The Unusual Tale of a Human Thief in Equestria

An Unlikely Hero.

Chapter 1 – Of Disappearing Princesses and Killer Plants.

For a few seconds, nothing happened, the pink one just stared at me tilting her head slightly to the side as if the very concept of not becoming instant friends from the moment we laid eyes on each other was alien to her. The other horses just cautiously watched Pinkie Pie almost like they expected her to snap at any second.

This whole thing was getting me quite nervous, usually, I’m a very calm and collected kind of guy, after all, if I started getting shaky because of anything I would really suck at my job, but this? This was another thing entirely, I’m in the presence of unicorns and pegasi, those things are only supposed to be myths and on top of all that they talk!

What’s happening here? Am I sane? Did I hit my head on the way down and this is just a big coma-induced hallucination? It’s surprising I’m dealing so well with all this, plenty of people would freak out and I wouldn’t think any less of them for it.

Finally, Rarity steps up and clearing her throat, proceeds to break the awkward silence that took over us “Darling, what I think Janos here is trying to say is that we just met, and it is not the best of time to discuss those things.” She reaches over to her friend and places a hoof on her shoulder.

Pinkie looks down for a bit mumbling something to herself before shooting her head up with the same energy she displayed earlier. “Okie dokie lokie!” She says before hopping away just as suddenly as this all began.

A sigh of relief washes over them before everyone returns to their normal states and the conversation continues as if nothing happened.

“So Janos, I don’t mean to be rude but…” She bites her lip before looking back at me and asking “what are you exactly?”

There is a question I never thought I would have to answer. “Human, I am a human,” I answer her taking off my helmet and goggles, causing the most curious of them to step up trying to get a better view of my face.

I ruffle my shoulder length black hair to get rid of that ‘helmet hair’ effect I get after wearing it for so long

“So what yer doing here partner?” Asked Applejack.

“Actually, I was supposed to be on a vacation.” My answer takes everyone by surprise and they look at me as if I just gone completely insane as their stares are filled with disbelief.

“You took a vacation to the Everfree Forest?” Asked Rainbow. “I don’t know if that’s really brave or really stupid.”

Applejack does a very poor job at repressing a chuckle that quickly turns into outright laughter after Rainbow’s disapproving glare. “Oh! And you’d know plenty about doing bravely stupid things huh?”

“Look, I have no idea where this place is,” I say while picking up my rifle from the ground and strapping it to my backpack. “Last I checked this was a forest in Washington, but it’s clear I’m not home anymore.”

“Yeah, I never heard about any Washington,” Twilight said tapping her chin trying to recall any mention of the clearly unknown land.

“I didn’t expect you to.” I sigh and rub my eyes, I can’t believe this is happening to me and to make matters worse I have no idea what do here! “So, do you girls know of anyone who could help me out?” I awkwardly ask. I don’t expect them to actually know anyone but right now my best bet is finding someone who has any idea how to help me, hopefully, this happened before and they can help me find a way home.

I have to think objectively here, there is no point in freaking out all that’s gonna do is make matters worse, If I’m gonna have any chance of going home it’s by approaching this in a collected manner, treat this like any other job. So much for my vacation.

“Well as a matter of fact I do!” Twilight happily answers before her smile turns into a frown of concern. “But we have no idea where they are. You see, they are missing right now.”

“And you’re looking for them?” She nods in agreement. “Then it’s settled, I’m helping you find them.”

“Woah-woah-woah, you’re not coming with us.” Rainbow quickly objected. “How do we know we can trust you? For all, I know you’re working with them.”

“Working with who?” I ask, my eyebrow raising slightly in disbelief.

“I don’t know, but you could be!” She replied a little flustered.

“Darling, he helped Twilight without even knowing what we are.” Rarity interjected, trying to put some sense in the overly suspicious pegasus. “Risked his life even, who knows what those plants would do to them had we not showed up.” She raises a valid point, I’m happy I could help but that was a pretty dumb move on my part.

Rainbow drops on her haunches crossing her forelegs in frustration before letting out a sigh. “Fine, you can come.” With that taken care of the group proceeds to move forward but as soon as I pass by her side she pulls me with a hoof bringing me to eye level with her. “But I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

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The rest of the way was filled with exposition that I will spare you, it’s better to just tell what Miss “Pony Encyclopedia Sparkle” explained to me about her and her kind. First of all, they are not horses, apparently, Pegasi, Unicorns, and Earth Ponies are just sub-divisions of a single species: Ponies.

Because of course, they are ponies, what else could they possibly be? At this point, I’m just shrugging these off. If I linger too much on these little bits of information I’ll just go insane and start freaking out which as I covered before, won’t do me any good.

The next thing is where we are, this is the land of Equestria because subtlety is a lost art among her people, more precisely we are in the Everfree forest a place that is very much feared by the local populace because of its strange properties. What properties you ask? Well, the weather takes care of itself, the animals don’t need pony intervention and the plants just grow without anyone tending to them. You know? Just like home! Apparently, her people control all those aspects of this worlds, how? Glad you asked mate! They use magic. Eye, magic. Pegasi take care of the weather, Earth Ponies of the land and Unicorns are just deus ex machinas because they can actually cast spells and so.

So imagine their surprise when I told them my home is basically one giant Everfree! Jaws hit the floor, it’s funny how these ponies are expressive with their big eyes and ears betraying them, gotta play poker with them sometime. Anyway, I’m rambling.

Now the important part, why we are here. So this kingdom is ruled by princesses, no kings, and queens, why? I honestly don’t care at this point. Their main rulers, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have gone missing and since they control the sun and the moon respectively, both of them have gone bonkers. Again I’m not even going to question it and go with the flow. So both these broads are also immortal and have lived for thousands of years thus they are my best bet of finding a way home.

So, Sparkle saw in a potion-induced vision that whatever is going wrong with the forest, which has gone out of control, and hopefully the princesses disappearance too is the fault of a tree hidden deep in this forest, where their necklaces and tiara have come from, those things are actually magical elements that use the power of harmony to defeat evil and such, so they are basically sailor moons or some shit like that, they just don’t transform into anything, well not yet anyway.

Anyway, something must be wrong with the tree because it’s not keeping the forest in check anymore so we are going to see whats the problem and how to fix it, and hopefully, we’ll get a lead on what happened to the princesses.

And yes, I realize how surreal and insane this all sounds like, to tell you the truth I’m still not sure this isn’t just some big fever dream or something, but like I said, whether it’s real or not, the only way I’ll be able to go back is to treat this seriously, if it’s a hallucination or not, freaking out is not going to help me.

In return I answered some of their questions about me and my home, I’m not any expert on all things human but I did my best. They had very varied questions, Twilight would ask about anything but mostly science stuff, Rarity was very interested after I told them humans were always wearing clothes (Prompting me to realize they are all naked and making me a bit uncomfortable.), and she asked all sorts of questions about what we wear and stuff like that, Applejack made the most personal question which I answered in my usual vague manner, only giving out snippets of information, like the fact I'm an orphan or that I work with a partner named Barry who is also one of my few friends.

Rainbow Dash didn’t talk much, she pretty much just hovered in the back glaring a hole in my skull, I understand the suspicion but I hardly think there was need for so much of it, Applejack was fairly cautious around me but even she understood that so far I gave them no reason to be hostile towards me. Closer to the end of the journey, however, she did warm up a bit and joined the conversation.

What surprised me the most was Fluttershy’s sudden participation, she asked me a lot about animals and both of us were very surprised that all the non-magical creatures their world had also existed on mine.

So, all in all, it was a pretty fun afternoon, at least I think its
afternoon, granted it would be a lot better had we not been travelling deep into a forest full of strange creatures that could possibly be stalking us from the shadows.

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After some time walking we found our way to an old ruined castle which Twilight told me was where Celestia and Luna used to live before the latter went all evil and stuff, another for the list of things to clarify when I’m out of the big forest of death.

“So where is this tree?” I ask once we reach an old and very rickety rope bridge which serves as the only means to cross the big chasm between us and the castle. “On the other side?”

Please don’t say on the other side.

“Nah, it’s down through those stairs there,” Rainbow says, pointing to a set of stairs carved into the cliffs side that I somehow failed to see.

Shrugging I follow the rest of the group down the stairs and into an old cave that sits on the end of the chasm, we make it without much trouble despite the huge vines covering the ground and walls that converge on the same cave, there is some climbing and taking care not to hurt ourselves in the thorns but all in all we manage to get there without any trouble.

Once inside I finally manage to see this tree that’s giving us all so much trouble, and I got to say, it looks like shit, it’s covered in those vines and dripping with a sickly green fluid that I am not inclined to come into contact with. The tree itself is a grey color but something tells me that’s not its original state. There is a big star in its center and from that star sprouts five branches each with a weird socket on the end.

Twilight walks up to the tree and looks like she is about to fly up before I stop her. “You might not want to do this,” I say placing a hand near her neck to prevent her from taking up.

“I just want to get a better look at it.” She answers.

“Yeah, but I don’t think those things will like that very much,” I warn her of what should be obvious, to a girl that almost became plant food she sure is trusting of these things. “We need to make sure there is nothing here waiting to pounce on us, let’s check around and then come back to decide what we’re going to do next.” The ponies all nod and make their way to start searching for anything that could be hiding from us, even Rainbow listens to me without questioning even though she grumbles a bit.

I check the corners cautiously but luckily nothing jumps out at me so at the very least we know that nothing will catch us by surprise, well at least nothing comes from where we checked but it’s still something to give us some peace of mind, I’m the third one to come back and meet up with Rarity and Twilight.

“Everything clear on my side,” I say catching their attention. “Any ideas on how to deal with this tree?”

“Nothing from me, dear, what about you?” Rarity asks once she notices my arrival.

“Nope,” I answer shaking my head. “I just got here, you are the ones who know how any of this stuff works.” She nods in agreement and falls back into silence while we both turn to Twilight expecting some sort of master plan, what can I say? She looks like the brains of this operation.

Twilight then slowly turns to us, only averting her gaze from the tree on the last moment. “I have an idea, but let’s wait till the rest gets here before discussing it.”

Pretty soon Applejack arrives together with Pinkie Pie who is bouncing up and down in excitement, from what? I have no idea, the very concept of being alive seems to be enough for her.

A few minutes later Rainbow and Fluttershy greet us, by being one of the few that can fly they took to the ceiling and high places and therefore took a bit longer than the rest of us to come back.

As soon as we were all reunited Twilight took a step forward and with a deep breath turned to us to explain her idea. “I think we need to give it the Elements of Harmony.” She said to the surprise and shock of all but me.

“The Elements? But how are we going to protect Equestria?” Rainbow all but yelled at her.

“And Discord! How are we going to reign him in without them?” Rarity said.

“Twilight…” Applejack stepped forward from the back of the group, “The Elements of Harmony are what keeps us connected no matter what.” She says, gently raising a hoof to the jewel incrusted in her necklace.

“You're right about one thing, Applejack. The Elements of Harmony did bring us together. But it isn't the Elements that will keep us connected. It's our friendship.” I am not hearing this right now. “And it's more important and more powerful than any magic.” Did I get sent to a Saturday morning cartoon? “My new role in Equestria may mean I have to take on new responsibilities, and our friendships may be tested, but it will never, ever be broken.” Dear god. was this little speech really necessary? I can understand the sentiment and friendship is pretty great and all, but really? “There's no time to lose. Everypony ready?” She finally puts an end to our little moral lesson of the day and the ponies all take a stand facing the tree, looks like they decided what course of action to take.

All that’s left is for this to go smoothly, hopefully, they will get this done with no problem and we’ll be on our way to finding those princesses and I’ll be one step closer to home.

Except smoothly is not how things go in my life. At the beginning everything works out fine, Twilight takes the jewels with the weird levitation thing she does and begins to hover above us, as the jewels begin to spin around her she takes her own jewel and adds it to the mix.

And that’s when everything goes wrong. The vines leapt out of the tree and towards her before I can do anything, they slowly begin covering her from head to hoof, and even if I did try something, it would be too dangerous, since I could hurt Twilight in accident, after they take her however I can shoot the stems with no fear of hitting her, which is exactly what I do. Two shots are fired in quick succession but the vines either brush them off or are replaced by others, meanwhile Twilight proceeds to fit the jewels in their respective sockets, but before the last jewel can be placed, a vine shoots off the tree and grabs the little magenta star, Twilight is now covered completely in those vines her “grip” on the small jewel is barely enough to keep the vine from overpowering her.

I take another shot at the vine managing to make it drop the jewel as the big star in the tree trunk opens up revealing what must be done, dropping my rifle I make a run for it, dodging a couple of vines that tried to stop me I grab the star mid run and make my way to the tree, luckily we were fairly close to it, so I could make it quickly enough that the other vines didn’t have too much time to try and stop me.

When I made to the tree, however, the assault began, ever tried climbing a tree while big thorny vines try their best to rip you to pieces? It is most certainly not fun, those things were hitting me with whips and clubs, I could feel the thorns going deeper and deeper into my skin as one of them coiled around one of my legs which ended up ripping my jumpsuit to shreds.

Once I finally made it to the big star shaped hole in the tree, that vine was already all the way up to my waist, getting more desperate than I care to admit I shoved that jewel right in there which prompted the tree to close around it, before I could get free, however, another thing took hold or me. The star points sprouted out of the tree and wrapped around my right arm pulling me closer to tree until my hand was forcefully touching the jewel.

And that’s when the panic kicked in, a loud humming vibrated on my ears and a strong taste of iron filled my mouth, while the tree’s grip tightened around me, my hand began heating up, especially around my wrist, almost as if it was burning some on my skin.

As soon as the burning sensation began to take hold, I began screaming and squirming against the tree, before the ponies could do anything to help me however, (As I hope they were about to.) a bright flash of light filled my vision forcing my eyes close, I could feel the vines holding me disintegrating as their hold becoming weaker and weaker.

When they were gone, a new pulse of energy burst forth from the tree, throwing me quite a distance away, someone’s cry of “Janos!” was the last thing I heard before my head hit something hard and the darkness of unconsciousness overtook me.

Author's Note

Here it is. A bit earlier than I expected, you might notice some difference between this chapter and the previous one, that's because the last chapter was ready for months now and just now I decided to publish it, and this one I wrote recently so I done a bit of improving over the past few months between them.
I'll do my best to keep publishing chapters every weekend and keeping the 3.000 word average, but I can't promise anything.
Once again any constructive criticism is welcome and any help appreciated.