Mark of Destiny

Chapters

Earth
Everfree
Sweet Apple Acres
Destiny

Earth

I want to say the road to my Cutie Mark began with friendship. That's how these stories are supposed to start, right? It's about Equestria, so this is a friendship story. But if the friendships had been worth a dime, none of this would have happened.

So it's probably most accurate to say it began with video games.

A little over two years ago — around the fourth anniversary of Contact — Kevin, James and I were crowded around the TV in the living room of my apartment. James and I had been playing Mareville vs. Capcom after classes every day in the weeks since its release. Kevin had suddenly walked in after vanishing for a month, and when we asked him where he'd been, all he said was, "Beat me at whatever you're playing and I'll tell you."

After humiliating both of us with three perfect victories in a row, Kevin set down his Playstation X controller with a smug grin. James and I just stared open-mouthed at the screen.

"Hard to say, only six games in," Kevin said, "but it seems like they did a pretty good job balancing the ponies against the superheroes. Except Fluttershy, she's OP. I can see why Mark mains her."

"Six —" I sputtered. "You are seriously trying to tell me that this is the first time you've ever played Mareville Vs. Capcom?"

"Yup!" His smirk redoubled, and he stared at us, waiting for the obvious question.

James asked it. "Where the hell've you been, bro?"

"Went to Equestria and got an ass-tat." Kevin slapped his hip and laughed. "And now I know it works."

"No," I cut in. "No, you didn't, because they did not let you waltz through a cross-dimensional portal locked down tighter than a goddamn nuclear silo to get a kiddie-mark in video games."

Kevin leaned back against the wall and shrugged. "They totally did. You do know who my dad is, right?"

I frowned. He was the son of some big-shot criminal defense attorney — not really the sort of person that either the American or Equestrian governments had been letting anywhere near the portal. "What's that got to do with it?"

"He knows some people. I got him to pull some strings so I could buy into the trial group."

"The what now?" James said.

"You don't —?" Kevin looked at us funny, then facepalmed. "Oh, right, the announcement's not until next week. In exchange for this year's aid package, the State Department made the Princesses an offer they couldn't refuse, so they'll be letting the public into the program."

James' jaw dropped. "Holy crap."

"And I got to jump the line." Kevin's smile broadened. "That career on the pro Starcraft circuit I've talked about? That's peanuts now, man. I can do that in my spare time in between breaking every speedrun record in the book. This was worth every cent."

I crossed my arms. "Dude. Even if that's true, they proved magic doesn't work on Earth. Therefore, getting a kiddie-mark did not just turn you into the world's best gamer."

"Now you're just being stupid," James said. "Even the scientists who discovered why unicorns can't cast spells here said that the tramp stamps work differently. Penn and Teller did a show on it and everything. And don't forget, ass diplomacy was how the Mideast accords got signed."

"Oh, come on," I said. "That's pure social engineering. If you can trick both sides into believing your 'magical powers' will give them the best deal of a generation, they'll call you a miracle worker no matter what load of crap you sell them."

"Don't tell me you're a denier," Kevin said. "Haven't you seen that video of the Marine bench-pressing that tank?"

I stood up and stomped toward the kitchen for a beer. "I'm not stupid enough to think that's a fake. But they obviously took that on the far side of the portal and buffed him up with magic."

"Six perfect wins says they didn't," James said, turning to Kevin. "Can we sign up?"

"Yeah! I heard them say the private trial for the big donors was so popular that they're running a few more rounds before the official launch turns everything into a circus. We'll go swing by my place. I can get Dad to put you on the list." Kevin raised his voice and called into the kitchen. "I'm serious, Mark. This is for real. Come with us and buy in."

For years, I'd scoffed at the idea that humans who had gone through the portal to Equestria had returned with hip tattoos and impossible abilities. For the first time, I had to stop and think seriously about it. Even if Kevin had spent several weeks secretly practicing the game to sell us his story, the walloping he'd given us should have been impossible.

"So what kind of 'donation' did your magic tattoo cost you?" I called back, taking a swig from the bottle.

"Ninety mil."

I sprayed beer over half the counter.

"Sweet Jesus, Kevin. Some of us aren't trust-fund kids here."

"So lie on the paperwork. Put me down as your financial adviser — I can snow 'em on the collateral. Then get a finance mark. You'll make the money in a week and pay them off before anyone's the wiser."

"No! That's …"

Cheating, I didn't say.

"… a permanent choice, you know? The mark would make the rest of my life about money. I didn't see you spend $90 million to become the world's best stockbroker."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine, so get something matching your degree. If it lets you do with engineering what I can do with games now, that sort of money will still be peanuts."

The uneasiness crept back into my gut, and I fell back on the comfort of skepticism. "C'mon, Kevin. You're asking me to gamble money I don't have, which I'm supposed to pay back with literal hand-wavey woo-woo magic." I frowned pointedly. "An awful lot of money I don't have."

He spread his hands, palms out. "Hey, look. I'm not gonna make you do this. I'm just telling you that you're missing out on the best opportunity of your life if you don't."

"I'll take that chance."

"Eh," Kevin said. "Alright, suit yourself."

That weekend, James came back with an empty speech bubble on his hip, a girl on each arm, and a triumphant smirk on his face.

"So what's that mark supposed to be?" I asked him.

"It's a symbol of how incredible he is in bed," one of his arm-candies said with a giggle, and kissed him on the cheek.

"It's amazing, is what it is!" James said. "Forget lifting tanks, now this is a friggin' superpower. Females believe every word I say — I can talk them into anything. No more negging. No more LMR. A one-night stand is as easy as telling them how awesome I am, then telling them to leave once we're done."

"You … buh … what!?" I sputtered, my gut twisting up.

His grin broadened. "Best. Mark. Ever."

I set my beer down on the table, feeling my heartbeat in my neck. "James, listen to me. Take it back. Go get something else."

James blinked, his smile wavering. "What?"

"You are my friend, but that predatory PUA bullshit hurts people, and I can't stand by and watch this." I stood up and faced him squarely, crossing my arms.

He looked momentarily wounded. "Predatory? What sort of beta propaganda crawled up your ass and died? Having a real man take charge is what all girls secretly dream of. I'm doing them a favor."

There was an odd tingling behind my sinuses, gone again before I could sneeze. Some voice in the back of my brain started screaming, but I ignored it — because there was something about the way he explained it which made it so obvious.

I felt blood rush to my face. "Oh! Uh … holy crap. I'm sorry. I never thought of it like that."

He looked slightly mollified. "I'm not surprised. Most men don't until they open their eyes. Females are evolved to be parasites, living off of men's hard work. All I'm doing is turning the tables and reasserting the natural order of male dominance."

"You're right. Look, I was stupid." My cheeks burned with shame. "Forget I said anything."

He scrutinized me for a moment, then the smile returned to his face. "No worries." He grabbed my beer and took a long pull. "Hey, these sluts have been trying to jump me all the way across town. Can I borrow your bed?"

"Of course," I said. It was the least I could do after overreacting so badly.

It dawned on me what the son-of-a-bitch had done about five minutes later, around the time I heard my lamp fall off my bedside table amid shrieks and giggles.

I slammed the door open. "James. Stop."

"Chrissake, Mark! You already said yes! Let me finish!"

"Uh …" I cringed, cheeks burning, head tingling. "Of course."

I closed the door awkwardly. As I sat and waited for him, a sense of unease gradually overtook my patience — and then realization hit. I bolted to my feet and scrambled around the corner to the kitchen, heart hammering.

I was halfway through dialing the police when my misgivings caught up to me. Would that even accomplish anything, if they reacted to him the way that I had? For that matter, what if I was merely convincing myself he had some sort of mind control? What would I be doing to him?

An entirely separate fear crawled into my gut. Right or wrong, what would calling the police do to our friendship?

I slowly set the phone down, throat going dry. If he's going to listen to anyone, I tried to convince myself, it'll be a friend. I'm going to lose my chance to get through to him and change his behavior if I call.

It's amazing the justifications we come up with for taking the easy way out.

Still, as appealing as talking some sense into him sounded, the direct approach was clearly not effective. I paced for several frantic seconds, considering my options, and then grabbed a pen — whatever he was doing wouldn't change a pre-written message. I was in the middle of my note when he staggered out of my room and into view, zipping his pants back up and glancing around the living room.

"Alright, Mark," he said. "Listen up."

I snapped my mouth closed, my full attention on him, lowering the paper I'd been about to start reading.

He noticed me in the kitchen and turned around. "Right. Look, I was going to let it slide after you apologized, but if you're salty enough to burst in on me having sex, you've gotta get your head on straight."

"What do you mean?" I mumbled. I felt like my brain was swimming through fog.

He ambled over and twirled a chair around, sitting across the table from me with his arms crossed atop its back. "I figured it out." He leaned forward, staring. "You're jealous because you missed out on the Cutie Marks."

A little knife twisted in my heart — and behind my sinuses — then guilt flooded in as I tried to hold his gaze. "… That does make sense," I said quietly.

"Well, don't take it out on me, man. You're supposed to be my friend." His eyes flicked down to the half-finished note on the table. "What's that?"

I hurriedly crumpled it and stuffed it into the garbage can. My friend deserved better than my backstabbing and second-guessing. "Nothing."

"You sure?"

"It's not important, buddy. Please."

James frowned. "C'mon, Mark. You've gotta be honest with me or you're not gonna fix this."

I tried to swallow through a suddenly-dry throat, but my lips were already moving as if they belonged to someone else. "James, I'm pretty sure that was literally rape, and I wish I hadn't been too scared to call the police. Your Mark can only end in tears. Please, get rid of it and get help."

He was silent for a terrifying moment. Frozen to the spot, I tried to tamp down my sudden surge of adrenaline.

"That's the jealousy talking," he said. "You don't mean that."

I sobbed and crumpled as the tingling in my head intensified. "No, buddy. I don't."

He paced back and forth for a moment, face contorting, then whirled back toward me, throwing his arms wide. "They wanted it!" He shouted to my bedroom: "Tell him you wanted it!"

"We wanted it," two subdued voices chorused.

"See!?" He took a breath between clenched teeth, then stepped over to the table and leaned over me. "Look at me, Mark." He gazed intently into my eyes as my head jerked up. "You're the one with the problem. And you have to fix it, or your jealousy will eat you alive. Go to Equestria and get your own powers."

James stormed out, dragging one of his companions along with each hand, while I was calling the signup number he'd given me. I'd already told them all my personal information, lied about my finances, and was halfway through the preliminary background check when I came to my senses.

I slammed down the phone. Then I yanked its cord from the wall, turned off my cell, shut all the curtains, deadbolted the door, and stuffed cotton in my ears in case he came back and yelled something from the porch.

It took me two full days to work up the nerve to go back outside.

I emerged into a world gone mad over Cutie Marks.

The government had hand-picked the brightest scientists, artists, and performers it could find for the public launch, and the result was an avalanche of genius. The newspaper devoted a full page to a short story by one of the newly Marked authors, and a dozen people were clustered around the newspaper vending machine, reading page 4 with tears streaming down their faces. When I turned on the TV, every news station I flipped to had wall-to-wall interviews with members of the launch group — a physicist was outlining his mathematical proof of stable transuranic elements and the experiment that would create them; an artist was painting swirls of color on a collection of canvases around the studio that, after a few seconds of staring, your brain unexpectedly assembled into a breathtaking portrait of the reporter interviewing him; a doctor was animatedly discussing his discovery of a genetic code inside human cells that could be selectively activated in cancer cells to cause the tumor to self-destruct.

The ads for the Cutie Mark program that ran during the commercial breaks were almost comically unnecessary. UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL, they said, and then the station cut back to their discussion with a Marked transit engineer whose ideas on urban development were about to overturn our roads the way that a Marked diplomat the year before had overturned centuries of war in the Middle East.

I realized that both Kevin and James had been right about exactly one thing, and picked up my phone. But overnight, the portal waiting list had stretched into years.

A few days later, the news was still a wall-to-wall barrage of stories of the newly Marked, and I figured the obsession had hit its peak.

Then one of the first Marked came back with a pair of dice on her hip, bought a single lottery ticket in a convenience store, and promptly paid off her trip with her jackpot. The next day, the stock market spiked, crashed, and staggered to an unexpected recovery; within hours, the Forbes 400 had six new faces, and rumors of tattoos were swirling about the ones who hadn't lost everything in hours.

Overnight, the Marked became the only people worth talking about, and the waiting lists became vague promises.

The sports leagues and the Olympics banned Marking. The entertainment industry had no such scruples — within the month, every new musical act was almost literally addictive. The first political scandal blew up when a Marked journalist published photos of a handshake icon on President Rand's hip. An impeachment vote was launched, with the opposition party shouting that he was compromised by a foreign power, but it crumpled in disarray when a different newspaper published leaked hip-shots of four opposition leaders.

It was barely a footnote when the story broke of the first human to be arrested by Equestrians. They didn't publish his name — let alone the charges — but when I saw the blurry, zoomed-in video footage from the Crystal Empire, I knew instantly who it was. I suddenly found myself weeping in relief — at least, before the shame kicked in. I'd failed both him and his victims. I should have done more.

James hired Kevin's dad as his defense attorney. Then he quietly took a sealed plea deal, and the whole thing vanished from the news.

Harvard, Princeton, and Yale announced deals to supplement their schooling with a guaranteed Mark upon graduation. The NML was born as Marked teams began to play exhibition games, and the athletic leagues schismed as that crack burst open the dam. A law to ban workplace discrimination based on Marking sputtered out in Congress, as corporations poured money into Marked lobbyists and into ad campaigns touting the revolutions in science, medicine, and industry created by their Marked employees.

The Department of Marks promised that they'd unlock the waiting lists again the instant they finished training enough new employees to assign priorities to the names they already had.

Two years later — long after the DoM announced that data storage errors were forcing them, in the interests of fairness, to discard all previous applications and make everyone apply again from scratch — I found a large manila envelope in my mail, with an Equestrian postmark and no return address. Inside was a signed and stamped Department of Marks processing form, its entry date three weeks away, with my information pre-filled in; a picture of a table lamp, the same model that James had broken on that fateful afternoon; and an unsigned handwritten letter.

You tried to tell me, it said.

Make better use of yours than I did.

Everfree

Equestria was bright. Too bright. The soaring antechamber of the Department of Marks had no skylights, and was lit only by a few strips of fluorescent lights on the distant ceiling, but I wasn't the only one squinting as we stepped down from the portal and shuffled through the maze of barrier ropes toward the rows of clerks.

After half an hour of stop-start motion, I reached a red line on the floor with a set of shoeprints painted in front of it. "Next," a horned white pony wearing metal barding intoned, while the human soldier alongside him stood at parade rest. I stepped forward onto the prints, and the human glanced up and down at me and nodded.

I wouldn't have understood the significance of that if I hadn't watched a documentary about the new face of border security a few weeks before. After a successful pilot program, they were giving soldiers Marks in threat assessment — able to tell at a glance not only whether someone was carrying contraband or weapons, but also whether the slightest hints of their body language betrayed any hostile intention. Border interdictions had tripled overnight — although false positives remained a significant problem.

"Next," the pony said, before I even had time to properly panic about whether I'd be one of those statistics.

Shortly afterward, I reached another line on the floor in front of the row of grey, boxy clerk's booths. I stopped at the line, next to a yellow-coated, orange-maned pony dressed in what I could only describe as a drab full-bodied suit. A green light flashed up above one of the booths far to my right. "Number twenty-one," the pony said without looking at me. "Next."

Number 21 was occupied by a tired-looking mint-green unicorn slouched in a disturbingly human fashion in a padded fabric office chair. Unlike the guard-pony and the line-pony, she was naked save for a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and a green accountant's visor; some sort of golden harp-thing was clearly visible on her flank. "Papers," she said, and an insubstantial golden glow snatched my processing form and photo ID out of my hands before I could even set them down on the counter. I jumped, jerking my hands back, and blinked rapidly, looking at the matching glow of her horn.

I'd watched magic on TV, in the shows that used pony actors and an Equestrian setting as a production gimmick, but that was a very different thing from seeing — feeling — it in person. The brief contact with the weird glow had left my hands tingling, and the aura had a strange depth to it, as if space itself wasn't quite obeying normal rules.

As the shock of the magic faded away, a different sort of unease settled in. I couldn't tear my eyes off of her flanks. A musical instrument? What was this unicorn doing here? Shouldn't she be in a concert hall somewhere?

I was belatedly snapped back to reality by my name. "Mumblety-something Mark," she said, flattening my form on her side of the counter and lighting her horn again to wrap its aura around something I couldn't see.

"Yes, ma'am?"

Her eyes narrowed. The flat line of her mouth across her muzzle tugged into a frown. "I said —" and her tone was surprisingly frosty, even given her expression —"I need the code for your Mark."

"Oh! Well …" I worked my jaw, but my brain supplied nothing for it to say. I'd been putting off the decision ever since verifying the form was real. "I … don't know?"

"I always get the slow ones." She sighed aggressively. "It's simple, two digits for category and then four for classification. If you can't remember six numbers at a time I can look it up for you."

I tugged at my collar. "I didn't forget. That's the thing. I don't know."

She stared at me for a moment before closing her eyes. Her hornglow sputtered and relit, lifting her spectacles off of the bridge of her nose, and she turned her head to the side as she raised a forehoof to massage her temple. "Form T-42, please," she said in a carefully controlled tone.

"I, uh …" I made a doubly pointless show of searching my pockets. "I don't have one."

"Yes, you do. You couldn't have gotten this approved without it."

"My friend handled the paperwork."

She opened her eyes then, staring up at me for a moment before silently shifting her raised hoof to the bridge of her nose.

"Look, I … this was a bad idea." I took a half-step backward. "I'll just go."

"Mis-ter MacKen-zie," she said, voice wavering for a moment before returning to its tight lack of affect, "Making a scene would result in your arrest — and also the termination of my employment, since I've already gotten one writeup this month. Please … I am begging you … do us both a favor and let me do my job."

I stepped back up to the counter, glancing back guiltily at the line of milling people. "I'm sorry."

She took a lengthy breath, muzzle twitching. "Okay. We can pretend your T-42 got lost, but I need your cooperation so we're not holding up the line. Let's start with the Mark category. Academic, economic, linguistic, personal enhancement, recreational, scientific, social, technical, thaumological, or other?"

"I'm really sorry, ma'am, but I've got no idea. This whole trip was somewhat unexpected. I figured the right idea would find me when I was ready. That's how ponies do it, isn't it?"

Her eyes instantly widened, and for several terrifying seconds she simply stared at me. Then her muzzle curled into a scowl. "That's … not … how … this … works," she hissed through clenched teeth. "How did you get this form?"

"I told you, a friend handled it."

"You still would have had to sign …" Her voice trailed off as she glanced down at the form. She flipped it over. "Oh."

" 'Oh'?"

Her horn lit, and a rubber stamp flew across the counter to leave a circle of red ink on the front side of my form. Then her glow surrounded the form itself, which swooped under a boxy machine with a mechanical thunk, coming back out with an equally red timestamp. "You have interesting friends, Mister Mackenzie. Looks like Destiny's smiling on you today."

"I what now?"

"Continue to your right. Follow the exit arrows. Have a pleasant visit." She shoved the form into my hands, then turned from me and pressed a button to her side. The green light atop her booth lit up.

"Wait, how —"

"Have. A. Pleasant. Visit."

A tingling pressure shoved at my butt, and I was vomited out of the far side of her booth, staggering for several steps and bouncing off of two people before catching my balance. The big linebacker-looking guy I'd collided with glared at me. "Sorry," I said for the too-manyth time that day.

Past the booths, there were no more barrier ropes — only waves of humans flowing toward a long grey hallway with big red arrows on the walls. I let myself get swept up in the tide, shuffling toward the literal light at the end of the tunnel.

Loudspeakers crackled to life in the ceiling. "Salutations, Citizens of Earth," a deep, flat voice said. "On behalf of the Diarchy, We wish to welcome you to Equestria, and express Our wishes that obtaining your Cutie Mark is a personally fulfilling experience. Kindly remember that the Department of Marks offers limited entry passes, not tourism visas. You are allotted one hour of travel time, fifteen minutes for Cutie Mark acquisition, and up to one hour of personal time outside the Department of Marks facility. This message shall repeat."

The pedestrian flow brought me to the door, and my feet stepped into Equestrian sunlight. I squinted against the blinding rays of an unfamiliar star. The sun was too large. Too bright. Oddly, not too hot.

The crowd pushed me forward into the street, and the loudspeaker's droning message faded behind me. "Salutations, Citizens of Earth …"

I worked my way sideways against the dissipating crowd, finding a spot to myself against the poured-concrete foundations of the Department building. I took a few deep breaths, letting my eyes finish adjusting. A tall woman in a candy-blue business suit, about my age, took refuge from the crowd in the same lull. She was glancing animatedly around, her gaze sweeping over the tall concrete buildings and down the promenade toward what looked like a street but was devoid of cars. Every few seconds, she'd glance down at a black-and-white paper map in her hands, and on one of those glances, her eyes slid sideways to meet mine.

"Isn't this amazing?" she said, giving me a bright smile. "Look at this. We're here, actually here, on Equestria. Another world!" She pointed at an ugly purple tree-like crystal growth in the distance. "Oh, that must be the Friendship Palace!"

"Yeah," I said, "pretty exciting. Where'd you get the map?"

She flipped her map over to reveal a form that looked identical to mine. "It's right on the back of your zed-two-twenty-five."

I fished my own form back out of my pocket. Its back side was labeled "For Canterlot Use Only" and had a bunch of incomprehensible departmental codes, some signatures, and a stamped seal similar to the clerk's but with some sort of heart insignia in the center. Up until now I'd assumed they'd all looked like that.

"Not this one," I said. "Is there a tourist center listed on that?"

She consulted her map. "Yeah. Go down to the street and turn left at the McDonald's. The Everfree Welcome Center is right across from the Starbucks."

"Thanks." I stuck out my hand. "I'm Mark, by the way."

"Lisa." She gave me a short but aggressive handshake.

"So … not to cut into your Equestria visiting time, but how does this whole process work?"

Lisa raised an eyebrow. "Your ess-eye didn't explain it to you?" At my blank look, she sighed. "Sponsoring Institution. Oh, you poor guy. Look … it's really simple. Just go do the thing you're here to get a Cutie Mark for, and poof, as long as you're interested in that Mark, it appears within seconds." She shoulder-shrugged. "It's got something to do with how this world sees us and ponies the same way, and since every adult pony has one, it's desperate to 'fix' us not being Marked yet."

I nodded. "So what are you here for?"

"Optimization of clean-room processes for quantum transistors. You?"

"I'm … not sure." I glanced down the street at the crystal spire. "Is there actually a Mark for that? I mean, not to be racist, but …"

Lisa laughed. "Ponies are smarter than we give them credit for, but you're right, QTs are human technology. That's why Intel set up a satellite office here for Mark training — it's that office building down the street. When I hit CR eng two, they sponsored me in exchange for a 10-year employment contract." Her watch chirped. "Hey, I gotta go, but good luck."

"Yeah," I mumbled as she vanished back into the sprawling crowd of humanity. "Thanks."

I walked. I walked right past the Intel offices, then right past the McDonald's — with its window advertising hamburgers priced in dollars — and kept going. I didn't know what I wanted on my hip for the rest of my life — a problem whose clock was rapidly ticking — but I knew it wouldn't be something out of a corporate lab.

Two blocks later, the human traffic was thinning out. I walked past a few delivery trucks parked alongside the curbs, and for the first time since the clerk in the DoM office, saw a pony. He was a huge, bright red thing, almost the size of a horse, wearing a giant yoke around his neck that was linked to a rickshaw. He plodded evenly through the street, head down, while the couple in his cart laughed and chatted and took pictures of the surrounding buildings.

I kept going.

Another two blocks later, the pavement came to an abrupt halt just past a three-story brownstone office building. The road continued as a muddy stretch of dirt, lined with grass at the margins, twisting between cream-walled thatch-roofed cottages. I had to stop to rub my eyes, then stepped gingerly over the line, feeling like I was finally walking through the portal I'd allegedly crossed ten minutes ago.

A soft breeze blew up, bringing an earthy scent to my nose.

With one final glance behind me — there was no chance of getting lost; all I had to do was head back to the tall urban buildings — I walked into the unknown.

The road was slightly squishy beneath my shoes. There was no traffic — pony or otherwise — though I did seem to be following along a pair of wheel-ruts from that red pony's rickshaw. As the whirr of fans and hum of generators faded behind me, I began to hear the hesitant chirps of birds. At one point, the road went over a tiny rise as the bridge underfoot spanned a dry creekbed.

Several of the cottages I passed seemed to have accumulated a layer of dust. One had a broken window. Past the jagged edges of glass, its curtains swayed in the thin breeze.

I realized as I walked that the road was heading into what looked like some sort of market square — a large, open area ringed with more of those oddly identical cottages and a number of stranger structures. One in particular caught my eye: it had that same cream-colored siding, but the roof looked like it had been ripped off of a gingerbread house, and there was some sort of tower-like structure plopped on top that resembled a double-decker cupcake. The scent of pastry drifted my way from it, and my stomach rumbled in response. I realized that, in between the plane trip and all the waiting at the portal, I hadn't eaten since breakfast. Maybe some authentic Equestrian food would help ground out the weirdness of my trip so far.

The sound of weeping from a table near the windows caught my ears as I opened the door. Feeling suddenly awkward, I slipped in as quietly as I could. "… just can't," a thin female voice whispered. "I just can't stay."

"Fluttershy," a second, firmer female voice said, "I don't care what the bank is telling you. I am not going to let what happened to Rarity occur twice."

I very deliberately didn't look at them as I shuffled forward to the display counter holding racks of neon-colored lollipops and cupcakes. Not my business.

"You don't understand. This isn't about bits — I just can't. It was already bad enough with the city only a hundred hooves away, but with the stream dry, none of them can forage any more — and Harry Beary, yesterday, he got too close to the humans, and … and … they …" The first voice collapsed into incoherent weeping.

"Fluttershy. Listen to me," the second voice said, gently, pleadingly. "I promise you, I will take care of this. Give me a chance. I can't watch a third friend leave."

The first voice sniffled, struggling for control, then whispered: "I have to. I'm sorry."

"You are the strongest pony I've ever known. Please, be strong for me, just for a little bit, and I will make this right."

I glanced behind the counter, my stomach twisting, trying to block out the conversation without much success. There was a stairwell disappearing around a corner toward the second story; a tall, fancy display case with a number of large sheet cakes; and a doorway into a kitchen. Nobody in sight. The counter had a small service bell off to one side, and I hesitantly reached over and tapped the top button, ringing a clear, high tone that made me flinch with its intrusion.

An angular yellow muzzle popped around the corner of the kitchen door, topped by a shock of orange hair. "Yes? Can I help …" he said with a smile that instantly destabilized as we locked eyes. "Oh. I'm sorry, until the Everfree board starts returning our letters so we can get that misunderstanding with the business license straightened out, we're not allowed to serve humans."

The sobbing from behind me instantly cut off into a strangled gasp. There was the abrupt rasp of wood on wood — "Fluttershy! Wait!" — a few rapid hoofbeats, and a sharp slam as the door behind me burst open, filling the room with indirect sunlight. I glanced back over my shoulder to see a purple pony, wings flared, standing and reaching a hoof over her table toward the door.

The empty chair across from her, in the process of tipping over, overbalanced and hit the floor with a thump.

"Road app—" the purple pony snarled, cutting herself off as she realized I was staring. She swiveled her head to me, and I realized with a start she also had a horn on her head. "What."

"I," I stammered, memories straining for my attention. A purple winged unicorn … big red-and-white star on her flanks … wait a minute. The winged unicorns were royalty … and I'd seen her on the TV news, along with the tall sisters, in those big diplomatic summits. Sweet Jesus, I had walked in on the Princess of Friendship herself. "Uh, sorry?"

"I'm sure you are," she snapped, then closed her eyes; I could see her forcing in a breath through clenched teeth, and she closed her eyes and extended a hoof from her chest in some sort of weird salute thing. "Look," she said, more levelly, "this is really not a good time. What are you even doing here? On Wingsday, all the tour groups are supposed to be in Cloudsdale."

I fumbled in my coat pocket for the form. "I, I'm here for the, for my Mark —"

She cut me off with a humorless laugh. "Oh! Of course you are. Because stars forbid our world is anything more than a source of supernatural skills, right?" A raspberry glow enveloped my hand, yanking it out of my pocket and snatching my Z-225, which leapt through the air toward her. "What magnificently Equestrian specialty are you here for? Theme park recruitment? Subprime lending management? Aquifer extraction? Hunting?"

I shuffled toward the door. "Look, I'm really sorry. I think I should go."

Her eyes flicked past the form's timestamp. "Stars, no! You've barely been here fifteen minutes and already you've traumatized one of my best friends. Think of how much more you could accomplish with the full two-and-a-quarter hours." She flipped the form over, and barked a sharp and bitter laugh. "Oh, perfect. No wonder. Just because he gets a royal classification waiver means he thinks he has to make a beeline straight for the nearest princess."

"It's not like that!"

The princess took an ominous step toward me, wings flaring to full extension. "Oh?" she said levelly. "What is it like?"

I swallowed. "I–I'm …" I looked around the room for help, but the only other being in sight was the stallion in the kitchen, staring at us in frozen open-mouthed unease. "My friend set this up for me. I had no idea what to expect. I'm not even sure what I came for."

She tossed her head back and let out a strangled, incoherent scream. "You don't even know —" She slammed her hoof down onto the floor, cracking the wood and making both the shopkeeper and I wince. Her body began to heave, somewhere in between laughter and a sob, and she continued more softly as I backed toward the door. "So you came to me for help."

"No, I —"

"It's the easiest bucking thing in the world!" she screamed, flinging my paper back in my face. I staggered backward, lost my balance, and hit the floor heavily, desperately wrestling the smothering form out of its raspberry-colored grip. "As long as you're looking for a Cutie Mark, literally anything you do here will rip a superpower out of the beating heart of Harmony! You want a suggestion?" As I jammed the crumpled form in my pocket and crab-scrambled backward, she glanced around the room and picked up a salt shaker from the nearby table. I yelped and flung myself sideways as it rocketed in my direction, shattering on the floor behind me. "Eat some salt! Become the leading salt expert of two worlds! Learn fun and exciting facts like how to use it as a broad-spectrum herbicide, raising soil salinity levels so that nothing can ever grow there again! Or how about this one: The acute lethal oral dose of salt for an average equine is 440 grams!" She grabbed another salt shaker, and I bolted for the door. "Learn how to kill us all at once because it's a damn sight kinder than how you're killing us now!"

I dove through the door as the second shaker exploded against it, glass shards slashing across the backs of my hands and neck, a cloud of salt billowing out and raining to the ground.

I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the intense stinging from the lines and dots of red that were rising from my exposed flesh, and sprinted away at top speed. Behind me, anguished sobbing echoed from the open door.

Sweet Apple Acres

I finally risked a glance behind me a few minutes later, after I'd run clean past the last of the cottages and into some sort of forest. Nothing but empty road. Thank God the village streets had been so deserted — if anyone had seen me sprinting away from the Princess of Friendship, I probably would have had police closing in on me within moments.

I finally let myself slow down, then doubled over against a tree, gasping for breath. A tiny part of my brain reminded me that I wasn't necessarily clear — since some of the ponies had wings — and panic clenched me again. But when I scanned the skies, nothing was following me there, either. I sank to the ground with a sob of relief, and sat there for nearly a minute, the heaving of my chest gradually slowing.

When I dared move again, I glanced around. There was a thin trickle of muddy water running down a ditch at the side of the road — not enough to quench the burning of my throat, but I fished a Kleenex out of my pocket and did what I could to wash the blood scabbing the back of my hands. I took a second Kleenex and wiped the red from my face and neck. The jacket over my arms was shredded in a few places, but that was the least of my problems.

As I cleaned up, I became gradually aware of a distant, rhythmic thumping noise. I looked up and glanced around the forest. No — the farm. The trees were planted in an evenly spaced grid, and a profusion of plump, red apples hung low from the branches.

Thump.

I stood up on shaky legs and walked toward the source of the noise. Half of me screamed that every pony I'd met had resented my presence and that the princess herself had attacked me, and that I was only inviting more trouble. The other half was beyond caring. If I was in as much trouble as it seemed, wasn't it better to find a pony who wouldn't try to kill me on sight, and turn myself in quietly in hopes calmer heads would intervene? Or maybe, if I was lucky, they would lend me a phone and I could call the embassy. Wasn't that what embassies existed for?

Thump.

I crested a low rise, and a few rows away, a wooden cart was piled high with empty barrel-slat baskets. Just beyond it, an orange pony whose blond mane was covered by a Stetson hat was staring over her shoulder at a tree. She arched her back, rearing her hind hooves up, and then lashed out at the trunk —

Thump.

— sending a rain of apples plummeting into the buckets around her. She drew in a deep breath, clamped her teeth around a full basket's grip, hoisted it up onto her back, and walked over to load it on the cart.

Midway through the process, she caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of her eye. She froze, swiveled her head, and locked eyes with me for a silent moment. I swallowed and nodded in greeting. She stared for another few seconds, then turned away with a wordless frown and went back to her work.

Full basket to the cart. Empty baskets to the next tree in line. I was deliberating the gentlest way to interrupt her when she finally broke the silence: "I'd consider it a kindness if ya bucked your tree rather'n stood there starin'."

"Sorry," I said automatically and shuffled toward her. Thump. Apples rained down, and she began loading the cart.

I watched her walk back and forth for another few seconds, then set my jaw and grabbed a stack of empty baskets, setting them down under the tree across the row from her. I stared up at the clusters of fruit, trying to align the baskets with the thickest concentrations, until another thump shook me out of my assessment. I walked over to the trunk and gave it a toe-first kick, which accomplished nothing except sending pain stabbing up my leg. I hopped back, biting back curses, and paused to think about it — then angled myself sideways to the trunk, lifted one leg, and shot it out with a heel strike. The tree shuddered, and a modest torrent of apples spilled downward, scattering fruit all over the buckets, ground, and one or two off my head.

I looked at the mess, winced, and crouched down to start pitching apples into the baskets. Thump. When I was finished, the ground was mostly clear, and most of my baskets were between quarter- and half-full. Thump. I sighed, stood up, and reached up into the head-level branches, grabbing apples one by one; they yielded easily to my touch, and soon I was tossing them down into the baskets at a rapid-fire pace. Thump, thump, from increasingly further up the hill, and then quiet hoof-falls approaching from behind me.

"Gotta move up the cart," she said. "Couldja load on what you got?"

"Sure," I said, heaving a mostly-full basket up with each arm and carrying them over to the cart as she walked alongside me with a basket of her own. Between the two of us, it only took two trips, and then she hitched herself in to the cart-yoke, kicked off the wheel-brake, and began pulling it uphill with a heavy grunt. After a moment's thought, I got behind the cart and pushed. I heard her hoofbeats stagger briefly as she adjusted to the extra momentum.

"My name's Mark," I said as the cart trundled along.

"Mm-hm," she responded.

She set her handbrake again, grabbed a stack of empty baskets, and headed toward the nearest tree. She halted at the scrape of wood on wood as I took the next stack and began to walk toward the tree beside her.

"Mark," she said, "stop."

I froze. "Sorry."

"If you ain't got your Cutie Mark from kickin' that tree, you are beyond my help. And if you did, no offense, but I need a row of half-bucked trees like I need root rot."

"I, uh …" The surreality of the situation finally crystallized, and I fumbled to give her an explanation I didn't have myself. "That's not why I'm here, ma'am."

She regarded me dubiously, one eyebrow drifting upward. "You're on a zebra-225, ain'tcha? You gotta be. Young man alone on a Wingsday."

"I am, but I'm not here for a Cutie Mark in tree-kicking."

"Then what are you doin' here?"

"To be honest," I said, "I've been asking myself that a lot today."

The pony's mouth opened and moved, but no words came out. The harsh lines of her expression drifted. The corner of her mouth twitched. I winced inwardly, hoping I wasn't about to have to start dodging apple baskets.

Then she hung her head. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sor—" I said automatically before her words caught up with me. "Wait, what?"

She trotted toward me and lifted a forehoof. I reflexively flinched, but she just stood there with the hoof hanging toward me. "Can't say as you're much of an applebucker, but your heart's in the right place, and I'm afraid I weren't too friendly in return. Name's Applejack."

"It's nice to meet you." I gingerly took the offered hoof in both hands, and she gave my arms an intimidatingly strong shake. "Do you, uh, mind if I stick around? Is there a better way I can help?"

"After how I treated you, you're still askin' to do me a good turn?" She glanced around, and tapped her chin with a hoof. "Well, with those arms of yours, you seem to have a way with those baskets. Willin' to haul some apples to the cart?"

"I'd love to," I said, and meant it.

An hour later — sweaty, exhausted, and starving — I slung the last basket onto Applejack's second cartload, wiped my brow with a sleeve, and let out a breath. "I probably ought to get back to the portal," I said regretfully. With what had happened, just getting back to the portal safely would be a win — Cutie Mark or no. "I don't want to get into any more trouble than I'm already in."

"Right — your zebra-225. I'd plumb forgot." Guilt flitted across Applejack's muzzle, to be quickly replaced with curiosity. "Don't sweat the timin' — the worst they'll do is fine ya for being late, and I can make sure it don't come to that. But if you don't mind me askin' … what kind of trouble is a human gonna find here that don't involve two worlds' worth of guards hot on their tail?"

I winced. "I'm not sure why there aren't guards involved, actually. I walked in on the Princess of Friendship when I was looking for breakfast in a cafe. Her friend ran away the instant she saw me, and then the Princess got really upset and threw some things at me."

"Twilight what?" Applejack's eyes flew open, and she reached up to rest a hoof firmly on my arm. "Listen, sugarcube. Something ain't right — we've all been under a lot of stress lately, but that ain't like her. You stay right here, and I'm gonna get this straightened out."

"You can do that?"

"I can and I will — she's a good friend of mine. Just gonna run down to Ponyville. Sit tight, and eat all the apples you like."

I clenched her hoof in my hand. "You seriously have no idea how much that means to me. Thank you."

I watched her gallop off, feeling like I could sob in relief, and a smile crept onto my face for the first time that day. Things were looking up.

My stomach rumbled. I reached toward the cart behind me for an apple, only to feel my hand smack into something solid and fuzzy.

"Dear me! An assault! That makes this self-defense," a voice whispered right in my ear.

"Gaah!" I shouted, whirling around, and all but wet myself at the sight. Looming over me was some sort of … chimera-thing … that looked like it was stitched together from a grab bag of mixed animal parts. Its face was a twisted smirk, teeth bared, one huge fang gleaming white. Cold menace shone in its eyes as it reached out at me, two mismatched and equally ominous sets of claws closing in on my face.

I backpedaled as fast as my feet would take me.

The monstrosity stalked forward on one goat hoof and one dragon foot, somehow keeping pace despite its tiny legs. "You're a very lucky man, you know," it growled as it advanced, its voice smooth, high, and masculine.

I slammed into an apple tree, fell over, and balled up as pointy death loomed in. "Please don't kill me," I whimpered.

He stared at me hungrily, letting the moment linger — then stepped forward to stand over me, retracting the claws on his lion's-paw to offer me a hand up. "I didn't. That's why you're lucky."

I stared up at the paw, heart hammering. "… And you won't?"

"Not while Destiny is dangling an opportunity in my face." He bent down, clamped his eagle-claw around my arm, and effortlessly hauled me to my feet. "But after that? Who knows?"

I staggered back against the apple tree, glancing wildly around. Applejack was already out of sight, and the monster probably wouldn't take kindly to me shouting for help. Which meant my best chance of getting out of this was to keep him talking.

I swallowed through a desert-dry throat. "Would it help if I apologized?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Not the sharpest tool in the shed, are we? No, human, this is much bigger than you poking me in the tummy."

"I meant for whatever I did to get you mad."

"You mean you don't even …?!" Both eyebrows shot up off his face, hovering above his head. He took a deep breath, let it out, then reached up and pulled them back into place.

"Let's start from the top," he said, whirling around to pace in front of me, his neck twisting impossibly to keep his head facing me no matter which way his body turned. "I've put up with your kind's intrusion for this long because the Princesses told me it was necessary — that the 'magic of friendship' would redeem humanity the way it did me." He nearly growled the words. "But when I heard a rumor spreading around town that a human had attacked Princess Sparkle and nearly injured my dearest Fluttershy? I will not stand by and watch as my best friend gets hurt. All bets, as they say, are now off."

"I swear to you," I pleaded, "I just wanted some breakfast. It wasn't an attack."

"Yes, yes, you're very sorry. They all are when they're caught." He held up his eagle's claw — showing off a thick iron bracelet around the wrist, inscribed with gemstones and runes — and in a single smooth motion deformed the claw and pulled off the bracelet. "I'm going to tell you a secret, Mr. Son of Kenzie, to show you how serious I am. They think they have me tamed — my magic neutralized. I've let them think that, because it makes everyone feel safer." He grabbed my wrist, turned my hand upright, and dropped the bracelet in it. Then he snapped his fingers, and I was suddenly holding a child-sized blanket.

"Who —"

"Discord, at my service." He stepped back and gave me an exaggerated bow.

"Why —"

"Solely because Applejack wouldn't have appreciated me killing you in front of her."

"Er," I said, feeling the blood drain from my cheeks. That hadn't been the question on my mind, though. "But why —"

"But then," he continued, as if I hadn't spoken, "as I waited for my chance, I watched you help her, and I began to think. When you told her your side of the story, I realized you're one of those types … out to, air quote —" some ghostly punctuation obligingly floated by — "'do some good.' And, more importantly: despite all your misadventures here, you still haven't obtained a Cutie Mark. Which means that you present me with a unique opportunity."

"What —"

"I take it, from your reluctance to complete your two-point-two-five-hour mission before the secretary disavows all knowledge of your existence, that your experience with human Cutie Marks has been as loathsome as my own?"

"Listen, if you'll just —"

Discord snapped his fingers. I was suddenly sitting in a comfortable throne-like chair in front of the apple cart, with my mouth sealed shut and the taste of metal on my lips. He leaned in to me, putting his lion-arm around my shoulders. "Work with me here, Mr. Ironic First Name, we're on a deadline. This is the part where you answer my questions." He reached up and unzipped my mouth.

I gasped for breath, then decided cooperation was the better part of valor. "I have firsthand experience with Marked humans doing some scary things, yes. Things I thought were impossible."

Discord put on a mortarboard cap and pulled down a projector screen from out of midair; on it there was a Mark-flanked pony side by side with a human icon. Beneath the pony was an unmarked equine with an arrow pointing up; above the human was a similar arrow leading to an exclamation point. "That's because good ol' Harmony designed Marks to take the dominant race of the planet, and turn them into planetary stewards with powers far beyond their humble animal origins," Discord said. "But it never anticipated that anyone would qualify for the conditions of a Mark while already being sapient enough to master their environment. Too long, didn't listen: You're not supposed to have Cutie Marks, kid — it's a bug of interdimensional contact. They were designed to lift ponies onto an equal level with you."

"Okay, I get it," I said. "So what do you want from me?"

His muzzle spread into an unnerving smile and he steepled his fingers together. "It's simple. You help me fix the problem. Permanently."

I swallowed through a dry throat and stalled. "How exactly would that work?"

"Just decide that you'd like a spellbreaker Cutie Mark — one which interferes with all magic use in your vicinity. I'll help you earn it … and add in my own special boost to the effect. Then you walk back to the portal —" he grabbed two apples in his lion-paw and eagle-claw, and a shimmering rainbow appeared linking them —"and presto, permanent destabilization." The rainbow flickered, made a wheeze like an engine running out of gas, and disappeared. "I teleport all the humans back home while the portal is collapsing, and then bing, bam, boom — once the link between our worlds is severed, no more human Marks." He reached behind his wing for an asterisk, and stuck it into space next to my head. "Unless that's your name. We don't have to deal with your pesky superpowers any more, or your tasteless coffee … and most importantly, no more hurt Fluttershy. So — what do you say? Are you in?"

I shifted in the chair uneasily. Sure — all I had to do was singlehandedly destroy our only link to nonhuman civilization. "Uhhh."

Discord's smile fell away, and some of the earlier menace returned to his eyes. "As much as I'd love to stand here and watch you squirm, why don't we skip forward to the part where you realize that voicing your objection will get me slightly less enraged than stalling tactics."

I squeaked, paralyzed.

Discord sighed and snapped his fingers. A small palm tree instantly grew alongside him, and in a single fluid motion he peeled off his eyes, nose, and mouth and stuck them onto the tree. "Alright," the tree said, "let's do this the slightly more annoying way." He snapped again and my mouth started moving without me in an all-too-familiar fashion.

"Despite the obvious benefits of your masterful plan," I said, "this feels like you're a handsome villain trying to talk me into a bad idea. What's the catch?"

Discord put a paw to his chest. "Why, goodness me! I cannot believe that you've never even heard of me, and yet my reputation precedes me."

"Gah!" I shouted as my lips started responding again. My hands flew up to cover my mouth.

Discord snapped his fingers again, and was standing in front of me whole and un-treed. "The catch is that, for the first time in my life, there is no catch!" he roared. "I hate you, I hate everything you stand for, I hate everything you've done to my world … but I am doing this to protect my friends without their knowledge or consent, which means I can't solve this the easy way. If I harm a single hair on a single fleshy monkey head, then all my good deeds are just going to earn me another millennium as a bird-perch. On the other appendage, if all I do is help you hit the big reset button, then everypony — and everyhuman — will have some time to realize what I did was for the best."

He stood up straight, breathing through clenched teeth, and then lifted his lion-paw to his chest — extending it forward as he let out a tight breath. It was a little disorienting to see Princess Twilight's hoof-salute come from his stubby arms.

"Go ruin your own world however you want," Discord continued. "So long as you never soil my sandbox again, I could not care less what horrible things your worthless race does to each other."

My mind wandered back to the thought that had gotten stuck like a bit of gristle in my teeth: And all I'd have to do would be singlehandedly sever our interdimension connection. The greatest act of terrorism in human history. All my fault.

"Well?" Discord said.

And that was only part of the problem, wasn't it? He'd said they wouldn't have to deal with Marked humans any more. I thought of James, and my stomach clenched. With thousands of the Marked already running wild on Earth, and a guarantee that no more would arrive — what sort of horrors would I be unleashing on our future?

On the other hand, if things were already this bad … shouldn't I try to keep them from getting worse?

Fortunately, before my terrorized indecision uncoiled enough to reach my face, a ding like a microwave timer's echoed from behind my head, and Discord snarled what sounded like an alien curse. "I'm afraid the Funky Bunch has arrived," he muttered. "Sorry, Marky Mark, we're out of time — I'm not in the mood to deal with royal meddling. However, I'm willing to give you one last chance. When you decide to take me up on my offer, just find somewhere private. I'll be watching." With one final snap of his fingers, he — and the throne, and the blanket, and every other sign of his presence — disappeared.

"Remember, I WILL solve this problem," an ethereal voice whispered in my ear. "And if you're not part of my solution, then pray to all your nonexistent gods that we don't meet again."

"Wait, I …" I started, then trailed off as I heard hooves in the distance.

Soon, the form of Applejack resolved through the trees, with a familiar purple pony on her tail. My gut knotted up, but I tried to stay calm. Applejack had promised she'd take care of things — and right now, an angry princess was only my second-biggest problem.

Applejack slowed to a trot as she approached the cart, not even breathing hard despite her coat being sprinkled with sweat. The princess behind her was panting as she came to a stop. "Thanks for waitin', Mark. Now … I think Twilight has something she'd like to say."

The princess glanced up at the trepidation in my eyes, then lowered her head, taking a deep breath and letting it out. "I … I'm sorry, Mr. MacKenzie. I was upset about something that had nothing to do with you, and I took it out on you." She swallowed. "Applejack told me how helpful you were being, and I realized that I was judging you only based on your race."

The way Discord did? I couldn't help but think, and further unease at his plan gnawed at my gut.

"It's alright. We all have bad days," I said, glancing over at Applejack for support. She nodded at me, placing a hoof on the princess' shoulder.

"But I should be better than that. I have a responsibility to set an example." The princess looked up, meeting my eyes. "Contact with Earth is the biggest challenge we've ever faced. There's so many of you! It's easy to lose sight of how powerful friendship is, when you're dealing with impersonal bureaucracies and negotiating politics. But change only ever starts one person at a time … and you were looking to make things better, and I failed you."

I nodded uneasily at her mention of improvement. "Well … uh … what if we …"

"What if we what?"

"Never mind." I wasn't sure what Discord would be able to do to me if I spilled the beans on his plan, and I didn't want to find out.

The princess stepped forward, gingerly resting a hoof on my knee. "No, really, Mr. MacKen … Mark. I'd like to know what you have to say."

I tried not to imagine a murderous Discord standing behind me flexing his claws. "I might have some ideas," I dodged, "but I'd rather have some time to think them through so I can make sure I'm giving you good ones."

The princess nodded. "That reminds me — you remember when you asked me for Cutie Mark suggestions? I do have one, a genuine one."

I never did, but I was so relieved at the topic change that I let it slide. "What?"

"You're here because you care about us … and you could give Equestria something unique. Let me help you earn a Cutie Mark in diplomacy. Live with us here as an attaché, and represent Equestrian interests for us on Earth. A human with a Mark can out-think, out-talk, or out-fight even the most gifted pony a hundred times over … that power is something we just can't achieve on our own. You could help negotiate a new partnership with your world that helps us both achieve the best we're capable of." Her head drooped. "Which … isn't happening right now."

"The princesses have tried to get you folk to send humans here who'll use their Marks for the greater good," Applejack said. "We've all seen how sometimes that don't work out. They make suggestions, but we don't know human society like you do."

"We keep learning, and keep thinking we've got a handle on it, but every time we try to reform the Marking process, there's new consequences we never could have anticipated."

"Like Everfree City and its banks an' technology."

And super-soldiers, I mentally added. And politicians, and an army of diplomats already at the top of their game. That wasn't a comfortable idea. Could one human really make a difference against that?

"What do you say?" Twilight prompted. "Are you in?"

Terror began to creep in again. Me? Just me? One person, with the weight of fixing everything on his shoulders?

One magically enhanced human with perfect diplomatic skills, the voice of reason countered.

… Against other similarly perfected humans, with a head start on plundering this world for all it's worth.

It doesn't have to be just me. There must be others out there who would help.

And how would I find them? And how many more Fluttershys would get their lives ruined while I flailed around in that search?

And how many people would get their lives ruined if I tried to go it alone?

I wilted. It was too much pressure. Saying no and talking to Discord was looking better and better.

But what would stopping the flow of new Marks do to Earth? the voice of reason countered. Marked doctors are testing a cure for cancer. How many people — and ponies — will die if the next generation isn't powered up to cure the next epidemic?

That was, if I had to be honest, the least of the reasons to say no to Discord. … But what would happen to me if I took Twilight up on her offer, and then Discord found me?

"Mark?" Applejack asked, prodding my arm. "You've gone awful quiet."

I glanced up with a start. They were looking at me expectantly.

So I looked back and forth between the ponies, my thoughts a muddy whirl, and gave them the only answer that I could.

Destiny

I pause for a moment as I take a lengthy sip of cider.

"… So."

"Mmm?" I grunt back.

"You chose Twilight Sparkle's offer, right? The portal's still open."

I let loose a bitter laugh. "You think I made a choice? Have you even been listening to my story? I'm no hero. I didn't have the stones to tell either one of them no."

"You mean you just walked away?"

"No, I never said that. In fact, while I was agonizing over what to do, I had a moment of epiphany which gave me my Mark. I chose …" I smile wryly. "To punt the decision."

"How'd you do that?"

"Remember the clerk mentioning Destiny smiling? That's a thing, with them. A pony doesn't 'choose' their Cutie Mark like we do. To them — and presumably, their magic — they get the Mark they're meant to have, because Destiny's a real force with real consequences." I drain the last of the cider from my bottle. "So I figured, if the lottery-winning gal could walk into Equestria and get a Mark that aligned her with the force of luck …"

"Wait. Wait … are you telling me what I think you're telling me?"

I glance around the restaurant, shift a bit in my seat, and pull the side of my pants down to reveal the flesh of one hip. There's an image of a pointing finger, the tip shining with light.

"I'm telling you," I say, "that for a month I've been searching Earth for the one who can walk in there, make the decision I didn't make, and satisfy both Twilight and Discord. Make things turn out right. And I know, as sure as I know my name, that Destiny has chosen you as the best hope of two worlds."

I set down the bottle, reach into my jacket, and toss onto the table a signed and stamped form with "Z-225" in block letters across the top. Then I reach across the table, clasp your hands, and stare earnestly into your eyes.

"What do you say?" I ask. "Are you in?"