Author's Note

Hello, to anyone that happens across this story! Also, seeing as you’ve opened the chapter and are reading this, thank you. I realize that..not much I’ve written has really been..good. But that was almost three years ago, and I’ve been studying writing styles ever since. I also realize that HiE stories are not well received. But I won’t let that stop me. Just, thank you for giving this a chance. This story basically was a concept that came to me in a semi-lucid dream. Yes, it will involve me, or at least a future me, several years from now, because that’s the only way the story works, not because I’m trying to fulfill every brony’s fantasy. I will be trying some things I’ve never tried before in my other, now dead and soon to be removed or revised stories, and we shall see how it goes.

Beginnings of a new day

Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep the alarm clock rang out in its monotone electronic voice, each beep growing louder to add to the collective message: “WAKE UP”.

“Murgh” the form under the covers managed to groan out, before reaching a hand up and slapping the snooze button like it was a mosquito, silencing the alarm. His reprieve was short lived though, as ten seconds later the stereo across the room clicked on and the android phone connected to it by cable started to blast a familiar, orchestral-sounding song with rock and electronic blended together.

“Alright, alright, I’m up!” The figure yelled to no one in particular. Rising from the bed, and throwing the covers aside, Dan stood up. Stretching his back as he crossed the room, he silenced the phone, unplugged it from its charger and aux cable, and shut off the stereo. Yawning, he checked the time. 6:30, same as always. But strangely, he had no service. A quick thought crossed his mind to check the relay antenna he had built later, as it was the only way he got phone service in this forest he lived in. With a shrug and another yawn, he put the phone down and headed off to shower.

Dan stood in the shower, letting the warm water blast the sleep away while he gathered his wits for the day. The night’s sleep had been quite fitful, full of dreams of strange multicolored lightning and lots of chanting in a language he could not understand nor pronounce. Passing it off as just a strange dream, he finished his shower and went to get dressed.

After donning a shirt and some pants (because pants are essential when leaving the house), he stepped back into the bathroom. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he took a look at himself, then realized everything looked fuzzy. Chuckling at his mistake, he quickly inserted his contact lenses, and turned his gaze back to the mirror. The same face that had always stared back at him his entire life now looked into his eyes. He was tall, but not too tall, standing at about 6’3”, and not exactly pencil thin, he had a bit of a pudge. Clad in blue jeans and an old T-shirt for AKA racing tires, he had a very plain look about him. His dark brown hair grew wildly as usual, and he grabbed a comb to attempt to tame the storm. When he was satisfied that his hair was in order, or, at least as much as it was ever going to be, he grabbed the trimmer off the charger for a quick shave. After all, this was his first day back to work after a massive layoff months ago, and he wanted to look his best.

Checking the time once more, he noticed it was getting dangerously close to 7:00, and decided he had better get going. He ran back to his room to grab his work boots, slipping them on his feet and tying them tight. He also grabbed two Gerber folding knives, both half serrated. One went in his right pocket, his faithful RipStop folder, while the other one, a Tanto styled folder, went in his boot, between his skin and sock. With that, he was ready. Grabbing his phone, he headed out to the garage entrance.

Flicking on the light to his garage, two cars sat in front of him, begging him to make a choice. The first, was an old, somewhat dented 1998 MK3 VW Jetta, silver in color. It had been his first car, and since then, he always drove three-pedal. The engine had nearly 350,000 miles on it, yet it still ran like a top, and got nearly 40MPG, despite its age. He loved that car, and the 5-speed made it awesome to drive. Coupled with the nearly bulletproof 2-liter engine, it was an amazing economy car.

The second car was a bit different, a 2008 MK5 VW Golf R32, blue in color. This car, he had gotten cheap, due to a blown transmission. That had been easy enough to fix, a set of hardened race gears and a newer armored Haldex unit solved that little problem, and a double disc race clutch didn’t hurt either. From there, it had been a cake job to drop forged steel pistons, hardened head bolts, harder valve springs, reinforced timing chains, and a set of roller rod bearings into the engine, all so it could handle the supercharger hanging off the side. He had left the car sitting at the height range it belonged, only lowering it ever so slightly, he could not stand what was known as “rice rockets” (Side Note: R.I.C.E. stands for “Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements”, it is not a derogatory term) that scraped the ground. Coupled with a software change to the ECM, courtesy of a pirated APR tuning setup, this thing was a monster. And as much as he loved his old jetta, this was the car he was taking to work today.

“Hope I can catch Justin at the light again, give that STI a run for its money this time” He said to no one in particular once again, as he pulled open the door. He was of course referring to his supervisor, an Ex-Marine who drove an STI with some major upgrades. He had smoked Dan at a stop light one morning several months ago while he was driving the Jetta, and Dan was eager to finally have the chance to show him up. His STI may be fast, but Dan’s R32 was faster. While they shared all-wheel-drive, Justin’s car had an H-4 engine, with a turbo supplying 22 pounds of boost. Dan had a V-6 with a super pushing 35 pounds. “Game on”, he whispered with a grin, pushing in the clutch and turning over the engine. The engine roared to life, twin cams clicking away, and the supercharger adding a very deadly sounding hiss to the car, like a snake ready to strike. The radio head unit in the dash immediately picked up on the iPod plugged into it by USB, and began playing modulated, thumping and bassy music. Pushing the button on the garage door opener, he carefully backed the car out and over the driveway, finally backing out onto the dirt road his house was situated against.

Dropping the car in gear, and with a scream of the engine and dump of the clutch, Dan and his car surged forward, spraying dirt from all 4 tires. The trip through the forest was very eventful, with plenty of corners to drift around, and even more straightaway to pick up speed in. Though, for some reason, Dan couldn’t help but feel like he was being watched. The moving shadows he kept seeing out of the corner of his eye didn’t help this feeling either. Putting it out of his mind, he kept driving.

The road turned a sharp corner (which of course he drifted around) before opening up into a wide clearing. This caused Dan to stab the clutch and brake, bringing the car to a quick stop. “This isn’t right,” he said aloud over the music “Where’s the road?”

He was of course referring to the paved road that he should have reached by now, which seemed all but nonexistent. Popping the car out of gear and ripping the E-brake, he stepped out of the car to look. Ahead, he estimated about a mile and a half, maybe two, was a small town. But something was wrong. The town seemed…cartoon-like. And painfully familiar, if he could only just place from where….

His eyes suddenly snapped fully open with realization. “No….” he breathed “It can’t be.” Scrambling to retrieve his phone from his pocket, he noted that he still had no service as he quickly opened the picture gallery, calling up a specific image from the SD card.

It had been years since he had last watched the show, and yet, holding his phone up against the landscape he saw before him, there it was. Ponyville. How could this happen? How did this world even exist? How did he end up here, of all people, of all places? And how was he going to get to work now?

“HOW?!?!” He screamed into the sky, more out of surprise than aggravation. Realization slowly sunk in as he lowered his head. “This is like all of those crappy fan-fics I read years ago” He muttered, standing there unsure as to what to do. Then a thought struck him like a bolt of brain-lightning.

He had gotten ready this morning perfectly unaware of the situation that now perplexed him, seeing as he had both power, and running water to his house. He had to get back there, had to see if anything else was working, and if he could figure out what the hell was going on. He jumped back into the car, slamming it into gear and dumping the clutch, whipping the car around by sheer torque. Racing back to his house, he noticed that he could no longer see the shadows out of the corner of his eye.

Reaching his house and whipping into the driveway, he quickly shut off the engine and dove out, closing the door and locking the car. A move which, the voice in the back of his head told him, was pointless. If he was correct about where he was, nothing in this world would even know what a car IS, never mind be able to steal one. Running inside through the front door, Dan nearly tripped over a Short Course truck he had left laying out after a blast run through the mud, evident by the mud that now caked the tires and body in every area possible. He sprinted to the living room and quickly powered on the gaming PC he had hooked up to his TV as an ‘ultimate game console’, as he had affectionately called it. The large flatscreen TV quickly flared to life, followed by the word “ASUS” and then a Windows boot screen. The PC booted in a record 18 seconds, and in no time, Dan was staring at his desktop. He grabbed the wireless keyboard/touchpad sitting on the couch and flopped down, attempting to open Chrome. Chrome quickly returned with an error page “unable to connect to the internet”. Perplexed, yet somehow not surprised, Dan keyed in the gateway address to his router to make sure it hadn’t just dropped the connection again. It hadn’t. Both the modem and router were doing their jobs as designed, yet there was no connection to the internet. Dan quickly flipped a button on the remote for his TV, switching HDMI inputs from the computer to his cable box. A blue “no signal” screen awaited him.

With a sigh, Dan flipped the TV back to the PC input and grabbed the cordless phone from its base next to the couch. The display read “check tel line” and when he opened the line, all he heard was a hiss of a dead line. With another sigh, he tossed the phone gently onto the couch next to him. “I guess I shouldn’t expect it to be this easy, “ he said with a slight laugh “after all, real life don’t work like a fan-fic.”

He was interrupted by a light rapping on his front door, and a very quiet female voice calling out. He had to strain to listen, it was so faint “Um…hello? Is..is anypony there? I heard a scream, and..oh, I hope nothing bad happened!” Dan stiffened at the sound. There was no way. She…she was just a cartoon character in a show he used to watch years ago. But..well, if he was in the world he found no evidence to believe he wasn’t in, then she had to exist too. He jumped up from the couch, sprinted to the door and opened it.

There, standing on his front stoop, was Fluttershy.