One
A Strange Woman
The Panzer commander and his driver were hunched over the engine bay of their Panzer VI 'Tiger', muttering to each other about what could have been the cause of the breakdown this time, which seemed to happen all too often. The rest of the crew were sitting nearby in a small wood the Panzer had broken down next to, taking the opportunity to have a bit of respite and enjoy the local scenery, which icluded a small village in the distance.
"Die Kolben sind in Ordnung." The commander mused.
"Und die Zündkerzen."
"Ja, natürlich." The commander leaned a little closer to the engine, stretching out his right hand. "Warte..."
"Hi there!"
"Scheisse!" Jumping with shock at the sudden sound, inadvertently smacking his hand against the engine, the commander spun around to face where the voice had come from. The driver did likewise, and both men stared open-mouthed at the sight of the person that now stood in front of them, unable to believe what they were seeing.
"Um, I said 'Hi there!', silly! You're supposed to say 'Hi!' back, you know." The newcomer said. She was a young lady, the commander would've guessed no older than twenty-five, but what really struck him as odd was her large, curly, bright pink hair that stuck out in front of her face, hanging down a little, and behind her went about halfway down her back. Her snug-fitting t-shirt was a bright pink too, as was her knee-length skirt and her long socks. She stood there with a naive, almost oblivious, smile on her face that was so wide it looked as if it would become painful to hold it for any length of time.
Slowly turning his head to his commander, not taking his eyes of the woman, the driver murmured "Herr Hauptmann, was hat sie gesagt?" but was ignored by the commander, who merely cleared his throat with a quiet cough before hesitantly speaking out to the woman.
"H... hallo?"
"There ya go! I knew you could do it!" The woman's smile somehow grew wider than it already was. By this point the remaining tank crew members had all walked over, each one as dumbstruck as the next as to what to make of this strange person. "So what are you all called?" she asked.
The commander, the only one able to understand her, replied in his best English. "I'm Hauptman Hans Eisenberg, zis is my Panzer cre-" Hans was cut short by a sudden giggle.
"That's a funny accent you got there, mister. Reminds me of Photo Finish." The woman said before giggling again. "So," she continued, "What's this thing ya got here? A cider machine? A stagecoach?" she rattled off more suggestions as she skipped around to the front of the tank. She stopped dead in her tracks and gasped, staring wide-eyed at the tank's main cannon, seemingly overwhelmed with excitement as she hopped from one foot to the other. "Oh my! That's the biggest party cannon I've ever seen! Can I fire it? Can I? Oh can I please? Please please please?"
Hans jumped off the back of the Panzer and dashed around to the front to see what had got the girl so lively. He took a moment to process the lady's request and yelled "Vhat? I don't care if zat's ze biggest Panzer Kanon you've seen!", completely misunderstanding what she thought she was looking at. "Und it's not to be played vith!"
The young woman looked deflated as she stopped her hopping and pouted at Hans. "Are you sure? Like, really, really sure?" She said, her eyes starting to well up.
"Ja, I'm sure." Replied Hans; but dear God, even a hardened soldier like him couldn't resist saying 'No' to that adorable expression for long. In the event, it didn't matter that he wouldn't be able to, as the woman jumped up and gave a short scream.
"Yay! He said he was sure I can have a go!"
"Vait, vhat? Zat's not vhat I... Scheisse! Don't touch anyzing in zere!" He shouted to the woman as she scurried up the tank and jumped down into the hatch. She apparently started speaking to herself, as her voice could be heard, echoed by the inside of the vehicle.
"Now which button is it? This one?"
Hans heard the 'clunk' of the smoke dischargers attempting to fire as he climbed on the tank, luckily they weren't loaded.
"Nope. What about this one?"
The headlights turned on.
"This one?"
Hans reached the open hatch just as the woman was reaching out towards the trigger for the main cannon. He had barely enough time to yell 'Verdammt!' and clasp his hands over his ears before the cannon let out a deafening roar. Hans was thrown off balance and fell onto the engine, somehow managing to land on the same hand that he hurt earlier, as the entire vehicle rocked back on its springs. When he had finally recovered, he picked himself up and looked over the turret to try and locate where the shell had landed, but found it difficult to see through the dust that had been kicked up. The young lady had her head sticking out of the hatch, frowning.
"Well that was the worst party cannon ever, there weren't even any streamers!"
"Streamers, vhy vould zere be... nevermind zat! You've hit some poor man's house, it's completely flattened!" Hans had pulled up his binoculars from around his neck and was peering through them as the dust slowly settled. He could just about make out the village in the distance, one of the cottages with a gaping hole in the side of it, and the apparent owner nearby, standing there completely staggered about what had happed.
"I destroyed his house? Aw, I feel bad now." The woman took a short pause, seemingly thinking about a solution. "But... if it has an option to destroy houses... there must be an option to rebuild them, right?" With that, she ducked back down into the turret, but was abruptly stopped by a hand grabbing her shoulder. Hans wasn't quite sure what leap of the imagination had lead her to that logic, but he wasn't going to let her loose inside the tank again. He took hold of her other shoulder and hauled her out of the vehicle. She provided little resistance, too confused as to why this man wouldn't want to rebuild the house, and allowed herself simply to lie on the top of the turret as Hans stood over her, in an attempt to prevent her from escaping and causing more havoc.
"Alright" he said slowly, he had a few questions to ask this woman. "Vhat are you? American? English? Australian?"
"I'm none of those, silly, I'm Pinkie Pie!" She replied, smiling, apparently pleased by her own response.
"So... you're from..." Hans mused, not sure where a 'Pinkie Pie' would originate from.
"I'm from Ponyville!"
"Sure..." He was seriously suspecting her to be insane by now.
"Oh, you like pink, too?" Pinkie asked out of nowhere, her eyes brightening with fascination. Hans's only reply was to sigh; he had long lamented the fact that the Panzer crews, the mighty armoured fist of the Fatherland, wore rose pink piping around their collars. Watching the young girl reach out, apparently to touch it, Hans was surprised when she suddenly jolted and yelped, grasping her hand with the other.
"My hoof! What happened to my hoof?"
"Ach, mein Gott..."
Pinkie was now having a full-blown panic attack, screaming and staring at her missing 'hoof'. All Hans could manage was to close his eyes and sigh again; she was definitely insane.
"And my other hooves! Where did they go? What are these things?"
"Zose vould be your feet..."
"And these?" Pinkie's voice sounded a little calmer now, fear slowly being replaced by curiosity. Unable to think of what she was looking at now, Hans opened his eyes and looked down, only to see her staring intently at her chest.
"Z-zose... ach... I... zat's now important right now..."
"Are you sure? They look kinda important to me."
"J-ja... I'm sure."
"Okie dokie lokie!" She replied, somehow reassured by the brief answer.
"So, ach, how did you get here?" Hans was trying to change the subject away from her chest more than anything else.
"Oh, that's easy! Just follow me!" She replied, smoothly sliding herself out from underneath Hans and jumping off the Panzer, where she turned to face Hans again. "Well, what're you waiting for? C'mon!"
Exchanging a brief glance with his crew, giving them a look that told them to stay put, Hans reluctantly clambered down off the vehicle and set off to follow the cheerful young woman, who was now skipping into the forest, with a disgruntled frown on his face.
"Well..." Pinkie started, apparently deciding to provide a story as the pair walked along. "I was walking through the orchard at Sweet Apple Acres, when I saw this big glowy thing, like a window, but more strange, and a little scarier... but not that scary, I guess it was more creepy, and it was just sitting there between the trees, and I was looking at it, and I thought 'What's that?'. So I walked through it, and then I was in a forest, and then I found you guys, and then I saw your party cannon, and then I was like 'That's the bigge-'"
"Ja!" Hans yelled, unable to stand her incessant chattering, but soon felt a little guilty for snapping at her. "I mean... zank you, I know zis part already."
"Oh look, here we are!" Pinkie said, turning to look at Hans, with a big grin on her face. Hans looked up from the ground; he had been so preoccupied with trying to withstand the barrage of noise she produced that he hadn't noticed the large, glowing oval suspended in mid-air that was in front of him. Through it was the image of apple trees, distorted as if by ripples on a pond, and completely different to the wood the two of them were now currently in.
"So, zrough zere... is 'Ponyville'?" He questioned, still not having clue what was going on.
"It sure is!" Pinkie replied cheerfully.
Hans drew a deep breath and muttered "Gott helfe mir..." as he took a step forward into the portal...
Author's note/s
Words that Hans uses a lot which you might need to know:
Scheisse: Sh*t (As far as I'm aware, though Scheisse literally translates to sh*t, it's used in a sense closer to 'bloody hell'. Though I could be wrong.)
Verdammt: Damn (Can also be 'f*ck'/*f*cking', but Hans isn't that rude. =P)
Mein Gott: My God
Ach: Oh
Ja: Yes
Nein: No
Guten Tag/ 'Tag: Good day
Auf Wiedersehen/ 'Wiedersehen: Goodbye
Dummkopf: Idiot
Translations:
Here are the German lines from this chapter in English. Please remember that the German lines are most likely a little off here and there, I don't know German all that well. They are in the same order they appear in the story.
"The cylinders are in order."
"And the sparkplugs."
"Yes, naturally."
"Wait..."
"Captain, what did she say?"
"H... hello?" (As if you couldn't figure that one out.)
"God help me..."
Once More Unto The Breach
Two
Once More Unto The Breach
Hans looked around.
Something wasn't right.
Well, everything was perfectly alright. But that's what made it not right. Surely, one does not simply walk into another land... and for everything to be alright? What furthered Hans's suspicion was that the only person so far that he knew lived here, Pinkie Pie, was completely deranged, and yet must be considered 'normal' enough in this place to not be in an insane asylum. He had seriously expected it to be raining chocolate milk, roads to be made from soap, houses to defy gravity and hover in the air... something.
But no, everything was fine. Normal, even. Looking around, Hans could see he was in some sort of orchard, which fitted with Pinkie's story. It seemed to stretch to the horizon; all Hans could see were apple trees in every single direction, with a large barn poking out from the tree tops not too far away. On the ground, dotted in between the trees, were flowers of every colour. Along with the rustling tree leaves, these swayed gently in the light breeze, the spellbinding smell of apples mixing with the scent of flowers as it was carried by the wind. Hans was admiring them for a while before he realised something.
Flowers.
Hans couldn't stand them. Hay fever hit him 'like a... like a Panzer.' he thought, before mentally cursing himself for coming up with such an obvious analogy. While still taking in the new surroundings, it didn't take long for him to realise something else: he was thinking in English. Even the thoughts that were running through his head, right now, thinking about thinking in English, were doing so in a German accented English. This wasn't right.
Hans actually felt more at ease for a moment, at least now he had figured out the thing that was different about this place; apparently thoughts were in English. But still, he could see it becoming rather annoying. His English thoughts were interrupted by a loud sneeze that startled a few birds in the nearby trees, and threw his officer's cap off onto the ground.
"Ach, verdammt hay fever."
Well, at least he could still speak some German words, he considered, as he reached down to pick up his hat.
"Scheisse! Verdammte Scheisse! Mein Gott!"
Hans was staring in sheer shock at the hand that picked up his cap. It was no longer a hand. In its place was a stump that he shook around furiously, as if it was some kind of glove that would come off to reveal his true hand underneath. He was in such panic he didn't notice that this flung his cap into a nearby tree.
"Scheisse, Scheisse, Scheisse, Scheisse..." The words came out his mouth fast and rapidly as he continued wildly flailing the stub around, eventually giving up and holding the trembling appendage in front of his face, panting a little from the exertion. He stared at it. No fingers, no palm, no knuckles; just a single stump, as if someone had cut his hand off at the wrist. But wait, didn't hands come in pairs?
Dreading what he might see, Hans slowly turned his head down to look at his other hand. His fears were confirmed. It too, was just a stump. Even more confusingly, he was standing on it, and after checking his rear legs, he could see that he was now seemingly a quadruped. As he began to ponder over the potential implications of this unusual turn of events, he was interrupted by something flying through the air, crashing into him and sending him to the ground.
"Gott im Himmel!" Hans looked up to see a bright pink pony sprawled on top of him.
"Oh, sorry, mister!" The pony looked down at Hans, somewhat confused, as Hans looked back at her with a similar expression.
"... Pinkie Pie?"
"... Hans?"
"You're a pony?" Both said in perfect unison.
"Vell, apparently-"
"Of course I am, I've-"
"-I am now."
"-always been a pony."
Neither pony could understand what the other was saying in the muddled conversation, each pausing at the same time to let the other talk, then both speaking over each other. Nevertheless, they didn't need to communicate to see that they were both now ponies. Pinkie Pie rolled off Hans and allowed him to stand up, although she didn't seem the slightest bit concerned about anything. Hans stared at the glowing oval that hung in the air and walked over to it, then stuck his head and front leg through.
"Vell, zat's interesting..." Hans could see the leg was now his normal hand again, and turned back into a stump when he pulled it back out of the oval.
"Whatcha doing there?"
"Testing how zis zing vorks."
"Oh, can I see?" She said, springing towards him.
"Sure, just poke your arm... leg... zing... in und out."
"Okie dokie!" She said with a smile. After doing this a few times, gasping every time it changed from a hand to a hoof, she became rather amused by this, and had soon broken out into song as she kept doing it.
"You reach your right hoof in, you reach you right hoof out!
You reach your right hoof in, and you shake it all about!
You do the Pony Pokey; do in day in and day out!
That's what I'm talking about!"
Watching the spectacle with a relative lack of interest, Hans groaned as she starting to jump through the oval repeatedly.
"You stomp your whole self in, you stomp yo-"
"Pinkie!"
Unable to take any more, Hans had shouted to grab her attention. "Pinkie! Vhat is zis zing, anyvay?" He asked, waving his stumpy leg around.
She looked puzzled by this question. "That's your hoof, silly, didn't you know?"
"My hoof?" Hans considered how this went someway to explaining Pinkie's earlier moment of panic, which he only now realised was not too different from his own. "Of course... of course it's a hoof." Though it didn't look like any hoof Hans had seen before, it was just sort of the stub of a leg, he was willing to suspend his disbelief over this trivial matter, given how he considered the fact he was now a pony more important.
Suddenly, a grey pony head appeared through the oval.
"Herr Haupt... vhy are you dark brown? Und a pony, for zat matter?" Though Hans was a pony, the newcomer was still able to identify his Captain by the rank insignia on his shoulders. "Und vho's zis pink pony?" His deep voice carried in the relative quietness of the orchard.
"Why does no one recognise me? Hello?! It's me, Pinkie Pie!"
"Johan," Hans recognised the voice, "I'm as clueless as you. But I'm vorking on it. Also, zat's Pinkie Pie, if you hadn't already guessed." He continued, taking a glance at his hoof; he had barely noticed what colour he was amidst the panic and confusion, he was a chestnut brown, and the lock of mane he could just about catch a glimpse of was a darker, chocolate brown. He now also saw that he was still wearing his black Panzer uniform was, though his boots were absent. He hoped they'd reappear upon walking through the oval again, they were custom made, and not cheap. Turning back to Johan, he didn't pay attention to Pinkie skipping over to a nearby tree and apparently trying to grab something from it's branches.
"Ach, alright, Herr Hauptmann. I just came to report zat Deinhardt is being a Dummkopf, and has bet everyone he can drink a gallon of Panzer fuel and live... again."
"Johan?"
"Ja, Herr Hauptmann?"
"I didn't know you spoke English."
"I don't, Her- Scheisse! Vhat's going on? My thoughts... my speech... Gott helfe mich!"
"Calm yourself, Johan! It's just a new language."
"Ja... ja... you're right..." Said Johan, breathing a small sigh of relief. "Zis is odd."
"Indeed so."
"It's..." Johan stared off into the distance as he thought; Hans could almost see the cogs whirring in his head. "It's almost like someone's watching us... like some sort of omniscient person looking at us from a distance, able to hear our speech und read our every thought. But, he doesn't understand much German. So, he's forced us to speak und zink in English, mostly, vith ze exception of ze few vords he understands... like in a book, vhen a foreigner's vords are vritten in German, so us German readers can understand und don't get lost in masses of dialogue."
Hans stared at him in disbelief. "Do you realise how stupid zat is? Vho vould vant to vrite a book about us? Ve'd make one-dimensional, possibly two-dimensional characters at best. Und, any Dummkopf stupid enough to actually do so, vould no doubt vrite our dialogue in cheap, ridiculous, stereotypical und probably slightly offensive German accents. Replacing a 'w' vith a 'v', 'th' vith 'z' und so on."
"You're right, Herr Hauptmann... if you ever find a book like zat, give me ze author's address so I can run his house down vith ze Panzer."
"You have my vord, Johan."
"Vell, now zat's settled," Said Johan as he stepped fully through the oval. "Tell me how I look as a pony." He had guessed that as the two previous humans were now ponies having stepped through the glowing oval thing, he would become one as well.
Rolling his eyes, Hans replied, with more than a hint of sarcasm "Vonderful, Johan. Ze blonde of your mane really compliments your grey complexion."
"Excellent! Now I'm as pretty as my mother alvays vanted me to be!"
"I vorry about you, sometimes, Johan." Hans's gaze wondered over to Pinkie, who was still occupied with desperately jumping up at a tree. Hans's interest was drawn back to Johan, who had sniggered, and now had a smirk on his face. Rolling his eyes, Hans sighed. He knew what this meant.
"Out vith it, Johan."
"Herr Hauptmann?"
"Ja, Johan?"
There was a pause.
"Your mother alvays said I vas hung like a horse."
Author's note/s
Alright, a slightly shorter chapter this time, I didn't have a dream to work from.
Also, I'm heading away for two weeks this Saturday, so I won't be able to update the story. But have no fear! (If you were going to have some), for I shall take a pen and paper with me and write some stuff the old fashioned way. (With the pen and paper, just to clarify.) So hopefully there'll be of plenty new stuff when I get back.
Let me know your thoughts and opinions on this chapter, and any suggestions are more than welcome. I'll try to read some before I leave on Saturday, and take them into consideration as best I can.
