Stuck Together

Chapter 2: I am a pony now. Your argument is invalid.

Things were not going well.

At least that’s what Sam would have said, if anyone (anypony) had asked about his situation. Sadly, the only one who might have asked that at the moment was a somewhat small, blue unicorn, who was spending his time grinning like an idiot and blabbering on like one.

They had been walking, well, stumbling really, for some 40-50 minutes (Sam couldn’t tell accurately, since he had lost his watch along with every other thing he had had with him) in search of a way out of the forest, or failing that, some form of shelter. Their attempts of finding out their exact location had been fruitless so far, with Sam’s attempts at flying and the attempts to climb to a tree to survey the landscape by both Sam and Jason had been nearly atrocious. This seemed to be more than slightly degrading in Sam’s opinion, as having wings and cat paws should have made the whole procedure easier. But it didn’t. With no good idea about where to go, they decided to follow the first path they’d find, and stick to it, and after a while stumbling through the long, wet grass, they had found a dirt path, and thus had kept walking on it.

Since their latest attempt to climb a tree had ended in him landing on his head, Sam had optioned to stay silent and just think of the situation. Which wasn’t as easy as you might expect, since Jason had taken his silence as a sign to express his own humble opinion on their current situation.

“- I mean seriously, this is so AWESOME, even though it feels kinda funny when you can’t feel your fingers anymore, it’s almost like walking on my knuckles, but it doesn’t feel like much, and walking in this posture feels unusual, not bad, but unusual, with the ground being so much closer than before! I think I got the basic walking, I mean trotting cycle in control, I wonder if I can jump now-“

As Jason’s tirade was momentarily paused by his attempt at jumping (and consequent falling over), Sam wondered just how long he would be able to cope with someone (he didn’t like to refer to Jason as somepony just yet) so bright and happy and in his opinion, attention seeking. Though he did think that his own, previous behavior had been just as obnoxious (he blamed the sudden shock for it). He simply did not act like that, usually he was more able to keep his emotions under wraps, and he kept feeling embarrassed about it. Not to mention the slight bang of consciousness he had about lying to Jason. But seriously, who in their right mind just goes and tells their whole life to someone unknown? And besides, he had just lied about his name. That wasn’t a big deal, right? His thoughts were quite rudely pushed aside, however, as Jason continued his one-sided conversation unabated by his sudden fall.

“- so I guess that I should practice that a bit before attempting again. But what about magic? How do I use it? Do I just imagine doing something, and then it just happens? How much I should concentrate to use it? What if I go into a full avatar-stage if I try to use it? You know, like Twilight did. Oh man that would be so cool, probably disastrous, but cool-“

With a brief mental image of Jason floating in the air with eyes glowing with power, Sam started worrying over his own form over again (17th time in the past twenty minutes or so). Just what the hell WAS he? There was no piece of fanfic or anything else MLP related he could think of that would explain his form. It didn’t help that he had not even seen his own face yet; the little puddles of water on the ground being far too muddy to serve as any kind clear reflective surface. And the description given by Jason wasn’t exactly calming. Sam simply hoped it wouldn’t be so bad when he’d finally get a clear picture of his facial structure.

“- and my mouth feels kinda funny too, it’s just so LONG, and it feels like it’s, I don’t know, more flexible and more dexterous than before, I guess that’s why ponies can use their mouths to do everything. It’s also funny that there isn’t any sharp teeth in my mouth anymore, they’re all just flat-“

Sam gingerly touched his teeth with his tongue as Jason said that, and shuddered slightly. There were TOO MANY teeth in his mouth now, and far too many of them were sharp. They felt like they were small, long, and sharp, like thick needles. Although he could also feel with his tongue some flat teeth at the back of his mouth, he really didn’t want to think about just what he was supposed to eat in this new form. The same thought-pattern went for his paws. And his tail. And his weird-feeling hair. In fact, as Sam thought over it for a moment, he decided to dumb his whole new body to the mental “Don’t-Really-Want-To-Think-About-It” category.

“- wonder what it would be like to see a manticore out here? Or maybe a Ursa Minor? We might get away from them. I kinda wonder what they would really look like. Would they be like they were in the show? Or would they be completely different? And what else lives in these woods? God I just hope we don’t run into any cockatrices. I hate snakes, and having a head of a chicken and petrifying gaze are really not positive add-ons by my book-“

This one piece of rambling from his unwanted companion really made Sam to think. If this place really was the Everfree Forest, they should have seen some creatures already. But there had been nothing, not even birds could be heard. There were some small insects crawling and flying around them, mostly beetles from what he could see around him. But no large creatures, not even squirrels or any other small critters, much less something monstrous like a manticore. This was odd to say the least. Maybe they really were still on Earth, as the forests he had been in were sometimes like this back home. But that wouldn’t explain the weather, as it had been the beginning of winter where he had last been before that flash. Here it looked like it was still summer.

“-and that’s another thing, what about pony clothing? I know that they do wear clothes in at least formal gatherings and high society parties, but what about day-to-day clothing? Or is it really down to a personal taste? Do ponies ever wear, I don’t know, pyjamas? Would ponies actually wear socks? Oh man that would be funny to see-“

Sam wished, and not for the first time, that they had taken their clothes with them. Jason had had a point, though. All of their clothes (including Sam’s favorite winter jacket) were badly torn and burned from whatever had brought them here, with Sam’s own clothes doubly torn from his new appendages pushing through the fabric, so they really couldn’t have used them anyway. With that last thought he decided to try to use his new wings again, but just like previous attempts, he was barely able to just rustle the feathers, with both limbs still being stubbornly stuck to his sides. He let out a tired sigh as they kept walking on the path.

Things were not going well.

Things couldn’t have been better.

Jason couldn’t remember the last time he had been so excited in his live. He was a pony! A living, breathing pony! And a unicorn, on top of that! All though he admitted to himself of being grateful of that, he would have likely been just as happy being an earth pony. Heck, just being sent to the Equestria would have been enough in his opinion! He was living every brony’s dream! With that thought, he decided to give another try for the whole quadruped jumping, this time actually staying upright after his small leap. With this yet a new reason to smile, Jason started to actually take in his surroundings.

The forest itself was dark and damp, with water dropping from the gnarled trees to the pools of muddy water all over the ground. The trees themselves looked like they were really old, being all gnarled and covered in moss and fungus, with long, warped branches hanging low to the ground. The ground along the path they were walking was full of small thorn bushes, long grass and ferns, with strange flowers and other plants poking out from time to time. The forest was also eerily quiet save for the sound of their own hooves (and paws) hitting the ground.

With that last thought Jason looked with slight worry to the creature walking besides him. Jason had been talking non-stop for at least the last 10 minutes, and Sam hadn’t so much as grunted in response. And though Jason had already been quiet for couple of minutes, Samuel was still silent, just walking along with a worried look on his face.

Jason frowned for the first time after waking up in that crater. For somepony (squeee~) claiming to be a brony Sam seemed to be taking this whole thing pretty heavily. True, he wasn’t a pony, but that wasn’t a reason to be gloomy, right? And what happened to his mood? Back at the crater he had been having some weird mood swings, but now he looked just droopy. Well, he thought, maybe I’m ought to do something about it.

“Hey Sam? You’re okay?”

With that direct question Sam seemed to come to from his self-imposed stupor.

“Huh? Yeah I’m okay. I was just.. thinking.”

“Okay… so, how does it feel?”

“…Really weird. My paws don’t have much of a feeling in them. My wings are near unresponsive. My tail feels weird. And I have too many teeth in my mouth. And too many of them are sharp,” Sam replied with a near monotone voice.

“Aha.” Jason was little at loss as to what to say next, but quickly continued regardless, “So.. What do you reckon we should do when we get out of the forest? Or if we run into anypony? Should we come up with a cover story? Oooh wait wait, we should think of some cool pony names for ourselves!” Jason was once again getting exited, despite his gloomy companion.

Sam actually smiled for a smallest of moments before going back to his neutral impression. “Yes, you’re probably right. In case we really are in Equestria, at least you should have a good backstory,” Sam said, coming to a halt.

“Huh? What you mean, at least I should have?” His puzzlement was clear on his voice and even clearer on his face, as he came to a stop, too. Sam just snorted with a small smirk.

“Have you actually seen what I look like? If I just appear in Ponyville, or any other pony inhabited settlement for that matter without any preceding warning, I’ll be lucky if I get just the Zecora treatment. And you know what would happen if we come across a human city. Which I do admit, isn’t probably the case, since this DOES look a whole lot like the Everfree Forest,” Sam said, warily eyeing the trees around them.

“Aren’t you overreacting just a bit? I doubt that they’d really freak out that badly.”

“I am not willing to take that risk just yet. You saw how they treated Zecora at first in the show. I really don’t want to see that happening to me.”

“Well that’s exactly my point. They only treated her like that at FIRST.”

“Look, can we get back to the matter at hand? My point is, that while I might easily cause panic in any settlement we come across, YOU won’t probably have the same effect.”

“…So, what exactly you had in mind?”

“Easy. I think that when we get out of these woods, and if we ran into anybody or anypony, I should probably just hide, while you gather some information.”

“That.. actually sounds like a plan. Sort of. But what should I ask if I meet anypony? You know, besides the obvious where am I, who are you, where’s the nearest town..”

“Hmmm.. Try to find out at what point in time we’re in. There’s always a possibility that were in some period of time that we recognize. And that might be a bad thing. And also, you should likely try to find out are we in THE Equestria, and not, say, some canon universe.”

“Canon?”

“Cupcakes.”

“Oh.” They both shuddered at the thought.

“So, we get out of the forest, you hide, I find some ponies, or failing that, some people, ask some questions and generally try to get our bearings, and then come back for you. And I probably shouldn’t say anything about humans, or Earth, or the show.” As Jason said this, his face started to lit up again at the thought of meeting other ponies, and possibly even the Mane 6.

Just then he noticed the disgruntled look on Sam’s face.

“Yeah… That’s another thing you probably should remember. Don’t go having a fangasm, okay? I know this is awesome and all, but let’s not unnecessarily freak out any ponies, okay?” Sam asked, actually smiling for the first time since Jason had seen him. It was a concerned smile, but still, Jason saw it as an improvement.

Jason sat down on his haunches and gave a mock salute, grinning from ear to ear. “Aye aye, Captin’! So, what should my backstory be? Ooh, and my name! What would be a cool pony name?” Jason squealed with delight.

“Starstruck the Easily Excited,” Sam said with a small grin.

This had the effect of making Jason laugh. In truth, he was glad that the person he was walking with had brightened up. It would have been terrible to get in Equestria, ponified, no less, only to be stuck with someone continuously grumpy.

“That’s a good one, but how about Starshine?”

“That’s one option… How about Night Sky?”

“Not bad, not bad… But how about Stargazer?”

“Okay, that’s just bad. That’s not a name, that’s a job title.”

“Oh, and what would be better name than that, then?”

“Well what about the one I said already? Night Sky?”

“It might work… If I was a black pegasus.”

*sigh* “True.. but I think it’s still better than your first option.”

“What’s wrong with Starshine, then?”

“Nothing, it’s a good name... It’s just that I can’t say it without thinking about moonshine.”

Jason thought about it for a moment, before replying with a smile, “Hmmm.. Nope! Starshine it is.”

“..Glad that my propositions are taken seriously,” Sam muttered under his breath.

“So, now that that’s done with, what about your name?”

“Huh?”

“Well come on, you should have a pony name too! Or did you plan to just sit in this forest without ever coming out and meeting anypony else?”

“ Well, no, but.. I mean… I really didn’t think this one through, did I?” Sam asked with an embarrassed smile on his face, his long ears flopping ridiculously low.

“Nope,” Jason/Starshine replied with a small laughter as he saw his companion’s comical expression.

Sam scowled for a moment, and after what seemed like a moment of thinking he replied, “Hexus.”

“Ummm… What?” Starshine asked with confusion.

“That’s my new name. Hexus.”

“Wait, just like that? No other options, no thinking about it? And isn’t that the name of some animated villain?” Starshine asked with a confused look on his face, trying to comprehend what just happened.

“It is. And I did think about it.”

“But.. Just Hexus?”

“No, I think I will add something to it later, you know, to make it longer, but for now, Hexus it is. Or Hex for short.”

“But.. But..”

“I have opposable thumbs, Jas- I mean, Starshine. Your argument is invalid.” Sam/Hexus replied with a smug grin.” Besides, I like it. I think it’s a brilliant name.”

As the well-known sentence ‘ What is this I don’t even’ ran through Starshine’s head as a reaction to the Sam’s/Hexus’ suddenly found sense of humor, he wisely decided just to drop it.

“ …Ugh, fine, Hexus. But what now?” he asked as he took a look around. “The sun is setting, and we’re far from being clear of the woods.”

“Good point,” Hex replied, taking a slightly fearful look at the forest around them. “Should we try to climb a tree again?”

With that said, they both started to scamper up a nearby tree with low hanging branches. The difference to their previous attempts, however, was that after a couple times of falling down (and quite a lot of muttering and grumbling of foreign, obviously obscene words from Hex) they both managed to reach the top of the tree. As soon as Hexus reached the treetop next to Starshine, they both took a good, long look at the forest and the land surrounding it.

Then they looked down at the trail they had been following. And back up at the forest canopy.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Hexus said with enough venom in his voice to poison an entire city.

The Forest that they had been walking around, while it had been dark and damp under the boughs, was a roiling see of lush greens, coloured with vibrant hues of orange and red by the setting sun. It was majestic, vast and held its own kind of beauty.

…And it ended just under a hundred meters right of the dirt path they’d been following.

“…We were walking by the edge of the woods the whole time?” Starshine asked with an unbelieving look plastered on his face.

“#&¤%&*&!!!” Hexus screamed out loud a foreign obscenity with a sound not much unlike a bestial roar, causing Starshine to jolt up with a startle (and to almost fall off from the branch he had been sitting on).

“…Feeling better?” he asked after a little while.

“…Little,” came a silent reply from the heavily breathing Hexus. “Let’s just get down and out of these woods,” he continued with anger in his voice and rage on his face.

After gracefully climbing down (falling down halfway to the ground) from the tree, both of them started scrambling through the small bushes and other wild plant life towards the edge of the forest they had seen from above.

“I can’t believe we spent all that time for nothing,” Hex grumbled as he kept pushing through bushes.

“I can’t believe that there’s a path going around the whole forest like that,” Starshine replied panting, his somewhat smaller stature making it harder to fight his way through the forest compared to Hex’s way of just barging through anything lesser than a tree or a boulder. “I mean, who would want to make a path like that, just a little way away from the tree line? What’s the point?”

“Don’t know, but I’m pretty pissed at whoever made that trail at the moment,” Hexus replied with grunt as he kept moving on through and around the obstacles.

They soon got out of the forest and stopped, watching back at the imposing treeline through which had just came. Both looked tired, battered, Hex panting from anger and Starshine from exertion.

“You remember how I said that I would hide when you would go and find out about our situation?” Hexus asked, to which Starshine just nodded, too tired to talk after that battle against the forest and its nefarious plant minions.

“I tell you one thing. I WON’T hide back in that forest, that’s for certain.”

“If you… Even need… To hide…”, Starshine panted, slowly regaining his breath.

“I thought we already agreed that I should hide,” Hexus replied, giving Starshine a sideways look.

“You just have a too pessimistic way of thinking this situation. I really doubt that they’d do worse than stare at you,” Starshine retorded, starting to get slightly aggravated by Hex’s constant pessimism.

“…I hate being stared at..” Hexus muttered.

“And besides, don’t you want to meet other ponies out there?” Starshine continued, not hearing what Hexus had said.

“Well yes, but I don’t want to cause any panic,” Hexus said slightly louder this time, his previous anger being replaced by anxiety.

“Oh please, you couldn’t cause panic even if you tried! You may look a little.. different,” Starshine faltered for a moment, waving his other hoof towards Hexus’s body, “but that’s it! You just don’t look at this from the right perspective,” He concluded, hardly believing that he was encouraging a supposed brony to meet other ponies.

*sigh* “Okay. I won’t go hiding at the first sign of ponies or something else for that matter. Though I will blame you, if things get bad because I dared to walk in the open.” Hex still seemed little nervous, but that was at least an improvement, in Starshine’s opinion anyway.

“Okay,” he replied, “what now? It’s still not night, and I think we should get going somewhere. It probably isn’t a good idea to fall asleep near the forest,” he said tapping his chin with a fore hoof thoughtfully.

“…There’s smoke rising in that direction,” Hex announced, pointing to the left of the forest in front of them.

“What? Where?” Starshine asked, puzzled. “I can’t see anything in that direction.”

“What you’re talking about? It’s right there,” Hexus said, jabbing with his finger (Is it still a finger when it’s a part of paw? Starshine thought idly for a second) towards the same direction, “A couple of really thin, wavering grey lines in the sky. Can’t you see it?” he asked in puzzlement.

Starshine looked again at the pointed direction, but still saw nothing. Just as he was about to tell Hex just that, he happened to see his eyes as Hex was staring at the supposed smoke lines.

“Wait a second… you just did the thing Gilda does!” Starshine shouted with a grin on his face and a hoof pointed at Hex.

“What?” Hex asked with a confused look on his face.

“That thing! The thing that Gilda does! With her eyes! You did it just now!” Starshine shouted, his grin actually getting wider as he spoke.

“Ah.. whu.. I..What?” Hex stuttered, starting to look less confused and more nervous.

Starshine sighed little, and then went on to explain, “Your eyes just went really small, you know, with the iris going miniscule, when you looked over there. Just like with Gilda in the show!” Starshine exclaimed, his smile growing with every moment.

“What, seriously? I didn’t even notice anything…” Hexus muttered, confused and worried.

“Well you did! And that was so AWESOME!” Starshine excitedly replied while making his best Rainbow Dash impersonation.

“…Really?”

“YA RLY!” Starshine shouted, chuckling at his own joke.

“Well, okay. but I still didn’t feel any difference…” Hex said. “But anyway, should we get going, while there’s still some day light left?”

“Oh! Yeah, let’s go. Adventure time, HOOO~!” Starshine shouted with a goofy grin on his face, while starting to trot towards the point Hexus had pointed.

“Oh you just didn’t say that,” Hex groaned, but still smiling slightly at Starshine as he began trotting after him.

Starshine actually grinned a little wider at this, the thought of exploring and meeting other ponies driving of any negative feeling that was left sitting at the corner of his mind. Because despite everything that could have gone wrong and had gone wrong, Starshine, formerly known as human Jason, was certain of one thing as he looked at the sundown over the forest.

Things couldn’t have been better.