It was a couple days after the defeat of Nightmare Moon and things were getting back to normal. Applejack was taking a stroll through ponyville. This would have been remained completely normal if one thing had not happened. Some unscheduled lightning had struck into itself twice and a figure the height of the average fully grown pony had appeared. It had brown hair, was wearing a light blue shirt with golden star designs along with a pair of jeans. This, of course, was the prelude to the creature immediately falling onto its face, knocked out.
Ari probably should have known not to mess around in Silas's workroom, they and Asher had just gotten there and they felt it was better than their old place and although there were definitely issues it had improvements, first was he and Ashton were able to be themselves, the second was that Asher was able to have a steady supply of Xanax to help with his anxiety, and third was that Silas, at the very least, wasn't physically abusive. Despite that, however, Ari thought it would be a good idea for them to go into Silas's workroom by themselves and see what Silas had that he wouldn't let them both see. This meant, when Ari saw a large machine and a large button, that there was no one to tell him not to push it.
Ari awoke on a hospital bed seeing some a large, white, blurry object to their right.
"Where am I?" they asked.
"You're at Ponyville General Hospital. You were unconscious and have been brought here so we could see if you are alright." the blurry figure said, slowly becoming less blurry as Ari's eyes adjusted
"Never heard of that place before but oka-" Ari began to say before realizing "-OH MY GOD, YOU'RE A HORSE!"
"I'm a pony but close enough, now, my name is Nurse Redheart and I'm supposed to ask you a few questions if that's alright with you." Redheart responded. This made Ari think for a minute 'I should give this the benefit of the doubt and see how it goes.' they decided.
"Alright go ahead, ask away." he said, accepting the request.
"Ok, first off, what is your name and the name of your species?" Redheart asked.
'Alright this should be easy.' Ari thought before saying "My name is Ari Anderson and I am a human." This made Nurse Redheart pause in the middle of writing the answers to ask something.
"How do you spell that?" she asked to which Ari responded, "Ari is A-R-I and human is H-U-M-A-N."
"And as for your age and where you're from?" Redheart asked, proceeding to the next question.
"I'm 10, and I'm from Earth, in the country of the USA, and the state of Oklahoma. Also, incase you were going to ask, I got here after messing around with a machine in my adoptive father's workroom." Ari clarified, leaning up a bit.
"Last and most important question, any pain, symptoms, or pre-existing conditions we should know of?" Redheart asked relieved to be almost over with the tedious question process for unregistered and unidentified patients.
"Well to leave it off on a positive note, no to all three of those things." Ari stated with enthusiasm.
"Ok, thank you for your time." Redheart said before taking the clipboard containing the patient notes and exiting the room. Once outside she spoke to the pony at the front desk, "We need to contact Princess Celestia about this now."
"Shit!" Silas said standing next to Ashton after he realized what had happened, knowing the secret was out and Ari had been sent elsewhere.
"WHY DID YOU EVEN HAVE SOMETHING LIKE THIS!" Ashton yelled, feeling his heart rate increase with dread.
"That's not your concern, besides I have a plan to get them out of there." Silas said, responding to Ashton's question before handing Ashton a wristband with a small button on it and saying "Put this on."
"Why?!" Ashton asked, the situation continuing to escalate his heart rate.
"I'm going to have you go through, once you do you need to find Ari and grab onto them whilst pressing the button, then you'll both be back here." Silas explained before he grabbed an old dusty black backpack and began putting rations of food, water, and some Xanax inside and going to hand it to Ashton saying, "You're gonna need this incase you either get sent far from Ari, get sent to a desolate area, or, in the worst case scenario, both."
"Alright fine, I'll do it but just for Ari, not you." Ashton said as he took and put on the backpack and then put on the wristband before finally, with all plans set into motion, activating the machine.
When Asher awoke he found himself in a strange dark cave place which seemed to be a cave, trapped in a hole in one of the cave's walls and blocked from leaving by a clear green material covering the opening. There seemed to be some strange darkly colored creatures who looked like mixes between insects as well as horses, they had clear monocolored insect-like wings, on the tops of their heads they a sharp pointed horns, he was also able to notice they had fangs, which worried him, as well as having legs covered with holes, which matched the cave. He looked and could see he still had the backpack so, doing the only thing he could think of, he took a single pill of Xanax to help him think clearer. He then checked his pocket and confirmed the switchblade he always kept with him since he and Ari had first gotten kicked out incase they got mugged was indeed still there, this led him to the thought of Ari, hoping they weren't someplace like this.
He finally came to the conclusion that when none of the creatures were watching he would slowly use his knife to inconspicuously cut through the clear green material and escape. For now however, he would wait.
Author's Note
Next chapter: Ari integrates theirself into society and goes to school.
Ari was sitting alone in their hospital bed, they regretted ever entering the workroom, he regretted having any sense of curiosity at all, whether it be about the workroom or anything else. However, they did not have the opportunity to continue wallowing in self-pity as they heard a knock and the familiar voice of Nurse Redheart.
"Excuse me Ari but you have a visitor."
When Celestia had been informed of the situation in Ponyville she knew something needed to be done and she had gathered enough info about the human to form a plan. She had been informed they were friendly and young, and knew the Royal Guard were not the right ponies for the job. With all of that in mind she began to write a letter.
'to my most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle...'
While Ari did expect they would get a visitor inevitably, given the whole not being of this world thing, they did not really know who it could be for obvious reasons. This meant when a purple unicorn came to visit Ari he wasn't very shocked, not even the unicorn part because, well, since they got here a unicorn was their main doctor after all.
"Hello there, mind if we chat?" the purple unicorn asked.
"Sure, I'm Ari by the way, Ari Anderson. What's you're name?" They replied, kicking the conversation off.
"Well it's nice to meet you too, my name is Twilight Sparkle." Twilight responded.
"Well, hello then, Twilight, what do you want to talk about?" Ari asked, bringing the conversation back to the original subject.
"Well, since you don't have any legal guardians here from what we know and foster families are rare here, I'm supposed to be your caretaker here and you'll be living with me and Spike." Twilight explained, breaking it all down, but Ari was more focused on having just noticed the young dragon.
"Uh, who is that?" Ari asked, pointing a finger at the dragon.
"Well on the subject of Spike, this is him, he's a young dragon and he's lived with me since he hatched." Twilight explained as Spike gave a wave and a simple "Hey."
"Well, uh, it's good to meet you too Spike." Ari said with a small smile, silently wondering if Asher would be worried about him.
"TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW! HOW DID YOU GET HERE!?" the changling queen yelled out, demanding to know.
"I don't fucking know the answer myself, I just went here through a weird machine my adoptive father had for some reason to try and find my younger sibling who apparently used it!" Ashton explained, his heart pounding out of his chest.
"This is going nowhere, maybe if I infiltrate one of the kingdoms I'll get some useful information. Yes, this will work wonderfully." Queen Chrysalis began thinking out loud before walking off as Ashton flicked open his switchblade and began slowly whittling away.
"Wow, this is a pretty nice place. So... this is my bed?" Ari said whilst examining the room.
"Yep, took a little bit of time but we got it all set up!" Twilight answered happily.
"Alright, uh, what day is it tomorrow, do you have school here?" Ari asked, getting Twilight's full attention.
"It's actually Monday tommorow, I could get you enrolled today." Twilight said.
"Okay, let's go get that set up!" Ari decided.
"Hello there Cheerilee, I'd like to enroll a foal at your school." Twilight said, standing by Cheerilee's front door.
"Of course, who are th-" Cheerilee began before noticing Ari and, with a small amount of caution, saying "Oh hello there, I'm Cheerilee."
"Hi, I'm Ari, Ari Anderson. I'm here to get enrolled at the school." Ari explained.
"Wonderful, come inside and have some tea, we'll see if I can get you into class by tomorrow." Cheerilee said, directing Ari and Twilight to come inside.
It was Monday and Ari approached the school as Twilight went back towards the library. He noticed some foals near the school and decided to make conversation with two of them. One had an orange coat and a pinkish-purple mane. The other having a white coat and a duocolored mane that was on one half a dull purple and on the other a light pink color.
"Hello? I'm Ari Anderson, nice to meet you. What's your name?" Ari said, introducing theirself.
"I'm Scootaloo, uh, what are you anyway?" the now named 'Scootaloo' asked.
"Scootaloo! You can't just ask somepony that!" the white filly said
"Come on Sweetie Belle, you can't tell me you aren't curious either." Scootaloo said.
"It's fine, she was just curious. I'm a human by the way, I got stuck here after I made a mistake." Ari reassured and explained to both of them.
"Okay, thanks." Scootaloo replied to which Ari just said "No problem."
"We should probably get to class." Sweetie Belle said to which the other two simply nodded.
Class was mostly uneventful except for onetil moment. Cheerilee was checking if any of her students had any questions when Diamond Tiara raised her hoof.
"Yes, Diamond Tiara, do you have a question?" Cheerilee asked.
"Why is there some random ape in here?" Diamond Tiara asked, making sure she said the word 'ape' with as much snark as possible.
"Well, Diamond Tiara, ignoring your clearly negative wording and emphasis, this is Ari Anderson, our newest student who is currently being fostered by Princess Celestia's student, Twilight Sparkle." Cheerilee responded, which got Diamond Tiara to shut her mouth and simply occasionally send glares Ari's way instead. For the rest of school things went mostly normal
until the school's recess.
As Ari walked out to recess they were approached by the two fillies that they met in the morning.
"Don't worry about what Diamond Tiara said, she's like that to pretty much everypony." Scootaloo said.
"It's fine, I've been told AND experienced way worse!" Ari said reassuringly before realizing how bad that sounded and saying "No big deal."
"That actually sounds like a really big deal." Sweetie Belle stated.
"Let's just hang out, All of that was in the past anyways." Ari said, to which Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle reluctantly agreed.
Eventually, Diamond Tiara approached with Silver Spoon in tow.
"You made me look bad in front of the entire class." Diamond Tiara said with a sneer.
"Well I do deeply apologize for making you feel that way but, if I may add, it was you who initiated the conversation and it was Cheerilee who responded, not me." Ari stated, seemingly carefully selecting each word to be polite and with a lot of effort to not be confrontational before turning back to Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle and saying "C'mon let's go find something to do."
As Ari was walking back to the library they remembered how Asher had told them that he needed to stop being nervous to ask for things for theirself and ended up working up the courage to ask Twilight for something important to them.
"Hey Twilight, is it okay if I, uh, get some flags hung up near my bed?"
Author's Note
Now that i've gotten the obligatory getting DT infuriated by a human child scene out of the way the story can progress to it's fullest (currently have plans reaching up to season 2 + side stories)
Ari gonna get some flags
