I ought to get something out of the way first—I don’t particularly enjoy Friendship is Magic. I watched a bit of the first season, didn’t really find anything too noteworthy. Quit at episode 7 because I didn’t want to waste any more time. So let that sink in while I tell you how absolutely fuckin’ bullshit this Five Score-type shit is. Except now it’s even worse since the Circle series got thrown in the mix for good measure. It didn’t deserve to be dragged into this.
Neither did I, if I’m at all honest. But not all of us get what we deserve.
I’ll go ahead and say that this isn’t even the beginning of it. No, I started in medias res just to grab your attention, but I’m wondering if I should have bothered since the first day was even worse. I woke up without any control over “my” body. At the time, though, it wasn’t really mine. Think of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, except the changes also affect your physical appearance.
Compound that with Mr. Hyde being Rainbow Dash, and I wasn’t having a good time. I didn’t know at the time, so rather than it being an in-the-moment concern, it manifested itself later in the form of a bombshell.
Look, while normally I would question a human with rainbow hair calling herself Rainbow Dash, the fact that I seem to be displaced in what was once my own body is enough to at least give credibility in a “this is not the craziest thing to happen to me today” sort of way that this is some form of the genuine article.
While I have to say my thank-yous to the String-Puller-Behind-the-Scenes for choosing best pony, it didn’t really help that I didn’t have control over “my” own body anymore, and worse I had to lose it to an FiM character. And no, other than the fact that I was just sitting and enjoying the view while Rainbow Dash fumbles around with human things, there was nothing to indicate it was a dream. Nothing else changed, and it’s been going on for longer than six minutes or however long dreams usually last.
It’s been going on for about a week.
Ought I bore you with extremely relevant details? Probably, actually, so sit tight. Or don’t, since these are words on a screen and not a lecture where you’re chained to a chair and forced to participate. I won’t subject you to that because I hate those like I hate communism.
...the reveal of which has caused untold problems I won’t get into just yet.
Rainbow Dash really didn’t know how to human at first. Eventually she got walking, but it took her far longer to realize a couple other things, like, say, clothing. All she had when she… well, we woke up was what I was sleeping in, which was a sweater just long enough to reach halfway to her knees. This was not enough to protect her from Murmansk weather.
Not that she didn’t try.
I know.
Because I felt it.
I have never wanted to be so cold in such places in my life and will never again, and I’m just lucky it was on the apartment’s balcony and not calf-deep in the snow.Even if she had them on, my snow boots would not have protected us from the intense cold. So I tried to communicate with Rainbow Dash that there are things we people things wrap around ourselves to make sure we don’t die of hypothermia in cold and remote places like where I live. Dice, but I rolled a pair of twos. I got her to back down and get some clothes on. Didn’t get to explain why, or even better have this just not happen at all.
I had initially imagined putting clothes on to try to explain it, but then I attempted something unprecedented: audiation. Which is a real word, LibreOffice, so just believe me and stop trying to correct it to audition.
“Hi, can you hear me?”, I thought. I suppose even if she did know what I meant by that, she wouldn’t hear me.
She didn’t.
So instead, I decided to ask again, but spoken. Or rather, I mentally mimed speaking.
“No.”
I wished I could have rolled my eyes at that, but being reduced to a consciousness the most I could try to do is creep her out.
“Well too bad because I’m going to do ghosty things.” Yeah… creep her out. Because there’s nothing creepier than complete and total apathy. Well, there could be, if this wasn’t the Ian MacLeod patented let’s get it over with so I can drink sort of apathy. “Like order you to put on some goddamned clothes before you go out into the Russian outdoors in early March.”
Yes. I will eternally resent her for that.
==========
Okay. What happened?
I was trying out some new spells, and one of them was a teleportation spell. Normally pretty simple, but this one was less taxing on my magic and could move multiple things or ponies at once.
Then it hit me, and the question changed from “what happened?” to “what will happen?”. Not only was I not on the right page, but even if I was, I also missed my aim on a monumental scale. The page was 697 (when I should have been on 591—I blame that on Spike’s bad handwriting), and the spell I had just used was a repair spell. I aimed for Rainbow Dash and nowhere in particular.
I had used a “fix this broken plate” spell on a living being, and I didn’t aim at an object 2.
This was bad news.
“SPIKE!”
Bad handwriting was better than none at all in times like this.
==========
“So that’s what happened?” I asked.
“Yep.” She looked around and put on a pair of boxers and bell bottoms I had lying on the floor. It was Sunday, so…
Thoughts kept nagging at me, ringing through my imagined head about how I would explain this to my boss. Sick days would only get me so far.
As far as the rest of Sunday went, it went okay once Rainbow Dash got used to a human body. She made food for herself, learned about our Earth, and became a metalhead in about eight hours. I have never heard so much of Dokken or Megadeth in one span of time, and that’s including the days I’ve listened to Breakin’ the Chains on shuffled repeat, and shy of myself being brought to Equestria, it won’t be the last at all.
She went to sleep and I woke up in control of my own body. I was a quadruped. A gryphon based on the fact I have claws. So while I’m face down because I have no idea how to walk on four legs, I’ll just summarize Monday: Similarly to Sunday, with the roles reversed. As it turns out, it’s a bit like crawling on all fours, really. With control over my own actions, and once I was no longer tripping over shadows that protruded out of the ground enough, I tried to get revenge on Rainbow Dash by going outside with even less clothes on. It didn’t really do anything, though, since the fur kept us warmer than we were as a human.
I explained to her how to communicate with me as a mind, and we had a little bit of a talk. More of an argument.
In the meantime, I had opened up Pluma and wrote down the events of the last two days, in as much detail as I could think of.
Including the time I punched myself in the face to see how much pain felt by the host would be felt by the guest.
The answer, seemingly, is all of it.
With nothing better to do—after verifying my voice hadn’t changed enough to be easily heard over the phone, I called in sick for the week—I started Rhythmbox and rocked out to as much Judas Priest starting with Sad Wings I could fit in one day.
One advantage to gryphon biology is omnivorous biology. Or at the very least pescetarian. All being said I didn’t get any pains by eating beef, so all seems fine. If I had been a pony I just might have razed a couple cities.
Another is that I didn’t have to be humanoid to have hands, so I could still shred or slap G strings to my heart’s content. Aside from several things that I was taught not to talk about doing in polite company, one of which is liking Stryper, that was all I could do for the week. Or, presumably, as long as I’m a gryphon. Rainbow Dash can go out and get groceries, but I’m grounded to my apartment until I got back to Norway.
Knowing I was likely months away from leaving Earth, possibly for good, I started learning as much of the music I like as I could. Both guitar, bass, and drum parts. Disco, rock and roll, and heavy metal, it didn’t matter. Apart from dinner that was how I spent that evening.
I slept.
==========
Tuesday went well. We went to get groceries, after which I ended up showing Friendship is Magic to Rainbow to see how accurate it was. Other than a few inconsistencies, it checked out.
It had to happen at some point, so I just tried to ignore all sensory input while we took a shower. It didn’t quite work. However, at least I could forget all about it once I had a separate body, if not my own back. Still, I asked her to at least look away, which she thankfully did when she could, after an explanation of why exactly American humans found nudity and personal hygiene as, well, personal of a deal as we did. Yes, Norwegians had a different understanding of this situation, but I didn’t decide where I spent the first 31 years of my life and I wouldn’t have made a different choice if I could.
It was, as it happened, not actually a bad shower. The fact I could feel everything she could made it both relaxing and incredibly odd and awkward, for identical reasons. I didn’t want to feel how the water felt on her body at all, to be honest, I just wasn’t interested. Which is kinda funny since I know of a couple thousand people who would absolutely love to take this situation I’m in.
It was during Wednesday that I wish ghosts or whatever I was could sleep, or that gryphon me could sleep without giving control over to Rainbow. Not only would it have been nice to sleep through the shower session, nothing at all of note happened that day. I was pretty much forced to stay awake for that long, with nothing of anything resembling note happening. I suppose this is what living in Wisconsin is like. More music, some video games, some exercise. It was awful. My job was great, I would rather be doing that than this, and I probably could if I found some way to get my body to go anthro so I could get some clothes on.
I could imagine the reaction on Monday morning. “Tycho, why are you a gryphon and also not wearing clothes? It’s rather unprofessional.”. Tuesday; “Tycho, why are you a female with rainbow hair? It’s rather unprofessional.”. The cycle repeating until it just became a fact of life that I was either a nude gryphon or a rainbow headed chick.
It wasn’t all bad, not only did I get to take control every other day, but gryphons are also pretty cool. Rainbow Dash would even be pretty cool if I didn’t have to watch every time she used my bathroom.
Having opened LibreOffice to write all this down, I raise my drink in defiance of a couple months of this.
Time Travel Gets Involved
«Hallo? Cook familie, Michael snakker.»
Dad’s voice rang out like a beacon of light in the darkness that was this situation. They went back to Oslo a bit after I got my first stable job, having finished up their mission of raising kids in the US, the only reason that they went in the first place.
«Pappa, jeg kunne miste telefonen tilkobling ganske snart.» I hadn’t actually spoken to my parents in two or three years, which means I got incredibly rusty, but that should mean “I’m about to lose phone service”. Seemed to get the idea across, though.
“Tycho?” Dad’s thick accent didn’t help the frankly awful phone audio quality. “What for?”
I didn’t explain. Instead, I just reassured him everything was fine, and that I’d call back when I got phone service again.
Essentially giving whatever god exists carte blanche to make sure I never get to call him again. I’ve heard stories that started this exact way where the protagonist never got to see their families again. I’m really just glad I got to say goodbye, since many don’t.
We caught up on the last two years, talked a little more, and hung up with a simple «Ha’ en god dag». Formal, but it worked.
It occurred to me as I was stretching a wing and playing with my claws that I hadn’t heard Rainbow today. “Ah well,” I figured, “she’ll show up when she does.” Until she did, I fiddled around with the Dot, practicing the solo from Electric Eye. Eventually I got it in one take, but it didn’t come easily.
Right?
Oh, there she is. I already feel like I’ve been married to her for twenty years. “Didn’t hear you,” I said as I failed to hit an E minor. Frustrated, I… quickly but gently set the Dot down, and went to make a sandwich. “Repeat yourself,” I clarified after Rainbow said nothing.
Tuna. Havarti. Tomato. Rainbow Dash rattling off a question in my ear, although I didn’t hear “right” this time. “Yes, that was another language. No, I won’t teach you it unless there’s a good reason for it. Hell, I’d have to learn it again myself. Although having said that it’ll probably come up.”
I eyed up the .308 rifle in the corner longingly. It wasn’t nearly as good as it was in the US in part due to the fact I had to leave behind my 20 round magazines for some 10 round magazines. Any other day to relieve stress I’d accumulated through the week, I’d go out to the shooting range and fire off a couple of shots, maybe getting one or two dirty stares from old people who remember M14s (in my case the Springfield-branded clone) as “the gun the people we don’t like use”, but generally not attracting any attention.
I can’t do that right now, at least I don’t think. There’s a common joke about how Russians are completely insane… but I think gryphons just showing up to shoot at some paper with one of the quintessential American guns would attract some attention. Wasn’t about to test my luck, in any case.
Boring. That’s how anyone could describe the day I was having. Other than that solo, I can’t say I did anything of note other than cycling the action of my trusty “old” (although, really, it was built in 1990) M14 134 times while waiting for things to happen.
Things eventually happened.
==========
It should have been simple (if strenuous and incredibly long of a process) to find and return Rainbow Dash.
That wasn’t the case.
Instead, I ended up getting a weak positive signal from one particular place but it would disappear not long after I find it. In its place was a weak negative that still contrasted from the strong negative of the area. It would seem like that was what I was looking for, but that negative that the signal would devolve into made me second guess.
So I took it to Celestia. After all, who better at magic than Literally God™? After reassurance and dismissal, I went to sleep. I just wanted to get her back, and pretty obviously Celestia did too.
==========
You get two days, pack up and grab onto your stuff because you’re going on a ride.
Not the same voice. Not Rainbow. This was a different person. Given the fact they’re in my head too I have no reason not to believe them. Typically I’d especially not believe them if they were just in my head, but after this last two weeks, I’ve learned to trust my head on things because things are weird enough that I should just stop thinking about it these days, that or that I’m completely detached from reality by now.
Either way I just had to roll with it.
While I was still awake I threw together a backpack with just necessary stuff. .308—with the scope I never use thrown in just in case, plenty of rounds, flask, flashlight, three small notebooks and five pencils, folding pocketknife, handgun that legally I’m definitely not supposed to have, rounds for that, aspirin, camping stove, three boxes of strike-on-box matches, rope, and any little bits of metal I could find. Anything I’ve forgotten I can fit in there the morning of the last day.
Got nagged with questions from Rainbow. Mainly because I forgot to tell her what a gun is.
What’s that big thing, and what’re you bringing it for?
Do those little things go in there?
Why bring kopecks? Equestria doesn’t use roubles.
And on and on the procession of question went.
Called it a day after that. God did this make me appreciate sleep, even if I couldn’t do it. Absence, after all, makes the heart grow fonder.
Except for Rainbow. I still resent her but her being me half the time means I have to be nice to her just so she does things like go to the store.
Rainbow woke up and stayed in to watch the show a bit more. I can’t say I blamed her, but I learned to just shut myself off during this since it can get a bit tedious after the first hour.
Two days later, it was time. Rainbow was brought up to speed on everything she needed to know about, and I was touching everything I wanted to take with me.
==========
“Last time I heard of something like this happening was… 858 or so, right?” Twilight asked to nobody in particular, though towards Celestia. “How is it that suddenly all these things we’ve been around for, most of which haven’t happened for centuries, all happened at nearly the same time?”
Celestia, being the patient and caring person she is, paid just enough attention for the idea of the year 858 to stick in her mind. She brought over Rainbow and the gryphon, separating them in the process.
So why weren’t they there?
After not even a second, she projected a view of 858. They were there, unconscious.
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” Twilight asked, smacking herself.
Celestia blinked.
“...yes. I’ll try to get her back but it won’t be as easy when she moves around all the time. I’d just tell her or the man she’s with to stand still but it’s spotty when that works when time travel is involved.”
“Well, she’s unconscious now, can’t you do it?”
Shut eyes, not a good thing with that expression. “It takes two d—”
All of a sudden, the castle doors flew open. “We’ve got troops marching up to Appleloosa!”
Troops? She didn’t have any enemies. And if someone did take Appleloosa, that would be, to say the least, bad. Since this was a guard, she asked for more information.
“As far as we can tell, ma’am, our Southern neighbors built up courage after the bloody revolution, and the new regime’s calling for expansion. They should have listened to me. I said it wouldn’t even be a month.”
Southern neighbors? The only things southern to Appleloosa are Arimaspi's Territory and the Badlands. “Make it worse for me,” she asked, “I don’t have enough things on my plate with these recent developments.”
“Si—er, ma’am,” came calling the much younger stallion behind him, “we’re pretty sure the new leader has some pretty good magic. Hoofdini has nothing on him. As in, you’d better assemble the rest of the Elements right here, yesterday. Plus the footsoldiers are issued spears and thirties, much more reliable than what we’ve got.”
Thirties? She’d have to make a note to ask him as soon as she could. She looked at Twilight, who didn’t have any answers for her either.
She had more than enough things on her plate.
She didn’t need Rainbow Dash to move. In fact, the opposite would have been very nice right now. This was going to be the worst year of the decade, probably.
1020: the year we fucked up.
==========
When I came to, I noticed I was still on top of my stuff. Cool. Even cooler (bad shippers!) was what I saw in the distance. Rainbow Dash lay in a clearing just yards away from me, bleeding but nothing that won’t heal up with a bandage, which I grabbed out of my stuff and wrapped around her injuries. I’m an asshole, not a bad person.
Satisfied that she’s not going to bleed to death, I left the backpack with her and wrote “Went to explore, will be back soon. Use the pocketknife if you have to, I highly doubt you can use the handgun.” in a notebook that I left in the bag. With that explanation done and over with, I took the M14, a small pouch, and a fresh notebook and a pencil and headed off into the wilderness.
Not much but jungle. On the way I took note of how everything looked just about the same as it did back home, other than the fact everything’s a different species. Nothing looked like a cartoon, which made sense since it wasn’t a cartoon. At the very least it was hallucinations, and those have no restrictions based on reality.
I looked the gun in my hands over once more. 10-plus-one rounds and another magazine on my person, with a beautifully finished stock with reds that popped out and contrasted with the black handguard. One of the best investments I had ever made.
“Nothing out approx. one mile west.”
With that I turned south, taking just a couple of steps before I heard something between a blood-curdling scream, a growl, and an earthquake, before the mass that made the sound charged toward me full speed. The beast was a hulking mass of scales and exposed flesh, in some ways blue and in some ways peach. Scarcely an eye on the thing, the whole front end seemed to be a mouth. Still, I readied, aimed, and fired. Five rounds of supersonic .308 tore up my ears but more importantly tore up the beast’s head, at least what I assumed to be its head, even worse. It didn’t get back up, that’s for certain.
I knew I should have felt something, other than the fear I felt before filling the beast’s head with steel. Maybe guilt, maybe regret, but ultimately neither came.
“Quick note: Towards the south be monsters!”
I got a couple more paces at a sprint before I felt that sound once again, from another beast that was less dead. At that point, I knew precisely what to do to my imaginary pants.
==========
Rainbow woke up just before the second round of shooting happened. The six rounds cracked in the air from seemingly lightyears away but at the same time just right next to her, they were so loud.
Coming up near her was a stray hyena that figured she would be an easy pick given her injury. Though sluggish, she managed to get to her hooves and grab the knife in her mouth, waiting for it to make its move. Deciding she would be a tough meal, it walked away, keeping eyes on her as long as it could. She advanced suddenly to startle it and make it go away faster.
It complied, and not a moment to soon, as moments later she felt all the energy taken out of her.
