They Walk Among Us

Uugh...

As he woke up, the first thing he felt was itchiness. He tried to scratch that stupid itch, but he couldn't move at all. He felt very fatigued... and it hurt a lot if he even tried to move a tiny bit. He had a migraine, his back was aching like mad, and he felt one of his arms being crushed by a piece of debris. He laid down there, unable to move, but feeling incredibly uncomfortable.

His eyelids were heavy. They seemed to be kept down by some immovable force, but in the end, he was able to take a peek.

And it was bright. Very bright. So bright that every time he opened his eyes for even the tiniest bit, it would feel as if his eyes were burning. Eventually though, his eyed grew accustomed to the bright light, and he quickly sat up and took a good look at his surroundings.

His first thought?

Well, this is truly a sucky place to sleep in...

He winced. One of his arms were still stuck under some rubble, but as he used all his strength to sit up, he couldn't summon enough energy to pull his arm out of the rock.

He had to think fast. He already started losing the feeling in his arm.

He turned around painfully, and then, eyes shut to concentrate, he used both his legs to try to push the rock away. He expected a lot of pain, but he did not expect that the large rock holding his arm down would so easily fly away from one of his kicks.

After that great ordeal, he fell on his back again. He tried to gather as much energy as possible before attempting to stand up. His arm still hurt, but it was quickly healing. He could feel his bones reconstructing themselves rapidly. He did not understand what was happening to his arm, but he couldn't care less. In fact, he was grateful- a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time.

But what happened?

That was the question. He tried to recollect his memories, and as he started piecing them together, he remembered the Observatory, his Dad bringing snacks, the Supernova, the Black Hole...

Wait...

He was conscious even after they exited the black hole. Then there was a great earthquake or something, and the entire Observatory collapsed on itself. He swore that he saw the Earth crash into something, though.

That was when the gravity of the situation weighed down on him.

He was not supposed to be alive! No, the Earth should have been utterly destroyed because of an impact like that! There is no scientific explanation at all to explain their survival!

The shock of finding out that he was alive and that the Earth was intact gave him enough energy to literally jump into position. However, he quickly lost balance and fell down again with a heavy thud.

Ow!

That hurt a lot. He felt something impale his shoulder, and he sat back up again.

That was when the itch returned.

That painful, burning, son of a $#@!&. However, now he had enough strength to scratch that itch.

Prepare to be eradicated, you unwanted, foolish itch!

As his arm reached into his back, he scratched like there was no tomorrow. The pleasure that came from finally scratching that itch overwhelmed him.

After two minutes of non-stop scratching, he slowed down, and then stopped all of a sudden.

What is this?

He touched his back again.

His back was furry.

Not hairy, but furry.

Short, smooth, cool, fluffy, and somewhat dirty fur.

He reached his arm back to pull one of the hair to take a look.

But he had no fingers.

He snapped his arm back and put it up to his face.

In place of what was supposed to be a human hand of flesh and blood, was a furry, fingerless, blue-gray coloured stub. Was this a....

No, that's

He looked around, trying to find a reflective surface in order to see himself.

Right outside what used to be the University, where Second Street was supposed to be, was replaced with a large lake surrounded by fresh, trimmed grass.

He stood up, but lost balance and fell again.

His feet have also turned into stubs, which also looked like...

Nah... that's impossible!

So he stood up on four of his 'stubs', trying to keep his balance as he slowly walked towards the lake. It was definitely easier to walk like this than to walk on two legs, as he tried to do earlier.

Which brought up the question again...

What is happening?

As he walked up to the lake, he noticed that it was much bigger than it looked from the observatory. He also saw something partially submerged in the middle of the lake. It looked like a giant stone statue of a lion with the face of a woman...

It was the Sphinx.

Now Steven was thrown into full panic mode. Where was he? What happened to his body? What the hell is a freakin' SPHINX doing in the middle of a lake, right in front of the Observatory?

Then he remembered what he came for.

His heart rate became faster, he started to sweat, and he really needed to take a leak somewhere.

Slowly, and reluctantly, he forced himself to look into the lake, which would undoubtedly show his face. He closed his eyes, not ready to face the truth yet...

Finally, though, his curiosity overwhelmed his reason, and he snapped his eyes open.

He saw a head. A head with long, protruding jaws, a strong mandible, large eyes, and a pair of ears at the top of that head...

He was looking at the head of a horse. A young colt.

Now he understood everything. His inability to balance properly on two legs, his stubbed hands and feet, his fur, his strong legs...

He was a colt.

For about half an hour, Steven looked at his reflection. He was a horse. He was a horse. Out of all the things in the world, he. Was. A. Horse. What the hell is happening? If he was a horse, then what happened to his Dad and the team?

His Dad and the team.

Steven immediately shot back to reality, and he ran back to the Observatory. He had to find his Dad and his friends.

Please don't be dead... Please don't be dead...

He looked through the rubble, lifting the smaller pieces of debris and kicking away the larger ones, but he could not find them. He turned the whole place upside down, but they were nowhere to be found.

But Steven still had hope.

If they weren't here, he thought, then at least I can go on thinking that they might be alive...

However, he never stopped looking for them. Not only did he check the Observatory for them, he looked everywhere in a 10 mile radius of the Observatory. He looked in the lake, he dug at the ground, he kicked open the Sphinx's head (Screw ancient history, I need to find my friends!), but he still couldn't find them.

As he did that, fatigue slowly started creeping in. When he could not stand it anymore, he dragged himself back to the Observatory, and sat down. Because of all the excitement, he forgot about the wound in his shoulder from when he accidentally impaled himself. However, it started to heal- heal as quickly as how his bones rearranged themselves.

As he sat down, he thought to himself. He seemed to be doing a lot of that nowadays, but this was as good a time as any. First of all, he still couldn't figure out how the Earth survived the black hole, and the impact immediately after. Then, he wondered how the hell those events managed to turn him into a HORSE.. He tried to remember what happened after the impact and where all the people in the same room with his in the Observatory went, but as he fell unconscious at that time, he couldn't remember anything.

He looked up at the sky again. He never believed in miracles and the Almighty, but he also never had an event which couldn't be explained too...

"Hey... um... if you're up there, and if you can hear me... Please, I beg of you, give me a clue... ANYTHING that can help me explain what's happened here."

As he ended that sentence, he wondered if the Man in the Sky would listen to him, despite him not believing in him for all these years. Then again, even if he does forgive him, does the Almighty understand horse?

Suddenly, he heard a loud 'CRASH' to his right.

A streetlamp just fell down on the road opposite to the one he was sitting on. Just as he looked, something caught his eye.

He quickly ran there as fast as his new legs could carry him. His front hoof's shoulder was still stinging, but he needed to get there fast.

Beside the streetlamp were two giant pieces of rubble, and in between them was...

A woman? She was facing down, and only her head, neck and one arm was not buried in between the rocks. He slowly crept forward, scared that the woman would suddenly jump out at him, and she seemed unconscious.

He tried to pull her out, but his new hooves were no use in gasping anything now. So he very slowly used his long mother to grab hold of the woman's arm, and pulled her out of the two pieces of rubble.

He quickly turned her over. She was young- about his age, maybe... 18-19 years? And she was pretty, too. She was wearing only a zipped-up cyan hoodie and short jeans (with a design of what looked like a thunder cloud and multicolored thunder), and no shoes. The thing that stands out most, however, is her long, rainbow colored hair.

He shook her with his hoof, trying to wake her up, but she was totally non-responsive.

Was she dead?

Steven put one of his ears (I ears are mobile! How cool is that?) to her chest, ans he could hear her heart beating. No, she's not. I should find another way to wake her up.

He dragged her by the hoodie to the nearby lake. He needed water to wake her up, but there was no container of any sort in nearby.

What to do... What to do...

He thought of using his mouth, but that would be gross, even in horse standards. So he did the only thing he could think of...

He dunked her head into the water.

The woman woke up kicking and flailing her arms around, and Steven quickly stepped back. The woman sat up, shook her head, rainbow colored hair whipping back, and started stared at him.

Steven didn't know what to say. The woman seemed angry, yet she did not say anything. He had to think of something. FAST.

"Err... Hi? Um... How are you feeling? Um... Haha..." he said.

He then facepalmed (As his hand was replaced with a hoof, would that make it facehoof?), remembering that he was a horse, and she was human. There was no way a human could understand horse-speak.

"Not good, thanks to you." she said. "Ah, I can't STAND water in my head. Not that it hurts, cause it doesn't, it's just, er... Really umcomfortable."

She started smiling. However, it was now Steven's turn to stare at her.

"Don't stare at me like that," she said. "It's kinda creeping me out."

"How do you understand me? How are you able to understand my language?"

"Come on, even foals know that there is only one universal language in all of Equestria."

Foals? Equestria? What was this lady talking about?

Just as he thought that, there was a sharp, burning pain, smack in the middle of his forehead. Steven sat down, wincing, and he covered that spot with both his hooves.

The woman sat there and looked at him, confused, as to why the colt who had just dunked her head in the lake was holding both hooves in his forehead.

"Hey... are you okay?" she asked.

Steven was not okay. But he couldn't speak at all- the pain was too overwhelming. Suddenly, he felt something come out from his forehead. Something hard, and sharp. It kept growing and growing, until it suddenly stopped. The pain was greatly reduced, but he could still feel that spot stinging.

"Woah." said the woman. looking at him with large eyes and an open mouth. She then smiled and said: "I thought that unicorns get their horns from birth! Maybe you're a special case?"

Unicorn? Steven felt the new object on his forehead, and he knew that it was definitely a horn. He tried to say something... anything... The woman in front of him seemed to know something about what was going on.

"Er..." he started.

"The name's Rainbow Dash." she interrupted. " Fastest flier in all of Equestria. What's yours?"

"Hi, er... Rainbow Dash, was it?" What a strange name. Where is this girl from? "Um... I'm Dr. Steven Reilly. Excuse me, but..." he said.

"Steven Reilly? Never heard of a name even close to that before? So, I'm hoping you got answers. Where am I?"

"Well, I don't know too, and..."

"Then it's up to me to find my friends. Catch ya later, Steven!"

Rainbow Dash jumped up, hands outstretched, but then she fell down on the floor, face first.

Steven ran to her, but Rainbow Dash just sat back up, a bewildered look on her face.

"What in Equestria...?"

She never managed to complete her question. She looked at her hands, then at her legs. The tips of her arms and legs were oddly shaped, much unlike the usual hooves.

"What are these?" she said while looking at her hands and feet while flexing her fingers and toes. However, Steven guessed from her tone that she did not expect an answer.

She then touched her hair. She took hold of it and then brought it in front of her face to see. Her eyes shined at her brightly coloured rainbow hair.

"At least my mane's still normal..." she said.

Mane? This thing was getting wierder by the second.

Then Rainbow Dash did the wierdest thing she had done so far- she stood up on all fours, looking oddly imbalanced, and shook her tiny bottom. This counted as strange even among strange people. Steven stared at her while she was doing this, his head tilting about 90 degrees sideways, his expression so bewildered that it looked comedic. But that was nothing compared to the look Rainbow Dash was giving her bottom. It was even more funny when she looked at Steven with that same look.

"My tail is gone!" Rainbow Dash said, her mouth gaping open.

Steven turned around, trying to suppress the laughter he felt was going to burst out any second. The sheer hilarity of Rainbow Dash's actions was unbearable already, and the fact that she was completely serious about all this just added to it.

After about 2 minutes of holding back his laughter, it had finally died down. He turned to look at Rainbow Dash again, but he was met with a crying, no, WAILING Rainbow Dash. This was the exact opposite of her character when he first met her.

Steven galloped to her and put a hoof around her shoulder. It felt wierd doing that.

"There, there..." he said, his tone very low and comforting.

Rainbow Dash leaned her head on his shoulders, still sobbing. It really felt wierd now. A human being comforted by a horse- no, a colt? This was plain wierd. But he had a job to do, and that was to try to comfort Rainbow Dash.

"I... lost... them..." she managed to say, in between loud sobs.

Steven patted her shoulders awkwardly. He hadn't even known the girl a few minutes ago, and now she's unloading her troubles upon him. He didn't know how to react. His felt his face burning up.

He had never been in that situation before. Even Jaeda never cried on him like this.

Jaeda...

Steven felt frustrated upon remembering her again. For a year and a half, he had tried in vain to forget her. To forget Jaeda, the woman he once loved- no. She was the woman he still loved. And he knew that no one, even a prodigy like him, can ever forget the one person they truly love.

But right now, he had to think of something to say to Rainbow Dash.

"Ok... It's fine... Everything's gonna be alright..."

Rainbow Dash jumped out of his arms, still crying, and stood up on two legs, staring at him like a rabid dog. Her breath heavy, and biting her lip, she shouted at him:

"Alright? ALRIGHT? Do you know what I've just lost?"

"Your feathers, and your tail, but come on, you can still live without them! I mean, this horn just came out of nowhere, and my fingers and toes suddenly..."

"I don't care about my feathers and tail! It's these!" She said, pointing at the sides of her torso.

"There's nothing there..."

"Exactly! My wings are gone!"

"Okay, I understand that-"

"No! You don't understand! No one can! I am one of the fastest pegasi in all of Equestria. If I lost my wings, then how can I still be the fastest? HOW?"

Steven tried to answer that, but he couldn't. He tried to think about what life would be like without his brain, but he couldn't. He could now feel a portion of what Rainbow Dash is going through.

"Listen, Rainbow Dash. I can't honestly say that I know what you are going through-"

"Of course you don't"

"But all I'm saying is that maybe I can help. We can find a doctor, or a biologist, or anyone that can help. All I'm asking you to do is to calm down and maybe try to understand what's going on here.

Rainbow Dash stayed silent.

"Because believe me, I understand this situation like how a cat can understand you teaching them Quantum Mechanics (which I have tried to do, so I know). I need to know everything you know about what is going on, and how we can reverse it."

Rainbow Dash sat down, and Steven sat down next to her.

"You see, before I became a horse-"

"Colt." Rainbow Dash corrected.

"Fine, a colt, I used to be a creature like you. And trust me, life without those fingers that we humans have is really hard."

"Fingers? What do they do?"

"They can help you grab things."

"Grab?"

Steven stood up.

"Wait here."

Steven took a rock and, using his mouth, rolled the rock to Rainbow Dash.

"A rock?"

"Try to pick it up."

Rainbow Dash reached down with her head and picked up the rock in her mouth. Then, rock in mouth, she looked up at Steven and tilted her head.

"No, no. You see, with fingers, we don't need our mouth to pick it up."

Rainbow Dash spit the rock at Steven's face.

"Don't need our mouth? Oops... sorry."

Steven's eye was black from the impact on the rock, but he was still smiling.

"Here."

Steven picked up Rainbow Dash's hand, and put it on top of the rock.

"Now, cover the rock with your fingers."

As he said that, he gently pushed her fingers so that it gripped the rock.

"OK, now with your fingers tightly gripping the rock, lift up your arm."

Rainbow Dash pick up the rock, then she looked up at Steven, a smile on her face and a gleam in her eyes.

"I did it! I picked up a rock with my hooves! I mean... hand!"

Steven smiled.

"Really! I think I can become the best and awesomest 'gripper' in the world!"

"Let's not get too ahead of ourselves, now." said Steven. Now she was acting like normal. Or, as normal as she ever was.

Steven looked up at Rainbow Dash, who was easily balancing on two legs, and was jumping around, throwing the rock in the air and catching it in the other hand.

Then Rainbow Dash fell down.

Steven laughed and walked to her.

"You really do like falling, don't you?"

"No, its just that I realized... Can't you 'humans' just use magic to pick the rock up?"

"Magic?" There was no such thing as magic, he was sure of that. Magic is just what common folk calls things when they do not understand it. But then again, they have pegasi too... so why not?

"Sorry, but humans can't use magic." said Steven, chuckling.

Rainbow Dash's face dropped.

"Oh. I just thought that with magic, I could grow my wings back."

Rainbow Dash stood up again. Even at her full height, Steven was still around the same height as she was. He liked this- he was always considered short by the American populace.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go find someone who can fix those wings."

Rainbow Dash, however, was frozen. She looked surprised about something, but Steven didn't know what it was about.

"I just had the most awesome idea ever?"

"What?"

"I know exactly who can help me at this time!"

"Who?"

Rainbow Dash smiled, face brimming with excitement.

"I have a friend from back in Equestria. She's, well, she's like you!"

"Human turned horse?"

"Pony." Rainbow Dash corrected. "And no, I meant that she's like you- a unicorn! She's the most powerful unicorn in Equestria- other than the Princesses, of course. She can definitely help me."

"Help us, you mean."

"Yeah, sure! Now come on!"

Rainbow Dash pushed Steven's flank with all her strength, eyes screwed up in concentration.

"Hey! I can walk myself, you know."

"Oh, sorry."

"Where do you think she can be found, anyway?"

"Oh, just look for the tallest building around. She'd be there."

Steven smiled. He admired Rainbow Dash's spunk and attitude.

She's not just cute, but she's got a whole lot of guts and energy, too.

Just like Jaeda...

Steven shook his head again. He didn't want to think about Jaeda. Not at a time like this!

Rainbow Dash noticed his behaviour.

"Something wrong, Steven?"

"Err... No, nothing, nothing! Just wondering, um... What is the name of this unicorn you speak of?" he said, hiding his face as he tried to cover up his ruby-red blush.

"Oh." said Rainbow Dash, her pink eyes shining as she looked forward.

"She's one of my best friends. Her name is Twilight Sparkle."