Chapters Chapter 1, Where have I gone
Reformation
I trudged my way to my hand-made hut. In my 11 months of being in the forest, I learned a thing or two about how this place works and what happens inside of it. People knew about me apparently, I'm like an urban fact, if that makes any sense. I built a hut around a small pond I use for bathing purposes. Despite the fact that I am a little over 4 miles away from that noisy old city, people found me.
I opened the door to the hut and let it close with a bone-rattling thud. I start to strip off my clothing - specifically the ones that I bought from the store before I abandoned the city-life. I climb into the ice cold water and start to shiver quite immensely. After about 5 minutes of playing around in the water, it's not so frigid feeling anymore. I lean back and go over my life these past months.
I pressed the button on the headset from hell.
"Hello my name is Vern and thank you for calling Initech, how may I help you?" I say in my 'hi I am a customer support person who doesn't give a shit' voice.
"WHY WAS MY ACCOUNT CANCELLED?" the voice on the opposite end screeches through my headset. I instinctively reach up and move the earpiece out of my now-damaged ear. This was the call that started it all. I got angry, screeched at him, and got fired later. What a way to live.
I return to my grungy apartment after getting dumped by the company called "IniTech'. I sigh and look out the window towards the forest.
A loud bang catches my attention, which is not normal. I scramble out of the water and dry myself off with my shirt and throw on my pants. I grab a left-over shirt from the dirt and throw it on, and peek out the cracks in the door. It turns out, I was right about the gun. I see someone staring right towards the door right before someone appears right in front of it, scaring the daylights out of me. I jump back and land in the pond. I should've hit the bottom of the pond, since it isn't very deep at all. Except, I kept going. I started to panic, attempting to swim up. I was nearly about to break the surface before I was tugged down again, and at a frantic pace too.
I'm going to die! I look down and see something glowing... a lavender color, or is that blue? I feel the water rushing around me at this point, the water forcing it's way into my nose. I let out all my air and take a breath, the water draining into my lungs. After an exasperating 5 seconds, my last thought was. Drowning in 2 feet of water. Pathetic. .
Chapter 2, To the land of the unknown
I wake up slowly to beeping and a comfortable warmth radiating through my body. I try to move my arms, but I find that my arms are restrained. Why were my arms restrained? God damn it, I just want to wipe the cement crust out of my eyes. I hear a small gasp after moving my arms, and a few footsteps. Who was wearing high-heels? The footsteps got closer... Clack clack CLACK CLACK CLACK They stopped right next to me. I need to see who's next to me.
I groan and try to open my eyes again, this time with more force. What greeted me was an insane retina-frying amount of light being unveiled to my eyes as they snapped open. I squint them closed and let out a anguished groan. I try to wrestle my arms out of the restraints trying to get at my eyes again. What responded to my efforts was a yelp and a call for help.
"Help! He's awake!" the person said. The clacking went away as the person kept trying to get 'help'. I slowly open my eyes again, finding that it was slightly more bearable. I had to blink my eyes a few times to get my bearings. When I did, I found myself in some sort of 1970's style hospital.
I keep quiet and wait for the person to come back. Then I hear a stampede of high-heel sounding people rushing towards my general direction. They're probably coming for me. The first person... that's not a person. Oh hell what in gods name even is that? It looks like they shoved cartoon horses and humans into a blender and set it on high. My eyes grow wide as I see these things come in with happy-worry looks on their faces.
"Whrrr am I?" Good lord. My voice sounds like Bane on a bad Monday morning. They all jumped at this, but I would too if a fucking horse humanoid talked. One of them snapped out of it first.
"Err... Pardon?" 'She' has a very southern accent. It took me a minute to notice a respiration mask attached to my face, and attempt to remove it, only to find out yet again my arms are strapped down.
"C-could you possibly... remove the straps?" I say, my voice wavers pathetically. The same pony-thing shakes her head slowly.
"Sorry. We can't release you until Princess Celestia comes and sees you," the lavender one spoke. I recognize the voice as the one who went and got... help? I don't think this is help, but who the hell is Princess Celestia?
"Wh-Who's that?" My voice wavered again, "and if it's anything, who, and what are you?" I blink my eyes a few times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.
"How-?" she stopped herself, apparently seeming like that question would've been really stupid. "Princess Celestia is our ruler, and I am a pony. Now if you don't mind me asking, what are you ?" Her voice had a slight indentation in pitch on that last one.
"I'm a human. Could you remove the respirator?" I scrunch up my nose as I breathe in more stale tasting air. The lavender one shakes her head again.
"We... can't. When I pulled you out of the water, you were..." she stopped abruptly. I rest my head down and go over the memory of the lavender-blue color I saw. I close my eyes again.
"I am done talking to you." I stare at the flashing colors beneath my eyelids. I hear the pony thing sigh and mumble something to her companions and they leave. I just wanted to live a peaceful life in the wilderness, and I get sent to a pony-world? What a life. 15 minutes later, I go plunging into dreamland.
Chapter 3, The Midnight Funtime
Spinning and swirling, twisting and turning. I jolt awake, it must've only been at least 5 or 6 minutes since I closed my eyes, except it's so dark I can barely see within the murky darkness. I scan across the room, and sit up and rub the crust out of my eyes. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up. I waltz over to the window and stare out the window to see a brilliant, beautiful moon staring right back.
"Whoa, that's some hell of a moon," I say.
"Indeed it is, Vern," I spin around towards the voice behind me, what greets me was... not as surprising as I thought. It was a purple-blue pony thing.
"Who are you?" I ask, looking over her figure.
"I am Princess Luna, ruler of the dreamscape, and princess of the moon. I do not normally go into dreams all at once, but you are an exception." The surroundings go into a very bright white, I cover my eyes reflexively.
"Agh, turn down the lights there, sun goddess." Nice one there, jackass. The brilliant white suddenly shimmered into a warm sunny day with grass plains and a lone tree. I walk over to it and sit down.
"I have some questions to ask you, Vern," she says with a somewhat regal tone. I nod, awaiting the questions.
"Princess Twilight," I chortle a bit. I know for a fact that 'princess Twilight' isn't what I'm laughing about, but whatever. "Had found you waterlogged in a lake, barely alive. If she'd not been there when she was you'd probably be dead by now. I wanted to know how you got in there," she looks at me and waits for my answer.
"From the beginning?"
"Yes."
"Alright, it began when I was taking my usual morning bath."
"...and now we're here." I had been explaining everything that happened, about 15 minutes worth of explaining, and very slightly boring. She was pondering over what I'd told her and looked off towards the horizon.
"I had heard you are a 'hooman', correct?" I cringe at the way she said 'human'.
"It's pronounced "Heyouman"." She nods in response, I can hear her saying the word under her breath a few times.
"Can I wake up?" She glances at me and nods before everything goes dark. The comfortable warmth returns, but, I hear a discussion going on in the background.
"How do we know that the community is going to like him?"
"I don't know, but he seems OK."
"If he isn't OK, then you just might as well have kept him in that lake."
"Hey! If I know better, he'll be accepted into Ponyville nicely. Don't worry about it."
"Unless I see results, I am going to worry about it."
"Uuuugh, don't be THAT pony."
"I am going to be that pony right now." I feel like this is my time to interject into this conversation. I've got the lines to this play, anyway.
"I don't know about you, but if this place is as accepting as you say it is, I'll be fine." I could hear two sets of jaws clamp, there's that, and my voice still sounded like bane on a bad day. My eyes are crusted shut again, but I take my time in opening them. I attempt to move my arms, which are still restrained. I have an itch under my arm pit that I am simply dying to get rid of.
"I know you two are still there, come here please." I wait for the clacking to come over, but it never happens. I hear very hushed whispering, and I attempt to open my eyes the forceful way. However, when I open them up this time, they're not being fried by some brilliant light, instead, it's a pleasant dim lit environment this time. I swivel my head around towards where I heard the voices to see nothing.
"Hello?" I call out. This is supremely terrifying, voices, then whispering, then nothing? What the hell man. Not cool. I pull on my restraints, and surprisingly, manage to get my left one off. I then undo the right one and sit up, keeping the respirator on. I have a feeling that if I remove it, I might die. I rub the crust out of my eyes and scratch the hell out of that itch. I then twist and pop my spine, doing the usual 'waking up' ritual. After that, I stand up... barely. It turns out that I was out for a lot longer than I had thought. I take the rolling stand with me, making sure that I don't run out of life before I even find the restroom.
After stumbling a bit, I manage to figure out how to walk with jelly-legs. I find the restroom and find it mostly OK for being in pony-world. I plop down onto the toilet, doing my biz. After doing that, I exit the bathroom to see a nurse looking at me with a bewildered look in her eye. I raise my hands up to the sides of my face, she flinches.
"Hey, hey. I'm not going to hurt you, in fact, I wouldn't dream of it. I just needed to use the restroom to tinkle and maybe explore a bit," I lower my hands slowly. She seems to have calmed down a bit.
"Y-You're not supposed t-to be out of your bed," it looks like she has the case of waver-voice as well.
"Well... I suppose I should be getting back then? I just wanted to be able to move around a bit." I walked over to my bed, the wheels squeaking along the way. The nurse kept standing there, even after I laid down on it.
"I guess you should put on the straps again," the nurse shook her head.
"No, you'll be fine," her voice no longer wavered. "But you'll need to keep that mask on, It's keeping you from a whole slew of symptoms you would've experienced, except the swelling," she states.
"What'll that be?"
"Chest pain, cough, shortness of breath, and vomiting."
"Whoa," I look down at my now-paled skin. "Do you know when... Princess Celestia? I think that's her name, is coming?"
"You're right about her name, and she's due time right in the morning. You'd better get some rest." I nod and settle my head into the pillow.
"See you in the morning."
"You too."
Author's Note
If it isn't obvious, I have no editor, but I do pre-read it before posting. I am like my own editor, but it'd be nice to have someone else look through it .
Chapter 4, Road to Citizenship, part one.
Chapter 4, Road to Citizenship, part one.
I hear small talk going on in the background, as a dull redness blinds out the rest of the light from the outside. I then open my eyes slowly, the light was not bothering me much this time around. To the left of me, I notice the same six 'ponies' from yesterday chatting with each other, plus the nurse, and a giant white one - much taller than the rest - talking with them. The one with the nice looking Stetson glances over at me for a second and then does a double-take when she notices that I'm staring right at her.
"Hey, he's awake," she quietly says to the rest. After that, all eyes were on me... figuratively of course! The white one with the unrealistic as hell wavy hair walks over to me.
"Hello, my name is Princess Celestia," her voice is regal but soothing, like all my worries were melted away. Except, I had a shit-ton of worries that are made out of Katchin metal. I look up into her eyes.
"You needn't be afraid of me. However, we do need to be alone for a bit," she states and looks back at the others, who simply nod and walk out of the door. Once everyone has left she snapped her finger and the room went deathly silent, the most I could hear was my fast-paced heartbeat and breathing. I reach up and scratch my chin and it was only then I realized that my respirator was gone, thank god, but how was I able to recover so quickly?
"I was able to heal you of your internal injuries, but your body seemed to reject magic, which made it extremely hard for me to do so," she states flatly. Magic? MAGIC!? You must be pulling my fucking legs off.
"But... there's no such thing as magic!" I hear the lavender one yell 'HEY!' in the next room.
"How'd she hear that? How'd we hear that? Questions for another time. However, magic is a thing, Vern. Though, being this resistant to magic has its upsides." I cock my eyebrow.
"And what would that be?"
"Well, from normal unicorns, you'll be able to deflect any magic attack that they'll throw at you, however, you will still do the same with healing. You'll need an Alicorn to do that job for you," I struggle to take all this information in. "You can wield this abnormally high resistance to magic to capture said magic-based beams." I smile a little.
"Would you like to try?" I swing my legs over the opposite side of the bed and stand up a little too quickly, getting a bit dizzy. Once I shake off the dizzy spell I get into a weak looking stance.
"Give it a go," I haven't noticed it before, I don't know how, but she has a reeeaally long horn protruding from her forehead. Said horn just started glowing as a small beam shoots out towards me. Before it hits my chest, I cupped my hands around it. It's harder than it looks, to be completely honest. The beam started to shoot around in my hand, making it quite toasty, not to mention that I think it was starting to gain grounds on how powerful it was getting.
"Princess, open the window... now," the warmth was now pretty hot. She nods her head and uses her 'magic' to open it. I then point my palms towards the window where the beam shoots towards. It's in a different color as well, like a radiating orange-green glow, not to mention the beam had quadrupled in size. It was like I was in Dragon Ball Z for a second there. The beam shot off into a hill where it left a really big hole in the ground.
"Holy crap," my jaw was slack, the princess much the same.
"How'd you do that, Vern?"
"I just held it in there until it got too unbearable," I deadpan.
"That's... interesting. However, we need to put this off and test it later.. I understand you have nothing right now, but I can quickly change this around. Take it as a one-time royal present for a new species," she paused to think. "What do you need?"
This was a question that I wasn't exactly prepared for, and I sure as well wasn't going to be greedy with this opportunity. I could be, but where would that go? It looked as if Celestia was starting to warm up to me too.
"I need... food, shelter, and clothing, it's all I need."
"Do you need anything else?"
"No ma'am."
"Alright," she didn't sound exactly convinced that that's all I needed. She open the door and motioned for the rest to come back in. They all clicked into the room, the lavender one giving me a nice frothy death stare.
"Uhh, what's the deal with her?" I motioned towards Lavender again. Huh, who knew Lavender sounded like a decent name .
"Twilight? I suspect she is still quite disgruntled after your claim that 'magic doesn't exist'," Celestia deadpans.
"Aaah, so that's her name," I look at Twilight again. Eh, Lavender is still a better name in my opinion. I look down at my callused hands, they are slightly reddened by the 'attack' Celestia delivered to me.
"How long will I need to stay here?" I ask, looking at the nurse from last night. She pauses to think, and then shakes her head.
"Technically, you could leave right now. However, it is advisable that we look you over for anatomy research," she says. I rub my knees for a second before nodding.
"Sure, I'll let you look over me, doc. How long will it take?"
"About a half-hour to an hour."
"Alright," I look over to the others. "That should give you all enough time to, make plans? I have no idea how I'm going to fit in around here." A few of them nod at my statement.
"We shall take our leave then. We'll see you later, Vern," Princess Celestia practically ushers the group (excluding nurse) out the door. Once they're all out, the nurse walks up to me and looks me over.
"Let's begin."
Well, that could've been a little less eventful. It was surreal that a huge group of doctors were examining me all at once, but then again, I was the only human in this place. Though, it was a little embarrassing when they were looking over my... yeah. Her time frame of observation went way longer than I had expected, regardless how fast it seemed. Turns out, it had taken nearly 3 hours before they were finished. I had my old clothes on - comparable to rags at this point. Seriously, my shirt is quite torn - and was at the main doors. I turned towards Nurse Redheart.
"Here I go. Good lord, this is like jumping off a building," she giggles at that.
"Good luck. I'm sure you'll be fine out there. Just don't actually jump off a building, though!" I nodded and stepped out into the warm air.
Author's Note
I have been really busy with real life things, so I've been typing crap while my professor rambles ON... and on. :\
Also sorry if it seems rushed and... ugly. I wasn't kidding when I said that I write this when I'm bored n stuff. (Over a span of like a week or two to be honest.)
Chapter 3.joke, I'm not sorry, Vern.
Okay, okay... look, I only made this damn chapter so I could get into the swing of things, and you know what? Why not utilize it in the best way possible! Dreamscaping! Yes, in this chapter, he is visited once again by his long-dead nemesis... Ernest! I'm not sorry.
Spinning and swirling, twisting and turning. I jolt awake, it must've only been at least 5 or 6 minutes since I closed my eyes, except it's so dark I can barely see within the murky darkness. I scan across the room, and sit up and rub the crust out of my eyes. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up. I waltz over to the window and stare out the window to see a brilliant, beautiful moon staring right back.
Without warning, an arm slid and rested onto my shoulder. "I know what you mean, Vern."
Horror shook my body as I suddenly slapped the hand away and backed up against a wall. Oh god, please. No, why did it have to be him!?
Ernest stood there with his big goofy happy smile, one that said 'Free hugs', honestly. I made the attempt to run away, only to find that my legs were like sludge. It felt as if I were on the sea floor with cinder blocks tied to my feet.
"Where ya goin', Vern?" he asked, making my gut clench up in pure agony. I did not wish this, I didn't want any part of this. Ernest began to spew his random advertisements at me, god, I hated those. I just- I just wanted them gone! After what felt like a millennia, and about 7 advertisements later, I finally make it to the window, and luckily for me, there was a ladder! I swung my heavy-as-steel legs over the window sill and began to climb down. Suddenly without warning, the ladder shook violently and began to tip backwards. I let out a cry for help, but not even Ernest was there.
With a mighty crash, and a few sickening cracks from my legs, and one particularly bruised knee, I hit the ground. As my vision drifted in and out, Ernest came into my view, "Now I told you to watch out for those ladders, Vern!" he said accusingly right before I blacked out.
Several days later, I woke up in a hospital with my left leg hung up, and an IV into my arm. Something felt wrong though, and boy was I right. Suddenly, Ernest appeared from the end up my bed and said whilst slapping my now painfully aching knee.
"Hey Vern! How ya feelin'!"
"Somebody get a gag to stop his screaming!" One of the nurses shouted as another nods and runs off. Vern had randomly started screeching bloody murder in his sleep for no explainable reason. Where was Luna when you needed her?
Author's Note
...admittedly, this was kinda fun to write.
[youtube=https://youtu.be/OS-RB-goZqk?t=38]
^ Whoopsie! That's supposed to be the second ad that I referenced. Apparently Fimfiction's YOUTUBE tagging doesn't support specific timing. Rip.
Also, I know that this chapter was INCREDIBLY short. I promise you that I will get a long one out for you guys and gals (if any).
