Pony On

Tomorrow was going to be a stressful day.

Rewinding two months, Alex had been contacted by a nearby university and asked to appear there on October the second so that the Science students could meet a prodigy and exchange knowledge and information. Alex had agreed immediately, of course; he'd decided not to apply for uni until he was a little older, but he'd still desperately wanted to at least see the inside of one.

Now in the present, however, she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Should she or shouldn't she go? If she didn't, she'd be letting down the entire science department of the university. If she did, she'd have to reveal that she was an orange-flavored talking unicorn.

Actually, the irony of that would be pretty damn funny. Watching her audience's reactions would almost be worth the embarrassment of being turned into a girl. And a pony, but most important was the being a girl part.

Actually, she could just make a tiny fib, and nobody would ever notice. The smallest lies were the best, after all.

Mobile phones weren't allowed in the university after somebody hacked into the systems from an iPhone 16 Flex. Cameras also weren't allowed in assemblies for fear of interruptions. How lucky was that? It was like the universe wanted to give her a chance for once!

No cameras or phones meant that the information probably wouldn't spread past the science department. Or at the very least, it wouldn't spread quickly. The fact that unicorns, especially talking ones, shouldn't exist would dissuade people from sharing it with their friends, and if they did, it was unlikely that anyone would take them seriously.

The mare's second order of business was to get a suit; she could hardly go to a formal meeting in her usual human-based attire. Donning the sweat-pants and hoodie, she came to a rather surprising obstacle: the stairs. How she'd gotten down them before she didn't know, but she chalked it up to achievements in ignorance. Now they stood in their full glory, steep and foreboding.

What kind of idiot put stairs on a sixty degree angle, anyway? There should have been laws about that sort of thing.

There were three options. The first was to stand like a human and go down, but the motion would probably hurt her spine, and god forbid she fell like that. The second was to slide down on her butt, but she'd need to do that every single day, and it'd make her feel like she was disabled.

The third option was to... pony up and go head-first, walking like a horse, or a unicorn as the case may be. Alex took a deep breath and placed a shivering hoof on the first step down, slowly shifting her weight forwards and lifting her right leg to keep up. She pulled up her right front leg from the safety of the upstairs landing and set it on the second step. So far, so good. Placing her left hoof on the third step, Alex reached forwards for the next one...

And froze.

She'd forgotten about her back legs, which were still on the landing, and now the only way to fix it was to lift one. She chose the right one on a whim, brought it up off the stair, and slipped.

The tangerine-coated girl squinted open an eye. Surely she should feel something, right? A bump on the butt, or a broken snout or something? All she could she was a carpeted ceiling. With her father hanging upside-down from it.

"Uhh, Al? You okay, champ?"

Alex's eyes snapped open and she scrambled about, finally realizing that she was being dangled upside down. Strange, it really felt like she was... She looked up at her legs.

"Wait, so I can fly now?"

Matt scratched his head before flipping Alex back the right way up, where she wobbled before tumbling to the ground in a heap of pain and suffering. "Looks like it, I guess. What happened? Your horn was glowing."

"I realized too late that walking downstairs was difficult," Alex muttered, rubbing her forehead. "I wonder if I can make other things float..." Her dad's look of perplexion made her chuckle, hiding her mouth behind a hoof as she reminded herself of the issue at hand. "I probably shouldn't break physics much until the university meeting's over, though. I doubt they'd react well if things started flying around the room."

Matt made his woes clear to the world with a sigh. "I take it you're still going to the uni, then?" Alex nodded and he let out another calming breath through his nose. "I guess I'll take you there, unless you think you can drive when you're up to my waist with no hands or feet."

Well that was something she'd forgotten. With all the worry about the meeting itself, Alex hadn't even thought of the trip there and back. "Sure thing, just put a blanket and a chew toy in the- Ow!"

Glaring at her father, Alex held her nose the best she could where he'd flicked her. Matt just smirked back and poked her in the forehead, right under the horn. "You being a unicorn doesn't change the fact that the boot isn't safe. Seriously, what is with you and sitting in there? You aren't supposed to be the reckless one, that's my job."

"You've just been fired-"

"-And you've just been grounded unless you sit in the front with me."

The scientific genius stared down the detective genius. Ten seconds, twenty- "Damnit, I had something in my eye."

Matt thrust a fist into the air. "YES! Still got it!"

Well, she'd put it off for long enough. It was probably best to be humble and apologetic if she was going to be facing her mother. Taking a deep breath, Alex steeled herself and... reached up... and... fumbled with the door handle...

It was hard to keep any tension in the air with that pathetic sight. Matt twisted the handle and let her in, snickering not quite silently as his newly-made daughter grumbled about pity and indirect but extremely painful revenge.

Stanley and Amy were in the middle of the room as was usual at two in the afternoon, with Samantha watching over them like a hawk from the armchair. Alex stumbled into the room, her hooves finally contacting something other than carpet. Unfortunately that something was a polished wooden floor, and it took a lot of maneuvering and some help from her dad to get to a sofa, at which point the man just picked her bodily off the floor and dumped her on the seat, much to her noisy disagreement.

"Feet off the sofas," her mum scolded her automatically, then she raised her hands to her mouth as if she'd witnessed a murder. "Oh I'm so sorry, Alex! I-"

"-didn't mean to," the daughter finished tiredly. "I know, but you have told me every day for the past five years at least, so I really can't blame you." She let loose a tiny smirk, but hid it behind a less frightening smile as she joked, "I wish they did some pony-shaped clothes in a shop or something, I keep tripping in these sweat-pants."

Samantha's ears almost literally perked upwards as she leant forwards a little. "What kind of clothes? We'll need all the regular stuff, some suits... Alex, what are you doing in the near future?"

Hook, line and sinker. "Just that university meeting that I told you about, and that's tomorrow, but-"

"But nothing, Alexander-slash-Alexandria James-slash-Jamie Williams! I will not have you at a formal meeting in that outfit! I'll need some underwear for you-"

"-I have fur-"

"-And soon you'll have underwear to match. I probably shouldn't make it lacy, though..."

Alex felt the blood rush to her face. "If you have to make underwear, at least choose boxers, for the love of all things coated in caramel!"

Her mum just brushed her off. "Sure, sure. I'll need to make you a skirt, too-"

"I don't think skirts go with boxers, mum."

"I never said I was making you boxers, dear. Now be good and stay put, I'll go get the tape measure!"

Alex gave a long-suffering sigh, feeling that somehow, the conversation had not gone as planned. She shot daggers at the man rolling on the floor laughing, before her face split into a grin at the opportunity. Glancing over at Amy and Stanley Alex pointed a hoof resolutely at her father.

"Sic 'em."

Legends would later be told of the ghost of the Williams family.