Neil Armstrong’s Moonwalker.
Original Trotcon prompt: Rainbow Dash/Featherweight.
Location: The Moon.
The Moon. October 9, 1964.
“One small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind”
Last name Armstrong, first name Neil, destroyer of Thots and canned ravioli, stepped off the lunar lander with his right foot. The stairs creaked under the combined weight of his solid frame and spacesuit.
Under his left boot, he heard a sound that didn’t sound like it came from anything related to what mankind had at least previously considered particularly lunar-like.
In fact, it sounded more like a yelp. A ululation really.
Never mind that fact that the sound wasn’t supposed to exist in an airless environment. There hadn’t ever been sign of any sort of intelligent life, let alone life that could speak, in the vacuum of space, no less. So the thought of something speaking and being understood on the moon was unthinkable.
“What the hay was that for?”
Lifting his boot, he found a rainbow maned pony, about the size of a housecat, or perhaps a particularly small and therefore yappy dog, currently flinching away from his extended leg.
Neil blinked. Not because this was the first thing of color he had seen in his whole life—the nineteen sixties were entirely in black and white, didn’t you know?-- but rather that he just remembered that he forgot to turn off his stove off before liftoff, 250,000 miles away back on earth. His gas bill was going to be astronomical.
“Hello, diminutive equine” He said, But what came out of his visor was more of a muffled nothingness---they were in space after all.
But somehow, the technicolor horse managed to understand him in a feat of what must have been clairvoyance--as thinking deeper into the situation beyond the high-strangeness he was going through at the moment was going to take about a decade off of his life, or at least, give him an ulcer in five years at best.
“I’m a pony. I don’t even know what ‘Diminutive’ even means.”
“Uh” came the astronaut’s reply. He was ever so eloquent. Good job, Neil.
“Anyway, could you park your carriage somewhere else? It’s in the way of the Passage.
Neil didn’t quite understand exactly how he could hear the capitalization on the world “Passage”, but he chalked it up to the same cosmic force that allowed him to talk to rainbow colored ponies in the first place.
He stepped a few paces to the right. Sure enough, there was another one of these winged horses, this one with a more regular colorization. It looked more like his niece's pony—He liked this one a bit more already.
He also seemed to be trapped under the steel legs of the lander, trembling under the heat shield like a frightened chihuahua.
Over the intercom, he heard the voice of Aldrin, first name Buzz, consumer of alcohol.
“Gotchu fam.”
There was an all-encompassing beeping noise, and the entirety of the lunar lander started moving to the place of moonland behind it.
It was reversing… That was also a new development. NASA hadn’t told him about that feature either.
“Thanks mister.” The gangly pony squeaked out. He had a camera around his neck, one of those large, Kodak instant cameras. At least there was something on this god forsaken rock that he was used to. He grounded himself in the memory of home through the lens of that camera, thought about the days that he would go out with his dog and just take pictures of the passersby.
Armstrong was jolted out of his reverie by the interjection of the first voice he heard on the moon. Ms...or mister for that rather, he didn’t honestly know, rainbow horse.
“Hey moon man, get out of the way before my groceries spoil, let me into the ‘passage.’
Now he heard the sound of single quotes in her voice. Strange.
“You and your friend can come with us if you want, I’m making quesadillas” The rainbow pony led the way, with the lanky one following demurely behind.
There was a large trapdoor, partially covered by the dust left behind from their admittedly not-so-smooth landing of the lunar module—good job Buzz...you jerk. --and Neil couldn’t fathom how they didn’t notice how they hadn’t seen the passageway before they landed. It was quite conspicuous.
He made his way inside, it was surprisingly roomy for a tunnel supposedly made for a people of less mass than his daughter’s cat, but somehow they managed. Inside...Neil couldn’t even begin to describe it.
“Holy shit” he heard behind him, buzz must have followed him in when he wasn’t paying attention. That sneaky bastard somehow had the conspicuousness of a church mouse, with the alcoholism of the irishman’s ex-wife.
Apparently the interior of the moon was hollow, if what he was seeing was anything to go by. There was an expanse of what looked like the sky above him.
The “Sky” if he could even call it that, was filled with more of the winged creatures, ponies of all shapes and sized filled the air and walked the streets.
The streets.
Oh god, there was an entire civilization of sentient life, living right under...well over their noses, but under the moon, apparently.
So he did what any logical, hot blooded American would do in this sort of circumstance, he fainted.
Opening his eyes, Neigh’l Hoofstrong groaned with the pain of the light making it into his eyes. It felt like a herd of buffalo were stampeding through his brain, with the combination of the Running of the leaves going on a few blocks over in his prefrontal cortex.
"Hey buddy, you alright?"
He looked over to his side, where his friend Buzzard Avocet, Bachelor Extrordinaire, and consumer of alcohol, was smiling brightly.
The smile was all too bright, according to Hoofstrong’s hangover, and Buzzard patted him on the cheek, his talons feeling like sandpaper on Hoofstrong's oversensitive skin.
“This is why you never try to outdrink a Gryphon. Especially with moonshine.”
