One minute, you were walking across a parking lot, and the next minute, you were surrounded by some purple light. The lovely suburban sprawl and decaying roads you knew and loved were replaced by a disgustingly beautiful forest with a warm sun and the sound of singing birds.
Your confusion was broken when you saw the noise of a rumbling wagon coming from a clearing in the forest. What you saw pulling the wagon shook you to your core.
It was a pony cat-thing with blue fur and a yellow mane. He, you guessed it was a he, wore a brown shirt that reminded me of a UPS delivery guy and started singing some song, in English of all things. Despite your shock, you managed to hide behind a tree and stayed quiet, more due to shock than stealth. Once it was gone, you began hyperventilating for a few minutes over the shock of ending up in a whole new world where other sapient creatures existed. Once your fit was over, you sat down on the grass, seriously pondering your next move, carefully considering your options when you ended up in a world you knew nothing about.
Reluctantly, you pulled yourself up off the ground and looked in the direction the pony had come from. You pushed yourself through the clearing, leaves running through your head. You paused when you felt something lightly brush your head. You briefly wondered if you put on a hat before you left the house and forgot about it before continuing.
You saw a village—a colorful version of a Middle Ages hamlet with thatched roofs. In the distance, you saw a vast castle that resembled a treehouse made out of crystals. Three other ponies were chatting amiably at what looked like the town center or market. They were standing behind tables with pots of flowers. Were these the town botanists?
The town seemed peaceful and pretty, and these creatures looked adorable and chatty. Maybe you could establish friendly relations with them. Taking one last breath, you wandered over to the three mares and put on your most dignified expression.
"Excuse me?" The ponies stopped gossiping and looked at you with big, wide eyes as you approached. "Can you tell me where I am? My name is-"
As soon as the ponies stood to look at you, they fainted in shock. Not the best first impression to make of an entirely new species. You approached the ponies with anxiety, wondering what you had done to offend them. "I'm sorry, did I-"
"The horror, the horror," the tan pony shrieked.
"It was awful," the orange one muttered.
"A horrible, horrible disaster," one with a green mane and tail wailed.
Before you could do damage control, a voice bellowed, "HEY, UGLY!" You turned around and saw six ponies glaring at you. Scratch that. They looked like they were about to murder you and spread your entrails across town.
"Foul beast!" Shrieked a unicorn who looked like a pretentious marshmallow. "You dare show your wicked visage here!"
"Varmints like you need a wrangling," an orange pony who sounded like Dolly Parton warned while spinning lasso with her...pony tail? Separate from the...ponytail (one word) in her hair? Was she trying to be deliberately ironic with her appearance?
"Let me at him!" A blue pegasus with hair that looked like Skittles and who sounded like a tomboy who had taken steroids. "I'll tear it limb from limb." She referred to you as an "it." That is not a good sign.
"Why are such meanie-meanie pants!" Yelled a bouncing pink pony with a poofy cotton candy-like mane and a voice so juvenile it would make a four-year-old cringe. She sounded both weirdly excited and weirdly annoyed.
"Why can't you leave innocent creatures alone!" Yelled a yellow pegasus. She then frowned nervously and began hiding her face with her pink mane. "If y-you d-don't mind," she said, suddenly acting as yellow as her fur.
"As the Princess of Friendship," the purple pony with both a horn and wings said, "I can't allow this to go on."
Shock, fear, and embarrassment competed in your brain as you wondered why your existence angered these ponies. Did they know about humans and their often destructive natures? Did they see humans are irredeemable monsters, and would anything you said in your defense change their minds? You tried to come up with a coherent reason that would establish that you were innocent of your species' misdeeds.
"Eh-"
"GET IT!" Princess bellowed. With danger rearing its ugly head, you bravely turned your tail and fled.
You barely got a few yards when you suddenly felt yourself being tripped and plowed face-first into the grass. In shock from being tripped rather than any pain, you barely realized you were being dragged along the grass. You saw Dolly Parton pulling you toward her with the rope in her mouth, murderous intent in her green eyes. Her other pony friends also looked at you with viciously sinister smiles as you were drawn closer to their clutches, except for the yellow one, whose eyes contained a weird combination of anger and...pity? Did she feel bad that her friends were about to put you down?
Princess landed on top of you, a murderous gaze in her purple eyes. Her horn lit up with a pinkish glow and a noise that sounded like a broken vacuum. You're heart rate began to go up, and sweat started running down your skin as you realized this was it. You would die at the hands, or hoofs, of six crazy ponies who hated humans. Princess paused as it noted your distress. "Don't worry," she said to you in a deceptively reassuring voice and a seemingly kind smile. "It will all be over soon." These ponies were sociopaths! Princess was so psychotic, and she would murder you with a smile and a tone like some unusually charming serial killer. Or maybe she hated humans so much that she considered murdering them merciful.
"Twilight." She paused and turned toward Yellow, who looked at her pleadingly. "Please don't-"
"Sorry, Fluttershy," Princess said with some reluctance. "It has to learn." She turned her gaze back to you, rage and hate in her voice as her horn lit back up.
You felt yourself turn cold as Princess' horn grew brighter and brighter. Time slowed down, each second feeling longer, as the pony's horn grew brighter and brighter until, finally, there was a huge flash. You shut your eyes and let out a huge scream. And everything went black.
Wait. Nothing went black. Your eyelids were just closed. To your confusion, you weren't burned alive or whatever that crazy pony was going to do. You then felt the Princess was no longer on top of you, the other ponies were no longer surrounding you, and the hat you wore had fallen off your head.
Once you force yourself to open your eyes, the ponies are no longer around you. You hear some yelling and see the ponies gathered around something else, your existence pretty much forgotten. Cautiously you wander over and see they, especially Yellow Belly, were pissed at something, thankfully not you. You saw what they were scolding at your blood went cold.
It looked like the combination of a centipede and a burlap sack making weird gurgling sounds. And Yellow Belly was scorning it. "Bad! Bad brain-eating slug!" The pegasus yelled, somehow looking both angry and yet adorable. "You know not to eat the brains of sapient creatures. Not only is it mean, but brain matter will give you indigestion!"
Does that thing eat brains?! The pegasus saw the act of eating brains as somehow "mean?" You suddenly realized with a shock that the ponies weren't chasing after you. You had a brain-sucking monster on your head! And these horses were trying to save your life! Embarrassment and annoyance flowed through you at once.
The brain-eating monster starting...crying? It made weird gurgling noises, but the cadence of the noises made it sound like a child who was sobbing after being lectured. Suddenly, the pegasus began running her hoof along the slug, like it was an adorable pet puppy, and giving it soothing reassurances. "It's OK, Mr. Slug," Yellow Belly said softly. "We've all made mistakes." I wouldn't refer to eating someone's brain as a mistake. It sounds more like "attempted murder." The yellow pony stopped her petting once she noticed you paying attention. She suddenly flew over to you, slug in hand (or hoof?). "Now say you're sorry!" She scolded. You thought she was referring to you, but she was admonishing the mutated sack in her arms she was carrying. The slug suddenly made a weird gurgling noise that did sound apologetic.
"See," the blue-eyed horse said in a reassuring tone. "He said he was sorry for trying to cut through your skull and slurp up your brain matter."
"Uh," you said uneasily, "well, it's...not OK-"
"See Mr. Slug!" Scolded Cotton Candy. "You were a big-meanie mean pants, and now you can't come to his Welcome to Ponyville party." The slug let out the combination of a gurgle and a wail. "Well, you should've thought of that before you tried this the seventh time!" Seven times? "Now go home and think about what you did."
The slug lept out of Yellow Belly's arms (or legs?) and slithered into the forest with an expression that looked like a kid who was sent to bed without supper.
"Are you OK?" Princess asked you, looking with concern that bordered on motherly.
"I think," I said uneasily, still trying to process what happened. "Thanks?"
"Why did you run away from us?" She asked in a more scolding tone. "That slug could've bitten through your skull had it properly attached itself to your scalp." A bit of self-loathing and shame funneled through you, not realizing a predatory monster was nipping at your skull.
"Don't worry, Twilight," Skittles said with a weird smirk. "That slug would've had a lot of work to do." Did that pegasus thing hint that you had a dense skull? The other ponies gave a scolding side-eye at the blue menace before turning their attention back to you.
"You ran away from us," Princess repeated in a severe tone. "Why?"
You rubbed your neck in embarrassment. "Well..?"
"What did you think we were trying to do?" Yellow asked you, with genuine concern in its voice.
A sheepish smile came onto your face. You didn't know how to explain yourself to these pony things. "Uh, well," you began reluctantly, "I thought you were...trying to...murder me." You didn't know how they would take that. Anger? Annoyance? Defensiveness?
Instead, the ponies stared at you with wide eyes before they fell to the ground laughing themselves to death. While your embarrassment grew, your apprehension started to go down a bit. Maybe these creatures wouldn't be so evil. After all, They saved you from a slug and were more amused by your assertion. Once the laughter died down, Princess approached you with an amused smile. "Why would you think we were trying to kill you?"
"Well, you chased me down very angrily!"
"Because we were trying to get the brain slug off your head," Skittles said as if she was trying to explain the sky is blue. "But," she said with a sneer, "it can't eat what's not there." She roasted you. That pony thing that looked like a kid's toy burned you.
Yellow Belly looked at Skittles with an admonishing tone. "Rainbow," she warned, "that's not nice."
"Also," you said uneasily, "those ponies at the...market fainted when I approached them."
Pretentious Marshmallow let out the scoff that high society ladies know all too well. "That's nothing to do with you, darling," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Lily and her sisters faint at everything. They fainted when a pack of bunnies approached them and nipped at some of their flowers."
"Really?"
"It's quite annoying when somepony reacts over a minor thing," Marshmallow said before looking at a mirror. "Oh no!" She shrieked. "I forgot to apply my second coating of mascara. THIS IS THE. WORST.POSSIBLE.THING!" The other ponies just rolled their eyes at Marshmallow's dramatic tone.
"Also...I thought you'd be scared of me."
Dolly Parton came up to you with a smirk. "And why would we be scared of y'all?"
Your expression turned uneasy. "Because...you all are ponies, and I'm...." you awkwardly gestured to yourself, "not."
The pegasus-unicorn looked at you like you were being silly. "I've been to a world full of humans before," she said in an unusually casual voice. "I also was a human, so I know your species' capacity for reason and sapience."
You looked at her with interest. "You've been to my world?"
She looked at you in confusion. "Well...'a' human world." Did she say 'a human world? "You looked remarkably similar to the humans I met, except your colors are a lot more pasty and dull than the ones I remember."
"Also, we live in a world full of all kinds of critters," added Dolly Parton. "Hydras, zebras, centaurs, yaks-"
"My little brother/assistant is a dragon," Princess added.
"Yer hardly the strangest thing we've ever encountered," Dolly Parton surmised. "Besides-"
"You couldn't hit water if you fell out of a boat," Skittles added with another smirk, much to the annoyance of the green-eye mare.
This pegasus called you a wimp. "I can hurt anybody I want!" You yelled back in wounded pride.
Dolly Parton looked at you with a smirk. "Are y'all saying you want us to treat you like an evil varmint?" You felt your cheeks turn red, realizing you embarrassed yourself, and ponies grinned at you like an adorably angry chihuahua trying to act like a lion.
"No." You said, feeling like a scolded eight-year-old.
Princess approached you with a welcoming expression. "Let me guess. You're lost in a world you don't understand, you need help getting back to your own, and you don't know who to trust?" You looked in surprise at the mare, having read you like a book.
"Pretty much," you uttered with a tired sigh.
The winged unicorn smiled at you with a welcoming demeanor. "Then it's settled! You'll be staying at the castle until we can work out how you got here and how we can get you home!" You glanced back at the crystal treehouse in the distance. So that's where she lived.
"But first, we're going to throw you my patented Welcome to Ponyville Party!" Cotton Candy chirped, confetti blasting all around her.
You looked uncertain. These ponies just met you and were already treating you like a guest in their home. The Princess seemed wiser than you expected, as she now looked at you with a tone of understanding. "I know how you feel. You're alone, and everypony you know is a dimension away from you. I've been there before," she said in an unusually empathetic tone. "Thus, as the Princess of Friendship and Harmony, it is my duty to help all creatures in need. Friendship and magic touch every creature's heart."
The words sounded like they were from some cheesy girl's cartoon, but she said them in such an emotional and passionate way that she felt sincere and inspiration. She must be a Princess who saw it as her duty to help others. And based on the proud expressions of the other ponies, they felt the same way. Maybe you might like this place.
"Thank you, your highness," you said, so moved by her passion you decided to address her formally. With that, the ponies all started trotting to the castle, but not before Skittles gave you one last dig.
"Don't turn your backs, girls! The s-s-s-s-scary monster is going to eat you if you do!" She said in a faux-ominous tone before laughing and flying away.
Scratch that.
You were gonna love this place.
