Author's Note

"Chapter's got a beginning, an ending, and only three quarters of a middle. Let's post it anyway, because I just want to move on! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻"

Seriously, this chapter's been WIP for way too long, for reasons that are my own doing. If I write about the search party again, it'll be in their own story, because I can't do it justice in side chapters like this. Only reason I'm actually posting this chapter is because there's setup for future events on Pete's side in here.

Search Party. May 23rd, 1:52 PM. New York City

For what was definitely not the first time, silence hung over the room. Sage and Glimmer Glory exchanged awkward glances, before looking at a strangely pleased Geoffrey.

“Oookay. ‘It fucking sucks,’” Glimmer muttered to herself, innocently transcribing Geoffrey’s words. She looked back to him, once she’d finished writing. “Could you elaborate? The more details, the better.”

“Jesus, where to start?”

“Wherever you want.”

“Well, when I woke up this morning, I almost suffocated under my bedsheets. Then I almost broke my nose. I mean, all of a sudden, I’m this…” Geoffrey looked down at his outstretched forelegs, “This thing!”

“So, how you wanna do this?” Dustup asked Clarity. Clarity scanned the horizon, then lifted her wing and dug through the saddlebag that was hidden underneath it.

“D’you still have your flare gem that Glimmer gave you, before we went through the portal?” she asked, using her hoof to wiggle an oblong, green crystal out of her saddlebag. The crystal tumbled out and clattered on the gravel covering the roof of the building.

“Oh, that thing?” Dustup watched Clarity scoop the crystal up, with her mouth. “Yeah, of course!”

“Wehl, I wuffinking, we fwit uh.”

Dustup blinked a few times, his muzzle wrinkled up. “We...frit—” then he understood what she meant— “Oh! Split up! Right.” He lifted a wing, and began digging through his own saddlebag. “Yeah, you go one way, I’ll go the other. We use the flare if we find anypony… Wanna start with this big island and meet up after a couple hours?”

Clarity nodded, and she was gone before Dustup could say anything else. Unable to find his own flare gem in the left saddlebag, he turned to his right.

“Hm.” Glimmer looked back down to her notepad, scratching a few more notes into it. Sage laid by Geoffrey’s side, and the two earth ponies occasionally dunked their muzzles into a big bowl of enameled chocolates—M&Ms, he’d called them. “Not that I lack empathy for your frustrating situation, but I was sort of hoping you could highlight more of the...mechanical? Differences between a pony and a human.”

“That’s even harder,” Geoffrey sighed.

“There’s no rush.”

“But I really don’t know where to start, this time!”

“Well, we’ve sort of seen what a human looks like. Maybe you can describe an average human for us?” Glimmer suggested.

“Oh yeah, they’ve got…” Geoffrey paused, his eyes flicked back and forth, and he stood up. “I’ll just go get pictur—oh!” The second he tried to take a step, he tripped. “Fucking tiles,” he grumbled.

Dustup sighed, looking down at the city below, forelegs draped over the edge of a tall building’s rooftop. He’d only just set off, but he was already feeling overwhelmed by the task set out before him. The awe of his first impressions still lingered, and it persisted the more he thought of how his surroundings. Where Canterlot or Manehattan might have blended into farmland and forests, the concrete blocks extended onward, tall as, if not exceeding what he’d thought to be the limits of architecture. There was hardly any green to speak of. Where were all the farms? Where did any of these humans get their food from?

He groaned and held his head in his hooves. “Millions,” he muttered, “Millions of them.” He looked around once more, at the maze of stone and glass that sprawled far as the eye could see, and sprawled out like a deflated balloon, precariously balanced over a hundred foot drop. “They could be right under my nose and I wouldn’t even notice. How the heck is anypony supposed to find anything in a place like this?”

He slowly fanned his wings as he stared at the park below. It was the only patch of greenery he could find, and it stretched a mile and a half in either direction. It was a perfectly wide, flat area to search, even if the trees somewhat obstructed his view. It seemed a bit peculiar that a society that had so ravenously expanded would leave any room for a city park. Dustup couldn’t imagine a life where he never saw a tree again. That much, it seemed, he had in common with humans.

He huffed and lazily scanned the roads, not that there were many within immediate view. A rectangle of rodway circled around the park, while a few unoccupied bridges stretched the width of it. At the least, they looked unoccupied. Dustup scooted forward, dangled more of himself over the roof’s edge, and squinted. In the tiny gaps between the branches lining one of the roads, he could see little flashes of color. A few more seconds with his imaginary binoculars coaxed out the shape of three ponies. Three!

Dustup reached around his neck and, took his flare gem in his front hooves, and squeezed it tightly. Under the pressure, the object glowed red and launched straight up in the air, and it tugged itself free of the string around his neck. With Clarity notified, Dustup pushed off the building and glided his way down. One of the new ponies—the first to see him—grew massively in size when they noticed him approaching. A little closer and it became apparent that she was a pegasus!

“Hey there!” he called to the ponies, while he landed a few body lengths away. The one pegasus in the group squealed, her wings flailing about as they did their best to keep her balanced.

“I knew these wings are good for something!” she squeaked, before turning to the two earth ponies beside her, “I told you! I really can fly!”

Dustup couldn’t help but smile at the mare’s enthusiasm. The smile faded a little, when one of the stallions approached him, stumbling briefly. However, the misstep hadn’t done anything to his rather serious face.

He opened his mouth, as if to say something, before he closed it again.

“Do you know the M&M Store? Near Times Square?” Dustup asked him.

“What about it?”

“That’s where my friends are. We’re combing the city, trying to gather up all the ponies we can.”

“Wait, that’s what we’re called? Ponies?”

“I guess we do...kind of look like horses, but—” the mare began.

“Uh, yeah. I can explain it a lot better back at our base,” Dustup said, as he looked to the mare, busy flapping her wings in a poor attempt to fly.

“Woah, Dustup, look!” Clarity called over the wind, pointed down with her hoof. “It’s one of those carriages, all smashed up!” At her prompting, Dustup looked down at the ground.

A lump of brown metal sat on one of the many bridges in the city. It had the recognizable shape of the driverless carriages that’d been described to them, albeit, this one was bent out of shape. Little bits of debris were scattered all over the road, and what looked to be a wheel and some other components were wadded up around one of the cables supporting the bridge. Something glossy and black wriggled about a few yards away.

“What a mess,” Dustup muttered as he set down on the black concrete, looking around at the scene. Four pitch black marks along the road perfectly marked the carriage’s path as it had careened into the barriers along the side of the bridge. He knew this certainly wasn’t an intentional crash, even with as little as he had experience. Looking inside the carriage, he could barely get into the seats, let alone operate the controls. How could anypony be expected to work such a thing? Maybe Celestia could, but then again, Celestia could do anything.

Dustup started, remembering why he was here. “This looks recent. Clarity, where’s—” he turned around, and stopped dead.

Lying on the ground, directly in front of Clarity, was a changeling. Wearing what were unmistakably the remnants of human clothing.

“Don’t get me wrong, I loved working here,” Geoffrey said, “But I was just tryin’ t’keep on top o’ my student loans—”

“Student, loans?” Glimmer interjected, looking up from her notepad. She’d never heard of such a thing. She certainly hadn’t needed any sort of loan during her time at the conservatory. “What for?”

Geoffrey blinked. “For school,” he said. “College is expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“Around fifty-thousand dollars a year.”

Glimmer’s brow raised a little. “Dollars are your currency?”

“In America, yeah.”

“How much is a dollar worth? What could you buy with just one?”

Geoffrey sat back, and thought for much longer than he wished he’d have to. “Do you know what a pound is?”

“The weight measurement? We use those in Equestria.”

“One dollar is a pound of apples,” Geoffrey declared, and Glimmer took a few seconds to perform some basic arithmetic.

“That’s, a lot of apples,” she grunted.

“A-ah…” Clarity rocked backward on her hooves and looked to Dustup. “W-what should we do?” She took another glance at the changeling and let out a little squeak. Dustup bit his lower lip, looking between Clarity and the changeling.

“I-I-I, I don’t know! Don’t look at me!” He threw his forehooves out.

Clarity whinnied and trotted in circles.

Dustup spun around and flapped his wings.

“Ooogh,” the changeling moaned, “That hurt!” Dustup and Clarity froze in place. Their heads slowly turned to regard the shiny, black creature as it pushed itself onto its knees. A pair of lime green eyes shone through an equally green mane. The two ponies’ eyes widened when the changeling finally looked at them.

“Don’t look it in the eye!” Dustup shouted, and he and Clarity immediately slapped their hooves over their faces. The changeling looked on.

Time passed.

“Psst, Dusty!” Clarity loudly whispered, her eyes still covered, “Is it eating you yet?”

Dustup uncovered his face and turned to Clarity. “Seriously?”

“Why would I eat a horse?” the changeling asked, sitting right beside Dustup. Dustup vanished and reappeared, clinging to Clarity for dear life.

“B-bu-b—run!” Dustup screamed.

The two pegasi didn’t make it very far—their wings tangled within seconds, and they collapsed into a wriggling mass of feathers and panic a few yards away from a very unamused changeling. While the two ponies were still very much afraid, their blunder had made something quite apparent: neither of them had been eaten yet. Or, really, harmed in any way whatsoever.

Dustup separated himself from Clarity and slowly beat his wings. “Uuuuuhm,” he droned, slowly turning to look at the changeling. “Whuh, what’s your, uh...name?”

“Horace.”

“Oh, that’s—” Dustup tapped his hoof against his chin— “That’s not a very changelingy name.”

“Well of course not, it’s a Roman name,” Horace said, without missing a beat. He blinked and shook his head as he took a step forward. “Wait, wha—”

“We’ll explain later!” Clarity interjected, then immediately squealed when she Horace’s contorted, scowling face. “Ah! Sorry! Sorry!”

“We’re going to the M&M store! Y-you know where that is...right?”

“Really?” “Candy, at a time like this?”

When the day finally came to its twilight hours, the eight ponies—and one changeling—gathered in a hotel room overlooking Times Square. Glimmer Glory, being the only functioning unicorn out of the group, did most of the cooking. Sage helped here and there, while Clarity and Dustup sawed the legs off a dinner table, so that it would sit closer to the ground. The returned humans, now a trio of earth ponies and a pegasus, spoke with one another, reminding themselves of the world that once was. Horacio, the male changeling, sat by the window, staring out into the dead city. He was by his lonesome, not for the ponies’ lack of effort to integrate him into their group, but of his own volition. He was uncomfortable in his own shell—overwhelmed by a self consciousness he had never felt before. He could barely stand to be in the same room as the ponies. He felt indecent. Exposed.

The former humans all ate what would likely be their last straight meal for years to come, whether any of them realized it or not.

The Equestrians picked at their food, glancing between one another, then at the humans, the changeling, and back to themselves. This food had been stolen, as far as they were concerned. Even if the law no longer mattered.

The changeling looked between the two parties, eating even slower than the Equestrians did. He was entirely unenthused by the spaghetti squash, or the asparagus wrapped in fried hay, or anything around him. Whatever he ate satisfied him less and less, and while the humans might not have understood, the Equestrians knew too well that he was a wolf among the sheep.

Dinner was finished as the sun set, and the returnees all piled into the bedroom. Even the changeling joined in. None of the former humans seemed bothered by the closeness of sharing a bed; they even welcomed it. The shock of the day had been enough to bind them all together.

The Equestrians stayed in the main room. At a small communications station that’d been set up in the side of the search party’s travel carriage, Glimmer tapped out a message:

[ DAY 1 - CHANGELING TAMPERING CONFIRMED - SPELL TOO STRICT - RATIO OF RETURN LESS THAN 1 : 5,000,000 - RECOVERY UNEXPECTED WITHOUT INTERVENTION ]

Glimmer sighed, and held her head in her hooves.

“So, what do we do tomorrow?” Sage asked her, sprawled across the floor.

“We move on,” Glimmer said, rubbing her cheeks, “We go to Boston, see what we can find. Then Canada. Another team’s heading south, so that isn’t our problem.” She licked her lips as she glanced out the hotel room’s window, then turned back to Sage. “I just...I wish I could’ve seen what this world was like before the event. If I knew it’d be like this, I-I…”

“Wouldn’t have even bothered coming?” Sage finished for her.

Glimmer whined and bonked her head against the side of the carriage.