The Tales of a Dubious Traveling Soda Salesman

by GoobTroop

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, Adventure
Length: 2021

After finding himself in the land of Equestria, Hermes angers Celestia and starts an all-out war.

Hermes is a man of many questions, or, in this case, a pony of many questions. Finding himself in the magical land of Equestria and having almost no knowledge of the world, he goes to ask the one pony who has all the answers. Getting to Celestia was the easy part, but when he questions her right to rule, things go downhill. Hermes must decide to either be banished, or to escape from a world that he knows nothing about.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-28 01:16:10 UTC

Chapter 1

I lived a perfectly abnormal life. What I mean by this is that daily it was normal. I went to school, did homework, stuff like that. On the other hand I didn’t have internet, cable or any TV for that matter, or a cell phone.  I listened to vinyl records, ran a radio station, and acted. Needless to say, I was weird.

My group of friends, however were just as “weird” as me. They were all Bronies. Yup, that’s right, Bronies. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely a Brony. Well, good for you. I am not a Brony. Don’t jump to conclusions now, I’m not against Bronies or what they watch. I even think that MLP is a decent show, better than most cartoons today. I’m just not crazy about it, that’s all. IS THAT SUCH A CRIME?????!!!!! You won’t believe the hostility I get for not hating the show, but at the same time not loving it. Anyway, what happened should have happened to one of my friends, not me. But as I found out, luck doesn’t have favorites.

It was a day like any other; a Wednesday, I think. I had just gotten off the air, and I was about to reread “Gulliver’s Travels” when suddenly I was hit with a terrible migraine right above the left temple. Man did it hurt, so much that I fell right over. Within an instant, however, it was gone.

“Must have been a head rush …” I said to myself as I picked myself up. I was the only one home, so I figured a little snack would suffice before I read my book. Chocolate would do. As I opened the cupboard to where the chocolate was hidden a migraine whacked my right temple. This one being worse than the last, it threw me to the ground. Once again it passed within a moment. Sitting there on the floor I wondered what was causing the migraines. You’re probably thinking, if they were so severe, why didn’t I call for help? Let me take this time to explain something about myself. I am a man of many questions, meaning that I’m always asking questions all the time. It’s like a hobby of mine. anyway, more on that later. For now, let’s go back to me sitting on the floor.

“OW, what the heck is with my head? Oh well, where is  the chocolate?” I got the chocolate and was making my way to sit down and enjoy the simple sugary snack.

I didn’t get to do that, however, because halfway to my seat the mother of all headaches invaded my brain. I was forced to all fours. I could only endure the pain with my eyes closed. It only lasted a couple of seconds. As I let the headache ebb away a nice breeze passed across my face. With my eyes still closed I thought, “Wait a minute all of the windows are closed.” Then I heard a bird chirp off in the distance. I thought I heard the chatter of many people. My eyes, wanting to comprehend, opened. My head lifted, and before me was a city the size of New York. What’s more, it looked somewhat medieval…if it was done in Technicolor. I was at a loss for words to say the least. My eyes saw figures moving in and out of the city. I strained them, and they seemed to be horse like.

Like a bolt of lightning, I then realized what had happened to me. I usually don’t swear, but the only thing I could say was “Oh shit.”

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I was afraid to look at myself, fearing the obvious. I knew I would have to sooner or later, so I looked down at what used to be my hands. That’s right; I had become a pony, hooves and all. While looking at my han… I mean hooves, I noticed that I still had all my clothes on, which presented the first challenge: how to take off clothes without fingers of any kind.

It’s not that I didn’t like my clothes, but they were uncomfortable and probably looked ridiculous on me. They were made for a biped human, not for a four-legged equine. After a couple of unsuccessful tries with my teeth, I found that hooves were actually quite useful. They weren’t opposable thumbs, but hey, they were better than nothing. I got rid of everything except my hat and my watch; the hat because I like hats and think that they give more character to a person, and the watch because I like to know what time it is, and it was a keepsake.

I now faced my second challenge: what to do. I wasn’t going to do the “this has got to be a dream” crap. It was obvious that I was here, but what was I going to do? I mean, I wasn’t overjoyed like any Brony would be, but I was curious enough to check things out. My knowledge of the My Little Pony world was very limited. I knew the following from overhearing Bronies talk about MLP: I was now in the land of Equestria, which is ruled by two princesses: Princess Celestia and the other one, which I forgot. The Mane Six are as follows: Twilight Sparkle, the main character who seems to be the smartest, Rainbow Dash, really fast and tomboyish, Pinkie Pie, random and fourth wall breaker, Rarity, clothes pony who speaks in a British manner, Fluttershy, who is, well, shy, and Applejack, named after the cereal. They have a dragon friend named Spike, who receives letters from Princess Celestia via regurgitation…hey, I still don’t get this. They live in a place called Ponyville.

The Mane Six, as they are called by Bronies, have encountered some villain types, the most noteworthy being Discord, Nightmare Moon, Queen Chrysalis, etc.

In other words, I knew the basic stuff. On thought of this, I figured I needed to go to the nearest library to study up on history, law, and mannerisms of this world before I did anything else. One thing crossed my mind before I started off. “What is my…um…what was it called again…oh yeah, cutie mark!” (Kind of a watered-down name if you ask me...) I turned around to find my rear end stamped with this:

[url=http://goobtroop.deviantart.com/art/Crude-HerIt looked like this-[/url]

Chapter 3

With that figured out, I started heading towards the library I mentioned earlier. Walking was an interesting experience. I had first tried to walk on my hind legs, which worked well, but I realized that most ponies don’t walk everywhere in this manner, so for legs it was.

This was also easy. It was almost as if my brain had developed pony instincts instantly, which was fine by me. In no time at all I was at the entrance to the capitol city, Canterlot. At this time I said something quite random: “Canterlot,” pause, “Canterlot,” pause, “Canterlot…It’s only a model. Shut up.” I still don’t know where this came from.

Anyway, with that, I trotted into the city. I didn’t know what to expect, cupcakes and rainbows everywhere?  To my relief, I was wrong. The city was actually wonderful; medieval with modern flashes thrown in.

After walking for five minutes on the main road, which had many vendors selling their wares, some of the food was looking wonderful.  I was flat broke, so I figured library first, financial troubles later.

Finding the library was actually pretty easy, or else I was just extremely lucky. It was one of the biggest buildings on the street, and one of the finest, I might add. As I stepped into the library, I was run into by a unicorn. Wham!

“Oops, sorry,” was the reply of the lavender purple pony.

“It’s alright,” I said, picking up some books that had flown in the collision. “Here you go. Uh, have a good day.” I turned to walk into the library.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

Before I realized that she was talking to me, I had closed the door behind me.

I walked up to the main desk (the only desk, for that matter). Behind it stood slash stat, what I presumed to be the librarian. She was an elderly, tan colored mare with graying hair and spectacles. In short, a stereotypical librarian.

“Hello, could you direct me to the history and/or lifestyles section, please?”

“Of course, but you need a library card first, dear.” Her voice was sweet but stern: a perfect grandma character.

This caught me off guard a little; I had thought that library cards were for checking out books. “Um, right, can I have one?”

“I’ll need your name, dear.”

“My what?”

“Your name.”

“Right, my name.” I broke into a sweat. I couldn’t give my real name; it would be too weird. I quickly made one up. “It’s…Hermes.”

“Was that Herpes?”

I winced. “No, Hermes.”

“Just checking.” She finished whatever she was doing and handed me a library card. “Here you are. The history section is three shelves down.”

“Thanks.” I slipped my library card into my hat, much like reporters do. As I walked, I thought about my new name: Hermes, messenger of the Greek gods. My real name was something to do with messengers, so I thought this was fitting.

When I got to the history section, I found that it was small; non-fiction never does well in libraries. I scanned the shelf and picked the book entitled The History of Equestria. With the book in hoof, I sat down and read the book. Man, was it confusing. Talk about a screwy timeline. Despite this, it expanded my knowledge.

I then found a book called Villains of our Time. This book was much more interesting and knowledge-expanding. Believe it or not, I learned about Nightmare Moon, Discord, and the queen of the changelings, whose name is hard to spell. I learned that all three were stopped by the “Mane Six,” with some help from Princess Celestia. I thought this to be odd. Didn’t they have some form of military? And Luna the princess, didn’t she contribute at all?

With more research, I discovered that Nightmare Moon was actually Luna after escaping a thousand-year banishment on the moon. What?!! I needed to know more.

I soon found out that when Equestria was very young, Luna had had a mega temper-tantrum, so her sister Celestia had used the Elements of Harmony to banish her to the moon forever.

Uh?!! Where’s the logic in that?!! It seems a bit harsh and suspicious. Almost like King John and King Richard, but I shan’t get into a history lesson.

When I reread the facts I realized that it had to have been overdone just a little bit; banishment and whether or not Luna went insane and revengeful. This disturbed me. Was the world of MLP not as perfect as my friends thought it was? More reading was in order.

After a while, I found that the two other villains mentioned mostly got what they deserved. I say mostly for the following reasons: Discord is like the spirit of dis-harmony, so can he help it if he causes chaos and higgledy-piggledy? Secondly, the queen of the changelings was, in a sense, just trying to feed her people. Granted, it was the very emotions of other ponies that they fed on, but it was kind of a vampire paradox.

So one out of three wasn’t so bad, but I still had my doubts. I did even more reading and discovered that there has always been one ruler in Equestria, and that ruler is Princess Celestia. No other ruler has ever been required. What’s more, the only royalty I could find were alicorns, pegasi and unicorns, most of them female.

This seemed, well…dare I say racist/sexist. I had serious doubts that the Princess, or any other pony for that matter, was racist, but I still had questions, and books could no longer answer them. Right then and there I decided to ask the only one who could answer them: Princess Celestia herself.