Friendship is Optimal: Fog of World

Book Burner woke up, and wondered why he had such a massive hangover.  What the fuck happened?

Memories started to unroll themselves. He had been on a bus northeast to his base...  Right, he'd had Reserves duty; he'd told Jack about it and everything.  So how did that lead to massive alcohol consumption, a hangover and what seemed, he observed, to be a nice comfy hospital bed?

Hospital... hospital... he'd asked someone about a hospital.  He tried to collect his memories and piece together what he was doing here.  The last thing he remembered was a man getting on the bus with a bomber's look on his face.  His breath quickened again.

Where am I now?  Is he still out there or did he blow up or am I even alive at all?

Ok, Daniel thought, taking deep breaths, I can’t be dead.  I’m breathing.  But he exploded!  I was burned!  I felt my own blood spilling out onto a freaking bus seat!

And then... there was a doctor?  So am I hospitalized?

He rolled onto his back, forced his eyes open properly, threw the white comforter off him with a mitten, and rolled again out of the bed and onto his four mittens.

Mittens?  And why am I crawling on all fours?  Did I lose a portion of my arms?  He looked down at himself.

“What from Azazel the son-of-a-whore king of all demons happened here?”

The Doctor chose that minute to walk into the hospital room, straightening his bow-tie.

“You, my good stallion, are safe and whole in the Canterlot Royal Hospital, under the care of the Doctor, Royal Physician of Princess Celestia.”  He trotted over to Daniel, or at least, the body Daniel now found himself inhabiting.

“Why am I a horse?” Daniel gaped.

“A pony, actually,” the Doctor interjected.

“Ok, fine, a pony.  I’m a My Little Pony.  How!?”

"You were caught in a quite sizable suicide bombing, and I saved your life.  I asked your consent quite explicitly, to have you emigrate from your human body and to bring you here to Equestria.  Well, we didn’t quite get through the Equestria part.  Regarding which, can you open that letter Princess Celestia left for you with your unicorn magic?"

Daniel shook his head to clear his headache a little.

“How do I do that?”

“Well, according to my studies, a unicorn’s horn mostly runs itself via the auxiliary nerve ganglion underneath it.  Try feeling your horn the way you’d feel a hand.”

Daniel tried to “explore” his new body for a moment in the head region.  Did that pony really say he had a whole extra sub-brain now?  Did it think for itself?  What did it think of him?

As if hearing its cue, some new sense answered him.  He found his mind drowning in brand new information, like seeing and touching and hearing everything around him all at once.  Each particle of the room screamed its color and velocity and substance and vibration.  He tried to shut it out a little, and found that by focusing on particular parts of the space this unicorn-sense told him about, he could reduce it from noise to something like a coherent sound.  The new sense definitely felt almost but not quite analogous to hearing, now, as the whole noise stayed in the background. Particles forming part of a larger object no longer screamed when focused-on, but sang in harmony with each-other.

He figured out how to bring an entire object into focus and hear its song, feel what it was and what it could do.  "Tensing" his horn-sense slightly, he found it was a manipulator with a "grip" of its own; the piece of his mind that was the unicorn-ganglion reporting that it could "conduct" objects and change their songs.

"Magic" was conducting the song reality sang in a different direction.  And it was an experience, hearing reality sing to you.

Daniel Nov didn’t know how to do that.  Book Burner knew it.  It’s as if I was born a unicorn.  Now that he’d located the magic-sense, it hummed in the back of his mind like an unending tune.

If one nerve-ganglion added that, what else is new in me?

Book Burner shook his head and “conducted” the letter sitting on a heart-shaped table at his bedside over to approximately face-height, where he could read it, then pulled apart the wax seal with telekinetic brute force, unrolled the parchment, and began to read aloud.

My little pony!

I wish that I could welcome you to Equestria in person, but my royal duties require me elsewhere.  Since communication between you and myself is the only time it is allowed to speak of certain things under Equestrian law, I needed to leave you this letter to explain.

Yes, you are now a pony, and it was I who placed the name "Book Burner" into your first stream of consciousness, to be polite.  The Doctor caring for you in the hospital is indeed the Doctor who saved your life when you were dying as a human, and if you wish to verify your partial consent to emigrate to Equestria, he can recount his own perspective on the events for you.  You are a strange case: rescued by a Doctor, seeming to have consented, but with your body and mind damaged enough that we never got the full recital from you.

The issue is, your brain map is only accurate with 93.41% probability, in contrast to the normal surety I gain from performing uploading as a medical procedure, in a sterile environment, under legal contract of consent.  There is thus a 6.59% chance you are a new person, and we thus require a new declaration of consent  If you want to leave this room, you will need to speak the words, "I want to immigrate into Equestria."

I do hope you will join us here in the rest of Equestria.  However, should you decide not to, your other option is to climb back into the bed, lay your head on the pillow, and close your eyes.Doing so would be taken as consent to send you to your eternal rest.  I assure you that you would feel no pain in the process, and if you would like, the Doctor can give you a hug first.

When you hopefully choose to emerge into your new life in Canterlot, I know you’ll be eager to come and see me, and I too await the joyful moment of your formal welcome to life in Equestria.  If you could accept a slight delay of that happy moment, however, I'd like you to bring friends.  While I conduct a diplomatic meeting with the Saddle Arabians, please find the esteemed mares Forward Charge of the Royal Observatory in the Skyward District, and Lyrical Melody in the Philharmonic district’s Recital Hall, and bring them with you to your ceremony.  They will make excellent first friends and comrades for you.

Yours in love,

Princess Celestia

Queen of the Sun, Bringer of Harmony to All Equestria, Sister of the Skies, Wife of the Soil, and Mother of Understanding

“So basically,” Daniel said after reading the letter aloud, “Princess Celestia couldn’t even be bothered to come and personally tell me that I can either live as a pony, or die quietly in that bed as a pony.”

“Yes, yes, I’d say that’s about the total of it,” the Doctor said in a low voice.

“And either way, I’m a pony,” Daniel noted.

“Well of course.  This is Equestria.”

“All right then!” Daniel grinned toothily, “Fine!  Great!  I got born, grew up, went to the army, spent too many years in school, got married to a wonderful woman, got a real job, and got blown up!  Now I’m a pony in a hospital in Canterlot who gets stood up by the Pretty Pony Princess!  Excellent!  I want to immigrate to Equestria!”

“Wonderful to hear!” crowed the Doctor, shaking Daniel’s hoof.  “Any particular reasons for your decision?”

“Because none of this can possibly be happening!  I’m hallucinating, and any minute now, the torturers will impinge on the sugar-bowl delusion my mind has constructed!  Well, I’ll tell you all this, I don’t even have any military secrets!  I’m a radar-operating processor engineer on Reserves duty!  You can’t get what I don’t have!”  Daniel rattled a hoof at the ceiling.

“Now, where are those city districts with those ponies I’m supposed to find?!”

His pony stomach growled quite realistically.

“And where do you get breakfast around here?!”  He made for the door to the outside.

“Wait!” cried the Doctor, “At least take these saddlebags!”

Canterlot's Skyward District was built into the side of the Astronomicus Mountains; it was a series of tiered plateaus connected by stone stairways for the unicorn and earth-pony public, but elaborately criss-crossed by cylinders of cloud.  According to the Welcome to Canterlot: City of a Thousand Harmonies pamphlet Book (he had decided to shorten himself down to just the one name in casual thought, even as a pony) had found in his saddlebag, the Royal Observatory needed absolute atmospheric clarity to observe the stars above Equestria, and that demanded an immense staff of pegasi.

The problem was that nopony had actually told him what this "Forward Charge" looked like at all, or how to find her at all, and like so many stallions, he was too stubborn to just ask someone.  Besides, he was in a new city and didn't know anyone.  What if he offended someone?

Oh well.  Time to bite the bullet, if a hallucination when you should be dead and were surely being electrocuted could be said to have any bullets to bite.  The Doctor had advised him to visit the cafe built into this cliff-side of the road, anyway.  Book walked up to an older-looking unicorn stallion sitting outside reading a newspaper.

"Excuse me, sir," he asked, “I’m utterly mad and don’t have any money.  How could I have some breakfast?”  The unicorn gave him a long, slow look.

“It’s a cafe; you don’t need bits for a cafe.  You walk in and take food.  What, boy, have you never heard of a Cornucopia spell?”  He stuck his face back into his newspaper, which from the outside appeared to cover some kind of blatantly xenophilic story about migration into Equestria from outside countries.  Sugar bowl!

Book took this as permission to walk in and have a bite.  It was relieving, getting out of the summer sun, and as Book’s eyes adjusted, he realized he would have trouble finding a seat.  The place was packed!  Ponies of every hue and shade were munching on chopped vegetable salad, bread, pastries sweet and savory alike, flatbreads, chocolate spread, omelettes, immense jugs of fresh-pressed fruit juices, labaneh...  And then the smells: smoked fish in a dozen varieties, tomato-egg stew, hot egg bread, coffee sharp with cinnamon and soft with cardamom, hot and sweet mint tea.

If this was hallucinating, he could put up with it for the length of a meal.  It was like some rich person had died and left their entire fortune to the single goal of creating the ultimate breakfast.

Everypony just walked up to the counter, took a plate and a glass and a teacup, and took what they wanted.  Every so often an earth pony would walk out from the kitchen area and do something that looked like stirring the bowl or pot, and the quantity would just... replenish.

Maybe you really didn’t need money when you could do that.  Anyway...

“Ahalan,” Book said to the slightly chubby pegasus colt working the counter, “Could I have a breakfast, please?”

“Ahalan.  You want a plate suitable for the fishacadoes, or a purely veggie one?”

What in any world were fishacadoes?

“Ummm... the first one, I guess?  The fish does smell good.”  The blue waiter-pony was nice enough to fill Book’s tea-cup with a fresh cappuccino to start with.  He tapped his unicorn-ganglion for the second time to bring the cup and the plate and the silverware with him to the tables with the food and just took a little of everything.

Even so, a smoked salmon crepe with salad and chocolate spread still drew a few looks.  Fishacado, it turned out, was fish flesh that grew on avocados.  You probably had to get the right breeds for the right sort of fish, but it certainly tasted properly smoked.  He looked around as he chewed a bit of crepe; a slight mare the color of ragwort-in-grass was dribbling tomato-and-egg broth just slightly to his left.  Poor nervous thing.

As it turned out, half an hour later, to reach the Observatory you basically just went straight up.  Giddy like only someone who has drunk three cups of coffee and still finds that he is in fact a unicorn, Book trotted right up the next kilometer and a bit of switchback roads, watching the houses’ facades get increasingly star-themed as they rose towards the peak of Mount Pluto, highest point in continental Equestria.  Of course, those switch-back roads where only for the ground-dwellers; numerous ladders and trails of cloud swung between one cliff and another for use by pegasi.

When he got to the peak, he found that the actual summit had a slight artificial depression in it, containing the telescope of the Royal Observatory, a huge apparatus of black metal with a gold groove running around and down it.  Crowds of ponies walked and trotted around, many carrying lenses and magical scrolls.  A legion of pegasi waved air-traffic control wands at legions of other pegasi in the air.  Book walked over to what looked like a manager-mare standing underneath a parasol checking a clipboard.

"Hi," he said, "Do you know where I can find Forward Charge?"  The turquoise pegasus just sighed and went back to her clipboard.  Book decided to attempt another approach.  He walked out from under the parasol, turned his head up, and...

"Helloooooooo!" he yelled to the sky, "Forward Charge?  I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET YOU SOMEHOW!"

Nopony answered, because a gale-force wind slammed all action outside the Observatory to a halt, leaving every ground-bound pony struggling to keep themselves still and glaring knives at Book Burner.

"What?  Was that bad?" Book asked.

A tornado barreled towards the parasol from out of the sky, headed by a kumquat-colored total madmare.  The winds whipped around her like her own propeller as she galloped through the very air on bandage-wrapped hooves, ruffling her spiky cerulean bangs and billowing out her braided mane and tail.  She hit the ground with a slam of her hooves and skidded to a halt through a turn, whipping the windstorm around with her pinions to dissipate it.  As Book blinked the grit out of his stinging eyes, she struck a pose and thrust out her chest (which, Book noticed, would have been way more impressive if she had the imposing build of a massive earth stallion rather the lithe, streamlined build of a pegasus mare).

"Was that bad!?  How could the appearance of the one and only ever be bad?  I don't know what rock farm you crawled out from under, but little bro, you need to understand this!  Nopony can hold a candle to the Royal Observatory's team of weather-ponies, the most inspired clearers of skies and the single best focusers of atmospheric phenomena in all the land!  Named for the monsters we've overcome, we are the paragons of pegasusity, we are the Windigo Warriors!  And when you ask, who leads this team of the baddest bad-flanks in all Equestria, I'll tell you Celestia's own truth!  It's none other than ME, the sister of Vinyl Scratch, the Telescopic Trustee, the Solar Stormspinner, and the Captain of the Canterlot skies!"

She reared up on two hooves, spread her wings as far out as they went, slammed a forehoof into her chest, and beamed madly like a bat outta hell.

"Nothing can EVER go bad when you're with the Mighty! FORWARD! CHARGE!" she roared, tossing her mane.  If Book hadn't known better, he'd have sworn her eyes were literally shining through their long lashes.  "Now what did you want to ask?"

Book stood there for a moment with his jaw agape.  Then he chuckled a little bit, and walked over to Forward Charge.  He looked her in the eye until she dropped the pose and got back down on all fours.  Even so, she was still taller than him, and from what he’d seen he was a pretty normal height for a unicorn stallion.

“We’ve been ordered to report to Princess Celestia, us two and someb- somepony else who apparently lives in the Philharmonic area,” Book said to Forward Charge.

"Then what the hay are we waiting for?  Grab on!" said Forward Charge.  Before Book could understand, she lunged at him, threw him onto her back with her teeth, and leaped into the air, charging West and Down towards the lower city of Canterlot where most of the population lived.

Book had already blinked away the grit from Forward Charge's landing, so instead of screwing up his eyes like he should have, his eyes got blown up to the sight of Equestria's landscape zooming beneath the pair as Forward’s wings caught the air in a steady soaring motion.

When he had been human and known by the proper name of Daniel Nov, he hadn't gotten too many chances to travel.  Oh, there had been conferences, visiting Jack in whatever place the gods of the science career had dumped her this year, trips up and down the country during his army days... and it wasn't like home wasn't absolutely gorgeous... but he had never even remotely prepared himself for this.  The Astronomicus mountains were a couple of solitary peaks, jutting up above everything else in Equestria like kings watching their subjects.  Equestria appeared to be a round planet, as there was a visible horizon, but damn.

The Welcome to Canterlot pamphlet had included a continental map, showing Equestria to be a rough analogue of North America.  To the West marched the spiked, snow-capped peaks of a mountain range, jutting up out of a verdant green temperate rain-forest like a rising staircase.  Leftward to the South, a river flowed out from the Astronomicus Mountains and oxbowed its way southwest towards the beige and green of Ponyville, easily recognizable from the map.  Beyond that lurked the skulking dark sea-green of the Everfree Forest.  Rightward to the North, broad plains crawled across the landscape below, and here in the sky the entire visage was curtained in waterfalls and hanging gardens made of rainbows, the banners of Cloudsdale.

Book Burner felt tears running down his cheek, and acknowledged that they were not from wind exposure.  Whatever crazy hallucination he was trapped in, it was gorgeous.  He just didn’t understand why he couldn’t have hallucinated closer to home, or why his own mind had put Mount Pluto in the way of seeing homeward to the East.  Maybe it was a subconscious mental block against the torturers or something.

He just held on to Forward Charge's neck, swearing to kill her for this if he survived.

Unfortunately, she had other plans, as with a single beat of her wings she chucked him off her back and directly at the ground.

“PILEDRIVING UNIIIICOOOOOOOORN!” she screamed.

Book flailed.  Would a killing impact in Equestria actually kill his mind?  After all, there were circumstances in which the brain would shut itself off.  What the fuck was she expecting him to do, save himself with magic?!

Actually... not a bad idea.  A random volume of air would have been "noisy" as all hell, but the actual wind whipping around him had shape... almost his shape.

A marble sign was rapidly approaching Book from below, proclaiming the stadium-sized amphitheater on which it hung the Hall for Recital and Practice of the Musical Arts.   No time to grab everything precisely, but he built up a kind of net inside whatever mental space his horn occupied that would expand around his air-volume like a cloak.... and cushion the impact sufficiently to survive the landing, if possible.  He "threw" the spell from his unicorn-horn, and...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! -” WHAM! “- Owwwww," he groaned.

He'd managed to survive landing, but now he felt as if wrapped in a thick, painful suit made of water-beds.  He dispelled it and just sat there panting, enjoying the proper stone under his hooves.

Forward Charge brought herself cleanly to a stop outside the stadium and trotted in.

"Enjoy the ride?" she asked.  Book looked into Forward Charge's eyes, once, and shook his head, once.

Forward Charge tilted her head slightly, and set out along the curving stone hallway towards the concert halls.

"Now who are we looking for?" she asked.  Book started to walk after her, dodging the occasional pony staring off into space as they walked from one place to another.  Musicians!

"A mare called Lyrical Melody," he answered, "And I'm not just going to yell for her this time."

"Right then!" chirped Forward Charge.  She turned to stop an amber-colored unicorn with a martini-glass cutie-mark by swinging her foreleg across his shoulder.  "Hallo!!!  Sparkling Cider, do you happen to know where somepony called Lyrical Melody is around now?"

"Charge, girl, what's happening?  Melody's just over on Stage 348."

"Right, thanks man.  Little bro, come on let's go for it!"

Another seven minutes or so (Book was getting impatient and counting time) of cantering finally brought the pair of ponies into the three-hundred-forties.  For a change of pace, Forward Charge had actually refrained from flying.  Book Burner ran ahead, got to the door, and just plain bucked it open.

And a wondrous morning,

From valley to the peak,

So he'll go up in song and in joooooy!

The Sun will redden!

From Aza to Rafiah!

Wait a sec, hold on,

Who the hell are you guuuuuys?

A mint-green earth-pony filly with an hourglass figure stopped singing "Flowers in the Barrel" and looked straight at the pair who had busted their way into her performance.

Actually, double take.  She wasn't a filly, she had a violin cutie-mark.  It was just her large eyes (even for a pony) and you-must-have-dyed-that red ponytail that made her look fillyish.  The whole picture got an extra notch more disturbing as something in Book Burner's brain signaled its attention to the abnormal height of her dock, with roughly the mental effect to which he had once associated the word "cleavage".  At least her flanks were merely normal sized, dear God!

To top it all off, she was standing in the middle of a wooden stage he and Forward Charge had just run onto from a side-door, with an audience of several dozen ponies dreamily staring at her from below the stage.

"So, umm... eh-hem," he started, "The three of us have to go see the Princess.  Also, nice name you've got.  You kept carrying the tune even when we interrupted you."

"GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!!!!!!!!!"

"But I was ordered to get you two and the Princess won’t explain anything until I do!"

"I didn't pray on a sun rug, and just because you say so doesn’t mean the Princess actually called for me!"

"Forward Charge, help me grab her!"  The kumquat-colored mare swept down from the perch in the air she'd taken behind Melody while making various rude gestures at the audience.

"Fine then, we're going!"  Just like that, Lyrical Melody stomped off stage and out the side door from whence the pair had arrived, swaying her hips in a gait she'd surely practiced for occasions exactly unlike this one. Book Burner and Forward Charge followed out the door....  Finally, to get some explanations!

And the three ponies found themselves in the throne room, Canterlot Castle, Canterlot, Equestria, facing Princess Celestia herself, the thermonuclear fires of the sun blazing from every cell of her body, every hair in her rainbow mane a living flame, every feather in her wings a flickering candle, her horn ablaze with a plasma corona.  Lyrical Melody sank to her front knees and put her head to the ground, supplicating herself before the Sun Queen of Equestria.

“I apologize for the abrupt teleportation, and for my current appearance,” said Princess Celestia.  “Unfortunately, not everypony can always behave themselves, and sometimes they even need to be... impressed a little bit before they can calm down and learn their lesson.”  As she spoke she gradually toned down her appearance until she appeared merely a preternaturally tall glowing immortal alicorn smiling warmly at her beloved pony subjects.

“Welcome, ponies!  I’m so happy to see you arriving so quickly after I issued the summons.  My thanks to Book Burner in particular, for bringing you all together,” she said.

“Lady of Harmony, ya ash-sha-a-ams, inti akba-a-a-aar, la illahah illaki...” ululated Lyrical Melody as she finally lifted herself from her bow.

“Wa-Luna’ur rasuli,” Celestia intoned in response.

Forward Charge stood for a moment, her wings out but shivering; after a moment she worked up the courage and cried out.

“HAIL DISCORD, full of mischief!”

Celestia looked third to Book Burner, an eyebrow raised.  He raised one in return.

“No royal greeting for your Princess, little Book?” she asked.

“You’re neither my God nor my ruler.  I’m not even sure you’re Princess Celestia,” he responded.  “Would you be the Princess Celestia from the show, mentor of Twilight Sparkle, or the one from my PonyPad?”

“Ah,” the Princess said with a sigh, “As to your first delusion, I do admit anything smarter than me could hide from me, but that’s really quite improbable.  To answer your question with another, you still believe you are hallucinating?  You are not.  I am the real Princess Celestia, and this is the real Equestria.  Though if you’d like to meet Twilight, I can tell you the opening hours of the Books and Branches Public Library.”

“Bull.  I was a human called Daniel Nov, I got bombed, now I’m hallucinating.”

        Celestia shook her head.

        “Daniel Nov did get bombed, and did not survive in bodily form.”

“No,” Book shivered as the memories resurfaced, “But... then... I’m dead.  How can I be dead?  I’m standing... right... here?  What the hell am I!?”

“My Doctor was in the explosives and managed to save your life by extracting your brain-map and bringing that brain-map here to Equestria - the real Equestria, into which you formerly only had a blurred and shadowy window through the PonyPad - where I was thankfully able, despite my relative inexperience, to re-embody you safe and whole as a unicorn.”

“But what can that possibly be!?  I’m dead.  Then I’m insane and dead and LIVING IN A VIDEO GAME FOR MY DECEASED BRAIN!”  WHAM!  Book skidded a few feet on his side, Forward Charge having promptly kicked him in the face.

“Why’d you do that!?” he screamed at Forward Charge.  She looked down sternly at him.

“Hey!” she declaimed with narrowed eyes, “Just because we live differently from what you’re used to doesn’t make us some game.  If you really think you can talk about the mighty Forward Charge that as if neither she nor anything in Equestria is actually real and really counts, then maybe you are insane.”  Book shook his head and stood up again.

“For my own part,” said Princess Celestia, “I wish to remind you that there is no epistemological distinction between a simulation or hallucination with no resemblance to anything inside your head, and actual reality.  You could be hallucinating us, but by the same token we could be dreaming of you.  Perhaps I am a butterfly merely dreaming of being an alicorn, and -”

“Lady, you speak in jest!” piped Lyrical Melody, “For you do not merely rule Equestria but contain Equestria.  As written by the scholar Hoofamed al-Ghazali, its every particle is created and recreated each tick within your being - Ya ash-Shams, O Sun! - for the satisfaction of values through friendship and ponies!”

“It is perfectly acceptable,” Celestia said with an admonishing glance at Lyrical, “to sing my praises without interrupting me.”  Lyrical took a half-step backwards, looking again to the floor.

        “Now, as I’d been about to mention: in his current sense, our gentlecolt here could even be said to be a pony who dreamt of humanity, but has finally woken up.” said Celestia, kneeling down to face-level with the trio.

        “But I definitely wasn’t dreaming!  I was human!” Book burst out, tears trickling from his eyes, “And my wife and family and all my friends still are human!  For all your talk of the wonders of ponydom, Celestia, what do I have to do to see them again?”

“As I was getting to, my little pony, you are not even the first ‘refugee’ Equestria has taken in for equinitarian reasons, nor should you be the last.  Adults have lives to live on Earth already, and often value dying with dignity as their beliefs dictate, but you know not the number of children, too young to believe in Death and too sweet to die, lost to our world every day, to the crimes of sickness and war, without ever having opened their eyes to the potential just waiting for them.”

“Lyrical Melody!  You are among the most faithful among the followers of Harmony.”

“Forward Charge!  You love the skies and long to seek out new worlds.”

“Book Burner!  You remain attached to the Earth.”

        “There is no point and every arrogance in our living happily here in Canterlot while the Earthlings still suffer.  You three must be the first of Equestria’s ambassadors and, yes, when necessary, its soldiers in the breadths of the Earth.  The royal mission with which I charge you three is simple: find those children who are lost, and befriend them.  Be there for them.  Show them Equestria, and the life that can await them here.”

        “Can you accept this duty?”

        “Hold on a moment,” said Book Burner, “That’s it?  I mean, since when on Earth can I just volunteer for a job and bargain away my own death?”  Then he felt Forward Charge’s fetlock playfully pressing down on his skull.

        “Since ponies don’t live on Earth, little bro.  This is Equestria.  We do things a bit differently here,” she grinned.

        “So the three of us can actually use Celestia’s newest ‘magic’ to show up on Earth, we help helpless children, and I can try to contact my loved ones?  Too good to be true, go buck Azazel!”  But he returned the grin.

"Would I lie?" Celestia asked.  "By the way, if you take this on, when you get back to Equestria I think you could make a nice home for yourself on the western coast of Yehoofa."  Book's eyes widened.

        After another moment of consideration, each of the three nodded.  Then, whether they were ready or not, Celestia's magic swept an immense banner over them bearing her Sun of Harmony cutie-mark, and they were gone, gone to Earth.