I came, I saw, I sat in a comfy chair.
Walking through the streets of Ponyville was unreal. The color, the vibrance, the sheer thrill of it was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. While it was easy to keep up with Lyra, I kept stopping to marvel at all the sights that were there for me to see; there was Big Mac with his apple cart, just like the show! There were Time Turner and Derpy, messing about with some kind of phone booth! I could even see the top of Twilight’s library poking up over the horizon. I slapped myself on the cheek. This was way too good to be true. I was living every brony’s dream, walking right through Ponyville! I could barely keep myself from jumping up into the air and whooping with joy!
“Come on, Jaxxon, if you keep stopping like that, we’ll be out till sundown,” called Lyra from the end of the street. Ponies all around were stopping to wave at me, which I returned happily, but none of them seemed all too shocked about a human just appearing in the middle of their village. I guess it had something to do with grandpa. Reluctantly tearing my eyes away from Cheerilee’s schoolyard, I jogged ahead to keep up with my rescuer.
Lyra and I walking together in silence for a while, her picking her way expertly through the maze of cottages and stores, and me following her and just…living. For the first time in months, I felt alive. The air smelled clean, the sun was shining down like a huge disc of gold, and I was in Equestria. Life couldn’t have been any sweeter.
Except…
Who were those gunmen who had come for me back at my house? A shadow seemed to fall over my mind. Without a doubt they would have searched through my computer by now and figured out that I was the one they were after. Probably booby trapped the place too. Maybe placed a sniper on the apartment opposite. Bastards.
I felt something on my leg. I looked down at Lyra, who was staring up at me in concern.
“You okay?” she asked.
I forced a smile back onto my face. “Yeah. I’m just a little shaken, that’s all.”
There was more to it than that, and it must have shown on my face but the mint green pony just nodded understandingly and started walking again. I followed suit, shoving the memories of the men in red out of my mind for now.
Arriving at Lyra’s house, I was ushered in, much to my excitement. Even on the show, they’d never shown the inside of Lyra’s house! Now, I’ll just get something out of the way. I love Lyra. She’s my favorite pony of all time, so you can probably get how pumped I was if you can imagine being invited into the home of your favorite pony like an honored guest.
Yeah. I wish it has stayed like that. But I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you; shit went down pretty fast after that.
Anyhow, once I entered, I was pleasantly surprised to see another familiar face: a beige colored earth pony with a deep blue and pink mane and tail, and a cutie mark that depicted three sweets on her flank.
“Welcome home, Lyra!” Bon Bon chirped. Leaving the flowers that she had been arranging on the table, the beige mare hurried over and gave Lyra a hug. “And you’ve brought home a guest!” She turned to me, giving me her biggest smile. “My, what a tall human you are! Welcome to our home, Mr....?”
“Uh, Jaxxon.” I said. “Jaxxon Citadel. It’s great to finally meet you, Bon Bon.”
Bon Bon was in mid nod when she suddenly gave a start. “How do you know my name?”
Now, I had two options here. Either I could tell her that her whole world was actually just a cartoon that a toy company back on Earth had made to sell their products, or I could make something up. Not willing to get myself thrown in in mental asylum quite so soon, I grinned nervously as my eyes darted around the room.
There! An envelope, sitting on the mantelpiece! I couldn’t read it, but for sure it had to have an address on it.
“Uh, well, I just read it on that letter over there, so since I’ve already met Lyra, I figured you had to be Bon Bon.”
Bon Bon glanced at the fireplace then back at me. “You have remarkable eyesight, Mr. Jaxxon,” she complimented. “Listen, I need to go to Sugarcube Corner to pick up a little something, but I look forward to getting to know you as soon as I get back.”
“That sounds great. And please, just call me Jaxxon.”
Nodding once more, the beige pony trotted off to get her saddlebag. As for me, I followed Lyra into the living room and at her behest, sat down in an armchair that was noticeably bigger than the rest of the furniture.
Lyra took a seat opposite me, grinning like she had just won the lottery. While I was still inwardly beaming at the idea of having made it into Equestria, it also brought up a whole host of new questions, not even counting how Lyra knew my granddad or how those gunmen had been involved.
Neither of us seemed to know what to say; I definitely didn’t. Smiling awkwardly, I gestured to a photo hanging over the fireplace.
“Nice photo.” I ventured, then instantly cringed at how dorky that must have sounded.
Lyra, however, didn’t seem to think so. Lighting up her horn, an aura of magic enveloped the frame and levitated it over between us. “It’s a picture of the last Winter Wrap-Up,” she explained, smiling fondly at it. Captured by the photographer were Lyra, Bon Bon, Roseluck, and Lily, all crowded around a freshly de-iced pond and all looking like they were having the time of their lives. “Princess Twilight put together a whole new schedule for Ponyville, so we actually finished ahead of schedule that time.”
“Cool,” I said, trying to share in her enthusiasm, although since I hadn’t done a Winter Wrap-Up before, I felt as though I couldn’t really relate.
I chewed my lip while Lyra replaced the picture. This wasn’t quite how I would have planned my first trip to Equestria. Not at all. But when life gives you gun toting gangsters, you make polite conversation with ponies.
“Look,” I said as Lyra finished hanging up the photo. “You saved my life back there at my house. I owe you big time for that, Lyra.”
She blushed lightly and waved a hoof half-heartedly. “Hey, what was I supposed to do, just let you get killed? I’d have let down your grandfather if I had.”
There is was again, the mention of my granddad. I couldn’t hold back any more.
“Listen,” I said, trying to maintain a pleasant expression. “You keep talking about my grandpa like you knew him, but I…I don’t…”
“You don’t what?”
“I…I don’t know where to begin,” I admitted, hanging my head. It was partly true. In my heart, I couldn’t bring myself to tell these ponies that they were nothing but the product of a corporate company’s marketing scheme. That would be cruel beyond measure.
I could feel Lyra’s eyes on me. Finally she spoke. “You’ve had a pretty rotten day, Jax, so maybe I should be doing the explaining.”
The unicorn slipped the book from her back and placed it on the coffee table between us. It was about half the size of a sheet of A4 paper, and about an inch and a half thick. The cover was browned with age and the bronze fittings were tarnished. Clearly this book was very old, but it still didn’t explain much at all.
“This book was given to me by your grandfather, Jaxxon. He arrived here a few years back, looking like he’d been hit by lightning and blabbering about some kind of parallel dimension. I found him and took him to Ponyville Urgent Care and they managed to save his life.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Grandpa Stanley had been to Ponyville…before me? I was about to open the book when I remembered that I was still the guest here.
“May I?” I asked Lyra. She nodded somberly and continued talking while I cracked open the musty pages. I was a little disappointed; the pages were filled up from border to border with formulas and equations and glyphs, none of which I understood.
“While Stanley Citadel was recovering, Princesses Celestia and Luna came to meet him…he was our first ever human, after all,” Lyra chuckled. “I was able to talk with him a lot since I found him and all. He was a pretty cool human.”
“Yeah…” I wasn’t really paying attention. Flicking the pages left and right, the book seemed reluctant to yield its answers to me so easily. Finally, I shut it and went back to listening to the story about my grandfather.
“…he said that he’d used a prototype of some kind of book to get here, but the book wasn’t finished when he’d tried it so he almost got killed. Eventually he wanted to go home, so Princess Celestia had Twilight Sparkle help him complete the book so he could use it to get home.” Lyra pointed at the old tome. “That’s it right there. I used it to get to you.”
I frowned. If he’d arrived here a few years back, that would put it on par with when grandpa had reportedly gone through a major personality reboot. Was this book responsible for my grandfather’s death? And, I thought with a twinge of horror, what if using the book had some kind of negative effect on me?
“Uh…Lyra…the book is safe to use, right?”
“Well, sure. Your grandpa used to come here all the time after he perfected the book. In fact, that’s his chair you’re sitting in now; none of the normal furniture here was quite big enough.” She said with a smile. “Eventually he’d let ponies tag along with him to your world too, but only at night and under an invisibility spell. I even saw you a few times, but you were a bit shorter then.”
“Wait, grandpa took you to see me? When...why didn’t he tell me?”
All those years of watching the show, all those years of wishing at night that just one pony would pop out of nowhere and say hi to me, and it turned out that ponies had been spying on me the whole time while I was sleeping? I didn’t know whether to laugh or be indignant.
Lyra took the book back gently, cradling it like it was made of glass. “Probably because he promised the Princesses that he’d keep it a secret. After a few trips to your world, Celestia and Stanley quickly agreed that no good would come of too many humans learning that a whole new world was literally just a turn of the page away. No offense,” she added hastily. “Your grandpa also made sure no ponies stayed in the human world past sunrise, so it’s all even.”
“Oh.” Was all I could say. “So I guess when he died, my grandpa gave the book to you?”
“Yep. We were all devastated to hear that his heart condition had reached the terminal stage but he…” Lyra stopped to blink away some tears. “…he told us it was for the best and asked us to send him back and to leave the book here. He…he asked me to take care of it for him.”
“Why not the Princesses?” It seemed a more logical choice to me.
Lyra gave me a look. I couldn’t tell if it was doubt, puzzlement, or something else, but it was obvious I’d said something wrong. Damn it, Jaxxon. Get it together.
“Stanley Citadel was the first human I’d ever seen in my life, and I was the first pony he’d ever seen,” she explained. “I guess we were just best friends by the time he had to go.”
“I’m sorry.” I whispered. “It sounds like you knew my grandfather better than I did. I…I just wish he’d told me in person instead of hiding it in a note.”
Standing up, my host came over and patted me gently on the knee. “I’ll go get us something to drink. I figure we can both use it.”
“Yeah…thanks.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and I was left alone with my thoughts. Grandpa Stanley had known about Equestria this whole time. I almost didn’t want to believe it. I’d hidden my love for My Little Pony from most of my family, including my grandfather, but once I’d moved out I had let it slowly slip into my online identity, using ponies as my chat room avatars, publicly liking pony related pages on Facebook.
How hard it must have been for grandpa to keep it a secret from me, and from everyone else. Inwardly, I knew that in spite of everything, grandpa had done the right thing, but part of me resented him for not telling me sooner. All those nights spent staring at fanart of Canterlot and Ponyville, separated from them by a computer screen, and it had all been right here, concealed within a magical book? It beggared belief.
...but in the end, grandpa had in a way, saved my life. By giving Lyra the book, she had been able to come to the human world and save me from the hit men just when it counted. I had to be grateful for that.
I had so many questions, but my body felt so warm, so comfortable in this armchair. Grandpa’s armchair.
I’ll just close my eyes for a bit, I thought sleepily. With the cartel thugs another world away and the smell of tea coming from the kitchen, I drifted off to sleep, thinking about what I'd been told.
In hindsight, I wish I’d stayed awake.
Author's Note
Blah, blah, blah...wasn't there supposed to be something funny here?
Go to Equestria, they said. It will be fun, they said.
Hey there. Let me tell you the magical story about how I, a young man with a lot of money and a crazy grandpa, got myself into a massive shitstorm in Equestria. Yeah…I wish I was kidding too.
My name’s Jaxxon Markus Citadel. Yeah, yeah, I know; it’s an unusual name. Would you believe that I’ve tried to get it changed twelve times, and I still get turned down? I mean, who’d going to take a name like Jaxxon seriously? I blame it on my dad, of course. His fault for dropping out of elementary school and never learning how to spell J-a-c-k-s-o-n properly like a normal person. Thanks, dad. Sure, it looks cool, but you didn’t have to go through school with that name.
I’m your average brony, I guess. Actually, I’m lying. I absolutely love the show. I know all the songs off by heart, and I can quote most of the ponies like nobody’s business. I even printed off the entire transcripts for seasons one through four. You might say I have a problem, but you haven’t watched the show. It’s fucking awesome.
Anyhow, I just finished high school, and bought myself a fancy flat in Utah, in my hometown. Where’d I get the money? Well, my granddad, a self-proclaimed ‘scientist’, just died a year back. He left us a lot of his cash, so with me still waiting for college to start, I decided to spend some of it on an apartment, a car, a PC rig, and a flat screen TV with surround sound. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I remembered to donate some of it too.
So while I was helping the moving services haul my stuff into my new home, I was stunned to notice a strange cardboard box among the ones that held my clothes and the My Little Pony DVDs.
“Weird,” I said to myself as I stacked the container against the wall in my bedroom. I didn’t think about it until late that night, when I finally went to bed.
As turned off the television and dragged my ass to bed, I almost tripped over the box, knocking it over with my foot and spilling the contents across the carpet. Trying to resist the urge to punch the wall, I bent down and started to clean up the mess. Haphazardly, I threw a few deflated beanbags into the box, which I saw had grandpa’s name on it.
Grandpa always had been an eccentric old man. Dad had told me that for the most part, he had been a family man, working an ordinary job at an ordinary pharmaceutical with a minor in chemistry. But then, for three years before he had died, my grandfather had distanced himself from the rest of the family, working long hours at night and becoming more and more reclusive. Not even the death of his wife had fazed him, and on his deathbed, dad had said that granddad had been unusually calm, passing on without even saying a word.
The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Why had a contented family man suddenly turned into the opposite of himself, shutting himself away from the world? What dark secrets had the old man been hiding that he had carried to the grave?
I stared slowly at the cardboard box. Maybe, just maybe, there were clues right here, in front of me. With renewed vigor, I dug through the cardboard box, tearing it apart in a frenzy.
It was mostly papers, sorted into two folders that were yellowed with age. It looked really complex and formulaic, with a bunch of equations and algorithms that looked completely alien.
My curiosity was piqued, and against my inner voice of reason, I made my way over to my computer and booted it up. As the room began to brighten in the light of the my Lyra wallpaper, I sat down on my bed and was about to put the folders down when a folded note fell out of one of the binders. It was covered with a strange white powdery substance that smelled a bit strange. I wiped it on my shirt and unfolded the note.
Dear Jaxxon ,it read. I am afraid that these may be the final few weeks of my life.
Final few days? What had grandpa been talking about? And why had he been writing to me?
Any day now, they’ll catch up to me and they’ll end me for what I’ve done. Please forgive me, grandson. You’re in high school, and I haven’t the right to trouble you when you should be having the time of your life, but I can trust no one else with this. Your father…he wouldn’t understand. But you, Jaxxon, I know will get it. In this box is the culmination of an old man’s life’s work.
In this box you will find two folders, and various materials and instruments. Some of it may seem strange to you, but all of it is important. Oh, Jaxxon. If I only had the time to explain it all to you. But all the files will be enough. They have to be enough.
Above everything else, you have to keep this secret. You must tell no one. And if they come knocking, don’t answer.
Your loving grandfather,
Stanley Citadel
I stared blankly at the letter for a few more minutes before I was able to comprehend what I had just read. Grandfather, it seemed, had been working on something top secret before he had died, and he had entrusted me with the secret? I was incredulous. What had the old man been hiding all these years? And who were ‘they’?
By now, my computer was warmed up. Grabbing the two folders, I slumped down in my ergonomic computer chair and opened up Internet Explorer. Then, I closed it and opened Chrome instead. Silly Jaxxon, what are you thinking?
I picked up the topmost folder and blew the dust off of it. It was pretty thick, but a lot of it seemed to be diagrams and blueprints. It looked pretty step-by-step, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out just what the finished product was supposed to be.
I found a page that had nothing but words on it and scanned it. I recognized some of the vocabulary from my high school chemistry class, but that still left at least a third of it unintelligible.
I sneaked a look at the clock on my wall. It was a cheap one from Ikea, but it worked just fine all the same. 11:34 PM. Eh, I had nothing to do tomorrow, so why the hell not.
My eyes lingered on the document, my fingers tapping the keyboard swiftly. I would find out what grandpa had been working on in the last few years of his life, and I would start tonight.
“Benzoylmethylecgonine…”
It’s been three weeks since I started picking up grandpa’s trail. I haven’t slept well in a while, but I’m starting to get what he was going on about. Apparently, his pharmaceutical company had been doing some illicit deals with some kind of drug cartel. His company had been using its equipment to manufacture a new kind of cocaine, one that was supposed to be four times as potent as the usual stuff. I’ll admit, at first I was kind of thrilled. In high school, I had snorted coke a few times, but eventually quit it once the dealer was arrested.
But this stuff, damn. It was supposed to be four times as potent, true, but it was also four times as addictive and overdosing could kill you just like that. The more I read into grandpa’s notes, the more I realized how much of a hero he had been. No wonder the old man had been so reclusive in his last days. If he’d let anything slip, grandpa would have been a dead man.
Now that he was dead though, the cartel and the pharmaceutical company would be back at it. They were out there, making their super-cocaine, and nobody would know the truth.
Now that I knew the truth, the next part was what to do with it all. There were some parts of it that didn’t make sense to me, like how they managed to enhance the coke to four times potency, or how nobody seemed to notice that the dealers were suddenly sporting new stuff. It was almost like it was magic…
I sighed heavily, closing my laptop. “I bet Twilight would know what to do,” I mumbled to myself. Speaking made me realize just how parched my throat was after hours of browsing, so I decided to help myself to a soda while I popped in one of my Friendship is Magic DVDs.
Halfway into “A Canterlot Wedding”, there was a knock on my door. Funny, I wasn’t expecting anyone over today. I hoped it wasn’t a door to door salesman or something. Quickly putting on my shoes and a shirt, I turned down the volume and went to the door.
However, as my hand closed around the doorknob, something clicked in my head. I could hear several people talking outside my apartment. Even door to door salesmen didn’t come in gangs like what I was hearing. Taking my hand off the doorknob, I bent down and took a look through the peephole.
What I saw nearly knocked my socks off.
Outside, I mean right outside my apartment, were five or six men, all dressed in varying shades of red and all wearing sunglasses. One of them was carrying a toolbox and a guy at the back held a ladder, but the one closest to the door was holding something far worse: a submachine gun.
“Holy shit…” I breathed. I was them. They’d found out who grandpa had left all the evidence to, and they were here to get rid of it. And kill me too.
Making as little noise as possible, I tiptoed away from the door and turned off the TV. However, on my way back to my room, my leg caught on the leg of the coffee table, and the DVD case fell off the surface and hit the floor. Hard.
“Open up!” shouted someone from outside. “We know you’re in there!”
Shit, I thought. No point being quiet now. I briefly thought about grabbing my baseball bat from the closet, but dismissed that idea as soon as it came. These guys have guns, I’d be killed before I could even get close to them.
No. The best bet was to call the police, and climb out the window. I scooped up my mobile phone and began to dial 911…
Suddenly, there was a rattle of gunfire from outside, the sound of wood cracking.
My phone connected to the hotline.
“Hello, this is 911, please state your emergency.” Said the voice on the other end.
“Hello?” I panted, panic threatening to overwhelm me. “I’m being attacked at my home. People are shooting down the door! Please help me!”
“May I have your name please?”
“Jaxxon! Jaxxon Markus Citadel!” I yelled as another hail of bullets smashed into my front door.
“Jackson Markus Citadel?” asked the 911 voice. “We don’t have a record of a Jackson Citadel living at your location. What’s your real name?”
“It’s Jaxxon!” I practically screamed. “J-a-x-x-o-n!”
“Uh huh…” said the voice on the phone. “Is this your idea of a joke?”
“What? No! I’m getting shot at by drug cartel thugs! You gotta help me!”
“Records show you’ve sent twelve petitions to supposedly change your name, but none of them were permitted. Do you have a criminal past?”
What the hell?! “No, I don’t have a criminal past! I’m going to have a criminal future if you don’t send some police over right now though!”
There was a crash from outside, followed by the sound of men talking in low voices. Shit. Fuck. They were in. I figured they would figure out where I was in about a minute. Not daring to say another word, I grabbed up all of grandpa’s papers and threw them into a backpack that I slung over my back. There was nothing else for it. I had to go out the window. Then I realized that my room had no window, and the closest one was through the cartel thugs.
Tears sprang into my eyes as I stood there in what were probably my last moments. I tried to sing the theme to My little Pony; if I was going to die, it would at least be with happy thoughts in mind.
“My little pony, my little pony…” I croaked.
Outside, someone shouted, “Come out! We know you’re in here somewhere!”
Something smashed outside. It was probably the coffee table.
And then, amidst all the chaos, I heard someone call my name.
“Jaxxon! Jaxxon, come quick!”
My head snapped to the source of the sound, which was coming from the cardboard box that grandpa’s stuff had come packed in. There, glowing like an angel, was a mint green unicorn pony with a matching tail that has white streaks shot through it. A lyre was emblazoned on her flank, and instinctively, I whispered her name.
“L-Lyra?”
The unicorn waved at me, urgency in her eyes. “Come on, Jaxxon! There’s no time to lose!”
One of the thugs thwarted hammering on the door. Had I locked it? I didn’t have any time to debate with myself whether Lyra was really there, or if I was just hallucinating. Anything was better than getting ripped apart by bullets.
I raced over to Lyra and took her hoof, and the whole world went white.
The first thing I noticed was that I as lying on grass and my bag was digging into my back. It was soft and springy, and smelled nice, like the field at school used to on sunny days. The second thing I noticed was that my hand was still closed around something firm and fuzzy.
A turned my head over and when I did, I almost recoiled in shock. It wasn’t a hallucination. There, smiling down at me like it was Hearth’s Warming Eve, was Lyra, from My Little Pony!
“Holy shit,” I mouthed. All my life, okay, all my high school life, I’d dreamed about Equestria, about visiting the world of My Little Pony, and just enjoying myself here. However, with the memories of the drug cartel not too far behind, I just got to my feet and said to Lyra, “Uhh, thanks, Lyra. You saved my life back there.”
The mare smiled and swished her tail breezily. “Hey, it’s the least I could do for the grandson of the great Stanley Citadel,” she remarked. I noticed there was a book laying on the grass next to her, which Lyra quickly picked up with her magic and put on her back.
That statement gave me a start. “Wait, you knew my grandpa? What, how?!”
“It’s a long story. But it’s got a lot to do with this book on my back. C’mon, Jaxxon, I want to show you to my friends.”
Author's Note
So it begins. Let's take this to the top, people!
