You look around the dark alleyway, checking for witnesses, and then look back at the shady man in front of you. He is wearing a dark overcoat, and a hat with a wide brim that casts a shadow over his dark eyes, creating an eerie effect. Stubbing out your cigarette, which contained more than just tobacco, you look at the man, staring him up and down, taking in every detail.
“You got the dough?” he asks.
What dough? Or did he mean doe?
You then snap out of your haze and look at the man intently. Just as you reach into your pocket, you hear a familiar sound.
Cha-chick!
Looking up quickly, you deftly draw and flip out an eight inch serrated butterfly knife.
The night exploded.
Your quick wit didn’t betray you as you predict the move and duck under his outstretched arm, just as a flash erupted from the tip of the deadly weapon. Moving behind your attacker, you put your knife to his throat and pry the gun from his trembling fingers, and replace it with a cylindrical bundle.
“He he!” You laugh. “Good one, Snake. Now one question remains. Have you upheld your part of the bargain?”
Forcing Snake to his knees and keeping the knife to his back, you tuck the pistol into the front of your trousers roughly, but careful not to set the handgun off; it could be the end of your best friend. Deciding that it would be better if you didn’t take that chance, you put the knife back into your pocket and pull out the gun. Quickly examining it, you find it to be a revolver. Putting it to Snake’s back, you intrude the shallow pockets of his overcoat, revealing a pipe, a lighter and some bags filled to the brim with dried and crumpled leaves that you could not identify in the dark.
“Snake, it seems that you have decided to give me a discount? Pay less, get double?” you laugh. Then you bend down to his ear and whisper “Don’t let it happen again.” To your satisfaction, Snake whimpers and trembles. Pushing the gun to the back of his neck, you are about to end Snake, there and then, and rid yourself of these constant problems.
“Get on the floor, scum” you whisper into his ear.
“Wh-wh-what’s that?” he sobs.
With a pang of guilt, you decide not to kill him, but frighten him out of cheating you again.
“You know what it is,” you reply coldly, trying to make your act as convincing as possible.
Turning the gun around, so that you are holding the barrel, you lift the revolver high in the air, and slam it down onto the back of his neck, knocking him out cold, before fleeing at the sound of sirens.
As you come to the front door of your apartment, you hastily pull out the key that you use to get in. Not being able to find it, you pull two thin steel rods with rubber handles and insert them into the lock and push up the balls inside. With the other, you turn the lock twice to the left, and try the handle. To your glee, the door opens, but your happiness is soon lost as you see jobs piling high on your table. You always knew you were a good ‘fixer-upper’, as everybody called you, but you could never keep up with the jobs that always seemed to endlessly increase in number. Ever.
Sighing, you decide to put off all of the jobs for a day before turning on the lights and pulling out the small the small bags you had taken from Snake.
“Never seen this stuff before,” you say to yourself, before putting them into your new pipe, which was of excellent quality and lighting them with the lighter that you had taken, basically wasting none of the fuel you had here at home. To your surprise, the lighter was modified, and when you struck it, it singed the hair on the top of your forehead.
God damn! You think. Can the day get worse than this? Of course it can.
After the first puff of smoke, you throw your pipe under a running tap and rinsing your mouth. “Tobacco!” you shout. “I’m going to kill the freaking cheapskate!”
You pull the small revolver from your freshly pressed trousers and put it into a cupboard opposite you, which was quite cluttered, and replaced it with a black bandanna and a nine millimetre pistol. A Colt .45 Semiautomatic, to be exact. You always seemed to be happy to remember the whole name of the gun, but despite that, you were still too angry to rethink what you are going to do. Sliding the magazine into the bottom of the handle and pulling back the back section of the gun, you walk briskly out of your messy apartment while putting the gun into your left overcoat pocket, down an elevator, which led directly outside. Lighting a Roll Your Own that was filled with smoke-able cocaine that a friend had cooked up for you last week, you pull a hat over your eyes, turn up your collar and walk out into the city, right where you had left Snake. You stop around the corner, right before the alleyway that you had knocked Snake in and look around. Pulling the gun out of your left trouser pocket, you check that it is still loaded. You then storm into the alleyway, half expecting to see Snake, grovelling.
You hold the pistol out at arms’ length and shout “Snake! Come here, you dog!”
But instead of Snake, you see a tall woman, her face concealed, her purple, pink and white hair blowing in the wind – wait, there is no wind tonight.
“Listen, Lady,” you start.
“No, my friend, you listen.” She cuts you off as if you were nothing. That one sentence just ruined your whole entry.
Thoughtlessly, you fire off the entire magazine, but each bullet stops right in front of her head.
“Wh-wh-Who… What the fuck are you?” you cry.
“In my world, I am called Celestia.” She replies calmly. She then reveals her face, and to your surprise, she was a horse! Not only that… a unicorn!
“Wh-Who? How?”
“Take this.” She replies. “Eat it when you wake up. You must learn about friendship, for there are deathly small amounts of it in you.”
In her hoof, she hands you what looks like a small berry, but you can hardly hold it by then. Your vision has turned red, and with every heartbeat, your vision blurs, more and more each time, soon followed by a bad case of tunnel vision. As much as you run, the tunnel gets bigger, with each passing heartbeat, a second seems to take more than an hour.
Then… Blackness.
With a start, you wake up, feeling numb, not being able to move any of your body. Slowly, your feeling returns, but as it creeps up your back, you wish you were left numb.
Then, you remembered.
Desperately throwing your hand into your pocket, you pull out the berry, ignoring all pain. You throw it into your mouth and crunch down onto it, and immediately, you are surrounded by… nothing. You float freely, and all trace of pain, hunger and drowsiness has left you. As you explore your surroundings, not that there was anything to explore, you come across a familiar horse. Her mane is purple, pink and white and flows freely as if it were windy, but it wasn’t windy. The short hair on the rest of her body was white, but not any white, pure whit e, like the blinding white you get when you look up at the sun with wide eyes. The horn on her head was not to scoff at, at least twenty inches long, and her wings were just the same.
“Come,” she said, her voice soft, inviting and merry, like a warm fire on a cold winters’ night.
You float over to her and grab her tail just as she glides away.
The trip goes on for hours, and soon, you start to feel drowsiness overtake you.
“Do not fall asleep” you hear a voice command you sternly.
You look up at the magical horse called ‘Celestia’ with pleading eyes, and you are relieved of all drowsiness, just as if you had when you had eaten the magic berry. Tasted like chicken. Chicken – Berry?
You look around yourself in boredom, and all seems the same as it did hours ago. But, there, right in front of you, there is a speck… of green, blue and orange? Could it be getting bigger?
Just then, your body starts contorting, twisting in impossible angles as you writhe in pain.
What’s going on? Did the Unicorn-Pegasus trick you?
The unbearable pain is turned into an unbearable itch, and you howl as you feel the tingle of hundreds of needles piercing your flesh.
Then it’s gone.
“Look at yourself,” Celestia commands.
Reluctantly, you look down at yourself, half expecting to see a mauled body.
But it is worse than that. You are… a… pony? Yes, you are a pony!
“Whathaveyodone? Whydidyoudoit? HowdoIchangeback? Helpme!” You half shout.
“I told you a while ago. Do you not remember that the levels of your friendship are extremely low?” she replies calmly.
“Listen, bitch,” you start, reaching into your left jacket pocket – but you stop when you realise that… you are not wearing anything.
“Holy crap, I’m naked!” you shout. “I object!” You cry.
“Object what?”
The one phrase that meant so much at school has no meaning here. Mustering up all of your brain power, (which, admittedly, isn’t much,) you retort: “I object to coming here, to this place full of boredom, on a magical horse – “I am both unicorn and Pegasus,” she interrupted. “… On a magical horse,” you continue, “and having no clothes! I’m not some man whore like the rest of your race-” “What is a man whore?” Celestia interrupted again, much to your annoyance. “How would you say it here,” you say slowly, pretending to think. “Whorse?”
Celestia looked at you.
“It seems that my ever faithful student Twilight Sparkle was right about you.” She says, outraged.
