. “She’s nothing but plastic like the others…”
“There’s something… off about her,” Fluttershy says, looking to her left, then her right. “Oh, I know! Her wings are missing!”
The other four gasp, now noticing the seemingly missing wings. “Why is she without her wings?!” Rainbow Dash asks, looking horrified at the sight. “Do you know why she doesn’t have her wings?” she asks Anon with worry.
“I haven’t the slightest clue,” he answers, looking through the papers. “Maybe it hasn’t happened in the story yet, I don’t know.”
“Whoa there,” Applejack says, walking up to Anon who looks down at her, “I don’t like the way that sounds. What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Why do you think I thought you were all toys? You were all “created” with the intention of selling some merchandise and for a cartoon on television a long time ago. That’s how it was originally in this world, but something happened so that never went through.”
“So somehow those papers know about us and our world?” Applejack asks.
“Yes, but like I said, up to a point,” he answers, leafing through the papers while talking. “Whatever happened in these papers seems to have already happened in your world, so this is like a retelling of your world if you will.”
“What’s it say?” Applejack asks with the others eager to hear more.
Flipping through the papers, Anon stops on the beginning of some papers for the first season’s episode. “It says here for the synopsis of the very first episode, “Queen Celestia instructs Twilight Sparkle to go to Ponyville and help with the Summer Sun Celebration and make some friends. Twilight though is more concerned with the impending return of Nightmare Night from her one-thousand year banishment.” So does any of that make sense to you all?”
They all turn to a certain pony that’s got a very dark blue color to it, along with a crown and other odd trinkets. “They’re not queens,” Applejack says, “they’re princesses in our world. And… that sounds like right after Princess Luna returned to Equestria,” Applejack says. “That was a good while back…”
“So in terms of what’s happened in your world to this script, maybe there’s a few seasons worth of material that’s happened so far.”
Rainbow Dash walks up to a stack of papers, looking at some of the images for other things such as the designs of the characters before looking up to Anon. “So what you’re saying is all of this was made… for toys and a cartoon.” Anon nods his head. “How exactly did they know about all this?”
Anon looks at all the toys on the table, letting out a sigh. “I’m not exactly sure. I honestly wish I knew.”
“Huh,” Rainbow Dash mumbles, looking back at Twilight. “Is there anything… odd about us when we were toys, compared to the rest of these ones?”
“You were the only clean ones out of the entire box,” Anon says, lifting up a pony he sees called Cheerilee from the papers.
“If these get cleaned up, maybe they’ll also come to life!” Fluttershy exclaims, now with the others looking at her with hope.
“…Yeeeah, sure,” Anon mutters out. While I doubt this is likely to work, at least I’ll have these things cleaned up. “Let me go get some cleaning stuff,” he says before placing the toy down and getting up.
Gathering up some rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs, he places the materials down on the table for the ponies to use. Taking the cap off, he pours some of the rubbing alcohol in it for easy access.
“There you go,” Anon says, sitting back down.
“Aren’t you going to help us?” the yellow one asks, grabbing a cotton swab.
“Um… I’m going to…” Anon picks up the script papers again. “I’ll be looking through this, see if there’s anything that can help in case this doesn’t work.”
“Good idea, we’ll get started on getting our friend here cleaned up” Applejack says, rubbing some of the alcohol on the Twilight Sparkle toy. “Be careful girls, this stuff smells strong.”
“Ooh! Ooh!” Pinkie Pie hollers out, jumping over to the papers. “I want to help looking at papers!”
The other ponies nod to that, to which Anon shrugs as he looks through the papers once more while keeping an eye on everything.
“Oh wow! This shows how they thought we were going to look like! There’s some of us doing funny faces and looking really weird.”
“So the concept art I was just looking at,” Anon says, looking down at some of the images. “I’m not sure what use that’ll do you.”
“You never know until you look!” she says, going back to the papers. “Though… why are we the ones mostly in these images?”
The others stop what they’re doing hearing that question, looking up at Anon. He lets out a sigh, looking back at them.
“The show was going to be centered on the “Elements of Harmony””, Anon say, resisting rolling his eyes, “which is sort of silly sounding, but it focuses on the five of you along with a Twilight Sparkle.”
“So this show was going to be about us?” Fluttershy says, looking nervous.
“Yep. There were going to be side things such as these Cutie Mark Crusaders, like Appleseed right there,” Anon says, pointing to a very small pony, “to add in and mix things up. But for the most part, it’s all about you six.”
“Her name’s Apple Bloom,” Applejack tells Anon. “She’s usually around with two others, so I wonder why they’re not here…”
“I hope Sweetie Belle is doing well without me there,” Rarity says, looking down at the ground.
“Why doesn’t that toy have one of those butt tattoos like the rest of you?” Anon asks, trying to look through the papers on the toy designs.
“They’re called cutie marks,” Applejack says, cleaning the inside of Twilight’s ear. “When they appear on us, they tell us about ourselves, such as who we are or our special talents.”
“I don’t see anything here about them for what Hasbro used them for, I wonder if I’m missing papers to you guys; I might need to look that up online.”
“Who’s Hasbro?” Rainbow Dash asks, scrubbing Twilight’s body while keeping her head away from the cotton swab, gagging at the smell.
“The company that owns the My Little Pony IP,” Anon answers, only getting blank stares. “Ehr, that’s the name of the franchise Hasbro owns, which is where these toys originate from. The show’s full title you were all going to be in is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.”
“That sounds like something Twilight would always talk about,” Fluttershy says, looking up at the smiling toy.
“It’s also sort of a lame sounding title for a cartoon about all of us,” Dash says with a frown, “especially me. I think calling it “The Radical Tales of the Totally Awesome Ponies” would’ve been better.”
Anon ignores them at that point as they start discussing better ideas on their cancelled show while continuing to clean up the Twilight Sparkle toy, right before moving onto the princess toys. They were fairly disappointed that Twilight didn’t start talking right after cleaning her, but Anon brought up it might take a while to work, if it’d even work at all that is.
“Sheesh, how’d they get so dirty?!” Rainbow Dash asks, letting out a groan from trying to get an area cleaned out.
“I don’t know, not even sure why you five were cleaned to begin with. Maybe it’s just luck of the draw.”
“Not exactly lucky getting stuck here,” Rarity murmurs out while shining the hoof of the toy.
The entire time, Pinkie would let out a giggle or snort, looking at the papers and seeing how everyone was designed… up until she saw herself.
“Hey! It says right here in these pictures of me smiling and having fun that I was supposed to have wings!” She looks at her side, rubbing them up and down before looking at the picture with a frown. “WHY DON’T I HAVE WINGS?!”
Looking down, Anon sees that she does in fact have wings in the picture. “It might have been them wanting to balance things out in the show, so they removed the wings in your design, for whatever reason they had.”
“What balance?! I would’ve been even more fun with wings! Think of all the things I could’ve done if I had them on! I could actually party in Cloudsdale! Or hide inside clouds when I play hide and seek!”
“You already do those thingPinkie, which I still have no idea how you do that,” Rainbow Dash murmurs out.
“It looks like another pony got the wings instead in the end,” Anon says, pointing to Fluttershy flying in a picture. “See, here she is without wings,” he points out, where Pinkie is flying above her and blowing a party whistle. “And here she is with them now,” he points to, with the others also in the image with their final designs. “So that’s likely what happened.”
Pinkie Pie slowly turns her head to Fluttershy, looking at her wings, then back to Fluttershy before pointing a hoof at her. “YOU STOLE MY WINGS!!!”
“Pinkie, that doesn’t mean you were going to have them in your own world if the designs here were different… I think…”
“B-but… WINGS!”
“There’s no point in worrying about it now. And hey, maybe in another alternate reality, you have them.”
Pinkie says nothing as she sits down, rubbing the side of her body, then looking at Fluttershy. “Sooo, since this is technically an alternate reality, can I have your wings, Fluttershy?”
Anon simply slaps his face in exasperation of the situation. “Have you found anything that might help out with things?” he asks in an attempt to change topics.
Pinkie slowly averts her gaze from Fluttershy who looks very confused, right before going back to the papers as if nothing happened. ”Weeeell, things look really weird, like… um… Like somepony didn’t know exactly how things look in our world,” Pinkie says, looking at some of the images. “But I can’t tell if it helps us much…”
“What about you?” Applejack asks just as they finish the white princess toy and move on to the second princess.
Anon shakes his head. “So far, all I’m reading is a script of season one, which likely coincides with things in your world. There’s nothing about how you all got here.
“Does it say anything interesting?” Rainbow Dash asks, cleaning Princess Luna’s crown.
Anon looks down at the page he’s currently on. “There’s an episode called “Winter Wrap-Up” where… you all decide to end winter and do some singing, where Twilight tries to find something to do…”
“We do love to sing when the mood calls for it… or sometimes when it doesn’t,” Fluttershy says, shining the hooves of the pony toy. “We just really love to sing in general. Oh how I wish I could do some singing with the birds right now.”
“…Do you all sometimes just randomly break out into song, or even into a dance or routine that comes off like it was choreographed but it never was?” Anon asks.
They all blink up at Anon. “Yes, but how did you know that?” Rarity asks.
Anon purses his lips hearing the answer. “I’ve seen it plenty of times in other cartoons or shows,” Anon says, looking up at his DVD collections. “So your world is cartoony in nature which matches things I’m reading, gotchya.”
“There!” Rainbow Dash says, flying above the dark colored royal pony toy. “We got Twilight and both princesses all cleaned up! Sooo… what now?”
“That was fast,” Anon says, looking at the very clean looking toys, then back to the ponies. “…Don’t you want to, I dunno, clean the others?” Anon asks.
“We all thought that if it does work, we probably don’t want to accidentally bring everypony over here to this world,” Applejack says, looking over to the other toys.
“I guess that makes sense,” Anon says with a sigh. “At least those three are cleaned,” he says to himself, right before placing all the toys beside one another, keeping the three cleaned ones by themselves.
“Was there nothing in the papers that could help out?” Fluttershy asks looking at the stack of papers Anon was looking at on the couch.
Standing up, Anon picks up the papers and places it down in front of them. “Nothing I could find that might say how you all ended up here, but you’re more than welcome to look through them.”
“Don’t forget the papers over here!” Pinkie says, lifting up a page and shaking it.
The ponies, staying optimistic about things, dive right through the papers, hoping to find something that could tell them how to get home while waiting to see if anything happens to the now cleaned toys.
Anon watches them crawl all over the table, talking to one another about what they read, seemingly still in high spirits regardless of the situation they’re in.
Clicking his tongue, Anon slouches in his couch, looking up at the ceiling in thought. Thinking back on things, he starts to doubt that it’s the toys themselves that actually changed.
Otherwise, why didn’t they wake up when he first opened the box? It had to be that cupboard he got for his birthday.
Did that old man have anything to do with this? If so, it’s very odd that he’d let this happen without a warning of any sort. Unless he wanted this to all happen. But why would he want that? And how do I get in contact with him to find out how to fix all this?
Anon’s eyes light up almost immediately. Sasha! She should know how to talk to him, or even about fixing all this!
With that thought in mind, he wonders if she knew this was all going to happen. Is that why she wanted to see the pony toys in there? Or is she just as clueless to any of this happening?
Feeling a tug on his shirt, Anon looks down on it and sees it pulling in the air without anything actually pulling it. Looking at the ponies, he sees the unicorn with its horn lit up, clearly the one doing this.
“Sorry,” Rarity apologizes, “but we were trying to get your attention and you seemed to be spaced out.”
“No, it’s fine,” he replies, straightening back up. “Did you find anything useful?” Anon asks, now doubtful there’d be anything there to help.
“These pages of yours are… scarily accurate,” Rarity says, looking back to them. “There are some things off, but for the most part, they know a lot about us and our lives.”
“They’re really scary,” Fluttershy mumbles out, not liking the pages one bit. “Something like this… how would anypony be able to get all this without knowing us?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Anon says with a small shrug. “For all I know, everything else in our world is like this and all our stories are real in some other dimension.” Anon pauses for a moment when something pops in his head. “Or, maybe you all just think your world and everything else is all real when you came to life…”
Rainbow Dash frowns at that. “Are you trying to say everything we know isn’t real and it’s all made up?” She lets out a huff, looking away at him. “I don’t believe that, I just can’t!”
“Let’s try to stay positive, Dash,” Applejack says to her. Rainbow Dash lets out a snort before sitting down on the papers, still frowning. “Anyhoo, other than the papers knowing us, we can’t seem to find anything that might help us get back home.”
“What about this?!” Pinkie squeaks out loudly, lifting up the corner of a page and poking it. “This looks reeeeeaally weird, even weirder than the picture with Rarity looking fat—”
“I was NOT fat!”
Pinkie ignores the irate pony. “It looks like it’s being covered here!”
Leaning in, Anon sees what Pinkie is talking about; an area of the page with something smudged on it. Grabbing the page, he sees what appear to be some words being hidden with Wite-Out.
“We didn’t know what to make of this but it didn’t seem all that important,” Rarity says, lifting up some other pages with the same thing.
Looking at them too, Anon has some difficulty making out what’s being hidden. Flipping through the pages quickly, he sees they all have the same thing on each one.
“Maybe I can find something out on the computer, this could be important,” Anon says.
Grabbing all the papers, he goes into his bedroom and straight to his computer. Turning on the screen, he immediately goes online and starts looking up info on the pages and what he purchased.
He doesn’t get very far, only coming up with news on what Hasbro is currently working on.
Taking a moment, he looks up the person he purchased everything from. Putting his search into the name as well, it doesn’t take long for him to come up with info relating to his purchase.
He’s not very happy with what he does find. He immediately flips his keyboard at the computer in anger with a yell.
It bounces off the wall right beside the monitor right before dropping to the ground. Anon slams his computer stand with both fists in frustration before placing his head down on it.
“A-Anon?” Letting out a groan, he turns his head to the side and looks at the ground, finding the ponies there. “Is something wrong?” Fluttershy asks.
“…I got ripped off,” he replies, looking back at his computer. “I bought some damn reproductions of the prototypes from some idiot that’s been trying to sell them for a while.” He lets out a curse before bending over to his side and picking up the keyboard, ignoring the scattered papers now all over the floor. “I knew I should’ve done some research on the product, but I just got too darn excited at the idea of getting Transformers!” Placing his keyboard down, he stands up with a sigh and starts picking up the papers. “And now I’m out over four hundred bucks on reproductions of a franchise I wasn’t even interested in…”
“That sounds like a lot of money,” Rarity says, lifting up some pages with her magic to help him.
“Thanks,” he says, grabbing the papers. “And it is. It really sucks finding out I just wasted my money like that.” He lets out a chuckle, looking at the papers. “It’s a nice touch adding the papers, making it look more official. It must have taken a long time to collect all the info for this. Too bad the wite-out is such a bad job or I’d be convinced it was the real thing.”
“At least we know it’s not about the toys that brought us here,” Rainbow Dash says with an awkward chuckle.
Standing up with the papers, Anon walks back out into the living room with the ponies following him.
“So the cupboard is what brought us here, right?” Rainbow Dash asks, flying above the others.
“I doubt some idiot on the internet would send reproductions that could come alive, so it’s most likely that,” Anon answers, placing the papers down and looking down at the toys on the table.
“Then we just need to collect the other pieces to the cupboard so you can fix it and we can all go home!” Pinkie says enthusiastically with the others nodding their heads with smiles.
“I should probably wait for my friend to get here before I try anything with those pieces,” Anon says, grabbing his phone from the table.
“Why’s that?” Applejack asks. “We have a solution home, so why wait?”
“She’s the one that gave me the cupboard just yesterday, which came from some old man she knows. For all I know, gluing the pieces back onto the cupboard could just make things worse, so we need to wait for her.”
“Why would she give you a cupboard that could do this?” Pinkie Pie asks with a frown. “That’s not very nice.”
Anon tsks at her, looking through his phones map. “It was a birthday gift. And I doubt she even knew about it. If she did, she probably would’ve kept it herself and put Lego people in it.”
“Why Lego people, whatever those are?” Rainbow Dash asks.
Anon pauses, staring up and away from them. “Reasons.”
The others look to one another, unsure about that answer as Anon goes back to sliding his fingers around his device.
After a few moments of silence, Fluttershy walks up to Anon slowly and sits a few feet away from him. “So the cupboard was a birthday gift?”
“…Yes,” Anon says, not looking away from his phone.
“S-So we were supposed to be… gifts too…”
“Yeah, and it didn’t turn out like I was hoping it would.”
Fluttershy looks at the ground, moving her hoof around in a circle. “I-I’m sorry we were bad gifts…”
“It’s nothing to apologize about,” Anon says, still looking through his contacts.
“Why didn’t you like us?” she asks.
“I was expecting large, awesome robots, not… small colorful ponies.”
“Could we get you a better birthday while we’re here?” Pinkie asks. “I can help if with that.”
“My birthday was fine, there’s no need to do that.”
Fluttershy takes a moment to herself, trying to stay calm. “I… I want to show you that you can also like ponies, like you can your robots! Maybe before we go home you can give us ponies a chance…”
“…Maybe,” Anon answers, doubtful on that. I’m not even sure why she’s bringing this up.
“So anyways,” Rainbow Dash says, moving things somewhere else, “we just have to wait on this friend of yours. When can she get here?”
“…Tuesday.” The ponies all look at him in confusion. “Today’s Saturday, so that’s not for another three days, not counting today.” They all let out a groan hearing that. “For the time being, you all are just going to have to stay here.”
“We should go collect the other pieces, girls,” Rarity says, walking back to the bedroom, “we wouldn’t want them to get further lost before then.”
She immediately stops in her tracks when a rumble goes out. The others make similar rumbles before slowly turning around and looking up at Anon with sheepish smiles.
“I was just looking up some places to order out,” Anon says. “I’m too tired from all this crap to make anything so I’m ordering out. I’m in the mood for some pizza anyways.”
“Yes!” Rainbow Dash squeals out. “Can you make it a large?!”
Anon stares at her. “You realize it’s going to look large enough with your size, right?”
“B-but it could be even larger!”
He lets out a sigh at that, still looking around for a pizza place close by. “It’s going to take around an hour or so before it gets here, just so you know” Anon says.
“That’s plenty of time for us to find the pieces!” Pinkie Pie says, pushing the others towards the bedroom.
Finding a local mom and pop pizzeria, he quickly orders a pizza, making sure one half was vegetarian and pays with his credit card before sitting down on his couch and relaxing for the time being.
He can hear the pony’s voices in the other room along with the clicking of their hooves on his hardwood floor, looking around for pieces of the cupboard. Turning back to what’s on the table, he picks the papers up, deciding it might be a good idea to see if there’s anything there about the ponies now with him. Going through them, he finds a bio page of the ponies along with pictures of their toy version being displayed by them.
“That should’ve been the first clue to this not being official, why would there be photo images of the toys themselves here?” Anon says before reading through some of the pages.
Most of what he reads deals with very basic things about their characters, such as Fluttershy being shy and kind and caring for animals, or how Rarity is very generous to others.
“She was quite generous with that bats swing power,” he says, rubbing the bump still on his head.
Hearing his doorbell, Anon gets up and walks to it, looking out the door sights. Surprised to see the pizza man, he opens the door. “Did you seriously just climb three sets of stairs to deliver this?” he asks, seeing the man winded.
“I might have,” he says, holding the pizza out to Anon. Hearing something clatter in the back, he tries to peek inside where Anon moves to keep him from looking in. “Sounds pretty active in there,” the man says with a smirk.
“PINKIE, DON’T EAT THINGS THAT ARE JUST LYING AROUND!” Rarity screams out from the back room, making Anon suck in his breath.
“I CAN’T HELP IT, I’M HUUUUUUNGRYYYYYY!”
The pizza man shakes his head with a large grin. “Dude, you have two girls back there?! You lucky bastard.”
“Yeah… lucky…”
“I’ll leave you alone with them,” the man says, giving Anon the pizza box. “You enjoy your night!” the delivery man says, walking away, still smirking.
Shaking his head, Anon closes the door. “Odd he didn’t have me sign anything,” he says as he turns around, right before spotting all the ponies now standing on the couch, staring up at him in hunger.
“Are there apples in that pie of yours?” Applejack asks.
“It’s half veggie, half meat,” Anon answers.
Walking over to the table, he places the papers in the box before moving it and placing the pizza down. Opening the top, the ponies clamber onto the table, looking inside.
Anon starts to serve the pizza over on the lid for them before grabbing a slice and starting to eat. Pinkie’s first reaction is to belly flop right into it, to which Anon grimaces at. The others chuckle at that as they try to figure out how to eat the oversized food, mostly being covered in cheese and sauce in the process.
“And now you all need baths,” Anon mutters out from a bite,” just terrific.” The ponies innocently stare up at him, mouths full of cheese and sauce. Anon lets out a sigh, going back to his pizza. “I suppose I’d do the same if I encountered an oversized pizza.”
“A bath sure would be nice,” Rarity says, trying to keep from the carnage left from the others while munching on a green pepper. She lets out a squeal seeing Pinkie somehow throwing an entire slice face down on her.
“You’re not trying the entire pizza out, Rarity!
The others snicker as Rarity tries her hardest to move the slice off her, now covered in sauce and looking angered. Everyone looks away with a scrunched up face, trying not to laugh.
“Why did you have difficulty lifting that?” Anon asks, throwing his crust in the box and grabbing another slice.
Rarity tries getting the sauce off, only managing to smear it more into her fur. “There isn’t much magic in this giant world of yours, so it’s difficult replenishing it inside myself.”
“Ah, you used it all on that bat then,” Anon says. “Hopefully you get your magic back; it might be needed to getting you all home.”
“I can’t use a lot of spells, mostly levitation and a spell to hunt down gems,” Rarity says, pulling a mushroom out of her hair. “I probably won’t be of much use for you all. Twilight would have been a better choice here for magic.”
“It could still prove useful if we need t—” Anon pauses, looking at the blue pony, trying to grab some of the meat pizza. “You really think that’s such a good idea with what your friend said earlier?”
She looks back at Fluttershy as everyone else stares at Dash. She simply shrugs before looking back up to Anon. “I’ve been around griffins, it’s cool. I really want to see how it tastes.”
“What… type of meat is that?” Applejack asks, lowering a mushroom from her mouth.
“It’s mostly pork, why?”
Applejack’s ears lower with her looking sickened. “That sounds an awful lot like pig to me.”
“I’ve had calydonia before, Applejack,” Rainbow dash says. “And it’s not like these are sapener—whatever the word is… right?” Rainbow Dash asks, turning to Anon.
“I think you mean sapient, and that’s right. Only humans are sapient in this world.”
Nodding her head, Dash grabs a sausage piece and takes a small bite of it, chewing it over a few times before letting out a hum. “Tastes different from how the griffins prepared it, much sweeter tasting. Sort of greasy though.”
“So there’s griffins in your world?” Anon asks.
“Yeah, we have a lot of different beings in our world like them, like chimeras, parasprites, and dragons,” Rainbow Dash answers, trying to now take a bite of bacon. “This is pretty tough to chew into, but it’s really tasty.”
“Your world seems to have a lot of mythological creatures from our own tales,” Anon says.
“Really?” Fluttershy flies up over closer to Anon, covered in sauce. “Maybe you could tell us about your worlds creatures later on, if there’s time, that is.”
“Tomorrows a dead day for me before I go back to work, so there’s not like I’ve got much to do.”
Fluttershy claps her hooves together, showing a large smile while hovering in front of Anon. “Oh that is great! I can’t wait to hear about your worlds creatures! Oh, do you have ponies here too?!”
Anon pauses from a bite hearing that. A smile starts to spread on his face. “Why, yes… yes we do. I can show you those tomorrow.”
The others don’t like the smile on his face, unsure what it means while Fluttershy remains oblivious to it, too preoccupied with thoughts of animals at the moment.
Sitting back, Anon watches as Pinkie starts bugging Rainbow Dash about trying out calydonia, with Dash recanting tales of how she took down a large boar with griffins helping. He couldn’t help but feel fascinated hearing her tale, even though much of it feels hammed on.
The others start adding in things about other creatures they’ve met, allowing Anon to hear much about their world. Anon meant to ask more about who they are themselves but finds himself too pulled into what they’re currently saying to do so.
I can do that tomorrow , he thinks, listening to how Applejack took on something called a timberwolf. Maybe then, I can also get help from someone else as well.
~End Chapter Three~
