86-34: Arc 1: Fight the Power, Fight the Fad

Shortly after the defeat of Nightmare Moon, the tale of the Elements of Harmony prevailing began spreading like wildfire across Equestria, and was all too well known in Canterlot, Ponyville, Cloudsdale, and nearby regions and cities like Fillydelphia and Manehattan. This sparked a rapid growth in the pony entertainment industry,will many pony artists attempting to capture the magic of friendship portrayed by the heroes of Equestria. Plenty of art and music were released that centered around that theme. Some works became famous, and gave rise to “Masters”, pony artists who became specialists in their field of choice, with many fans across Equestria closely following their latest work on the website, TheEquestrianPost.net.

At first, everything seemed to be fine,if not great. The “friendship” was spread further from Ponyville,throughout the provinces in Equestria, some rumors even saying the influence extended beyond its borders at some parts. Everyone welcomed it with open hooves. But, shortly after winter was wrapped up the same year, some strange trends begin to surface...

~~~

Present day, end of the first Spring week.

Submissions were still flooding into the site from fans and artists alike. Ponies from all over Equestria spent hours browsing through seemingly endless content. In an average flat house in Manehattan, three ponies were also checking out this new craze.

“Aaaaand it just hit 1 million views”, said Circuit Cut, the blue unicorn with orange shades. His cutie mark consisted of a green circuit board and was in contrast with his blue skin and orange mane.

“Noted”, responded Badger, the pegasus with grey skin, with a darker grey patch of skin around his eyes, his head having a patch of white mane. His cutie mark was a striped shield(2 black stripes and a white stripe in the middle, much like his face with the white line down the middle).

“Also, something else you may want to know”, Circuit Cut continued. “This user, RedMane66, posted a remix vid yesterday. Nothing unusual till earlier this morning. The top voted comment was:’Just thought you might want to know that Lexus ,A Master of Music, liked your vid’. After that, views came in by the thousands.”

“So he likes the vid, and views come rolling in?”

“Sure seems that way.”

“Seems logical. Somepony with a title likes a vid and it’s bound to raise flags, suddenly everypony likes it too.”

Although he seemed triumphant in his discovery,the monitoring work was slowly getting to Circuit Cut. “We’ve been doing this for a month already, and there’s absolutely nothing strange going on. Are you sure there’s something going on here?”

“We are doing this BECAUSE Badger thinks something’s up,” said Hot Shot, an earth pony mare with red skin and pale black mane, with a revolver cylinder cutie mark. She was fiddling with her trusty mouth-operated revolver. “And he’s never been wrong before.”

“Well, I’m not sure this time, just call it a hunch”, Badger replied. “Besides, it indirectly contributed to us losing our jobs.”

“Oh,right. I almost forgot”, Circuit Cut retorted, in a sarcastic manner, but his glum state suddenly lit up with excitement.”Oooh check this out! It’s a pony quiz! ‘How much do you know about the heroes of Equestria?’ Sounds cool! I’m gonna take it!”

“A quiz? Looks like the fans seem to come up with everything these days”, remarked Hot Shot.

“Oh,horseapples! I only got 60%. Wait, what’s this caption down here? ‘Do not feel disheartened, for this quiz is made for mega pony fans’. What,is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Really now?” Hot Shot chuckled at Circuit Cut’s stunned face.”Let me have a go,then!”

“Hey not so fast! I wanna try again!”

Badger smiled slightly watching those two,but his smile disappeared as he began to think. Where did it all go wrong? Just 6 months ago the three of them were in the office at Manehattan PD, when this fad started to grow. A month later, in an effort to reduce budget allocation on law enforcement, there was a program to recruit officers from all over Equestria to participate in a competition where the winners would get a contract with Canterlot High Command in writing new training programs, and the three of them were selected to represent Manehattan. However, in as the program was nearing it’s conclusion, the budget cuts worsened, and the program was discontinued. But it just got worse from there. There was an Equestria-wide retrenchment for officers, and as a huge coincidence, the three of them got “selected”. Now they run their own private security firm, escorting valuable goods and very important ponies to their destinations. And through all that, Badger couldn’t shake the feeling that the spread of friendship was somehow related to it.

“Ugh,I’m thinking too much”,he muttered too himself.

~~~