Carla walked towards the cafeteria, that foggy morning. She sighed. My penultimate day at Outdoor Ed, I can't believe it's gone by so quickly! she thought, sticking her hands into her new, fluffy sweater her parents had gotten her for Outdoor Ed. She looked at the sky, tired. She wouldn't be seeing the beautiful woods behind her cabin anymore, or sleeping on the top bunk, on top of one of her friends; Miriah. Boy, she would miss Outdoor Ed. Her parents weren't really the camping type, and her brother and sister were too small to go camping anyways. She sighed again, and looked around towards the Striped Bass cabin, for the boys. Out came Lennard, a blonde kid with blue eyes, with something wrapped tightly in his hands. He called out to somebody Carla couldn't properly see because they were sitting down on a bench, and Lennard raised his hand up high to catch the person's attention. Carla started walking towards the bench too, and soon noticed that it was Liana who was sitting down. Lennard sat down himself right next to Liana, who provided something that looked very similar to the object Lennard had in his hands. As Carla got even closer, she realized that they were cards. They were quite interesting though. It looked like some sort of game, like with Pokemon cards, but the Pokemon were not Pokemon. They were ghosts, vampires, mutant animals, and warriors.
"Watcha playing?" Carla asked Liana who was putting down a card, and Lennard grinned devilishly.
"Just a game," said Lennard, triumphantly putting down a card. Liana gasped, as Lennard pointed towards a ghost card she had, who was floating through a haunted forest.
"But I didn't die yet, HA!" cried Liana. "I still have five lives!"
"Yeah, and I have 16," said Lennard, picking up another card as Liana twisted a 'forest' card in her hand. She suddenly put down a card that said 'swamp'.
"You shoulda attacked me!" said Lennard, pointing at his card.
"Shut up!" said Liana as Lennard pointed at the same ghost girl flying through the forest as last time.
"Dead!" said Lennard, putting the ghost card in a pile of cards Liana had accumulated, while in Lennard's pile there were only two.
"I said, shut up!" said Liana, grabbing a card from her deck. "Oooh!" she said, putting the card down. Lennard leaned over to look at the card and opened his mouth with astonishment.
"Nice trick, nice trick," he said.
Then, the unmistakable voice of Mrs. Young, the English teacher that had come along for Outdoor Ed, said,
"KP's should already be in the dining hall! Everybody else, we're going in two minutes!"
Liana and Lennard decided to keep playing, as a confused Carla watched their match. Then Carla felt an unmistakable tingle behind her ears. When this happened...
"Hey guys!" said Ian, flailing his arms around wildly, his sweater tied around his neck. His glasses nearly fell off his nose.
"Ian," said Carla.
"Do you know how to play?" asked Lennard.
"Cheeeeeeese!" said Ian, grabbing a card and throwing it off the bench. Carla stifled a laugh as Liana picked up the card and said,
"Take that as a yes," and giggled.
"What's that card?" said Ian, pointing at a 'Titanic Growth' card, with a giant dog on it.
"Mine!" said Liana, keeping it close to her chest. Ian looked at the ground, a fake frown on his face. From a distance, Carla also heard the voice of Aidan who was saying,
"Nobody knows how I eat worms, worm three times a day, HEY!"
"RIIIIIINALD MCDIIIIIINALD!" screeched Ian
"Ian?" asked Carla, looking at him with a confused look.
"RIIIIIINALD MCDIIIINALD!" he repeated. Carla burst out laughing.
"RIIIIIIIIIIIINALD!"
"McDinald?" asked Carla. Ian slightly nodded, and jumped in place.
"McDiiiiiiiinald!"
And that's how our curious story began.
Ian waddled though the door into the dining hall, the number 11 on a card in his hands. Suddenly, Ian didn't feel like going to Outdoor Ed anymore.
"To... EQUESTRIA!" he said, pointing his index finger up at the sky. Three seconds later, he was gone.
Meanwhile, in the magical kingdom of Equestria...
Applejack waved good-bye to Rinald McDinald, her latest client, who waved back at the mare as me smiled contently with a big basket of apples at his side. He brought them inside and closed the door to his house, licking his lips. Rinald loved cooking, and he was ready to cook his biggest and best apple fritters yet.
Rinald took out the ingredients, and a rolling pin. Then he put on his white apron with his name embroidered on the front, and put the basket of apples on the counter. The earth pony looked through drawers to find a knife good enough to cut the apples, when he thought he heard talking coming from outside his window. Rinald sneaked a look outside, and saw Bon Bon, the cream-colored mare with candy as her cutie mark, murmur something to her best friend Lyra Heartstrings.
"REALLY!?" said Lyra Heartstrings, bouncing up high.
"Yes! Lyra, I swear to Celestia that I saw one with glasses and a black mane, wearing clothes,"
"You mean hair. Humans don't have manes, Bon Bon," said Lyra matter-of-factly, looking around.
"Where was he headed?"
"Rinald's house,"
"What would a human want to do with Rinald?"
"Well, apparently something!"
At the very second that those words escaped Bon Bon's lips, a crashing sound was heard all the way from the front door, and a... human... came barging into Rinald's personal space, yelling,
"RIIIINALD MCDIIIIIIINALD!"
What are you doing in my house?
Rinald didn't have any time to think before the human jumped on him and screamed his name again.
"What are you doing!?" asked Rinald, looking around. Rinald then realized he had a knife lying right next to him, and made a lunge for it. Rinald grabbed the knife in his hooves and gasped, as he saw the human back off.
"What are you DOING!?" asked Rinald again. The human tilted his head to the left and looked deeply into Rinald's eyes.
"Well, I teleported myself to this land, Equestria, using my very common and incredibly powerful index finger, all the way from Outdoor Ed, in the United States of America, which I presume you do not recognize from any books, since humans, I understand, are not very common in this land of yours," he said with a plain tone in his voice. "Do you have Minecraft here?" he asked, looking around the house and propping his glasses back up his nose.
"Teleported? Index finger? Outdoor Ed? United States of America? Hu-humans? Minecraft?" said Rinald, confused.
"Yes, exactly," he said.
There were a few moments of silence, except for Rinald McDinald's accelerated breathing.
"So, what are you doing here?" asked Rinald. The human shrugged.
"I guess I'm looking at you, standing, breathing, living, a bunch of more things," answered the human. Rinald shook his head.
"No, I mean, what are you doing here, in my house,"
"Oh! You coulda just said that," said the human.
"But what are you doing in my house?" asked Rinald.
"Well, I was looking for Riiiiiinald McDiiiiiiinald, but since in my world nobody's going to name their child Riiiiiinald McDiiiiiiinald, I went looking for Riiiiiinald McDiiiiiiinald here, in Equestria,"
"But how did you even find me? You don't seem to have a horn for making tracking spells. Or wings to fly," said Rinald.
The human shrugged again. Rinald nodded.
"I was baking apple fritters if you're interested,"
"No thank you my friendly carrot,"
"What?"
"Carrot. Just like Thai Lily, you guys are carrots,"
Rinald didn't listen to the parts about carrots, but decided not to bake the apple fritters after all.
"Should we go and sit down?" asked Rinald, motioning to his living room with a lot of sofas. The human shrugged again, but walked over to the sofas with Rinald anyways.
"So," started Rinald when they were both seated. "Who are you?"
"I'm a person with a vivid imagination," he answered. Rinald sighed.
"I meant your name,"
"I'm Ian," he said, playing with the fringe of his shirt.
"What are you wearing?"
"Clothes," answered Ian.
"No, I meant, what do you call them in the human world?"
"Pants, shirts, socks, shoes, underpants, glasses," said Ian, showing and pointing each one out to Rinald McDinald.
"And, I, for some reason, still don't understand what you're doing in my house," said Rinald with a slight tone of defeat in his voice.
"Well, I was looking for you-"
"Why?" interrupted Rinald.
"Cause I want to. Just like my friend Aidan chases worms, and my friend Thai Lily chases soccer balls, and my friend-"
"But why me? There must be another Rinald McDinald in this vast world!" said Rinald. But Ian shook his head, which indicated Rinald that there was no other pony, or human for that matter, with his same name.
"Why the name 'Rinald McDinald? Why not my twin brother Ronald McDonald?" asked Rinald, only receiving another shrug from Ian.
"Sounds weird, Ronald McDonald. I prefer RIIIIIINALD MCDIIIIINALD!" he screeched again. Rinald covered his ears with his hooves, tired of hearing his name for that day.
"You know what, get out of my house! I can't take it! I bet Ronald sent you after me anyways!" said Rinald, returning to his grumpy self.
"Sure," said Ian, running to the front door, standing outside. Rinald looked through the peephole and saw Ian's eye looking at him back. Rinald ducked down.
A FEW MINUTES LATER...
Rinald couldn't take the guilt anymore. He was sorry he had been mean to Ian, and even though he might be an annoying human, at least he wasn't crying on the front doorstep or something. So with a great sigh of relief, Rinald McDinald let the weirdest person in all of Equestria enter his house, about to change his life forever.
