A Stranger In Ponyville (OR, A Genre Shift in Three Acts)

The interview got us nowhere.

After everything he’d suffered at the hooves of Ponyville, he felt he could return the favor by denying us an interview. Lyra attempted to explain to him that we were really trying to help him, only for him to tune her out, delving once again into his tired excuses. I felt like just giving up this whole endeavor, to just let him rot in his cell for as long as it takes for him to behave.

Before we knew it we were out of the precinct, Spike, Lyra, and I. Spike kicked at a stone as we left, evidently grumpy. I knew his reason for assisting us in this case: the sooner we could get the stranger to leave, the better.  The news that the stranger would be staying in Ponyville—jailed, but still sharing the same air he breathed—made him uncomfortable.

We gathered in the library once again, brainstorming ways to get the stranger to talk to us. Spike suggested the threat of violence. “In a jail, Spike?” Lyra asked. “Where there’s lots of guards?”

Spike shrugged. “Okay then,” he said, “how about sweets? He likes sweets.”

I mulled this over. He did love sweets, and prison food was pretty close to garbage. He had only been incarcerated for a day or so, so he didn’t have enough time to get sick of the awful cuisine. I proposed we could wait a week before we tried Spike’s idea, which would be long enough to leave him howling for a treat.

It was during this week I decided to get my life back on track. Compiled all my notes into what would become the first draft of this report, managed my library and lent and returned books, re-instigated the ruined board game afternoon for me and my friends (And invited Lyra, Bon-Bon, and even Derpy—who turned out to be an ace at Risk), started a painting in order to pursue a new hobby…

… after a while, I had realized how eaten up by the lunacy of the past month and a half I had been. This was my life: my friends, my library, my studies, my hobbies. They had often been put to the back-burner in favor of this insane adventure, this surreal expedition with this mysterious stranger. This seemingly endless waltz was slowly grinding down to an eventual halt.

By the time a week had passed, I wasn’t sure I wanted to just jump back into this madness. The stranger was already in jail, he was being tried, he’d get convicted easily, he’d be in that jail for years. We wouldn’t have to worry about him at all. Why should we figure out if he’s a human or not?

The possibility of a foreign, undiscovered creature being in our midst. This was the focusing point of not just Lyra’s curiosity, but also my own. This was the reason we had pursued the stranger so obsessively: for the sake of closure, of making a discovery nopony has ever made before. If it turned out we were right—and we likely were—we’d get our names in the history books. We discovered humans.

So after some internal debate, I decided to see this through to its end. I told Lyra to meet me at Sugarcube Corner, where we’d pick up a cake to bribe him with. It turned out to be a little more difficult than I thought, since Mr. Cake’s popularity hadn’t yet died down, and the crowds were still thick.

After our struggle to obtain a cake, we made our way to the prison. Bribe at the ready, we inquired about our stranger.

“Mr. Chandler?” said the receptionist. “He was released as of yesterday.”

Spike let out a joyless, horrified squeal. A guard looked through the door to see if everything was OK.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “He was arrested on charges of theft and vandalism!”

“There wasn’t enough evidence to mount a case.”

This time it was my turn to let out a disgruntled noise. “What do you mean there wasn’t enough evidence?! He had Featherweight’s camera in his possession—”

“Mr. Featherweight was proven to have misplaced his camera long before Mr. Chandler had found it.”

“—But he broke into the school!”

“The school hadn’t locked their doors, and there were no hoofprints that matched Mr. Chandler’s.”

“The newsprints? The libelous article he wrote about Mr. Cake?”

“An article that did absolutely nothing at all to Mr. Cake’s reputation.”

I felt like strangling this receptionist. She was not unlike a machine, doling out this information coldly and lifelessly, as if the possibility of a creepy thief did not perturb her in the slightest. The stranger apparently had access to the kind of lawyer provided by the taxpayers—the kind that constantly put the criminals back on the streets. I need to make a report on the faulty law system, but that’s clearly another report for another time!

We left the jail in tranquil anger, none of us saying much on our way back to the library. Too upset to even eat a delicious cake, Spike threw it away in disgust—looking at it reminded him too much of the stranger.

At a loss for much to do, not knowing where the stranger currently was now, we tried to pull ourselves back together. Lyra suggested that the stranger may have come back to Derpy to see if she’d let him stay. Spike asked why he’d do that, especially since Derpy had sworn him off for good—but I reminded him that a) the stranger is not smart, and b) Derpy is too forgiving for her own good.

When we arrived at Derpy’s house, we were greeted by her daughter Dinky—cute, energetic, and just as bubbly and innocent as the mare that gave birth to her. She led us inside to her mother, who told us that the stranger hadn’t been by. “Didn’t the court put him away?” she asked.

Lyra shook her head, as if she wanted to say something, but thought it might come out too angry.

Spike suggested she keep Dinky indoors while that maniac was on the loose, and we all left, now all out of clues. We sat at an empty table at Sugarcube Corner, exhausted from our traveling. Pinkie Pie gave us some shakes to ease our minds (and told us not to worry about the money), and asked what was bugging us.

Her face puckered when she learned the stranger was out again. As long as Mr. Cake was still at Sugarcube Corner, there was no way the stranger would ever come by again, but to be on the safe side, Mr. Cake had gone and bought new locks and bolts for the doors.

As we drank our shakes, we discussed our plans. It felt almost like we were planning to hunt down an exotic creature in some deep jungle, gentlecoltly hunters of high-class breeding readying their blunderbusses for the one shot they’d get. While we may have considered skinning him, we doubted we’d need to mount his head on our wall to pride ourselves as we smoked our pipes in the study.

Out of nowhere, Lyra made a bold suggestion.

“Why don’t we just ask the Doctor about all this? Think he could come up with something?”

I scoffed. Normally, I’d have tried to remain civil, but the day (and these experiences) were all beginning to wear on me. “You mean Whooves?”

Fought the urge to laugh. Whooves was a nice enough stallion, but when word got out he claimed to be from another dimension, everypony thought him mad—including myself. Everypony but Lyra, actually; she had tried to dog him at every corner, trying to get an interview to see if humans existed in other dimensions. It wasn’t long afterward that he became something of a recluse.

“Yeah, him.”

“Him and his stories of interdimensional travel?”

I, a student of the study and science of magic, told her as politely as I could that such a magic wouldn’t—or at least—shouldn’t be possible. Unless it was some unpredictable outcome of a “Blue Magic Pocket”, bubbling up and exploding, giving birth to results unlike normal magic (Something I said with an uncharacteristic snicker).

“Blue Magic Pocket?” Lyra asked.

“Oh, it’s his theory. Basically, the idea is that Equestria is literally a magical land: magic builds up beneath our Earth, going from the normal magic used (considered white) until enough builds up that it changes color to blue. Normally, the magic in Equestria’s soil is used by Earth ponies for things like improving the crops they plant, but when that doesn’t happen often or fast enough, the magic keeps building until there’s so much in one ‘pocket’, it overpowers itself and explodes—causing unpredictable results.”

Lyra seemed to listen intently. As I finished my lecture, she nodded slowly. It was evident this was her first time hearing this theory.

Originally, we all laughed at his Blue Magic Pocket theory, since although it might have made sense to the uninitiated, it contradicted several already-proven theories regarding the magic in Equestria—for example, Equestria’s Magic Clouds. (I mean, how else are pegasi able to stand on them?)

We all laughed at him then, including myself. It all seems so silly now, especially since it slowly began to fit into the overall developing situation. It fit too well, honestly.

Lyra finished her shake, licking at the cream for a finish. “That was the best shake I’ve ever had,” she declared.

“Yeah,” Spike said, “Pinkie Pie knows how to mix ‘em.”

I looked down at mine, which remained only half-finished. “I kinda feel bad for leaving Bon-Bon out of this,” I said. “She probably would have liked one, too.”

Lyra chuckled. “She sure would have. The trouble is, we hardly have any money for things like shakes.”

Spike went back to his shake. “Why not?” he asked between slurps.

Lyra sighed. She looked around to make sure Bon-Bon was nowhere near, then leaned in and said in a whisper, “I’m the only one of us who has any reliable source of income.”

“Why hasn’t she gotten a job?” I asked quietly.

“Have you SEEN the way she acts towards other ponies? She has this reputation for being mean, sometimes even to me.” Lyra moved her empty shake glass lazily, looking at it as if she couldn’t figure out whether to smash it or not. “I’m her only friend, but sometimes, I really wish I wasn’t.”

I suppose I should have figured out long ago that Lyra’s and Bon-Bon’s friendship was in a tumultuous position at that time. Lyra always seemed so intimidated in Bon-Bon’s presence, almost never speaking when she was present. It all seemed borderline abusive.

Spike tapped my shoulder, drawing us both back to reality. I looked at him to see that he was pointing in some direction. Following his finger led me to see perhaps the most insane thing I’ve ever witnessed.

At first, I had thought it was some ugly mare wearing awful clothing, but upon closer inspection, it was the stranger, decked out in pearls, lipstick, eyeshadow, mascara, and an ugly dress with sandals. He looked as though he had raided Rarity’s makeup without really knowing how to apply any of it. As he walked by, however, I noticed he carried with him a new kind of flamboyant confidence, one he had lacked before.

Was he… proud of himself? For going out in public while wearing an ill-fitting, ugly dress? For honestly believing he looked “hot” in it? For scarring the minds of children? (I know that Spike still has night terrors regarding this event.)

For almost a minute after he’d left, Lyra, Spike, and I were all struck completely dumbfounded. A traffic jam of half-complete thoughts began to pile up in our minds, none of them ever making it out our mouths. With our thoughts came our emotions, confused and bubbling with anger—but for some reason, instead of feeling more like a burning fire, our anger felt like a cold wind.

We had to figure out what exactly he thought he was doing, so we tried to follow him (hard not to spot the only stallion in town wearing mare’s clothing). Eventually, we managed to corner him.

Lyra was the first to demand an explanation, and she did so with only two words.

“CHRIS. WHY.”

“I am Tomgirl,” he claimed. I told him a name and wardrobe change wouldn’t be enough to dissuade us from knowing who he was. He told us it wasn’t a name change, just that he decided he wanted to wear a dress to express himself—a “Tomgirl” being the gender-opposite of a “Tomboy”.

I didn’t care to hear this. Out of everything he had pulled—stating his sick interests in the presence of a child, defecating allover himself in public, stealing a child’s camera, breaking into a school, insulting Derpy, slandering Mr. Cake—this was the most incomprehensible thing he had yet done (Though admittedly, not the most wicked). I decided right there that the history books can go jump in a lake for all I cared: this human needed to be sent back to wherever it was humans lived. We needed him OUT of Ponyville before his insanity threatened to harm others.

But it wasn’t as if he’d spill on where he was really from or what he really was. We couldn’t make him talk, and he had no reason to talk to us (and he knew it). There was nothing we could do to force his cooperation, so we simply left, angered and defeated and disgusted.

It had reached nightfall by the time we returned to the library. We were now completely exhausted from this day’s events. Still no way of knowing how to send him back home, or where his home even was.

We had fallen asleep on the couch, the three of us. Bon-Bon would probably be worrying sick for Lyra, and the library had been closed all day, inconveniencing any Ponyville readers. Unwittingly, we were allowing this stranger to slowly damage our lives.

I felt it was high time we damaged his life a little ourselves.