Ponies, Please

I had hardly gotten any sleep last night, the howling winds and cries of my son constantly preventing me from getting enough shut-eye. What didn’t help at all was who was standing third in line. That human actually came back. Why did he have to come back? Hell, he even had on that oblivious smile from before. I lazily trotted over to my booth, and turned my microphone on with a quick button press. “Next!”

The first pony entered through easily enough, offering me a ticket to a brothel with a sly wink.

Bastard.

The next was an obviously overweight women, human in fact. How they managed to gain so much weight while still maintaining the ability to walk was still a mystery to me. However, turned out all that weight was a fake, the bugles of her fat just a disguise to smuggle drugs into the city. What happened next was the usual brush-in with the guards, with her being dragged away and cursing my name. Just another typical day, I guess. Didn’t even bother to look her way, only yelling for the next in line to arrive. That strange human fellow from before, of course, was the next one at my booth.

“Good morning to you, friend!” The man laughed, but I was too awestruck with what he had on his head. Was that an ice cream cone? Taped to his forehead? And vanilla? Whatever… just gotta get through the day. I groaned and asked for his papers.

“Here!” He smiled, handing me an Equestrian passport. I took one look and it and my jaw went slack. “Stalliongrad still best country for sure!”

“Uh… Sir…” My eye twitched with annoyance. “It says here that your name is… Rarity? And you’re a tailor unicorn from Ponyville?”

“Yes!” he replied, nodding his head. “That is me.”

“Well, for starters, this isn’t even the right papers for a pony from Ponyville,” I said, checking my registry book. “Along with the fact that you’re not even a pony, never mind a female.”

“No,” he denied, calmly shaking his head. “I am pony. My name Rarity. Let me in, please.”

“Sir, even if you were Rarity, which you aren’t, I couldn’t let you in. This passport has expired.” I returned it back to him, with a newly-added red stamp of denial. “If you’re going to fake a passport, at least get the expiration date right next time, sir.”

The man just laughed again. Dammit, what’s so funny? “Okay, you caught me. Jorji told a little lie. I’ll see you again soon, okay?”

“Hopefully with the correct papers,” I replied, already losing interest and preparing to press the microphone button. Sadly, it didn’t seem like the next entrant was willing to wait. A pegasus ran through and jumped into a short flight over the border before I could even lower the gates, holding a grenade in her mouth.

Well, shit.

The unicorn guards at the end of the border readied their rifles, and there were three loud bangs as they took their shots. The pegasus slumped to the ground, lying in pool of her own blood before the grenade went off. I closed the shutters. No matter how many times it happened, seeing a pony explode just wasn’t something I wanted to deal with.

The line scattered, my job coming to a close faster than I expected that day, people and ponies alike running back to Equestria. Looks like those new security measures would be coming in sooner than I thought.

As I was jostled by the guards to evacuate the area, I thought back to that human fellow. Jorji. How could he be so optimistic and cheerful, when in this world everything was so bleak? Were us ponies always like this, or did the humans change things? I guess in the end, it didn’t matter.

What did matter was that I couldn’t get the image of that dead pony out of my head.