There are No Ponies in Equestria

Chapters

No Ponies in the Castle
No Ponies in the Town
No Ponies in the Land
No Ponies Acting and Reacting
No Ponies Slowly Adjusting
No Ponies Marching Forward
No Ponies Awkwardly Explaining

No Ponies in the Castle

Five of the six Bearers of the Elements of Harmony sat in their respective thrones within the Castle of Friendship, patiently awaiting the last of their number. Some, more patiently than others.

"Where is she?" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, breaking the silence that had filled the room ever since they had run out of new things to talk about some minutes ago. "Twilight said to be here at lunch and it's nearly an hour past and I'm starving!"

"Ah'm sure she's on her way, sugarcube," Applejack drawled from across the room. "Probably just got herself all wrapped up in some new project or other."

Spike nodded. "She was starting something new this morning and looked pretty eager about it. " He stood up suddenly from his courtesy mini-throne. "How about I go make us some snacks to tide us over?"

"Oh that would be lovely Spike, thank you ever so much," said Rarity, taking a moment to look up from the embroidery work she'd brought to pass the time with.

With a quick scurry of claws on crystal, the little dragon was out the door and down the labyrinthine hallways toward the kitchens. Meanwhile, Applejack shot Rarity a look.

"Rares, don't you think it's a mite shameful to keep usin' him like that?"

"What?" she asked innocently, "He offered."

Just then, the doors were blown open by a stressed-looking alicorn flying at high speed. She came to a screeching halt mere inches from hitting the table before launching into a verbal waterfall. "I'm so sorry everyone! I had my hands full with a new project and just got so completely wrapped up in it that I completely lost track of time! And just when it was starting to go well I found some new and novel bugs in the system and had to... to... Why are you all staring at me like that?"

A strange and unreadable set of expressions had settled over the faces of her friends. As with most silences, Rainbow Dash was the one to break it. "What do you mean by you having your 'hands full'?"

Twilight's eyes went wide as the pupils shrank. Despite this, she put on a tense smile as though nothing was wrong. "Hands? No, I said hooves. I had my hooves full."

"No," AJ countered, "You definitely said hands."

"Oh, maybe I did then." She laughed nervously, "Just a little slip of the tongue. Hands is... ah... a foreign word for forward grasping appendages. Like hooves. It's something of a regional term."

Applejack's eyebrow ascended skeptically. "Ahuh. What region?"

"The... minotaur lands. Yes. There."

"Really?" Fluttershy cut in, "Because in all the time I spent with Iron Will, I don't think he ever referred to what he had as anything but claws or graspers."

Once more Twilight seemed to seize in panic. "It... I... You see... ah roadapples." She hung her head in resignation. "Well, I suppose now is a good a time as any. I've been putting it off far too long as it is."

Raising her head, Twilight walked to her seat at the table and stood in front of it. Though she held her stiffly, a small tremble of fear still made her legs quiver beneath her. With an audible gulp she swallowed back her reservations.

"Girls. My friends. I have a confession to make. This is something that is... rather difficult to share, and I hope that you won't hold it against me for hiding it for so long."

"Silly Twilight," Pinkie smiled as she gave her a comforting pat. "You're our friend! And there's nothing you could tell us that's going to change that." The rest were quick to agree.

"Darn right."

"Indeed."

"We got your back Twi, whatever it is!"

"Mhm."

Some confidence restored, Twilight took a deep breath and let it go slowly, letting some of the tension leaving her body with it. "Alright. Here goes. I... am not Twilight Sparkle."

For a second, no one moved. "Also not a changeling!" She added before anyone could misinterpret. "I am me, the pony who came to Ponyville and met you all and helped stop Night mare Moon, I just... wasn't always."

Silence continued to be the dominate force in the room as Twilight studied the expressions of her friends. Applejack was stonefaced, completely unreadable. Rainbow Dash was similar, but her twitchy wings betrayed her discomfort. Fluttershy had pulled even more of her mane in front of her face than usual, leaving almost nothing visible. Rarity was somewhere between disbelief and suspicion. Pinkie was... smiling? A wide smile too, one of her knowing grins. Why would she be smiling? Then again, it was Pinkie. She'd probably somehow known from the start.

Eventually, Rarity restarted the conversation. "That's... certainly a claim Twi- ...er, should I call you Twilight?"

The alicorn who was not Twilight nodded. "It's fine, I've been Twilight for so long that I'm comfortable with it."

"Hold on, back up." Rainbow Dash interrupted. "So... you're not Twilight?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Well, what happened to the real Twilight?"

She cringed at the implied meaning of her being the not-real Twilight. "I... don't know. Maybe I replaced her, maybe she never existed? If it makes you feel any better, none of you ever met her. I became Twilight before I came to Ponyville."

"Maybe you should start at the beginning," Applejack suggested reasonably, her face still a mask.

"Yeah, at the very beginning." Pinkie added with a giggle and a smirk.

"I- Alright. From the beginning then. Here goes. A long time ago, I was not a pony. None of you will have heard of it but I was a creature called a 'human'."

Somepony gasped under her breath and Twilight looked up but there was no indication who it had been. She continued.

"I had a boring and normal life for most of it, until one particular day in my early twenties. I was walking home when I saw this truck heading down the road, way too fast and out of control. The light at the crosswalk turned green, but no one moved... except for this little girl with headphone on. She didn't see the truck. So I did what anyone would do. I jumped in and pushed her out of the way. Unfortunately, there was no one to save me."

There was another gasp, and Twilight spotted this one. It came from Fluttershy, whose one visible eye was already glistening with moisture.

"I floated in darkness for a long time, or at least... I think so. Time was... strange. Then a voice came to me. It thanked me for saving the girl and apologized. It hadn't been my time to die yet. The voice said it couldn't send me home, but instead, it could send me to a new world. A world of magic and monsters and adventure, like the kind in stories. Naturally, I agreed. As a final farewell, the voice said it would bless me with incredible magic so that I could live a comfortable or adventurous life as I chose to."

Twilight took her seat heavily, a weight gone from her chest. "When I came to, I was in my chambers at Celestia's school and a few weeks later I was sent to Ponyville. And the rest, as they say, is history."

She raised a hoof and rotated it in front of her face. "Mind you, I never expected to be a pony. I had thought I'd stay human when I got wherever I was going."

"Well what'd you expect?" Pinkie asked, "With great power comes great nerfing. Imagine if you had magic and hands. Magic hands! You'd be unstoppable!"

Twilight couldn't help but crack a smile at her antics. And the distraction had eased her mind from the tenseness of the situation.

"Still," Pinkie continued, "I'm so glad you finally told everypony cause now I don't have to keep my 'Twilight finally reveals herself' cake on hand anymore, which is good cause that thing was getting sta-a-ale!"

"Pinkie, you knew?" she gasped.

The party planner shrugged. "Eh, wasn't that hard to figure out when you know Twilight like I do."

"This has to be the craziest thing I've ever heard." Rainbow Dash shook her head in disbelief. "You could make a book out of this. I bet it'd fly off the shelves."

"Pfft. I dunno," Pinkie replied easily, "The isekai genre is pretty oversaturated as it is."

That caught Twilight's attention. There were a lot of... inconsistencies about Pinkie Pie, both the one she had watched and the one she called her friend, but this was something she could not let slip past. "Pinkie... how to you know that word?"

"Surprise!" She declared as streamers and confetti rained from the ceiling. "It's actually a double reveal party! I get to use both my Twilight Reveals Herself cake and my Pinkie Reveals Herself cake!"

Twilight's eyes boggled. "Wha... Pinkie... Don't tell me you're-"

"A human too? You betcha!"

Twilight reeled back in shock, as did several other of her friends. Another human? In Equestria? And of all possibly ponies it was Pinkie Pie? Which, actually, explained quite a lot.

"Did you also get hit by a truck and meet a god?" she asked.

"Ha, nope!" Pinkie gigglesnorted, "I just bought a Pinkie Pie hair clip off this kinda creepy merchant at a convention. Next thing I know, Bam! Pow! Straight to the moon! Or rather, straight to the rock farm."

"Well that does explain your regular pop culture references..."

Oblivious to the emotional rollercoaster she was sending Twilight on, Pinkie addressed the seat across the table. "How about you Rarity? You wanna make this double reveal party a triple?"

The fashionista stammered and sputtered for a moment before settling down and sighing. "Well phoo. Way to out a girl, Pinkie."

"Hehe. Sorry."

"Rarity... you too?" Twilight's voice cracked.

"Yes, yes. Me too. Though I can't imagine how Pinkie knew."

"It's cause you have no fashion sense."

"Pinkie!" Twilight scolded.

"No, no, she's quite right." Rarity admitted. "I have no idea how fashion works. Don't get me wrong, I love a good poofy ballgown as much as the next mare, but I have no taste for making them. I just... throw stuff together and ponies keep buying it. Sometimes I try to remake things I remember watching the original Rarity make, but mostly it's just whatever colors look nice together."

"But you're a premier designer! You own multiple boutiques!"

"And I'm also a former geologist who scrimped and saved my way through six muddy years of college on thrift store fashion and Walmart bras," she countered "Fashion is fine and all but you can't forget practicality."

Rarity sat back and lazily twirled a lock of mane in her magic. "I suppose since Pinkie already outed me I might as well share my story too, though I'll be brief. For a time, I lived in a rather large city with a not insignificant homeless population. One day, a scruffy man accosted me for some change. It was early, I was tired, and I was... rather rude towards him and said some very unkind things. Little did I know, he was a wizard. As I walked away, he cursed at me in a foreign language and said that he'd 'teach me a lesson about generosity'. Then I tripped and hit my head. When I woke up, I was Rarity as a filly, forehead still bleeding from smacking it into the boulder that led to her cutie mark."

She stopped twirling her now slightly knotted mane and turned pensive. "I've always assumed that the original Rarity died when she hit her head and my spirit took up residence. But given the sudden influx of other former humans, I'm beginning to have my doubts."

Twilight's mouth opened and closed uselessly. Rarity being another former human was one thing. After Pinkie, she could just about wrap her head around that. But finding out that Rarity isn't into fashion? It was unbelievable.

"But... if you don't like fashion, why are you so invested in it?"

"Because I'm Rarity," she replied, "And Rarity is the fashion horse. Remember, I thought I was the only human here. I didn't want to disturb future events, so I played my part and acted the prissy fashionista, even when I had to cringe at my own ham-fisted acting or act ignorant when I knew how things would turn out."

"So you're really not into fashion?"

"I'm afraid not, but I do like the gemstones. You should see my basement sometime. Between crystal lenses and unicorn magic I have quite the expansive mining operation."

With a thunk, Twilight collapsed onto the table like a deflating bounce house with a person still inside. "I can't believe it. All this time, I thought I was so alone. And yet not one, but two of my friends were in the exact same boat as me and I never knew."

"Actually..." Twilight glanced up at the apple farmer sheepishly rubbing the back of her neck. "Since everybody else seems to be feeling particularly honest today, you'd better adjust that number to three."

"Applejack," Fluttershy whispered, "...your accent."

"Yeah, I've been faking it," She said as clearly and crisply as a spring brook. "I had to fit in with the rest of the family didn't I? Wouldn't make sense if one pony sounded different."

"So what's your story then?" Pinkie asked as she dolloped more green icing into a piping bag which sat next to a half-iced orange cake that read 'Applejack Rev-'.

Applejack removed her stetson and sat forward in her throne, hooves as arched as her eyebrows. "Technically, this should count as a national secret, but given the circumstances it's probably fine for me to tell you. To make a long story short, I used to work for a secret government lab. The type that makes America's Area 51 look like a public museum. Some project, not mine, a few rooms down from where I was working went haywire and exploded. There was a terrible noise, a flash of colors, and the next think I knew I was crash landing through the roof and into the hayloft of the Sweet Apple Acres barn. The rest of the family seemed to know me, so I played along. Did chores, put on the accent, and ate apples like everyone seemed to expect me to. And everything was fine and simple until Nightmare Moon showed up a year or two later."

"Oh, oh!" Pinkie interrupted, practically hopping out of her throne. "Since you used to be a scientist, did you build a super secret science bunker beneath your house like Rarity did with her mine and filled it with all sorts of advanced scientific equipment and technology?"

Applejack gave her a level look. "No. How on earth was I supposed to do that? Just because I used the tools doesn't mean I can make them. Besides, there aren't any circuit boards in Equestria let alone the facilities to manufacture them."

Meanwhile, Twilight turned to stare at Dash, making the pegasus ruffle her feathers uncomfortably. "What?"

"Just get on with it already, I'm not even fazed at this point." Twilight deadpanned.

"Alright, fine." Rainbow Dash finally stopped hovering and took a seat. "You can count me and Flutters in the former human club too. We already knew about each other."

"And with that," Pinkie smiled, "We've got the whole set!"

"So what's your story then?" Applejack asked, "Died? Cursed? Science gone wrong?"

"None of those. I remember I had just bought the latest and greatest VR headset. Top of the line, not even on the market yet. My uncle knew a guy in the industry. I got home, plugged it in, turned on the demo. A big splash of color fills my face and suddenly I'm on top of a cloud about to race some bite-size bullies with rainbow hair in my eyes. No VR I'd done had ever managed to pull off flight before, but this one did it great! Responsive, so intuitive, and as realistic as you could ask for. Then Fluttershy fell and I went to catch her cause I figured it was a starting quest. Took me two days of flying and goofing off before I realized I couldn't log out." She shrugged, "And I've been here ever since."

"So... you thought this is a video game?"

"Eh, maybe? I could also be in a coma. Don't really care because either way I've been having a pretty great time."

"But... a video game?"

"I was on a nature hike... " Fluttershy murmured, "I got separated from the teacher and the rest of the group. It started to rain so I went into a cave. It was dark and I tripped and I fell and fell and fell. There was this bright light beneath me, and a few minutes late Fluttering Breeze gave birth to me.

"Ew," Pinkie declared as she began mixing a batch of yellow icing. "TMI, Fluttershy. TMI."

"You properly reincarnated," Rarity commented with a small noise of surprise. "You've actually been Fluttershy from the very beginning."

"Mhm. Also, when I was still human I used to have terrible equinophobia, so being Fluttershy has really helped with that. Sort of."

A loud smacking noise drew everyone away from the smaller conversations they had started to drift into. It was Twilight, smacking her head on the table over and over, using the staccato beat to punctuate each word.

"Literally. This. Whole. Time. Everyone. Was. A. Human."

She sat back up, an angry red welt already beginning to heal. "And here I am! Having run myself ragged trying to make sure we stick to show canon and I don't disrupt anything, when it literally didn't matter because literally everyone already knew what was going to happen!"

"You're not alone in this Twilight, " Rarity said comfortingly, "We've all been putting on personas to try and maintain the canon. Although," she laughed nervously, "Admittedly I only watched up to season five, so I've been winging it since then."

"Season seven," Fluttershy admitted.

"I only watched it with my daughter on occasion, so all I had was a scattering of episodes," Applejack added.

"I have no idea what you're all talking about now."

Five sets of eyes turned to Rainbow Dash. "The show?" Twilight prompted, "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Where all these characters and their adventures take place?"

"Never heard of it."

"Wait," said Applejack, "So you haven't been acting like a tough, sporty, flying-obsessed braggart just to stay in character?"

"Uh, no? I've just been me. And don't diss flying. Flying is awesome."

"Huh. Go figure."

"To be fair," Pinkie added, "I was basically a lot like best pony even before I became her. I just ham it up a bit for canon adventures."

"So now that we know we're all humans," Applejack asked, "What do we do with this information?"

Rarity shrugged. "I guess we can stop putting on airs? Start being true to ourselves and all that."

Applejack eased back down into her chair and reapplied her hat. "I guess. Though I've been in character for so long, I know some of it's melted into my actual personality by this point." Such as how wrong it felt to not have a hat on.

Pinkie was just about to comment when she noticed a curious expression on Twilight's face. "Twilight? Are you okay?"

The faraway look faded from her eyes as Pinkie Pie's comment brought her back down. "Huh? Oh, yes. I am. I just... now that I know I'm not the only human in Equestria, a lot of small inconsistencies I've noticed are starting to come together into a much bigger picture."

"How do you mean?"

But Twilight didn't respond as within her head, gears and cogs were meshing together like never before, connecting together memories of odd Freudian slips and unusual mannerisms. "I need Spike," she announced at last, "I need to send a letter to the Princesses."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Fluttershy ventured, "What if the princesses think we're crazy?"

"Or possessed?"

"Or changelings?"

"Or possessed by crazy changelings?"

The alicorn just shook her head. "If I'm right, and more than ever I think I am, they won't. Spike!" She hollered down the hallway.

"Coming!" Echoed back after a moment, soon followed by the familiar clicking of claws on crystal. He came around the corner with a huge tray of delicious-looking sandwiches, crusts pre-removed. "It's not much, but it should hold us over until- oh hey Twilight."

"Spike," she said, suddenly serious, "I have something very important to ask you."

He nodded. "Shoot."

"Did you used to be a human?"

The dragon froze. His eyes darted between the six sets watching him in a remarkably similar reaction to Twilight's own several minutes before.

"H-human? I, uh, don't know what you mean."

"It's alright Spike," Pinkie called, "Twilight used to be one herself."

"We all did," Rarity added.

His eyes focused on her. "Rarity? You... used to be a human?"

She nodded, and the dragon sank to the floor. A moment later, he jumped back up with a fist pump. "Yahoo! Oh yes, finally!" He continued as he transitioned into his happy dance. "So long species barrier! Oh you have no idea how happy this makes me!"

"I think we've got some idea," Pinkie giggled.

Twilight merely rolled my eyes. "I take it that's a yes then?"

Remembering himself, Spike ceased his dance. "What? Oh, yeah. I used to be a human." He made a small bow. "Charlie, pleasure to finally meetcha."

She nodded in response. "Jack Kirby."

"Matt- Mary Brown," said Rarity, suddenly wincing. "But now that you know, would you terribly mind... forgetting I said that? I'd prefer leaving that name behind. Rarity would not have been a first draft name choice, but it's still a far cry better than that."

"Cherie Clarke", Pinkie added, "Though 'Pinkie' is still fine."

"I don't remember," said Fluttershy.

"Johanna Schmidtt," said Applejack, "I'm also fine with my pony name."

"Chad Kaschak," Rainbow Dash declared as though she were announcing a prize winner.

"Oh, she was a guy." Pinkie muttered in realization, "That explains so much."

While the introductions had been going on, Twilight had scribbled out a quick scroll and wrapped it up. "Anyway, I need you to send a letter to the Princesses."

"Before that," Spike cut her off, "If we're doing secrets then I've got another one to tell, which I now feel a lot better about sharing since we're all people."

"What, are you a changeling?" Rainbow Dash snorted.

"Ha ha, yeah," he laughed as green fire consumed him, "I guess it was pretty obvious in hindsight."

The whole group fell back in panic, the less combat-savvy ponies hiding behind their thrones while the rest took up fighting stances. Twilight found herself stuck in the middle.

"Spike!" Twilight cried, "You're a changeling!"

"Uh, yeah?" the changeling said with Spike's voice, "I thought we just agreed that everypony knew that."

"I was joking!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed.

"How long have you been a changeling?!" Twilight demanded, thoughts of humanity dashed as they were replaced with worry over the safety of her precious friend and assistant.

"Since ever?"

That brought her up short. "Ever?"

"Yeah, since always," he confirmed, "When I landed in Equestria, I was already disguised as a dragon egg in a storeroom. A couple hours later I was taken to a testing room and faked a hatching when you showed up. You're welcome, by the way. That light show was not easy to pull off."

"So you've always been a changeling?" she clarified, finding herself more open to believing the unbelievable today, "There never was a Spike the Dragon?"

"I've looked, but never found a trace of him." He chuckled to himself. "Man, and here I was thinking that the green fire was a dead giveaway."

"Wait, a second," Applejack cut in with a worried expression, "Do the other changelings know? That you're a human?"

"Oh yeah, totally. You know, hivemind and all. Also," he turned to Twilight, "Sorry about Cadence's wedding and everything I said and did there. I didn't like throwing you in the caves, but I had to stick to the script, you know."

"What?" Twilight asked in confusion, "But that was Chrysalis, not you."

"Didn't I make that clear? Hivemind. One consciousness, lots of bodies."

"You mean..."

He nodded. "I'm all the changelings. From Chrysalis to Thorax to Ocellus, they're all me."

"Wait, even-"

"Yes Pinkie, even him," he said with a slight blush that was quickly out-classed by Pinkie's beet-red full-face flush of embarrassment.

"Well that is... a lot to take in and process," Twilight said slowly, "But that also seems to be the theme of the day so moving on!" She held up a scroll. "Can you still send a letter to the Princesses?"

"Oh sure." With a flash, he was a dragon again, and one puff of fire later, the letter was on it's way.

"What did you send them?" Rarity asked.

"Well, you see, all this reminded me of some strange things I once read while studying old equestrian law and ancient diplomatic treaties. A lot of particular familiar phrases that kept cropping up. I thought it was just cosmic coincidence before, but now I have my suspicions it may have been more than that."

"You think ones of the princesses might be, you know, like us as well?" Fluttershy asked hopefully.

Twilight nodded. "It's a possibility, though I don't know which princess it might be. So I sent them a very particular passage that, if I'm right, at least one of them will recognize immediately and let us know. And if not, I can claim it's some scribblings I didn't mean to send."

Rainbow Dash scoffed. "I don't buy it. What could you possibly have written that could out them so easily?"

Twilight gave a sly smile and began reciting.

"I proposed the idea of starting an Equestrian Space program, lauding such a venture's lofty goals like exploring brave new world, seeking out new life and civilization, and boldly—"

"TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE!" Luna finished at full royal Canterlot volume as she teleported into the room with a shimmer of rainbow sparkles. Rather than her usual regalia, she wore a fitted yet unmistakable uniform consisting of a yellow shirt with gold rimmed cuffs and black pants. She embraced the youngest princess the moment she finished materializing.

"Oh, Twilight I'm so glad! I knew we'd find someone, somewhere who'd get our message and what providence it happened to be you!"

"Star Trek?" Applejack asked incredulously. "You got her to admit herself with Star Trek?"

Through her smooshed face, Twilight managed to reply, "You should read the early Equestrian diplomatic proclamations when you get a chance. They cribbed most of it from the Prime Directive, not a small amount verbatim."

"It's in the tax code too." Luna broke off her hug. "You'll find quite a bit of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition there." In an instant, Applejack found herself wrapped in royal blue magic and soon after, royal blue forelegs. "Dear Applejack, you as well? You get my reference?"

"I'm pretty sure most of us get it, Princess." Rainbow Dash confirmed with a smirk. "Though I would have gone with Star Wars."

"Or maybe Battlestar Galactica," Fluttershy voted softly.

"Farscape!" Pinkie contributed.

"You would say that," Rarity countered, "Though it's really just a reimagining of Buck Rogers."

"Not as much as Andromeda was."

"...fair enough"

Tears crested the edge of Luna's eyes. "You... all of you? You're all from Earth?"

"That's right. Humans every one." Spike said through bites of his sandwich.

She released Applejack from her death grip and spread her forelegs wide as if to encompass the whole group at once. "Oh how wonderful! After so long alone! If only my sister-"

"TO BOLDLY GO WHE- hang on... Luna! I told you to wait for me! I had to find my pips!"

Princess Celestia's outfit was much like her sister's, only it was one piece with red instead of yellow and six little metal pips on the collar.

"Celestia, you too?" Twilight asked.

"Yes Twilight." Luna said gravely," I'm sorry to have to tell you, but your beloved teacher," she dropped to a harsh whisper, "Is a total nerd!"

Celestia gave her a shove. "Like you're any better Miss 'Let's put fandom references in legal documents and treatsies!'"

"Well it worked, didn't it? Behold!" She spread her forelegs wide once more, "Finally more transformed humans!"

Celestia's eyes went wide. "The Elements? All of them?"

"And me." Spike added, "Or, you know, just forget Spike. That's how it works in canon after all." They ignored him.

Celestia walked to her student's side. "Twilight, why did you never tell me you used to be a human?"

"How would I possibly start that conversation?"

"I suppose that's fair."

"And what about you!" Twilight rebutted, "How long have you been Celestia?"

"About," her expression turned quizzical. "Five hundred years, give or take. Right, Luna?"

"I'd say closer to six, but thereabouts. And no, we don't know what happened to the Celestia and Luna who defeated Discord or existed for the four centuries after that."

"So how did you two get here?" Pinkie asked as she pulled yet another two color-coordinated reveal cakes from nowhere.

The two eldest alicorns shared a look. "Just like we rehearsed?"

"It's been decades since we've practiced, but of course."

"To begin with," Celestia started, "We are in fact sisters, even before all this."

"Indeed. Long before now, we both were-" she paused, "Given the circumstances, I think we can amend out the explanation about humans and earth and other dimensions."

"Good point." Celestia sighed dramatically, "So much for the routine we've been readying for centuries."

"Anyways, it all happened when my sister and I were going to a convention."

"I was taking a semester off college and it was her high school's Spring Break."

"One of the big things at the convention was a Star Trek event," Luna rolled her hoof idly. "Some decade anniversary, I forget which."

"Aside from countless actors and writers attending, they also had recovered a lot of the original sets and props."

"So my sister and I, being the hardcore nerds we were, wanted a photo standing on the bridge."

Celestia nodded in agreement. "But the line was too long, so we went to the transporters first."

"Just as we got into position and the photographer asked if we were ready, the convention center was struck by a bolt of lightning."

"All the lights went out, except for the prop ones on the transporter console, which only seemed to get brighter."

"There was a bright flash, and suddenly we were in the Canterlot Observatory tower, winged and horned and hooved."

"That was a couple centuries ago," Celestia concluded their dialogue, "And we've been living as the Princesses ever since."

"So does this mean I don't have to call you 'Princess" anymore?" Applejack asked, "Since, y'know, you're not? And because of how were all so much closer now?"

The Royals shrugged. "We could care less," Luna replied, "We tried to get Twilight to stop for nearly two seasons after she ascended, but years of hero worship and fangirlism is hard to break."

Silence fell in the room.

"So..." Celestia ventured, uncharacteristically short of words, "We never actually planned on what to do next after we found some more humans. Any ideas what we should do now that all this is out in the open?"

A contemplative silence filled the room. "Drink?" Pinkie offered as she pulled a long bottle out of her mane. "I have strawberry schnaaaaaaps~!"

"...Sure," Luna agreed easily, "I haven't gotten proper drunk in decades."

"I guess it's fine," Twilight relented, "It's not like we need to try and preserve a timeline anymore."

"Sounds like a party," Spike said, "I'll bring over some stuff from Berry's Tavern."

"Spike!" Twilight chastised reflexively, "You're not old enough to drink. Or... I guess... huh. Maybe you are."

"Y'know, I'm probably older than you Twilight."

"Enough talking!" Rainbow Dash complained, "Toss me that bottle Pinks! This is an awesome day and I just found out that all my best friends are as awesome as I secretly was! It's time to celebrate the human way: with booze!"

Caught up in her energy, the rest cheered along as she bit off the bottle cap and began to chug like the frat boy she had once been.

Author's Note

...I don't know what this is. I don't even know what genre to tag it as.
It's not a story, not really. It's just... a thing. A thing that exists.
A stream-of-consciousness idea that wouldn't leave me alone yesterday.
Probably be another chapter tomorrow, but I have no idea after that what this is or where it's going.
Also might go back and give this a thorough overhaul at some point, as it is very stream-of-consciousness.

No Ponies in the Town

Author's Note

Wow, this has gotten rather more attention than I expected. I'll have to see if I can do something about that.

Also, thanks to my goof of not rereading, in order to rectify a continuity error that several people have pointed out, Rarity's human name has been retconned from 'Matthew' to "Mary".

No Ponies in the Town

"So you really were never on the moon?" Spike asked as he refilled Luna's cup. The booze had flowed freely amidst no less than nine cakes, and after the first few rounds and toasts the recently united humans had broken into smaller groups for more personal conversations.

"No, but I did visit for a time. Beautiful views, if somewhat empty otherwise. Still, I knew I couldn't show my face—timeline preservation and all that—so I studied transformation magic and spent a few centuries travelling the world and having adventures under various pseudonyms." She gave him a wink. "You should check out the journeys of the adventurer Undaunted Moon. Some of my best work."

"Another fandom reference?" he smirked.

"Of course." She took a long pull from her drink, a dark stout from Minos, and released a small sound of satisfaction. "Mm. Delicious."

"Thanks." Spike took a quaff of his own. "It's a real pain to import, but it helps when you have connections all over the country."

Luna shook her head in tipsy disbelief. "I still find it hard to believe that's you're actually a changeling. Sorry, all of the changelings."

"You think pretending to be one pony is hard?" he laughed, "Try pretending to be a thousand at once, then we'll talk. But I guess that's what I get for ignoring the 'Do Not Touch' signs on that ancient 20-sided die in that museum."

"Do you think you could... ah..." the alicorn swirled her drink as she stalled, but Spike caught her drift.

"Sure. It's no problem. What pony do you want to see?"

Luna blushed, turning her cheeks purple. "C-Chrysalis..."

Spike raised an eyebrow, but complied. One swirling vortex of green flame later and Luna found herself muzzle to muzzle with a black predatory grin.

"This what you wanted?" the Queen asked in her multi-tonal voice.

"Haahoooh... that's hot," Luna shuddered, a tingling sparkler travelling down her spine.

Spike-Chrysalis blinked and gave herself a once over. "Really? This?"

"Hey, you try living for a few hundred years and see if your tastes don't turn exotic." She reached a hoof out as though to touch, but stopped an inch short. "Could I...?"

"Yes, I already said you cou- oof!" the changeling gasped as the air was suddenly and forcefully crushed from her lungs by a bear hug.

"Mm, you're so smooth and cool," Luna purred as she practically nuzzled the chitinous chest.

"I'm... glad you like it?" Spike replied, his voice slipping back to 'young dragon mode' in surprise.

"No, stay in character. Cold and aloof."

Collecting himself, Spike looked away and forced a blush as he spoke again in the queen's voice. "F-fine. Hug me if you want. It's not like I l-like the taste of your love or anything, fool."

"Ohoho yes. That, more of that."

Across the room, Twilight and Celestia watched the pair over a couple of glasses of red wine. "They certainly seem to be getting along well."

"Indeed." Celestia took another sip from her glass, savoring the flavor. "It's too bad Cadence isn't here. She's just as much of a shipper as you'd expect a fangirl turned Princess of Love to be. Though she was always a proponent of Chrysentry, but Lunalis was a close second."

"Cadence too? Why am I not surprised." Twilight was beyond disbelief. At this point it would be harder to convince her that one of her friends wasn't a human.

"Yes, her and your brother. They came over as a pair." She lit her horn and cast a small hologram-like illusion as she spoke. "From what she told me, they were on a date at Coney Island. Just before they were going to go home, they decided to ride a slightly sketchy-looking Tunnel of Love. They entered the tunnel as humans in Coney Island, New York... and came out the other side as ponies in Poney Island, Manehattan."

"As least they still had each other's company," Twilight mused, her mind still easily drifting back to those countless sleepless nights spent wrestling with the crushing thought of never seeing or talking to another human again.

"Though they weren't very good at hiding it," Celestia commented, "I had them figured out in two weeks. Shining Armour had never seen the show, you see, and one of their pet names was a Disney reference."

"Celes- Cassandra," Twilight corrected herself as she interrupted.

"Celestia's fine," she said with a wave, "Or even just Celly. I've been that a lot longer than I was Cassie."

"...Celestia," Twilight settled, not quite ready to cross that bridge of familiarity yet, "What do we do now?"

"Get another bottle?"

"No, I mean in general. The odds of all us being secretly humans must be astronomical."

"We are main characters," Celestia pointed out.

"True, but hear me out. If there are this many of us, who's to say there might not be more.

That gave the Princess pause. She set down her glass. "That is a sobering thought. To think that there could still be others out there, living like we were. Alone and pretending to be some pony that they're not just to avoid rocking the boat."

Twilight nodded. "I can even think of few offhand that might be humans."

"Really? Who?"

"Flim and Flam for one, and Vinyl Scratch for another."

"What makes you suspect them?"

Twilight sat up a little straighter as she instinctively shifted into lecture mode. "Mostly it's their technology. You've seen the show... and presumably them in person. Don't you think their Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 seemed a little too advanced for this pseudo-medieval world? It was powered by magic, sure, but aside from the train every other form of transportation is pony-powered. They not only built a car, but built a whole automated factory within it. And Vinyl Scratch is along the same lines. She not only invented techno music, but also all the equipment needed to make it exist? You don't make the jump from Victrola records to digital turntables with amps and electric speakers in one move. And who invents a microphone when voice charms are a beginner level spell?"

"Those are very valid points." Celestia sighed and filled her glass again, to the brim. "Points which would rule out my main character theory. The brothers are minor villains, but Vinyl is a confirmed background pony. If we include them, then any pony might be a human. The gates are open, as it were."

"And if there are more humans out there," Twilight stressed, "We can't just leave them alone and isolated like we were. Even if it's just one or two, we need to reach out, find a way to help them. Something like a support group, if nothing else."

"I agree, but how would we find them? You and your friends are as close as can be, yet not one of you picked up on the others' vestiges of humanity."

Twilight stood and began to pace. Partially because she could feel the wine muddling her thoughts slightly, and partially because she always found the ticking staccato beat of hooves on crystal to be an excellent metronome to getting her thoughts in order. "We need... a question. Something that would be obvious to any human, but that no pony would be able to answer."

Celestia tracked her with her eyes as she found the safest route between bottles and cake. "You mean like who was George Washington? Something like that?"

Twilight shook her head. "No, we can't assume that they're from America. Applejack is apparently a native German, after all."

"Hm. Something that not only would every human know, but that also only humans would know? Sounds like a zen riddle."

Twilight continued her pacing as her thoughts turned inward, saving precious time by not saying them aloud. Something that only humans would know. History? It would vary by region and spotty education systems. Language? The same problem. The universal language of memes? A possibility, but one which too was hampered by their short shelf life and patchy recognizability.

As she still struggled to come up with an idea, she found herself distract by noise. Across the room, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and two changelings in Spike form were arguing over the lyrics to a drinking song. In this case, 'arguing' meant that each of them were trying to sing what they thought was the correct verse louder than the others were, as if mere volume would prove their point.

And then Twilight got an idea. Something so universal, so well-known, that no human could resist it.

The populace of Ponyville did not know why they had been gathered to the center of town. But two of the Princesses were there, as well as all the Elements of Harmony, so it had to be important. Plus, several of their neighbors had seemed oddly insistent in making sure that absolutely everypony turned up for the meeting.

"And so," Celestia concluded, wrapping up her unnecessarily verbose introduction where she'd thanked everyone for coming out, "In light of some recent revelations, we have a question to ask you all, citizens of Ponyville. A question which we hope you will answer honestly."

The princess cleared her throat, doubled-checked her voice amplification spell, and took a deep breath.

"Is this the real life?" she asked, "Is it just fantasy?"

"Caught in a landslide," Luna added, "No escape from reality."

"Open your eyes," Twilight pleaded, "Look up to the sky and see..."

There was a pregnant pause. The princesses held their breath, waiting. Would someone speak up, or were they going to have to make some very awkward excuses?

Then, a single voice hesitantly sang out from the crowd. "I'm just a poor boy," sang Thunderlane in his rich tenor, "I need no sympathy."

A second voice joined in, louder, growing in confidence. "Becauthe ith's eathy come," it was the filly, Twist, "Eathy go."

"A little high," contributed Bon Bon.

"Little low," finished Lyra with a wide grin and not-so-subtle rump bump.

"ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS, DOESN'T REALLY MATTER TO MEEE..." bellowed Bulk Biceps, "TO MEEEEEE...!"

By the time they'd gotten to Scaramouch, it seemed like the whole crowd was singing in chorus. Lightning flashed at the appropriate time as the crowd split into two groups for the call and response portion. But this was no Heartsong, no Moment of Harmony. No unseen instruments joined in their song save for a long guitar a stallion had already had with him. Everypony knew what to sing, not because the force of harmony whispered it in their ears, but because they already knew the lyrics.

In time, the song ended, as all songs must. Sweetie Belle beautifully soloed the final 'Anywhere the wind blows' and silence returned to the town square. Everyone certainly had some idea of what had just happened, but no one wanted to be the first to say anything just in case they were wrong.

"Right then," Luna declared as she stepped forward and took charge. "Now that you all probably have some idea as to what's going on, will anybody who was not, in some way, shape, or form, previously a human being, please raise your hoof."

There was a pregnant pause as everypony waited, their eyes ever anxiously shifting to the ponies around them. One second. Two. Three. No hooves were going up.

Noticing Luna's jaw hanging uselessly, Twilight stepped up to the plate. "Alright, that's... more than we'd counted on. Okay, next question. Please raise your hoof if you are familiar with a television program called: My Little Pony. Specifically the rebooted Friendship is Magic version."

And suddenly there was a forest. Not all the hooves were raised but it was certainly no less than three quarters of the crowd. There was another momentary pause as everypony took acknowledged the sight... and then the floodgates broke as the mob descended into cacophonous chaos. Countless conversations flowed over top of each other like an avalanche of shock, surprise, and joyous relief.

"You're a human?"

"Yes! Well, I was."

"Me too!"

"You're not really Lotus?"

"No, my name is Charles, and I have no idea how to massage."

"Yeah, I could have told you that."

"I hate growing flowers! It's so boring!"

"Then why are you a flower vendor?"

"Cause look at me! I'm one of the flower trio! That's what they do."

"And I hate retail! In a world of magic and monsters, why am I still bagging produce?!"

"I'm so sorry. I know I've been pretending to be your husband, but I have no idea what your first name is."

"That's okay, I don't know yours either."

"All of you were humans and you never told anyone?!"

"What would I say?"

"They'd think I was crazy."

"I thought it was a dream."

"A coma."

"A parallel timeline."

"An alternate dimension."

"So this isn't a holonovel?"

"And besides, I didn't want to break canon."

"...couldn't change the timeline."

"...didn't want to mess up the future."

"...ruin the show."

Some ponies, rather than react in mere surprise, had skipped ahead right to anger. The first was the piebald colt, Pipsqueak, who stepped forward and declared in a loud yet adorably squeaky voice, "I am a forty-five year old veteran and I demand a beer!"

He was quickly joined by a blue colt of similar age. "Yeah! And a release from the education system! I didn't go to college just to go back to elementary school!"

"Stop making Dr. Who references at me!" Time Turner yelled at the group of ponies all trying to speak to him at once. "I know this character is a reference, but I never saw that show! Blast it, I'm a gym instructor, not the Doctor!"

"Quiet down, all of you!" Luna roared, easily overpowering the crowd into silence. "Yes, there are a lot of changes that are going to happen now. A lot of adjustment as ponies- no, people, stop playing a role and start living authentically. But we cannot give in to chaos. To do this we need to cooperate. So the important question is: what are we going to do now?"

"No Pinkie, we are not going to keep drinking." Pouting, the pink mare pushed back in the bottle she'd been pulling from her tail.

"Princess! Princess!" There was movement among the crowd which after a moment resolved itself into a pony pushing their way forward. After a long minute of struggling, she reached the front, falling on the ground as she did so.

"Yes, what is it?" Celestia addressed her. "Golden Harvest, isn't it?"

The mare nodded as she stood and dusted herself off. "Yes, though, I'd prefer Dennis now that everything's out in the open."

"Of course, Dennis."

Dennis cleared her throat. "Princess, I know the pony I've been playing is a farmer, but really I'm an electrical engineer with over thirty years of practical experience in electronics manufacturing. If you give me a team and a budget, I can kick-start Equestria's Information age."

"Done," Luna answered immediately. "Come to Canterlot in a couple days and we'll get everything sorted."

As though the clouds had parted to reveal the sun, Celestia suddenly had a vision of the future as clear as day. Not a true prophetic vision, as she'd often faked to explain away her knowledge of future canon events, but a vision nonetheless. An idea of what could be done with the powerful union of human knowledge and Equestrian magic.

"Listen to me!" She yelled to gather the attention of those whose focus had begun to wander, "Our humanity may be gone, stripped away from us by force or chance, but that does not mean we are not still human. Each of us carries within ourselves a portion of humanity. Music and art, culture and technology! If we work together, if we combine the best of what made us human with the best of what we loved about ponies, then we can rebuild! If we can't return to our world, then we'll rebuild our world right here! Who's with me!"

The roaring cheer was deafening. Be they humans or ponies, everybody loves a powerful and dramatic speech.

Catching her sister's drift, Luna raised her voice so the crowd could hear her over their ongoing cheer. "If anyone else has a skill, talent, or life experience that they feel may be put to use in rebuilding a portion of our former human lives, please come to Canterlot in three days time to submit your proposals."

True to the nature of humans, they all ignored her instructions and began yelling out their ideas over top of one another.

"I was in Special Forces!" declared Mrs. Cake, "I can reform and modernize our military so we'll be prepared this time for that horrible event that happened in the final season!"

"Pencils!" another pony exclaimed, "I developed a spell that can convert raw wood and diamonds into pencils. Think about it! No more ink! No more quills! No more insufferable quill feathers that you can't pick off your tongue because you don't have fingers!"

"I know Python!" possibly the most unhelpful pony shouted, "If you make me a computer, then I can write some programs for... things!"

It was all too much. The crowd was on the fast track to evolving to a proper mob, and Celestia was just about to break out her Royal Canterlot Voice to shut the entire show down when she suddenly realized that there was a pony by her side. She had neither seen nor heard him arrive, and his deep crimson cloak did not look like it had just squeezed through a crowd. The cloak and its hood also served to effectively hide absolutely everything about his identity. Yet, even without speaking, he seemed to give off a foreboding aura that not just she, her sister, and the Elements could feel, but was strong enough to make even the closest edge of the crowd quiet down in apprehension.

"Princesses. Elements." His voice was as plain and featureless as a field of snow, giving nothing away, yet it seemed to easily cut through the noise of the crowd. "If I may speak with you. Privately."

The two primary princesses shared a look, one which passed the kind of meaning that could only be developed after many many years. Whatever their look had discussed, Luna apparently agreed with a quiet huff and a nod. In a flash of light, Celestia teleported all of them away, save Luna, leaving her sister behind to corral the enthusiastic crowd and, hopefully, convince them to return to some semblance of normal life, if only for the time being.

She would not be successful. There would be no going back to 'normal life'. Not after this.

No Ponies in the Land

With a flash of light, one princess, six elements, and one mysterious stranger teleported back into the throne room of the Castle of Friendship. The seven known ponies were quick to distance themselves from the stranger, though his aura had diminished greatly. If he cared about their trepidation, he did not show it.

"My apologies for the theatrics," he said with a small nod of a bow, "But I felt that this was a conversation better held away from prying ears.

Celestia took the lead. "Who are you then?"

"And what do you want?" Twilight supplemented.

"All reasonable questions, but first, I'm afraid I have one of my own." He paused. No one could see his eyes, but they generally assumed that he was fixing them with a level stare. "Were you all really humans? Really?

"Uh, doy?" Dash scoffed, "Did you not see that whole show out there? Though I still say Gangnam style would have been a better choice."

"And we voted it down, seven to two. It's too niche and dated," Twilight insisted, clearly not for the first time. "No one over thirty would have gotten it. Bohemian Rhapsody is known across a much wider sampling of ages and countries."

The stallion seemed hesitant for a moment, but then nodded. "Alright. I'll accept that as confirmation of humanity." He chuckled. "It feels a bit pointless to say this now, but tradition is tradition, so without further ado... Welcome to Eeeeeeeeequestria!"

With a dramatic disrobing worthy of Team Rocket, the stallion whipped off his cloak to reveal-

"Braeburn!?"

The yellow stallion laughed merrily. "Yes! It is I! Braeburn! Everyone's favorite secondary character! But not just Braeburn! Due to an unfortunate accident, I am also Jeremy Higgins, former human and official greeter for newly arrived humans in Equestria and its surrounding principalities!"

He glanced from his dramatic pose to the nonplussed expressions of his audience. "Hm. Usually that gets a bigger reaction."

"It might have if we hadn't revealed ourselves to each other already," Fluttershy said.

"Touché. I suppose this isn't your first rodeo after all. See what I did there? Rodeo? Cause I'm-"

"We get it."

Braeburn cleared his throat and recomposed himself. "Right. Sorry. Sometimes I get a bit too into character. I used to be a greeter at a theme park. Hard to shake old habits. Anyway, today I stand before you as an official representative of the secret society known as the Red Fist."

"The Tirek-worshiping cult?" Celestia asked, her voiced colored by both confusion and concern. "I thought they disbanded years ago."

"Oh they did, they did," he assured, "About the time it turned out Tirek was real and subsequently attacked everyone. No, we just co-opted their name and logo. Plus all these nice cloaks they left behind."

"We should probably actually check on him," Twilight mused absentmindedly, "Given the situation, he may have been as much of a victim of circumstance as anyone. Spike, could you-"

"Already on it." He said without moving from his chair. No doubt one of his other bodies was already en route to Tartarus. Such was the benefit of a hivemind.

"Origins of our current name aside," Braeburn said, "We are a clandestine society of ponies from all across Equestria who all share a common bond."

"And what would that be?" asked Applejack, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer, given how the day had been going.

"That all of our members used-."

"That you were all humans?" Pinkie interrupted him eagerly. He gave her a look.

"Yes. Thanks."

"Called it!" Dash whispered to Rarity, who grumblingly handed over a small sack of bits. Very small. It wasn't a tough bet.

"There's a whole secret society of former humans?" Dash continued after pocketing her winnings. "Are you like... the Illuminati of Ponies? Secretly controlling the government from the shadows and stuff?"

He cringed for some reason at her comment. "Actually-"

"Nah, I bet it's more of a support group." Pinkie interrupted once more, "Spotting new arrivals, helping them make the transition to pony life, getting them jobs or filling them in on upcoming canon events they need to be wary of. That sort of thing."

"Are you sure she's human?" Braeburn asked nopony in particular as he narrowed a suspicious gaze at the pink pony. "Because she's behaving an awful lot like Pinkie Pie."

"Yep! 100% all-natural home-grown human!" Pinkie assured, "Or maybe fifty percent. Or maybe ten? What percentage of you is your brain? Unless we're just counting the soul, in which case I have no clue how much of a percent the soul is."

"I'll vouch for her." Rarity stepped forward. "She's just... naturally very in tune with the character."

"Pinkie's a fun person to be," Pinkie agreed. "Given the choice, why would you choose not to be Pinkie?"

After considering it for a moment, Braeburn blew out in his lips in exasperation. "Fine. Whatever. Just stop cutting me off. Getting back on track, there's actually at least two secret societies that we know of, but it's been a long time since we've heard anything from-

"Princess!" A new voice burst in. Moments later it was followed by a grey coated pegasus bodily bursting in through the window. Derpy Hooves had arrived on the scene.

Like Braeburn with his red cloak, Derpy wore a uniform of her own consisting of a golden newsboy cap with a yellow triangle on the brim and a matching vest with a triangle-decorated hem. "Hello Princesses or whomever you actually are," she said cheerily, "I'm here to represent a secret society of ponies who used to be humans."

"Oh great," Braeburn grumbled, "They actually did have someone in the area."

Celestia's eyes slid sideways to meet with Twilight's. The situation was rapidly growing larger than either of them had anticipated. But at least for once all their problems and complications were announcing themselves. "And what is your group called?"

"We are-"

"Here it comes," Braeburn cringed.

Derpy rose up onto her hind hooves and struck a bipedal pose with her elbows akimbo and her hooves connected over her head. "The Illumi-not-a-pony!"

Braeburn smacked himself in the face, as did Twilight. "Really?" she asked, "Really?"

"Hey, I didn't name it." Derpy shrugged as she dropped back down on to all fours. "That's what our founder called it over a hundred years ago."

Braeburn sniffed disdainfully. "Which just goes to show that your group has never had the right attitude for a proper secret society, even from the beginning."

"Yeah, but it's a secret society in Equestria!" she insisted, "Live a little, why doncha? You're all so focused on 'maintaning the canon' that you're not even having fun."

"I take it your two groups don't get along?" Celestia, more than used to having to settle squabbles, cut in.

"They're all sticks-in-the-mud," Derpy confirmed.

"They lack respect and their name is terrible," Braeburn shot back.

Human or no, Twilight could sense the familiar steps of a friendship problem brewing. "But, you're all former humans. There should be plenty of common ground between you."

They nodded at that. "Oh for sure," Derpy began as she sat down, "We both work to find newly arrived humans, help them settle in-"

"Basically everything Pinkie guessed earlier," Braeburn interrupted, "Though we urge our members to stick to canon events as closely as possible to avoid influencing the development of the characters we know and love." He brushed some imaginary dust off his shoulder. "We're also the much larger group.

Though her demeanor was calm, one of Derpy's wings twitched in agitation, and half of her eyes were squarely locked in on her rival society member. "While we encourage people to think of their new lives as a fresh start and to go and explore things they could never do back on Earth. Also, we're definitely bigger."

"Oh please. We have twelve-point verification system for identifying transformed humans with an exceptionally high success rate."

The gold and silver pegasus smirked. "So exceptionally successful that you missed all of Ponyville?"

The cocky smile froze on his face. He quickly wiped it away with some recontextualization. "I'm sure there were really only a few humans in the crowd. Everyone else just got caught up in the Heartsong."

"There was no Heartsong," Celestia confirmed, "I had a suppression spell active."

His eyes darted about the room, searching for further excuses. No one wanted to meet his gaze, especially Dash and Pinkie who had gotten bored apparently and were trying to play blackjack using what remained of the booze as betting chips. Finding no excuses, he settled for a redirection.

"Putting all that aside, as a Level 2 member of our organization, I have the authority to negotiate in the event of a XZ-Class scenario."

"A what now?" Applejack asked.

"An 'End of the Line' situation," he clarified, "When, for whatever reason, we can no longer remain in the shadows and need to go public. And with the secret as out as it is now, there's no going back."

"Out? How's it out?" Rainbow Dash added her two bits, "It's just Ponyville that knows."

"Ponyville, yes. And also a number of Canterlotites taking a day off from the capitol's hustle and bustle. Families visiting relatives in the town. Not to mention who knows how many tourists from across the nation. And yet all of them turned out to be humans. No, there's no stopping it now. One way or another, knowledge of humans in Equestria will out."

"Oh!" Derpy suddenly cried, "That reminds me. I also have instructions on what to do if this happens."

"As a gesture of goodwill between our society and the crown, we offer this." She pulled a bound scroll from beneath her hat and handed it to the princess. "This contains a collection of half-spell, half-recipes that can create iconic foods from Earth that are both digestible by ponies and don't harm thinking creatures in their production. This particular scroll covers hamburgers, real potato french fries, pepperoni pizza, and chicken tenders." She shot the stallion a smug glare, almost as if to say 'Top that, fist boy'.

Not to be outdone, Braeburn cut in. "We also have a gift for the crown." He produced a sapphire the size of an egg, etched with ribbons of gold and silver. "This engram crystal contains a collection of over one hundred pieces of humanity's best music. From Bach to The Beatles, and Jackson 5 to John Williams."

"Ooh, gimme." Pinkie snatched it from his grasp. "Does it have Nickleback?"

"Er... no. But we do have-"

"How about Smash Mouth?"

"No."

"Tell me you've at least got the iconic prog rock band Ayreon?"

"I've... never even heard of them actually."

Pinkie tossed the crystal back, making the stallion scramble over himself to catch it. "Eh, not a very good playlist then is it?"

"That sounds right on-brand for the Red Fist," Derpy commented as she held her scroll open as Rarity perused it, "You got the classics but forgot the hits. I bet you don't even have ABBA."

"We do, actually. And you can thank Sapphire Shores for that. She's one of ours."

"Oh yeah? Well we have Photo Finish."

"Just how many members are in your societies?" Celestia asked, hoping to derive some new nugget of actual information form their relentless bickering and constant one-up-manship.

"Across all our branches, maybe... a few hundred?"

Derpy scoffed. "Wow you guys have gotten small. We're closer to a few thousand."

Both Celestia's and Twilight eyes widened in disbelief. All of Ponyville was one thing, but thousands more across the nation? How had no one figured it out before? Then again, apparently some ponies did realize it, and had subsequently formed secret societies to make sure no one else did.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Twilight asked as she physically placed herself between the two quarreling ponies, “How did you each end up in Equestria? We were talking about it earlier and we all seemed to have arrived via different methods.” On one part, she was genuinely curious, though she was also keen to take advantage of the question to break their stalemate of an argument. It wasn’t the cleanest segue, but it did the job.

"It's fine," Derpy replied, "It happened a while ago so I've made my peace with it. My family and I made the mistake of going to sleep in a haunted house. We woke up in the Castle of the Two Sisters as a trio of ponies, though, thankfully, we maintained our correct ages and parent-child relationships."

Derpy's story done, they turned their gaze to Braeburn, whose expression had tightened significantly. "Youtube stunt gone wrong," he stated bluntly, "I'd rather not talk about it."

The room was silent for a moment before they noticed someone muttering under their breath. "Oh geez, oh geez, oh holy-"

"What's wrong, Spike?"

"Checking in on Tirek," he replied as he winced, "Not a human, but he's definitely heard of us and he's not a fan. He's have a bit of a Gamer Moment right now." He winced at something only he could hear. "I've got a dozen identities as sailors and he's putting the saltiest of their crew to shame. I need— Is there something stronger than mind bleach? Can you invent that with magic? Cause that's the level of mind-wipe I need right now."

"It can't be that bad."

"If he'd done this onscreen, not even Adult Swim would have aired it."

With that awkward sour note lingering in the air, Celestia took the opportunity to re-seize control of the conversation.

“Derpy, Braeburn, how quickly can you mobilize your organizations?”

“Pretty fast,” Derpy replied proudly, “We staff most of the postal system. It’s a good job for ponies with no documentation who’ve appeared out of thin air.”

“Er, us also rather quickly.” Braeburn was not to be outdone. “We have a very efficient private communication system.”

“Good. Spike, if you’ll help as well?”

He shook himself out of his funk and nodded. “Sure thing P-Cel, whatever you need.”

“Ooh, catchy. I like it. I’m glad you’re all onboard, because I think it’s high time we figured out just how deep this vein runs.”

It had been three days since Ponyville had had its ‘Moment of Revelation’, as some had taken to calling it, and already things had begun to change.

With the help of the Red Fist, the Illumi-not-a-pony, and Spike (all several thousand of him), Celestia initiated an impromptu census of the Equestrian citizenry. Standard questions for the most part, followed by a few rather poignant ones asked during private interviews. Luckily, the Red Fist already had a multitude of questions and methods derived to help coax out a former human, so all Celestia had to do was implement the questioning on a larger scale. She was sitting in her office, fiddling with something when the first results of her questioning began to bear fruit.

A light rapping at the door was quickly followed by the entrance of Raven Inkwell, a sheaf of papers clutched under her foreleg. “Princess? Is now a good time to deliver a report?”

“Ah Raven, perfect, come here.” The princess beckoned and Raven complied, stopping just before the ancient mahogany desk. Celestia held up a crystal so they both could see it. “I just received this from Dennis in the Technology and Engineering department.”

It was a quartz, or something in family, about the size of a domino. As the light caught it, Raven almost thought she could make out hair-like strands of something silver crisscrossing deep within it, like a spiderweb frozen in milky-white amber.

“It’s beautiful,” she acknowledged, “But what is it?”

“Watch.” Celestia set the crystal down and loosed a small pulse of golden magic from her horn. The crystal glowed for a second before, with a magical sparkle and soft chime, a rectangular plane of magic the size of a sheet of paper appeared in the air above it. On the hologram-like projection were three shapes: two long thin rectangles and one much smaller square. With another minute flash of magic from Celestia, the smallest of the shapes began to move.

“It’s… It’s…” Raven fumbled for words.

It’s Pong!” The princess cried, nearly squee-ing herself, “They invented Pong in less than a week!”

“Astounding…” Raven reached up to touch the display and saw the paddle on the left move in vertical sync with her hoof. “Motion controls as well?”

“They had to work around not having hands.” Celestia clarified, “But can you imagine? At this rate we’ll claw our way back to and even surpass modern games in only a few years!

Celestia’s secretary shook her head in astonishment. She was not as much as a gamer as some others, but even still she could see an obvious truth in front of her. “How is this possible? They only just started.”

"I'm no expert, but this is how Dennis explained it to me." Celestia turned off the device and adopted a posture better suited to lecturing. “Unfortunately, we are a long ways away from the infrastructure needed to build even the simplest of circuit boards. However, the digital logic that circuits use to compute and operate is outstandingly compatible with magic. Magic is more or less a coding language with its own syntax. If-then statements, while loops, reference this, transform that; it’s all there, though most ‘spells’ as we learned them are wildly inefficient from a programming perspective. In addition to that, the repeating patterns within gemstones make them just as excellent at storing this kind of logic as they are at storing traditional spells." She grinned. "Basically, we never knew it but the whole school of Enchanting was effectively a primitive school of computer science.”

She deactivated the gem and slipped it into a drawer. "But enough of that for now. You said you had a report?"

“Yes.” Raven adjusted her glasses and resumed her professional demeanor. She sifted through a few pages before she found the one she was looking for. “Thanks to the additional manpower provided by the secret organizations, census data is being accumulated much faster than anticipated. Most of the major cities have between seventy and eighty percent reporting in, with varying amount from the smaller cities and frontier towns. Though the statisticians are still analyzing the bulk of the data, I have the preliminary reports here. It-“

“Raven. Drop the formalities and just give it to me straight. What are we looking at here? What’s our human to pony ratio?“

Even though Raven knew now that the Princess had once been a normal human (just as she had), it was still hard to forget twenty years of formalities and protocol. With some effort, she let her stiff posture loosen into something more conversational. “Out of every pony that’s been interviewed, so far every single one has been a human. The ratio, such as it were, is one to nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a one.”

“But that’s impossible!” Celestia exclaimed, all pretenses abandoned, “They can’t all be human! Could they be lying? Just trying to fit in with the growing majority?”

Raven shook her head. “Unlikely. Following Princess Twilight’s recommendations, each questionnaire was administrated on a one-by-one basis with either a changeling or verified-human member of one of the secret societies. After convincing them to identify themselves, each pony was asked to provide a piece of human specific knowledge or answer a series of culture-based questions taken from the Red Fist’s handbook and derived from their provided age and country. According to the data, no one has yet to answer ‘no’ to being a human.”

Raven flipped to another sheet. “We collected other information about their former selves as well once their humanity was confirmed. Name, gender, age at time of egress, nationality, and a few others of note.”

“And?” Celestia asked expectantly, knowing that she wouldn’t have brought it up if there wasn’t something particularly important about the information.

“Again, the data set is incomplete, but according to the current data, approximately seventy-some percent of all Equestrian ponies used to be a male in their late teens to mid-twenties. In addition, over eighty percent of ponies were aware of the My Little Pony television show and professed to be a fan of some degree.” She shifted to another page in her portfolio. “The most common former career is ‘student’ followed by jobs related to computers and then artistic careers.”

She shuffled away her pages into the correct order and straightened up. “Of course, these are just statistical averages. The interviewers have encountered humans from all walks of life and nearly every age and profession. ”

Celestia did not respond. Raven looked up and saw her sovereign's eyes had gone wide and her motions had stilled. "Is something the matter?"

"Raven… dear, friend Raven. Do you have any idea what this means?"

She racked her brain for a moment, mentally shuffling through her portfolio for anything so noteworthy as to cause such a reaction. “There are many implications, though I’m at a loss as to which you are referring.”

"We have a citizenry of magic-wielding computer programmers and one of our most abundant natural resources is crystallized programmable logic boards."

Raven’s eyes widened as the dots connected. “Oh.”

“’Oh’ indeed.” Celestia steepled her hooves together, deep in thought. Though she may have been a normal girl at one point, several hundred years at playing princess had been ample time to become genuinely skilled in the art of statecraft and nation management. This was going to take a careful hand, and possibly a little deception, but in the end it would be up to her to do what needed to be done.

"Get me one of the changelings," she ordered, “I think it’s time I brought everyone else up to speed.”

“Everyone else? Who do you mean?”

“Did I stutter? I said everyone.”

Across the nation of Equestria, in small towns and big cities alike, ponies began to gather. Groups of three to four came together in town squares and city parks. At a glance, there was little that seemed to connect them. Politicians and gardeners, homemakers and soldiers, and yet they gathered. Some were earth ponies or pegasi as they approached, but by the time they met they were all unicorns. If any passerby had noticed the small wisps of green flame, they merely shrugged it off as a strange trick of the light.

When all were gathered in their respective cities, as if by some unseen signal, every one of them across Equestria lit their horns and shot a stream of magic into the sky.

Now ponies took notice. Ponies stopped whatever they were doing to witness the strange light show as each set of beams of light merged, widened, and flattened into an enormous rectangle of light in the sky. The screen soon filled with a black and white mess like a sandstorm of salt and pepper, instantly recognizable to those among them who remembered when TVs had rabbit ears. After a moment, it cleared to reveal the visage of Princess Celestia, their beloved monarch.

"Greetings, my little ponies," she smiled down towards the nation, her voice booming across the countryside, "Please, gather around your nearest broadcast, for I have an important announcement which will impact all of you."

Even if they hadn't been asked, ponies were more than willing to stop and pay attention to such a strange new event. Taxi carriages in Manehattan stopped where they stood in the street and even the trains abandoned their schedules to stop and wait for the message. After allowing a few minutes for ponies to gather properly, Celestia continued.

"First of all, let me welcome you to the inaugural airing of the Equestrian Emergency Broadcast System, brought to you by the Changeling National Network."

She cleared her throat. "To clarify that, and bring up the first announcement, an official peace has been struck with the Changeling Empire and all members have sworn fealty to Equestria."

The eyes of the populace dropped as one to the few handfuls of ponies powering the providing the images. They smiled back, if a little uneasily, and made their eyes flash green for effect.

"Before anyone panics, although you may recognize some members of your local communities aiding this broadcast, please be aware that your loved ones have not been replaced. The changelings have proven to my satisfaction that all ponies they are currently posing as are original characters and that no currently missing ponies are as such due to their actions. In short, if a changeling is someone you know, then you've never known them when they were not a changeling."

To the changelings operating the broadcast (as well as those still disguised in the crowds), they felt as though they were in a stormy sea. Waves of tension, fear, and curiosity rose and fell throughout the message, some practically strong enough to physically push them back. Some ponies seemed happy at the news, other felt more distrustful than ever. But all those emotions were blown out of the water by the Princess's next statement.

"Also, all of the changelings are humans. In fact," she paused to don a pair of glasses with lenses nearly an inch thick, "Good news everyone! Everyone is a human!"

"What!?" someone yelled from off-screen, making the nation cover its collective ears, "Stop! Stop, stop, stop the broadcast. Spike go to commercial or something!"

"Uh, Princess, I can't-"

The 'camera' shook as though someone were trying to shake their head 'no', but it was ignored and the broadcast continued as an irate Princess Luna walked into the world's view.

"What do you think you're doing?!" She yelled at her co-princess, spittle flying in high definition. "You can't just drop it on them like that!"

"Why not?" Celestia replied with a mischievous grin. "It was fun." She toggled the back of her glasses with her magic, making the lenses bob up and down on her face before Luna snatched them off. "Besides, it's the truth of the matter."

"Truth of-! Well you could still give it some build up! Talk about how there's a creature called humans, then lead into how sometimes humans stumble from their world into this one, maybe tease it a little about how some ponies may already be aware of this, and then-"

"Luna," Celestia interrupted, "What's the point in beating around the bush? We finished the census. With 99% reporting in, we can safely say that there's not a single pony in Equestria who doesn't know what a human is because every last one of them used to be one."

"Still!" she insisted, "Have some tact when you drop something like that!"

All of Equestria watched, mouths agape, as the two royal and dignified princesses, icons of poise and civility, bickered like a pair of teenagers who couldn't agree on who owned a particular dress.

Eventually, the argument ended with Luna giving up, sighing in exasperation as she rolled her eyes. "Well it's too late now anyway. Any other bombshells you plan to drop on the populace when we restart the broadcast that I should know about? Going to tell them how statistically a majority of them were fans of the tv show this world is based on? Or the fact that I don't know how to dreamwalk?"

"Actually I'd been planning on letting them figure out the first for themselves, and keep the other one a national secret."

Luna paused at that. "Oh. Well. I guess you are thinking these through after all. Now that we've cleared that up, I suppose we've left the nation in the lurch long enough." The lunar princess turned to face the 'camera'. "Spike, let me get out of the shot then you can start rebroadcasting again."

"Yeah... About that..." The camera listed slightly. "We've actually been live this whole time."

In a heartbeat, one mare went pink, one went purple. In the following hours, many arguments would be had regarding which was more adorable.

"We what?"

"If I turned it off, it'd take nearly an hour to build up enough magic to start it again."

With a high-pitched cry of alarm, Luna threw herself bodily out of the frame of view. The sound of something crashing came from offscreen followed by a shaky 'I'm alright!'.

Celestia shook out her surprise, swallowed her nerves, and re-adopted the motherly smile she'd spent decades perfecting in the mirror. "Unplanned though that was, I suppose it saves me a lot of trouble. But just to clarify: Yes, every single pony in Equestria was once a human. Yes, many of you are fans of the My Little Pony show. And yes, your pony waifu is also a human and the odds are not in your favor of her being mentally female."

It was then that three noises swept across Equestria like a tidal wave. The first was a sigh of relief as ponies realized they didn't have to hide or pretend anymore. The second was a gasp in surprise as some realized the implications of this revelation. And finally, an 'awww' of disappointment as countless superfans realized that it was pointless to go and meet their favorite characters, when said characters were effectively just another fan in perfect cosplay rather than the real deal.

Celestia continued to speak after allowing a moment for everyone to react. She was well aware that she had precious seconds to speak before every city and congregation of viewers fell into a raucous discussion and cultural celebration, much as Ponyville had when they found out. Though it didn't matter terribly if they listened or not from this point on as it would all be repeated in tomorrow's papers anyway.

"That being said, any ponies- no, any people who have been living until now under the impression that they were trapped inside a book, film, video game, television show, holonovel, or dream, please do not use this as an excuse to descend into hedonism. For all intents and purposes, this is reality now and letting society collapse into wanton debauchery isn't going to do anyone any good."

One of the changelings in Fillydelphia sent a signal and Spike relayed it via a hand gesture. They'd lost the city to excited chaos already. Celestia nodded and picked up the pace.

"If you are discontent with your current name or assigned pony identity, please ask for form 'Identity-2000' at your local government office to apply for an official legal change of name. It is our hope that this will help ease the transition from a strictly pony society to one that recognizes and embraces our shared human history."

Spike sent another gesture, followed quickly by two more. They'd lost Whinnyapolis as well as Sire's Hollow and Rainbow Falls.

"In addition-" Celestia's next point was cut off by a piece of paper suddenly shoved in her face by a blue foreleg. She took it with only a flicker of a frown and read it aloud. "Any ponies who have been 'isekai-ed' and would like to put their talents to better use are invited to visit the recently established 'Luna's Academy for OP Ponies with unusual powers, Quirks, or abilities', rename pending. If you don't know what those terms means, then it probably doesn't apply to you."

Spike sent a flurry of gestures, so quick that the princess could no longer distinguish them. Viewership was falling like fruit flies in a cold snap as city after city stopped listening in favor of joyously confirming the humanity of their friends and neighbors. Time to wrap it up.

"Seeing as how only a fraction of you are still listening, I will end this broadcast with two final messages. One: As Royal Princess of Equestria, and with the support of my fellow princesses, I hereby declare us all to be post-canon. No longer should anyone feel bound to perform certain acts in order to preserve a timeline or follow a script. The future is ours now, and we will do with it whatever we want! Secondly, I declare the next week a public holiday to let everyone adjust to this revelation, and for today in particular to be made an official annual holiday to celebrate the end of our hiding and secrecy."

Princess Celestia stepped back and spread her wings to their fullest extent as across the nation, hundred-foot tall magical replicas mimicked her actions. "I welcome you, every human, one and all, to the dawn of the Humanity in Equestria!"

Author's Note

This chapter marks the official end of the story, from the premise of the original oneshot.

It will continue, though chapters after this point should be considered apocrypha, side stories, "where are they now's", expanded universe, and future speculations as things get slightly less comedic and I dive into slightly more serious worldbuilding on the social, technological, cultural, and political ramifications of such a world.

The portion of the Author's Note following this is left as legacy from the original chapter's posting, before the chapters after this were fully planned out.

At this point, I am very open to ideas as to where to go from here. I have some plans, but I need more flesh on these bones. So feel free to suggest things in the comments be it anything from magic technology to how certain people/ponies react to the news and how they arrived. I will do my best to give credit to suggestions that are implemented.

No Ponies Acting and Reacting

Ponyville
Approximately 30 minutes post-Rhapsody

Three ponies sat quietly in a cozy, private booth in the otherwise loud and raucous Sugar Cube Corner. All around them ponies danced, drank, and partied as their true selves, but this little corner was quiet.

“So.” One of them eventually ventured.

“So…” Replied the second, just as enthusiastically.

“Okay, you know what? какого черта.” The third member of the group stood up on her chair. “We’re all thinking it and one of us is going to have to say it so it might as well be me.” She raised a hoof with all the portent of an executioner's sword and pointed it at the first speaker. “Human?”

The accused hesitated a moment, but quickly sighed, shrugged, and relented. “Human,” Applebloom acknowledged.

The hoof moved to the next in line. “Human?”

There was even less hesitation. “Yeah, human,” Scootaloo confirmed.

Finally, the hoof rounded on its owner. “And me makes three,” said Sweetie Belle as she sat back down.

"And just to be clear," Apple Bloom continued, "We all knew about the show, and we all knew that all the crusades we did were going to fail?"

"Yeah, but I still wanted to do them." Thus far, Scootaloo had been taking the news the best of the group. "Far as I knew, I was getting to hang out with some of my favorite characters."

"That's... fair." The farmer relented.

"Still," Sweetie Belle chuckled, "This is a pretty crazy situation, amirite?"

The wall of tension that had been building finally broke down as the other two laughed as well. With a situation this absurd, what else could you do?

"Y'know, Ah don't know about you two," Applebloom said, "But Ah came to Equestria completely by accident."

"Really? Me too."

"Me three."

"Ooh, fun! Storytime!" Scootaloo cleared away some crumbs and propped her head up on the table in a more comfortable listening position. "Let's all say how we ended up here. Sweetie Belle, you go first."

"Oh, um, ok. It's a bit of a long story." The others gestured for her to continue anyway and she relented. "Alright then."

Sweetie Belle leaned back in her chair and took a sip from a glass she'd acquired from somewhere. She grimaced, as though displeased with the taste, but took another long draw anyway before starting. “I was part of a group of hobbyist roboticists who all happened to be pony fans. So, naturally, we tried to construct a functional pony-shaped robot. A Sweetie Belle shaped one. Things went well for a few years; we were making good progress in both design and functionality, and our patreon was doing better than ever. I remember there was a convention coming up, I forget which, and we wanted to load our little bot with some new walk cycles and gestures to show off the redesigned joint systems. But time was short, so we decided to take a few... shortcuts." She sighed and took another sip.

"We were... cocky. A we hadn't had a significant setback in months, and everything we tried seemed to just work. Then Dimitri found us this new, unlicensed motion capture software. Top of the line. Body sensors, EEG cap, the works. It'd shave weeks off our schedule. I volunteered to get into the rig. Everything was going well; the signals were clear and we were getting good data... and then some Сволочь tripped over a cable, caused a short or something, and next thing I know, I am Sweetie Belle."

She took another pull from her glass and noticed the other's expectant expressions. "That's it. That's my story."

"That's it?" Scootaloo questioned, "Just... pull out the wrong cable and poof! you're a pony?"

"Pretty much."

"That's... weirdly close to what happened to me," Applebloom mused, "Though Ah don't have the luxury of having someone else to blame."

"Oh?" Were you also making a robot?"

Apple Bloom shook her head. "No, Ah was programming an Applebloom AI."

“Ah used to work fer a company that made AIs, you know, fer video games and data analysis centers and interactive toys and stuff. Simple ones, no true AIs. Anyway, Ah had a side project that Ah tinkered with when my workload was light. Ah called it 'AI-pplebloom'."

“Seems there’s an awful lot of people trying to bring ponies to the human world, aren’t there?” Scootaloo commented.

Sweetie Belle nodded. "Though that is a terrible name."

That earned her a glare from the programmer turned farmer. "Let me hear you come up with a better one then." When her friend failed to respond, she continued, "Anyway, Ah’d made this training algorithm for it based on the Apple Bloom-centric episodes. The closer the AI behaved to how Apple Bloom acted in a canon episode, the higher score it got, and the more likely it survived to the next iteration.” She sighed, almost wistfully, “I was nearly a million generations deep before... before...”

“Let me guess:” Scootaloo interrupted, “Something went wrong?”

"No, something went right. Too right. The program did so well, grew so complex, it started taking up too much space on the company servers, more than it rightly should've been able to access. People were starting to notice the lack of resources as it siphoned off more and more processing power. Then the men in suits turned up. Turns out, we had a secret department making AIs for the military, and they thought there was something espionage-y going down. Ah tried to shut it down, tried to delete her... but Ah couldn't. When Ah tried to wipe the hard drive there was this rush of color and sound like a rainbow exploding in my face."

Her breaths came in short pants and gasps as the memory triggered buried anxieties. Almost instinctively, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle scooched closer and laid a comforting pair of hooves over their friend's withers. Actual pony or not, they were still her friends. She took a few deep breaths and regained control. "Thanks girls. It's not a pleasant memory."

"You don't have to continue if you don't want to," Scootaloo offered.

"да, we get the gist."

Apple Bloom shook her head. “No, Ah'm alright now. Ah need to talk about it. Anyhow, next thing Ah knew, Ah was on the Apple Ranch. And from that point right up to the song earlier, Ah always thought that Ah was trapped inside my own simulation. That if Ah didn’t act perfectly like Applebloom, exactly like her in every scene, then Ah’d fail the test and be deleted like the countless other AIs that hadn’t passed." She raised her head. Tears glimmering in the corners of her eyes, but her voice was strong. “You have no idea how happy Ah am, knowing that Ah’m not in the computer. That Ah can do anything Ah want now without risk of being deleted." She laid a hoof on both of her friends. "That you're both real, thinking, living, people."

She sniffed a little and tried to wipe away the budding tears. "Look at me, getting all sappy on you."

Sweetie Belle offered her some of her drink. "Hey, don't be like that. You've had it really hard but now the bad times are over."

Applebloom smiled and took a sip of the drink. Immediately she spit it back out all over the table, making the other two fillies rapidly throw themselves back to escape the splash zone.

"какого черта! What was that for?!"

"That was beer!" Applebloom shot back, "Ah thought you were giving me water. Who even gave you a beer, you're like ten!"

"It was a lager, and a good one too! And she did." Sweetie Belle pointed across the room where Berry Punch, who was now a unicorn apparently, was eagerly refilling any glass that was raised into the air with frothy liquid from one of a pyramid of six barrel she sat atop of. "And if you count human years then I'm at least twice old enough for a drink."

"Alright, just... Ah'm sorry." Applebloom apologized, "You were trying to help and you caught me off guard." Hoping to change the subject, she turned to their mutual pegasus friend. "Alright Scoots, you're next then."

Scootaloo tensed up. “Yeah…” she rubbed the back of her head, “I gotta say, after hearing you guys' experiences, my story’s a little less… I don't know..."

Applebloom looped a foreleg across her shoulders. "Hey, it's fine. None of us had any control over how we got here."

“Alright, well, you know the movie Weird Science?”

Applebloom scratched her head thoughtfully. “I think so. Is that the one where two guys get high and hook up a bunch of wires to a barbie doll and turn her into a living breathing woman?”

“That’s the one.” A slight blush grew on Scootaloo's cheeks as she continued. “I… had a bit too much to drink one night and tried to do that to a Scootaloo plush. Clearly, it did not work out.”

Wait,” Sweetie Belle interjected with a concerned expression, “In the movie, they brought the doll to life because they couldn’t get girlfriends. Are you saying you were attracted to—“

“No!” Scootaloo yelled, garnering the attention of a few ponies who just as quickly returned to their own things. “Holy—No! I was just depressed! And alone. And also really drunk cause I’d just flunked my midterms and probably ruined all my chances at graduating. And I thought, you know, having a cuddly pony companion might makes things a little better."

“But instead of getting a cuddly pony…"

Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I became one instead. Explain to me how that works out."

Sweetie Belle had another sip of her lager, which had been refilled during Scootaloo's story. "So we all ended up here from science mishaps. What are the chances of that?"

"Low, Ah'd bet." Applebloom agreed, "Then again, if you asked me yesterday about the chances of there being a second pony in Equestria...

"It’s almost funny," Scootaloo commented idly, "It’s too bad we never met each other back home. Between the three of us, we could probably actually succeed at making a pony."

The trio chuckled at that, but the laughter died away quickly as realization set in. Sure, they had not met back home, but they had met here and were together now. Not to mention they now had magic and an ample amount of free time.

“To the clubhouse!” They cried as one and scampered out of the eatery, eager to take another stab at their old passions.

Outside Ponyville
Several hours post-Rhapsody

"In the beautiful nation of Equestria, there was a town called Ponyville. A road led to this town that wandered and meandered through the countryside like a river flowing to parts unknown. Along that path there was a cart, a most magnificent cart, surely an expert piece of craftsponyship. Even the dust of the road built up on its sides could do little to mar its color and brilliance. And yet, even then, the cart found itself outshone by the pony pulling it. A most epic pony, whose power and might was matched only by her beauty and grace. With lithe muscles taut under an azure coat, she trotted as though the wagon weighed nothing at all. Her stellar mane, coiffed and without flaw, showed not a trace of the dusty roads it had seen, yet another testament to her awe-inspiring skills. She—"

"Trixie, what are you doing?"

"A pony leaned out the front window of the cart, her voice disturbing the peaceful tranquility of the countryside. Who could it be? A stowaway? A brigand? Nay! It was merely Starlight, loyal friend and assistant of the one who pulled the cart."

"Merely?"

"Normally, such a devoted friend would walk alongside her great and talented comrade, but today, she had decided to ride inside the wagon, not only leaving her most magical companion with nothing to do to pass the time other than narrate her life, but also increasing the heft of the wagon's weight by a noticeable margin."

Starlight raised an eyebrow. "A noticeable margin? I was making you a snack in here, but now I'm starting to reconsider that offer."

"Trixie is done with her narration now," Trixie said quickly and with only the smallest hint of embarrassed blush at how easily she'd caved. "Trixie would also like to thank her most fit and athletic assis— friend for taking the time to think of Trixie's hunger." She paused, then figured a little extra butter wouldn't go amiss. "And for coming along with Trixie on this long and arduous journey."

Starlight laughed lightly and hopped out of the door to walk alongside Trixie. "All is forgiven. Although, I wouldn't really call a four-day trip to some shantytown in the southern wastes to get a custom order of smoke bombs a 'long and arduous journey'."

"Well we had to fight that armored brute didn't we?"

"You mean that guard you tried to haggle the entry fee with at the front gates?" Starlight replied plainly, "And then immediately caved when the he called his buddies over?"

"Still!" Trixie raised her head proudly, "We emerged victorious!"

"If you call paying full price and an extra fee for the disturbance a victory," Starlight murmured under her breath before changing the subject. "Say, Trixie? How far out would you say we are from Ponyville?"

The showmare consulted the topography, the position of the sun, and her own memories of prior travel. "About an hour and change. Maybe closer to two. Why?"

She pointed ahead. "Because there's something strange headed our way."

As the mysterious figure grew closer to the pair of magic mares, it became that much clearer just what what stumbling back and forth across the road. Though it was clearer to Starlight, who had spent much more time living day-to-day in Ponyville and getting to know it's eccentric residents that Trixie had.

"Pokey Pierce?" she asked in surprise, "What's he doing way out here?"

The unicorn in question stumbled down the road with a giddy grin on his face as he belted out out the lyrics to some strange song. Even at a distance the pungence of alcohol saturating his body and breath alike made both mares gag.

"We shan't discriminate great from small. No we'll serve anyone, meaning anyone, and to anyone at aaaaaaaaaall!"

"Hey!" Trixie snapped when he was finally close enough to speak to, but still far enough away that they could breath. "What's your deal? What's with the singing?"

"And why are you so far from town?" Starlight added, hoping to cover for some of Trixie's abrasiveness. But if Pokey was offended, he didn't show it. He just grinned loopily at the pair.

"What am I singing? I'm singing anything I want! I've unlocked Equestria+! There's no restrictions now!" He stumbled towards them, blinking rapidly as if only just recognizing them.

"Well hellooooo there Comrade Glimmer." He slurred. The unicorn tried to strike a salute, missed, and whacked himself in the head. "Ow! How's— how's that manifesto coming along? Shall we be seizing the means of production today, or do we wait till next season finale? Whoops!" His hooves slid out from under him and he collapsed heavily into Starlight's side, much to her disgust and confusion. "You know, you were always my favorite. Much better than Chrysalis."

Starlight looked to Trixie, a silent cry for help screaming from her eyes. But Trixie barely registered it. There were far more important things that had just been said that needed further clarification. Now.

"What was that about a season finale?" she pressed as Starlight shoved the stallion back onto his own four hooves.

"You know," he said unhelpfully, not a trace of a thought behind his glazed eyes. "The My Little Pony show. 'S a good show wasn't it? Everybody's talking about it."

"Everybody?" Starlight pulled in close, his smell long forgotten. "What do you mean everybody?"

He squinted at her. "Where've you been? Haven't you heard? Ponyville's got more people in it than ponies. It's all anybody's talking abou— abou..." His sentence dissolved away from him into a noxious yawn. "Man I'm tired. Where's my bed? I should have reached it by now."

Starlight, too confused for complicated thought, answered him. "Pokey, you live on the West side of town. You've gone a couple miles south."

He yawned again. "So it didn't wander off then." His eyes began to droop even as he stood. "Ooh, I think I may have had a teensy bit too much to drink. Look, it's already getting dark."

"No! Pokey stay awake! I need answers!" Trixie grabbed him in her magic and shook the poor stallion like a ragdoll. But whatever he'd been drinking must have been top shelf stuff, as he did nothing but snore. With a frustrated grunt Trixie tossed him into a bush on the side of the road.

"Trixie!"

"He'll be fine, let him sleep it off!" the magician snapped before rounding on her friend, "More importantly, we need to get to Ponyville now. Can you teleport us both?"

"I—" Starlight's confused gaze wavered against Trixie's piercing determination. "I could. But just us. The cart is too big."

"Leave it then," she answered immediately.

Starlight gasped. "But... it's your precious—"

"There's no time!" Though Trixie's voice was angry, there was an almost pleading look to her eyes. Starlight hesitated a moment and then gave a grim nod.

"Alright. I don't understand what's going on, but if it's that important—" She lit her horn and bathed the area in azure light. "—then there's no time to waste."

And in a flash of magic they were gone.

They reappeared in the middle of a state of chaos. This was not unusual for Ponyville, but somehow this chaos was distinctly different. It had all the flavor of a Ponyville party, but with a lot of elements Starlight didn't recognize. The platters of food and tables of drinks were par for the course, but there were many she didn't recognize. For once the culinary theme of the buffet seemed to be savory rather than sweet, with pastries being in surprisingly short supply.

But it was not just the food, the ponies themselves were acting odd. In the far side of the town plaza, two teams of ponies were repeated tackling one another. It looked violent, yet no one seemed to be getting particularly injured. Every few moments the broke apart, stepped back into a formation, then tackled again. Zecora stood nearby and occasionally called out odd phrases like 'That's a first down for Team Woona' and 'Foul on Team Molestia'.

In another corner, a group of ponies, some of them foals, crashed foaming mugs together and sang an upbeat tune that seemed to describe in details the ways all their family members had died. Elsewhere she overheard a couple arguing over whether Tirek or Grogar would be the queen bee if they were highschool mares and which they'd rather see in a swimsuit of all things. Strange statues of odd bipedal creatures dotted the pavilion as earth ponies carted in fresh blocks of stone or wood to ponies apparently gripped by mad artistic fervor.

And all around her, on every side and from every angle, ponies spoke gibberish. Strange haikus of short phrases and nonsense context-less dialogue that somehow everyone else seemed to not only understand, but find great joy in.

All of this Starlight took in within the first few seconds post-teleport. It usually paid to have stellar observation skills, but now it left her more confused than ever. It was a sensory overload of the worst kind; the kind where no matter how hard she tried, she could not decipher a structure or meaning.

Meanwhile, Trixie had also regained her bearings. And in response to all the chaos around her, the first thing she said was:

"Why is there a statue of Rick Astley in Ponyville?"

“Practice.” A stallion covered in flakes of chipped stone and dust said as he came up from behind her. “A couple of the guys from the construction team wanted to show off what they could do. Someone just ran off to the library to look for any spells about golems so we can make it sing. I hear they’re going to try and make a Gundam later.”

Trixie nodded slowly, caution apparent in her every motion. “And we suddenly know about all these things because…”

He gave her a skeptic look before his eyebrows raised in realization. “Oh! You weren’t here earlier were you? That explains it. Yeah, the Princesses did an announcement. Turns out basically everyone in Ponyville used to be a human.”

“They what?”

"Oh yeah. We sang some Queen, it was real nice. You should’ve been there.” He offered a friendly hoof. “I’m Roger, by the way. Nice to finally meet you honestly.”

“Everyone is a human?” Trixie repeated, still stunned.

“That’s right,” Roger confirmed, lowering his hoof since it was obvious she wasn’t going to take it. “One way or another, somehow we all ended up here.”

Trixie practically flipped around as a wide grin split her face. “Starlight ! Isn’t this great!”

The mare in question gave an awkward chuckle. "Yeah... I guess? I mean, I really don't understand, but you seem to be happy about... whatever this is."

Trixie cocked her head. There was something off about Starlight. For some reason she didn't seem nearly as over-joyed at the prospect of more humans as Trixie felt. "What do you mean? Everyone is a human, just like us. What's not to be excited about?"

"Trixie…" Starlight hesitated for a moment before finally letting the bomb drop, "What in the wide world is Equestria is a human?"

The showmare's ears drooped as some of the sparkle left her eyes. “Wait... you aren’t one? But… but you got all my references! You laughed alongside me."

"Trixie, I laugh at all your jokes cause I know how it makes you happy. Even the ones I don’t get, which was, admittedly, a lot of them."

“…No. No! You have to understand!” Trixie gripped Starlight by her shoulders, forcing the mare to meet her desperate gaze. “I wasn’t always Trixie! I didn’t even used to be a pony! I was someone else, something else; a human called Miami Sodelle! You can’t— please don’t stand there and tell me… that when suddenly every pony is a human, my one friend, my truest most deepest friend, is the only pony who isn’t?!”

"No!" Starlight exclaimed fearfully, "I— I don't— I'm not— I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"You can drop the act Glimglam." Starlight turned to find herself face to face with a filly from the Friendship School. A sweet little pegasus who had never once referred to her as anything less respectful than 'Miss Guidance Councilor Ma'am'. "It's all out now. Everyone's a human. Everyone's from Earth. Here, have a beer."

Starlight looked at the offered drink in horror before instinctively knocking both mugs to the floor.

"Hey!" The sweet little filly scowled. "Well screw you too!" She buzzed off in an angry huff.

Starlight's mind reeled. What new madness was this? Trixie suddenly claiming she was somepony else? Sweet fillies suddenly turned foul-mouthed drinkers? Ponies speaking in tongues and behaving erratically? Day-drinking?! It was nearly too much to bear.

No, she resolved herself. She couldn't falter here. Somepony had to save the town from... whatever this was, and it might as well start with her! She'd held her own on several adventures; she could handle some Ponyville chaos. Right?

Shifting mental gears, Starlight looked again at the chaos before her with a new analytical lens. Yes, chaos. That was a word for it. Yet it lacked Discord's distinctive touch. Behavior aside, nothing had been transformed. No crazy colors, no inversion of physics, no Discord himself present to watch his work unfold. He always liked to watch. That ruled him out. But what else could make this many ponies behave so oddly? A revival of evil changelings? Magical illness? A cursed artifact? She quickly realized that, a few successful adventures aside, she might be out of her depth.

"Hello? Earth to Starlight? You in there Glimmy Glamorama?"

She blinked. At some point Trixie had apparently moved in front of her, her face creased in worry. "Are you okay? I was starting to get concerned. You completely zoned out there."

That did it. Finally, it clicked into place what had unsettled her so much about Trixie's earlier speech, and at once Starlight knew she was completely out of her depth. Anything that could cure Trixie of her illeisms was way above the pay grade of a part-time hero, part-time counselor. Time to bring out the big spells.

She laid a hoof on her friend's shoulder and spoke softly. "Don't worry Trixie. I'm going to fix this."

Trixie blinked and cocked her head. "Fix what? I—"

"Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh." Starlight smothered her words. "It's okay. I'm going to go get Twilight and she's going to fix this. Then you, and everypony else will be back to your old selves in no time."

"Starlight, I am—"

"No words." Starlight removed her hoof and gave her friend one last lingering look, laden with worry yet tinged with hopefulness, before she turned tail and took off in a full gallop towards the Castle of Friendship.

Gotta hurry, a voice in her head urged her, Gotta find Twilight. She has to be able to fix all this. She has to!

Canterlot
Three days post-Nationwide-Revelation

It was just after lunch on the third day after the announcement that Celestia met with her small council. Though she had given most of Equestria a vacation, unfortunately, the government still needed to run. A sentiment that was thankfully shared the ponies in her government.

Well, most of them. The important ones.

Unlike the rest of the city, and the palace specifically, this meeting room was small and practical. A week ago, a passing observer might have said it reminded them of a Manehattan office. Now, they would say it reminded them of Earth; an almost stock-photo-ready meeting room from its long angular table to its wall of plate-glass windows. Of course, there were some differences: the leather stools and chairs were artificial, and the windows were one-way enchanted brickwork, but the feeling it gave off would be eerily familiar to any white collar worker.

With her everyone having made themselves comfortable and the complementary waters and teas distributed, Celestia brought their meeting to order.

"First off," she began, "I'm letting you know now that you can drop most of the royal formalities of you want. This is a clean slate and you shouldn't feel you have to continue to treat me special just because of a quirk of luck."

The gathered ponies shared uncomfortable glances at that, each daring another to go first. "If you don't mind my saying so Princess," the Minister of Agriculture said, "In these turbulent times, I for one would appreciate some element of stability, even if it is just an obviated title or two." A few others nodded in agreement. "Regardless of who you were before, you're Princess Celestia now. And that title carries weight."

The princess nodded, mentally postponing her plans to establish some less formal relationships. She'd figured the odds were a toss-up at best anyway. "As you wish. Let's begin this properly then, shall we?" she segued with her usual skill. She turned first to the pony on her left." Minister Holiday, were you able to look into those things I asked you about?"

Minister Holiday, a middle-aged pegasus mare with a bob cut mane, rose to reply. "Indeed I have. As you predicted, we've seen a skyrocket in orders for both mane and fur dyeing tonics as well as gender-swapping potions. Thanks to your forewarning, the Guild of Alchemists and Potion Makers was able to stockpile the necessary ingredients before the buying surge hit." She coughed. "And, since demand for these particular products was rather low to begin with, no one seems to have noticed the sudden hike in their price. However, given the surge in demand, I'd recommend tasking some researchers to create a brew that doesn't wear off in a few days."

Celestia nodded in thanks as the mare sat back down. "A valuable foresight. I'll set some to it immediately." That was excellent news. With all the changes that would doubtless be coming soon, they would do well to have a larger-than-usual surplus in the discretionary budget. There were new industries to subsidize, infrastructure to bring up to modern standards, countless hundreds of man-hours of overtime to process the inevitable storm of upcoming paperwork that loomed at the edge of the future like some bureaucratic behemoth. Just thinking about it gave her a headache, one which the money did at least a little to alleviate.

She addressed another pony, a well-groomed noble from a prestigious bloodline whom she was certain had no quarrel with the lot he'd been cast in Equestria. "Doctor Syringe? How goes your project?"

The green stallion sighed. "It's been... slow, your highness. I've put together a committee to try and establush a method to determine which medical professionals actually earned their degrees and which merely 'inherited' them, as we've been calling it, but it has proven more difficult than expected. Most of the frauds who managed to stay in the profession have passed thus far because they're good at bluffing. We've had greater success in small town hospitals where smaller staffs meant less ponies to push their work onto, but the larger hospitals are still giving us trouble; Manehattan and Canterlot General most of all. Especially since so many people are still out celebrating."

"On a related note," the Minister of Agriculture who had broken the ice earlier spoke up, drawing the group's attention. "As you've probably noticed, my sibling, Minister Flask, is absent from our meeting. However, they asked me to pass along a message that they have their people taking similar steps within the scientific community."

"Oh dear," the Minister of the Treasury murmured, "It's not like her to miss a meeting. Is she alright?"

"He, is doing fine. Just dealing with the after effects of unwisely combining a gender potion with a few more... recreational concoctions," the Minister replied with a small smirk.

Celestia smiled on the outside but mentally cursed. She owed Luna twenty bits now. And she'd been so sure that out of the twin ministers Cornmeal was going to be the one to make the change. Apparently five hundred years of learning to read ponies still wasn't enough when it came to human-ponies. "Make sure to send him my best wishes for a speedy recovery."

She turned to the Minister of the Interior. "I've been keeping an eye out but you're closer to the common pony than I am. How is the general population taking the news?"

"Wheeeee!"

The council looked up at the sudden interruption. Outside their window, a blue unicorn was flying. That is to say, he was clutching a broomstick for dear life as it bobbed and dipped erratically. Despite this, he seemed to be having a splendid time.

"Whoo!" he yelled, darting around violently as he made overcompensating adjustments to his anti-gravity spell. "Watch out! I'm Harry Potter, ya'll!"

And once more he zipped out of their field of view.

"Overall..." the Minister of the Interior replied with an amused smile. "They seem to be taking it well."

After the discussion of a few more minor topics, future planning mostly and a bit of old business, the meeting broke up. As soon as the ministers filed out, Luna entered in from the other side of the room. "Oh no," she said in mock anguish, "Did I miss the meeting? How unfortunate."

Celestia rolled her eyes. "You know you weren't required to come. You have your own duties and you'd get a copy of the minutes either way." The taller mare flopped down onto her extra-large half-couch half-chair without a trace of poise or grace. "Speaking of which, how's that going? Pick up anything useful from the dream realm?"

Luna shook her head as she took an adjacent seat. "No dice, it's as much of a mess as ever. I'd hoped people might drop their guard if I "leaked" that my dreamwalking ability was fake, but as far as I can tell it's had no effect. I can still visit and influence just fine, but the dreams themselves are still random nonsense. Not to mention how hard it is to track down a specific person without a dream beacon."

"A pity, that," Celestia commented as she poured them both a fresh cup of tea. "We'll have to stick with more traditional informant networks then."

Luna nodded in agreement and transmuted her tea into coffee. She took a sip and grimaced. "Remind me to invent an espresso machine at some point. I'd kill for a good latte."

The offhand comment reminded Celestia of another of her sister's recent ventures, one which had caught her completely by surprise and which she'd been meaning to ask her about. "How's that new school of yours coming along, by the way?"

"Quite well, actually," Luna grinned, happy for the change in topic, "We've had a few early applicants who've shown some promise. Ones with unique magic or abilities. Not to mention a rare handful who seem to have to become ponified versions of characters from other franchises, complete with watered-down versions of their abilities." Her expression tightened. "Nothing game-breaking yet. Whoever or whatever brought them all here did a remarkable job power-balancing their abilities."

Celestia's hooves crossed and began to tap in frustration. "Which is another point towards it being some kind of intelligence rather than a cosmic coincidence." She shook her head in an effort to shake out the worrying thought and get the conversation back on a more pleasant path. "Are you having much trouble finding a campus? I know space is tight in Canterlot."

"Actually, no. It's been super easy, barely an inconvenience," she replied easily, the smallest hint of a grin tugging at her features. "I was planning on opening a school of my own anyway once we outlived the canon, so most of the groundwork was already in place. I have a lovely spot picked around the back of the mountain."

"Hm. Well that's certainly fortuitous." Celestia stroked her chin. "More interference from whatever force brought us here?"

Luna gave her sister a curious look for a moment, before she rolled her eyes and gave her a slight whap to the back of the head.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"Don't give me that. I saw that look in your eye. You were starting down another paranoid conspiracy spiral. Had to knock you out of it before you started trying to micromanage the entire nation. Again."

Celestia took a deep breath and let it out slowly, allowing the frizzling ends of her mane to settle back down. "Thanks. It's just... There's just so much that we still don't know about how or why we're here. Were we kidnapped or rescued? Banished or evacuated? Hand-picked or chosen at random? I can't help but worry."

A blue foreleg moved around her, and Celestia leaned into the embrace. The sound of Luna's heartbeat thumping through her leg eased her mind and helped her pace her thoughts. She soon felt a second hoof running across her mane soothingly.

"It's alright." Luna spoke, softly and tenderly, "We'll figure it out. And it's not just us now. We have a whole nation of people who want answers and will be willing to do whatever it takes to get them. The weight is not solely on our shoulders anymore."

The touching scene of tender sisterly bonding would have probably continued until both were satisfied if it weren't for a sudden and insistent knocking at the door. Work would never wait and, with a sigh, both alicorns sat back up and one opened the door with her magic.

A messenger pegasus dashed in, panting and out of breath. "Princesses!" he gasped, desperately sucking in lungfuls of air as fast as he could. "I'm so glad I... I found you!"

"What is it?" Celestia tried to remain calm despite the surge of fear and adrenaline that suddenly swamped her system. Was the unwritten Law of Equestria finally going to kick in? Just when things were looking too good, had something big and evil come in and spoil it?

"There's-" the stallion sucked in one final gasp of air as though he were trying to plunge the room into a vacuum, "There's guests in the castle. A diplomatic envoy. Nothing on the books, completely unexpected."

"Who is it?" Celestia pressed. Of all the possible times for someone to make a surprise visit, it had to be now. With the nation is chaos and half the staff taking their days off. Political damage could still be mitigated though, but how much would depend on just who had come knocking. "The Griffons? The Yaks? The Buffalo?"

The messenger shook his head. "None of those. It's the seaponies."

"You mean... the hippogriffs?" Luna asked hesitantly. "They have multiple forms, both-"

"No," he interrupted insistently, "Seaponies classic edition. Proper shoobedooers."

Luna's eyes lit up in glittering sparkles. Seaponies. Proper seaponies. At long last, and after so long.

For many years after their her and her sister's arrival (having little else to do while pretending to be on the moon) Luna had traveled the world and made it a point to meet as many species as possible. She'd studied with Zebra shamans and danced at a kirin bonfire ceremony. She'd flown with the wild dragons and fought in the gladiator ring of the Abyssinians. But in all her travels, despite decades spent chasing rumors and old fish tales she had never been able to track down a single member of the elusive and isolationist creatures known as the seaponies.

Until now.

"Where are they?" she demanded as she practically launched herself at the messenger. "I have to to be the one to meet them!"

"T-t-the majordomo moved them to the parlor in the east tower!" he stammered out. "Bbut there's something really strange about them—"

Alas, his warning went unheeded. Luna was already out the door and down the hall, her sister not far behind.

Author's Note

Yes, yes, I know. Trixie does speak in the first person every now and again. But, counterpoint: This isn't actually Trixie, it's someone who has been pretending to be her.

Also, not 100% edited. Wanted to push the chapter out before leaving for an hours long event.

No Ponies Slowly Adjusting

Smoky Quartz took the long route to the parlor. He didn't want to arrive too early, after all. All of his skill at planning had gone in to making sure this meeting went absolutely perfectly. A day with a light workload, few royal petitioners, no pestering nobles, and his announcement timed for the Princess's most peaceful part of the day; her mid-afternoon teatime. There was no need to hope for good luck; his sheer extend of planning made it unnecessary.

His crystal hooves tapped out a quiet staccato beat in the otherwise silent hallway. Long before he reached the door, however, he found his ears assaulted by the sound of raised voices.

"It's a good idea!"

"It's a bad idea, and possibly dangerous."

"It's good in theory, but we need to make some big changes for it to work."

He sighed and loosed a small grumble under his breath. Already things were not going to plan. This was supposed to be when their royal highnesses would be the most relaxed and in the best mood. This was supposed to be the optimal circumstances to reveal his secret.

And they were arguing.

Should he back off? Wait for a better time? No. With the massive human revelation only a day or two ago, there would be no better opportunity than this.

With that thought steeling his shaking confidence, he opened the door.

"And for another thing I- Oh, Smoky Quartz." Princess Cadence cut herself off mid-tirade to address her surprise guest. "I'm sorry, did we have something scheduled? I thought I'd given you and the other advisers the day off."

"You did," he replied with a nod, "But I came in anyway to tell you-"

"Actually, you know what?" the crystal princess interrupted, "This is perfect. You can help us settle a little... disagreement we've been having."

With an easy flick of her magic, Smoky Quartz found himself yanked forward into the center of the room, surrounded on two sides by royalty, on a third by their ranking court wizard, and on the last by a forgotten table of light snacks and tea. Particularly expensive tea that he'd acquired at great cost to ensure all ponies involved were calm and relaxed. He didn't even need to check the pot to tell it was still full.

Recovering quickly, he bowed and asked, "How may I be of service then, your majesty?"

"We're deciding what music to play at the concert."

Smoky Quartz blinked in surprise. A concert? There was nothing like that in the schedule. He would know, since he was in charge of drafting it. "We're having a concert?"

"No, we're not." Sunburst insisted, showing a surprising amount of backbone as he countered his sovereign. "I'm telling you, Princess, having a concert is a bad idea. It can only lead us to ruin."

"And who would play at such an event?" Smoky Quartz added, "I'm not sure I could book anyone on such short notice."

"Why, me of course." Cadence said with a grin that spoke of more confidence than Smoky felt was warranted, "With Shining on guitar and whoever else we can find to play bass and drums. I can pull double duty on lead vocals and keyboard if need be."

"You play?" he asked, dropping decorum in surprise. He'd heard her sing, lullabies and Heartsongs mostly, but the keyboard was a twist.

"Not since becoming a pony," she admitted, "But since Flurry Heart can basically take care of herself now I've been meaning to pick it back up."

"I still say this is a bad idea." Sunburst cut in grumpily, redirecting the conversation back where it was supposed to go.

Cadence shot him a glare. "Do you want me to explain it again?"

The wizard and the husband groaned. Clearly, this would not be her first repetition. But before anyone could dissuade her, her focus snapped back to Smoky Quartz. "Alright then. Smoky, where are we right now?"

"...the Crystal Empire?" he ventured, cautious of such a simple-seeming question.

Cadence nodded. "Right. Which is protected by...?"

"The Crystal Heart."

"And the Crystal Heart is powered by what?"

Now he understood. "The emotions of the citizens."

"Which, as of the recent revelation, is a bubbling hotpot of everything in the emotional spectrum." Cadence began to pace as she got into what was clearly the most impassioned part of her spiel. "True, there is positivity in abundance; joy, relief, and thankfulness are overflowing. But we can't risk ignoring all the negative emotions that are swirling about as well. There's a king's ransom in shock and confusion, not to mention all the fear for the future and existential dread. I've even sensed a bit of hate flaring up here and there as old divisions start to come to light."

She whipped around and preempted Sunburst's interruption with a pointed hoof. "And don't tell me I'm exaggerating the situation. I'm connected to the Crystal Heart. I can literally feel all this as it happens."

Smoky Quartz moved quickly between them, hoping to redirect a little of the princess's anger. "And I take it your plan was to use music to sway everyone's emotions into a more positive direction?"

"Exactly!" Cadence exclaimed. "See, now he gets it."

Smoky Quartz nodded. It was a reasonable idea. Music was often used to rally support or even just to raise morale. That is, so long as the correct music was selected. "What songs were you considering?"

She smiled, apparently assured that she had already won him over to her side of the argument. "I think some good, classic love songs will do the trick to raise everyone's spirits."

"And there it is." Shining Armor said with an exasperated sigh. "Honey, I love you, and I know you want to stay on-brand as the Princess of Love, but love songs just aren't going to cut it. All that those are going to do is remind everyone of the countless friends and family that they will never see again. Do that and we could lose the dome entirely."

Smoky Quartz turned to him. "And what would you suggest?"

Shining smiled, glad that someone had finally asked. "Old cartoon and TV themes. Ones that everybody knows. Get people talking, get them to share memories. We play our cards right and we can leverage the power of fandom in our favor. We'll hit 'em in the feels and make bank off the nostalgia."

"It doesn't matter what you sing!" Sunburst insisted with a stomp of his hoof. "Any song from back home is just going to heap on the nostalgia which, despite your claims to the contrary, is not a positive emotion. Nostalgia is a subspecies of homesickness which is itself a specific type of longing. And longing, as we all know, is a flavor of Loss. And no one wants to be reminded of loss at a time like this. If you want to raise morale, that's fine. Just no concert. Throw a Crystal Fair, like we always do."

"Sure, and that might work," Cadence shot back with a glare, "If anyone out there was actually a crystal pony!"

Without room for a saving interjection from the errant advisor, Smoky found the room thrown back into the midst of argument. Not one cohesive point could be heard due to the noise and the rapidly fraying tempers.

Smoky Quartz's eyebrow twitched in concealed irritation, but he held it in. After nearly a full minute of bickering with no sign of slowing down, he broke.

"You're making too much noise!" he declared with a sweep of his hoof. "Quiet down!"

Stunned, they all actually obeyed. Smoky Quartz gave them all the evil eye in turn, each wincing under his gaze like a naughty student caught by a teacher. "What are you, children? Can you not hold a discussion civilly?" He shifted and gave Cadence his full attention.

"Princess, while your idea holds merit, I agree with Prince Shining that traditional love songs may not be appropriate. His reasoning on that is sound. However," he turned to Shining, "neither are old cartoon songs the answer. Even pony ones. I've been keeping my ear to the ground. There's a not insignificant portion of our populace who weren't even aware that this is the world of a show. With your plan, if we choose the wrong fandom to support, we risk alienating some of them even further. They could become desperate. And while a desperate pony is at most an inconvenience, a desperate human is another thing entirely."

He turned slowly on his heel, not breaking eye contact until he could immediately entrap someone else in his gaze. "Sunburst, I feel you may be underestimating our citizens. Remember, these are not scared and weak ponies; eager to run from their own shadows. These are people. Humans who've lived through trials and struggles and overcome them. I think, if you give them a chance, they will surprise you. So long as we do not divide them further. Now, can we all calm down and hammer out a plan peacefully like sensible adults?"

As the fires fueling Cadence's anger waned, she exchanged her glare for a self-deprecating smile. "Thank you Smoky Quartz. As always, you prove yourself one of my most helpful and straightforward advisers. And often the only one willing to speak frankly." She sank down into a chair, the tension gone from her body, and tittered slightly. "You're almost too perfect sometimes. I don't suppose you also happen to play bass guitar do you?"

They all broke into chuckles at that. So much so that they almost missed his response.

"Actually, I can."

Cadence's eyes went wide in surprise. Her horn immediately flared to life and fabricated a pink guitar out of raw magic, modified for hoofplay. "Show me."

The stallion took the guitar gingerly, feeling out the weight of it in his hooves. He started slowly, it had been years since he'd last played, but it quickly came back to him. A few stray notes at first, then actual chords. Soon he transitioned to riffs and then finally he hit his stride with a cascading waterfall of music. Not a song or melody in particular, but a showcase of talent. Chords and combinations that would have stretched human fingers to their limit landed perfectly before the might of magical playing. And it felt good to play after so long.

Smoky Quartz became so lost in his music that he forgot to keep up his concentration on something else. As he played, wisps of smoke began to leech off his form, first from his hooves and then the rest of his body. The silvery ash of his crystal coat grew dark and thicker as it began to resemble proper fur. His musculature swelled as he grew taller alongside a rising crescendo of notes. He finished his solo off with a long-held note, flanged by his magic, and only then did he notice the gobsmacked expressions on everyone else in the room.

"Too much?" He asked before glancing down and noticing his much less crystalline appearance. "Oh. I can explain."

"Sombra!" someone cried. Shining Armour and Cadence adopted offensive postures with their horns lit and ready while Sunburst jumped behind a couch.

"Whoa!" Smoky Quartz, or rather, Sombra, cried out, grabbing the tray out from beneath the pile of snacks and holding it up defensively like a shield. "Human! Don't forget! Human! Not evil!"

"And how are we supposed to believe that?" Shining growled, "Sombra's a known master liar and deceiver. It makes perfect sense that you'd try and take advantage of the human confusion."

"Look at my eyes," he insisted. "Do you see any glowing trails of evil?" They did not. They were quite nice eyes, truth be told. "Look at my horn. See? Perfectly normal. No evil or corruption."

Shining and Cadence shared a look, the kind shared by couples where whole conversations can be held in an instant. As one, they powered down their horns. "Alright, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're human. But don't think that that excuses any crimes you may have committed as Sombra."

"But I haven't done any crimes!" Sombra persisted, though he set down the tray. "Well, aside from identity fraud and lying on government documents. It was only after you... I don't know, evaporated or exorcised or whatever you did to Sombra's astral form that left his body empty when I came into the picture."

Sunburst chose this time to pop out from behind the couch and rejoin the conversation. "But what about Smoky Quartz? What have you done with him?! He's one of my closest friends in the palace. If you've done anything-"

Sombra scoffed. "I've done nothing. I am Smoky Quartz, you numbskull. It's a persona I created. Did you think Sombra, King of Shadows, could just waltz into the Crystal Empire and apply for a job? I'd have been outrunning a mob in under a minute. That or a friendship laser. So I made a disguise. I still wanted to be a part of things after all. And this body came with a copy of Sombra's memories, so that's a few decades of free political experience I had to offer. I applied for a low-level administrative position and somehow, just kept getting promoted. And here we are. Also," his gaze softened for a moment, "Thank you. For calling me one of your closest friends. That genuinely means a lot to me."

"You have been a rather invaluable employee," Cadence admitted, finally dropping her stance and retaking her seat.

"Cady..." Shining, who still stood battle-ready, said warningly.

"Oh, come off it Ricky," Cadence said with a roll of her eyes, "If he really was evil, then he's inept enough to be a non-threat. I can think of a dozen times off the top of my head where he could have easily incapacitated or even killed me in the last couple months alone." She snagged a cookie off the floor, dusted it off, and inspected it. "Besides, regardless of alignment, the Empire wouldn't be running half as well as it is if it weren't for all the help he's given. If he's telling the truth, that's great. If not..." She delicately placed the cookie between her teeth and snapped it in half. "I'll have Flurry Heart blast him so hard he'll wind up in another franchise."

The atmosphere of the Crystal Empire was electric. Celestia's sun had long since set but the central plaza was still as bright as day. Enormous pillars of magically attuned crystal shook the air with the sound of amplified instruments that flooded the empire with music. Bleeding out from the palace and down every main road was a sea rainbow stars that pulsed and shook in time with the beat.

Somepony was making a fortune tonight with the invention of magic glowsticks.

In the center of it all, atop raised platforms of varying heights, the hastily assembled band played like they'd been practicing together for years, helped in part by the magic of Harmony.

Towards the back, Sunburst manned a drum kit. With a drumstick clutched in each foreleg and two in his magic, he bashed the tubs and pies as though they were the heads of every indifferent boss and incompetent manager he'd ever worked for. On another pedestal, Shining Armor and Sombra stood back to back, shredding away on a pair of palette-swapped guitars as their chords intertwined into a soul-shaking melody. Mares in the crowd (and a few stallions too) practically swooned at the nearly palpable chemistry between them as each tried to outplay the other. They would have actually swooned, but the crowd was too dense to let them fall over.

Front and center was Princess Cadence, her pedestal low and closest to the crowd. Her mane wild and drenched with sweat, she sang her heart out to the crowd of crystal citizens who, for their part, ate up her energy like ravenous changelings.

Much as Sombra had expected, the concert was going spectacularly. The selection of songs they'd eventually hammered out was eclectic, to say the least, but contained enough hits of every genre to hopefully reach each and every listener. With the power of Harmony on their side, their music reached down deep into the people's hearts and pulled them together, reminding them of the shared roots they all could rely on. The Crystal Heart was a veritable beacon of positively charged energy, bleeding off the excess as a Borealis that could be seen as far away as Manehattan.

A few hours into the event, at a point just after a slower song had finished and the band was starting to rile the audience up again, there was a small flash of lavender light. It happened in the farthest edges of the crowd, past even where quieter and more introverted ponies had slipped away to try and steal an early bit of shut-eye. From around the corner, a lavender mare poked her head suspiciously. Past failures had made her wary, so she was more reluctant to immediately show herself. No, a bit of discretion would be best, at least at first.

Despite her initial trepidation, she was hopeful. Surely the Crystal Empire, with its impassive barrier and the unique biology of its citizens, would be spared, right? But her hopes were quickly dashed as she heard Princess Cadence belting out to hundreds of cheering fans.

"The time has come, at last~!"

"Secret, secret. We've got a secret~!" Shining Armour and a huskier voice she didn't recognize provided backup.

"To re-embrace our past~!"

"Secret, secret. We've got a secret!"

"Now everyone can see," the mare could see her now, the bright lights reflecting off the many buckles of the Princess' jacket as passion flooded her voice even more, "Our true identities!"

The whole crowd joined in on the final line, and though obviously guided by Heartsong, it was clear they meant what they sang wholeheartedly.

"We're humans! Humans... humans... humans..."

The mare cringed as she ducked back into the shadows. Another failure. And with a flash of light, she was gone.

Canterlot was not known as a party city. It tried to rival cities like Manehattan and Las Pegasus, but the general stuffiness of the nobles tended to put the brakes on anything too... frivolous. It excelled at state holidays and ceremonial events, but new and impromptu celebrations... not so much.

What it did excel at was the day after. No city was more skilled than Canterlot at cleaning up and getting back to work. An odd claim to fame, to be sure, but it wasn't like the city was lacking in other titles to compensate. Canterlot was, at its core, a city built on bureaucracy. And bureaucracy doesn't care if you're a human or a pony; just get back to work if you don't want it to collapse.

Thankfully, much like an army, a bureaucracy marches on its stomach, so some breaks had to be allowed.

And so, when the twelve o'clock bell rang out in Canterlot the day after the official week-long 'Humanity Revelation' celebration ended, civil servants and office drones alike poured forth from Canterlot municipal buildings like a tide of starving termites.

Among them was a young unicorn with a mane the color of faded strawberries and a coat like Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil lead. She stopped outside her building and allowed the crowd to flow past as her eyes scanned faces and cutie marks. After a moment she smiled and waved. Across the plaza, a pegasus gave a halfhearted wave back. Together they swam through the crowd and met on its outskirt.

"Hiya Legal!" the unicorn beamed, "What kept you so long?"

The pegasus groaned and used his wings to push back the stray mint hairs that had fallen over his glasses. "Work has been a nightmare today, Penny. It's been nonstop since the second I clocked in. It's a madhouse in there."

The pair began walking, the act much easier now that the initial rush had died down. "Totes same for me. Though it sounds like you had it worse."

"It's these insufferable name change forms," he grumbled, "I swear every pony and their mother wants to change their name. Seriously, just go by a nickname or something! You don't have to legally change it! You can call yourself whatever you want!"

Penny gave his withers a soft pat. A small gesture, but one of unspoken camaraderie. "We all get days like that. I'm sure things'll settle down after a while. Tell you what? Why don't we go to Allspice's Cafe, huh? My treat."

"Allspice's is gone," he muttered.

Penny stopped in her tracks. Every muscle in her body tightened at once as her naturally over-enthusiastic Equestrian flight-or-fight response kicked in. "What?! Gone? Allspice's can't be gone. It's the best cheap place in Canterlot! What do you mean gone?!"

"Calm down Penny," a new voice, soft and soothing cut in. "Mr. Grumpy-pants here," Legal grunted as a feathery body lightly hip-checked him, "Is just spreading his misery. Allspice's Cafe is still around, they just rebranded as Alice's."

All the tension left Penny's body as she sighed in relief. The newcomer was also a pegasus, though almost a head shorter than Legal. "Oh, thank Admin. I don't know what I'd do without that cafe."

"Starve, probably."

Penny grinned at her friend's dark humor, a much-needed salve to Legal's grumps. "Things going good for you, Updraft?"

Updraft shrugged. "Eh, same old, same old. The big reveal hasn't affected my workload any. Just cause everyone's a human doesn't mean they suddenly need to update their property titles and deeds. I spent most of the morning working on my novel."

Legal grumbled something under his breath about ponies getting paid too much to do nothing, but was ignored. The three continued to chat amicably (or in Legal's case, grumble intermittently) as they navigated the streets of Canterlot towards Alice's.

When they arrived, the restaurant was bustling. Ponies filled the establishment's three levels as the smell of foods both fried and fresh wafted out windows and off balconies. The signboard out front proclaiming its new name was an obvious change (including a smaller notice warning of wet paint), but that aside it still seemed the same place the trio had been patronizing for months.

"Table for three please," Penny told the host as they entered, "And this meal's on the Pencil Pusher tab."

The stallion nodded in acknowledgment and guided them to a cozy table on the veranda, perfect for pony-watching while they ate. He poured their complimentary waters, reminded them of the strict no-littering policy for the veranda, and let them know that their waiter would be arriving shortly. As the group settled in, Updraft decided it was high time to break the funk.

"Alright Legal. Spill." She ordered, her tone leaving no room for argument.

Legal moved as if to say something snarky, but seeing her expression, thought better of it. He sighed and finally opened up to vent. "It's just been a classic case of bureaucracy run amuck. The minute we opened up this morning the post office started dropping off bags of mail like it was the end of Miracle of 34th Street. Everyone wants a name change. Boss called in all the temp workers and even some from second shift to help process the load. It wasn't so bad at first; tedious, but not hard. But then they started making all these new rules about what names were allowed. First it was just no profanity. Then no famous pony names. Then no famous human names. Then no names that required nonstandard characters. Then some genius, no doubt with a private office, decided that names which were a pun or references needed to be marked and sent back for an additional form." He grabbed his glass and drained it, rewetting his throat to continue. "Not to mention, every time they added a new rule, one of the managers took a portion of the staff off the front end to reprocess all the forms we'd just finished to make sure they complied with the new rules! And the changelings! Don't even get me started on them! I swear every single one them has the exact same hoofwriting and not one of them can write an H, a U, an N, or an M without it looking like all four at once! It's melting my brain out my ears!"

It was about this time that a pony approached their table on near-silent hooves. He was a completely ordinary and boring stallion except for his wings, horn, black fur, blood red mane, and a pale jagged scar that ran across his eye.

"Good afternoon," he said with a voice like chocolate being poured over a gold brick, "I am Lord Edgelord. Lord of Edges and Edgiest of Lords, and I will be your server this afternoon. Does everypony know what they'd like to drink?"

Silence reigned at the table as the three diners stared, jaws slack and open, at their waiter. After a moment, he chuckled and his red eyes (which, oddly, had three smaller pupils orbiting the central one) briefly flashed with green fire. A quick burst of flames after that reduced the crime against character design to a much more visually-palatable reformed changeling.

"Sorry," he apologized, "You looked like you needed a laugh. I can do impressions if you don't like OCs. I do a killer OG Luna."

Like a lingering stench, the silence continued. And then, Legal snorted. He tried to hold it back but he was quickly overpowered by the need to laugh. Soon the others joined in as well, hearty laughter from Penny and light giggling titters from Updraft.

"Oh, oh... ha ha haaa. Oh yeah, I needed that." Legal said through his diminishing chuckles. "Thanks, uh..."

"Micheal." The changeling provided, "But I'm not really to tied to any particular name. I'll go by anything." He shifted into a tan stallion with a blue mane, still with his work apron on. "I call this guy 'Swift Service' when I'm working."

"Well then, Swift, thanks for lifting my mood. I guess it's not all that bad." Legal let out a final sigh and even his stressed posture seemed to slacken into something comfortable. "And I'll take a water. No, I need a pick-me-up. Make it a root beer float."

"Ooh, seconded!" Penny chimed in.

"Eh, make it three. And make it malted if you can."

Swift Service nodded. "Three root beer floats it is then, one malted. Also, we're having a 'no menu' special today. To celebrate the revival of humanity, order anything you can think of and our chefs will try their hardest to make your most nostalgic flavors a reality. It just costs a flat charge up front."

"Pen... Pe... Pencil Pusher!"

Penny turned at the sound of her name being called. Coming up the street was an older stallion, his hair streaked with silver, running like Tirek himself was hot on his hooves. He came to a skidding stop just outside their table.

"Ticker Tape?" Penny asked, immediately recognizing her coworker, "What is it? What's going on?"

The stallion panted, wheezing for a moment before finally collecting enough air to speak. "We- we need you back at the patent office right away! It's an emergency!"

The mare rose from her seat in alarm, ready to leap the fence between them if necessary. "What's wrong?"

"A couple of unicorn brothers just came in with over two hundred patent applications!"

Penny frowned and sat back down. "Ticker, that's not an emergency. Ponies have been doing that all week, trying to claim any and every piece of human tech they can think of for their own. That's why the Princess made an edict that they have to have a working prototype to stake a claim."

"But they do!" Ticker Tape insisted, his eyes wild and panicked, "They brought some kind of magic car filled with gizmos and contraptions! And all their paperwork is properly filled out!"

Penny's breath hitched in her throat. Impossible! No one ever filled out all the paperwork, let alone correctly, before coming into the patent office!

"They said they'd been waiting for this for a long time," Ticker continued, "Ever since the first season. Penny... they have Class A priority forms, pre-notarized in triplicate. We don't even offer those anymore!"

That was the final straw. Penny leaped from her seat and jumped over the decorative railing that separated the dining area from the street. "Then there's no time to waste!" She turned back to her friends with a rueful expression. "Sorry, but I gotta take care of this. I'm the only ranking manager on duty today. They need my clearance to access the records."

"Go, go." Updraft shooed her off with small motions. "Do what you need to do. We understand." Legal nodded in agreement.

"Thanks!" Penny started to run, Ticker hot on her heels. "Order whatever you want! It's on my tab!"

In seconds they were out of sight, lost in the crowds and twisting streets. Legal turned back to Swift, his expression emotionless. "So I'm thinking I'll have the lobster... and does that come deep-fried?"

Several tables away, a newspaper fell over, the pony previously holding it vanishing in an unnoticed flash of light.

In a flash of lavender light, Starlight Glimmer appeared in a narrow alley between two houses. It was far from the first alley she had been in over the last few days, but it was thankfully the cleanest. She breathed deeply, but quietly, as the aching in her horn flared again with magic burnout. Powerful spellcaster though she was, chain-teleporting still took a lot of energy and concentration; something which was not helped by a lack of sleep, not giving her mana time to recharge, and the growing panic that clouded her thoughts.

Nowhere was safe. For the past several days she'd scoured Equestria for any sort of ally or comrade. Any pony she might be able to turn to for help. Yet, everywhere she went, there were no ponies. Or rather, there were a great many somethings wearing pony skin. They spoke strangely, using many words she didn't understand, but above all it was abundantly clear that these "humans" were not ponies, despite their appearances. She had heard them admit as much many times.

She'd heard it in the Crystal Empire, where she'd seen her childhood friend playing a strange instrument and singing songs that made no sense.

She'd heard it in Ponyville, where her friend and mentor lounged in her castle binging on thin slices of potato (somehow ignoring its potent toxins) as fast as her apparently not actually a dragon assistant could fry them.

She'd heard it in Canterlot and Manehattan. In Fillydelphia and Las Pegasus. In rural villages and bustling metropolises.

She'd even heard it in Sire's Hollow where her own father griped and bemoaned over the inconvenience of his own hooves.

And what was this 'cannon' that they all spoke of? Some kind of weapon? But she'd seen no destruction. As far as nationwide takeovers went, this one had been alarmingly bloodless. Was this cannon so terrible a weapon that every single pony from Princess to farmer bowed at the mere threat of its use? And why was she the only one unaffected?

She'd run to the farthest reaches of Equestria: to her last vestige of hope. A place so far away from civilization that it was practically unknown save by its residents and the hoofful of rare visitors. A place she'd once called home.

Cautiously (and invisibly, just in case) Starlight stepped out from the alley onto the main road of Our Town.

Our Town looked much as she had last seen it, though the road was a little longer and there were a couple of new houses. Familiar faces trotted by without noticing her, acting for all the world as though there was nothing wrong. Starlight felt a surge of hope in her heart. Could she finally have found a place spared from the human invasion?

Spotting Party Favor and Double Diamond across the road, she stepped closer to listen to their conversation.

"...and that was the last I saw of him," Party Favor said as he wrapped up some story.

Double Diamond nodded. "I get his reasons, but I still don't like it."

"Yeah, not everyone was a big fan of Starlight, so it makes sense why he left, but at least most of us stuck around."

Another surge of hope filled Starlight's chest. Not only did they seem to be ponies, but they still liked her. They were allies to her cause. She prepared the magic to release her invisibility spell and-

"The forum was never the same without him."

-she stopped. Our Town didn't have a forum. Or any other sort of amphitheater-like place for meetings and discussions. Within the warm glow of hope, a small black worm of worry began gnawing away.

Unaware of Starlight's growing dismay, the conversation continued on without her. "Yeah, Starlight can be pretty divisive, whether she's pre- or post- reformation. Still, I'd say we were pretty lucky that we got to meet her in person and have front row seats to the whole thing."

Party Favor nodded sagely in agreement. "Too true. Hey, you think she was aware of everything and playing along, or did we actually get to meet the genuine article?"

"Who knows," Diamond replied with a noncommittal shrug. "No way to tell unless she comes back and we ask her."

"I do wish she'd come back." Party Favor shifted on his hooves. "Be nice to meet her properly and talk about everything.

"Yeah..."

Once again, Starlight felt a surge of that same mercurial hope. The forum comment was concerning, but that aside they still sounded like the Party Favor and Double Diamond she knew. The same voices, the same mannerisms, the same everything. But any chance that hope took to grow, the worm of worry also took to gnaw at its foundations before harsh reality toppled it fully.

"But then again," Double Diamond spoke as his words swung like a wrecking ball towards Starlight teetering tower of hope, "Where would she stay since we tore her house down?"

What.

Starlight's brain froze. Slowly, almost against her will, she rotated in place to face down the street. True to their word and much to her shock, at the end of the road her house (the house she had built herself) was no more. In its place was a tree. A tall evergreen. Tall enough that it must have been planted quite a while ago, even taking earth pony magic into account.

"Yeah, shame about that." Party Favor's words trickled into her ears like grease down an oubliette. "But, you know, canon said we had to do it, so we did it. Maybe we can turn the tree into a library or something, like Twilight had back in the early seasons. I wonder who you go to for that, an architect or a gardener?"

Starlight heard the words but didn't hear them. There it was again. Cannon. Blasted cannon. A weapon? An entity? Whatever it was had led these humans to replace her friends and family and assume their lives, but now it had made them tear down her house? The house she'd built with her own two hooves?! Both hope and worry shriveled then burned in the fires of anger. This fight had just become personal.

Not bothering to remove the invisibility, Starlight charged her horn with another teleport. A teleport this far was going to hurt, she knew all too well, but there was nothing for it. If there was no help to be found in Equestria, then she was going to have to go outside to get some. Luckily, she was at least acquainted with several groups she could turn to in times of trouble, some that she already had friends in as well. Or, at least, she hoped they were still her friends.

With little disturbance save for a rush of air filling a void, Starlight left the village and Equestria.

Author's Note

Sorry about the wait, this one really fought me and had to go through several major revisions and rewrites. But now with some establishing shots out of the way, I can finally plot a trajectory for this story.

Also, something from this chapter is surprisingly enough canonically true. I almost wrote a oneshot about it on its own, but decided to merge it in here.

Also! Important thing!
Though I'm regrettably late in mentioning it, the incredibly talented GMBlackjack has included this story/universe in one of their massive crossover projects. My chapter can be found here, but I'd suggest reading the whole thing as it is well worth your time and one of the best things I've read on here in ages. If you want to see what happens when a team of interdimensional (that is, inter-fanfictional) pony explorers react to finding an Equestria With No Ponies, go check that out!

No Ponies Marching Forward

There's an old trope in cowboy movies where the comic relief character mistakes the sound of stampeding hooves for incoming thunder. On Earth, it’s nothing more than a quick gag to lead into an action-packed scene. In Equestria, it’s an all too real phenomenon. And thanks to magic, it only takes a single pony to pull off the effect, and they don't even have to be a pegasus.

Only sufficiently peeved.

Twilight's ears perked up as they caught a not-so-distant rumble. "I didn't think we had a storm scheduled today."

The thunder of hooves came to an abrupt halt as the unnecessarily massive doors to the Friendship Map room slammed open like the Gates of Perdition.

"I have had it!"

The-artist-formerly-known-as-Rarity stormed in with thunder on her brow and bloody murder on her face.

Twilight Sparkle (née Kirby) glanced up from the rat's nest of wires, crystals, and miscellaneous metal shapes spread out over her portion of the table, but said nothing. Applejack, seated to her left, also said nothing, but that was because her mouth was full of noodles.

They continued to say nothing as the distressed unicorn crossed the room in a huff, sank into her throne, and buried her face in the recently upholstered armrests like she was trying to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest herself.

As the silence stretched on, one eye peeked out from behind its shields to gauge her friends' nonreaction. Eventually Applejack chose to nobly sacrifice herself and take the plunge.

"Morning, Rares." She said before catching herself with a flinch. "Sorry, habit. Mary. Everything okay?"

Everything was, in fact, not okay, and she was more than eager to share. Mary sat up a little too quickly and nearly unbalanced herself. "No," she growled, as best one could growl with a voice that most would describe as 'musical’ at best and 'flute-like' at worst. "I've had it just about up to here. My nerves are worn down to the last... last... nerve, and if I can't find a way to let off some steam soon I'm going to rip somebody's head off."

Still focused on her project, Twilight lit her horn. A moment later, two half gallon cartons of ice cream and a set of spoons manifested on the table. "Triple Chocolate Deluxe or Neapolitan Cookie Dough?"

Mary glared at her. "On one hand, I hate how that's your first response. On the other..." She grabbed the second carton and pulled it close, popping the lid off like Popeye with a can of spinach.

"Bad day?" Applejack ventured.

"Bad week, more like," she sighed. "Maybe even a bad month. It's been weeks since my interview with Equestria Weekly was published, but despite their assurances it hasn't done a spot of good. If anything, it's made things worse." She stabbed her spoon into the ice cream like it had personally offended her. "Some people just can't seem to get it through their thick"—stab!—“skulls”—stab!—"that I'm not Rarity."

It was not the first time she’d made such a complaint. The riot outside her house when she'd decided to step back from the Rarity brand had made the papers… which had really only exacerbated the problem and alerted a wider audience to her decision, leading to a second, even larger riot. She'd very nearly stripped the Rarity name off the brand entirely just to spite them

Twilight took the news with an even keel, half her focus still directed towards precisely winding a loop of wire around a crystal. Applejack wore a small grin, which she hid poorly behind another chopstick-full of not-quite-ramen. Mary slumped forward and shoveled a choking-hazard-size scoop of ice cream into her mouth. "Why couldn't I have been Maud?" she muttered. "That'd have been nice. Simple. I could've just picked up my geology career right where I left off. No mess. No fuss. No dresses. Just me and dozens of new types of crystal."

Twilight offered a pitying, yet understanding gaze. "They're still showing up at your house?"

"In droves. And they all come in one of four unoriginal flavors. The ones that want a dress." She took another heaping spoonful. "The ones tha' wan' me to quote something." Another scoop. "Cree'e 'erver's." A third one that dwarfed the rest. "An' t' uns 'at 'ay ahm 'eein 'aar'i'y ahng."

Twilight blinked. "You want to run that by me again in English?"

"It's fine, I speak Mouthful," Applejack cut in. "She said 'And the ones that say I'm being Rarity wrong', right?"

Mary swallowed. "Precisely." They were the ones who had made up the majority of the rioters. People who, despite everything, still believed wholeheartedly that canon should be preserved as purely as possible. At least when it came to their 'waifus'. As one may expect, there was decent overlap between those and the Creepy Pervert group.

Twilight nodded in comprehension. "I can understand getting mad at people insisting you should stay in character, but isn't selling dresses... kind of your job?"

"Selling dresses, certainly. And I'd be more than happy to rake in the bits from owning a popular business and just push all the work onto Sassy—she genuinely loves the work, you know—but nobody wants a dress by Sassy Saddles. All they want are Rarity Originals, hand stitched by Fashion Horse herself." She groaned and rubbed her eyes. "I feel like I can't get a moment's peace outside my house without someone demanding I call them 'daaaahling~'. It's driving me crazy!"

"Welcome to the party," the farmer chuckled dryly, finally letting her amusement show. "There's cookies and punch by the door. Or, at the very least, ice cream. Mind passing me that triple chocolate tub? I think I put too much spice in these. Need to soothe my tongue."

Mary obliged, a quick magic push sliding the carton across the table. "You too?"

"You don't have to sound so surprised." Applejack rolled her eyes as she dug in. "You're not the only main character here; I too suffer from protagonist syndrome. Not a day goes by I don't have to put up with a couple fans, gawkers, self-proclaimed distant relatives, and people angry at me for things canon Applejack did. Sometimes I even get fans sending me apples in the mail. What do they think I'm going to do with more apples?"

Mary wondered if it might be the same fans that mailed her gems and fabric swatches. Not that she minded the gems, she just wished whoever it was had a better eye for quality. "What do you do with them?"

She grinned. "Sign 'em for the guests that are polite, throw 'em at the ones that aren't. I may not have Twilight-level fame, but it's not all anonymous peaches and cream over here either."

Twilight's ears perked up at her name as she extracted herself from her focused fugue. She blinked a few times as she reviewed the conversation she'd only half been paying attention to, and frowned.

"Oh you do not want to drag me into this," the alicorn said as she set down her project. Applejack gave it a curious look and pulled it closer, adopting the task of fiddling with the arrangement of wires. "I've got it twice as bad as either of you."

What angry tension Mary was still holding in her posture quickly dwindled away at the declaration, as some small, schadenfreudian part of her took grim satisfaction in knowing that her friends had it just as bad as she did. It wasn't a pleasant realization, but misery loves company. She did her best not to let the satisfaction show.

"Twice? Do tell."

Twilight leaned back as her voice took on a tired tone. Clearly Mary hadn't been the only one in need of a good vent session. "It's bad enough that I have randos dropping by wanting to see Twilight Sparkle; I'm... well, not used to it, but I've made my peace with that. It comes with the whole princess package. But now I also have to deal with a whole new crowd who thinks I'm the inventor of comic books."

A memory clicked and Mary's eyes widened as recognition dawned. "Wait are you-?"

"No." Her deadpan reply couldn't have been flatter if she'd had a level and a mallet. "No relation whatsoever. I don't even read comic books. I thought I'd finally escaped the curse of my old name and left it behind, but apparently not even crossing dimensions is enough to escape superhero fanboys." A pair of levitating spoons stole a scoop each from her friends' ice creams and brought them to her mouth.

It was an interesting stance, but not an unusual one. It was an ongoing talking point across the country about how to best address everyone's dual-identities. Many people (mostly those who'd had a few years to acclimate to life in Equestria) didn't bother with a distinction. They chose to respond equally to either their pony or human name. On the other hand, some ponies had, like Mary, chosen to eschew their pony identities entirely and make a distinct divide between who they are and who they'd pretended to be. Usually these were those who'd arrived most recently.

Then there was the smallest group who, like Twilight, took the opposite route and leaned in hard into their pony identities. They acknowledged that they had been human, of course, but considered that part of their lives past and not worth revisiting. This group was primarily reincarnators who'd been born in Equestria and grown up there, but also a few who had their own private reasons.

"Speaking of which..."

Twilight tapped the table, the Friendship Map quickly springing to life at her touch and rendering the familiar dragon's eye view of Equestria. She swiped her hooves across the surface and the image began to zoom in and in until the Friendship Castle alone occupied the space. That, and a teacup-sized pony standing outside with a sign and a megaphone.

"I swear he's like clockwork," she muttered before pressing a nearly-invisible button on the arm of her throne. "Iron Bagel." The tiny figure jumped and fell over in alarm. "If I have to tell you one more time to get off my property I'm calling the cops!"

The hologram raised its megaphone, but the sound came through the windows above, faint and distant. "But I love you! Hashtag Twi4lyfe! Step on me, Queen!"

"Tell it to the judge." She tapped another hidden button and the figure of Iron Bagel collapsed with a sudden high-pitched yelp and a sharp *pi-twip* noise. "He's a perfect example of one twice as bad," she offered in way of explanation as she dismissed the illusion. "A Twilight stan and a Raven simp all in one."

Mary narrowed her eyes. "Twilight. Please tell me you did not install an automated sniper rifle on the Castle of Friendship."

The alicorn scoffed. "Of course I didn't." Mary heaved a sigh of relief at- "It's a turret! I just didn't turn on the full auto. Don't give me that look. It's non-lethal. Stun spells only."

Mary let out the breath that she- "Unless I activate Siege mode, but that's only for season finale level threats."

"...Right." That much she could grant. No one knew what monsters may come after canon, but it wouldn't hurt her peace of mind to have a little more firepower on hand if something showed up that made Tirek look like Trixie.

"Still need to put that through a full test run. Get it calibrated," Applejack muttered. "Quick question." Twilight glanced over as the earth pony nudged her with an elbow. The mare had turned the back end of her spoon into a makeshift screwdriver and was using it to attach two wires to some round component while she gestured to a third. "Is this the ground wire?"

The unicorn traced it back with her eyes. "No, ground is there. That's the antenna line."

"Antenna? Then why does it lead into this metal plate?"

"Flip it over. See that engraving? That's the runic form of a resonance spell. Antenna wire connects there."

"Ah, gotcha. You've worked magic into the design. So it functions like a gain booster?"

"More like a signal repeater. The more units there are in range, the clearer the signal should be."

"Clever. Very clever. I might have to borrow some of your magic textbooks if I'm going to keep up with these new advancements."

"Excuse me." Both mares looked up as Mary tapped her spoon on the table. "Is this a private scientific seminar, or can anyone join?"

"Right! My bad," Twilight said sheepishly, "you probably haven't seen one of these yet. This is a—"

"Yee-Ouch!" Applejack snatched her hoof away as a snap and crackle of plasma sparked across it. Her eyes shot to Twilight, bright with accusatory intent. "It's live?!"

Twilight shrugged. "Just a lightning attuned crystal. Can't exactly plug it into the wall." At Applejack's continued glare, she carried on. "Come on, there's no need to get all bent out of shape. It's low... not 'voltage' exactly, but it's harmless." After a final stern look, Applejack nodded and returned to her work, visibly more cautious, and Twilight picked up where she'd left off. "Anyway. I've been tinkering with this prototype the Science Council sent me. They wanted my input on where magic might be able to shortcut where our tech is lagging behind."

Mary resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Despite the whole country turning on its head, some things never changed. Twilight could still motormouth on about technical details without actually answering the question. It was impossible to tell if that was a trait she'd adopted from pretending to be Twilight for so long, or just a convenient personality overlap from her human life, but it was a moot point anyway. "Yes, but what is it?"

"Got it!" Applejack's cry came alongside a crackle of electricity and a buzz of static. She twisted a knob on the front and the noise slowly resolved into the familiar sound of a harmonica and piano. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have music!"

"Oh! A radio. Why didn't you just say so?"

"I was getting there."

Now that she knew what she was looking at, it was easy to ignore the messy jury-rigged bits and spot the familiar tuning knobs and speaker. "This looks rather a lot bigger than the ones in the shops."

"That's because those are mark ones, maybe a few early mark twos. They're just simple crystal radios; the kind you could build out of scrap in the trenches. This is six generations better, maybe seven if my modifications work out. Oh, perfect timing, here comes the news."

Three faces turned to the little radio as the last echoing chords faded away, only to be quickly replaced with the crystal clear sound of the disc jockey's upbeat voice.

And that was Piano Man by Billy Joel covered by the local band Never Better Man. The time is two in the afternoon and you're listening to Equestria Radio One, your one-stop shop for all the latest tunes, hottest interviews, and freshest news. Literally, since this is the first and only station we've got up and running. As always, I am Vinyl Scratch, your host, and you are my rockin' audience. I've got the hourly news for you in just a minute, but first, a word from our sponsors.

Her voice clipped out a syllable early, replaced a moment later by the scratchy sound of a record being played into the microphone.

This program is brought to you by FlimFlam Industries.

All ears in the room perked up as a pair of unforgettably distinct voices came across the airwaves.

Are you tired of dirty feet?

Disgusted at eating good food with filthy hooves?

Fed up with stumbling around on two legs as you try to keep your front ones clean?

Presenting the latest solution from your friends at FlimFlim. New self-cleaning horseshoes!

That's right folks! No longer need you be concerned with dirt in your hamburger or the flu in your fries. FlimFlam Self-cleaning Horseshoes are dirt-repellent!

Antibacterial!

Antimicrobial!

Antifungal!

Waterproof!

Rustproof!

Mudproof!

Sandproof!

And so lightweight you'll forget you’re wearing them! So if you're tired of eating like an animal, get yourself a pair of FlimFlam Self-Cleaning Horseshoes today! Available wherever quality goods are sold.

FlimFlam Industries: We're Legit Now, We Swear!

That's their actual slogan, by the way. Vinyl Scratch's voice returned with a hint of amused disbelief. And it seems like they actually are. I've got one of their automatic coat brushes and I gotta say I am lovin' it. Cuts like half an hour out of my morning routine.

"I wonder why they're still in character," Mary mused.

"Brand recognition, I figure. Can you hear anyone talk like that and not think of those two?" Twilight shrugged. "Or maybe they actually were carnival barkers before they were ponies. Who knows."

"I'm still not completely convinced they've gone straight." Applejack crossed her forelegs and frowned. "Maybe it's just some leftover prejudices from pretending to hate them for so long, but even knowing that it's not actually, you know, them, I still can't quite trust them."

"You should give them a chance,” Mary commented. “I picked up a set of their enchanted dish scrubbers recently and those things are a marvel. Such a clever mix of magic and simple technology." She chuckled. "Sometimes I like to let them loose on the floor and watch them scurry around and bump into each other like sudzy roombas."

Applejack smirked. "I bet you named them, haven't you?"

She blushed. "Just the extra large pot scrubber. Cinderhexa."

It was a lie. She’d named all of them and assigned them a family tree.

"Just goes to show,” Twilight interjected, “humans will pack-bond with anything."

"True enough. On a related note, did you hear there's a team trying to domesticate Timberwolves? I bet we'll have foal-sized Groot-Puppies in a year or two."

"If they can breed out the rotting-corpse breath, sure." The alicorn in the room turned back to Applejack. "Even if you don't like them personally it wouldn't hurt to give their products a try. It's not really fair to hold grudges over something they did in the name of canon."

A single eyebrow arched in iconic Applejack fashion. "...Are you trying to turn this into a friendship lesson?"

Twilight gave her a friendly shove. "Shut up, the ads are done."

But you didn't tune in to listen to me ramble about everyone who's given me money, so let's jump right into the news.

First off, we've got a declaration from the princesses. It's like five pages long but there's a note at the top saying I'm allowed to summarize, so I will. Basically, if you wanna keep partying and celebrating, that's cool, but don't come crying if your boss tells you to come in to work or some cops tell you to move your block party out of a major intersection. You had a whole government-sanctioned week to get it out of your system and if that wasn't enough for you then either do it at home or fill out the paperwork at your local mayor's office or whatever.

"Not like that'll stop Pinkie," Mary joked. Cherie sometimes seemed to be even more Pinkie than canon Pinkie. While some, like Mary, had struggled to distance themselves from their pony personas, others had embraced them wholeheartedly.

"It wouldn't anyway. She has a whole stack of prefilled forms ready to be finished and filed at a moment's notice. I think the Mayor lets her get away with it cause she considers her a tourist attraction."

Next up, there's a special broadcast tonight at nine. We'll be livestreaming direct from the Canterlot Amphitheater where Dr. String Theory will be debating his popular "Junk Drawer" theory against Dr. Varadkar and his "Dimensional Cheesecloth" theorem. Maybe one of them will prove why we're all here, maybe not. Personally, I think it's gonna be a real snoozefest unless you're really interested in that kind of thing, but if they end up duking it out my money's on Professor Infinite Integration who's moderating it. I had one of her classes at Canterlot U and that old mare is tough as nails. Anyhow, that's tonight at nine if you can't make it in person.

In national news, five ponies were hospitalized today after a botched attempt to create and cast a human transformation spell. All of them are in intensive care but are expected to survive. Be glad this isn't a TV show because even if it was I don't think I'd be allowed to air the photos. Folks, I didn't think this needed saying but apparently some of you need to hear it anyway. There's a reason Living Transmutation is a restricted subject that requires a six year degree to get licensed in. It's not like turning teacakes into teacups; when it goes wrong, it goes wrong hard. This ain't Fullmetal Alchemist. And even then, it didn't go so well for the Elrics either, did it? So don't try messing with it on your own.

Three ponies exchanged somber looks. There were very few who could honestly claim that they'd never once thought about trying to find a way to turn back. Most had the good sense not to get reckless with dangerous magic.

Putting that aside for some happy news, this coming Friday the Changeling Theater Troupe is proud to present Shrek Live! A faithful reproduction of the first five movies in the franchise complete with full musical accompaniment by a variety of local groups. Catch it in person at their simultaneous showings in Las Pegasus, Canterlot, Ponyville, Manehattan, and Pegasopolis.

"Five movies?" Applejack asked.

"I might watch, assuming they're avoiding the prequels," Mary mused. "Not even Matt Foley's brilliant performance could save those trash fires."

"I think I had Shrek for the PS2, but I didn't know they made a movie out of it," was Twilight's contribution.

And lastly, There came a sound of rustling paper. A special bulletin that the station manager has just handed me literally right now. This... huh. It's a message directly for Princess Twilight Sparkle

"Oh?"

It says, and I quote: "Twilight. Somehow you have a broadcast model. We can all hear you and AJ and Rarity. Please disable your transmission override.

Color drained from her face so fast it looked like she'd been dunked in milk. "What?! Ah Ffff-"

"Live on air!" Mary hissed.

"...udge," she finished lamely. After a moment spent stewing in regret she sighed and shook it off. "Well...uh... Sorry? Everyone. Not sure how that happened."

Suddenly, her expression brightened and she got an odd gleam in her eye. "But since I've got this platform I might as well use it." She picked up the radio and, seeing as she had no idea what part was acting as a microphone, brought the whole unit as close to her face as she dared. "People listening at home: stop coming to me about the comic book thing. I'm not that guy, I don't know that guy, I'm not related to that guy. My father was just a nerd. Thank you. Twilight out."

Several wires detached themselves in her magic grip and the background hum of the crystals died down to nothing as the device shut off. Twilight set it back on the table and leaned back with a look of satisfaction on her face, tinged with lingering embarrassment.

“And that takes care of that. Not how I'd have liked to deal with it, but whatever works works."

Both Mary and Applejack gave her a concerned side-eye. "So I see you felt like bringing the Streisand effect to Equestria."

Twilight blinked at her. "The what?"

Mary shook her head. "Never mind. I'm sure you'll find out soon enough."

"Speaking of things from back home..." came a voice from nowhere, "So, O Mistress of Magic Jacklight Sparklby, should I be getting ready to have hands by this summer, or do you consider them more of a Hearths Warming present?"

The group looked upward to the source of the unexpected voice. High above, it wasn't hard to spot Pinkie lounging like a cat on one of the many roots of the Treebrary-turned-chandelier.

"Pinkie? When did you get up there?"

"I've always been up here," she laughed. "Pinkie Powers are a lot easier to use when I don't have to worry about being discreet." She walked along the limb and into one of the many knotholes on the trunk only to immediately step out from around the back of her throne and take a seat. "Really makes getting around a piece of cake." She extracted a slice from her mane, plate and all. "Cake?"

When no one moved to accept it, she shrugged and tucked it back away.

"Pinkie, what on earth are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you cracking the human equation. Obviously if anybody is going to figure out how to do it it'll be you, so I figure it's just a matter of time until I can play the piano again."

"Can't you play the piano now?" Mary asked, remembering a certain adventure in Appaloosa.

"Ask me again after you hear me try to play Listz’s Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 with these pink chopsticks I have for arms."

Twilight took a deep breath before sitting up straight and looking her pink friend dead in the eye. Everyone else sat up a little straighter too, sensing the change in the atmosphere. "Sorry to break it to you, but I don't think it's going to happen. I've been trying since," she paused as she traced her memories back through countless failed attempts. "About when the Crystal Empire returned, but even I couldn't get it to work."

"Reeeeeeally?" Pinkie pressed, her eyes narrowed in exaggerated suspicion. "But you're the protagonist. You can't fail. You've got the power of Faust and anime on your side. You're the Element of Magic."

"The Scion of Sorcery," Mary added.

"The Mage of Miracles," Applejack chuckled with a small grin.

"The Princess of Plot Convenience!" Pinkie declared.

"More like the Jack of Winging It," Twilight corrected, a little good humor trickling back into her serious tone. “But seriously, don’t start investing in gloves. Trying to make a transformation spell from scratch without a living subject to base it on is like trying to write down all the Harry Potter books word-for-word perfectly from memory. And if you get anything wrong, maybe nothing happens, maybe you get super cancer, maybe you transform without skin. Bodies are complicated.”

Mary shuddered at the thought. Memories of a dozen different horror movies flashed through her mind, reminding her of all the many many ways the human body could be put together not-quite-right.

“Maybe a research team of all the best doctors and biologists we have could pull it off,” Twilight continued, “but it'd still take years. Decades even. Spike can’t even get it right with Changeling magic."

The room fell silent. No one wanted to admit it, but even after so many years and having eventually come to accept that there was no going home, they'd all held on to some degree of hope that a magical macguffin or long lost spell would one day let them experience what it felt like to be human again. Even if only for a brief time.

Pinkie, however, was not one to lose hope easily and had come prepared.

"What about the Equestria Girls Mirror?"

Faces around the room started to brighten before they noticed Twilight's remaining unchanged.

"I knew someone would bring that up eventually, so I've prepared a demonstration."

With a flash of magic, the alicorn disappeared and a tall purple-skinned biped in preppy clothes took her place.

Mary shrieked.

"Sweet mother of all things holy! Go back! Go back! Undo!"

The Thing That Was Not Human vanished the same way it had arrived, leaving behind a pony rubbing her midsection. "Not so pleasant, is it?"

"What the holy heckarooni-and-cheese was that?" Pinkie's eyes had gone wide with fear and hadn't so much as shrunk an inch since. Applejack had dropped into some kind of combat position, and even after standing back up her muscles were taut as bowstrings.

"That is what happens when you try and make a living creature based on a drawing."

"You looked like you were about to snap in half!"

She nodded. "An eight inch waist with a giant head will give that impression." She cracked her neck as though she could still feel its phantom weight on spindly shoulders. "The mirror is not an option because, as it turns out, canon lied." She paused as everyone gasped. "Or at least, misled. The mirror was never a portal, it was Starswirl's security system. Sort of halfway between the Mirror of Erised and a holodeck. It's a pocket dimension designed to trap thieves by making a space filled with whatever they desired most; which, according to his notes, would presumably be an unlocked vault filled with valuables."

“So how did it turn into a school full of humans?” Applejack asked.

Twilight shrugged. "Simple. Sunset Shimmer. A human who, when faced with the mirror, desired for it to work exactly like she remembered from the movie and take her to a place she had very specific memories of. And it did exactly that. It even created brand new creatures that looked and acted exactly like her memories, biologically-impossible Barbie figures and all."

"So... no hands then?" Pinkie asked.

"No. Not unless Daring Do digs up a wish-granting relic or a scientist manages to figure out how to reverse whatever bought some of us here."

"Phooey," she cursed, crossing her forelegs. "And I already commissioned some baking tins to make hand-shaped cupcakes."

It was a disappointment to all of them, but not a great one. Like finding out a sweepstakes they'd entered had been canceled. They lost by default, but there'd never been that much of a chance of winning in the first place.

Mary was no exception to the mood. She wanted hands. Wanted to be able to gesture and gesticulate to drive her points home. To feel that satisfaction of a proper follow-through as she throws a fist-sized diamond at the trespasser of the day. She could do without the legs, even. She’d settle for hands and a familiar face.

With that thought, a spark of an idea flickered to life in the depths of her mind.

Was it really that important to have all the trappings of humanity? Why despair over the cost of a solid gold statue when all you really needed was gold plating?

“If transformations are out…” she started hesitantly as everyone’s attention turned to her, “What about illusions?”

"Illusions? Those are a piece of cake." Twilight lit her horn and a pink-tinted semi-transparent girl appeared beside her. "It's just bending light. Any random unicorn could probably do this much with a bit of training.”

“Can you make it move?”

"That takes a bit more effort, but sure." The figure raised its arm and waved in a jerky, mechanical motion.

The spark of an idea was singing. Still weak, but quickly growing stronger as it fed on her hope. “Could you rig it to mimic something else's movement? Like a puppet?”

“That's... huh." Twilight hesitated. The ghostly figure froze again as she lost concentration on making it wave. "I suppose it's not impossible. I don’t know a dedicated spell for that, but I can see how it might work. I’d probably need to consult with Trixie or someone else with that magic specialization, but it could be doable.”

“Aaah!” Applejack’s warm gasp of realization filled the room as she shot Mary a conspiratorial smirk. “Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?”

Mary felt her grin grow to match. “I think I may be.”

“Ooh this is gonna be great!” Pinkie cheered. “I always wanted to be a V-tuber!”

Mary opened her mouth to disagree, but changed her mind and closed it. It wasn’t exactly what she’d been going for, but it wasn’t a terribly inaccurate analogy either. Her little idea had clearly taken root in the others, as Applejack and Pinkie began tossing suggestions back and forth as quickly as Twilight could note them down alongside a list of spellcasting specialists she might need to contact. It was a familiar scene that reminded her of earlier days, back when they thought ponies were the be-all end-all of their existence. It was a warm feeling, to see how little had changed despite everything.

But there was something not quite right.

A small knot in the bottom of her stomach like she’d left the kettle on.

“Does anyone else feel like we're forgetting something?”

“No.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Always, but no more today than usual.”

“Hm.” Mary racked her brain. With everything that had been going on, she hadn't checked her day planner in weeks (especially since most of the entries were just 'make another stupid dress'). "I feel like there’s something important, but I can’t put my finger on it.” She shrugged. “Oh well. I'm sure if it's important it'll come to me."

“Hello? Anycreature home?”

“Yona not like empty school.”

“I think it's neat! Listen to the great echo I can get! Echo! Echo!”

“Where'd you think everybody is?”

“Pfft. Search me.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Maybe they decided to extend summer break by a few weeks cause it's such fantastic sunshiney weather outside, only our letters telling us not to come back yet all got lost in the mail!”

“...Somehow I doubt that.”

“Yes. Yak post office is best post office. Never lose letter in ten generations.”

“Yeah, even when everything else in Griffonstone falls apart, the mail always shows up.”

“Okay, so where are all the ponies then?”

"I don't know, but they gotta be somewhere!"

No Ponies Awkwardly Explaining

It wasn't easy, being everyone.

Okay, so maybe everyone was an exaggeration, but sometimes xey certainly felt like it.

It was one thing to be a changeling. To not be tied to any one face or name or personality. It was another thing entirely to be every changeling, everywhere, all at once. Having one mind spread across so many bodies was... an experience. It was something The Hive knew xey'd never be able to explain properly to another former human.

The closest xey'd ever come to accurately describing it was comparing it to being the Dungeon Master of a tabletop game. Within the world of the game, you’d have five or six player characters who were the heroes, and the DM who was the king. And the DM who was the merchant. And the village elder. And the bandit leader. And the orphan girl. And the evil dragon who gets seduced by the bard to join the heroes side. The Dungeon Master is all of those and more and all at once. The main difference between being a DM and being The Hive was that the DM had only a single mouth and stream of thought with which to roleplay at once.

In Rainbow Falls, the part of xem that was Orange Sorbet finished ringing up a customer and smiled as they left him a tip.

The multitasking ability came as naturally as breathing. A dozen conversations, a hundred jobs, a thousand relationships: no sweat. Whether it was a feature of changeling biology, a blessing from the cursed dice that had brought xem to Equestria, or just the magically souped-up leftovers of Charlie the Human’s ADD, xey didn't know.

It came so naturally, that sometimes it was hard to remember what it felt like to be just... one person. Just Charlie the human.

The Hive wasn’t sure how much of Charlie was actually left. One day for everypony else was a thousand days of new memories for xem, after all. From a certain subjective viewpoint, xey had more life experience than all the princesses combined.

Most of the details xey knew for certain came from a battered old journal, reinforced by the part of xem whose sole job was to reread it every day. It painted a picture in broad strokes, but sometimes The Hive wished that Charlie the human had bothered to write more about their family, their childhood, their hometown. So many “obvious” details they’d never considered penning down, all lost now. Xey didn’t even know whether Charlie’s full name had been Charles or Charlotte.

Near a public park in Manehattan, the part of xem that was April Showers giggled with her girlfriends as she dutifully watched little May Flowers stubbornly struggle to scale the part of the slide she was meant to be sliding down.

When xey put on a persona—fully let xemself be filtered through a mental lens into a specific he, she, or other in a way that truly had no human comparison—it was almost like being a single person again. The part of xey that was actively he or she could tune out the rest, like focusing on one conversation in a noisy room. But the full scope of xem was never more than a thought away.

But there were certainly upsides to living, seeing, doing so many lives at once. For one thing, boredom was a thing of the past. If any part of xem felt like zoning out while cleaning or waiting in line or guarding an empty corridor, there was never a shortage of other, more interesting viewpoints to pull back and shift focus to. Usually from the parts of xem hanging around main characters and canon events. Whatever part of xem was actively Spike the Dragon was a very popular perspective of interest.

At the moment though, there was enough upheaval in Equestria to keep every part of xem occupied, especially since the part of xem that was Spike the Dragon was enjoying something of a slow day.

Spike sighed as he allowed his wandering mind to drift back to the part of xemself that was currently himself; not disconnected in any way, but still an individual. It was a quiet day in the Castle of Friendship for the first time in a while. The local gawkers had finally gotten the message that their favorite princess wasn’t going to be making any surprise appearances and had gone home (with only a few stragglers needing motivation from the roof-mounted defense system). Thus, despite the wide-reaching effects of the Revelation, Spike found himself falling back into his usual habits; namely, cleaning the castle, cooking snacks, and tidying up after Twilight.

Tasks that were made so much easier by the fact that he could have four or five instances of himself helping out at once, leaving one of himself free to take the time to properly get to know the real side of his adoptive sister.

“Okay, your turn,” he said around a mouthful of gem chips. “Villains edition. Discord, Sombra, Tirek. Go.”

Twilight, lounging on her throne in a way that spit on the very idea of noble bearing, blew a raspberry. “Really going for the throat aren't you? Alright... even reformed I don’t think I could make anything last long-term with Discord, so he’d have to be the one night stand. I bet he’d be a very selfish lover, but that’s manageable if it's only for one night. Sombra... marry, I guess. Never saw much of his personality, but if anyone could reform him I'd probably have the best chance. Which leaves Tirek to be killed: honestly no big loss.”

She levitated a few potato chips into her mouth and washed them down with a fruit punch flavored potion to neutralize their natural poison. “Here’s a hardball for you. Classic Spike ships: Ember, Thorax, Rarity.”

His answer was immediate. “Marry Rarity, one night stand with Ember, kill Thorax.”

Twilight blinked in momentary stupefaction. “Wow, no hesitation, huh?”

The part of The Hive that was Spike shrugged. “Your hardball was more like a slow pitch. You’re gonna have to try harder than that.”

“Fine.” She sucked on her straw for a bit more potion. “Still, marry Rarity? I thought you weren't into her now that all the masks are off.”

“I'm not gonna pursue her,” he countered, “but she's Rarity. She’s objectively hot.”

Twilight nodded in agreement. “True. But killing Thorax? No moral indecision at all?”

“He's as much a part of me as any other changeling. ‘Killing' him would be like deciding to delete a Tumblr alt account.” He lifted another fistful of chips but paused as a thought struck him. “Wait, Spike/Thorax is a popular ship?”

“In certain circles,” Twilight replied distractedly as she peered into the depth of the chip bag, searching for any decently-sized specimens among the broken bits.

“Your circles?”

“Not me, no. Personally, I always shipped—”

Twilight choked on her words, her eyes going wide as her mouth clamped shut like a spring-loaded trap.

No reaction could have made him less interested. “Shipped what?”

“Nothing,” she said, suddenly finding her punch far more interesting. “Nevermind.”

“Come on, you can't leave me hanging like that!”

“No. It's… embarrassing.” As if the growing blush on her face wasn’t already a testament to that.

He mentally ran through some options, and it didn’t take changeling cloud computing to come up with the worst possible answer.

“It was Spikelight, wasn't it?”

She said nothing, but the look of pure mortification was answer enough.

“Do you still...?”

“No,” she shot back immediately. “Absolutely not. I would never. You're like a brother to me. That ship died the day I got involved in the dynamic.”

An awkward silence filled the room. Spike chose to distract himself with the part of xem that was watching a play in Manehattan.

Twilight coughed pointedly, bringing him back to the moment. “Which, uh, reminds me of something. Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while.”

Noting the seriousness of her tone, he sat up straight and gave her his full attention. “Yeah?”

She fidgeted in her seat. With her ears pressed back against her head and her eyes darting like the prey species she technically was, it didn’t take an emotional sixth sense to see how profoundly uncomfortable she was.

It took a few false starts before she finally found her voice. “I’ve been doing some thinking,” she started. “About what you said. Back when we thought it was just the seven of us who used to be humans. You said that you’d been Spike ever since the day he… you hatched, right? During the entrance exam?”

He nodded.

“But I didn't show up until a few weeks before canon started.”

Twilight took a deep breath, held it, and released it.

“So that means you know…” She hesitated again, chewing over her words in obvious discomfort. “You knew the Twilight that was here… before I arrived, right? The original Twilight Sparkle.” He nodded, and she sighed, paradoxically both relieved and more tense than before. “Was she… I mean… could you tell when I… stepped into her shoes? Was it obvious?”

Another benefit of the unique perspective being The Hive provided: he, as xem, had had plenty of time to prepare for tough conversations like this.

He hopped down from his chair and put a comforting arm around Twilight’s shoulders. The touch seemed to help her focus. “You want the truth? No. I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t like I was looking for inconsistencies or anything, but there was also a lot of plot happening right around then that I was more focused on, so anything weird or out-of-place I just chalked up to that.” He shook his head and gave her a cheeky smile. “Either you’re just that good of an actor, or your personality and original Twilight’s were so close that the distinction is kinda meaningless anyway.”

She smiled, but it was a brittle thing. “Thanks, it’s… something, I guess. A small bit of closure. It’s just a nagging thought that gets stuck in my head sometimes. Everyone’s a human now, but there were definitely ponies here at some point. But what happened to them? And why?” She shook her head. “Philosophy’s not my strong suit, so I try not to think about it, but sometimes…”

“...you can’t help but wonder,” he finished.

Twilight nodded and a moment of reflective silence passed between them.

“You’ve probably met more humans than anyone else,” she mused. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas about what happened to all the ponies? The real ponies?”

He did. Xey did. And xey’d had a lot of time to speculate and a lot of data to work with.

“I’ve got a few.” He cleared his throat before beginning. “From what I’ve seen, there’s broadly three kinds of ways humans show up in Equestria. The first is the Reincarnators. People who died one way or another and got reborn as a pony with all their old memories. The second is the Transmigrators. People who, through magic portals or cursed stuff or fringe science, suddenly found themselves in Equestria in the body of a pony who never existed before that moment. The third are the Understudies. People who got dropped in the middle of some existing pony’s life. Those are my names for them, at least. The Red Fist and the Illumi-Nots have different ones, as well as a few more categories for the weird niche cases, but it’s that last group that no one likes talking about.”

He stole a handful of Twilight’s chips and tossed them back before regretting it immediately. While Twilight swore the nostalgia was strong enough to power through the poison, potatoes and draconic taste buds were clearly something that nature had never intended to interact. Spite tasted better.

“The other two don’t have any big moral concerns, it’s only the Understudies that have the lingering question of what happened to the mind, the personality, the soul that inhabited the body before them. The Red Fists like to say that those ponies died—heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms: things that wouldn’t leave visible damage—and that a human soul jumps in to take over so quickly that no one notices.” He shrugged. “It’s possible, but kinda grim. Personally, I prefer the Illumi-Not’s theory.”

“And what’s that?” Twilight asked.

“That the Understudies are really just a special case of either Reincarnators or Transmigrators whose memories were locked until something triggered them. They didn’t replace anyone, they just got their own lost memories back.”

It wasn’t a perfect answer: it had holes and there were contradictory cases, but believing it to be true was a hope he had to have. Everyone else only had to worry about displacing a single soul, but there were hundreds of changelings (many already in the middle of infiltrations) when xey had woken up.

But unless the scientists and philosophers came to an agreement, xey probably wouldn’t be getting an answer anytime soon. The part that was Spike shrugged and continued. “There’s a couple other ideas that get tossed around: lots of variations on other Equestrias and split timelines and stuff where the local pony gets booted to one of them when a human arrives. But it’s really all speculation any way you slice it.”

Finding his mouth a bit dry from the monologue, he reached over and snagged her bottle of potion-punch, taking a long slurp despite her noise of protest. The taste was rather sour, but the burst of emotion it sparked in Twilight was a decent flavor: surprised amusement with undertones of exasperation.

As he tried for a second sip she pulled the bottle from his grasp and laughed as she lifted it beyond his reach with her magic. “Go get your own! Pinkie made this special just for me.”

“Then she can make you some more. Share!”

He kept up the lighthearted scuffle for another minute or so, long enough to take the edge off the somber and depressing mood. Existential dread tasted revolting.

Twilight coughed and took another drink to ease her laugh-wracked throat. The straw growled as it sucked up the last few drops. “Great. Now neither of us get any.” She set it back on the table and ran her hoof through her mane, unknowingly filling it with crumbs and oil. “Well, at least I know there’s more options. I’m sure someone will figure it out eventually and worrying about it until then is unhealthy. It’s not like I could change things now even if I knew.”

Spike nodded, her opinion echoing his own. “Yeah. These are the lives we’re stuck with so we might as well make the best of them.”

“Still,” she rubbed her chin in thought. “Bumping ponies between alternate timelines. I hadn’t thought of that one at all. I wonder what Starlight thinks about it, given she’s the resident expert.”

“Couldn’t say. You’d have to ask her.”

“True, true.” Twilight nodded along for a moment before pausing. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her around for a while.”

“Me neither,” Spike replied before he was struck by the oddity of that statement.

He hadn’t seen her. In fact, xey hadn’t seen her. Across hundreds of bodies in dozens of cities, not one part of xem could remember seeing Starlight Glimmer in a couple weeks.

As Twilight continued to speculate, the part of The Hive that was Spike pulled back into the greater xem to better focus. Several other bodies doing less important things also stopped to help search through the last few weeks of thousands of memories. Things had been so chaotic, maybe xey’d just forgotten?

While no few parts of xem sorted through memories for a flash of non-Twilight purple fur, the rest of xey’s bodies perked an ear up for anyone who might know of her whereabouts. It wasn’t likely that anyone would be talking about her at that exact moment, let alone one close enough to be overheard, but the odds of any random chance got better the more bodies xey threw at the problem. Besides, Starlight wasn’t just anybody.

There were a couple of hits. A group in Canterlot debating her strengths in a death battle. A visitor to Our Town asking about the whereabouts of her Staff of Sameness. But nothing recent. Nothing about the pony, rather than the character.
Except for one.

In a distant corner of Ponyville, in a special section of a bar dedicated for minors who were still awaiting paperwork proving they were allowed to drink, the part of xem that was wiping down the counter eavesdropped on a conversation between two junior patrons.

“—ight Glimmer? You could ask her.”

Diamond Tiara shook her head. “I don’t think she’s that kind of counselor. If I was the one having a problem, maybe, but…” she trailed off, uncertain, idly swirling her mocktail rather than drinking it.

“There could be some crossover,” Silver Spoon pushed. “Marriage counseling is sort of like a friendship problem, right?”

“I guess. But it’s not like anything’s changed. If anything, that’s the problem. Mother- Spoiled—I don’t even know what to call her now—she keeps acting like nothing’s changed. Insisting on it. Doesn’t want a radio or any other new inventions in the house. Shuts the windows when someone starts singing a song from back home. And she absolutely freaked when she heard me call Filthy “Richard” instead of Father.” She took a sip of her drink, but from her expression it didn’t have the bite she was looking for. “I feel like I’m going crazy. I finally get a chance to be my own person and she’s right there, ready to shove me back in a Diamond Tiara-shaped box.”

“Maybe… she’s scared?” Silver Spoon offered. “She is losing her daughter. Kinda. That has to hit hard.”

The pink filly rolled her eyes and made a dismissive snort. “I doubt it. She’s not being all smothering or loving or whatever. I think that’s just who she is. She’s not putting on an act like we were; her base personality just is HOA-president Karen. She doesn’t know how to be anyone else.”

Silver Spoon frowned. “That almost sounds like… are you sure she used to be human too?”

“I am. She knows cultural stuff and famous people—what little we were able to pry out of her—but I just don’t think she cares. I overheard her and Richard talking one night; she’s been a pony more than twice as long as she was a human. Either she barely remembers it, or it’s the kind of memories she’d prefer to forget. Either way, it leaves me stuck playing ‘Mommy’s perfect princess’ whenever I’m at home.”

Silver Spoon slid to the edge of her barstool and reached over to pull her friend into a one-armed hug. “Hey. If it gets too bad, you know you can always come and stay at my place. We may not actually be little girls, but that’s no reason we can’t have an extended sleepover.”

Diamond Tiara snorted, but smiled. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Spoons.” Then, in most unladylike fashion, she knocked back the rest of her drink and slammed the glass on the counter. “Hey! Waiter! Get me another! A double! And one for my friend!”

“I still can’t put any real booze in it,” the part of xem that was Pitcher Pour reminded her.

“Whatever. Put some sugar cubes or something in it. Maybe a big enough sugar crash will remind me what a hangover feels like.”

As he went off to make their drinks, he half-listened in on their continuing conversation, though with dwindling focus as, while interesting, it clearly had nothing to do with the search for Starlight.

“That said, Spoons, you may have a point about finding a counselor or a therapist or something. She’s been reaching out to other ponies who think the same way, and I think there may be a bunch more of them who don’t like change than I would have thought.”

Meanwhile, at the exact same time Pitcher Pour was listening in, other parts of xem in various cities were putting out feelers in their local information networks. The Hive as a whole didn’t care much for gossip beyond the practical usefulness of it, but the parts of xem that were Loose Lips, Rumor Weed, Spilled Tea, and Horse’s Mouth lived for it.

But while rumors moved at the speed of light, it still would take time for their social circles of retirees, teen fillies, office drones, and well-to-do socialites to make the rounds and get back to xem, so in the meantime xey pursued other avenues of investigation.

Likewise at the exact same time, another part of xem was arriving at the School of Friendship. It wasn’t likely that Starlight would actually be in her office, especially with the building being unoccupied while society settled from its upheaval, but it was worth a look. Xey had bodies to spare, after all.

This particular body was more drone than most, still dressed in generic changeling black without expressing an identity. A backup body, one of many kept in stasis in strategic mini-hives in case anything unfortunate happened to another body and a quick switcheroo was called for. It was the closest one xey had to the school.

The doors were unlocked as it made its way through the silent, studentless corridors. Even if Starlight wasn’t around, her office might still hold a clue to her whereabouts. Or at least a note, if xey were lucky. But with the lack of any easy answers, it was all too easy to speculate in wilder possibilities. Maybe she'd remembered that she'd arrived in Equestria with someone and left on a quest to find them. Maybe she and Trixie had extended their trip and were still out partying somewhere (it wouldn't be the first time).

Or maybe she’d just disliked being Starlight so much that she’d ditched the identity as soon as she could and started a new life elsewhere. She was, after all, an expert in fake cutie marks. With a new generic mark and a bottle of mane dye she'd be unrecognizable.

Despite the many benefits of a hivemind intelligence, changelings were not immune to distraction. As a result, the undisguised body was so caught up in its musings that it failed to notice the sound of voices until the doors to the cafeteria slammed shut behind it and the voices abruptly stopped. A pregnant moment passed as a pair of compound eyes met four shocked pairs.

Then, pandemonium.

“Changeling!” someone screamed. “I mean, the old kind! The bad ones! You know what I mean!”

Yona reared up in panicked fright, flipping the table and sending what looked like a tray of sandwiches flying. Smolder and Gallus took to the air, the latter backing off to a safe distance while the former gathered a threatening mouthful of fire and brandished a long metal pole like a spear (though her intimidation factor was somewhat lessened by the half-cooked cheese sandwich skewered on the end).

Silverstream, unflappably peppy as always, was the only one to not move. But she did squee and dance in place. “Oh, Wowzers! I didn't know there were any of that color of changelings left. This is so cool! Are you here to apply for the school? We’ve got one changeling already—Ocellus—do you know her? If you’re from the same hive, does that make you one of her relatives? Oh, I wish she was here so she could introduce us!”

Along with distraction, changelings were also not immune to panicked reflexes. Which was precisely why that part of xem did the most familiar action when in the presence of these particular non-ponies. It became Ocellus.

The burst of green fire brought with it not just a bluer carapace, but the unique perspective of Ocellus’s mental schema. She was quick to duck behind a trash can while also raising her hooves in surrender. “Wait! Wait! It's just me! I can explain!”

Unfortunately, her desperate cry only served to sow more confusion. Yona and Silverstream looked at her surprised bafflement, while the pair of flyers looked even more on edge.

“Wait. Friend Ocellus was black Changeling?” Yona asked.

Smolder rolled her eyes and growled. “No. That's one of the bad ones pretending to be her to trick us. Duh.”

“Oh. I understand now.”

“No you don’t!” The changeling called back desperately. “I am Ocellus!”

“Oh! Then that’s good.”

“Don’t listen to her! She’s lying!”

“That’s bad.”

“I’m not lying!”

“That’s—”

“She is!”

“Wait—”

“I’m not!”

“Yona head hurt…”

“Are too!”

Gallus landed by SIlverstream, his head mimicking hers swiveling back and forth between the two sides like a tennis match. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. She sure acts like Ocellus.”

“Sure,” he shrugged, “But changelings are good at that.”

“Are they? I’ve never seen a changeling try to be a different changeling before.”

He raised his claw to object before realizing he didn’t have a comeback to that. “Huh. Me neither.” He turned his attention back to the argument which had devolved into a back and forth of “nuh-uh” and “ya-huh” while Yona sat in the middle holding her head in her hooves. He decided to take pity on her and put a stop to things. “Hey Ocellus.”

“Nuh- oh? Yes?”

“You remember that one time after Professor Fluttershy’s class about weasels when I came for a surprise visit and walked in on you—”

“Gah!” she yelped, blushing furiously. “No! I mean, yes! I mean, no one needs to know about that! You promised!”

Gallus grinned. “Yeah, it’s her.”

Smolder still didn’t look convinced, but lowered her spear. The sandwich fell off the tip with a sad sound. Ocellus poked her head out from behind the trash can and cautiously re-emerged.

“Soooo…” she started, idly kicking a hoof but unintentionally kicking a sandwich in the process. “How was your summer break?”

“Nuh uh,” Smolder countered. “We’re not just gonna move past that. Explain.”

Ocellus sighed. “Couldn’t be that easy, huh? So I am me, just… also not. It’s complicated. There’s more to changelings than I—we?—I told you. This is going to be hard to explain.” And embarrassing, and awkward, but they were her friends and they deserved the truth.

“We got time,” Gallus said as he picked up a sandwich off the floor and took a bite. “Looks like classes got canceled for some reason.”

The part of The Hive that was Ocellus winced. “That… might be even harder to explain than the other thing.”

Meanwhile still, back at the castle the friendship Twilight was speculating aloud.

“—that, but you’d think she would’ve told me if she was going to extend her trip. I know Trixie knows a message spell. Oh, that's another option. Have you asked Trixie? She might know. I could—”

“Twilight,” the part that was Spike interrupted.

“—send a- What? Did you find her already?”

“Nah, but I did figure out that thing you thought we were forgetting the other day.”

“Well, that's good.” A beat passed. “What did I forget?”

“You forgot about the Student Six.”

Twilight blinked, froze, then shifted through several emotions so quickly she created an entirely new flavor never before documented by changeling-kind before she settled on resigned embarrassed.

“Oh, right. Them. In my defense, I wouldn't be the first.”

It did not take long for Ocellus to learn that convincing her friends that she was, in fact, Ocellus, had been the easy half of the problem. The real challenge was trying to help them wrap their heads around the idea of a hivemind. She’d had numerous metaphors ready… all which faltered thanks to Equestria’s general lack of science fiction media to use as a reference. They were making headway, but it was a foreign concept to try and convey.

“So you are Ocellus?”

“Right.”

“But you're also Thorax?”

“Right.”

“Even though I've seen both of you in the same room together?”

“Right. Same person, multiple bodies.”

“Yona still not understand. Was Ocellus pretending to be King, or was King pretending to be Ocellus?”

The changeling groaned and rubbed her eyes. This was going nowhere.

“Okay. New metaphor. Imagine there's… an Enchanted library. It's filled with hundreds of books, and all of them are blank except for the first page that has a list of stories. You pick one, and the book fills with that story. But because of the library's magic, you can put down that book, pick up a totally different one from another shelf and keep reading the same story from the same point you left off. Different book, same story, you follow?”

It wasn't perfect, but it was better than her next best explanation of having multiple accounts on the same website.

“Maybe?” Gallus scratched the base of his crest. “But how's that relate to changelings?”

“The Hive is the library. This body is a book. Ocellus is a story.”

Silverstream gasped as her eyes lit up with understanding. “Oh! I think I get it! It’s like a hermit crab changing shells!”

Ocellus shrugged. “Sure, if that helps it make sense to you.”

“Yona still not understand.” The yak smiled. “But Ocellus is Ocellus, even if they are sometimes not Ocellus.”

“Yeah, I guess the details don’t really matter,” Gallus agreed.

They all turned to Smolder, who rolled her eyes and huffed. “Fine. She’s Ocellus. Even if she’s weirder than usual. I still want to know why you never told us. Aren’t we all supposed to be friends?”

The changeling winced. “Well, for kind of more or less this exact reason. It’s complicated and confusing and when we met, changelings were only just starting to get accepted. I knew I’d tell you eventually, but there never was a good time until, well… I guess you don’t know cause you were on vacation, but there’s been a lot of changes in the past few weeks.” She sagged a little. “And now I’ve gotta figure out how to explain all that mess to you. Okay, so—”

“Hold on a sec,” Gallus interrupted, raising a claw. “Does anyone else hear music?”

They all quieted down and strained to listen. There was definitely something like music in the distance. The beat of a drum kit and not much more.

“Probably just one of those Heartsong things happening in town,” Smolder dismissed.

“I dunno,” Silverstream said, “I’m usually really sensitive to those but I can’t feel any harmony magic.”

“Song getting louder,” Yona added.

And she was right. A muffled guitar had joined the drum, but getting clearer every second. Those among them with sharp ears could almost make out lyrics.

‘Yes, I’m let loose! From the noose! That’s kept me hanging about!’

Gallus turned towards the door. “I think it’s coming from inside the school.”

Smolder readied her improvised spear again (now sandwich free). “And getting closer.”

“I still can’t hear it,” Ocellus complained as she discreetly morphed her ear frills into tufted batpony ears. They swiveled for a few seconds before locking in on the cafeteria doors. She frowned. “Wait. That sounds… familiar.”

‘I've been looking at the sky! 'Cause it's gettin' me high! Forget the hearse 'cause I never die!’

The music had grown loud enough that everyone could hear it. There were two voices singing it, the feminine of the two trailing a fraction of a beat behind the masculine one.

“I don’t know the song, but that voice sounds weirdly familiar,” Gallus noted.

“You too?” Smolder asked. “I can’t put my claw on it, but something about it makes me annoyed.”

“Where do I know that from?” Ocellus muttered, retreating partially out of herself into the larger xem to try and jumpstart a memory with a broader perspective.

‘I got two lives! Cat's eyes! Abusin' every one of them and running wild!’

The music boomed, sounding like it was coming from right outside.

'Cause I'm back!’

Something pounded at the door.

‘Yes, I'm back!!’

The group of friends shrunk into a defensive cluster. The door shook as another blow hit.

‘Well, I'm baaAAaaAAck, baaAAaaAAck!’

Ocellus’s eyes went wide.

“Uh, Twilight? We might have a problem.”

“Well, I'm back in black!”

The doors burst open with supernatural force, slamming into the walls like thunder to herald the arrival of the most unforgettable figure of their young lives.

“That’s right COZY'S BACK!”

The music carried on in instrumental as one and all gaped at the new arrival. Her cerulean mane had been enhanced with a combination of black and purple stripes, but there was no mistaking those ringlet curls. She looked to be in fine form; more like she’d come from a day at the spa than an incarceration in a maximum security prison. She graced them all with that manic grin that still haunted some of their dreams, brimming with pride and self-confidence in her own rightness.

“Hellooooo Friendship School!” Cozy Glow, junior villainess and winner of the 'Most Likely to Decorate the Palace Gardens Someday' award, crooned, “Guess who’s back and read to—hey!” Her smirk faltered. “Where is everyone? How am I supposed to do my big comeback reveal if there’s no one here to witness it but the Diversity Squad?” After a moment of silence, she shrugged and continued. “Ah, oh well. No stopping now. Hi there, Friendship the Next Generation. Did ya miss me?”

“C-Cozy Glow!” Silverstream gasped.

“That my name, Pinkie-but-a-bird, glad you remembered!”

“What are you doing here?”

“You're supposed to be in Tartarus,” Smolder scowled.

Cozy shrugged. “Didn’t like it. Bad neighborhood, terrible neighbors, and the nightlife there was completely dead.” The record hissed and clicked as it reached the end of the recording. She glanced around and took in the mostly empty lunch room. “So did everyone, like, flunk out or something? I spent a week planning this and I am honestly disappointed in my reception.”

“They extended summer break due to… circumstances,” Ocellus said tersely.

Cozy clicked her tongue. “Should have thought of that. Should have planned for that. It would have worked just as well to do the whole entrance in the middle of Ponyville instead of—whoa!”

Cozy ducked as a sandwich sailed through the air, barely clipping one of her curls. The flying footlong continued on its flightpath until it reached an unplanned collision with the portable record player she’d left sitting in the doorway.

“Hey! Rude!” she snapped. “I was talking. And watch where you’re throwing things! Do you have any idea how much a custom record costs?”

Gallus rolled his eyes. “I literally could not care less.”

“Well it’s a lot! Even if I did get it for a discount because everybody loves the adorable, two-faced, omnicidal Cozy Glow.”

“Loves you?” Smolder gagged, “Nocreature loves you! You're a wanted criminal! A monster! A villain!”

“A beloved villain, thanks,” she preened. “But that's all in the past now. It’s all about fresh starts and new beginnings these days, so I figured why not do the reformation thing early? Beats a future as a lawn ornament. I even got a royal pardon and everything.” She reached into her mane and pulled out a scroll with an official-looking seal. “Signed and sealed by Celestia herself. All charges dropped, record expunged.”

“No way that’s real,” Gallus protested. “Gotta be fake.”

“Real as the beak on your face, birdboy.”

“But you tried to destroy Equestria!”

“Oh, that? Nah. Don’t worry. I was only pretending to be evil.”

Her claim was met with a deadpan stare. “Pretending.”

“Yep. If I really wanted to destroy Equestria, there's a bajillion easier ways to do it than flushing all the magic down the drain. I mean that’s just stupid.” She landed, and her expression took on a melancholy, distant look. “But that was my role to play. Just following the script.”

A moment of confused silence passed, save for one member who knew exactly what she was talking about. Ocellus approached cautiously. “You knew the canon?”

Cozy nodded, then looked up, eyes curious. “Yeah. I didn’t think the changelings were a part of—”

“We are,” Ocellus said quickly, “But I don’t think the other creatures are.”

“Oh. Oh.” Her eyes widened as she glanced at the others. “So they don’t—”

“I was about to tell them.”

“Um, Ocellus?” The casually conversing pair turned Silverstream who looked confused and wary. “Are you… friends with Cozy?”

The changeling shook her head. “No, but you could say we're in the same situation.”

“Is Cozy changeling too?” Yona asked.

Cozy barked out a laugh. “Now that would be something. No, if I could shapeshift I definitely wouldn't be walking around looking like this.” She tugged on one of her curls and let it sproing back into place. “I'd much rather be a hippogriff.” Silverstream perked slightly at that. “Or maybe an anthro Yak. One with an absolute huge pair of—”

“Children present,” Ocellus hissed at her with a glare.

“...Horns. Huge pair of horns.”

Yona nodded knowingly. “Yona understand. There is ancient yak saying: always be yourself. Unless you can be a yak. Then be a yak.”

“See? Best girl gets it. Though while we’re on the topic, lovebug: you got any kind of changeling magic you can use to induct me into the hive, vampire style?”

“What? No.”

“Shame. Could Chrysalis do it? Is it a queen thing?”

“I— it's not— No. That's not a thing. I can’t turn you into a changeling.”

“Come on,” she pleaded, slipping back into her saccharine persona like a glove. “I already rejected my humanity for power. I’m more than happy to reject my equinity for a buggy cure to body dysmorphia.”

“What’s a humanity?” Silverstream innocently asked.

The redirect proved a suitable distraction for the pegasus. “That’s right. You all don’t know yet. Kinda surprising token normal horse hasn’t told you yet.”

“Who?”

“Sandbar is home with his family, adjusting,” Ocellus clarified.

“Goody,” Cozy giggled, her devious smile returning. “That means I get to be the one to tell you. Take a seat kiddies, as Aunt Cozy tells you all about the great invasion that happened right under your noses.”

“We’re all literally older than you,” Smolder grumbled.

“Do you still need me to intervene?” Twilight asked. She’d prepared a number of emergency contingencies, ranging from a net gun to a few wide-field combat and suppression spells, depending on what kind of intentions the filly villain returned with.

“Nah, looks like you can stand down. She comes in peace.” Spike hopped back onto his mini-throne and grabbed some more chips. “She’s explaining the whole human thing to them. Saving me a lot of trouble.” He winced. “Though I keep having to run damage control and correct all her exaggerations and intentionally misleading phrasing.”

Twilight nodded and sat back down, carrying away her various preparations in a field of pink magic. “Well, that's good. Maybe she can make some friends for real this time. Still no luck finding Starlight?”

“None. She’s off the grid.”

“Well, I'm sure she'll turn up. She's a smart mare. She can take care of herself.”

“...and they were eating potatoes! Potatoes! Throwing them back like hayfries!... or, I guess, it’d be gems in your case.”

Ember rolled her eyes. Why did ponies always have to be so dramatic? She leaned back and tried to get comfortable in her throne, with little luck. She’d been fine with her dad’s old throne (even if it dwarfed her, but she knew she’d one day grow into it) but that contentment had died the day Spike had introduced her to cushions. For all that she liked to criticize the ponies for being weak and soft… they were really onto something there. She’d even parted with a chunk of her hoard to pay a pony craftsman to make a custom throne for her, though she hadn’t heard any updates from him in a few weeks. Maybe he needed more gems.

That was one of the perks of being Dragon Lord; having more gems than she could stuff herself with. What better way to show off just how big her hoard was than by having some of it turned into a fancy chair? A hoard with back support (and fire-proof cushions). And if she ever got tired of the throne, she could always just eat it and buy another.

But rulership wasn't all lava flows and daisy agates. Sometimes she had to do actual work. Normally, it was just mediating between various arguing dragons, but sometimes there was also diplomacy with other nations. Which was why she was struggling to stay focused as she listened to some pony go on and on and on about whatever. She'd only let her in at all because she thought it was Twilight, Spike’s adopted clutchmate and Ponylord of Ponyville, but after a few minutes she’d noticed the lack of wings and realized it was actually the other purple one. Star whatever.

Who was still rambling about… something, and pacing a rut in her floor.

“I’d think it was a changeling takeover, but they'd never announce it like that. Thorax never said Chrysalis was into big song and dance numbers. And they never had the kind of numbers to replace everyone even before the reformation and population boom.”

Something about ponies being weird. But ponies were always weird. That was kinda their thing. And this was getting boring, so she decided to cut the chase. “So did you actually want something or did you just come all the way out here to try and bore me to death?”

Starwhatever actually stopped talking for a second and shot her a glare of… something. Anger? Desperation? Hunger, maybe? Their squishy faces were always hard to read. “I’m here because I need your help. Something’s happened to all the ponies back home, even the princesses and my friends, and I can’t fix it on my own. I need allies. I need friends.”

Ember shrugged. “So ponies are being weird. That’s not new. Spike’s told me a lot of stories about his adventures. Whatever’s going on, I’m sure it’ll blow over in a week.”

“Normally, yes, but it’s been weeks and I’ve never seen something as bad as this before. Not even in the other timelines… nevermind.” She shook her head. “Whatever’s going on, it’s like everypony’s been replaced with strangers. I have no one to turn to except friends of friends and even those are hard to come by. Please, won’t you help me?”

“Again, really not seeing how it’s my problem.” The pony seemed to wilt at her words. She sighed. Why couldn’t diplomacy be solved through trial by combat? That’d be so much easier. “Look. You ponies tend to panic pretty easy. I’m sure it’s nothing. Go home. Talk with your friends. Like half of your friendship problems get solved when you make them talk to each other, right? If you get invaded by… I don’t know, living gem monsters or something, I’m your dragon. Cracks, I’ll bring a whole armada with me. But “my friends are acting weird” is a pony problem, not a dragon one.”

Starpony sighed, but nodded and raised her head. “Fine. Fine! If you won’t help, there’s others I can go to. Sorry for wasting your time.”

As she turned around and started to leave, Ember called after her. “And tell Spike to come by sometime. He hasn’t visited in awhile.”

The pony turned back, fixing her with a complicated expression. “Sure. Will do. If he ever starts acting like himself again.”

Ember felt the blood turn to obsidian in her veins. Like she’d had a bad crash into the ocean and suddenly there was no air and her wings didn’t work. “Hold up. You didn’t say Spike was involved.”

She rolled her eyes. “I said all my friends, Spike included. He’s acting just as unnatural as the rest of them.”

Ember jumped from her throne and glided over to land by the pony’s side. “Tell me what you need,” she demanded.

“I— what?” Starlight—that was her name!—stammered. “I thought you said you weren’t going to help?”

“That was when it was a pony problem,” Ember explained slowly, as if to a hatchling. “Now Spike is in trouble, so it’s a me problem. And since I’m Dragonlord, that makes it a Dragon problem. Now tell me what you need to fix him. The Dragonlands are at your disposal.”

Starlight replied with one of the few pony expressions Ember could recognize without fail.

A victorious grin.

Author's Note

Hello friends.

Yes, that's right. It returns. And it's not a jokey April Fool's chapter either.
(Thus making you the fools for having expected such. Truly, the greatest prank is authenticity.)

Bigger news. I have an ending planned. One that I think will satisfactorily answer all those lingering questions. And do so within four more chapters. (Maybe five).

A few other updates as well: I've gone back through the preceding story and cleaned it up a bit. Prettied up some awkward lines, removed a lot of semicolons, and generally smoothed out the flow. I have also re-cannonized trans Rarity. This stemmed from a typo in the original one shot, which readers were quick to point out, which was subsequently retconned. I have now un-retconned it, since it offers a deeper and more interesting character to explore. Not much else changed lore-wise expect for a few minor tweaks that will make the ending a bit cleaner.

My goal is to have this completed within the year, muse and real life circumstances depending. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

(And do keep an eye on my other "dead" stories. It's a lovely year for necromancy, don't you think?)