Don't Panic: Chapter III

Day 5 in Equestria

 

>You were currently seated in a rather small chair, with a rather small purple unicorn hooking various wires and other doodads to your person. There also happens to be a rather large metal dish on your head. You could have sworn it was a straining bowl that she'd re-purposed, but you weren't trying to focus on the strange experiments being performed on you.

>No, you were trying to take your mind off of all the strangeness of your predicament by focusing on the other, much less strange things around you.

>It had come to your attention when you first arrived in this hollowed out tree, that it was actually a library. Every inch of the walls were covered  in literature, the spines of various books lining the shelves and showing off their titles and names.

>Suddenly you get a thought in your head that you feel, if only to distract yourself from the wires and incessant beeping from the machines around you, you just had to say out loud.

“A Treebary.”

>”What?” asks the small purple unicorn, looking up at you confusedly with a few more wires in her mouth.

“This place. It’s a Treebary,” you say back to her, a sort of worried grin on your face.

>She cocks an eyebrow at you and nods. “Right,” she says, “A Treebary... you DO know it’s a library, right?”

“Well yes, but it’s a library IN a tree. Naturally it deserves some sort of special name, like a Book Nook, or a Libraratree.”

>You grin to yourself when you say the latter.

“In fact,” you begin, “I rather think I prefer Libraratree over Treebary. It just sounds much more... well, Libraratree-y, don’t you think?”

 

>She’s confused, doubly so now that you’ve begun making up words. Up until this point, you haven’t made a peep since you were dragged into the Libraratree by Rainbow Dash and this unicorn. Said her name was Twilight Sparkle, if you weren’t mistaken.

>You had holed yourself up in your apartment once more, sleeping soundly in the night when they struck. Well, “struck” seems like a rather harsh word to use when describing it. They more or less walked calmly into your home, threw a rather comfortable sack over your head, and dragged you to this Libraratree, where Twilight has spent the last few hours next to machines that go “Ping!” while nodding and mumbling to herself. Dash hovers in the air above you, eyeing you with suspicion still. You tilt your head back up to her and give a smile, albeit a nervous, worried one.

>”Twilight,” Dash starts, “what are all these doohickies telling you? Is he a monster? An alien? A spy?!”

>Twilight glances at various papers that whir out of the machines, peering analytically at the lines scratched onto them. Clearing her throat, she confidently asserts, “I have no clue what he is.”

>Dash stares at her, her mouth agape in disbelief.

>”You mean to tell me that you spent three hours with all those wires and doodads stuck to him, and you can’t even tell what he IS?!”

“Is this a straining bowl on my head?”

>”Hush,” says Twilight as she begins plucking the wires from your skin. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen something quite like you in all of Equestria. I’ve studied ponies, dragons, a hydra or two, even a draconequus one time. But you?... you’re rather strange.”

 

“Well now that you mention it, I do believe that I’m not really from around here. In fact, I’ve told this to your little techni colored, winged friend many times in the last two days,” you say as you stare sternly up at Rainbow Dash.

>”What? I was just being cautious!” she shouts down at you as you continue judging her with your eyes.

“Miss Dash, tapping on my window menacingly in the dark of the night is not being cautious, it is terrifying.”

>”I was being terrifyingly cautious, then,” she says as she crosses her hooves and shrugs.

“Miss Sparkle, if you don’t mind me asking, couldn’t you have asked Pinkie Pie about me? Or, better yet, just asked ME about myself? The late night kidnapping wasn’t very necessary I think.”

>Twilight looks at you puzzlingly. “Are you... shaking?” she asks.

“Yes. I am quite scared at the moment.”

>”But you seem so... calm.”

“It’s a defense mechanism. I stay calm on the outside, while on the inside I am screaming bloody murder.”

>Twilight sort of nods as she continues to pluck wires and other various things from your skin, but then asks, “Anonymous, why would I ask Pinkie Pie about you? Does she know you well?”

“Ah,” you begin, rubbing a spot on your wrist where a wire was taped, “well she happens to be the only pony in this town who’d greeted me without strapping me to a chair or dragging me out into the night, so that’s one thing. That, and I’ve told her all about where I come from.”

>”Any other reasons?”

“Well... she’s pink.”

>Twilight and Rainbow look to each other, and then back to you.

>”What does being pink have to do with anything?” asks Dash, landing softly to the floor.

“Nothing really. I just like pink I suppose. Can I get out of this chair and sprint back to my house now?”

 

>Dash gives a noncommittal shrug, but Twilight cringes just a bit when you mention going back to your house. Her expression doesn’t slip by you, and you glance back at her.

“What?”

>”What?”

“You winced, why did you wince?”

>”I didn’t wince,” she says as she winces.

“There. Right there, you winced. Am I not allowed to go back to my apartment?”

>Twilight fidgets around a bit, darting her eyes from side to side. Now Dash is next to you as you both look at Twilight with suspicion. Eventually, Twilight relents and gives a deep exhale.

>”Okay,” she starts, her voice solemn, “so, you know how your house is in the middle of the town square?”

“Yes.”

>”Well,” she continues, “Mayor Mare can’t really find a feasible way to move it out of the way... so she asked me to distract you for a few hours.” She gives a weak grin at this, but you simply stare at her while you process this.

“She asked you to distract me for a few hours?”

>”Uh, yes.”

“Distract me from what?”

>With a loud bang, the door to the Libraratree bursts open, and Pinkie Pie darts inside and bounds over to you. She’s absolutely leaping all over the tree’s hollow trunk, darting from you, to Dash, to Twilight, and back to you. She is shouting. At least you think she is, for all you know this could very well be her normal speaking tone.

 

>”Anonymous, you won’t believe what I saw when I went to your apartment thingy to drop off ten cherry pies I made last night out of sheer boredom! I was bouncing on over there with all the pies balanced on my nose because I’m really, really good at balancing things on my nose, and then when I got to your house I saw a big ‘ole bulldozer sitting outside of it and I just freaked out because I’ve never seen a bulldozer in the middle of the town square and so I went up to the pony in the bulldozer and it was the Mayor! So I was like, “Hiya Mayor Mare, want a cherry pie?” and she was all, “Sorry Pinkie I have to bulldoze this building while that tall monkey thing is distracted and away from it,” and that’s when I realized that she was totally going to bulldoze your house so I threw a pie at her and-”

>How Pinkie Pie finished that long, run on of a paragraph was unknown to you, for as soon as she told you that the Mayor was about to demolish your home, you found that your entire being was sprinting towards the town square, your eyes wide and pupils the size of pinpricks.

>Of course, Pinkie eventually caught up to you. Lord knows she was ungodly fast for her stature.

>”Don’t worry Anon!” she says as she bounds beside you in long leaps. “I’ve already taken the liberty of making a bunch of signs we can protest with!”

>She whips out a large poster that reads, “Shave the Whales.”

“Pinkie, my predicament has absolutely NOTHING to do with whales, nor does it have to do with their hair growth!”

>”Woops, wrong sign,” she says as she throws it behind her while whipping out another poster. “Here’s yours!”

>It reads, “Don’t Tread on My Apartment. Because Then I Won’t Have a Home and That Would Be Sad, as Having a Home is Pretty Important in This Day and Age, What With The Economy Being How it is Right Now.”

>Brilliance.

 

“Pinkie, please I am TRYING to save my house before it’s-”

>The words are caught in your mouth, as your eyes behold subpar sight. The spot where your apartment once was is now lying in a heap, bits of wood and concrete all piled up into a depressing heap, as a large yellow bulldozer casually pushes the rest of your old life across the street of the town square.

>You open and close your mouth a couple of times, your brain unable to properly form words that accurately portray just how flabbergasted you are right now. You suppose you should be feeling rage, if anything, but for the life of you that emotion just wasn’t forming all that well at the moment. If you had to describe the emotion you were feeling right now, you suppose you could call it a “stunned inconvenience.”

“But-... Why would they-... that was my HOUSE.”

>You stumble into the rubble of your home, looking at what used to be a bed, but was now an unappealing pancake of a mattress. Your couch was crush, your cabinets were destroyed, your whole house, every inch of it, was gone.

>Even your towels were trampled beyond repair.

“Why is everything in this place being so hostile towards me? I haven’t even-...”

>You don’t even bother finishing your complaint. Instead, you just slump to the ground and sit in what you think used to be your living room. Pinkie Pie quietly trots up next to you, taking care to watch her step, lest she step on something you used to care about. She’s even still holding the poster.

>”Uhm,” she says, laying the poster down to the side and sitting next to you, “I guess this isn’t the best time to ask if you want to have a fun playdate, huh?”

 

>You don’t answer her. Instead, you just give a piece of wood a dull kick, a hand on your cheek as you sulk in the remains of your home.

>Pinkie frowns a bit, but perks her ears up. “Stay right here,” she says, as she zips away from you and disappears for a minute or two.

>Huh... maybe you were wrong about her as well. Maybe after seeing all this, she finally gave up on you. Five days in Equestria, and your house is a big pile of nothing. Wonderful.

>And then, to your surprise, Pinkie Pie returns with two cupcakes balanced on her nose.

“...you’re right. You are pretty good at balancing things on your snout.”

>She gives a giggle, and extends her snout out to you to take one of the cupcakes. You do, and hold it in your hands for a bit while Pinkie sits next to you with hers, as ponies from around town begin to look at what the two of you are doing. Must not be everyday they saw a human and a pony sitting in a demolished home with desserts.

>”Don’t worry Mister Anon,” she says with a smile, “I’m sure we can find you a nice home around here for you to stay in! I promise!”

“Well... thank you Pinkie Pie. That means a lot.”

>You pat her head, scratching behind her ear a tad as you do as she giggles further with a mouthful of cupcake.

>”Well of course, Anonymous! After all, what else are friends for than to make sure they take care of each other?”

>She had a point, after all.

>Taking a bite from your cupcake, you can’t help but smile back at her.

“Pinkie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

 

END