The creak of twisted metal tore at my ears.
I slowly opened my eyes, adding to the pain I was experiencing, the interior of my - now upturned - car increasing in detail as I grew more accustomed to the darkness.
"Well shit, there goes my no-claims"
The roof and the floor were filled with dents, and coated in shattered sheet glass; the windshield - unusually intact, albeit spider webbed - obscured my view of the outside. The smell of burning 5 to 50 weight oil hit my nose and I promptly flipped the ignition to ‘off’ to prevent damage to the engine. This thing was fucked up enough already; I don’t want a wrecked HEMI on my hands on top of that.
My head suddenly throbbed with pain and when I reached to feel my head, my hair was unusually wet. A glance at the roll-bar situated beside my seat confirmed my fears.
"Blood", I mumbled, surprised I was conscious at all, and frankly thankful that although the roll-bar did give me a head injury, it meant that I wasn’t flat as a pancake right now.
Undoing my 6-point harness, I dropped out of my Recaro and landed face first into the plain white sheet metal.
“Well, grace and beauty never were traits that I was familiar with.” I chuckled hoarsely at my own joke. Attempting to rise from the roof, I found that I was unable to lift myself at all, an unbearable pain present in my cracked ribs, a thud in my head and a weakness of my limbs.
I struggled to stay conscious and dropped to the floor, part way out the shattered window on the driver’s side. Shadows of cartoonishly shaped shrubbery and trees faintly stood out against the royal blue of the night. There was a path right in front of me, lining another set of barely comprehensible shadows. The shapes were weird, but both seemed to be moving and had faint glows around about where I assumed was a head. A sharp pang of pain. "…shit… my head..." and with that, I went blank all together.
“...He's waking up!” a feminine voice stated. ‘Well, yeah, no shit, you normally wake up or die when you're unconscious’ I thought to myself, laughing inside at how I was still dry and witty after having a near death experience. There was feeling in my face so I opened my eyes slowly, so as to reduce the amount of light currently bombarding them.
“...Damn, that must have been a big hit."
"Why do you say that?" the voice asked, it's source now affirmed to be a pony - of all things - with a brilliant white coat, a ‘spear’ growing out of its head (the hell am I supposed to call it anyway?), wings and a flowing, almost gaseous mane. Its face hovered over mine, seemingly inspecting every detail possible.
"Well, for one thing, I'm seeing three colourful ponies, one of which can speak perfect English and another who's dressed like a kid on Halloween, pretending to be a doctor." I chided, making fun of my current situation as if it were one big joke.
"I AM a doctor!" The pony in question – brown with a darker shade for hair (or whatever the hell it’s called) – grimaced.
"Thanks for making me insane, Doc."
"No problem, it wasn't that hard anyway..." The doctor/pony in question mumbled to itself as it walked out into what seemed to be a ward.
I turned my head to face the pair of ponies to the right of my, rather comfortable, hospital bed, paying most attention to the one that shouted when I woke up. It also turned its head from the door and faced me.
"I'm Princess Celestia, and this is my student, Twilight Sparkle." The white pony said, with a particularly soft voice.
She (I presume "it" is female from its voice) then pointed (I presume aiming its foreleg is pointing) to a much smaller purple pony with a slightly smaller spear on her head, who simply smiled and said
"We found you out in the Everfree forest at night, in some sort of weird machine.”
‘It must be talking about my car. So I’m not dreaming. How reassuring. Didn’t need pinching anyway, I feel like shit. The fuck happened to my arm to make it hurt that much…?’
“I picked up a burst of magic in the area we found you in, leading us to you." the royal figure explained, unintentionally jolting me out of my thoughts. “Although, we don’t quite know what ‘you’ are, exactly.” She quickly added.
"I'm called a human, the ‘weird machine’ you saw is a car, and it contains an engine, in this case a V-8. Now, are you real, or have the doctors given me too many drugs again!?"
“I am shocked that you would think that.” The white pony said flatly.
“Really? We just prevented you from dying of blood loss plus a blow to the head, and this is how you react?” Twilight added.
"I apologise, where are my manners? I'm - " I struggled to remember my own name.
‘This should be second nature. Is this what having amnesia is like?’
"…I’m...I'm sorry but I can't seem to remember my own name." I sat for a second and searched around in the massive chasm that was now my head.
“Heh. I really can’t.”
"Can't remember your own name eh? Hmm...” The royal trailed off, seemingly in thought. She accentuated this by bending her foreleg in an impossible way to stroke her… chin… I think.
“In that case, I name you 'Vee Eight' after the chariot you arrived into our fair land of Equestria in. On the subject of that, would you please tell us how you got here?" The princess asked calmly.
“Gladly. Fortunately for you, that is one of the few things I do remember. I was driving along, minding my own business...”
Well driving isn't the word, drifting more likely. Hooning? HELL YES. The mountain roads in California are apparently so cool I had to ship my car out there and see them for myself, and boy was I loving it. At one point I even ran into a drift meet and gave the whole bunch a battering.
Anyway I was hooning along minding my own business and thrashing some import punks, when I reach the peak of the pass and the final stretch of baking hot, rubber coated road. Three corners to the very top, not much but to hell with it, I was here so I may as well take those last corners.
Downshifting to second using the heel and toe technique, I entered the first left hand bend at a wide angle, taking up almost all of both sides of the single carriageway, and torturing the already worn tyres even more to the point where you could almost imagine them squealing for mercy.
Deftly feathering the throttle while counter steering I made it through without a scratch, and approached the right hander sideways. Quickly I flung the wheel into full lock and let go of the throttle, stomping back down after the tyres had regained grip to swing the car around and enter the second bend at an even more ridiculous angle. This time I clipped the cliff face with the very edge of the meticulously restored rear bumper.
“That’ll buff out. HA!”
I continued, laughing to myself manically and still sideways into the third and last bend with my chrome bumper flailing about on its last bolt. I aced the entry again like I did the first time.
This time though, the entire road ripped around me and I fell through what used to be solid ground, still with much velocity.
Engulfed by a white light, I quickly shut my eyes to avoid being blinded. I feel myself defy gravity for what felt like a few minutes, then ‘drop’ and hit the ground. The roll, resultant of all the speed and the angle of impact, had caused me to hit my head...
"...And now here I am in this acid trip of a world, with a bandaged head and what feels like 50 broken bones. Any other details of my near death experience that you want to know?" My eyes fell on dropped jaws. "Thought not."
"What is California?" Miss Sparkle asked, summoning a scroll and quill out of thin air.
"It's a state in a country called America, on the planet E-A-R-T-H." I said sarcastically, ignoring the magic I just witnessed, dismissing it as another feature of my 'acid trip'.
"And this drifting you speak of-"
"Twilight."
"-Is it like drifting to sleep or-"
"Twilight."
"-like most other unusual things you have told us about?"
"Twilight!" Celestia jolted the lilac pony out of her inquisitive state.
"I'd like to speak to the patient on their own please."
"Yes, princess."
She waited for the smaller pony to walk out.
“You’ve been unconscious for two days and the doctors patched you up as best they could with what little they knew about your anatomy. Your ‘car’, as it were, is in a safe place, albeit very damaged as even we could tell.”
"That's normal when you roll at 120 MPH."
"...at what?"
"Forget it; I'll explain some other time."
Celestia almost cried.
“OK FINE! Jesus Christ.” I face palmed. “MPH stands for miles per hour and is the unit by which we humans measure speed; it is, quite simply, how many miles you would travel in an hour at the speed you are at. And miles are a measurement of distance.” Taking a deep breath and sighing, I noticed that this seemed to perk the Princess up. I guess it isn’t every day that you learn something new. Especially as royalty.
“And now I have grown tired of explaining all these things to you. I do however appreciate your concern and this brings about a question of my own. Why? Why save a creature whose origin you do not know of, is sitting unconscious in and unusual machine and looks like nothing you have ever seen before or since? Why?”
“Because of precisely that.”
The princess left after that. And for five agonising minutes I was alone.
‘Maybe I was a bithostile towards those ponies. Especially the royal. Just a tiny bit.’
Suddenly a nurse and the brown doctor pony from earlier walked into the room.
“We have decided to discharge you. We can’t help you much from now and you seem to be fine.”
“Erm…Thanks Doc. And by the way? I’m sorry for how I reacted earlier. It’s not every day you wake up to see a bunch of colorful talkin’ ponies. I thought I had gone insane.”
“Not at all, it’s entirely understandable. And besides, it’s not every day that you meet such an unusual species. You are human, correct?”
“Yes, sir. Wait… How did you know?”
“Miss Sparkle told me on the way out. On the subject of your visitors, the Princess has invited you to her castle. You would be wise to honor the invite.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks for everything Doc. I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Your clothes are in the drawer to your left and we have provided you with a map so you can find your way around. Good luck.”
I waited for the doctor to leave the room and checked the drawer that was in the bedside table for my possessions.
I found and threw on my white T-Shirt and my trademark leather jacket – which had some rather large gashes on the left sleeve – my denim jeans and Nike Ruckus Mid-Top trainers.
“Alright… It’s time to make shit happen.”
Stepping out of the Hospital doors I got my first hit of fresh air and a whole load of shock.
“Holy Shit. I’m in a fucking dream.”
I was essentially in a city, one side lined by a mountain and the other lined with air. That wasn’t what was really shocking though. It was a city… Filled to the fucking brim with small, colourful, talking… Ponies. PONIES, FOR FUCK SAKE. Talking, commuting, working, bartering, they were ponies doing everything that humans did. Like ponies had become sentient beings, grew colourful hair and built their own city overnight.
‘Man, either my head is completely fucked and I’m in some wild coma dream, or this is real and some pretty messed up stuff happened to bring me here.’
“…Hey.”
I was jolted out of my thoughts.
“Hello?” A hoof tapped my head, making a comical knocking sound and causing me to wince a bit. “Anyone home?”
“Yes, actually.” This startled the pony in front of me. I stopped letting my eyes wander for a moment to focus on it. It was a Cyan blue - similar to the cartoony sky above me - and had a rainbow coloured type mane and tail.
“…well ‘hi’, I guess. Hey can you stop zoning out? It’s kinda freaky.”
“Oh, err... sorry.” I tried to smile, ignoring the voice in the back of my head saying:
‘You’re mad, mad as a spanner wielding monkey. YOU’RE TALKING TO A P-O-N-Y’
Regardless, I introduced myself. Insane as that sounded to me.
“I’m Vee Eight, what’s your name?”
“Rainbow Dash. Hi and everything. What are you exactly?”
“A human. Surprise. Merry Christmas and shit.”
“A human. I gotta ask Twilight about that one…”
I noticed the wings on the back of this pony.
“What are you? Besides a pony I mean.”
“A Pegasus. You noticed the wings? I can fly.”
That just did it. I must be completely insane. I’m off my cam lobe. I’m out like a blown head gasket.
“Ah… can I…?” ‘don’t be stupid man. That is one of the most idiotic ideas ever. Ever.’
“Can you what Vee?”
“I don’t quite believe what I’m seeing. And being able to touch it tends to help me believe it.”
“Sure I guess… Go ahead.”
I felt Rainbow Dash’s coat. It was fluffy. More importantly it was there. I reached for a wing.
“Easy there Vee, That’s my wing. I didn’t say you could touch THAT.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I pulled my hand away from Dash.
‘That sensation. It was like fur, but so much more warm and soft. It wasn’t sharp or bristly like that of animals back home.’
I looked at RD’s coat again, and noticed it was actually fur, but appeared to be solid colour if I didn’t look closely. The image on the rear of her body actually appeared to be part of the fur, the colours split across each strand.
“Yo, Eight? You’re doing it again. Stop weirding me out.”
‘For Christ sakes. I’ve got to get my head straight.’
“Ah, yeah, sorry ‘bout that. Is there a reason why you wanted to speak to me?”
“Twilight sent me to get you because a) I’m the fastest pony in all of Equestria and b) She thought it would be a bad idea to just let a human walk around Canterlot on their own. Also ‘cause I was the closest to her, being that I was clearing the clouds near the castle and stuff.”
‘Wait… Clearing clouds? No, no quit it with the questions just go and speak to Twilight and the Princess. If I can’t get out of this acid trip then I may as well go along WITH it.’
“So, you gonna follow me or what?” Rainbow Dash shouted over her shoulder, she was already quite far away.
“Yeah, sure, just gimmie a sec”.
I began jogging to catch up.
‘Argh does this path ever end or am I going to be here forever?!’ I mused.
“- So Vee, I forgot to ask what those things where your front hooves should be actually are. Wanna clear that up?”
“They are called hands. They help me grab stuff. Like you, for example.”
I lifted RD clean into the air from underneath her.
“HEY STOP IT, VEE, THAT’S NOT COOL!”
I laughed and put ‘Dashie’ back on the ground.
“What’s wrong Dashie? Don’t like your head in the clouds?” I chuckled.
“No, numb nuts, we’re almost there!”
I turned my head, noticing the ‘castle’, towering in front of me like a disorganised medieval skyscraper. My jaw dropped.
“…Oh…My…Gosh…”
Rainbow was grinning from ear to pointed blue ear.
“You should see the look on your face!”
She snorted as she tried to hold in a laugh. Then the flood gates opened.
“BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
I put on my ‘seriously-is-now-the-fucking-time’ face and stared at the cyan Pegasus.
“- HAHA…ha…ha…” The huge grin on her face receded. “…ha?”
“- #And in the summer time - that we lost - out of time and - at a cost, I need someone who can understand, I'll never be a prophet in my own land when I'm a long way from home, with so much pressure on my bone, I'm such a long way from home…#”
My voice echoed around as I ventured the grand corridors and plush hallways of the castle. Rainbow Dash had to leave me at the gates because she had work to do.
“You have a wonderful singing voice.”
‘GAH, THAT WASN’T EXPECTED!’
“Erm… Thanks.”
I glanced up to notice that a certain lavender equine was standing before me. She dragged her hoof across the immaculate marble flooring.
“I mean it.”
“Trust me, I don’t. That crash didn’t kill me, but my sore vocal cords probably will.” I pointed to a rather painful scar that rounded my neck which was surrounded by bruising. I only knew it was there from the pain. Damn those old cars and their brittle single glazing.
“Vocal cords or not, The Princess is waiting inside.” She gestured to the literally huge double doors behind her. “It’s not a good idea to keep her waiting.”
“I thought as much.”
“A few things you need to know. Cel – ahem - I mean Princess Celestia is an Alicorn. Not a mere ‘pony’ as you called her only an hour and a half earlier. Also, she is the ruler of this land, and as such should be treated with the utmost respect. Not sighed and groaned at for asking a simple question.”
Twilight looked at me with a scrutinizing stare. ‘Oh boy, talk about making a bad first impression.’
“Alright, dammit. So sue me if I was a bit grumpy, I woke up from a two day coma, remember? I’m hardly in the best of nick. Not to mention the fact that I feel like shit.”
A grin graced her lips.
“Ok screw this. I’m ready as I’ll ever be.” I straightened the wrinkles in my plum colored leather jacket.
‘Well done, genius, like that’s going to help the bloody huge gashes in the damn thing.’ Shut up.
“Would you mind, ever so kindly, opening the doors?”
“My pleasure.” A purple glow surrounded Twilight’s horn and the doors, which swung wide, seemingly at her command.
‘I really am off my rocker cover now.’
The room was the size of a large warehouse, the roof glazed in stained glass and the impeccable marble floor graced by an incredibly long red velvet…carpet? I don’t know if there is a fancy term.
“Remember what I said. Respect.”
I walked up the carpet towards the Royal, letting Miss Sparkle lead. About 20 feet away from the princess she stopped and knelt.
‘Really? They want me to kneel now? Fuck it, I guess I can’t be defiant all the time.’
I knelt before Celestia. God I hate doing that.
“Rise my faithful student. And you, sir Eight. This is purely to talk. Besides, formalities are lost on me.”
“I hear that.”
Twilight shot me a look that said ‘big mistake, hombre’
“What did I say?! I said treat her with the utmost respect.”
“Formalities are lost on me, too.”
“You would be great friends with Vinyl Scratch.”
“Who?”
Celestia was clearly not in the mood for another one of these tangents.
“Not now, please. We have business to discuss.” Celestia said sternly.
“Fine, I’ll ask who this ‘Vinyl Scratch’ character is later. For now, I’ve got three problems:
Where the fuck is my car?
Where the fuck am I?
And why do I feel like I’ve been bitten by a fucking wolf?!”
“One, your car is going to be kept in a special building that is currently being built just on the outskirts of Ponyville. It’s almost finished so consider the car safe.
Two, you are in Canterlot, in the land of Equestria, and are currently in breach of over fifty border laws, but because you are human and you didn’t exactly have a choice about being here we will make an exception that I will bring up later.
Three, you WERE bitten by a wolf. A timber wolf, to be exact. One that you promptly killed after it bit you, I should know, you were on my back at the time.”
“Whoawhoa WHOA! Slow the fuck down. Car is safe, check – Unusual land filled with ponies and has a name even I can’t make sense of, check – Unusual story about how the hell I ended up on your back with a wolf bite, not check. Care to explain?”
“You don’t remember?”
The look on my face said it all.
“Perhaps this will jog your memory.” The princess brought out a firearm from behind her, which floated in the air. A golden sparkly ‘aura’ hung around it.
‘Stay calm, she doesn’t know how to use it.’
“Can I have the gun for a moment? I won’t use it, I just want to examine it.”
The golden glow surrounded the firearm and it floated towards me.
‘They trust you more than you do them.’
Earth to subconscious, I never trust anyone. I grabbed the weapon that was floating in front of me and carefully pulled the slide back to check for a cartridge. One was loaded, so I dropped the mag and pulled the slide back fully while engaging the slide lock with my right thumb. I threw the mag into my pocket, picked up the cartridge then proceeded in examining the firearm.
It was a Springfield Armoury Model 1911 Custom, the slide finished in gloss black, the receiver, handle and barrel finished in silver, along with black grips that curved around the front of the handle. I turned the weapon in my hands and noticed the numeral scratches and spattering’s of crimson, tainting the perfect finish of the gun. On the right hand side of the slide a serial number was stamped, along with the calibre and manufacturer.
‘Forty five ACP? You lucky motherfucker.’
“Is this mine?” I asked.
“Yes. And it’s pretty deadly.”
I swung the front of the gun towards me, ignoring the stupidity of doing such a thing. A chip of wood was jammed between the slide and the barrel…
I heard the steady but swift clop of hooves against ground. I was alive – just - and was being carried by a large white horse. Beside it was a smaller purple pony. They were running. Running away from something, but I didn’t know what. Then they stopped.
‘Fuu-ck,that’swhat they were running from.’
A wolf. It swam into focus as I tried to examine it. It was made completely of wood, no fur, no skin.
‘That hell hound is gonna kill me, ain’t it? So why don’t I kill it first?’
I pulled my gun from my leather shoulder harness and took aim as it lunged for my arm.
The freak of nature was dead before it hit the ground. But not before it sunk it’s wooden teeth into my left bicep. Blood spurted out of the wound and ran down my arm, coating the pistol and painting it crimson.
‘No time to worry about that. That demon spawn’s friends have come along. Two of them to be exact.’
The wolves growled. I didn’t hesitate.
<-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle>
Smoke rose. Blood burned. Shards of bark and wood flew. Brain matter was scattered all over the place. Trees were painted blood red. Wooden bodies fell.
"You blacked out from blood loss at that moment.”
I pulled the slide back 'till it locked, removing two rounds, throwing them in my pocket and then separating the magazine from the firearm in one slick, well-practiced movement.
“Two rounds left…”
I turned the mag in my hand and read the side plate.
“…Seven round magazine.”
“…That really happened…”
‘I killed in cold blood. Oh God...’
“No.” I looked at the white Alicorn. She glared at me as if to say ‘you are not a monster’. “If you had not killed them, they would have killed us. Simple as that.”
“I guess…”
“Vee Eight. You saved our lives with that tiny cannon you call a gun. Can’t you see that? You saved the lives of one of the most important ponies in Equestria along with her student. You are not a monster. You are a hero.”
‘Short Change Hero’ rang out in my mind.
‘This ain't no place for no hero, this ain't no place for no better man, this ain't no place for no hero, Go home.’
“You haven’t caught on yet, have you Eight? I can read minds.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“I don’t do it all the time, no need to fret.” She smiled. It was a smile that seemed to alleviate all my worries, my sadness and my pain. “Besides, that is a beautiful line. Is it from a song?”
“Yeah. By a band called ‘The Heavy’. I can show you the whole song.”
I checked my pockets for my phone. While I was at it I threw the round in there.
‘…spare magazines… motel key… headphones… 3.5mm aux in jack… guitar pick… Aha!’
I pulled out my Blackberry Curve 9900 and started twirling it in my hand.
“This is called a phone. We use it on earth to talk to other people over long distances. Explaining how it works is not simple and is quite beyond me, add to that the fact that I’m in what seems to be a medieval land with no radio towers and explaining how this is intended to work becomes impossible. For now it can only be used for media, music, pictures, video and the like.”
To demonstrate I unlocked the phone and navigated to the music player, selecting a piece that I had downloaded and listened to for what felt like eons.The intro to ‘Short Change Hero’ swam out of the top mounted speaker.
Jaws dropped again. This time hitting the floor with a metallic clang.
I turned off the music and threw the phone to Twilight, who caught it in that purple aura of hers.
“Go ahead, have fun with it. If you take it to pieces, you might find out how it works. I assume you are able to do that?”
A clown like grin was plastered across her face.
“Really? YES! HAHA! The implications of this technology in Equestrian hooves would be phenomenal!”
“English please?”
“If I can find out how this works, we can duplicate it and spread it across Equestria for everypony to use!”
“Get started then!”
Twilight ran off, Phone held in some kind of magical glow.
“Nice to see that you are being at least a tiny bit complacent.”
“I’ll do anything to help. You’ve been so kind to me even though you didn’t know if I was friend or foe. Heck, I’m not even a pony but you treated me as if I was entitled to the same rights. You could have killed me or left me to die.”
“Come with me, Vee.”
The Princess sauntered towards a balcony on my left hand side. I followed, more out of curiosity than from following an order.
We reached the balcony without uttering a word and I gazed out at the view of ‘Canterlot’ as it is called.
“You like the view?”
The sudden speech startled me but I kept composed all the same.
“Yeah. I wish my bedroom had a view like this.”
“You see all those ponies down there?”
“Yeah. You rule them.”
“Very observant of you. But you do not know the answer to this question.”
“What question?”
“I was getting to that.”
I blushed. My impatience has been my Achilles heel since I was a child. Explains why I drive so fast though.
“What morals do you think we as a nation uphold, sir Eight?” Celestia looked at me as she asked the question.
“Damned if I know. I only just got here, remember?” I said, not turning to look at her.
“I shall tell you then. Peace and harmony for all pony kind. Peace and harmony have one very important prerequisite. Equality. It’s not exactly easy to break the habit when you’ve upheld the same values for over three thousand years.”
“Funny. We’ve been fighting for ‘peace’ and ‘harmony’ for over three thousand years ourselves. Never fuckin’ happens. Want to know why?” I held my M-Nineteen up by the barrel. “We fight for peace. Talk about being hypocritical.”
“Quite. It sounds like we will get along, you and I.”
“No doubt. You owe me your life, remember?”
We both chuckled.
AN: I’ve combined and edited chapters one and two because I did not like the way they panned out, creating one even more /)^3^(\ chapter.
At the current moment I’m in talks with a friend of mine about getting his lazy ass up and completing that cover for me but no dice yet, the poor guy is caught up with A-Levels.
So I’m on the lookout for anyone who could spare the time to draw me up a half decent cover. I’d do it myself but I can’t draw or photoshop for shit.
The new Chapter two is to be released SOON™ dependant on the severity of my newly acquired year 11 status and the studies that it brings with it.
In the meantime, favourite and like or dislike the story appropriately.
Signing off,
Vee Eight
