As I tried to trot across the street, an enormous white shape bore down on me. "Yeeaaahhh!" a powerful voice shouted. A hard wall seemed to hit every part of my body all at once, and I was surrounded by darkness.
"Oh horseapples," I said. "I guess I must be dead now."
I opened my eyes, and saw faint motes of light floating around me. "Is this the Haylesian Fields?" I asked.
Behind me, somepony cleared her throat. "Not quite," she said. "You don't get to die yet."
"Don't get to? Who the haybucket wants to die?" I turned and saw a midnight black alicorn. Princess Luna?
"You'd be surprised," she said. "But we've made a deal across the dimensions, to keep from running out of creatures. When somecreature tries to die in one world, we just plop them into another world that also doesn't want to run out of creatures. We call it the Trans-Platform Plopping Pact."
"But I wasn't trying to die in any world. I was just trying to cross the street!"
"A common excuse," Luna said. "And one I've heard quite enough times already. You're going to live in another world and like it, young lady."
"Another thing," I said. "I'm not a young lady. I'm a filly. Or maybe I've grown up enough that I'm more of a mare now, I don't know. But my point is, I didn't want to die, and I"
Luna's horn flashed, and the world around me changed.
I was lying on a narrow strip of grass, with the sun in my eyes. On both sides of me, noisy vehicles screamed and rumbled past.
I sat up. "Horseapples!" I shouted. This wasn't like anyplace I'd ever seen in Equestria. Wagons as tall as a house and longer than a sea serpent sped past me in multiple lanes, like some kind of crazy magical vehicle race.
Also, my body was different. I had longer hindlegs and forelegs. I couldn't feel my tail! What had happened to my tail! I screamed. I'd heard stories about ponies who drank a "knockout potion" in their drink and woke up in a bathtub full of ice in some hotel room, with a note on the wall in front of them that said
Your tail has been surgically removed. As soon as you wake up, go to a hospital immediately
but I never thought it would happen to me!
I screamed again, but with the noisy traffic racing past, I doubted anypony could hear me.
I wanted to go to a hospital, but how could I get there without running in front of a speeding vehicle and getting crushed? I was pretty sure if I killed myself twice in the same day, Princess Luna would not be happy with me.
What could I do? I tried to stand up, but my legs didn't work very well. My hindlegs were too long, and my front legs too short. I bent my hindlegs with the knees facing out, and tried to walk the best I could. I felt ridiculous.
Above me, a blue woman with wings and rainbow-striped hair said, "Hi! How did you get there?"
I had a decision to make. Would I tell a crazy story about how I was from another world, or would I just make up an excuse?
"I think I bumped my head," I said. Getting run over by an enormous white bulk and getting killed must include bumping your head at some point, right?
"That happens to so many people around here," the blue woman said. "My name's Rainbow Dash. Who are you?"
"I'm...I don't think I know who I am." In my old life, if I'd ever thought about killing myself, my embarrassing old name would have been one of my top reasons to do it. But a whole new world meant an excuse not to tell anyone my real name!
"Must have been some bump on the head. If you want help getting out of the expressway median, I can give you a lift." The blue woman landed on the grass beside me, but she was standing on only her hind legs.
"Wow," I said. "So if you have wings, you can stand up on just two legs. Is that comfortable?"
The woman laughed. "Anyanth can stand up like this. But first, let me take you someplace where if you fall over, you won't fall in front of a truck and go splat." She reached around my body with both arms, and carried me up into the sky. I looked down at the speeding traffic below.
"Whoa!" I screamed. "I'm afraid of heights!"
"Don't worry. Rainbow Dash will protect you."
"I think I'm airsick!" Moments later, I coated the front windows of at least half a dozen speeding wagons with my own vomit. The wagons veered and swerved, leaving the roadway or tipping over. Once one or two overturned wagons blocked one half of the road, other wagons crashed directly into them.
"Apples! Sorry about that," I said.
Rainbow Dash carried me away from the roadway, to a field of tall grass where she set me down. "It happens," she shrugged. "Ponyville is the world capital for high speed fatal pileup crashes. It's because Anthrostria's three busiest expressways go directly through town, carrying all the cargo used by every part of the country."
"But I still feel bad about it."
Rainbow spat on the ground. "Don't. If it was you in the road and a speeding truck coming right at you, they would have done the same thing."
"They would have puked on me?"
"You know what I mean. The war between footanth and driver is older than, well, it's not all that old, but noanth can do anything to stop it. It's just the way things are."
"So what do we do now?" I wondered. "This place is so crazy."
Rainbow Dash smiled. "Now, we see if you can stand up."
Rainbow was a harsh teacher. She wouldn't take no for an answer. She demanded I learn how to walk around on my two hind legs just as much as a normal pony would on all four, even though I didn't have wings to help me stay upright!
If I fell back onto all four legs like a normal pony, Rainbow would do antything to make me get back up. Tossing pebbles at me, ticking me with grass stems, spanking my bottom, there was really no limit.
"My butt sure is sore," I complained up at her. "It's because you forced me to keep standing up and falling over again. It just isn't natural." I threw a clod of dirt at her. I missed.
Rainbow laughed. "Look what you're doing. Now you're throwing things at me. Could you do that if you were walking on all fours? I don't think so. Now throw something else at me."
"I'm tired."
"You're just lazy." Rainbow shouted a stream of insults at me. I didn't know what most of them meant, but I was sure they weren't nice. I threw more clods and small rocks at Rainbow. "Stop dodging! You deserve to have somepony hit you!"
Rainbow laughed again. "I have to keep doing this. Otherwise how will you get any practice?"
"Practice hating you?"
"No, practice throwing things. You're in the world capital of anthro versus truck confrontations, so you need to know how to protect yourself. Here, follow me." Rainbow flew across the field to some trees. "Practice throwing at these trees. Only when you can pick up a rock and glower with so much confidence that anyone can tell you're a deadly weapon on two legs"
"Four legs! I have four legs, even if two of them are defective now."
"Whatever. Only then will you be ready to cross a residential street."
