Why Humans Shouldn't be Allowed in Equestria

Soon enough we were all at the party's location. Not that it took a lot. I swear this entire town is about a mile wide. When you grow up in a village in the sticks, that means something. Well, it used to be a village, now it's a small town. Fucking yuppies building houses the rest of us couldn't possibly afford. Most of them couldn't either. There's a lot of foreclosures there now. Digressing again. Where was I? Oh yeah. So we come up to the door of the gingerbread house from 'Hansel and Gretel', and Twilight knocks on the door. Before you could blink we were inside, and the pink one was staring us down with the ear-to-ear grin of a serial killer. That might be the most unnerving thing I'd ever seen.

“Welcome to Ponyville!” she exclaimed, with a small explosion of confetti and streamers seemingly ejecting from the ends of her hooves. She jumped back to the middle of the room in one bound, revealing the place packed with ponies of every type and color. Man, she can get a lot of bodies on-the-fly. Some looked confused for a moment. “There's two of them?” “Heard there was only one humans.” and so on. I looked at Aranea. Sure it would take practice to really get it right, but she kept whatever the human equivalent of her features would be for her face – probably from not having any frame of reference – and that was a plus. Kind of Asian actually, the native island kind before Europe showed up. At any rate, none of them seemed to see anything off, and bought it. Except Twilight and Rarity, but they kept their mouths shut. At least for the time being.

Jobs and money, home and family. Small talk is universal like that. I managed to bullshit my way through the staring throng, and Aranea did the same. Better than me, but from the looks she was behind on the news. Guess a lot of it was a hive thing and she had to find out the last couple of years on her own. It wasn't anything consequential. She was at some wedding that Celestia herself officiated, but didn't get to the reception. They all cleared too much space for her and she must've backed out, knowing she wasn't all that welcome. Overall it went well enough. We were both kind of nervous, and neither paid too much attention to what was really being said. Pinkie handed us each a cupcake, and we dug in. Who the hell thought hot sauce was a good idea? I like hot stuff, but it really didn't work. We ate them anyway. Pinkie was apparently part of Twilight's circle of friends, and she specifically introduced us to the others.

Applejack, an orange plain pony that had on a southern hat. Similar to some folks around home. Said I had “A hoofshake like an Earth Pony.” I didn't. Found out that Earth Pony magic is internal that way. I wasn't strong in the arms, but that whole magic-killing thing made me seem stronger. I could tell one could still easily kick my ass, and made a mental note not to piss any off.

Rainbow Dash, a blue pegasus. Obviously the cocky kind. Seemed cool enough. Wondered what would happen if I grabbed a wing. Reality would probably take over and it'd snap under the oversized body it was holding up. I didn't try.

Fluttershy, another pegasus. Painfully shy. Kind of like Aranea, but this one had friends, and a home, and a stable job at the same time. Probably had issues.

So the party wore on. There wasn't much to relate, though I tried to pick up on social cues for a while. Then I remember I was crap at it. I worked my way to Twilight and reminded her about the Q&A we had to finish. She explained to Pinkie, who probably made excuses to pass along to the others. It was pretty late by that time anyway, and a few ponies had already left. I collected Aranea, who obviously didn't want her backup gone, and we were out of there.

I still had no idea what Twilight wanted to do with her lab. It didn't worry me too much, not anymore. Apparently being immune to magic makes you stronger than the equivalent of a physical god here. Keep the Earth ponies happy and I should be fine.

'Fine'... I could be a king here. The rose-tinting of Earth was starting to fade.