Bacon Ponies (Flash Fiction)
Twilight can't take a joke
Bacon Ponies
By ANTIcarrot
Based on Friendship is Magic, created by Lauren Faust
And My Little Pony, created by Bonnie Zacherle
Render Unto Hasbro That Which Is Hasbro’s...
Tom winced as Fluttershy tended to his black eye. All things considered he was lucky the bones under his skin hadn’t fractured. Earth ponies may be stronger than unicorns, but unicorns were still ponies, and the human fare wasn’t really built to stand up to such punishment.
"Twilight has a real good right hook doesn't she?"
"I'm sure she didn't mean it. Not really."
"It was only a joke!"
"I know that. And I'm sure Twilight knows that. It's just..." Fluttershy trailed off and busied herself wetting the cloth in the water.
"Just what?" Tom asked. "Do you know why she did this? Because I'm a little confused about the whole thing. And not just because she hit me in the head real hard." He winced as Fluttershy returned the cold compress to his face. "Your hooves really don't have a lot of give to them, you know?"
"I don't know exactly what happened, but did you say something about Twilight eating animals?"
"Well, yes."
"And when she didn't like the idea, you teased her about it a little?"
"Yes. And then she called me a jerk, hit me, and stormed out. If there's a punch line, I don't get it."
"Do you remember when you were taken to the hospital?"
"You're going to have to narrow it down a little there."
"Oh. Sorry. I meant the big hospital in Canterlot, not the local clinic. When you first came here. You sat in a big magic circle and they made a crystal duplicate of you?"
"Erm... The statue thing? Something about the ponies wanting to study me. I got the impression it was something like a magical photocopier for animals or something."
Fluttershy smiled slightly, and got a faraway look in her eyes.
"It is. It lets us look inside animals, and ponies sometimes, without hurting them. And they really wanted to look inside your brain, because it's really different from ours!" Fluttershy stated to perk up a little. "Not just in size and shape, but in the way it's put together. Like the difference between a house made from wood and a house made from bricks. I've been following the reports they've published on comparative anatomy. And, um, so has Twilight." Fluttershy quietened again.
"Well, that's fun and all, but what's that got to do with bacon?"
"With what?"
Tom rolled his eyes, and instantly regretted it as his right one flared in pain.
"With meat," he clarified.
"Oh. Well, you told us that only humans could talk on your world, didn't you?"
"Yes," Tom repeated. He sighed inside. This was something that the ponies had been quiet persistent on when he first arrived. He could understand their perspective, but it had been kinda annoying how reluctant they had been to believe something they hadn't wanted to be true. "Ponies, pigs, cows, and chickens don't talk on my world. Maybe some body language, but nothing else. Intelligence is pretty recent thing on my world. Humans have only been around a few hundred thousand years."
"Um, well, you see... It turns out that..." And the rest of Fluttershy's answer turned into one long squeak.
Tom reached over to Fluttershy and started stroking her neck. It tended to calm her down.
"Go on. Whatever it is, you can tell me."
Fluttershy swallowed.
"Well, when we looked at your brain, or rather when the doctors looked at your brain, they determined that that couldn't be true. I mean there are, well, roads in your brain that carry information between the various pieces, and they found that they all meet in one of the oldest parts of your brain. It's pretty close to the part that controls your heart and lungs, and it must have been there for a long time. It's older than your species, maybe older than thumbs. The problem is that the older something is, the more likely it is that your close relatives will have it. And this is really old. Old enough that most mammals almost certainly have it."
Tom was silent as he digested that. Then went over it again to make sure he understood it correctly. He wasn't sure he had. In fact he wasn’t sure he wanted to have understood it correctly.
"So after all this time, and based on studying a non working copy of my brain, your fancy idiot doctors have concluded that pigs on my world can talk after all?"
Fluttershy shook her head. Tom was relieved. He really didn't want to go over all that again.
"Not smart enough to talk. But smart enough that killing them would count as murder under Equestrian law."
"But they can't talk!"
"Neither can newborn ponies. Or newborn griffons. Or newborn dragons. Neither can some unlucky adult ponies. I'm pretty sure newborn humans can't talk either. If the law said it was okay to kill anything that couldn't speak, that would cause a lot of problems."
Tom started to face-palm, and then paused, before changing the position of his hand to miss his right eye.
"So Twilight now thinks I'm a murderer?"
"Oh no. Twilight's known that you're a mass murder for a long time." She put a hoof on his knee. "And we forgive you. It's just the way you were raised and we're sure you would understand when we got around to telling you. Um, which we've both been putting off, because we're worried the news would upset you. I mean it's not like you're doing it anymore!" Tom groaned. "There there Tom. It's not your fault you were a bad pony. It's all behind you now and we're both here to help you."
She hesitated.
"But you still shouldn't have implied that Twilight would like to murder and eat young children like that."
