Secret Lightning [REWORK IN PROGRESS]

=========SECRET LIGHTNING=========

This is my first attempt at a fanfiction, and I am trying to find out whether or not I am any good at writing them. If I have any spelling errors let me know. Also, if you decide I’m focusing too much on the character, just wait. Next couple chapters will get a little interesting.

Finally coming to a stop under a large oak tree, Matt silently cursed his life. “Why do things have to be this way?” he thought. “Why can’t they just get along?”  Then, “this is my fault, if I hadn’t applied for that job……….” Matt’s mind trailed off as he sat under the tree wondering what he should do next. For you see, his parents never really got along, and while his mother loved him more than anything in the world, his father wasn’t really the same. Matt’s father was planning on leaving his mother when he was born, he had found out during the fight. He had been forced to stay with his mom, but what the reasoning  was, he didn’t exactly know. They would never tell him. Suffice to say, matt’s father had never been a very……….supporting father, to say the least. There was even that one time he had left matt waiting at school, waiting for a ride, because he didn’t feel like picking Matt up. Eventually, a teacher had noticed and given him a ride home, only for matt’s father to berate him for making a teacher go out of his way for him. While the teacher, Mr. Orie, a shop teacher at the school he went to said it was no problem at all, matt’s father wouldn’t hear of it, and grounded matt.

Matt shuddered, remembering the fight that incident had caused between his parents. Recently, he had graduated from his school, with high marks in his shop, IST, or computers, and applied for a job. But the job that he really wanted required that he get a bachelor’s degree at least. So Matt had applied to almost every college he could think of, but was denied every time. Matt had no problem in his trade, and the work for his trade came easily to him, computers had always been a specialty of his, but there was one problem he had: academics. The school he went to was a technical high school, and had both academics and trade, and alternated the classes in different cycles. Try as he might, Matt could never get anything higher than a D in any of his academics classes. As his guidance counselor had said, “you can do the work matt, you’re a very smart person, you just aren’t putting your heart into it.” Part of this was because Matt’s father was a schoolteacher. Not at the school he went to, thank god, and he wasn’t really an actual teacher, he just handled the in school suspension and detention room, but knew enough that he could teach if he had to. Recently, one of matt’s friends, a kid who never really talked much, he preferred isolation and anime more than being out in public, had introduced matt to something new. It was a TV show called My Little Pony: friendship is Magic.

Matt enjoyed the show, as nothing really bad ever happened to any of the characters, and it also taught him the value of friendship, and how to better get along with people. His favorite pony was lyra, a mint colored unicorn with a mint and white striped mane and tail. In a way, she reminded Matt a lot of him: she was always in the background, always ignored by almost everyone, but if you looked really closely, you could sometimes see her in the background, either sitting on a bench very un-ponylike, or jumping excitedly behind a crowd, or in one case he noticed, sitting in the cloudsdale coliseum, where only Pegasi could venture. In this way, Matt felt a connection to lyra, as he himself was sort of a background character, no one ever noticed him, and in a couple years, Matt could almost guarantee that people would page through their yearbooks, looking back on their senior year of high school, looking at all the people they knew, and remembering them. Except him.

He only had one friend, and never really spoke to him, as he never really spoke to anyone. One other thing, Matt is what’s known as a “closet brony”, meaning he watches the show, but that’s about it, and only one other person knew he did even that. God, matt could remember the time his dad found out about it. He had walked, well, more like barged, in on matt while he was watching one of his favorite episodes. What happened next was exactly what matt expected: his father had yelled him for a good hour, including things like “no son of mine’s going to be gay!” and other such hurtful comments. His dad had also taken his computer and blocked the HUB channel from the TV, just to make sure there was no way he could watch the show. In short, he had taken away the only thing that was keeping Matt from spiraling into a deep, dark pit of depression. So he made up his mind: he was going to get a job and move away as soon as possible.

The only job he really wanted, also the only job he could really do extremely well, a computer repair technician for a company that made aircraft engines, required that he at least get a bachelor’s degree. When he had brought up the subject to his parents, his mom got very excited and said that she would foot the bill for the college, just so “he could be happy doing what he wanted”. His father, on the other hand, had gotten really aggravated and forbid his wife to pay for “someplace for Matt to go get drunk/high and have wild parties all night and day”. As usual, his parents started squabbling, more so than two birds over a french fry. Then it happened. In a fit of rage over her last comment, Matt’s father hauled back and slapped his wife in that face. All three stood quietly for a few seconds, paralyzed with shock. Then, matt broke the silence by running out the front door.

And he just kept running. He could have easily gotten into his car and drove, but his father had had an Onstar system installed in the car, and Matt really didn’t want to be found. He just wanted to be alone. He had even ditched his cellphone, leaving it in the car. And so he ran. Ran so far in fact, he ended up in the forest about a mile from his house. It was raining, so matt looked for a decent tree to sit under and weather out the storm while he thought. Eventually, he found a nice oak tree, with dry ground underneath it. He sat under that tree for over an hour, contemplating what he should do with his life. A thunderstorm was closing in, and Matt knew he would have to find better shelter than a tree. But Matt couldn’t force himself to move, preferring instead to sit under the tree and cry. It was then that a certain electric feeling took the air, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “oh god, no” he thought. Just as he was about to get up to run away from the area -KRA-BOOM!!!!!

The lightning strike had hit the tree he was under, but enough voltage had gone from the tree to him that he found he could not move at all, short of breathing, which surprised him. “I should not have survived that” the thought, as a dreaded cracking noise filled his ears. He knew all too well what that meant. He forced his eye muscles to move his eyes to look up just as a big leader branch from the tree, easily the size of a small car, broke off where the lightning hit and plummeted straight towards his unmoving form. His last thought was “mom, please don’t hate me” then all was black.

=================================================================================================

The next thing Matt remembered, he was waking up in a warm, soft bed. He didn’t hurt at all, just felt……..warm. When matt opened his eyes, he was surprised by what he saw. He was in a white room, much like a hospital room, but……………different. He felt the place was very familiar, but could not for the life of him place where he was. He tried to stand up, and immediately regretted it. A splitting headache pierced his brain like a knife. He immediately sat back down on the bed, and the headache lessened. He decided to see if he could get ahold of anyone to see what was going on. “Hello?” he called, finding the words came easily, considering what had just happened to him. That HAD happened to him, hadn’t it? Before he could consider anything more, he heard a voice waft into his room. It was female, probably a nurse. “oh, you’re awake, I’ll be right there.”

What Matt saw next, nothing could have prepared him for.

Next thing he knew, a nurse pony stepped into the room. Wait, PONY?!?!?! He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, and looked again. Sure enough, there was a white earth pony with a light pink mane and tail and a nurse’s hat was standing in front of him. Matt’s brain reeled. First, he knew exactly who this was, it was nurse tenderheart, a nurse at the ponyville clinic, he recognized her from the show. Second, there was no WAY this was happening. Right?!?!  It’s just a show, he thought, there’s no way he could possibly be in ponyville, this HAD to be a hallucination. “Are you alright dear?” the mare’s calm, gentle voice snapped him out of his trance and back into reality. A reality he still couldn’t believe was real. “you……….you can’t be real!” he exclaimed, backing against the wall. “I must be dreaming of something! There’s no way any of this can be real!” Startled by the human’s sudden reaction, nurse redheart backed away as well. “I’m sorry to tell you this” she said while making sure she was close enough to the door that she could dash out of the room to safety if the human became violent “but this is very real. And you are not the first human here either.”