Irony's Tale

I cannot believe how much arguing ponies can do when it comes to something so essentially trivial to our lives. I look around at the ponies assembled within the city hall of the new pony town. Mayor Mare was easily elected to be in charge of the city, especially with a small speech delivered by video conference with Dust back at her home in Baker. But the ponies want to name this new pony town. They are bickering over the size of lots, how much work the new power plant is costing among the pegasi of the city. And a million other things. Mindy, for all her chaotic tendencies, has been an absolute godsend.

I tend to not spend Dust’s money unless I absolutely have to, but Mindy has been flexing that mare’s bank account like a damned champion. Dust’s company, Lightning Electric, has been digging an entirely new line from the nearest exchange, a distance of over seventy miles, to give the new pony city a staggering internet speed. She’s also set up, in Dust’s name, a whole new internet service provider for the entire city. Setting up the server farm underground near where the shore of Lake Luna will end up being once it’s complete. There is even construction inside the planned hoofprint of the lake. Mindy had explained to me that the lake water was going to be used to cool the servers, as the lake is going to be deep enough to not be able to freeze solid in the frigid Montana winters. So, heat exchangers have been installed into the planned area. She’s even overbuilt the system, she’s been working on Dust, slowly, to move her house in Baker to the new town. The plans for the ponies to have the city outstrip pretty much every city in Montana regarding size, is absolutely amazing. And leading that, is Mayor Mare. She’s directing the energies of the various factions of the ponies into a general forward progress that is actually getting things done.

For example, the city hall was completed shortly after Dust had been recovered. She had moved her offices from the small modular buildings to this complex. She’s also been working with the state government, getting the city recognized. But the thing is, one basic tenet of a city, is it having a name. The state government has been understanding, with all the infrastructure work being done, and everything else involved, the name has been pretty much on the back burner. I sit among all the ponies, not with the small city council or the mayor. Even though Mayor Mare has insisted that being a member of Dust’s family, I have every right to be sitting up at the front with her. I have zero interest in dealing with the day to day governance of the town.

“Why is this such an issue? I think only the Florida colony has actually named itself as of yet. And there are colonies and new cities being set up in Texas, and of course, here. And Celestia knows what other cities are being set up in Russia or Europe. We know Australia has been ponis non grata, but, we don’t have to name our city yet, do we?” A tangerine colored pegasus expounds, tossing her mint green mane in annoyance as she folds and refolds her wings. “We have so many other pressing issues to deal with. Like what to do for pegasus housing.”

Mayor Mare clears her throat, silencing any murmurs of agreement. “Can’t you simply build your own cloud houses?” She asks gently.

The pegasus blushes, taking a step back. “Well, of course we can build cloud houses. But there must be rules about the altitude of the houses. Remember, we have to deal with the human FAA when it comes to flying around the city.”

Mayor Mare smiles. “And I got an email a few weeks ago regarding pegasi and flight rules and restrictions.” She looks around at all assembled. “The town and a control zone of 15 miles around the city will be under pony administration below ten thousand feet. So, you aren’t going to have to get FAA clearance to fly within our town. But if you want to not run afoul of the 520th, you are going to have to get transponders if you want to fly within controlled airspace and can qualify to fly that high or that fast.” She taps her ipad with a stylus attached with a velcro strap to her foreleg. “So, near speedsters and up. But even most pegasi can make it above ten thousand feet when doing weather work. So, we are working on rules regarding that.”

I haven’t tuned out, it’s not boring, but the technical minutiae of regulations gets a small huff from me. I know all of this is necessary, not just to keep lawyers off our plots. But also to give us legitimacy among the humans. But I want to just leave. I had hoped the naming of the town would be happening soon. I glance at the pegasus, who is arguing further. I know the pegasi want to build cloud houses, but many want more than the occasional cloud house floating in the breeze. They want a full on pegasopolis style city. But then they have to figure out how to not have it roam across the countryside like Cloudsdale did. The large hill near the edge of the property has been considered for an anchor point, and some of the unicorns with some weather abilities have said the cloud city could be anchored to it. But then some of the pegasi have complained that it’s too low.

How Mayor Mare is able to get consensus with so many differing opinions on the topic is beyond me. I lean back and watch as the tan mare with the now white mane works her magic. And less than an hour passes before the pegasi have agreed to the plan. I marvel at how good the mayor is when it comes to addressing the concerns of the ponies.

Finally, she sits up, looking around. “And are there any more proposals for naming our new pony town?”

That instantly opens the floodgates. Names are bandied about rapid fire for several minutes before Mayor Mare bangs down her gavel. “No horse puns, we aren’t in Equestria, wde are on Earth. We want the humans to take us seriously. We can’t simply add new to names that we had back in Equestria. So, New Ponyville is off the table. This isn’t the city where Luna is residing, she’s spending more of her time around Washington DC having to deal with the political fallout of ponies. So, New Canterlot is out.” She glares around for a moment. “The same with New Vanhoover, New Baltimare, and so on and so forth.” Her voice gets sharper as she continues. “If you cannot be serious with this, I will have to table the issue until the future.” She holds up the gavel, glaring around as the cacophony continues. Finally after a measured breath, she bangs the gavel down. “Okay. Discussion done. We will address naming our city until a future meeting.” She takes a deep breath. “Mindy, do you have any new business we need to discuss?”

The magenta unicorn with the poufy white mane shakes her head. “We’ve got everything working out for the servers. I think three more truck shipments are on the way with the rest of the server equipment.” She looks down, her ears flicking. “I’m sorry, I’m not used to this side of things. But the plan on having wifi coverage over the entire city is viable. And 5G service is being set up, we signed a contract with Verizon for a new tower to be built by ponies and they’ll install the equipment. But within a month or so, the access points will be fully installed in every street lamp stand. And all of your houses will have fiber drops as installation continues. I got permission from Dust to have Lightning Electric do the underground and fiber installs for us.” At the mention of Dust, her ears flick. It happened almost too quickly but I noticed it. Our convalescing mare is bothering her too. She looks up. “Electric service is being installed as quickly as you ponies are building the houses. But remember, we aren’t in Equestria, follow the NEC, Lightning Electric has multiple master electricians who are advising ponies who are building. And contractors are available for building your service. Our goal is to have pony style homes as we remember from back in Equestria, but with a modern human touch, having ready electrical power, water, and sewer services. No outhouses or getting water from a creek.” She taps her screen on her tablet. “That’s all I’ve got.”

I look over at Mayor Mare who swings the gavel again. “Okay, meeting adjourned.” She drops the gavel on the table and leans back as the ponies start to file out the exits. I sit calmly, watching the ponies as they make their ways to the exits. Only about ten minutes has only a few groups of ponies chatting as Mindy works with Mayor Mare along with the other ponies of the city council as they gather up their things. I finally stand up from my cushion and walk slowly to the front of the room.

“That was…”

Mindy brightens. “Exciting? Exhilarating?”

I shake my head. “Boring.”

Mindy visibly deflates, but she recovers quickly. “Well, these things need to be done. I’d much rather be planning a party, or doing fun things. Or even playing a new computer game.” Her horn lights, stuffing her tablet and a few papers into her day bag. She looks back at me. “But we got a lot accomplished today.”

I groan. “But why did you ask me to come?”

She tilts her head. “We helped found the city, Irony, dear. We are responsible for helping all these ponies get their lives in order. Many of them were just twenty-five year old humans from every different background in the world. Very few have any idea how to deal with being a pony at all, much less living without all the modern conveniences of life in this world. Just like the pegasi getting trained by the 520th for rules of flight outside of town. We are basically setting up an economy from scratch, teaching them basic finance, basic pony life skills, so we can live here long term. New ponies are showing up almost every day. We are trying to help their lives achieve some sort of normalcy.” She giggles. “Well, as normal as life can get being a four foot tall quadruped.”

“That happens to have magic or flight, right?” I finish with a smile, getting a nod and a wink. I turn to Mayor Mare. “What are you doing with ponies that are just showing up?”

She smiles at me. “Well, we have an intake process now. We’ve rented a building in Baker, the old youth center, remember?” At my nod she continues. “Ponies are greeted, we’ve got a couple of healers there, helping with any medical issues, and giving them initial vaccinations. Also ponies that have had a rougher time are talking to some of the new arrivals, letting them know that life here isn’t like the Equestria they remember. But it’s working its way there. And to have hope. They can stay in the barracks that Dust built in the first couple of months after our changes. But after that, we have financial services available, and help them find jobs. The new weather service is hiring any pegasus or unicorn with any aptitude. The 520th is hiring pegasi as quickly as they can. Anypony wanting a job gets one very quickly. And we are getting things built. She looks out at the empty auditorium. “We just have to name the blasted place.” Her voice ends in a growl.

I chuckle. “Of course, I heard New Ponyville many times when you opened that can of worms.”

“Of course you did. Many ponies here were bronies before they turned. But I will not have us name this place like that. As I said, we are looking for legitimacy among the humans. The governor has been bending rules in helping us get things set up. Likely being prodded by the President, but we aren’t common knowledge outside of Miles City or Baker. And the government wants to keep it that way. We don’t want to be a media sensation, at least until we have things set up and settled down. I have ideas, but I’m not imposing my ideas on everypony. I want everypony happy with the name of their home.”

I nod. “I totally agree.” I glance over at Mindy. “Ready to head home?”

She looks unsure. “I think I’m gonna pull an all nighter working on the internet service setup. We’re pretty close to a full startup so ponies won’t have to depend on mobile data and hotspots for their internet service. You know the cell providers are a little pissed at how much traffic we’ve put through their systems in the last few months.”

I give the energetic mare a hug before I head out of the building. I stop for a moment, looking at the large diesel Dodge Ram sitting in the parking lot. It was Dust’s personal work truck before her change. And since she’d changed, she wasn’t interested in driving, since she could now fly faster than an airliner. Well, until she got captured. I sigh as I rear up as I change forms. It’s a very nice truck. Enough torque for anything I’d want to do with it. But I miss my car. I reach out and open the door before sliding in and pushing the push to start button as my left hoof pushes down the clutch. The engine roars to life and I put the transmission into reverse. A quick check of the mirrors and I’m out of the parking lot and heading out of town. Newly paved streets all over the place, so I get back into the town of Baker, Montana in less than fifteen minutes. A smooth stop at the four way stop in the center of town before heading straight.

I mentally count the streets I pass before hanging a right and follow the street to the familiar house owned by Lightning Dust. As I pull in, I remember the first time I pulled up to this house, what feels like a life time ago. Shutting down the truck I close the door before relaxing onto four legs and walk slowly into the house. As I open the door, the familiar sounds and smells of this house envelop me in comfort. This…this is home now. I sometimes wonder when this house became home to me? Dust had insisted, saying she’d overbuilt the house when she built it a few years before our change. The more the merrier, the mare had said. I smile at Moon Shadow, who is concentrating, her horn lit as she has a video game controller in her magic along with Dust’s two human children. I make it into the kitchen, stopping as I see Helen sitting on a stool, a steaming cup before her, her head held up by her hands as she contemplates the dark liquid in her cup.

“Good evening, love.” I murmur, getting her to look up at me with a smile. I shift again and grab another stool. “Any more coffee?”

She nods. “Always. I live for the stuff.” She chuckles. “Though not as much as Mindy does, I swear that mare lives on caffeine.”

“Yeah.” I reach out and grab a mug, it doesn’t have me long before I’m sitting next to Helen and blowing gently on my own mug of liquid gold. Though I’d added some Baileys to mine. It’s late enough.

“How is she?”

She smiles at me. “Surprisingly well. She ate today. She’s not complaining on how much pain she’s in. But she’s also trying to get us to stop waiting on her hoof and wing. As she puts it.” She looks up, her eyes zeroing in on the bedroom on the floor above as though she could see through the ceiling. “She wanted to know where you were. You weren’t answering your phone.”

“I had it on silent.” I sigh. “Well, I’ll go see what she wants.”

Helen smiles at me. “It’s going to be okay, Irony. She is healing. She’s worlds better than just a few weeks ago. Just go, talk to her. I’ll wait down here a while with Moon until the kids go to bed.”

I nod and pick up my coffee. The emotional drain of trying to help Dust put herself together has been an ordeal for everyone in the house, even the kids. Trixie and Flash have found a new place over in the new pony town. I stop for a moment, Mindy mentioned moving this place. I look around, it’s typical human construction. How the hell would they move this house? It’s enormous! I shake my head as I ascend the stairs and move towards the bedroom. The door isn’t closed, a good sign. Though the lights are set to minimum brightness. I glance over on the bed. Dust is reclining, pillows holding her up. Her faithful mixed breed dog, Dolly, is leaning up against her. And one of the many cats of the house, a snow white Turkish angora named Sir Lancelot, is in Dust’s lap, getting scratched idly by the pegasus. Dolly’s head had lifted on hearing me enter, though on seeing me, the dog laid her head down on Dust’s leg. The only creature to cling to Dust more than me was that dog when she was convalescing. Dust smiles at me brightly. And while I can see her pain, the smile is genuine, I think. I stand at the end of the bed, unsure how to proceed, before the pegasus nods and tilts her head slightly. So, I put the coffee down and shift back to all fours to hop onto the bed before laying down next to Dust. She wastes no time shifting herself over a little to lay her head on my shoulder as I put a forehoof around her.

“Hello, love,” I murmur softly.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says in response.

I furrow my brow. “About what?”

“Oh, lots of things. Since that miserable day, I’ve had lots of memories come back. Even when I was nearly lost, I remembered more of my life in Equestria. I remembered more of the changeling war. Where you were injured, and acted so bravely to get the notice of the crown princesses.”

My eyebrows rise. “Really?” My face scrunches as I think furiously. “I know little bits and pieces have come back. But I was so busy, searching for you. I haven’t really thought of our past.”

“That the funny thing. I’m not really thinking about our past. But the predicament of the here and now.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Your name as a human was Henry, right?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“How much of the mare that is holding me right now is still Henry? How much is just Irony?”

Oh, that’s a doozy. I haven’t really thought about all of that. “Ummmm.”

She moves her hoof, scratching the white cat behind an ear, the loud purrs intensifying. “I’ve been trying to think, how much of Mike is still around. How much of me is Lightning Dust. I think I’ve come to a conclusion.”

“Really?”

She nods. “I had a lot of time thinking as I’ve been trying to heal.” She stops speaking as she continues loving on the cat. For a long moment, we are just enjoying the feeling of closeness. Finally she shifts a little. “I have a TV in here, but no interest in watching anything on it. I have a tablet, but don’t really do much more than work stuff on it. I’m not sleeping twenty plus hours a day anymore. Hell, I’m barely able to sleep eight hours a night anymore. But I still have my memories of growing up in Corpus Christie, learning to hunt, learning to fish. Dear God, I’ve always loved fishing. I remember dreaming of flying. I’ve wanted to fly since I was a kid. Did you know I jumped off my parents roof with a garbage bag as a parachute. In my mind I’d float gently down to the ground.”

That gets a laugh from me. “You crashed.”

She echoes my laugh. “You know it. I also remember many times as a young filly. Now trying to deal with memories of growing up male with growing up female has been a challenge, to say the least. But I think Mike was not just born with me in him. I was reborn, and named Michael. But I was the same…” She stops furrowing her brow. “I guess you could say, soul. Or personality, or whatever. That I was as a pegasus in Equestria. I was Lightning Dust, Lightning Dust is Mike now. I had to wrestle with that when I changed back. And now, after what we’ve been through since turning back. With everything. I have to think, is Mike inside me? Screaming to be let out? Is Mike dead? And the only answer that works in my head, is Mike is me. Lightning Dust, is me. There was no death of one in favor of the other. The Mike that Helen knew is still here. Not in body, of course.” She shifts her hind legs a bit. I know she’s thinking of her very tender nether regions right now. But the tension passes quickly. “But in everything that’s important. The drive that I had as Mike, once I married Helen and had kids, is the same drive that pushed Lightning Dust into applying for the Wonderbolts. I can’t look at a memory, and think, that’s Mike’s memory. Or that’s Lightning Dust’s memory. They are all my memories.” She turns her head a bit. “What do you think?”

I frown. “I really haven’t pondered that, Dust. I remember some of my time as a pony, and my time before I came to Equestria the first time. Those memories that were of me before I became Irony. They were me, they were mine. But Irony, Henry.” I stop. Trying to process what she’s told me.

“It’s hard to tell them apart?”

I nod. “How is that? Equestria and Earth are so different! Yet I’d have to think really hard about a memory that doesn’t involve another human or pony to identify where they were and who they belong to.”

She smiles. “Because they are all your memories, Irony. You were Henry, you were the human, the pony, then the human again before you became what you are now. But all of them, they are you.”

“I dunno. I kinda feel that Henry got the shaft in all of this.”

“Oh, definitely, Love. Definitely. But nothing was taken from him, because he was you. You served this nation honorably. You put your life on the line for Princess Twilight Sparkle. You learned smithing and built so much with just heat and your strength. You rebuilt and lovingly maintained that car of yours. You were yanked out of your life by a spell by a young unicorn and ended up in Equestria. You are Irony Smith, the shieldbreaker. You are Henry, the soldier, the warrior, the smith, the tinkerer. All of that, is you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positively. What really seals the deal for me in my head is how I was in the academy. I was brash, arrogant, foolish. And in my early relationship with Helen, I was the exact same way. It took a lot of hard work for her to get me into shape to be the man and now pony that I am today. I had to learn some of the exact same lessons as a human that I had to learn as a pony. I was the same…person that I was in Equestria, just in a different skin. I always had a love of flying. As a pegasus, I could fly, as a human, I would have flown had the US Air Force taken me. I would have lived among the clouds as I dreamed of as a young child. I had those dreams as a young boy, and a young filly. I was always a creature of the air, even as a ground bound human.”

“Boy, your time in bed has made you a philosopher.”

She chuckles at my joke. “No kidding. But the reason I was thinking all this is I was afraid.”

“Afraid? How so?”

“Was I killing a part of myself by loving this change so much? I mean, after a very short adjustment, being me as I am now, on four legs, wings, even being female. Was I condemning Mike to a death that he had committed the only sin of being born to be sentenced to? But after much of my thinking. I don’t think so. Mike is still here. In me. I am Mike, I am Lightning Dust. One and the same.”

A soft meow announces the arrival of another of the cats of the house, a tiger striped gray and black cat named, hilariously by Dust’s daughter, Derpy, thanks to his perpetual crossed eyes, saunters up to me. I reach out a hoof and love on the cat. “Looks like we’ve got company.”

She nods. “The animals know it’s bedtime, the kids will be going to their rooms soon, Helen will join us, along with Moon. And we’ll all sleep. How many sleep in this bed usually?”

“Well, you, me, Moon, Helen, sometimes Mindy.”

“And of the pets?”

“So, an additional two dogs, and what…four cats?”

She nods. Everypony loves piling together and sleeping comfortably. Even the pets.” She chuckles as Dolly emits a soft snore from Dust’s feet. She points at the German shepherd/Golden retriever mix. “That one prefers to sleep on the floor or under the bed. But since I was hurt. She wouldn’t leave my side.” She turns her head to face me. “Just as you’ve refused to leave my side. Thank you for that, love.”

“You’d do the same for me.” Is all I can say in response.

“I know. But it’s very much appreciated. Now, I want to go to work tomorrow.”

“Oh, Dust. It’s too soon.”

“It might be, but I’m going. I know the company can do without me. But the guys feel better knowing I’m there. Knowing I’ll help out whenever I’m needed.”

“I don’t think Moon will be happy with that.”

“I know, but she’ll have to understand. That drive, that got Mike to where this house is paid off, where there’s money in the bank. Where life is actually looking pretty good. That drive is still there. And I know I’m going to work, and provide for this family.”

“Dust, you could take a year off and not have to worry.”

“I could. But would I be Lightning Dust if I did?”