Article-15: Mat Best in Equestria
"So Many Questions" part1/3
The story starts the same way most stories involving ponies do. It was just another adorable day in the adorable world of Equestria; namely the adorable town of Ponyville for the adorable little ponies that made up Twilight Sparkle’s primary circle of adorable friends. That, as you can probably guess, is a lot of fucking adorable.
The Friendship Express came chugging into the Ponyville station with an obnoxiously girly whistle designed to draw attention to itself so it could better sell toys, and hissed to a halt. The carriage doors were thrown open and Princess Twilight Sparkle came trotting out onto the station platform. Waiting for her were her five best friends in the whole world.
Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy hovered above holding up the banner that read “Welcome home Twilight.” Applejack and Pinkie Pie remained firmly rooted to the ground as earth ponies usually were and threw confetti. Rarity had conjured up some magical fireworks and was as per usual dressed her best.
It didn’t take long for Twilight to run into a big group hug with all her friends, exclaiming “I missed you all so much!”
Which is a miracle by the way, since the Princess of Friendship had only been a short train-ride away in Canterlot for all of twenty-fucking-four hours! Ponies are weird that way though. Weird in their own adorable way; which is why we humans love them of course.
But this story doesn’t really start with ponies and their slice-of-life shenanigans. Oh, no, this is an adventure tale, sir! An adventure tale featuring crossovers and that infamous ‘human’ tag for good measure.
My good sir and/or madam, we are about to spiral down into the madness. For the darkness is rising. The apocalypse is coming. And very soon the simple ponies will find their adorable lives turned on their adorable little fuzzy heads.
This apocalypse begins with its first horseman waking from a drunken stupor in the midst of – where else but – the Everfree Forest.
He was of course not much of a “horseman” in the strictest sense of the word. He wasn’t much for horse-riding in that respect. But he certainly felt like he’d fallen off one.
The rough man with a glorious head of hair jerking his eyes open and inhaling sharply like he’d been holding it in for the entirety of last night’s festivities was called Mat – the same Mat Best the internet generation generally recognized as “MBest11x.”
The Army Ranger turned Youtube video satirist and face of Article-15 clothing suddenly collected himself out in a forest surrounded by ferns and trees and had a moment of panic. Pushing a twig out of his eye, Mat blinked hard a few times to sit up in a perfectly circular scorch mark. He’d probably put it there, being hot-shit and all.
As he was looking around he wore the expression of an amazed ten-year old seeing boobies for the first time. Possibly amazed he was alive considering how much he had drank last night.
Even for him the gallons of whiskey had been borderline suicidal. He figured he ought to have been used to it thanks to years of alcohol abuse since becoming a civilian… did I say alcohol abuse? I meant to say alcohol connoisseur.
Mat did a full pat down to make sure he all ten fingers, toes and most importantly, the family jewels.
Yup, we’re goo-… oh, Jesus!
His eyes bugged as he looked down to see what he was wearing. No-no, dear reader, I know what you’re thinking. He wasn’t wearing a dress, nor was he stark-bollock naked. Take a breather, man; life’s not always that sadistic.
No, Mat was in a panic realizing he was wearing a tactical-vest, a plate carrier woven with pouches for ammunition and all sorts of other odds-and-ends. Other than that he was pretty much naked, just wearing a pair of boxers sporting printed hearts and sandals.
“Oh, fuck me. Don’t tell me I re-enlisted in a drunken stupor!” Mat said to nobody in particular.
No, he couldn’t have accidentally re-enlisted. Firstly, the army probably wouldn’t want him back unless there was some kind of total emergency only the famed internet trash-talker couldn’t solve… okay, so maybe the army would take him back to deal with that I.S. shit, but that’s not where this story is going. There was no way the army would issue him a four-thousand-dollar Crye-Precision tac-vest… or tactical sandals… or a pair of shorts that didn’t make him look like he was fishing at a gay-bar.
Without all the pieces of the puzzle, Mat gave his surroundings a check over and suddenly noted his rifle leaned up against a nearby tree. The Pussy-Magnet was as deadly as she was sexy, a long barreled AR-15 dressed to kill with a slick red-dot sight, tactical fore-grip, juicy PEQ box and a sweet distressed-tan paint job.
“Thank God!” Mat exclaimed scrambling over…
Only to push his favorite rifle aside and dig up the glass bottle that was partially concealed in the moss under it. The tall green bottle was a heavy two-liter model adorned with the sticker of that Irish genius called Jameson. Trust the Irish to make a drink that can get you thoroughly fucked.
Mat popped the cap and took a few long, grateful drags like he’d been wandering the desert for a week and this was the first drop of liquid he’d laid his mitts on. Taking a breather, Mat took the time to read the label… then went back for seconds.
With nearly half of the bottle drained in the first thirty seconds, Mat stood, replaced the cap and slid the bottle into the dump-pouch hanging from the side of his tac-vest. He picked up his rifle and found one of the magazines fully loaded – slipped it into the Shoot-Stick and yanked the charging lever with a satisfying ‘shlock!’
“Time to put Ranger School to use and figure out where the fuck I am,” Mat announced, then realizing what he had just said sighed with an irritated expression. “I’m totally fucked.”
~~~ARC 01~~~
"So Many Questions"
Mat wandered the woods looking like he had way more purpose than he actually had. He sliced the pie around trees and made sure to turn and check his six every so often. As he navigated the thick woods, irritating thorny branches clawing at his calves reminding him of how he’d much prefer to have paid actresses clawing at his bare legs, Mat did his best to obey the three cardinal rules of pathfinding.
One, look cool.
Two, don’t get lost.
Three, if you do get lost refer to rule one.
Rule three was pretty much the only rule he was still following. Mat would very much have liked to have a sky to navigate by. The canopy was so thick he couldn’t tell if it was cloudy or clear. There was no way to see the sun, nor could he tell which way it was moving so he could tell east from west. Fuck, he’d settle for a damn road or pathway.
But no, he kept on stumbling over roots and rocks, stubbing his toes in his annoying sandals and grazing his bare legs on undergrowth. And just in case things weren’t irritable enough a low branch sometimes swung out of nowhere to swat him in his beardy face.
Oh, speaking of which.
SMACK!
“Oh, come the fuck on!” Mat groaned as he rubbed his eye where that branch had caught him.
Pushing the spiteful thing out the way he moved on, only to have another lash swat him right on the muscular buttocks.
“Whoa, behave!” Mat cried nearly jumping out of his skin. This forest was a raunchy one!
Trying his best not to anthropomorphise this forest’s attempts to hinder and molest him, Mat found a little clearing in which to rest. He sat on a rock and took a few swigs of his liquid full Irish breakfast.
As he was sitting there contemplating the state of his liver, the most curious thing in the world happened.
The air exploded.
Now Mat had seen, and caused, his own fair share of explosions. And even though his grasp on the science behind explosives was fleeting, he knew enough to know that air was not supposed to just spontaneously explode. But explosions were of course fun times. Except today. Today the air right in front of him exploded with enough force to knock him back over his perch.
Mat landed ass-over-tit, his legs sticking up awkwardly in the air. It took him a few seconds to remember rule one of pathfinding and quickly rolled onto his side, mimicking the urban-prone stance he’d seen Chris Costa do on Youtube. And it was actually kind of comfortable as well as cool looking. No way Chris learned that shit in the coast-guard.
Sitting up he suddenly saw the cause for the explosion. The tail end of a rainbow, vivid and glistening like it was a solid thing, had landed in the midst of the clearing in front of him. Mat looked at his bottle of whiskey wondering if he’d unlocked its Leprechaun powers.
The rainbow left a scorch mark in the grass and everything, similar to the scorch mark Mat had woken up in. And sliding down the rainbow like it was a slide came a hulking behemoth at least eight feet in height, landing with a heavy thud matched only by a heavy plant-felling implement landing beside him.
Mat had never seen anything so cartoonish in his life, and he was the one who had invented the Bikini-Snap.
Speaking of cartoonish, when the rainbow faded from view, standing in its place was a thing – or person – Mat had only seen on the big-screen. Kind of like a celebrity, although a celebrity who shouldn’t actually exist.
The mad fucker was huge, not exactly muscular but still a big guy dressed in a grubby overall. Carried in one hand was an old rugged looking machete and worn over his face was a hockey mask. Hockey stick, puck or other hockey-related pads were nowhere to be seen.
Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it; it was fucking Jason Voorhees! You know the guy, that iconic teenager-killing motherfucker from Friday the Thirteenth? The one and the very same stood right there in front of Mat Best and somehow the universe didn’t implode on itself.
Mat had so many questions. Had he slid into this forest on a rainbow just like that one? How was it Jason was an actual person standing there in front of him? What the hell kind of forest was this? An enchanted one? And if so, where the fuck were the unicorns!?
They were just a few to note. Somehow he was only able to voice one question as he sprang to his feet.
“Hey, Jay-Vee! If that gimp-mask doesn’t have a mouth-hole how do you suck dicks?”
The Jameson’s was really playing havoc on his ability to choose his questions intelligently.
Jason replied with furious silence, seemingly unable to form sentences. Though Mat doubted the tard’s ability to actually form conceivable sounds. Still, Jason was big and he carried a big fucking blade that he gave a practice swing as he charged Mat.
“Note to self. Don’t insult the enormous maniac with a machete.” Mat suddenly feigned an ‘oops, I’m so silly’ expression as he hefted his Boom-Stick. “Except if I have a gun, motherfucker,” he sang shouldering the AR-15.
The gun let out a pop-pop-pop and made Jason drop like a sick beat. Ragged, bloody holes blossomed across the maniac’s front and back, soaking his overall before the summer camp massacre-er fell to his knees and keeled forward, landing face down in the grass.
Mat posed triumphantly over his kill like a hunter who had just bagged his prize… after paying top dollar for said prize and having it tied up in front of him, completely removing the “hunt” from “hunting” and simply turning it into “-ing.”
Still, he had just shot Jason Voorhees in the fucking face. Not exactly a feat many could boast about.
“Yeah! ‘Murika!”
But his celebratory stance didn’t hold for long. Mat was taken aback by what happened next. And honestly, who could blame him? Because despite the twelve holes in Jason’s body, one of which having created the elusive ‘cock-sucking’ hole in his mask for him, the monstrous killer pressed down his hands and rose to his feet with a supernatural resistance to pain… and death.
Mat blinked confoundedly as Jason blocked out the very sun that managed to pierce the scant canopy of the clearing and stooped to pluck up his machete.
For all his operator work-outs and rippling musculature that turned women’s legs to jelly, Mat was still a dwarf compared to mungo the deformed killer. And he rightfully gulped at the sight of that bloody length of steel blade.
“Would an apology mean anything at this point?”
Jason was silent, but clearly miffed about being shot up.
Mat gave a nod. “No, I didn’t think so.”
Jason gave his machete a swish and pointed it square in Mat’s chest.
Smiling in response, Mat chuckled. “Ah, he-he-he… bye-bye!”
He was off like a bullet, zipping in the opposite direction of the swinging machete and soon Mat was crashing through the forest screaming and cursing harder than any damsel that had previously fallen to Jason’s blade. Mat was a little strapped for options really. Either keep shooting and be chopped to pieces. Stand his ground and be chopped to pieces. Or run the fuck away and eventually be caught up to and chopped to pieces.
He looked for options devoid of “chopping” and “pieces” as he ran. But it wasn’t easy with grit and dirt and little sharp rocks kicking up into the soles of his sandals.
“Fuckin’ sandals!” he cursed before sprinting through some brambles and scratching up his legs. “Fuckin’ boxers!”
He gave his tac-vest a shift, the coarse material ripping up his nipples. “Fuckin’ Crye-Precision.”
But then as if there wasn’t enough shit to complain about, low hanging branches found it necessary to swat him in the face as often as possible.
“FUCKING FOREST!”
Eventually he ran onto the bank of a raging river cutting right across his path. To the left led onto a steep incline that would slow his progress severely. To Mat’s right was a sheer drop off that the foaming river ran over to form a waterfall. And behind him the crashing noises of Jason’s movements indicated he was gaining.
Mat spotted a single fallen tree wedged between some rocks forming a single bridge across the river, just over the frothy cauldron of waves churning and spitting venomously. He groaned, then heard the heavy footfalls and quickly launched himself into action.
Using his rifle like a balancing stick Mat stepped onto the log and put one foot in front of the other. The log sagged under his weight but she held. It was a little springy and with every step Mat swayed a little. But thanks to the Death-Slinger in his arms he was able to compensate with counter weight and not drown.
The log was mossy and slippery though. So inevitably as is required by the laws of comedy…
He slipped.
“Whoa, fu-…”
One foot slid one way, the other slid the other way. And somewhere between he was able to catch himself on the log with his thighs. But at a terrible price. Here’s a hint; the terrible price was not wet feet.
“Guh!” Mat’s eyes bugged and he doubled over, sheer unimaginable pain racing up through his gut. How he was even able to articulate words was anybody’s guess. “That’s gonna leave a lasting impression on my virility.”
Righting himself, poor Mat was able to crawl the rest of the way across the log and pull himself onto shore on the opposite end of the raging river. By the time he’d caught his breath and climbed to his feet, Jason had caught up and was now looking up and down for a path across.
“Do you even love and tolerate, bro!?” Mat called, drawing the antagonist’s attention to the makeshift bridge.
Jason answered with silence and mounted the log.
Mat sighed, flipping his rifle into fully automatic and taking aim. “Suit yourself then.”
His red-dot bobbed across the hockey mask before he adjusted his aim sharply downward. With a roar of gunfire bullets tore into the log’s mid-section right at the dumbass’ feet, splintering wood and causing the makeshift bridge to groan loudly.
With a loud crack it was all over. The log snapped like a toothpick under Jason’s weight and he disappeared into the foaming water, his machete spinning in the air cartoonishly before following him into the drink.
Mat watched as Voorhees bobbed to the surface a few meters downstream before helplessly splashing over the waterfall and disappearing from sight. Running to the edge of the drop off he saw Jason get dragged down the next stretch of river before repeating the process of tumbling over the horizon of the next waterfall… and the next… and the next… until finally the madman was out of sight and out of mind.
“You just got BESTed. Mat BESTed,” Mat snickered before raising his eyebrow and nodding. “Hey, that could be a pretty cool t-shirt.”
Mat was able to navigate the rest of the woods to civilization without any further issue. Mind you, whenever he saw anything resembling a flash like that rainbow that dumped Jason Voorhees on his doorstep Mat made a point of turning ninety degrees and walked the other way. Call it “tactical evasion.” Totally different from “acting like a wuss.”
Eventually his wanderings brought him to the edge of the forest overlooking a small town in the valley of rolling hills.
The town in sight was a picturesque kind of place, like those quaint little German villages with thatch rooves on postcards your richer acquaintances send you from their European skiing holidays while you wallow in poverty and booze at home. The village was skirted by a glistening little river that ran down the hills and ended in a lake surrounded by a small spick-and-span park.
The horizon was a real sight to behold. Impossibly tall and steep mountains jarred the horizon, and plastered against the side of one mountain was some sort of capitol city made of marble and gold. It was mostly towers and walkways sprawling around artificial plazas that hung from the side of the mountain.
Between the impossible city, lack of pollution and too-perfect weather Mat was able to figure that he was definitely not in Kansas anymore… not that he’d want to spend any amount of time in Kansas to begin with.
Hefting his rifle over one shoulder, the operator moved down the hill and met the road leading into town. And what he found there was quite startling.
Everywhere he looked were colorful little horses. They were really cartoonish too, and he barely would have even recognized them as “horses” if it weren’t for the clippity-clop of their soft looking hooves and their manes and tails. They were very brightly colored with the palette of regurgitated skittles.
What bothered Mat was the fact these critters were wandering around unattended. There were no people supervising them and Mat suddenly felt a little nervous about spooking one of them and getting trampled.
Thankfully they seemed very docile. They seemed completely unfazed by the armed half-naked man wandering around, smiling brightly and offering a polite “good afternoon” as they passed…
Whoa, what the fuck was that last bit!?
Mat had to do a double-take on that last one, then triple checked again with his jaw ajar. That horse just spoke! Perfect American! With an accent and everything! There was emotion, and cheer and sentient feedback in the greeting! All the stuff normally reserved for God’s very own man!
Mat had to sit down and take that in for a while. More horses passed and said hello. And too dumbfounded to scream all sorts of bloody murder, Mat offered his sincere returns that the weather was indeed lovely today.
Finally as Mat was coming to terms with this slightly unusual turn of events, he was approached by a lavender horse.
“Hi!” it greeted, offering a toothy smile. “Ponies were telling me they spotted a newcomer in town and I had to come check it out myself. I certainly don’t recognize you. And I don’t forget a human face. Not many of you around after all. I’m Twilight Sparkle.”
Mat stared for the longest while at the horn stuck to the polite equine’s forehead. It would seem Mat had found the unicorn… sort of. She – he could tell by the voice and somehow the eyes – had a pair of wings to go with that horn, so he wasn’t entirely sure where to place this miniature horse – the term “pony” felt right – on the scale of freaky-to-fucked-up.
“Uh… I’m Mat,” the flabbergasted human offered.
“Are you new here in Equestria?”
The less he thought about this place being called Equestria the better. He hoped the horse puns would end there. “Yeah pretty much.”
“Then I’m sure you have many questions,” Twilight Sparkle said, dropping the understatement of the fucking year.
Just like when he had faced Jason in the forest, Mat had thousands of questions. But instead of freaking the poor girl out by bombarding her with queries, Mat thought it only gentlemanly to settle on one for now.
“What does it look like when you have sex?”
Damn you Jameson’s, you delicious son-of-a-bitch!
After Mat had apologized nineteen consecutive times for his rash line of questioning, and once Twilight Sparkle had calmed down the princess took our confused and hungover friend to – yeah, you guessed it – the Friendship Rainbow Kingdom castle.
…
Okay-okay, so maybe you didn’t guess it. But with a castle name like that, who could guess it? It’s like Castle Neuschwanstein or Chateau Fontainebleau. Who came up with these difficult castle names and how do they sleep at night!?
So Mat sat in the – shudder – Friendship Rainbow Kingdom castle, the cavernous walls on every side echoing every clip-clip of Twilight Sparkle’s movements ominously, and even amplifying the click of Spike’s talons on the floor.
Oh, Mat almost forgot to react to that one. Princess Twilight Sparkle’s assistant was a dragon. Albeit a small purple baby dragon, he was still a dragon. And that was pretty fucking metal, as opposed to the little girl motif of decorations that made up most of the town and the castle.
Then young Spike came in wearing a frilly apron decorated with hearts offering home baked cookies. All evidence of the dragon’s natural masculinity died and Mat felt a little bit of himself die along with it.
Finally Twilight Sparkle dumped a huge stack of paper on the table in front of Mat and announced they ought to get started. As it turned out Mat was an illegal alien. The feeling was not nice. But according to Twilight it was easily fixed. The immigration rules into Equestria for humans were pretty new and the local authorities were still lenient. But essentially Mat just had to fill out all the forms to get a visa so he could stay in Equestria without any hassle.
“So none of your colorful friends out there seemed too fazed at the sight of a creature from another dimension,” Mat offered as he was filling out a form that made his DD214 seem like a crayon drawing. “You get many human visitors passing through?”
“Not really. But Ponyville does have one permanent human resident!” Spike explained brightly.
Ponyville? Ugh… Mat regretted learning the town name immediately.
“We can take you to meet him after we finish up here,” Twilight said hoofing the next bundle of forms under Mat’s nose. “That’s a weapon, right?”
Mat turned in his seat and saw her pointing at the rifle propped up in the corner of the room. “Yeah. Y’know I’d rather not give it up…” especially not with that welcoming committee he’d met in the forest earlier that day probably still out there somewhere.
“Oh, no need. Owning a weapon isn’t actually illegal in Equestria.” Go figure. “We trust you to be responsible. You do have to register it though.”
“It’s got a serial number.”
“That helps. And that thing you’re wearing?”
Mat reflexively looked down at himself. “My tac-vest? No, that’s not dangerous, it just looks it. It’s actually just bulky and uncomfortable.”
“Why don’t you take it off then?” Spike asked.
“One, I gotta look operator. And two, you don’t just ‘take off’ a tac-vest you spent your life savings on.”
“Why would you have spent-…”
“Shhhhush-shush-sshhhh-shhh,” Mat shushed, pressing his finger against Spike’s lips, then sensually rubbing them he lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “Because it’s Crye-Precision.”
By their expressions the pony and the dragon clearly did not get it.
“So you were saying about registering the Blammer?” Mat finally deadpanned.
Twilight leaned over the table and pointed out several dotted lines. “Just scribble down the serial number here and sign here… and here… initial there… and here… and here… and there… and this one… and here… and there… and…”
So that went on for a bit, afterwards Spike went back to his baking and feather dusting, and Twilight Sparkle sent the stack of papers away on a magical wind that snaked up to that city in the mountains. Then they were on the road again, Mat walking alongside the purple princess of friendship as they took a path leading to the edge of town. There, cresting over the hill was a farm.
It was a farm in every sense of the word, surrounded by ploughed fields with seedlings, backed by orchards of apple trees and home to pig-pens, cow barns and a hen house. But the design was cartoonishly ridiculous.
The farm house looked like a glorified hay-barn re-designed by a five-year-old mad child with a brand new set of coloring pencils. The designer must have been a girl if the loveheart-topped weather vane atop the bell-tower was anything to go by.
There was even a white picket fence and a quaint little sign hanging in the rose-dotted archway welcoming Mat to “Sweet Apple Acres.”
All it was missing were happy go lucky talking ponies in all the colours of a kaleidoscope… oh, wait, no; it had those too.
One pony, a big red stallion buff enough for his head to reach up to Mat’s chest trotted by with a stalk of wheat sticking out the corner of his smiling mouth.
“Hello, Big Mac,” Twilight greeted brightly.
The stallion retorted with a courteous; “Eeey-yup!”
“Hi,” Mat added.
“Eeey-yup!” Big Mac repeated.
“… I think that pony may be retarded.”
Twilight Sparkle scoffed as she led Mat around the back of the house. “Mat, be nice! We don’t use that word here. We use the word special.”
“So he is retarded? I knew it!”
The mare gaped. “What? No! I was just saying… ugh! Big Macintosh is just a stallion of very few words.” Twilight then sighed dreamily. “So very few words.”
“Easy now.”
Around the back of the house were stacks and bales of hay, crops and all sorts of other bits and pieces. Tools were stacked up beside the back porch next to a confounding collection of muddy wellies. There were some carts full to the brim with apples and a few escaped chickens pecked their way across the yard.
“Reece!” Twilight called out as they looked around. “Oh, Reeee-eeeece!”
“Over here!” a strained voice replied before there was a distinct plof of something heavy being dropped. It didn’t sound like weights, but Mat could definitely tell a bro was lifting.
They rounded one of the tall hay bales and were treated to the sight of a human lifting a sack of wheat the size of his torso over one shoulder, walking to a flatbed cart and piling it up on the other sacks ready to be transported.
The other human was smaller than Mat, skinnier too with a lot less muscle mass. He looked as though he was very new to this kind of manual labour, but his keg was beginning to show the early stages of a six-pack. Metaphorically speaking of course. Nobody could actually tell, the guy wore baggy cargo pants and a t-shirt Mat very much approved of.
The black tee had an Article-15 logo on the back, with an M4A1 across the chest and the words “Pew Professional” written underneath.
“Hi, Twilight,” the human said without looking up as he heaved another sack of wheat.
“We have a new human staying with us in Ponyville,” Twilight Sparkle explained as the young man threw the next bag on the cart. “Mister Best, this is Reece. He’s been with us a couple of years now.”
Reece froze mid-step and going by that Article-15 t-shirt he wore he must have been because he recognized the name. Turning his gaze from what he was doing, Reece looked Mat up and down with bewilderment.
“Reece, this is Mat Best.”
Mat grinned and waved. “Hey, bro. Cool shirt.”
Reece blinked twice, then his eyes rolled and he collapsed to the ground; out cold. He didn’t move, not even a twitch. He just lay there as Twilight and Mat stared blankly trying to fathom what the hell just happened.
“Is… is this some sort of human welcoming ceremony I’m only now becoming aware of?” Twilight Sparkle asked, prodding Reece with her hoof.
“Passing out? Nah, not really. Although I do normally have this effect on people. But usually they’re female, so I’m just as surprised as you are… hey, should we, like, make sure he doesn’t die or something?”
Jason was fuming.
Even as he clawed at the muck and gravel on the river’s bank about a delta curling out of the woods, the heat of his rage caused the water soaking his form to instantly evaporate. A mist wafting up his limbs the supernatural serial killer scooped up his machete and stood tall and silent.
His next move was carefully calculated. That is to say, he caught some movement on the horizon. Ahead of him was some sort of town. He made out rows of houses, moving multi-coloured blobs going about their business. And to the edge of town an orchard with lines of trees that arched all the way around the flank and provided good cover to approach the village.
The master of moving unseen despite his clumsy bulk, Jason Voorhees ominously started walking, making for the orchard, his blade hungry for the blood of his bearded, gun-wielding prey…
Author's Note
Believe me, I have just as many questions as you do right now. I dunno why or how, I just got this idea of throwing all of my favorite things into a crazy mash up with my favorite human-being as the protagonist and this monstrosity just sort of flowed onto the page.
Article-15: Mat Best in Equestria
"So Many Questions" part2/3
Stumbling out of the outhouse, Mat slammed the door behind him.
“Wooo! Gas-gas-gas! I wouldn’t go in there for at least an hour,” he chortled, waving his arm through the air as if batting back stinky demons from the dark abyss.
The Mexican food from last night had not been kind to the bowel.
Moving to the barn, Mat found Twilight Sparkle and Applejack huddled around where Reece Summers lay on a bed of hay bales. After the poor guy had passed out, Mat and Twilight dragged him into the shade of the barn where he’d been introduced to an orange furredn Stetson wearingn southern drawl gal called Applejack. She was also Reece’s weekend employer so helped get the unconscious boy comfortable.
Back from his adventure to the toilet, Mat saw Reece had come to and was half sitting up, looking quite bewildered. When he spotted Mat again, Mat was almost sure the guy was going to faint again. Thankfully his constitution seemed to have solidified.
“Holy shit,” Reece cursed, sitting up and sliding out of the makeshift bed. “You’re Mat Best. I followed your channel on Facebook.”
“Ah. A fan” Mat chuckled.
Reece chuckled back, plucking at the front of his Article-15 t-shirt. “Yeah. Kinda. What a lucky break I didn’t wear my Ranger Up t-shirt today.”
After a short pause Reece added, “So you just arrived?”
“Yup. Just sent off my visa forms. The lady was showing me around town.” Mat indicated Twilight Sparkle. “Wanna come with?”
“I’d love to.” Reece smiled, but his expression fell a little. “But, I got some chores to finish up.”
Applejack quickly interjected with concern in her voice. “Now hold ‘yer horses there, sugarcube. Ya’ll took a nasty fall there. Maybe you should take the rest of the day off.”
“No! It’s okay Applejack, I can finish my work,” Reece blurted out. A little too eagerly it seemed because it deepened Applejack’s concerned expression. “I really need the money, Applejack,” Reece added a little calmer.
The Stetson wearing mare didn’t seem to like it much, but she sighed and cracked under his pleading eyes. “Alright, Reece. But you take it easy, y’hear? Do the lighter jobs, and if you have trouble don’t be afraid to ask for help or call it a day. Okay?”
Mat stepped in patting the younger human on the shoulder. “How about I keep an eye on the kid? I can always get the tour of… uh… town, later.” No way in hell Mat was going to rape his voice by saying ‘Ponyville’ out loud.
Applejack smiled at that idea. “Well that’s mighty gentlemanly of you, Mister Best.”
“I have my moments.”
As Applejack and Twilight Sparkle were catching up on some of the latest pony-goss’, aside from their new human friend arriving obviously, Reece led Mat back outside and they crossed to the yard where he had been loading the cart.
As they walked, Mat turned the other human a curious eye. “So what’s that accent, bro?”
“Welsh,” Reece answered as he returned to loading sacks of wheat on the flatbed.
“Where’s that from?”
Reece’s rhythm stumbled a moment before he quickly found it again. “Um… Wales.”
“Wales. That’s England, right?”
“N-no, it’s Wales.”
“Go figure. So why are you helping out on the farm here?” Mat shifted his rifle on his back and took in the sunny orchards stretching out over the hills.
“Gotta pay the bills, dude.”
“Yeah, I hear that. I might have to think about getting in on that action. Hey, when and how did you get here?”
Reece paused to catch his breath and think at the same time before heaving the next sack over his shoulder. “Oh, ‘bout two years ago now I think. Did you wake up in the Everfree Forest in a patch of scorched dirt?”
“Everfree Forest?”
“Creepy looking wild woodland.”
“It was wild, but not creepy looking.”
“Oh, you were teleported to the nicer part of the forest then. Lucky you.” Reece chortled. “But it sounds like you came here the same way I did. Across a rainbow-bridge.”
“Uh-huh,” Mat chewed his tongue and sat down on a nearby wood chopping block. As he did he found a small scroll with Reece’s name at the top. “And how do those work exactly?”
“Search me,” Reece admitted, not noticing Mat unfurling the scroll to read. “Far as Twilight Sparkle can figure they’re interdimensional bridges that suck you out of your home universe and dump you in the Everfree Forest. Always the Everfree Forest for some reason, like that forest is some kind of magnet for fucked up inter-dimensional shenanigans.
“Now if you’re lucky you’re just wandering about for a few hours before the laws of time and space catch up and send your ass home on the next rainbow-bridge. But if you’re unlucky you get stuck here.”
“Like you?”
“Well, that remains to be seen. But after two years I’m not holding out much hope.” Reece shrugged. “I kinda miss home I guess. Y’know, little things like skittles, youtube… oh, porn. Definitely missing internet porn.”
Mat chuckled. “I’m guessing there’s no human ladies hanging about the place?”
“Just a heads up, you’re gonna go crazy in the first week.”
“Hopefully I won’t be here that long.”
Reece offered him a smile. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Even if you don’t get sent home automatically, Twilight is working on a rainbow-bridge spell.”
“And how’s that working out after two years?”
“Well, the cantaloupes we’re teleporting around are arriving at their destination.” He added sheepishly: “It’s just the in one piece part we gotta work on.”
Reece loaded the last of the wheat onto the cart and stretched. Realising he was done, Mat held up the scroll he had been reading. It was a long list of things, load wheat onto the cart being one of them annotated with the comment: 15 bits.
“This your list of chores?” Mat asked?
Reece nodded taking the list from him and running his finger over the chore he’d just completed. As he did a thick red line struck through the text, ticking it off his list. He held it up with a smile, explaining: “Enchanted paper.”
“Cool. What’s a bit?” Mat asked pointing at the annotations beside the chores.
Reece explained as he checked his list, “A bit is the local Equestria currency. It’s all in numbered gold coins. You got ten bit coins, five bits and single bits. Then you’ve got hay-bits, which is half a bit, and finally the quarter which is like twenty-five pence.”
“What are pence in American?”
Reece paused to think. “Uh… cents, I think.”
“Oh. Quarter. Gotcha.” Jumping to his feet, Mat pointed out the chores he struck off at the top of the list were all low income chores. The majority of them ran between five to twenty bits. Near the bottom were the big earners, running up as high as a hundred bits each. “You’re ignoring all your high-roller chores.”
Reece snorted at the chore Mat pointed out in particular. “I don’t think I can dig a well all on my own. I gotta wait ‘till Big Mac has some time to help me with that one.”
“Okay, how about this one? It says five hundred bits.”
“Stumping? Have you ever stumped a field before?”
Mat scratched his beard trying to look knowledgeable. “Let’s assume I don’t know what stumping is.”
“Digging out a tree stump from a field so the earth can be ploughed and re-planted,” Reece explained.
Seeing the sense in it, Mat nodded. “Great! Let’s do that next, earn some real monies.”
Reece scoffed. “I know you’re thinking of earning some start-up money in case you’re stuck here, but do you have any idea how long it takes to stump a field? It’s gonna be dark in like three hours!”
But Mat wasn’t listening… or perhaps he was, even as he pulled something out of his tac-vest and gave it a light toss. It was a white block of what at first Reece thought was play-dough. And then Mat’s grin widened and the younger human felt a cold chill of realisation slice down his spine.
It would seem Mat had a ludicrous, irresponsible, crazy plan. And deep down inside Reece really wanted to be a part of it.
Reece wondered how many laws they were breaking right now. They’d spent thirty minutes running wires and burying clumps of high explosive putty in sawn down tree stumps across a few acres of disused farmland. This was of course Equestria, the land of harmony and talking ponies, where laws on owning a weapon were relaxed because everypony was kind and responsible. But something about rigging a field to be blown to smithereens had to be illegal, even here.
Honestly, Reece’s first question should have been where Mat actually got C4 explosive from and why he was packing it in his gear. Instead he asked, “So we’re splitting the money fifty-fifty, right?”
Mat nodded generously. “Of course. You helped bury the charges and run the det-wire. Seems only fair.”
“And you’re sure this will work. We’re not going to blow up the whole of Ponyville are we?”
“Relax! We’re just using a controlled explosion.”
“The words controlled and explosion should rationally speaking never be used in the same sentence.”
“Don’t be a wuss.” Mat finished hooking up his detonator to the wires running to the charges buried in stumps all across the field, then held the clacker out for Reece. “You wanna push my awesome-button?”
Reece lifted his hands to his ears and shook his head. “I think I’ll waive responsibility and let you do it.”
Mat snorted. “Fair enough.”
Even though they were barricaded behind a bunch of sand-bags they’d hastily thrown together and piled into a makeshift wall to protect them from the possibility of flying debris, Mat leapt to his feet like a rock star at a concert. Reece expected him to cry out: “Fire in the hole!”
Only instead he yelled: “Big ass titties!”
Reece lowered his head and scrunched his face. “Oh, God.”
The clacker clicked twice and in the typical description of explosions the field went up in smoke and flame. Realistically, there was barely any fire. It was more like a pillar of scorched dirt, shattered rock, splintered wood and absolute devastation.
When the muffled rumbling of the most powerful noise he’d ever heard had passed, when the tremors underfoot were gone and the wind driven out of his lungs was replaced by a gasp for breath, Reece opened his eyes. They’d been a good three-hundred metres away, but the farmyard was still dusted with blackened dirt and bits of debris. Some of it was falling several seconds after the blast, like a light silty rain. The air smelled earthy, musty and damp like he’d taken a shovel to wet peat after a rainstorm.
Looking sideways he saw Mat had crouched down beside him and was dusting some of the dirt out of his hair. “Well, that’s gonna do it. Check it out!”
He pointed over their barricade, and looking Reece saw the field had indeed been cleared of stumps… and pretty much everything else. It looked like no-man’s-land from the western front. Blackened dirt etched into a wobbly, crater and groove riddled landscape of desolation. But in principle they could now easily enough begin smoothening, ploughing and planting.
Whether Applejack appreciated the chore completed though remained to be seen.
He winced when two figures came galloping out of the house towards them, screaming bloody murder.
“What in the heck just happened!?” Applejack cried with Twilight Sparkle running close on her heels.
“We stumped the field!” Mat announced proudly, indicating the field that was technically cleared of stumps.
Though by Applejack’s expression when her eyes rested on the blast distorted landscape she certainly begged to differ.
“You nearly blew up my farm! It’s lucky Apple Bloom, Big Mac and Granny were in town shopping; somepony coulda been hurt!” Applejack screamed hysterical. Reece had never seen her like this before, and frankly it didn’t suit her.
But as much as he wanted to point that out, Reece’s gaze was drawn upwards to a shadow crossing the sun.
Mat in the meantime had his hands on his hips, glaring down at the ungrateful mare like a drill sergeant about to rip into a recruit. “Hey, you wanted the field stumped? We stumped the fuckin’ field. If you wanted it done a certain way you should have fucking specified on your list!”
“I don’t need to specify that safety comes first!”
Reece shaded his eyes with a hand to try and make out the silhouette in the sky. It didn’t have a very distinct shape and he squinted trying to figure out what it could possibly be. Was it Princess Celestia coming to investigate the blast? No, it couldn’t be. There were no wings on the silhouette.
“We performed all the right safety checks,” Mat argued. “And we made this midget sized barricade to protect from most of the debris.” He patted the sandbags proudly.
“This piddly barricade didn’t protect my farm from squat!” she indicated the mess of debris dirtying the yard. “Look at this mess!” she knocked over the sandbags with a powerful buck to punctuate her point.
“Hey, don’t knock over my barricade!”
“Then don’t blow up my farm!”
“Don’t be a drama queen!”
“Don’t be a dangerous maniac!”
“Don’t be unpatriotic!”
As they were arguing, Twilight Sparkle was looking at Reece and followed his gaze to the sky. Squinting she asked suddenly, “What is that?”
At the same time her eyes widened and the lavender princess shot sideways with a flap of her wings, tackling Reece and Applejack to the ground. The force of the movement caught Mat by surprise and knocked him to the ground too.
Landing on his back and staring straight up, Mat saw what the other two saw. He immediately curled up, covering his head in his arms like there was an artillery shell whistling down on his position.
“Incoming!”
There was no whistling of a HE-shell though. But the impact was punctuated by a loud crash. Though thankfully the incoming projectile missed the four of them, hitting Applejack’s house instead. It smashed into the roof throwing up the slates that shattered when they hit the ground. Inside were the sounds of shattering glass, splintering of floorboards, crackling of plasterboard and the scream of a very surprised cat.
“What the shit was that!?” Mat cried sitting up.
“I think we blew someone up.” Reece gasped, rubbing his ribs where Twilight had accidentally punched him while dragging him to the ground. “That silhouette looked human!”
Mat glanced between the house with a new skylight and Applejack before saying pointedly: “I’m not paying for that.”
When Applejack was about done giving him a dirty look the four of them scrambled up and ran to see what, or more importantly, who had crashed into the house. Getting through the door and sliding into the kitchen they found it.
Or rather, him.
The hulk in the hockey mask was still smoking and smouldering where he had been blown sky high and flung through the air. His machete stuck out of the floorboards beside where he lay still, whole stretches of his jumpsuit missing to reveal the charred, crispy flesh underneath.
Above him a Jason Voorhees shaped hole blown through the roof all the way down to the ground floor.
“Christ. That’s Jason Voorhees,” Reece whispered with recognition.
“What gave it away?” Mat asked. “The machete, the mask or are you just fucking psychic?”
“They call me Miss Cleo,” Reece quipped, kneeling beside the dead killer and pointing out the gaping holes in his torso. “Are those bullet holes?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s me. I put some rounds in him already but he just got up again.”
Reece frowned, looking up at Mat. “When?”
“Before I came into town.”
Sighing, Reece stood up rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Let me get this straight. The first person you interacted with upon arriving in Equestria was Jason Voorhees, and you waited until now to tell everypony!?”
“You know you can say everybody, right? It’s not like we won’t understand exactly what you’re talking about. Frankly I think the horse puns are getting a little worn out.”
Reece ignored that like Mat ignored his angry question. “So you filled him with lead and he just got up again. Is anypony else worried about this guy getting up again even after we just blew him up?”
Mat scoffed. “I really wish a motherfucker would.”
“Why would you wish that!?”
“Duh!” Mat hefted his rifle and Reece gaped.
“Even after we’ve assessed that bullets don’t stop him.”
Mat considered this for a moment, then added brightly, “I think I got a little C4 left.”
“Whoa, not in here!” Reece held up his hands to wave the operator off, then glanced between Jason and Mat. “C’mon, we’ll drag him outside before we blast him into itty-bitty pieces.”
As the two humans got ready to move the theoretically dead body, Twilight and Applejack shared a confused glance.
“You guys are weird,” the princess commented moving out of the way as the duo started sliding Jason Voorhees to the door.
Unfortunately they weren’t quick enough.
Voorhees grumbled, marking the first time he made any sort of vocal sound since arriving in Equestria. That and a heavy twitch rippling up through his body and convulsing every muscle for a moment made both Reece and Mat let go of the torn jump suit and leap back.
Clenching, Mat whipped his rifle around and shouldered it. Reece on the other hand just put some distance between him and the inexplicably alive serial killer.
Pressing himself up to his knees, Jason Voorhees took a rasping breath that ended about halfway in a gargle and a cough. But then falling silent, he slowly rose to his feet with heavy thuds of his boots and looked around.
They could see one eye through the cracked and crumbling hockey mask. It was red raw, partially gouged out and bleeding profusely. But at the same time it was still seeing, the eviscerated pupil darting between the faces of the two ponies and two humans.
The Princess of Friendship who should have been first on the ball to welcome this unusual figure to their land and defuse his building rage at the sight of Mat Best, balked at what she considered her duty and took a step to hid behind Reece’s legs.
“Should we be welcoming or running?” she squeaked as Jason reached down and plucked his machete from the ground.
“Running!” Reece cried, pulling Applejack back. “Definitely running!”
Reece and the ponies turned tail and belted it out of the kitchen and up the stairway in the hall. At the same time Mat jumped into their spot and rattled off a long burst of automatic fire from his assault rifle. The noise left a ringing in Reece’s ears as he retreated. But it was only at the top tread as the ponies ran ahead of him across the landing that Reece stopped with his eyes widening in terror.
“Wait a fucking minute. We’re being hunted by a serial killer and we trap ourselves upstairs!?” Horror movie retardation had clearly hit Reece hard.
He turned to scramble back downstairs when a cry pierced the air. There was a thud and Mat came flying out the kitchen door and across the hallway. He smashed into a cupboard that caved and splintered under the force the human was flung with and he just lay there in a daze, Voorhees’ muddy boot-print on the front of his plate carrier.
“Motherfucker!” Mat chocked as he struggled to his feet. Glancing up the steps he saw Reece was still loitering. “The fuck are you standing about for!? Run!”
Jason came striding out of the kitchen at the same time, forcing Reece to back up again as the monster blocked his path. The only way out anymore seemed to be up. As he disappeared to shoo the girls out of the line of fire. Mat took aim again, looking to score the headshots that stumbled Jason the most. Unfortunately his attention as drawn to the floor.
Jason stopped too, then looked down at a tabby cat curled up on the floor. The Apple Family feline looked up with innocence, wondering what the hell was going on. And out of what Mat assumed was just un-rational cruelty, Jason lifted a knee high to his chest, preparing to stomp.
“Not the cat!” Mat whined.
Even as he said it, the operator launched himself into a sprint, swinging his rifle to his side where it would be out of the way for what was coming next.
Jason’s boot started its way down towards the cat.
“Nonononononono!”
Mat kicked his legs out from under himself and performed a power slide right under Jason’s foot, scooping the defenceless animal up at the same time. Both the kitty and Mat slid clear by the time the madman’s heel came down and it harmlessly struck the wood floor with a crack.
Rolling to his feet at the foot of the stairs, Mat smiled with a triumphant, “Hah!”
Cat secured in one hand, rifle aimed in the other Mat pulled the trigger to keep shooting. After all, it wouldn’t have been the first time he had operated a pussy in one hand and a gun in the other (bow-chicka-wow-wow). But the trigger-motion was punctuated by a miserable click.
“Uh…” mat held up his hands, both of which full, and considered how he was going to reload. Before his brain could fully figure it out, Jason was closing in. “Fuck!”
He ran upstairs after Reece and the girls, buying time, and as much distance between him and that bloody machete as he could.
Mat hooked a right, jumped over the hole Jason made in the floor during his initial landing, then busted through a bedroom door at the end of the corridor to see Reece and the two ponies huddled by the window. Reece had it open and was leaning over the sill to look straight down.
“It’s a straight drop to the concrete below,” he reported backing up.
“We won’t survive a drop like that!” Twilight Sparkle blurted out.
Applejack deadpanned. “Uh. Sugarcube, you’ve got wings. You can carry us down.”
“Oh. Right.”
Before the princess could un-fuck the gloop of fear gumming up that massive brain of hers and spread her wings, Jason had made it up the stairs. Mat whipped around to face him, and with a simple jerking motion the killer turned his gaze on them.
It was like Voorhees’ very presence was perspiring the irrational fear that he commanded over the denizens of his home universe. Mat knew damn well that this guy was just a guy. Tough, hard to put down, yes. But in the end he wasn’t some supernatural monster, all evidence to the contrary. He was an anger fuelled killer.
And while Mat had spent the prime years of his life jumping out of helicopters in the mountains and zipping real motherfuckers in the face while in full sprint, the retired operator couldn’t help feel an involuntary tinge of fear himself. It just snaked its way into him somehow.
Turning, Jason Voorhees embarked on a power walk towards them.
The ponies lost their shit and embraced each other, letting out panicked screams. Reece seemed lost, his eyes darting around the room as he tried to find something, anything, he could use as a weapon to defend himself.
Mat was a blur of motion. Dumping his spent magazine, Mat trapped his rifle between his knees, slotted a fresh magazine into place and cycled the action with a firm yank of the charging lever. The bolt released and pushed a round into the chamber by the time he righted the AR-15 into a one-handed shooting stance. Not exactly stable or accurate, but at this point who the hell cared? He looked cool as fuck, standing triumphant over his obstacles with a cat in one hand and rifle in the other.
“Operator!” he cheered.
Jason either didn’t recognise the danger of a fully armed badass, or indeed recognised the danger and at this point didn’t have any shits to give. Mat fired as he fell backwards. He tripped on the bed and dropped onto his back, zipping single shots out of the Bullet-Hose.
“I’m suddenly wishing a motherfucker hadn’t!” he yelled as the bullets seemed to pass through Jason harmlessly.
He flinched with every hit Mat scored, but the madman didn’t drop. He didn’t even slow down. He raised his machete, ducking to fit through the bedroom doorframe…
And then he stopped in his tracks.
Cracking an eyelid, Reece slowly lifted his gaze to see the infamous Voorhees machete hadn’t hacked Mat to pieces and wasn’t about to be turned on him and his pony friends. In fact, Jason was frozen in place, an aura of golden light enveloping every inch of his body.
Jason twitched as he tried to jerk at his limbs, but other than that little twitch indicating he was trying, he didn’t move. Until finally whoever commanded the golden light washing over him – and Reece had a fair idea who that was – demanded he take off.
Voorhees shot straight up through the ceiling like a rocket, sent spinning and spiralling through the sky like had had been after Mat accidentally blew him up. Only this time he was flung farther and beyond-er. Out of the atmosphere, out of orbit…
And finally Jason Voorhees disappeared in a puff of smoke as he said his fondest hello to the surface of the sun.
Looking up through the hole his launch left in the roof, Reece and Mat slowly looked at each other before looking down the hallway. Descending through the first hole left by Jason’s landing came a glowing vision. A pony, taller than Applejack and Twilight Sparkle combined, she had a horn and a magnificent set of wings. Her glistening white coat gleamed with the same intensity as her regalia, and the same golden light that had just fucked Jason enveloped her horn for a moment.
The light extinguished and she approached the stunned humans with the confident gait reserved for a goddess.
They were silent until Mat suddenly blurted out: “Holy shit; that is one majestic fuckin’ horse!”
Reece face palmed and prepared for imminent banishment to the moon.
Author's Note
Sorry ladies. You're pregnant now.
