There and Hopefully Never Back Again

Chapter One:

Just go with it . . .

It was a pretty long time ago. I was in bed at my house after another long day at work. I wasn’t some awesome guy that did awesome stuff. I was boring. I owned and operated a large underground lab.

I guess I had done quite a bit to improve life on our planet, but I wasn’t as far as I thought I’d be at my age. Anyway, you would probably rather hear about this story.

The Present

“Wait, how long have you been here?” Paul asks, interrupting the story.

“It’s been quite a while. It seems longer than it actually was, because a lot of stuff has happened since I got here,” I say.

“Yeah, a lot of stuff. So, you were saying?” Brady says, casually straightening the feathers of his black fire wings.

“Hey, Joe!” I call out to the owner of the donut shop.

“What can I get for you?” Donut Joe asks.

I look at Paul and ask, “Are you hungry?” He nods. “Get me six donuts, please!” I say to the chef. He walks into his kitchen, and I turn back to the table. “Now then, back to the story.”

The Past

I was rapidly approaching sleep, and would soon be dreaming another dream about ponies. But I didn’t dream that night. Instead, I just woke up, feeling like only a few seconds had passed since I fell asleep.

But everything was wrong. Sunlight was streaming through a window and hitting me in the face. That’s not right. I don’t have any windows in my room. Where am I? I thought. I was on a wood floor. My body feels different. Maybe I shouldn’t have messed with Project 42 yesterday. It might have done something crazy, so I should remain calm, and just go with it. *Sigh*, here we go. I thought.

I raised my head up and opened my eyes to observe my surroundings. There were books all around the room, most in the bookshelves on the wall, with a few random piles on the floor. There was a table in the middle of the room with a statue of a horse head on it. The door leading outside had the image of a candle on it. There was another doorway on the other side of the room, leading farther inside.

I’ve seen this place before. Maybe this is a dream? Yeah, that’s probably it. Well, I guess I’ll explore. I thought, turning my gaze to my body. Well, not my body. My body doesn’t have short brown fur all over it, or hooves, or a picture on it’s flank of a green book surrounded by clouds, or a half green, half electric-blue mane and tail. Well, if this is a dream, it’s looking to be pretty interesting. I thought, rolling to my hooves.

I started walking to the doorway leading to the rest of the library, and immediately fell face-first onto the floor. I got back up and tried again, with a similar effect. After a few minutes of me falling down, I came up with a system that didn’t send me crashing to the floor.

Moving in my slow, careful shuffle, I eventually made it through that room and the next. I saw a set of stairs leading somewhere, and decided to follow it. The stairs led up to a room, and the room had two beings in it that I would recognize anywhere.

Twilight Sparkle was reading with her back to me. Spike was sweeping and covertly glancing at Twilight’s flank. They hadn’t noticed me yet, so I took a slow ninja-step forward. As I put my weight on it, the board creaked loudly under my hoof.

Spike stopped what he was doing and looked at me. He started running around, yelling wordlessly. At the same time, Twilight glanced towards me and returned to her book before looking back with wide eyes.

She reared back, then turned around and ran towards the other stairs, looking back. “What are you doing in my house!?” she asked, before looking forward at the exact moment that she missed the stairs and ran into a wall.

She crumpled and slid to the floor. Spike stopped circling the room and ran to her, saying “Oh, no! Twilight, are you okay!?”

At the same time, I was hurrying to her. Spike reached her first, then he spun to face me. “Don’t you come any closer! I’m warning you!” he said.

“Relax, I’m a genius,” I said in a calming voice, “Let me check to see if she’s okay, and then I’ll answer any questions.”

Spike tensed, looking around. After a moment he relaxed, nodding. “Okay, but if anything happens to her,” he said, a warning tone in his voice. He moved aside, allowing me to pass.

I almost jumped to her, moving my ear in front of her muzzle, listening for her breath. When I heard it, I sighed with relief. “She’s fine. She just knocked herself out on the wall,” I said, turning to look at Spike.

As I finished, she groaned and began to stir. She opened her eyes and looked at Spike, then at me. When she saw me she flopped backwards to Spike. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asked, starting to panic again.

“It’s alright, he doesn’t want to hurt us,” Spike said, calming her.

“Well?” she asked, looking back to me.

“I’m, uh… My name is Idikos Kyle, but you can use one or the other if you want. It’s a public library. Also, why didn’t you just teleport?” I replied.

“I, uh… um… hmm… Never mind that. Is there anything that I can help you with? I’m Twilight Sparkle, by the way, and this is Spike,” she said, pointing her hoof at herself, then at Spike.

“I know. I didn’t come for a book today. I came to meet you. I’m a huge fan. I was hoping we could be friends, and that you could introduce me to your friends as well. What do you say?” I said.

She smiled. “Well, in that case, I’d be delighted to introduce you to them! As for your offer of friendship… we’ll see,” she said.

I jumped up in the air and shouted, “Yay!!!” I landed and hugged Twilight. “Thank you so much!” I whispered into her ear. I backed up and looked at her.

She looked at me, blushing a little, and looked at the ground. She cleared her throat. “Well, uh… anyway…  We were all going to meet at Sugarcube Corner. Would you like to join us?” she asked, looking back at me.

“That sounds great!” I said, looking into her eyes. She looked into mine, and we stared into each other’s eyes, our smiles slowly growing. Those eyes… They’re so beautiful! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as stunning as her eyes! I thought.

Spike just stood there, looking back and forth between me and Twilight, a small smile on his face. “Well, I’m just gonna leave you two loveponies to it!” he said, slowly scooting sideways out of the room.

I glared at him with wide eyes, just noticing that Twilight and I had been staring into each other’s eyes for the past seven minutes. Twilight shook her head and looked at Spike. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that. What did you say?” she asked.

He caught my eye and winked. “Nothing! Nothing at all!” he answered while continuing to scoot out. Luckily, she didn’t press him for answers.

I have to remember to thank him later. I thought. I looked back at Twilight and cleared my throat.

“Oh, sorry Idikos,“ she began.

“Actually, I think I’d like you to call me Kyle,” I interrupted.

“Okay, Kyle… Let’s go!”