Goku's Makafushigi Arrival!
CHAPTER 1. GOKU’S MAKAFUSHIGI ARRIVAL!
The first thing Son Goku felt was confused. Why was he lying face first in the dirt? And, more importantly, why did his head feel like it just went ten rounds with King Piccolo?
“OMC! It’s Sun Wu--!”
“Sweetie Belle, shhh!”
Within an instant, Goku leapt to his feet and had his trusty power pole out in a defensive stance, gritting his teeth to deal with the pain he felt in his legs after he landed. With an instinctual speed, he turned his head and his body, taking stock of the immediate area. He was in a field. A particularly immaculate one with earthy green grass that was occasionally broken up by the odd knoll or two. About a mile ahead of him, he saw a quant little cottage resting on one such knoll along with a few chicken coops, and to his right, he saw a forest. Oddly enough, despite it being pretty bright out, he couldn’t see a sliver of light piercing through the canopy to the ground.
Next, he scanned vertically. As he had expected, the sun was more or less at its zenith. The sky was a blue as picturesque as any he had seen in the innumerable untouched wildernesses he had seen on his travels on earth with a minimum of clouds cluttering it all up.
In fact, after turning around and looking closer, he noticed that a few of the clouds, about a dozen, were almost directly above him. He made out what looked to be holes in them, shaped exactly like, well, himself. Head, limbs, and all. He even saw that the shape of his trademark spikey hair in the holes.
A quick glance below the bottommost cloud and he saw what looked to be a crater that, coincidentally enough, was also the shape of his body. Though Goku was nowhere near as smart as Bulma, it didn’t take him long to put two and two together.
“Huh. Guess I fell.” That, however, just raised further questions in his young mind. Why did he fall? And, for that matter, what was he doing up so high? Was he riding his trusty nimbus cloud too high and get struck by lightning? That did happen on occasion, especially when the power pole was on his back and decided to act like a, what was it Bulma called them? ‘Lightning logs?’
He sniffed under his armpits, groaning when he realized that his nose was injured to the point where smelling was going to be a problem.
*****
The Crusaders did not plan all that far ahead to be in that bush that particular late Saturday morning. Contrary to the popular opinion of the more cynical ponies in town (and their sisters or, in Scootaloo’s case, honorary sisters), almost all of their ‘Get Cutie Mark Quick’ schemes were spur of the moment things with about as much planning as ‘That’s awesome! Let’s do it now!’
Though, in this particular instance, this scheme was the product of their first emergency brainstorming session in their Crusader Clubhouse. Basically, during recess on Friday, they realized that they had tried a lot of different things to get their marks. A LOT of different things.
Though the girls weren’t the sharpest horn in the herd, and could be downright stubborn when it came to getting a clue right in their faces, they knew that the list of things ponies could be destined for was far from an actual infinite.
So, on the trot to the Crusader Clubhouse after the final school-bell had rung, they began to panic. The thought that maybe they weren’t good at anything, and worse, that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon would taunt them even after they were picking daisies entered their minds, the shear dread almost stopping them from reaching their headquarters.
Once there, they spent every hour of daylight they had, even burning some of the midnight oil after asking their guardians if they could have a sleep over, trying to compile a comprehensive list of everything they had tried. They then made a second list, trying to write down everything they hadn’t tried that three fillies, even ones as resourceful as they, were capable of doing without some serious bits or jail time for stealing.
Not a single thing made it to the second list.
It was at that point that the gravity of their situation fully set in for Applebloom and Scootaloo, who handled it as well as running around the clubhouse and yelling, ‘No, no, no!’ would indicate.
But Sweetie Belle, who had always been consistently more mature than either of her beloved friends, merely sat quietly on her haunches with a thoughtful look and a hoof on her chin as her friends galloped circles around her.
There had to be a solution to this problem. There just had to. Neither her nor her friends could be blank flanks forever, right? She and Applebloom were direct blood relatives to two of the elements of harmony, who had perhaps the greatest destinies in Equestria for Pete’s sake! And Scootaloo… well… now that Sweetie Belle thought about it, she didn’t know if her parents were blank flanks or not. Heck, she didn’t even know who her parents were.
But that was an issue for another time. She ‘put a pin in it,’ as Rarity would say, and focused back on her current, more pressing problem. Ponies who were blank flanks into their young adulthood were rare, and ones without cutie marks in their full-blown adulthood were even rarer.
She remembered this fact well when she went to the library on Wednesday to, once again, do most of the work on a project Ms. Cherilee. Spike had told her. He was nice and, now that she thought about it, kind of cute. But that too could wait. Another pin.
And then, like the chorus of a thousand angels, it hit her. The project Cherilee had given them was a report about mythical creatures from outside Equestrian Lore. The Old Countries. Spike had helped her find a book entitled ‘Tall Tails and Legends: Beyond Equestria,’ and when she found the tome to be daunting even for her, he had opened the book and read her the story of The Legendary founder of the equally as Legendary country of Chineigh, Sun Wukong: The Monkey King, a personal favorite of his.
Sweetie Belle had been instantly entranced by the figure, some of his more disgusting and disturbing exploits aside, and knew that the report would be about him.
In the clubhouse, she brought up the idea that they should try being Sun Wukong catchers. After explaining the awesomeness that was Sun to them, they were as hooked on the idea as she was and even more so when she told them that, even if they couldn’t capture him, that he’d give them one of his obscenely powerful enchanted items that they could then use to try getting their cutiemarks in something else.
However, catching a monkey, just like any animal, required a very strong net, even more so for catching a monkey who could somersault off of clouds and lift up and twirl around a staff that weighed several tons like a pom-pom. And that meant going to the home of Ponyville’s resident animal expert/caretaker/door-mat, Fluttershy.
The trek to said shy Pegasus’s humble abode had gone normally enough, and the Everfree had never even crossed their minds. At least, not until an object dive bombed out of the sky, crashed into the ground right next to them, and sent them sailing into the very same bush they now hid in.
But even such a shock was nothing compared to the momentous surprise that greeted their eyes once the managed to shake their heads clear of any blunt force trauma induced static.
For laying in the field, face down, wan ape-like creature, a monkey if the tail coming out of the blue karate Gi it wore was real, with a sheath slung over its back where a red bo-staff rested within.
Suffice it to say, it didn’t take long for Sweetie Belle’s eyes to widen and for her to loudly voice her opinion as to the identity of the creature. “OMC! It’s Sun Wu--!”
Scootaloo’s hoof found itself in Sweetie Belle’s mouth before she could finish. Whispering much too loudly to be considered much of a whisper, Scootaloo said, “Sweetie Belle, shhh!”
Said unicorn filly, now irate, spat out her friend’s hoof and was about to ask her if she washed up after using Applebloom’s bathroom right before they left Sweet Apple Acres.
And then the mysterious monkey thing leapt up to its feet, took out its bo-staff, and proceeded to look around for threats so quickly that all three crusaders just stared on and blinked owlishly until they had registered what had just happened.
“Scootaloo?” Applebloom asked in a legit, albeit terrified, whisper.
“Yeah, Applebloom?” Scootaloo replied in an equally true and frightened whisper.
“I think Sweetie Belle was right.”
“I think so too.”
“Told ya!” Sweetie Belle whispered smugly to her friends. “This is so exciting! Are guys excited!? I’m excited!”
“Yeah… excited… hehehehehe…” Scootaloo chuckled nervously.
Displaying some of that famed Apple family honesty, Applebloom said, “More like terrified! Did you see how fast that there monkey moved!? Even if we snuck up on him, there ain’t an Applejack’s chance in trig class of us gettin’ him! And if we mess up--” Applebloom gulped. “Ms. Cherilee’s report will be the last of our problems!”
“I’m with Bloom on this one,” Scootaloo nodded. “I may be brave, but after watching what he just did, trying to catch him is just asking for trouble even I don’t have enough courage for.”
Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes at her friends’ cowardly admissions. “Girls, Sun Wukong isn’t evil. He may be a jerk with a heart of jerk a lot, but mostly, he’s a jerk with a heart of gold. I’m sure all we have to do is talk to him and convince him to let us catch him!”
Before her friends could question her reasoning, as getting a cutiemark in catching something implied they would have to greatly exert themselves trying to do so rather than simply convincing their quarry to allow itself to be caught, Sweetie Belle jumped out of the bush and towards the monkey king, much to the apparent horror of her friends.
“Hey Sun Wukong, would you please--”
Those six words were Sweetie Belle’s final before Applebloom and Scootaloo witnessed Sun Wukong’s attention turn towards the unicorn filly… and right before he cried out, ‘power pole extend…’ and whacked her upside the left side of her head so loud that her friends could hear it and winced.
Her body then proceeded to drop down to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Unconscious. Or that other, darker thing her friends didn’t want to think about, but that entered their minds regardless.
Scootaloo opened her mouth to cry out for Sweetie Belle, but Applebloom saw this and quickly and violently jammed a hoof in it.
“Scoots! Shhh!”
Scootaloo spat out Applebloom’s hoof and said, “What do you mean, ‘Shhh!?’ We’ve gotta do something! We can’t just let that monster do whatever to Sweetie!”
“You wanna end up like her!?”
“You wanna be the one to tell Rarity and everypony else that we just abandoned her sister when she needed us the most!?”
Applebloom opened up her mouth to protest, but stopped short when both she and Scootaloo noticed ‘Sun Wukong’ slowly approach their unmoving friend, his now literal ‘ten-foot pole’ as far ahead of him as it could be while still being in his paws (or was that hands?).
With bated breath and chattering teeth, they watched as he poked and prodded Sweetie Belle all over, even on the large, swollen lump now growing from his forehead like a second, redder, and fleshier horn. He uttered words in some strange language that sounded like utter gibberish to the two fillies.
When The Monkey King grabbed ahold of Sweetie’s horn and used it as a makeshift handle to inspect either side of her head, Scootaloo said, “That’s it! I’ve had enough!”
She was about to leap out of the bush and pound Sun Wukong into next Taco Tuesday when Applebloom grabbed her by the neck via her mouth, violently pulled her back, tackled her to the ground, and covered her mouth with a foreleg.
“Scootaloo, you go out and try and pick a fight with that monster, then as Faust is my witness, I’ll beat you so hard you’ll never be able to fly fer sure!”
Scootaloo gasped beneath Applebloom and her eyes were as wide as saucers.
Applebloom felt guilty at what she had just said, but after a gulp, her resolve and steely gaze returned in full. “I’m sorry I said that, but it’s the truth, Scootaloo. You saw what it did to Sweetie, so you know darn well we ain’t got no chance of stopping it unless one of us goes and gets the girls or somepony else bigger than us! Ya hear me!?”
Scootaloo’s eyes narrowed upon Applebloom. When Applebloom’s eyes narrowed back, Scootaloo’s eyes darted back and forth like a cuckoo clock, desperately looking anywhere but Applebloom’s eyes. When Applebloom forced matters by forcing her nose close enough that it smooshed against her own, Scootaloo looked Applebloom in the eyes again, sighed into her foreleg, and nodded.
Applebloom nodded back and lifted her face away as well as her foreleg. “Good. Now make an egg and beat it for Ponyville since you’re the fastest!”
“What about Sweetie?”
“I’ll stay here and make sure that monster don’t hurt her no more until you come back with the cavalry. Now get!”
Applebloom got off Scootaloo and watched as the young pegasus made way for Ponyville as swiftly and stealthily as she could.
When she was out of sight, Applebloom turned back around and immediately found herself biting her hooves when she saw Sun Wukong lift Sweetie with one hand and toss her into the air like she was a plushie for some reason that was surely diabolical.
*****
<“Hmmmmm… it doesn’t weigh like a normal horsey.”>
Goku continued to gently (by his standards, anyways) throw the strange equine up and catch it once it came down. About the only thing he was certain of was that it was equine. At least he thought it was. The fact that its face looked all wrong, its hair was really weird, it was super teeny tiny, and that it weighed nothing like a normal horsey were kind of throwing him off a bit. Not as much as the fact it had a little, nubby, white, and hard weiner growing out of its forehead, but altogether, they almost matched that little factoid in oddness levels. Almost.
The fact that it could apparently talk wasn’t that strange to him. After all, he had seen and met many talking animals like cats and dogs and tigers and dogs and bears and dolphins and turtles and pigs and crocodilians and gorillas and rabbits and wolves and other stuff. Heck, the king of the world was a talking dog! Sure, he had never seen any talking horseys before, but he was certainly not going to be all that shocked if he did like just now.
The oddest thing about the horsey like creature, however, was not that it had a weiner growing out of its head. The oddest thing about it was that, in the crucial final moments before his power pole struck its head, he felt something in his head. Like, a voice only he could hear that spoke with no words but somehow still managed to convey to him that hitting the strange, white, wiener horsey with all the force even his unpowered up body could output in a strike was a bad idea. Looking at how harmless the poor thing looked and how the small ‘love tap’ (by his standards) he had ultimately decided to hit it with was enough to knock it out, he had to agree that the voice was right. It didn’t even look like it was jumping out of the bush to attack him now that he thought about it. The few words it got out of its mouth before he struck it,“Hey Sun Wukong, would you please--” if his grasp of English was good enough, didn’t even sound threatening, as loud as they were yelled.
Goku felt bad. Really, really bad, like he had just done something naughty even his Grandpa Gohan, patient as a thousand saints though he was, would have punished with a spanking.
So, to atone for his mistake, Goku untied a brown, pouch tied to his gi’s sash. After untying the rope around the mouth of the pouch, he pulled out a dark green bean. To the eyes of an unlearned person, it was just a simple mungbean, but to one with Goku’s experience, they would have easily recognized it as a legendary senzu beans, whose rejuvenating properties burned brighter than Mr. Sun. So bright, that ingesting the bean could firmly snatch a person from death’s jaws and place him or her back to full strength in seconds. For something relatively trivial like a big knock on the head, the bean would fix the wiener horsey thing up well indeed.
He bent down and was poised to open the wiener horsey’s mouth to slip the bean inside when he heard someone shout out, “Hey! Get your grubby mitts off her you darn, dirty ape!” from behind.
Quickly taking up a defensive stance with his pole again and turning around, Goku’s steely combat gaze broke into one of surprise when he saw the presumed owner of the voice.
Another horsey like creature. This one, however, looked more normal aside from the weird colors of its hair and the hot pink bowtie in the hair on its head. At least it didn’t have a weiner growing out from its head.
The bowtie horsey thing confirmed it was the owner of the voice he had just heard when it opened its mouth and said, “I don’t care how tough you are! If you don’t put whatever you got in your paws away from my friend’s mouth, I’ll make you eat the dirt! Hard! With worms and bugs and stones and stuff!”
It lowered its head, pawed at the ground in front of it, and snorted out a visible gust of carbon dioxide. If Goku could hazard a guess, he’d say that it was trying to look tough, like it could actually make good on its threat.
Not generally being one to judge an opponent’s power based on looks alone, and still feeling downright rotten for what he did to the weiner horsey, Goku dipped the combat end of the power pole to the ground and his expression softened. “Huh? I don’t want to hurt your friend. I just want to fix the poor little guy up with this senzu bean here.”
The bowtie horsey didn’t look like it was buying it. “Then why’d you knock her out in the first place then!?”
“Her? You mean this little guy’s actually a girl?” Goku said, looking at the wiener horsey while scratching his head. “Huh. I never would have guessed.”
Goku looked back at the bowtie horsey who, while still looking angrier than a thousand blue hypergiants at the galactic core, now looked that way with a raised eyebrow. “Anyways, I didn’t mean to knock her out. It’s just that when she jumped out of the forest like she did, I thought I was under attack and reacted on instinct and couldn’t stop myself in time and then… well… knocked her out.” He chuckled nervously and massaged his hair while flashing that large, famous Son Goku grin. When he saw that the bowtie horsey still didn’t look happy, he put the power pole back in its scabbard, clasped his hands together, closed his eyes, and bowed his head and the rest of his upper body. “I really am sorry for what I did, mister. Please let me make it up to you and your friend by healing her back to full strength. It’s the least I could do. Please?”
Goku could feel the bowtie horsey’s eyes boring into the top of his head as his upper body remained bent. A few moments of silence past and he was beginning to wonder if the bowtie horsey would accept his offer of atonement when said horsey spoke again. “Fine. But first, prove to me that that ‘senzoooo’ bean or whatever is the real deal and isn’t something that’ll make my friend worse for wear.”
Goku’s eyes shot open at that and his back and head straightened back up. He smiled warmly at the bowtie horsey. “That’s easy.” He withdrew his power pole, looked at it with a steely glare for several seconds, and promptly began hitting himself in the head over and over again like it was a pinata with delicious candy inside.
“What in the hay do you think you’re doing!? How in Equestria does this prove anything!?” he heard the bowtie horsey shout.
Not taking a break from trying to bust his own head open, Goku smiled, giggled, and said (in between grunts of ‘Ow!’), “You’ll see! Just watch!” A few more seconds passed and Goku stopped and felt his forehead. After wincing upon touching the big lump he felt forming there, he put the power back on his back, smiled at the bowtie horsey again, and said, “Now, pay close attention.”
He stuffed the senzu bean he had out into his mouth, chewed a little bit out of habit, and swallowed. Several more seconds passed and Goku touched his forehead again. This time, instead of wincing in pain from the sensitive lump there, he felt nothing but smooth skin and his fingers coming into contact with it. “See! Good as new, except for the dirt and dried up blood.”
He grinned again and chuckled upon seeing the utterly flabbergasted and astounded face on the bowtie horsey.
“No way…” it said.
“Way,” Goku politely corrected. “If you don’t believe me, then come on down and check for yourself.”
The bowtie horsey’s look reverted back to distrust, forthwith. “I dunno… I don’t think that’s a good idea…” it said, skeptically.
Goku looked pensive and he rubbed his chin in deep contemplation. And then, it came to him. “Eureka!” he said, snapping his fingers.
“Paprika?”
“No, not paprika. Eureka! Though, now that I think about it, I could go for something seasoned with it right now.” Goku tilted his head to the side, his mouth drooling as he thought of all of the various, scrumptious dishes that paprika would go splendidly with. Realizing that the bowtie horsey was looking at him strangely, Goku straightened up and coughed into his hand. “Anyways, Eureka, not paprika. From what my friend Bulma told me, it means ‘I’ve got it.’ It’s also the name of a few towns from where I’m from, but mostly that first thing I said.” Goku grabbed his staff’s scabbard and promptly chucked it at the bowtie horsey’s hooves. “There. Now I can’t hurt you with my power pole even if I wanted to. So, come on down.” Goku waved the bowtie horsey over.
Said horsey spent a few more moments, he unsure gaze alternating between the power pole and him before saying, “Alright. But only if ya pinky promise.”
Goku tilted his head to the side. “Pinkie promise?”
“Just do what I do and repeat after me.”
Goku shrugged. “Okay.”
“Cross my heart and hope to fly…” the bowtie horsey began, crossing a forehoof over where he presumed its heart to be.
“Cross my heart and hope to fly…” Goku repeated, crossing a hand over where he presumed his heart to be.
“Stick a cupcake in my eye,” the bowtie horsey finished, poking one of its closed eyelids slightly.
“Stick a cupcake in my eye,” Goku repeated, poking one of his closed eyelids slightly.
“There. Now I know I can trust you not to knock me into next week and now you know how to Pinkie promise,” the bowtie horsey said, closing its eyes and raising its head high in pride.
“Okay.” Goku wasn’t sure how what he did proved anything, but if it made the bowtie horsey comfortable, he wasn’t going to complain about how the Pinkie promise confused him.
The bowtie horsey trotted confidently towards him and, after a moment’s hesitation, found that final amount of bravery needed to inspect his forehead with its hoof.
Goku snickered as its eyes widened at the conclusion of its investigation. “Oh my Celestia, you’re right! I don’t feel a thing ‘cept your skin! And some dirt and blood.” When the bowtie horsey realized what it had said in that last sentence, it shook its head, pulled its hoof back, and wiped it off with the grass. “Ew.”
“See, what’d I tell ya? Now do you believe me when I say I want to help, sir?”
After it was thoroughly done with cleansing its hoof, it looked back at him and said, “As my big brother would say, E’yup!” Its eyes then narrowed to slits and a peeved look liked Bulma’s after he apparently said something stupid that he didn’t know about before appeared on its face. “Though, for the record, I’m a girl. As in, miss, lady, and female. Please don’t call me mister or sir again.”
Goku’s eyes widened and he gasped. “Wow? Really? Wasn’t my first guess.”
The bowtie horsey slapped itself in the face. “Just how many guys do you know that wear bowties in their hair!?”
Goku tilted his head to the side and though. “Well, there was this one guy named Mercenary Tao…”
The bowtie horsey slapped itself in the face again. “Just forget it. Just know that, around these parts, a bowtie in your hair ALWAYS means girl.” She scratched her head and looked thoughtful. “Except maybe at Nightmare Night and costume parties. But those are rare. Now, go on and help my friend like you were gonna before I butted in, please, Sun Wukong.”
There it--she--went with that strange name again. Goku thought about correcting her, but figured that the wiener horsey had been lying there on the ground for too long. He’d talk to the bowtie horsey about it later.
At present, he pulled out another magical, healing bean from his pouch, bent down again, and reached for the wiener horsey’s mouth. He planned to pry said jaw open, toss the bean down its throat, and close the jaw back up, banking on its swallowing reflexes to still be working correctly.
What he didn’t plan on, however, was to suddenly get tackled by tackled out of nowhere at great speed by some big, cyan blur streaked as though by a rainbow…
THE END... UNTIL NEXT TIME!
