To say that Earth’s Manehattan (Manhattan, as a sign had helpfully pointed out, which was equal parts amusing and surreal) was a spectacle, would be an understatement. It was absolutely nothing short of stupefying.

Tall, square structures of reflective glass, gleaming iron, and smooth stone rose hundreds of feet into the air. They stood so tall that their lofty heads swayed in the wind.

“It’s hard to appreciate just how huge these things are, until you’re on the ground right next to them,” Clarity thought out loud. Her statement summed up many of the feelings the party held. Such tall buildings were nothing short of an architectural miracle. Nothing so large in Equestria could stand on its own. These monolithic buildings were free of the arches and flying buttresses that surrounded many of Equestria’s grandest structures. The only truly comparably large building was the royal palace in Canterlot—so tall and utterly massive, that it was a city in and of itself, a maze of columns and supports, with buildings made to hold up larger buildings that held up even larger buildings, that served as leaning posts for buildings even larger still.

And then there were these: simple, glass boxes, comfortably swaying in the breeze.

There were no cobblestones on any street Glimmer Glory and her search party passed through. Instead, the roads were made entirely of concrete, smelly and black, and nothing like what they had ever seen. While the surface itself was quite smooth, it was very abrasive. And the bizarre, metal carriages that lined the edges of the black concrete were no more familiar.

“Where do you even hitch onto these things?” Sage asked, as she butted her muzzle against a particularly large, particularly boxy carriage. The vehicle could have easily fit a hundred, and then some, ponies into its absurdly spacious passenger compartment. The whole thing was covered in signs—advertisements, as far as Glimmer could tell—depicting all sorts of things, from a brand of orange juice, to a PSA about something called a ‘sharknado.’

Glimmer looked to the clear skies. She had seen plenty of strange and wondrous things during her time at the Fillydelphia Magical Conservatory, but even a twister full of flying sharks sounded far-fetched. Still, if there were public warnings of such an anomaly in a world without magic, she presumed it would be worth watching for.

After all, she’d hate to be swept up in a sharknado; that didn’t sound pleasant at all.

It didn’t take long for the party to find the big, central square of Manhattan. It was dubbed Times Square, and glowing, moving billboards stretched as far as the eye could see.

It was hard to focus on any one single object. Everything moved, everything flashed. Colors everywhere, mixed in with the sun gleaming off glass windows and storefronts.

Then, they looked again.

Times Square was a mess. Some of the storefronts had had their windows smashed. Random pieces of junk were strewn all over, rolling in the breeze. Total chaos. And yet, save for the moaning wind, it was completely silent. It almost reminded her of Canterlot after the changelings’ wedding crashing stunt.

The sound of shattering glass echoed from the distance. The party all looked between one another, and silently agreed that they should investigate.

Glimmer Glory hummed and tapped her hoof on her chin while she looked down at a large puddle of broken glass. Peculiarly, the glass had shattered into very small pieces—so small in fact, that she had initially mistaken the shards for clear pebbles. The tiny shards cracked and popped, slowly breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. “Novel,” she mused aloud, “All these little bits of glass have rounded edges, so you can’t get cut so easily.”

The store itself—a candy store from the look of things—was still dark. Without any of its employees, it never opened for the day. Which was quite a shame, really. Glimmer sighed. If only she could have seen what this city might’ve been like, teeming with the millions of cheery ponies she had been expecting. She’d probably see more ponies on one street than she could in all of Canterlot. Oh, if only—

The whole party flinched and covered their eyes with a unified chorus of, “Oh! Ack! Ah!” as the dim interior of the store suddenly became very bright.

By the time any of them had recovered, the sound of hooves on smooth tile could be heard. They were irregular, too: stumbling, careful, unsure. Every once in awhile, the hooves would scrabble and slip, punctuated by a meaty thud and a few grumbles.

“Who’s there?” Clarity called out, first to recover. The hooves stopped. “Hello?”

“Oh, holy shit!” a voice echoed from somewhere deeper inside the building. Clearly a stallion. “Wow, hold on, I’ll be right over! Jduwa—” thud— “Aahgh, motherf… Ugh. I’m coming!”

Glimmer held in a little giggle at another pony’s comic misfortune. Sage wasn’t quite as strong-willed. Still, whatever amusement they felt was weighed down by a certain amount of guilt. This mystery stallion clearly wasn’t so sure on their new hooves, through no real fault of their own. It had barely been a few hours since the spell was confirmed to have hit, and no sensible pony would’ve been awake for even half that time.

Shortly afterward, a tall, lanky stallion stumbled out from behind a corner, swimming in what could only be assumed to be his pre-spell uniform. He immediately tripped over his own hooves and came crashing to the hard, tile floor. It wasn’t funny this time. “Ooow,” he groaned as he flopped to his side.

“Hey, here, let me help you up,” Sage said, trotting over to his side and wedging her shoulders underneath his neck. “Come on—” she grunted, using her legs to heave the stallion up and onto his hooves. She huffed and pressed herself up against his side.

“Woah, you’re candy horses too?”

“Ponies,” Glimmer corrected him. “We’re looking for your princess—Lady Liberty?”

“Lady Liberty?” the stallion’s face scrunched up in confusion. “You mean The Statue of Liberty?”

“No, we aren’t looking for the statue, we’ve already seen it. We’re looking for who the statue’s of. We’re looking for your leader—your princess. Do you know where we might be able to find her?”

“Wha—” “America doesn’t have any princesses.” “This country’s a democracy!”

“Then...who’s in charge around here? Who moves the sun?”

“Uh?” If the stallion’s face could crinkle anymore, it’d collapse into a miniature black hole. “Where the hell are you people from? Tenochtitlan?”

“Tek-knock-tit-what-flan?” Sage squeaked.

“Well, if there’s nobody in Times Square, there’s no point searching the rest of the city,” Geoffrey said, crossing his forelegs over one another. At least, he tried, clumsy as he was with his still new limbs.

“Why’s that?” Sage asked.

“‘Cause it’s Times Square!” Geoffrey threw his hooves up—and immediately regretted it as he toppled over. “With all the tourists hanging around, there’s no way there wouldn’t be anybody hanging around.”

“So, you were the one who broke all the windows.” Clarity’s accusal made Geoffrey’s brown eyes pop a little.

“Wha—! No! That wasn’t me!” he shouted, in the middle of propping himself against the counter. “I thought it was you guys who broke the windows...”

Silence fell over the five ponies that were huddled among the colorful surroundings of enameled candies. A very serious silence, accompanied by a small side of hope. Glimmer Glory sighed, brushing aside the bangs of her bleached, golden mane.

“There’re others,” she quietly announced, before she turned to the rest of her search party. “Let’s get moving.”

As a unit, Glimmer, Sage, Clarity, and Dustup all stood up.

“Uh,” Geoffrey began, before he forgot whatever it was he wanted to say. “Uhm…”

“If we find anypony, we’ll tell them you’re here,” Glimmer said.

“Wait, wait, no.” The words fell out of Geoffrey’s muzzle as he stumbled to his hooves. “I still have, uh, questions!”

“Like?”

“Whuh, uh… What am I supposed to do?”

“You can…” Glimmer began, before her lower lip puffed out. What could he do? This clumsy stallion hadn’t been in his new body for more than just a few hours, and he was already being held to the standards of a native Equestrian. That wasn’t fair at all. Glimmer glanced around, before she pulled a small notebook and a pencil from her saddlebags. “You can tell us about your world!” She offered him a small smile, before shooing off Clarity and Dustup with a hoof. “Clarity, Dustup? You two circle the area for a little and see what you find, alright?”

The two pegasi looked at one another, before Dustup shrugged and led his winged companion outside.

“So—” Glimmer plopped on the ground, ready to write— “Let’s get business out of the way. Do you know any other place where we might find a lot of pon—er, people?”

“Not really. City hall, maybe?”

“How would we get there?”

Geoffrey clicked his tongue. “It’s, uh…” He scratched his neck with a hoof. “It’s… That… Way.” The same hoof pointed off in a direction. Glimmer stared for a moment.

“In this building?” she asked.

“Nah, outside.”

“Oh. South.” Glimmer scratched a few words in her notebook.

“Was it that building with the columns out front and stuff?” Sage asked, “It looked way different from everything else.”

Geoffrey noded. “Yeah, that one.”

Glimmer sucked in a cheek, when she heard his confirmation. “We’ve already been there,” she quietly said to Sage. She sighed, turning back to the human-turned-stallion. “Do you know of any other major population centers nearby?”

“Nearby? Well, there’s, uh, New Jersey?”

“New jersey, that’s...that’s the name of a city?” Glimmer could only barely tolerate the vagueness of the answers.

“I...think?” Geoffrey shrugged. “I haven’t been there myself, but it’s right over the bridge to the...west, I think.”

“And what about to the east?”

“Oh, that’s just Brooklyn.”

“‘Just Brooklyn?’” Sage parroted, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s a borough. Different island, but still a part of NYC.”

“And NYC is…?” Glimmer sighed, twirling the pencil she held in her magic.

“New York City. Y’know, in New York state? Where we are right now?”

“Geoffrey, we’re from an alternate universe. It’s a miracle we can even speak the same language.”

“Oh. Right, sorry.”

Glimmer huffed. “So, what about to the north?”

“Uh, there’s Boston, I guess. That’s where MIT is.”

“And what’s MIT?”

“The Massachusetts Institute, of Technology. I’m pretty sure. Also, I think that’s where Harvard is, too.”

“Institute, like a school?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything else to the north, other than Boston?”

“Well, there’s Canada.”

“Another city?”

“Nah, it’s a different country.”

“Can you think of any big cities in Canda?”

Geoffrey shrugged.

Glimmer’s eyes rolled into the back of her head.

While Sage and Glimmer Glory interviewed Geoffrey, Dustup and Clarity perched themselves at the edge of a skyscraper’s roof and stared down at the dense, urban sprawl beneath them. The buildings slowly tapered off to the north and west, contained by hills and shallow mountains, with the ocean providing the east border. But the city continued southward about as far as their eyes could hope to see.

“It really just goes on and on, doesn’t it?” Dustup muttered.

“Even with wings, how the hay are we supposed to find anypony in all this? The whole city’s completely empty!”

“Yeah…” Dustup sighed, “Not a single carriage on the street. Still, we oughta try. After all, sis, this is what we came here for. I mean, yeah, it’s not as glamorous as we were expecting, but...”

Clarity huffed, and Dustup scooted over and poked her with a knee.

“Besides—” he grinned— “Maybe we can pick up a few souvenirs while we’re at it.”

Glimmer flipped to a fresh page in her notebook. “So, here’s something a bit more personal. What’s it like, being a pony?”

“Aren’t you a pony too?”

“Well, uh, I was born this way. I meant it more in the context of you not having been a pony all your life. What’s it like, going from being human, to being an earth pony?”

“Oh, it fucking sucks!”

Author's Note

Jump cuts! Jump cuts!