Denial, Acceptance, and Everything in Between

===============Denial, Acceptance, and Everything in Between===============

Well, uh, I totaled my copter the other day (god damn it!), but I can get parts (again). Anyway, since Secret Lightning is on hiatus until I think of how to figure the whole mess out, I figure I’ll write this chapter. Also, SOPA and PIPA got pulled…..hopefully indefinitely. They say they’re pulling the bills till they get more “widespread support”. Like THAT’ll ever fucking happen. I literally felt like running outside and screaming “VICTORY, BITCHES!!!!”as loud as I could when I read the news. But I’ll stop boring you and get to writing, I guarantee that this chapter will get quite interesting. Btw, the idea for the ending part to this chapter inspired by Coal Buck and his story “My Second Life” if you haven’t read it yet, go do it nao!

==============Chapter 3: Explanations and Confusion==============

“John? John!” John could hear the voice of the nurse pony, Redheart, right? Drifting into his sleep stupor. He groaned and opened his eyes. Strangely enough, it was dark outside, he could see the moon through the window next to the bed. Also, a lot of the hospital equipment was gone, save for the heart monitor, though it was turned off.

“John, wake up.” The white mare was nudging him gently.

“I’m awake, I’m awake” he finally managed to grumble. Truth be told, he was slightly annoyed, he was sleeping peacefully for the first time since he could remember.

“Well, okay, it’s just that you said you had questions for me, and…..you slept for almost five hours.”

If John wasn’t awake before, he sure was now. “Five hours?! Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Well…….” The nurse pony stammered, “You…you just looked so peaceful and content, I figured I’d let you sleep. But my shift is over soon, so I figured I’d come talk to you before I left.”

John was a little surprised, but his curiosity of the world took over him. “O…okay, well, I think we can start by you telling me exactly where we are.”

The nurse was quite stunned by the sudden change in his mood. In fact, the hostility meter, (if they had one) would have risen several notches.

“W…..well, as I have already told you, you are in Equestria. To be more exact, the town of Ponyville.”

“But….what about earth?”

“I don’t know of any town called earth. The only thing I can think of is the earth poinies, which is a type of pony.”

“You mean there’s more than one type?”

She chuckled. “Yes, aside from earth ponies, we have unicorns and pegasi here as well. I trust you at least know what those are?”

He nodded. Well, he did, after all. But he never imagined he would end up in a world full of mythical horses! Yet he still had questions.

“So…how did I end up here? And how can I get back to my world?”

“Well, I honestly don’t know the answer to either of those questions. You’d probably have to talk to Twilight Sparkle, she’s one of the ones that brought you here after you were injured. She will probably be here tomorrow, she was here every day since then to see if you had woken up.”

John scratched his head. He had no idea who this Twilight was, but he was sure he was going to find out tomorrow.

“Ok, fair enough, and what about that symbol on your….flank?”

“Oh, you mean my cutie mark? Hehe, it symbolizes a pony’s special talent. As you could guess, mine is nursing and caretaking.”

“Oh.” To be honest, John didn’t really understand much of what she had just said, other than she was talented at nursing.

“Well, where I’m from, people don’t usually have ‘cutie marks’, nor are they very colorful”

“Colorful? What do you mean? You look pretty colorful to me.”

John laughed at what she meant by that. But decided he’d rather not get into a discussion about skin colors now. “Haha, no, most humans are pretty much the same color as me.”

The white earth pony, John figured that much out on his own, scratched her head in confusion. “But….if you don’t have cutie marks, and you aren’t very colorful, then what makes humans….unique from each other?”

Again John laughed. He decided he was strangely calm for having woken up in a world with talking ponies, but he would deal with that later. For now, he would ride out this possible hallucination until it ended.

“Well, I mean, not every human is the same color, most humans are different from each other by different tones of their skin, but I often ask myself that same question. At least, the part about being unique.”

(note: I’m sorry about the skin color thing, but you got to admit, if you showed up in Equestria, that question is bound to come up at some point)

“Hmm, very interesting. And I suppose you style your manes differently from each other too?”

“You mean my hair? Yeah, most people have different hair styles from each other.”

“Well, then I suppose you have that then. Look, I hate to cut this short, but my shift is up and I have to go home and make sure my little colt did his homework and such. But I’ll be back tomorrow, if you want to ask more questions.”

“Well, alright, fine. Have a good night, Nurse.”

“You too” She said, and trotted back out of the room.

“Heh” John said to himself. “I may just come to like this world before I even find a way back”

He laid back on his bed and tried to think about sleep again. But he couldn’t. His curiosity was piqued, and he wanted to explore now.

So he decided to sneak out a little, and explore. It was after dark, all the ponies should be in bed, right?

So he put on his half destroyed clothes, wincing as he put his shirt back on. While his clothes were all burned and tattered, they were better than walking around in his underwear. He smiled as he strapped his gun back onto his hip. It felt like he was missing a part of him without it. He checked the magazine, and just as he figured, he was only missing three rounds. Well, four, actually, but there was one chambered. He made a point of un-chambering that one and sliding it back into the magazine. No need for it to have a chance of accidentally going off, right?

After his gun was snug in its holster, he walked over to the window. He was still injured, but he had figured out how to walk without hurting himself already.

The window was super easy, just a simple slide lock, there wasn’t even a magnetic sensor. A quick check confirmed that yes, he was on the ground floor. No sense in being that stupid.

He stepped out of the window and into the somewhat cool night air. As he looked around, he noticed that yes, he was the only living thing outside right now. So that was good. He stepped forward, and, gaining momentum, started walking.

The walk was mostly uneventful, the town was like a ghost town at night. The cartoon-ish buildings seemed actually creepy, when in the daytime, he was sure they looked quite funny.

He was still walking an hour later, when he heard whimpering coming from a dark alley just down the street. He went to investigate, and was shocked and severely angered by what he saw.

There, in the middle of the alley, a grey unicorn stallion with a black mane had a white unicorn mare with a blue and electric blue mane pinned to the ground. He had her forelegs and horn enclosed in some kind of glowing entity, the same color as what was swirling around his horn. John took a wild guess and figured that was his magic. (you don’t say?)

He crept up behind them, unnoticed by both. He could hear the stallion muttering something to the mare as he raised her rump up with his hooves. “And now, Vinyl, since you have the GALL to do this to me, I am going to take from you the only thing I can. Your innocence.”

John was beyond angry at this point. He was fucking pissed! He never would have figured a cartoon-ey world with colorful talking horses could have such a dark side to it.

As he crept up closer to the two, the stallion still hadn’t noticed him. But the mare did. She stared at him with big, tear-filled, crimson eyes, and whimpered/mumbled something inaudible. John also noticed her mouth had a strip of magic across it.

“Shut up!” the stallion suddenly raised his voice a little. “Ain’t no pony coming to help you!”

“Oh,” Said John, a huge devious grin on his face as he towered over the stallion. “Definitely not a pony”

The stallion turned around, ready to attack. But two things happened. First, he got a look at John. Second, John had already grabbed him by the neck and tossed him to the ground by the time the stallion got a look at him. He held the thrashing pony to the ground, and bent down, speaking directly to his face.

“Now you listen here. I don’t know exactly what you were planning on doing to this mare here, but I have a pretty good idea. And where I come from, we don’t take very kindly to people…err….ponies like you. Now you have three seconds to get your sorry ass up and get out of here before I decide to do something more.” He growled, releasing the stallion.

The stallion looked like he was going to cut and run, but had a better idea a second later. He turned around and, before John had the chance to stand back up, bucked him straight in the chest. John groaned as he felt the breath rush out of him. Good thing he was on painkillers, otherwise that would have really hurt. But the stallion looked like he was going to try again. John may have been winded and injured, but these ponies were much smaller than he was, making this easier. He grabbed the stallion by the neck again, slamming him against the wall of the nearest building.

“You..” he growled through gritted teeth “Just made the biggest mistake of your life” he reached for his gun, but thought better of it. If this world was real, and not a hallucination, then why kill a person/pony and have everyone hate him? So he got a better idea.

“You caught me in a good mood today. But if I ever see your face around here again, I promise you I won’t be this nice.” He ended this statement by lifting the stallion off the ground again, and, grabbing his tail as well, hurling him bodily into the nearest dumpster.

Shifting his attention over to the white mare, he noticed that the magic bonds that were holding her down before were now gone. No surprise there, considering what he just did to their caster.

He knelt down close to the mare, and offered his hand, as if he were greeting a dog. “Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you , did he?”

“N...no,” she finally choked out, slowly approaching him. “I…I suppose I should thank you. If you hadn’t showed up, he might have…..” she trailed off, looking at John. His face was white, and his breathing heavy and labored, and within a few seconds, he was passed out on the street, the darkness once again rising to embrace him.

===================END CHAPTER 3===================

Well, there ya go! Sorry if this chapter makes anyone unhappy with me, but I felt like it was sort of necessary for the direction I’m going with this story. Anyway, I need sleep, it’s like 1 in the morning, which is why I’m not going to type much more than this sentence, so goodnight.