Day One

For the next few days, all was well. The harvest of tough tart Taloopa apples was going splendidly with Applejack. Rarity’s new line of duct tape dresses and suits were making a smash with adolescent ponies and their school proms. Pinkie’s daily party seminars at the community center had moved from an attendance of three ponies to seven and a half ponies. Rainbow Dash was still attempting the near impossible challenge of balancing a spoon on her nose. And Fluttershy was looking into the possibility of having mind control on account of her stare becoming more powerful by the day

Every pony continued on with the normal activities as always, except Twilight.

Since being told by Applejack of the disturbances, she could feel that something was off. It didn’t feel right, she didn’t know why and she didn’t know how, but the entire thing bothered her for some reason.

She had no idea what it was, but her gut told it was something important. Relying on bare instincts and intuition was totally not her style, but right then and now it felt necessary She knew something was up, she just couldn’t figure out what it was.

One foggy morning, Twilight decided to ease her tensions by going to the one place that could, the book store. The lemon scented air and cool rush of fresh pulped paper would hopefully calm her nerves.

The large store bell dinged as she pushed the railed door open with her head. She surveyed the room, as was her tradition, and found a comfortable area on the ground to lay out camp.

She set her saddle bag down with her books from home and briskly went off through the store to look for others. She browsed through the sections that interested her (mainly realistic fiction and fantasy) but found nothing new to her. The shipments must be delayed.

As she began to make her way back to the comfortable patch of carpet she had claimed for herself, an overweight employee, carrying a large box of books, bumped into her, spilling some of the contents.

Uttering a quick “sorry”, she began to pick up the spilled literature, strewn across the floor. She tossed all of them back into the employee’s box, one by one, until none remained on the floor.

“Thank you ma’am!” said the overweight pony. “That was very kind of you, pickin’ up all that stuff. Hey! In fact…” The employee quickly snatched into the box and pulled out a black and yellow hardback. “Here take this, for helping me out. Most of these are on clearance, I’m sure my manager won’t mind.”

Thanking Twilight once again, the employee handed it to her, and then quickly shuffled off back to work.

Shrugging her shoulders, she trotted back to her set up and sat down. Placing the stiff free book onto the floor, she began to examine it.

The front was mostly a large yellow smiley face in a black background. A single drop of blood was splattered on one of the eyes of the face, creating a major contrast between the two images. The title of the book was placed vertically on the side: Vigilantes.

“Ugh!” she grunted, sliding the book to her side in distaste. This was one of those, “graphic novels”. A really long comic book with childish drawings that took itself too seriously and almost was always about super-heroes. It was stuff like this that made her sick.

A cheap story can’t call itself a novel, especially when it’s just a bunch of stupid drawings involving goof-balls dressing up in Nightmare Night costumes.

Twilight shoved the “graphic novel” back into her saddle bag and pulled out a real book. Holding it at her eye level with her swirling pink aura of magic, she began to read.

_______________________________________________________________________

When she got outside a few hours later, the weather hadn’t much improved. The fog had evolved into a peppering rain and the slight morning chill had turned into large gusts of wind. The sun had gone down hours ago and most ponies where off the streets.

Stray leaves and paper where whizzing through the air while consistent specks of rain pounded against the ground. Large puddles where forming along the street sides, sending trails of muddy water across entire roads.

Twilight had to run home, even then she would still get soaked.

She galloped as fast as she could, through the town center, past the small shops, down the small dirt path, straight to her tree house of a home. The veil of rain felt like biting bats, stinging her as she sprinted as fast as she could. Her eyes were squinted shut as she dashed the last distance home.

About halfway down the road, just five hundred yards from her house, Twilight came across a pony in distress.

The pony was slumped down in the mud, their body in a puddle, completely motionless. This looked bad, real bad. No movement could be seen from the pony and they were undeterred by the storm raging around them. She called out to the stranger, hoping they’d yell back. No response. She called out again. Nothing.

Running closer, she arched down and swooped the pony onto her back. Sprinting the last distance home, she blasted through the front door. She had no time to wipe her hoofs or close the door, somepony needed help!

She gently laid the body onto one of the library benches and jumped back in horror.

She had heard about these moments in certain ponies lives before, the firsthand discovery of these animals had only been experienced by a select few, and now Twilight was one of them. She had seen pictures and read stories about the rare creature that was lying in her library. Not specifically about him, but about others of his kind, the silly looking travelers to Equstria.

She gasped in delight after looking at the peculiar creature a second time. A rare animal had just walked into her house (sort of) and now she got to study it first hoof! A chance like this, was a once in a lifetime opportunity, maybe even more! Containing her overwhelming giddiness, she began to inspect her guest.

It had all the features she had read about. Two legs, two arms, small nose, ears on the side of the head, strange apparatuses on the ends of both arms, and a small mane on the top of the head.

She took note of other unique qualities of this human, as compared to the other humans from Equstria’s past. This one had a large nose, fair skin, red blemishes on its forehead, and a cleft chin with a mole on it. It was of average height to most other humans, so still shorter then most ponies.

Of all the thoughts pacing through her mind, she started to think about the most important question, what should she do from here? Should she notify Princess Celestia of its arrival? Should she ask it a few questions? Should she just leave it there? What should she tell the ponies of Ponyville? Would he (it looked like a he) want to even stay in Ponyville?

The possibilities of the situation were endless for her and that made it even more spectacular! She started to spring up and down to let out some of her energy (which was overflowing at this point). Squealing, she hopped towards the ceiling, imitating Pinkie’s distinct style of moving around. But when she was halfway up, she froze in the air. She noticed something…off about the human.

Its right leg was positioned into a very unusual angle, like a crooked tree branch. Its brown trousers were greatly torn by the knees, with red stains dripped onto the sides. Faded yellow bandages were wrapped around many different parts of the leg, crudely applied, but still there.

The happy attitude had just changed. A sick and slimy feeling rolled into her stomach. A roll of sweat went down her face; a painful realization was coming into her mind.

The human’s body was badly mutilated. It hadn’t moved at all since she had brought it in, its breath was slow and unsteady, and she didn’t even want to feel its pulse.

Panic tapped at her slightly, then hit her like a twisted steel locomotive.

She had to act fast! There was no telling the extent of the creature’s injuries!

Darting into the upstairs bathroom, she pulled out everything from the medicine cabinet. Dashing back into the main area, her arms were bursting full of medical supplies.

She uncapped some disinfectant and poured the entire bottle onto the most bloodied areas and rubbed the clear liquid onto the largest wounds with a washcloth. Using her horn's magic, she gingerly removed the rotten bandages from the human's foot and then reapplied clean ones from the foot to the knee. A cut up leg was bad, but gangrene would be even worse!

The next part would be the most difficult. Breathing in deeply, she focused her magic onto the misshapen joint on the human’s leg. She held it there for a second, preparing, allowing the magic to focus into a single stretch of the human’s body.

With a single jolt of energy, she snapped the bone right back into place. A revolting POP was heard followed by silence. The human did not stir, not even a little.

Twilight was mortified at this and sprung her hoof forward to feel a pulse. Fitting her sharp hoof under his chin, she felt. A steady bump could be sensed, followed by another one and another one. The human was alive, thank Celestia!

Looking over her work, Twilight felt a swell of pride in herself. She had just saved a life and had done it all alone. Today was defiantly a productive one.

Once her adrenaline stopped pumping, she began to look over her work. She had just saved a life of a creature whose anatomy was entirely different from a ponies’ and not fully studied, working off guesswork, instincts, and a weekend’s course in first aid while staving off fear that her patient could have already flat lined. She had to hand it to herself, she was pretty good.

With some element of calm returning, she got back to thinking her situation over.

"How the hay had I not known about this?" said Twilight to no one in particular.

"Read about these kinds of things for years and well BAM there it is! I didn't even get to ask it anything. What's your name? Where are you from? Do you know the last human that was here? What do you like to do? Do you ever fall down? How are having two legs? Do you know about PRS? What about...”

Twilight continued talking to Twilight, trying to get some answers out of the tricky Twilight. But Twilight stopped talking to Twilight when the human finally made a noise.

“Ughhhhh” it grunted through its sleep, possibly realizing amazingly painful leg surgery it had just gone through.

Twilight again jumped back in horror, but this time yelping. She needed to get used to extra-dimensional visits from absolute strangers.

Pushing the bench (with the human on it) into the library level bathroom, she locked the door with a shiny yellow key and tied the window shut with a thick rope.

A fear of hers was the human walking out in the middle of the night, unaware of what was going on. Its ignorance to Equstria could possibly cause embarrassment and humiliation to itself over not knowing how the world worked. Either way, she didn't want that for him. She promised that she would do her best to prevent any form of discord while the human was in her care, partially out of anxiety and partially out of obligation.

Walking up the stairs she realized that through this entire ordeal, Spike hadn't woken up. Must be in another 'lost in a diamond mine' dream again, she thought.

Once lying down, Twilight hadn't realized how tired she was until everything turned black, and she heard herself snoring.