What follows is a true story. It may be the most important thing that ever happened to me, so I’m going to try to relate it accurately. And while I may ramble at times in the hopes of better leading you through what I experienced, I very much hope you will bear with me. I assure you, you don’t want to be that one guy who didn’t get the news. I ask only four things of you:
Please read my whole story. It is important that you properly understand what I am telling you, and that cannot be accomplished in a single sentence. If you skip to the end looking for the moral, you will be disappointed.
Do not try to find me. Some people are definitely not going to benefit from what I’m telling you. And maybe they can’t really do anything to me. Maybe I’m a paranoid fool running from nothing. But I’d rather not find out, so I ask that you not do anything that might help them track me down.
Spread this story around. They’ll want to take it down. If it’s only in a couple of places, they’ll probably succeed. Don’t let them kill it. Make sure that whenever they take one copy down, two more take its place.
Most importantly, do what you think is right. If I’m telling this right, you’ll agree that something needs to be done. But I’m no great leader. I don’t know what to do. I’m trusting you all to be wiser than me. I know you won’t disappoint.
—The Hunter
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’ve noticed that pastel ponies are the latest craze. And why wouldn’t they be? They’re the best pets money can buy. They’re adorable, they’re easy to train and care for, and above all they’re a sign that you can afford to keep up with the times. Every rich family has one, and every little girl wants one. But do you know where they come from?
Don’t answer that. You don’t. They aren’t genetically engineered like you’ve heard. One of FutureTech’s scientists invented a dimensional portal a while back, and it turns out that the nearest universe has some very marketable wildlife. Wildlife that probably can’t be patented, which is why their origin is a secret. That’s right, that pet your daughter keeps begging you for is an alien.
Unfortunately for the company, but fortunately for me, they’re basically impossible to breed. Something about our universe keeps them from reproducing, I’m told. And it would be prohibitively expensive to build a headquarters over there. Plus it wasn’t clear it would even be safe to do so.
See, there are distinctly human artifacts there. There are entire towns, in fact. But there don’t seem to be any humans, and nobody knows why. We couldn’t even check the towns for clues, because they’re all infested with ponies. And don’t let their cuteness or the marketing about how safe they are fool you; the wild ones are quite belligerent when they feel threatened, and they can kick every bit as hard as an Earth horse, so only an idiot would go into the middle of an entire herd.
All of this left us with continual arguments about where everybody is. The most popular theory was that something killed them all off, and that we’d probably attract its attention if we built anything. Personally, I thought the people are just hiding from us for some reason, but as long as caution was keeping me employed I couldn’t really complain.
The point is, I hunted ponies. A portal operator put me a few miles from some abandoned town, I snuck around just out of sight of the herd until I found some colt or filly that had wandered off (since adults can’t be properly tamed), and then I shot it with my tranquilizer gun and carried it back home. That was my daily grind for over two years.
The day everything changed I was assigned to a place I had taken to calling Forestville. I called it that because the town was right up against the edge of a forest. Not very creative, I know, but it’s not my job to have interesting names for the places I work.
Most hunters didn’t like Forestville. The forest was home to a lot of large predators, and you had to watch out that you weren’t being hunted while you were busy doing your hunting. But the forest provided such excellent cover that you could walk right up to the edge of town unseen if you were careful. If you were alert, you could usually catch a pony almost immediately from that close. In my opinion that was more than worth the need to watch your back, so I was sent there relatively often.
About half an hour after I got to the edge of the forest, I spotted an orange filly. I was already getting impatient, since I was accustomed to being done very quickly when I was sent here, so I guess I may have rushed my capture. It didn’t help that it had wings, which meant I was going to get a large bonus for it. So I made a cursory check that it was alone, shot it, tied it thoroughly in case it woke up before I got back to the portal, and started to arrange it in the harness I’d use to carry it. They may be small, but I’d like to see you carry one several miles with nothing but your bare hands.
Then I heard an angry neighing. Apparently, in my hurry to get home, I had been spotted. I saw a blue adult flying towards me (yes, the winged ones can actually fly in their home universe). Then its forehooves hit my head, and I fell unconscious.
I woke surrounded by books. The walls appeared to be entirely built out of bookshelves, in fact. More important, though, were the six ponies across the room. They seemed to be either unaware of or unconcerned with my presence, since they were all nickering and neighing and snorting at each other and none of them were watching me. But I wasn’t sure how long that would last; they looked agitated.
I should pause a moment to enumerate these six ponies, because they’re going to continue to be relevant. There were three—yellow, blue, and purple—with wings, a white one with a horn, an orange one with neither horn nor wings, and a pink one that was standing such that I couldn’t tell if it had a horn or not. The blue one was almost certainly the same one that had attacked me; it had a rainbow mane the likes of which I had never seen before.
I was also lying tied up on the floor, and with an awful headache to make matters worse. I guess somebody must have found me after I got attacked. It was nice to have some evidence that there were still people around here, not to mention to have not been kicked to death, but less nice to be tied up next to potentially dangerous wild animals. I offered a brief prayer to any gods that might watch over this universe that whoever had captured me was bad with knots, and then tried to escape.
Sadly, my prayer went unanswered. All I accomplished with my struggles was to attract the ponies’ attention. The purple one approached, revealing that it had a horn as well as wings (it was news to me that was possible), and nickered. A few seconds later, it pointed its horn at me. I froze and hoped it wouldn’t gore me if I pretended to be dead. Then its horn glowed, a strange pressure came over my mind, and I once more lost consciousness.
At least I couldn’t feel my head throbbing if I wasn’t awake.
The next time I woke, four of the ponies were gone, or at least out of sight, but the yellow and blue ones were staring at me. It was kind of unnerving. The blue one was angry, too; I can’t read these creatures nearly as well as the trainers, but all hunters are required to be able to recognize anger so we know whether to back away slowly or run like hell if we’re spotted. And with its ears flattened against its neck, its teeth slightly bared, and its wings open a couple inches, this one was definitely saying “run,” although at this range there was no way I could lose it if it chased me.
Not that what I should do mattered, because what I was going to do was lie immobile on the ground in an apparently enclosed area, since nobody had moved or untied me. I could feel a bandage around my head, so apparently my captor had visited me while I was asleep, but I guess he couldn’t be bothered to stick around or to move me somewhere safer. I thought that pretty rude, even given that I was his captive.
The yellow one, on the other hand, did not appear to be about to attack. Instead, when it saw me open my eyes, its ears perked up and it lay down in front of me. Then it slowly extended a hoof to right in front of my face while nickering softly. And it was still staring at me with its gigantic eyes. I had never noticed quite how implausibly huge these ponies’ eyes were before.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this, so I tried to keep away from the hoof to the best of my ability. “The best of my ability” turned out to be maybe six inches, since I didn’t dare startle the blue one by trying to wriggle away.
The yellow one kept its hoof out for a minute or two, still nickering the whole time, then withdrew it. I was glad for that, since my neck was already getting tired, and now I could relax. It stood up and left.
This seemed to prompt the blue one to approach me, and it didn’t look any happier than it had before. The difference was that now it was neighing loudly a couple inches from my face, and it was hovering just above the ground. Nobody ever told me what that meant, but I had a feeling it wasn’t anything good. I was hoping that it was smart enough to recognize that I wasn’t a threat as long as I was tied up. These things were supposed to be relatively intelligent, right?
Then I was saved by the yellow one. It came back and drew the attention of the blue one. After some sort of exchange, the blue one moved away from me, which I presumed meant it wasn’t going to kill me yet.
The yellow one dropped a carrot in front of me and pushed it to right in front of my face. And then it stared at me again with its giant creepy eyes. I really wish it would stop staring at me so much.
After a bit, it neighed and pushed the carrot right up against my lips. I guess it wanted me to eat? So I tried to take a bite. I couldn’t actually get the carrot to my molars, so I had no hope of actually eating, but just trying seemed to satisfy the pony. It backed off a bit and snorted in a manner I wanted to assume was happy. Even the blue one was looking less aggressive.
This brief moment of calm was ruined by the sounds of a pony behind me. The yellow one reacted by producing something that sounded remarkably like a lullaby composed of horse noises. Then I felt the same pressure as last time and fell asleep.
I dreamt of sounds. I don’t remember how, but I know I could see them. I was surrounded by a gently swirling wall of syllables, sometimes coming together to form English words, other times splitting into individual letters.
Then more sounds came. At first, I couldn’t really see them, but as they approached they were all things I had been hearing from the ponies. They spun around me, beyond the wall of English, faster and faster, until they blurred into incomprehensibility. Then the circle began to contract.
When it hit the wall of English, it was shredded and blended in. For a moment, it paused at that distance, as if to digest. I got a vague sense of words pronounceable by neither human nor horse, composed of strange mixes of consonants and neighs, nickers and vowels. Then all human sounds were lost, and the wall came for me.
I cannot remember what happened after that.
I woke up, and I was still tied up on the floor. Nobody had even moved the lightly gnawed carrot. I entertained a momentary fantasy of giving my captor a scathing review once I escaped or got ransomed.
Oh, and this time, it was the blue and purple ones that were watching me. The blue one was still angry, but the purple one seemed to be mostly curious.
Noticing that I was awake, the purple one asked, “Can you understand me?” Its voice was female and perfectly human.
In retrospect, it seemed obvious that taking a blow to the head from an angry pony would come with a high chance of brain damage.
“Can you hear me?” it added after a moment of us just staring at each other. “Are you deaf? Please tell me I didn’t accidentally deafen the first observed member of a new species.”
“Twilight!” the blue one (gender unclear) broke in. “Focus! Remember what it did to Scootaloo?”
Somehow, it seemed rude to not acknowledge that I was being spoken too. Just because I was hallucinating was no reason not to follow normal social rules. “I can hear you,” I whispered. I didn’t want to startle anything in reality, after all. “I don’t suppose you’re the sort of hallucination that helps me get out of here?”
“What? Hallucination?” the purple one responded.
“Yeah, I didn’t really think so. But I might as well ask, right?”
After a moment, its face brightened. “Oh! You’re confused why you can understand me, aren’t you. You’re not hallucinating; I cast a translation spell on you. Is it working properly? It should seem like we’re speaking your native language.”
“Must you insist that you’re real? I know ponies aren’t smart enough—”
I didn’t even see the blue one move. It was just suddenly right in my face again, and still as pissed as ever. Hopefully what I was seeing was no more real than what I was hearing. “I’m stupid, am I? I’m not real? Then maybe I’ll prove I’m real with my hooves! Maybe I’m too stupid to think of another way!”
“Rainbow Dash!” A third voice (female) came from behind me. I wondered if hallucinating random words was worse that hearing full sentences. “You will not lay a hoof on the poor thing!”
“‘Poor thing’? This ‘poor thing’ is the reason Scoot is in the hospital!” Despite its words, the blue one seemed mollified and gave me some space. It even looked a little bit ashamed.
It backed off further when the yellow one flew from behind me to stand between us. Once I had been suitably defended, the yellow one revealed itself to be the owner of the third voice as it turned and addressed me in a tone normally reserved for babies. “It’s okay, I won’t let the big mean Rainbow hurt you.”
“I’m right here, you know.” Was Rainbow the blue one’s name? It seemed to consistently respond to it, and “rainbow” was certainly an obvious feature.
Wait, what was I thinking? They don’t have names. They were wild animals that I happened to be connecting with the voices in my head. Which said things that sometimes predicted their behavior . . .
Well, that answered the question of whether I was having visual hallucinations. Either I could predict the future, or what I was seeing wasn’t any more real than what I was hearing.
Meanwhile, Yellow had started petting my head while wordlessly murmuring. It was surprisingly soothing, even if it was probably only in my imagination.
“You’re my favorite hallucination,” I told her. She blushed slightly. “I just wish I was a better lucid dreamer. Maybe then I could hallucinate that I wasn’t tied up.”
Purple cleared her throat. “That could be arranged, if you’ll help us. It would also be nice if you’d believe we are real.”
“Yeah! What did you—” Rainbow shouted and jumped forward, then stopped as Yellow glared at it. In a more careful tone of voice, it continued, “What did you do to Scootaloo?”
“Scootaloo? What’s a Scootaloo?”
“The filly you attacked!” Another look from Yellow forced it to calm down a bit again. “Orange coat, purple mane? The one you were going to do Celestia-knows-what to before I saw you?”
“Oh, that one. I was doing my job, of course. I don’t see why I need to explain myself to my hallucinations.”
Purple sighed. “Just humor us.”
“I was catching it to be a pet. You ponies are quite a pain to tame, I’ll have you know, but people will pay so much for their own pastel pony. You would not believe how profitable you are.”
Yellow withdrew her hoof. Rainbow stared, dumbstruck. Nobody spoke.
Purple was the first to regain her composure. “You foalnap fillies and colts and enslave them to be pets?”
“Just the ‘foalnapping,’ if that’s what you want to call it. It’s somebody else’s job to get them ready to sell. And I’m glad for that; I’m told it’s a long and frustrating process. You ponies are very obstinate.”
“Oh my,” Yellow muttered. She backed away from me as Rainbow spread her wings in what I was now oddly sure was aggression.
Abruptly there were twin pink flashes and Purple was between me and Rainbow. “I think that’s enough for now.”
As Purple’s horn lit up and the now-familiar pressure entered my brain, I wondered if hallucinating sleep meant I wasn’t really asleep.
I saw my friends and family. It was a party, and everybody I knew was there. Maybe it was my birthday? They were all so happy to see me and congratulate me on . . . whatever it was. Somebody gave me a beer.
It was later, and I was a little drunk. I was watching two of my friends wrestling over some tiny disagreement, just like they always did after a few mugs of cider. It made me wish I had the strength of an earth pony. One of my nieces chased her brother past me, shooting tiny bolts of magic at him. When a spark hit me, it stung more than I was expecting.
Before I could scold her, somepony asked me to show off some tricks. Soon everypony was chanting for me, so I took to the sky. I did a few loops and corkscrews, then flew low to hear the adoring crowd. But nopony was watching me.
Two fillies and one colt were missing. They had just disappeared from the edge of the party. All the pegasi, me included, were searching for them from the air. Five of them were gone already, and more were disappearing the more time we wasted.
Then I saw them. Strange hairless monsters. They had us completely surrounded. Feeling my gaze, they attacked. They carried strange wands and showed no mercy.
All the adults were lying on the ground. All the fillies and colts were gone. I couldn’t tell if anypony was alive. I cried, and it mixed with the blood to make a great sea of red. The salty liquid rose until it covered my head.
After that, there was only blackness.
When I woke up, something had finally changed. I was now tied to a chair. It was a bit small, but still more comfortable than the ground. Furthermore, I had been allowed some mobility in my arms; my wrists were tightly tied together in such a way that I couldn’t get at any knots, but otherwise I was free to manipulate any object within my reach. I could, for example, hold and eat a carrot, if anybody were kind enough to give me one.
Purple and Rainbow were still there; Purple was facing the other way and didn’t seem me wake up. Rainbow looked suspicious of me; considering what I had said about how humans keep ponies as pets, merely suspicious was better than I had any right to expect. Maybe what had happened earlier really had been a hallucination, and I hadn’t actually said anything? That would certainly be convenient.
“It’s awake,” Rainbow said.
“Don’t call him an ‘it’; he’s an intelligent being,” Purple replied. That was a good point. I should try to discreetly ask Rainbow’s gender, so I could find the proper pronoun for him/her. “He just needed a little help. It’s no call to be rude.”
She turned away from Rainbow and approached me. “Can you tell me what your job is?” she asked hopefully. There was slight nervous smile on her face.
I sighed. There went the benefit of having imagined the earlier conversation. “Can I just say ‘something bad’ and leave it at that? I’d rather not have to admit to it.”
Her smile grew. “Please, tell us. I promise not to judge you.”
“And what about Rainbow over there?” I couldn’t see him/her very well past Purple at that time, but I was pretty sure he/she hadn’t suddenly started liking me.
“I make no promises.”
I couldn’t see the look Purple gave him/her, but it seemed to be effective.
“Fine. I will not hold this against you if you help us from now on. Happy?”
“I suppose that will do. It’s not like you liked me before, anyway.” I chuckled weakly. “My job was to kidnap young ponies—which I only did because I didn’t know ponies were intelligent, I want to point out—and bring them back to be trained to be obedient pets.” I was glad I didn’t know how the taming worked; it gave me an airtight excuse not to elaborate. But it didn’t stop my imagination, and that was not full of pleasant images. “I’m not going to be doing that any more, of course. Not know that I know what I was doing. I suppose I should apologize for what I was doing, even though it’s a pointless gesture.”
“See?” Purple told Rainbow smugly. “I told you it would work.”
“What if it’s lying? Maybe it’s just trying to trick us into untying it so it can get back to foalnapping!”
“Last time he was awake, he thought he was hallucinating, and he was quite happy to tell us the truth. Why would that have changed if it hadn’t worked?”
“Wait, that was real? And what worked?”
They ignored me. “Besides, I doubt he would have been carrying all that equipment if he didn’t need it. Remember how there was some sort of dart in Scootaloo’s side? He probably couldn’t foalnap without darts even if he wanted to.”
“Yeah, where is my gear? I’m actually kind of attached to some of that stuff.”
“Well, I don’t trust it. I’m not going to be convinced that easily.”
“Just . . . don’t attack him, alright? Give him a chance.” Then she turned her attention back to me. “I’m sorry about her.” Oh, so Rainbow was a her. “Scootaloo is like a sister to her, so she can be very protective. I’m going to untie you now, and nopony is going to attack you. Then I have to get you to Sugarcube Corner because . . . reasons.”
Sugarcube Corner turned out to be a bakery. “Reasons” turned out to be a surprise party to welcome me to Forestville, which is actually called Ponyville. Not really any more original than my name, I know, but apparently this was the real one. The pink pony I had seen the first time I woke up turned out to be the hostess of the party.
Her name was Pinkie Pie. She was nice, if somewhat hyperactive. Possibly overcaffeinated, although I don’t think I actually saw anything with caffeine during my entire time in Ponyville. Maybe she drank it all.
She took the time to introduce me to every single pony at the party. I officially met Rainbow (full name, Rainbow Dash), who said she was watching for any funny business instead of giving a conventional greeting, and Purple (actually Twilight Sparkle), who was still oddly pleased about something. Pinkie told me that Rainbow was an aspiring Wonderbolt (an elite flying team, apparently), and that Twilight was a former student of Princess Celestia (despite her title, the effective monarch of the land) who had recently been made a princess (effective rank unclear) herself.
The other three adults I had seen were there as well. The orange one was named Applejack; she was a farmer, and her family was the biggest producer of food in the area. She was a bit wary of me, but she assured me she would try to give me a fair chance, since Twilight said I was okay now. She had brought her much younger sister Apple Bloom, who was friends with Scootaloo (the one I had tried to capture, remember?).
The white one was Rarity. She made dresses (I did see a couple ponies in clothes, but this was still surprising). I didn’t think it tactful to ask how she could make enough to live on that way; I got the sense she did not think it tactful to reveal her opinions on me. But at least she was polite. She had also brought her sister (Sweetie Belle), another friend of Scootaloo (and also about Scootaloo’s age). Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo had formed some sort of club centere around magic tattoos, I was told. I confess I didn’t understand, but it was obviously important to them.
Scootaloo was fine, by the way. The tranquilizer had long since worn off; I had shot her in the morning and it was late afternoon by the time I was untied. She was still in the hospital since they wanted to make sure there weren’t any serious side effects, but there weren’t going to be. FutureTech can’t make any money off of dead ponies, so they make sure the tranquilizer is completely safe.
It seemed Scootaloo and her friends didn’t know what had happened to her. I was probably going to have to tell them at some point, but I was glad I didn’t have to deal with that quite yet.
The most difficult of the six to find was Yellow (actually Fluttershy). Eventually she turned up in a secluded corner, though. She obviously didn’t like how crowded the party was, but she claimed she felt the need to be there in case she needed to protect me. She seemed afraid of me, but Pinkie assured me once we were out of earshot that she was afraid of almost anything that spoke the same language as her. I wasn’t so sure that was why she was afraid of me, but it was sweet of Pinkie to try. Fluttershy apparently took care of all the animals in the area, since she was must better at relating to creatures that can’t talk.
I could continue listing ponies that Pinkie introduced me to, even if I only remember about half of them, but what purpose would it serve to bore you with endless lists of guests? If I haven’t made my point yet, I’m not going to no matter how many ponies I list. Anyway, only the six who had seen me tied up knew what I had done, so the other ponies aren’t relevant to any point I could make about forgiveness.
In fact, I’m going to break my promise a little and sum up a moral: Every single pony I met was a thinking individual. Every one of them had a family, and dreams, and a role in the community, as so on. To enslave their children and treat them as mere animals? Even ignorance is a poor excuse.
And yet, for the most part, they tried to forgive me, simply because I recognized that what I had been doing was wrong. Would you be so forgiving? Would most humans? Perhaps they are a better race than us. Perhaps we are the animals when compared to them.
I just hope that I have explained well enough that you agree with me.
At this point I hope you’ll excuse me if I hurry. I haven’t got forever to write this thing, and in theory I’ve hit the important points already.
The party ran late into the night, and fun was had by all. The ponies were pretty much all friendly, despite how strange I must have looked to them. One mare—I think her name was Lyra—even asked me to dance at one point. I’m pretty sure her friends put her up to it, and we were terribly coordinated, but it was entertaining to try all the same. I felt more welcome in Ponyville than I’ve felt anywhere since I was a kid.
After the party, Twilight offered to let me crash on her spare bed. It was somewhat cramped, sleeping on a pony-sized bed, but it was more comfortable than sleeping on the ground like I had been planning. I didn’t want to look a gift horse (‘s bed) in the mouth.
Look, you can’t expect me to tell you all this without making any puns, alright?
The next morning, Twilight showed her ulterior motive when she started questioning me. See, I hadn’t even considered the idea that I could do anything about the pony trade beyond not participating in it, but Twilight was more optimistic. And the first thing she needed was information.
A lot of what I had to say wasn’t favorable. Any real solution would require action on Earth, and it would not be easy to get there. FutureTech still operates on the assumption that something over here might come through and slaughter humanity given the chance, so they do their best to make portals unpredictable on the Equestria (that being the local name for this place) end. By now, I would be officially dead, so there would be no more portals at my designated exit, and I had no way to know where or when other portals would be opened. I could still find a portal eventually, but it wouldn’t be quick or easy. And it wouldn’t be at all helped by me revealing how, before you ask.
Nor would things be easy if we could get to Earth. Twilight had a lot of questions aimed at figuring out how much magic Earth has, and while the answer was not “none,” it was also not very much. Flight would be difficult, and complex spells (a translation spell, for example) would be impossible, even before the pony’s internal magic reserves ran out. Within somewhere between half an hour and four hours, any pony who came to Earth would be nearly useless between the inability to communicate with humans (myself included), the lack of magical abilities, and the splitting headache that would probably result from magic deprivation.
To make things worse, I knew almost nothing about how one would conduct any sort of hypothetical rescue. I couldn’t operate a portal. I didn’t know anything about the taming wing other than where the main entrance to it is. I couldn’t even remember whether most doors in FutureTech can be locked. For all I knew, everything was controlled by secret passcodes.
In the end, Twilight had to admit the options were very limited. She’s going to do what she can to make it hard to capture ponies from the edges of towns, of course. I’ll leave the precise measures as a surprise to those who still work for FutureTech, but I can recommend that those people take this opportunity to quit rather than find out.
Of course, this is not a good permanent solution. And currently, a rescue mission would be far too much risk for far too little chance of success. So that’s why I came back to Earth to put my story on the internet. That’s why I’m appealing to you all.
If the world can’t get up in arms about the enslavement of intelligent creatures just because they’re not human, then I’m not sure there’s any hope left for humanity. I need you to make people care. I need you to make noise until those in power have to take action. Get the ponies sent home safely. Make sure this can’t happen again.
If it helps to have a competition, I’m going to try to free the ponies from the taming pens at FutureTech once I can come up with a reasonable plan for doing so. Can you beat me to the punch? Can you get the released before I’m ready to act?
Once again, I’m trusting in all of you. Good luck.
