All the trucks unload beyond the gopher holes
There's a world going on underground
Author's Note
Much as that old print ad for Messiah used to ask:
"What on Earth possessed you?"
There's a world going on underground
Twilight was out and about, moving from one location to another to do something new in the new location. The details were unimportant and she was happy. The sun was shining. All was well in the world.
She rounded a corner and went around a hedge.
And there stood Owen Jones, local human.
Or, rather, there was Owen Jones, because while he would normally be standing tall above all else around him, he was today instead up to his waist in the ground. This was odd. Twilight blinked at it but it did not change. He stayed there, waist-deep, and it remained odd.
So odd in fact that it took Twilight a moment and a few steps closer to realise that Rainbow was sitting next to him, plainly finding the whole situation pretty damn funny, at least going by the enormous smirk on her face. Owen seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing as well and was midway through laughing about something when he noticed Twilight approaching.
“Morning, Twilight!” He called out. “I would wave but my arms are stuck, you see? I’ll give you a ‘good morning’ wiggle.”
He wiggled. How effectively this conveyed good morning was open to debate.
Gawping, Twilight approached closer, still waiting for the other horseshoe to drop. No punchlines were delivered however and things appeared to all intents and purposes to be entirely sincere. He was in a hole in the ground, Rainbow was sitting next to him and that was just it.
“What happened?” Twilight asked.
Given the circumstances it seemed the best thing to open with.
“He fell in a hole,” Rainbow said, pointing to Owen who nodded.
“I was asking Owen,” Twilight said, coming very close to saying it through gritted teeth.
“Oh, I fell in a hole,” Owen said.
Twilight did actually grit her teeth then, grumbling briefly into a hoof and feeling that she was dealing with those being obtuse by choice and those being obtuse without realising it.
“Okay, how did that happen?” She asked.
Owen looked around the hole he was in, as if this might help him in some way, he then looked back to Twilight and said:
“Well I was just walking along, you see, when the ground just gave way! Just like that! Right beneath my feet. And down I go. Funny old world, isn’t it?”
Given that Twilight lived in Ponyville this wasn’t something she could really dispute, but still - falling into holes that opened up out of nowhere wasn’t something that happened every day, and certainly shouldn’t have been happening for no reason. Monster attacks sure, maybe. But holes? That was something else entirely.
There were other immediate concerns, however.
“Are you hurt?” Twilight asked.
“Hurt? Oh no, I’m fine as anything, me. Maybe a scrape or two but nothing more. Just very stuck,” Owen said, cheerfully enough, trying and failing to dislodge an arm. Twilight frowned.
“You can’t move at all?”
“I can shimmy but that seems to be the extent of it! Stuck fast, as they say.”
He gave a brief demonstration of his shimmying, which was broadly similar to his wiggling which Twilight had seen already. It was underwhelming and, indeed, got him absolutely nowhere.”
“All a bit strange, isn’t it? Not entirely sure how I’ve got stuck the way I have, truly speaking. It doesn’t make much sense, does it? Still, these things happen. Or at least they do here. I think this whole place has a bit of an odd sense of humour, if you ask me. Back home I’d just have turned an ankle, here I get stuck!”
He laughed again, and Twilight reflected that it was probably just as well he could see the funny side. She circled around him, just to try and get a better handle on things, but this didn’t tell her much. The hole he’d fallen into was a snug fit. A perfect fit, in fact. Like it had been made for him.
She shook her head. No, probably not. Probably more to do with dirt having filled in the gaps. That was probably it. Ridiculous otherwise.
“And you’ve been stuck like this for how long?” Twilight asked, circling all the way back round to the front again as Owen pondered the question. He tried to check his watch but, well, he couldn’t.
“Not long, not long. Was just out for my morning walk when it happened, so not long. Rainbow here has been keeping me company, she has. And keeping me fed, too!” He said, nodding to Rainbow who looked pleased as anything. Twilight cocked her head, raised an eyebrow.
“Fed?” She asked.
Rainbow held up a bag of nuts she just-so happened to have, gave the bag a shake and then expertly - somehow - managed to pop a nut right out of the bag and catch out of midair before Twilight even realised what she was doing. That was the sort of thing that required an embarrassing level of practise at home, Twilight reckoned, but she wasn’t going to mention that.
“Ooh, nice one! We’ve made rather a fine game of it, actually. Rainbow tosses a nut and I see if I can catch it in my mouth, like she did herself just there. Now either I’m not quite as good or else her aim isn’t up to the same standards as her flying,” Owen said, catching a glare from Rainbow for his troubles.
“Hey!” She protested.
“I’m just saying, it can’t all be my fault, can it? Try me,” he said, opening wide.
Rainbow gamely tossed off a nut and managed to hit Owen square between the eyes, whereupon it bounced off into the grass leaving a guffawing Rainbow and a thoroughly unimpressed Owen, who closed his mouth with theatrical deliberation.
There was missing, and then there was that.
“I think you’re doing that on purpose, you know,” Owen said while Rainbow wiped away a tear of mirth and struggled not to roll her eyes.
“Me? Nooooo!”
“So Rainbow has just been...tossing nuts into your mouth?” Twilight asked, bringing Owen’s attention back to her.
“Yes,” he said. He then frowned. “In retrospect that game sounds rather filthy, actually. Oh well.”
He shrugged, which was about all he could do at that moment.
Twilight was building a very odd piture of the sequence of events in her head.
“For the whole morning?” She asked. Own nodded.
“Well, since she found me, yes.”
“Why didn’t you go get help?” Twilight asked, addressing Rainbow.
“He didn’t ask me to,” Rainbow said, not-at-all defensively. Twilight’s mild annoyance slid back over to Owen, still smiling cheerfully in his hole in the ground.
“Why didn’t you ask her to go get help?” She asked.
“Oh, I didn’t want to cause a fuss! It’s alright, it’s quite alright. I’m sure it’ll resolve itself sooner or later. I’ve been stuck in worse places!” He said. Twilight blinked at him.
“You have?” She asked, curious.
“Port Talbot,” Owen said, simply, in tones that made Twilight not particularly want to go into details on what this actually meant. Her curiosity receded, and the matter at hoof came back to the fore.
“I’ll get you out of there,” she said, determined.
“Really it’s no bother Twilight, I’m sure you’re busy. I’ll find my way out eventually,” Owen said before giving shimmying another go, with much the same results as last time. Which is to say none. Twilight looked down at him, head cocked.
There was a certain novelty in being able to see the top of his head for once, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on that.
“You’re stuck in a hole, Owen, I can’t not help you,” Twilight said.
“Ooh, double negative, I like that.”
An odd thing to like, but not the oddest thing happening at that moment. Owen continued:
“Going to hoist me out with magic, are you?”
Twilight frowned.
“Magic doesn’t work on you, remember?” She asked.
“It doesn’t? Oh right, yes! Sorry, I do lose track sometimes! Hum, that does rather put a kink in things, doesn’t it? Hmm.”
Owen was plainly giving the issue some thought, though it was difficult to look properly thoughtful while stuck in a hole in the ground. He couldn’t even stroke his chin.
“You could haul him out by his clothes. Magic’ll work on those, right?” Rainbow proposed out of nowhere, catching Twilight off-guard. She’d been too busy just staring at Owen, still marvelling at how this was a thing she was having to deal with today.
“That doesn’t sound like the best idea…” Twilight said after giving the idea a moment of consideration.
“Well, couldn’t hurt, could it?” Owen piped up. Literally up, given how close to (and in) the ground he was. He rather liked the sound of Rainbow’s idea, personally. It sounded like a goer to him. His support buoyed Rainbow, who puffed up her chest.
“Yeah Twilight! Couldn’t hurt!” She said.
“Are you going to help?” Twilight asked her, cooly.
“I’ll tell you if you do it wrong. And share my nuts,” Rainbow said, equally cooly
She then tossed another nut at Owen, bouncing it off the top of his head. Owen chuckled.
“You are doing that on purpose. Somehow I’m more impressed! Aim on that girl, eh?”
He was an odd boy, Twilight decided, but an odd boy in bother and in need of help.
“Alright,” she said in order to get Owen’s attention back, which worked. “I’ll try the clothes thing. Let’s see…”
This did require a certain level of concentration. Her horn flared to life and she reached out and down through the sod and soil, tentatively fumbling for his clothing - more difficult than one would think, given he was half buried. She did manage it however, taking a firm-ish grip on Owen’s garments from top to bottom, belt and socks included, and then giving an experimental upward tug.
“Ooh, felt that,” Owen said.
A promising development. Twilight, confidence boosted, put a little more welly into it, going for a proper lift just for the satisfaction of seeing Owen pop forth from the ground like a cork from a bottle.
There came a rip as the clothing promptly gave way.
Inexplicably - blame magic - they came off perfectly Owen-shaped and hung suspended in the air a moment or two before Twilight turned bright red and promptly dropped them to the ground in a fluttering, ragged, utterly ruined heap.
“Owen! I’m so s-sorry!” She stammered, unsure of where to look or what to do and settling on straight up whilst blushing so deeply it was a wonder she managed to remain conscious with all her blood rushing to her face.
“Oh it’s alright, accidents happen, don’t they?” Owen said.
Rainbow, meanwhile, was rolling around howling with mirth, but that was to be expected. The bag of nuts was spilled, forgotten, forlorn. A victim of slapstick comedy and the inherent funniness of nude men in holes.
“What - heh heh - what’s your next idea, Twilight?” Rainbow asked, upside-down and between sniggers. Twilight glared.
“That was your idea!”
“My idea was to get him out the hole, not - heh - not - heheh - “
Rainbow could not finish the sentence without dissolving into further snickering, which then became further outright laughter as she continued to roll around and make a dusty mess of herself and everything around her. Owen watched this all with beatific detachment. Odd boy indeed. Twilight sighed, wrote Rainbow off, and turned back to Owen.
“Maybe I should get a spade…” she ruminated,
“How about that big red lad? I heard he pulled a house one time! Get him a rope, I’m sure that’ll sort it right out. We’ll have it done and dusted in no time!” Owen said.
“Big Mac?” Twilight asked and Owen shrugged - sounded about right to him.
“That’s the one!”
Twilight wracked her brains trying to come up with reasons why this might not be a good idea, but realised she didn’t have any alternatives available and, well, it seemed as good an idea as any, all told. Certainly, better than sitting around doing nothing.
“Worth a shot, somepony’ll have to go and-”
‘-get Big Mac’ would have been the end of that sentence, but Rainbow cut in before that part.
“I can go! I can go!” She said, zipping off before anyone could say otherwise, flying more-or-less straight but with occasional veering bobs and dips as the lingering laughter caught up with her. In a few seconds though she was out of sight, leaving just Owen and Twilight to wait in awkward silence.
“So,” Owen said, eventually. “Lovely weather we’re having.”
This about set the tone for the small talk between the two of them. Twilight didn’t really know what was the expected thing to say to someone stuck in a hole, so the weather it was. Only so many ways you could say it had been sunny lately, though, and by the time Rainbow returned with Big Mac (and Applejack too because sure why not) the two of them were getting dangerously close to talking about something else.
“Yep, he’s in a hole alright,” said Applejack, stating the obvious. She stated it because, up until she’d seen it herself, she had refused to believe it. Without looking she flicked a bit to Rainbow Dash, who caught it also without looking. Class acts all the way.
“Did you bring a rope, Big Mac?” Twilight asked, doing her best to stay on-topic. Big Mac dropped a loop of rope in front of him.
“Yup,” he said.
“Right, well, what I think we should do is…”
Twilight’s vague outline of how she thought things should go then followed, and all agreed it sounded perfectly acceptable.
With a certain level of jolly cooperation between all ponies present both of Owen’s arms were worked free which - owing to the speed that the dirt flowed in to fill the void - did not do much to move him on its own but which did allow him to firmly grip the rope that had then been tied around his waist.
“I have a good feeling about this,” Owen said, holding onto the rope as Big Mac got set to start heaving. Everyone else stood safely back, Rainbow still stifling titters, Applejack smirking and Twilight wondering at what point her day had gone sideways.
“Slow and steady now,” Applejack called out.
“Yup,” Big Mac said, sighing inwardly. He knew how to pull things, damnit. Big Mac then glanced to Owen, wordlessly asking if he was ready. Owen gave a thumbs up, heaving began.
Slow and steady indeed it was, the human not immediately being torn in half and instead shifting by inches, holding onto the rope and looking determined as Big Mac took one careful forward step after the other, rope taut. Further and further out Owen slid, more and more of him emerging from the ground until some part of him - likely his fine, manly, child-bearing hips - seemed to catch, whereupon some strain began.
All those watching held their breath.
There was an audible ‘pop’ as Owen came free and sailed gloriously through the air, flapping gaily the whole while, albeit tilted and flapping in such a way that - were there a hypothetical point situated to view the scene - it only would have caught the back of him, while all those ponies watching were instead treated to the front. For comedic effect.
The laws of the land as regards to these things were inviolate.
“You don’t see that every day,” Rainbow said as she followed Owen’s arc. Applejack tipped her hat back and let out a whistle, then adding:
“Ya really don’t.”
“Why is this happening…” Twilight mumbled to herself, rubbing her temples.
For his part, Owen landed in a conveniently placed hedge which puffed up a dozen or so leaves on impact and a few seconds later he jumped up behind it. The hedge was perfectly sized so that he could converse with the locals without it being indecent. Again, the laws of the land were inviolate - comedy be done.
“Wonderful! Freedom! Cheers for that one!”
He gave Big Mac another thumbs up, this one bigger and heartier, alongside a thoroughly thankful grin. Big Mac acknowledged this with the slightest dip of his head.
The hedge behind which Owen was standing then rustled slightly as the wind disturbed it. Owen’s eyes widened a little, then he smiled.
“Ah, that’s a breeze, that is. Very refreshing,” he said.
“I’m going home,” Twilight said, going home. That was enough excitement for one day.
Later, it transpired that the whole thing had been the result of rabbits performing warren-expansion without having consulted the proper authorities first and doing so without due care and attention. They got a proper talking to about this, and Owen was given a carrot by them as a way of saying sorry for the whole incident.
As the carrot was tied to a brick and thrown through his window at three in the morning, the intended message was somewhat diluted. Rabbits had curious and unusual attitudes towards apology.
Still. You had to laugh.