Empathy and Ignorance

“Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson

4:00 A.M, Central Standard Time
McKinney, Texas
21st February, 2018
Private First Class Pickett, Marine Corps

“So you heard about it too?” I asked, Valdez, my battle buddy to the right of me as we jogged down the road, panting. My sweatshirt was already soaked and the sun hadn't even risen yet. I was never good at endurance running.

“Who hasn't? Everybody is demanding war. Looks like you and I might get to shoot some ponies.” My friend, Valdez, joked. He was a stereotypical hard corps jar-head. Always wanting to rush in first, think second. He was like that in every aspect of life. He’d been my best friend since middle school. We got into fights, detention, car crashes, everything together. Now here we were jogging down the side of the road, talking about ponies. Valdez was a fair skinned guy, about five and a half feet tall with short cut blonde hair.

“Do you actually want to go to war?” I asked him with the raise of my brow.

“Heck yeah! From what I've seen, ponies are four feet of weakness. It’d be a turkey shoot, and it’d be exactly what they deserve from daring to talk to us about our world problems. Who gives them the right?” Valdez picked up the pace in his testosterone induced rant.

“Oh yeah? Might I remind you of Sweet Pea?” I hurried forward to catch up to him. At my question, he tensed up and then gave a shrug.

“U-huh, what about her?” His voice went deeper as if to emulate a confident, strong, man voice.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that she whooped your bipedal ass in wrestling. Twice.” I loved seeing him squirm, it showed what an ego maniac he is.

“My legs were sore from running that day.” Valdez was now beginning to run, as if he could escape the embarrassment. If I had more cardio I would have tried to get in front of him again, but I decided that jogging beside him would be fine enough.

“Nice excuse. What about that time she beat you in a drinking contest?” It was time to move on to more personal things. Yet again, Valdez began to squirm for another excuse.

“Well, she beat you at the 100 meter dash, didn't she?” Valdez countered. His shoulders relaxed and he slowed down. He apparently thought he had a good comeback.

“Dude, she’s a pony, she smoked everyone in that. She could beat Husain Bolt in a dead sprint with a simple canter. Face it man, a four foot pony full of weakness beat you in like, everything.” I laughed, this was too funny and it was true too. Our friend Sweet Pea had beat us on several occasions. We had our wins against her too, but all in all, she was no weakling. Sadly, she’d been deported not three days ago. She was a light green earth pony with slightly darker light green hair.

“Oh whatever! All ponies just wanted to assert their dominance on us, and boss us around.” Valdez grunted in frustration. His face was red as a cherry and two times sweatier.

“She was our friend! How could you say that?” I put my hand out and stopped him in his tracks. “She was nice, and pretty, and never once did she tell us to do anything that was out of the ordinary except not to watch her replace her horseshoes.” I was a tad bit on edge from what he’d said. We both already got a lot of baggage from simply being seen with Sweet Pea, but now it seemed Valdez had just switched sides to the haters.

“Blah, blah, blah, you’re just saying that cause’ you wanted to date her.” That got me to shut up real quick.

“N-no, I ju…” I stumbled on my words, but before I could debate, Valdez sprinted off. Leaving me on the sidewalk, alone. Tired, I slowed to a walk to catch my breath. A few thoughts went through my head as the sun began to peek over the horizon like a baby in a crib. I was in fact thinking about Sweet Pea, but not in the way you would think. I thought that everyone was throwing it out of proportion. Being a marine I was always ready to fight, but I didn't want to go to war just because of some small skirmishes. With all the ponies in the world deported back to Equestria, I thought things would cool down and get better. Turns out, without the ponies here, there was no sort of diplomatic middle man, or middle-mare, to keep rumors from circling. In no time, those rumors would soon be put to rest in exchange for fact. Only a month after that day, the first human was killed by a pony, and nothing would ever be the same again.