Hello, fellow travelers, and welcome back to our annual slot! Today, we go to the Northeast of the United States, but not where you think we are going!
“I bet it’s Virginia again! All your stories seem to happen there!”
“Well, the one with me in it doesn’t occur in Virginia.”
“Or mine, for that matter!”
“Get your pony on!”
Honestly, with so many MLP characters in my ears, I will...
No, this one does NOT take place in Virginia. As we have already visited the places of note in Virginia. Though, mind, we could always give Jamestown or Colonial Williamsburg a try...
“Seriously? I SWEAR one of those isn’t in Virginia.”
Diamond? Do you not use Google?
“Yeah! You’re worse than my sister when it comes to computers, and that’s saying something!”
“Why you-!”
Now then ladies, let’s not have a fight. Our tale will NOT take place in either of those places, as they are both in Virginia, and that state is right out.
“Like the number five!”
“Sorry, what?”
“Just making a Monty Python reference, dear.”
Anyway...this story occurs in North Carolina, a state known for many things, such as the first English colony in North America, the Roanoke Island Colony.
“But you just said we weren’t going to-”
DIAMOND TIARA, EITHER SHUT UP OR GET OUT!
Yes indeed, we are off to Roanoke Island, and the town of Manteo. And we start our adventure in the home of an individual we ought to know very well by this point.
Yes, you guessed it fellow readers, we are now inside the home of Jimmy Hook. And what was Jimmy Hook doing on this most fine and glorious of mornings in North America.
Well, I’ll tell you. He was currently doing nothing.
Exactly, totally, absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.
Why, there is so much to say about the absolutely nothing that he was doing it could easily fill a page. But I won’t bore you with such details, but instead engage a time skip to the most interesting bit of the story.
There was a loud clanging outside the house, which awoke him with a jolt. “What was that?” he cried. He looked out of his windows to see what had caused the noise-only to see that his mailman (not called Pat, and by logical extension lacking a black and white cat) had put something in the mailbox, and was now walking away.
Jimmy, as is reasonable in these cases, went outdoors into the sunshine, and over to the mailbox. And then he opened it! Now having opened it, he looked inside, and took out what looked like a flyer.
“Really?” he said. “Junkmail? I swear I told the USPS to stop sending me junk!”
He unfolded it, and read it. The flyer said;
A FIERY CONTEST FOR THE BRAVE OF HEART!
JOURNEY DOWN TO MANTEO TOWN CENTER ON 4TH FEBRUARY FOR A CONTEST IN EATING CHILLIS!
WHOEVER CAN EAT THE HOTTEST PEPPERS WITHOUT USING WATER WILL WIN A PRIZE!
SO, ‘WATER’ YOU WAITING FOR? GET ON DOWN AND LET THE FLAMES ROAR!
Jimmy checked his watch. “That’s today!” he cried. “I’d better get down there!” And so, without a second thought, he donned his coat, and set off into the cold and off to the center of town.
There were many people, each of whom sought to eat the hottest pepper in the entire world. And so, they went away, the temperatures gradually rising up and up. As the contest went onwards, more and more people dropped out because they couldn't stand the heat.
And so, Jimmy and only one other person was left. Even though his mouth felt like the interior of a blast furnace, Jimmy knew he had only one left.
The dreaded Fluff-
I mean, the dreaded Cayenne Pepper!
But he wasted no time in eating it. This he regretted almost immediately.
It felt as if somebody had detonated a thousand nuclear bombs on his tongue, which is an incredibly unpleasant experience, as anyone who has eaten a pepper or had nuclear bombs exploded on their tongues can tell you. A great scream let forth from his throat, and he vanished toward a nearby bathroom.
The others looked over. “Is he OK?” asked one.
“Dude, that’s just Jimmy,” said the other. “Weird stuff happens around him all the time. I recall only last week, he changed into some sort of horse wearing a strange dress.”
Another person still shook his head. “Dude, which of those peppers did you eat, because if they gave you hallucinations like that, I wanna try one!”
Jimmy arrived in the bathroom, and glanced in the mirror as he switched on the tap. He then looked again.
His hair had changed colour, from brown to several shades of red. Not only that, portions of it were pointing downwards at right angles to his face. As he looked closer in even more confusion, his eyes suddenly changed colour, from blue to red.
“What?” he said. “Again? It’s only been a weAARGH!”
The heat suddenly flared up again, focused instead in his face as his nose and mouth started growing out of his face, followed by them merging into a muzzle, which destroyed his glasses in the process. Fragments of glass and metal landed on the floor, next to his feet.
As he looked on, his arms suddenly locked in front of him, and his fingers and thumbs shrank back into his hands, which then morphed into stumps, rather like...hooves?
His back cracked and his hips reformed as he was forced onto all fours, followed by his chest expanding to more closely resemble a pony. This tore his shirt and coat open, which fell onto the floor alongside the rapidly accumulating pile of detritus and destroyed clothing.
Then came the worst part for him. “Oh no,” he whimpered, as his manhood suddenly began to tingle, then shrank back into his (or should I say, by this point, her) body, followed by a pair of lumps forming toward her butt.
Her legs shrank in length as her toes shrank into her feet, which likewise shifted into hooves. Jimmy shook what remained of her pants and shoes off, as her socks were long gone, which was fortuitous as just at that moment, a tail the same colour as her hair exploded from her backside, just above her mare bits. Finally, what looked like a tattoo-sorry, a Cutie Mark (or Cutiemark, depending on what era of the fandom you come from) appeared on both flanks. This was followed by fur of the colour white growing all over her body.
But it wasn’t over, as Jimmy suddenly felt a dull ache under her skull. A dull ache that surged into raging agony as a horn forced its way out of her skull and grew a few inches before stopping.
Jimmy looked back at this symbol, which resembled a pair of peppers. It was then she realised that eating the pepper had set the transformation off.
“Was that what they meant when they referred to the prize?” she asked. But that could wait for later. Right now she had to figure out how on Earth to get home without being seen, and more importantly get changed back in time for next week.
Author's Note
5 Stories baby! :D 
