Everyone has bad days, right?
Yeah, we've all felt life give us a good kick when we're already lying on the ground. However, there's only so much kicking a man can take before he stands up and kicks back.
For me, that moment came when I was idly staring out an airplane window, thinking about how I was gonna fix the mess I was in. I'd just had the hands-down worst day in my life. Seriously, I was pretty sure I'd broken some sort of record so far as shitty days go. Now, to top it all off some nutjob was waving a gun around and screaming in the aisle on my left. The gun looked a little odd, ceramic maybe. I wasn't exactly an expert, but I remember thinking for a brief moment that it would explain how he got it through a metal detector.
He kept screaming and ranting for a while. Something about the sins of America and purging with fire. I couldn't see a bomb anywhere though. Not that I was a bomb expert either, but he wasn't carrying anything other than the gun from what I could tell. Nor could I detect any signs of some form of wearable bomb under his clothes. Then again, if airport security couldn't find it, how would I?
I guess something in my brain snapped in that moment and suddenly I was done getting kicked. I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists, and decided to kick life back. I slowly stood from my seat with a somber expression, much to the shock of our supposed 'executioner', as he had declared himself. In fact, he almost seemed afraid as I stood.
"S-sit back d-down asshole! I control this plane!" his voice nearly cracked as he pointed the (possibly) ceramic gun at my head. I guess he hadn't expected any resistance. All eyes in the plane were locked on us, even a baby which had been crying before had gone quiet. Despite the extreme tension of the situation, the only sound for a brief moment was the hum of the jet's engines. I took the chance to really size up our 'captor'.
He was a tall, thin stick of a kid. Not any older than maybe 18 and shaking like a leaf in a fall breeze. I couldn't help but wonder why he was doing this, how anyone could throw their lives away like he was willing to do.
With speed born of a survival instinct, I lashed out with my left hand and knocked his arm to the side. Just as expected, he fired the gun reflexively. The bullet narrowly missed my side and embedded itself harmlessly in a seat. I then grabbed his wrist firmly to keep him from whipping the gun back up.
"Stop! You don't have to do this!" my voice was calm and commanding. I can't really explain why, but in that moment I felt more like a babysitter dealing with an unruly teen than a man facing down an armed terrorist.
"Y-yes... I do..."
Only then did I finally see the detonator in his left hand, which had been obscured from view from my spot on his right side. With a cry, I leapt forward and tackled him, trying to wrestle the device from him or... something. In retrospect, I'm not even sure I had a plan. His thumb slammed down onto the detonator before we even made contact.
Then the plane exploded.
What luck, right?
To my immense surprise, I eventually woke up. Albeit, in immense pain. Which, in itself, made no sense to me. I had just witnessed a plane-engulfing explosion. I'd seen the light, felt the heat. I should be dead, certainly not in pain and definitely not alive. It suddenly occurred to me that I might be in hell. That would explain it.
I groaned and decided to simply try to figure out my own body which felt incredibly dull, aside from the nigh overwhelming pain, and unresponsive. I cracked my eyes open and saw brown. Just brown, a distance away from me. After much intense concentration and a bit of wiggling, I managed to figure out that I was laying on my back, and the brown was the color of the ceiling. I almost immediately tried to prop myself up on my elbows to get a better view of my surroundings. Mistake.
"Aw fuck!" I cried out as searing pain shot through my arms. I dropped back down the mere centimeter I had managed to lift myself and cried out again as more pain jolted through my back and chest. I hissed gently and made a mental note to not move.
After the pain subsided, I sluggishly realized I had heard something move when I cried out. I decide to open my eyes, which I had clenched shut when my back hit the floor, and look for whatever had moved. At first, turning my neck to search was an agonizing activity, but the pain eventually dulled and I zeroed in on the source of the movement before.
To my great surprise, I saw a small, purple, horse. No, unicorn, it had a horn sticking right out of the middle of its forehead. It looked almost... concerned, I would say. When it saw me moving my head it started to timidly move towards me.
"Oh." I rasped, my throat barely allowing me to form words. "I guess I'm in a hospital. They must have really good stuff here..." that seemed logical. I must've survived the explosion and been rescued somehow. Then when I was carted to the hospital the put me on tons of painkillers which had to be why I was seeing a purple unicorn.
I had just enough time to realize that theory made no sense, as I was still in massive amounts of pain, before I passed out.
"Burns... doesn't move..." small bits of speech darted through my foggy mind as I slowly began to regain consciousness. The pain in my body was still sharp, still all over me, but not as all-consuming as before. I groaned softly, even the act of forcing the air from my lungs was slightly painful. Despite the pain looking around had caused me last time, I decided to give it another go. I idly wonder if I might have suffered some brain damage in the crash before I opened my eyes and tilted my head up slightly to get a good look at my surroundings.
I hadn't seen much of my surroundings before, I only recalled a brown color to my surroundings and a purple... unicorn. My vision was much clearer and more focused this time. My surroundings were brown because I was surrounded by wood: wooden walls, wooden floor, wooden ceiling, wooden bookshelves, wooden table, and even a little wooden horse head on said table. That would arguably be pretty normal, except the wooden structures around the room had no lines on them, no places where one wooden board met another. All the grains on the wood lined up perfectly as well, it was almost as if the whole room was carved out of one massive piece of wood.
Perhaps more strange, and certainly more interesting, were the two most colorful things in the room. A yellow horse with wings talking to the purple unicorn I had thought was a hallucination before. What confused me the most was not their colorful bodies, the markings on their flanks, or even their extra parts normally seen in mythological texts and illustrations; they were talking to each other.
"So... You're sure it's not dangerous, Fluttershy?" the purple unicorn was speaking to the yellow pegasus with a very worried, female voice.
"I'm pretty sure... He doesn't have any claws or fangs, and he doesn't seem to have any venom or any natural weapons really." the 'Fluttershy' one explained with an equally feminine, but softer and calmer voice.
"The muscle structure though... and the strange structures on its forelimbs. It makes me a little nervous..." she paused and looked at me, apparently not noticing that I had moved slightly. "Its like a smaller, strangely structured minotaur."
"From what I could tell, he seems to have a body structure that's pretty similar to monkeys, which are relatively harmless. Also, it's he, not it.... Sorry."
I smiled at the money comment, and even managed a soft laugh. The immediate result was immense pain which caused me to moan and lie my head back down. Almost immediately the little yellow pegasus was by my side, shushing me gently and looking over my body with a worried expression.
"What's it doing, Fluttershy?" the purple unicorn's voice was laden with suspicion.
"I think he's waking up... Hi there little guy, you feeling better?" Fluttershy raised one of her forehooves and carefully patted my brow with it. I raised my eyebrow at her, one of the few movements that caused me no pain, and scoffed quietly.
"Little? I'm like.... more than twice your size..." I winced slightly as I spoke, still not quite used to the pain it caused me. Fluttershy almost bounced backward away from me and her eyes were wide with shock.
"He talks!"
"It talked!" the purple unicorn called from the other end of the room.
I might have reacted the same way earlier when I saw them talking had I not been in such pain. "Yes, I talk." my voice was dry and weak, but at least I was talking again.
"Errr... uhhhh this was unexpected..." the purple unicorn's hooves tapped against the wooden floor lightly until she, too, had entered my field of view. "H-hello mister. How are you?"
"In pain."
"Right, sorry, bad question... If... if you don't mind me asking, what are you?"
"Oh, do you not know? That's odd, I know what you are." it wasn't until after I spoke that I realized I might be on another planet, or even plane of existence where humans didn't exist. It was all very strange of course, but I wasn't exactly in the best condition to be freaking out. "Errr... at least I think I do..."
The purple unicorn and Fluttershy exchanged a slightly scared look. "Y-you do?" Fluttershy asked worriedly.
"Well where I'm from at least. My kind calls things like you 'ponies'." my voice was still weak, and it still hurt to talk, but I was glad I could at least form unbroken sentences.
"That... that's exactly what we call ourselves. How is it possible that you know what we are, but we know nothing of your kind?" the purple unicorn seemed even more worried than before. Whatever was going on, and whatever these things were, I didn't want them scared of me. It was obvious that up until this point they, or others of their kind, had been caring for me. I needed them to like me if I wanted to continue surviving.
"Well that's surprising... to be honest I was just using the word that would be closest to what you are. Our ponies are nothing like you."
"W-what are they like?" Fluttershy asked with a scared quiver in her voice.
"Well ours aren't nearly as... pretty, or smart as the two of you." sure, using words like pretty and smart was obvious flattery and not really an explanation, but I wanted them to like me. Neither of them really seemed at all swayed by it, I guessed I'd have to try harder.
"... Right. Well, not to harp on this, but you still haven't told us what you are." the purple unicorn had an eyebrow raised at me. She obviously saw right through my flattery.
"Oh yeah, I'm a human. Sorry about that. So ummm... thanks for helping me."
"O-oh, it's no trouble. We couldn't just leave a helpless uh... 'human' like that." Fluttershy stuttered out nervously. She seemed nice at least. Well, more like commonly decent.
"Well, now that you're awake, I can finally write a letter about you to the princess. Fluttershy, would you mind making sure he doesn't do anything while I do?" the purple unicorn walked out of my line of sight and away from me.
"Y-you're going to l-leave me alone with h-him Twilight?" Fluttershy seemed more scared than ever now, literally quaking with fear.
"What? You said he's harmless, nothing to worry about, right?" 'Twilight' seemed totally unconcerned about me being any sort of danger. She didn't seem careless, so I could only assume she had 100% faith in Fluttershy's previous evaluation of my dangerousness. Fluttershy, however, didn't seem so confident about it all of the sudden.
"W-well I did..."
"Great, I'll go write a quick letter and be right back then. Nothing to worry about, ok?"
"O-ok..."
Twilight's hoofsteps gradually grew fainter and eventually I heard a door open and shut. For a long period of time, Fluttershy and I simply stared at each other in silence. To be more accurate, I stared and she slowly sank her face deep into her mane, as if trying to hide from me. "So uh... Hi." I muttered, not quite sure what to say.
"..."
"Ummm... so, if you don't mind me asking, where am I?"
"T-twilight's house..."
"No no, I mean this looks nothing like where I'm from. It's all... different. So where am I?"
"P-ponyville?"
"No, I mean planet."
"O-oh, E-e-equiss."
"Ok, thanks." yeah, it was official. I had no fucking clue what was going on and that was gonna change any time soon.
