Pinkie Pie was worried. She was about to say four words. Four words which were so unfathomably nonsensical and ridiculous that if said aloud, they might unravel the fabric of space, time, and reality itself. But they had to be said.
“Rainbow Dash, I’m bored.”
“Hello, Bored. I’m Rainbow Dash. Nice to meet you.” RD joked, flipping another page in her latest “Daring Doo” novel. Then it sunk in. “Wait, what?” Dash cried, sitting upright abruptly, flipping the book upside down. “You’re making a joke, right? The great and hyper Pinkamena Diane Pie, bored?! I thought that was physically impossible for you!”
“Well, it’s true.” Pinkie said, frowning.
“oh celestia, you're frowning! I thought your jaw was permanently locked into a smiling position!” Dash cried, zooming into the air. She promptly hooked her arms under Pinkie’s and picked her up. “c’mon! we gotta get you to the hospital, NOW!”
“Dashie! I’m fine.” Pinkie said, smiling a little as she wriggled out of Dash’s grip. “It’s just… well, I really wish something would happen.”
“I could ring up Discord, he could stir up some trouble.” Dash suggested.
“No, no, he just dropped by last week. I’d hate to bother him.” Pinkie sighed, plopping back down into her chair.
The duo were sitting in Twilight’s library. Or at least, what had used to be Twilight’s library. Now it was back to just being “the library”, as it had been before Twilight had arrived. It was rather sad, really. No constant sorting and rearranging of books by Twilight and her OCD. No Spike running around, pestering people or doing things for Rarity.
One year, eighty-seven days, and fourteen hours ago, Twilight had gotten her wings and become an Alicorn. She and the other five had gone to Canterlot, and had a big party, and a big coronation ceremony, and afterwards, the five went back to Ponyville, leaving Twilight and Spike in Canterlot.
And after that?
NOTHING.
Twilight seemed to have been a catalyst for the town’s crazy happenstances. In the time she had been there, NMM, Discord, Chrysalis, Sombra, Trixie, Gilda, had made their appearance, as well as a bunch of other crazy things. In fact, it seemed like something happened every week. But before that, and after that, there was absolutely nothing of interest.
Before Twilight had come, Ponyville was – there was no other way to put it – boring. No giant Cerberuses had come to chew on buildings. No ursa minors (or majors) had come lumbering out of the forest to ravage the town. No parasprite swarms had devoured every structure within ten miles.
And now that Twilight was gone, Ponyville was back to being boring. Even the mighty party pony couldn’t liven the entire town up twenty-four-seven.
And so, life had become more and more dull for poor Pinkie, until we get to where we are today.
“We could mess up Rarity’s dresses, and freak her out.”
“that’s kinda mean.”
“We can sneak pepper into peoples’ food.”
“they caught on to that the fourth time we tried it.”
“We could change the colors of Fluttershy’s flowers.”
“Dash, that’s just sick, and way too harsh. It’d traumatize Flutters!”
As the two bickered about what pranks to pull, the fireplace in the Library suddenly flared up with flames, with no apparent trigger.
The two ponies were silenced as they watched the flame turn green, then spit out a scroll, then disappear.
“…I didn’t do that.” Pinkie said, walking over to the scroll.
“It looked like Spike’s flame.” Rainbow said, following.
The scroll was marked with the Celestian Seal, a special marking to be used only on letters going to or coming from Celestia. Pinkie knew this because Twilight always made sure to tie one onto her scrolls before she had Spike send them.
In other words, the scroll was undoubtedly from Celestia.
Pinkie opened it, and together with Rainbow Dash, they read the scroll.
To the elements of harmony,
i hope you are Well. I would Like you come to canterlot Immediately. there is an urGent matter wHich requires your immediaTe attentIon. I am Sending a letter to every hoMe In ponyville, in caSe you are not at your homeS. please arrive IN canterlot once you have all Gathered together.
Hope yoU aRe Relaxing peacefullY,
celestia
There was a short pause, then Pinkie said, “well that was a weird letter.”
“Yeah, look at all those weird capitalizations.” Rainbow said. “Even though she capitalized random letters, she didn’t capitalize some of the sentences, or even her name.”
“Yeah, I mean, ‘W, I, L, I…’”
“You forgot the ‘T’ at the very beginning.”
“Yeah!” Pinkie said. “seriously, it’s so random! ‘T, W, I, L, I, G…. H…’”
The two looked at each other, the letters clicking together in their minds. “together, the first capitalizations of this letter spell ‘Twilight’.” Rainbow said.
“No duh! Princess Celestia didn’t lose her grammar skills, she was sending us a code!” Pinkie said, her eyes widening.
Together, the friends scanned the capitalized letters with renewed vigor.
“…….Twilight…..is……” Pinkie said slowly as she translated the letters.
“missing.” Rainbow finished, her eyes also growing wide as she stared at Pinkie.
Together, the capitalized letters in the scroll read,
TWILIGHT IS MISSING.
HURRY.
Rainbow grew confused. “Twilight is missing?! What the hay does that mean.”
“It means she’s missing, Dashie!” Pinkie said, shaking her friend by the shoulders like she was flatlining. Pinkie had genuine fear on her face, and she whipped her head around, like Twilight was in the room with them. Then she turned back to Dash. “Dashie, go and gather the other elements. I’m going to use my secret shortcut to get to Princess Celestia. I just hope it works this time…”
“Secret Shor- Pinkie, wait!” Rainbow said, staring at Pinkie as she suddenly ran away.
Without another word, Pinkie leaped high into the air…
….Pinkie landed in the throne room of Princess Celestia, where said princess was taking a sip of tea.
Celestia had to spit-take when she saw Pinkie appear out of thin air. “Pinkie?! How… how did you get here so fast?! I teleported the letter to you not even two minutes ago!”
“Jumped over the break in the chapters.” Pinkie said, breathing heavily.
“You… what?!”
“Look, I’ll explain later! Right now, tell me more about what you mean that Twilight’s missing!”
The princess could tell that Pinkie would not tell her anything else right now, so she shook her head and got off her throne. “Walk with me.” Celestia said as she briskly passed Pinkie. Pinkie bounced after her. “Or bounce with me… whatever works.” Celestia added.
“Where are we going?” Pinkie chirped.
“Someplace where we won’t be overheard.” Celestia said quietly, nodding subtly at the guards all over the edges of the throne room.
A few minutes later, Celestia and Pinkie walked/bounced into the Princess’ private quarters. Pinkie had never been in here before; there was a large rug with a sun on it, and fireplace similar to twilight’s in the corner. There were also couches on either side, and a large office desk along one wall with a filing cabinet.
Celestia went over to the filing cabinet. There, she used her magic to levitate out a slim manila file, the contents of which she spread across her desk. Pinkie went to take a look. The first thing she saw was a picture of Twilight in the canterlot train station.
“Two weeks ago,” Celestia said, “Twilight went over to the city of Manehattan, on royal business. Business seminars, conventions, and the like.
“Then, a few days later, Twilight was on her way to a conference in the city. She’d taken the opportunity to practice with her wings; she hasn’t gotten too skilled with them yet.
“To be quite frank, we don’t know that much about what happened next, primarily because Twilight had no escorts, despite our sincere warnings. All we know is, she took off from in front of the hotel to fly to the meeting a half mile away, on the other side of Manehattan island.” Celestia was silent for a few moments.
“…annndddd?” Pinkie prompted her to continue.
“And nothing. Twilight never arrived at the conference. The last time she was seen was when she was flying away from the hotel. She couldn’t have gotten lost; she could have just cast a simple location spell, or even ask ponies on the street if need be.”
“So throw up a search party! Comb the city for her!” Pinkie cried.
“We are currently doing just that. We’ve been doing that for over a week now. We’ve managed to roughly triangulate the area where she disappeared via eyewitness accounts-“
“Whoa whoa back up a second. DISAPPEARED? Are you sure she didn’t just get kidnapped or something?”
“For starters, I doubt anyone could kidnap Twilight without at very least obtaining serious injury. She isn’t exactly helpless. Furthermore, multiple smog-clearing weatherponies specifically saw her quite literally disappear in midair. One second she was flying, then there was a burst of energy of some kind, then she was gone.”
“Burst of energy? You mean like magic? Did she just teleport?”
“Yes and no. Twilight’s magical energy is a pinkish-purple, while this burst of energy was apparently black. It certainly wasn’t Twilight’s magic, and it almost didn’t look like…” Celestia stopped for a moment, pausing as if to think.
“Almost didn’t look like what?” Pinkie questioned.
“never mind.” Celestia said, looking away.
“Okay…” said Pinkie slowly. “and what do you need us elements of harmony for?”
“To put it bluntly, anything which can kidnap even a minor alicorn princess will probably require the elements of harmony to be defeated.”
“Makes sense.” Pinkie said. “So I’m guessing that now is when we travel to Manehattan?”
“Yes, and I’ll send you the location of Twilight’s dissapearance, but first… I want you to go see Lyra Heartstrings.”
This surprised Pinkie. “Lyra? That crackpot conspiracy nut who sees monsters everywhere she looks?”
“Yes… although I wouldn’t put it so harshly. Go to Lyra and ask her about the ruins of Manehattan.”
“Okey dokie loki!” Pinkie said cheerily. Then she ran and took a big leap across the room…
…Only to faceplant on the other side.
“Oopsie…” said Pinkie, picking herself up off the floor. “I must have used up more Pinkie Strength® then I thought jumping over that first chapter break. I don’t think I can do it again… Princess, would you mind teleporting me back to Ponyville?”
“Sure…” the Princess said slowly, bamboozled as to what had just happened. With a touch of effort, the Princess sent Pinkie on her way back to Ponyville.
It was rather late in the afternoon when Pinkie came out of Rarity’s fireplace.
Rarity, of course, was shocked. Where in Equestria did Pinkie come from? How did she get in Rarity’s fireplace? Why was her fireplace filled with green flame for a moment there? What on earth did she do to her soot-covered mane?!
“respectively,” Pinkie answered, “I came from Canterlot; I didn’t choose to go to your fireplace, Celestia teleported me there; everything Celestia teleports comes out in green flame, I guess; and the soot is from your chimney. How often do you clean that thing?”
“Well, if I did, I’d get soot in MY glorious mane!”
Pinkie rolled her eyes.
“Anyways, dear, what were you doing in Canterlot in the first place?”
Pinkie began to recite what Celestia had told her, only to have Dash, AJ and Fluttershy appear halfway through and cause her to have to start all over again.
After Pinkie had finally finished her relay of Celestia’s briefing (and Rarity had washed Pinkie’s mane upon insistence), the five wasted no time heading for Lyra’s place.
After a walk through ponyville, they arrived at a small cottage. Pinkie rapped on the door. At least, she was about to. Just as she was about to knock, a pony with a buttercream coat and a pink-brown-striped mane stepped out.
“Bon-bon!” Pinkie said happily.
“Hey, if it isn’t my favorite customer, the Pink Pie!” Bon-bon said cheerily. She had an odd voice, which seemed to change with every sentence. “I was just about to head out to the store, but if you want, I can whip up some strawberry suckers for ya!”
Pinkie chortled. “Not today, Bon. Actually, I came to see Lyra.”
Bon-bon seemed to deflate just a tad. “Erm… I wouldn’t bother her right now… she’s kind of in the middle of something…”
“Please, Bonny? It’s really really REALLY important!” Pinkie begged, widening her eyes and quivering her lip.
“Oh, darnit, Pinks. You know I can’t resist the face. Alright, fine; she’s up the stairs, first door on the right.”
“Thanks, Bon! We’ll only be a second!” Pinkie replied cheerily, bouncing past the sweetshop owner into her store/home. The rest of the five followed, giving respective nods to Bon-Bon.
Bon-bon’s store was an awful lot like Pinkie’s store, but focused less on cakes and pastries, and more on chocolates and suckers and things like that. Behind the counter was a stairwell, which the five went up.
As they headed up, they heard an odd mumbling coming from upstairs. Once the girls reached the upper floor, they saw a green light creeping from under the door Bon-bon had directed them to. Quietly, Pinkie eased open the door.
Inside the room was Lyra Heartstrings herself, hunched over a cauldron like she was flipping Zecora. Lyra was muttering unintelligible words under her breath as she picked up a cup with her magic and dipped it into the brew, which glowed green and bubbled.
Before the mane 5 could do anything at all, Lyra downed the mixture in one gulp. With tangible excitement, she threw the cup against the wall, and stared at her front hooves.
A full minute passed, during which nothing happened. Lyra was just staring at her hooves, and the mane 5 staring at her.
Eventually, Rainbow said “oh for the love of pete” and slammed open the door, drawing lyra’s attention.
Lyra squeaked when she saw her guests, and threw a sheet over the cauldron. “Hey! Hi! Hey Pinkie, did you do something new with your hair?” Lyra said, casually leaning against the bedsheet-covered cauldron and wearing a fake smile that Pound and Pumpkin Cake could have seen through.
“Nah, I’m just using ‘Maximum Bounce #4: Cotton Candy Cascade’ as usual.” Pinkie said, giggling.
Rainbow broke in, saying “What’s in the cauldron?” This earned her a jab in the ribs from Applejack.
“Oh, you saw that, did you?” Lyra said, sighing. She slowly took the sheet off of the cauldron. “Yeah, this is attempt #37 for me to grow hands… it’s a pity. I had high hopes for this one.”
“hands?” Fluttershy asked, tilting her head.
“Yeah, hands. You know, like on hoo-mans.”
“Hoo-mans?” Fluttershy questioned.
The rest of the mane 5 groaned. “here we go…” “I hate it when Lyra does this.”
Fluttershy looked at them, confused, and when she looked forward again, Lyra was inches from her face. Fluttershy squeaked and leapt backwards.
“You’re serious? You really don’t know what hoo-mans are?!” Lyra cried, a big grin growing across her face. “Oh boy, it’s been forever since I’ve told this story! Now where’s my script? I’m sure I put it somewhere around here…” She ran to her desk, which sat over in the corner near her bed, and began shuffling through papers, beginning to make a large stack.
“Darling, I’m sure your tale about humans is… fascinating…” Rarity said, “but we’re kind of in a rush here. We just came to ask about… about…. Ruins of something…
“The Ruins of Manehattan?!” Lyra cried, looking back over her shoulder. “Well, that changes everything!” and with that, she began to make an even larger pile of notes.
Everyone else groaned again. “Lyra, please. Just give us the short version. We really need to get going as soon as possible.” Rarity continued.
“Oh, fine. Spoilsports.” Lyra said, pushing away her stack of notes, which was now almost as tall as she was.
Lyra cleared her throat, then began to speak in a dramatic, well-rehearsed voice. “roughly ten thousand years ago, long before the reign of Celestia and Luna, long before Discord, heck, long before any creature which more than vaguely resembled a pony… There lived another race, one completely different from our own. According to ancient artifacts, these creatures were called… hoo-mans.”
“Were they owls?” Pinkie asked.
“They… wait, what?” Lyra said, slightly startled.
“You know… ‘hoo! Hoo!’ like owlisi… awulish… allish… Twilight’s pet owl!”
“…no.” Lyra said rather slowly, trying to get her dramatic voice back. “No, no, it’s actually spelled H-U-M-A-N. And trust me, these humans were like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
Lyra reared onto her back legs, and made a horrible face, raising her arms out in front of her. “They were twelve hooves tall (2 hooves = 1 foot) and had shoulders five hooves wide! They walked on two legs, and their hind hooves were stretched and deformed. That’s not all; they could take off their own hind hooves!” Lyra mimed taking off her back hoof. Under their hind hooves were – you won’t believe this – a second pair of hooves. This second pair was weird and squishy and called “feet”, and so they wore a harder, primary pair of hooves called “shoes” to protect their feet!
“You know how we ponies wear dresses and clothes for special occasions?” Lyra continued. “well humans wore clothes all the time! All the freaking time!”
“Wouldn’t that be uncomfortable?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“It might… but the humans had no coat! No protective fur or feathers or even scales, just disgusting, orangeish-pinkish stuff called ‘skin’! It was all dry and greasy and lumpy, and made the humans hideous!
“But that’s not the scariest part of the humans’ bodies. No, the scariest part was…” Here Lyra looked around, then leaned in close to the five, as if she was telling a secret.
“The humans had SPIDERS for front hooves!”
Fluttershy squealed in fright, and almost fainted.
“They called these spiders ‘hands’ and had complete control over them! While I admit they technically weren’t actual spiders, they still had five flailing legs on them, and to be frank, that’s close enough to a spider to be counted as one in my opinion. Of course, the humans called the spiders’ legs ‘fingers’ or something weird like that.
“But that’s not the truly magnificent part… the truly awesome part is that the humans could actually pick up stuff with their hands! They didn’t have to use their mouths or magic!”
Everyone gasped. “How is that even possible?!” Fluttershy cried.
“I don’t know, but it helped the humans build incredible things they called ‘technology’! There were so many things, I don’t even know where to start! Cars; cairrages which weren’t drawn by pony; they pulled themselves! Eckeltricity; harnessed lightning which humans used to power their magic devices! Phones; long-range communicators which used electricity to talk to any other human all over the planet! Internet; an invisible network of magical signals in the sky which contained whole universes, all of which were created by human minds! Satellites; miniature moons which orbited the planet at unfathomable speeds, drifting around and maintaining the internet! Television; a magical screen which broadcasted using more magical invisible signal thingies! Forks; miniature hands which-“
“WE GET IT, LYRA.” Applejack said. “Now what the hay do these humans have to do with the ruins of Manehattan?”
“Patience is a virtue, my dear apple farmer.” Lyra said in a maddeningly patient voice. “Now, I’m certain you all have a question on your mind which you are dying to ask.”
“Yeah, like how many licks does it take to get to the center of a berry popper?” Pinkie said cheerfully. “Speaking of which, we should go and get some of that candy right now! I’ll be right back!” She tried to leave, but, of course, was stopped by the others.
“What I meant was the question, ‘what happened to the humans?’” Lyra continued. “Well, among the humans’ more terrifying inventions was these things called bombs; basically sonic rainbooms, only with less “OOH” and more “AAH!” these ranged from tiny ones, called grenades, to big ones, called A-bombs, to the biggest, baddest bombs of all: nukes.
“Nukes could travel to any place in Equestria, and reduce it, and any place within miles of it, to smoldering rubble. Of course, nopony in their right minds would use such a terrible device, but these weren’t ponies, these were humans, and they were either very crazy or very stupid, because on one horrifying day, hundreds, if not thousands, of nukes were launched, and blew the surface of equestria to smithereens!
"Every last human – indeed, every living creature – died painfully, and for thousands of years, the planet was a half-frozen wasteland, due to the nukes’ energy blocking out the sun’s light.
"Eventually, though, after about five thousand years, the dust literally settled, and life began to bloom once more.
Skip forward another two thousand years or so, and Equestria was finally regaining some of it’s former glory. Finally, about three thousand years ago, the first ponies evolved and gained intelligence, and from there, you’ve learned about it in your fillyhood history classes.” Lyra shrugged. “So that’s it. Human history, in a nutshell.”
Everyone stared at her. “Soooo… What does any of this have to do with the ruins of manehattan.”Rainbow Dash said rather impatiently.
“An excellent question!” Lyra said cheerfully. “You see, many pony cities are secretly built from the ruins of human cities. While the nukes were strong, they couldn’t possibly obliterate all human-made structures whatsoever. And so, the earliest ponies found many ruins, where they made their homes. There they found artifacts, remnants of the lost human civilization. Later on, when they grew more intelligent, they sort of adapted the human designs, and in some cases, rebuilt the relatively intact buildings to become their homes. This scenario played out all over equestria; ponies found human ruins, ponies built using human ruins, and the human ruins were rebuilt with pony influences.
“Of course, some of these sites were preserved as they had been found; sometimes for memorials or parks, but mostly for historical research. One of the largest remaining intact human relic sites is in the dead center of Manehattan. Heck the city of Manehattan itself was once a human city, called MAN-hattan. Rather ironic, isn’t it? In any case, there in the center of Manehattan, there are many human buildings which have been left in their devastated state, so that scientists could study them, and find out more about the humans. In fact, the ruins of Manehattan have the most intact fully-human-made building on all of Equestria, which, according to ancient inscriptions, was called ‘The Empire State Building.’”
“Okay, Ruins of Manehattan. Thanks for the help, Lyra!” Pinkie chirped happily, as the five said their goodbyes, and began to head out.
“Wait!” Lyra said, rushing after them and carrying something with her magic. “If you’re going to find out about the humans, take this with you. I have a feeling it’ll be a big help.” She gave them a rather battered journal. “It’s everything which I’ve managed to find out about humans, all in one compact package.”
“Thanks, Lyra. I’m sure this will come in handy.” Pinkie said, taking the book from her. And with that, the mane five waved goodbye, and scampered off, with Lyra wishing blessings of good fortune upon them.
“It’s a pity they cut me off.” Lyra said to herself. “The fork – now THAT was an incredible human invention.”
