Setting back human-pony relations to the middle ages
Equestria
"Soon!" said Apple Bloom.
"Soon," agreed Sweetie Belle.
"Soon..." hissed Scootaloo, grinning and wringing her hooves together, wings flared.
The post office's front door opened, and Parcel Post, the postmaster, stepped out. Three large envelopes were balanced on top of his blue uniform cap.
"Good morning, fillies. I'm betting you three are waiting for these?" He lowered his head, and the Crusaders snatched the envelopes from the top of his head.
The fillies looked at the envelopes.
"Apple Bloom?" said Scootaloo, reading the envelope in her hooves.
"Sweetie Belle?" grumped Apple Bloom.
"Scootaloo?" asked Sweetie Belle.
They traded their envelopes.
"I couldn't help but notice," said Parcel Post, "those are official mailings from the Home Ministry in Canterlot. Are you fillies getting passports?"
"We're all a'goin' on a trip!" cried Apple Bloom.
"With our big sisters! Honorary or otherwise," said Scootaloo.
"And Princess Twilight!" said Sweetie Belle.
Parcel Post grinned. "Where are you fillies going?"
"Through th' portal!" said Apple Bloom.
"To Earth!" said Scootaloo.
"To Rome! And Paris! Tres chic!" said Sweetie Belle.
Parcel Post's eyes widened. "Those poor, poor humans..."
The opening of the portal had ruined Appleloosa's frontier-town vibe, and it was now five times the size of Ponyville.
Humans and ponies milled around on its newly paved sidewalks. Open-air cafes and new hotels packed its main street.
Rarity grimaced as they passed a human-style restaurant and she smelled cooking meat.
"Blech," said Rainbow Dash, covering her nose with her wings.
"Where are we all meetin' Princess Twilight?" asked Apple Bloom.
"At the portal complex, darling," said Rarity. "She's got some princess duties to attend to first."
Miss Cheerilee said, "Apparently a human hurt somepony, and Twilight has to decide if he gets deported."
"Could ponies get deported from Earth?" asked Sweetie Belle.
"If you break the human's laws, of course, darling," Rarity replied.
Scootaloo flapped her wings twice. "Could ponies get put in jail on Earth?"
"It's possible," Cheerilee replied, "but not very likely. Not many ponies have misbehaved on Earth yet. And I doubt even humans would jail foals."
"Alabama," corrected Rainbow Dash.
Rarity looked at the Crusaders. "You do understand we shall have to behave by the humans' rules once we cross the portal, correct?"
"We do!" chorused the Crusaders, smiling beatifically, eyes closed, and with momentary sparkly halos appearing above their heads.
Miss Cheerilee asked, "Would you three recognize good behavior if you saw it?"
They walked across town and reached the stone portal complex. Twilight sat at a table near a café kiosk, levitating a large glass of iced cider and reading a book. Two Royal Guards stood near her, ensuring her privacy.
"Princess!" shouted the Crusaders, running to her and piling up together into a chair on the far side of the table from her.
"Girls! It's so good to see you. Did the Ponyville train just get in?"
A whistle sounded across town. "And leaves again," said Applejack. "How's it goin', Twilight? Get your princess duties sorted out?"
Twilight sighed and levitated her book down. "Yes."
"Do tell us about it, darling," Rarity said.
Twilight said, "It's bureaucratic and boring."
Cheerliee dropped her saddlebags and sat down next to Twilight. "You might have been to Earth before, Princess, but we haven't. The more we can know about humans, the safer we'll all be."
Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Rarity all sat down, too.
"Fine," Twilight said. "A human and a pony had a disagreement, negotiating prices at the pony's shop. The pony turned away to help another customer, ignoring the human."
Twilight turned and put a forehoof on Cheerilee's shoulder. "When a human wants another human's attention, especially if they're mad, they grab each other's shoulder or upper arm, to prevent them from turning away. Robert grabbed Cloudy Quill's wing, instead, and dislocated it."
Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo both gasped and clamped their wings tight to their flanks.
"The human was sorry. A simple misunderstanding, but both cultures have so much to learn! That's half the reason we're going on this trip. I gave Robert the choice of deportation or being featured in an educational brochure on acceptable behavior to give to humans when they arrive. He took the brochure option, but he's used up all his warnings."
"What happened to Cloudy Quill?" Scootaloo said, with a flap of the wings. "I've heard her name. I think we're fifth cousins, or something."
"She's in a sling, but she'll recover. Humans haven't yet learned how fragile pony wings are."
"I hope we don't get deported from Earth," Scootaloo said. "That would be embarrassing."
"I hope we don't break any human's wings," said Sweetie Belle with a frown.
Apple Bloom raised one eyebrow. "We won't."
And at that moment, Rainbow Dash's, Applejack's, and Cheerilee's cutie marks began to glow, with an odd chiming sound.
Twilight took to her wings and hovered over them. "A map mission! The map is calling us!" Twilight looked over her shoulder, and saw her own cutie mark was dark and still. "....ohhhhh."
With the train already gone, Twilight used a Royal Voucher and bought a new pegasus chariot from an Appleloosan vehicle lot. Rainbow Dash hitched up, Cheerilee and Applejack climbed aboard and strapped in, and the Crusaders hugged the three of them goodbye.
Rainbow Dash hauled the chariot into the air and back towards Ponyville.
Twilight looked at Scootaloo. "I'm asking you again: You're absolutely, totally, one hundred percent sure your aunts would be okay with this?"
Scootaloo nodded. "Yes! They love Rarity and you."
Twilight frowned at the Crusaders. "The only reason I'm not calling this whole thing off right now is because it's educational. And... the portal isn't going anywhere. If you three manage to get diplomacy cutie marks, well, that would be to all Equestria's benefit."
The Crusaders smiled and nodded, halos momentarily appearing again.
"Give me your passports," Twilight said.
Twilight levitated up the four silver-and-gold colored books, and they began to orbit above her head, faster and faster, as her horn charged with a spell.
After a brief flash of raspberry magic, she returned the passports to the others.
Instead of Equestrian silver and gold, they were now jet black.
Sweetie Belle levitated hers unsteadily in front of her eyes and read the new writing on its cover. "Dip-lo-ma-tic. Princess Twilight, what does 'diplomatic' mean?"
Rarity gasped. "Oh sweet Celestia, Twilight, darling, don't tell them what it means! Have you any idea the trouble they'll get into?"
Twilight's face paled slightly. "Oh! Right. Girls, what this means is, you're going to be on Earth representing Equestria itself, as part of my official royal entourage, and not just representing yourselves. Best behavior."
The grins and halos reappeared.
Earth
Rarity and the Crusaders hopped out of the limousine in front of the Louvre.
"All right, girls," Rarity said, levitating up three human-toddler sized backpacks with leashes. "I've a panda, a doggy, and an owl. Who wants which?"
"Sis, why do we have to wear leashes?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Because—" Rarity ground her teeth, then forced a smile back on her face "—of what you three did to the Pope. Yesterday was Palm Sunday, which is evidently a very major religious holiday, and you three... I just. Can't. Even."
"We said we were sorry!" whined the Crusaders.
"If I'm chaperoning you three by myself today, I need all the help I can get. Hold still."
"Where is Twilight, again?" asked Scootaloo. "She's nice to us."
"Vienna, I said," Rarity replied. "At the International Atomic Energy Agency. Luna thinks we ponies can make a lot of money by using unicorn magic to dispose of radioactive waste."
"What does that even mean?" said Apple Bloom.
"I've no idea, darling, none at all," Rarity said, snapping the panda backpack around Scootaloo, and levitating up its leash.
"Ow! Rarity! Pegasus!"
The two Paris Police detectives hid smiles behind their hands.
"Sweetie Belle? Apple Bloom? Owl or doggy?" Rarity asked.
The Louvre went more-or-less uneventfully, other than the Crusaders' whining about the humiliation of the leashes.
At one point, a security guard approached Rarity.
"Mademoiselle ambassador! You cannot walk pets in the Louvre!"
"We ain't pets!" snapped Apple Bloom.
"I'm her sister!" said Sweetie Belle. "And I'll never forgive her!"
"Call me a pet again and I'll bite your shin!" snarled Scootaloo.
"RarrrRRRRrrrrity," Scootaloo said during the short car ride from the Louvre to Notre Dame, "You've got to let me out of this backpack. It's killing my wings."
Rarity levitated the snaps open and looked at Scootaloo's wings. She used her forehooves and magic to spread the wings wide and flare the feathers. "Indeed it is," Rarity said. "They're getting swollen. Scootaloo—please accept my apologies. All I can say is I'm not a pegasus myself, so I didn't realize."
"Yeah, well," Scootaloo sniffed, "don't you remember Twilight's story about the pegasus and the human, before we crossed the portal? Wings are fragile, Twilight said. I—I accept your apology, Rarity, but just leave the backpack off, please? It hurts. It hurts a lot." Scootaloo used her foreleg to wipe some tears away.
"Of course, dear." Rarity gave her a short hug.
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle looked at each other. Sweetie Belle said, "Sis! You can't make us walk on leashes if Scootaloo isn't!"
Rarity thought about that, sitting silently for several minutes while the driver fought the car through the city traffic. Visions of tsunamis of pudding, breaking stained glass, and smoldering orange juice danced in Rarity's head.
But, alas: generosity, in all its forms, including benefit of the doubt. "Very well, girls, you're older than you used to be, and I shall trust you to be on your best behavior. You do remember what Twilight said, yes? You're representing all of Equestria here on Earth."
Smiles. Halos.
Rarity undid the other two leashes.
Rarity and the Crusaders stared up at the towering west facade of Notre Dame cathedral.
Rarity told the Crusaders, "It's eight hundred years old—only slightly younger than the Castle of the Two Sisters, and much older than the current Palace."
"I thought we didn't know how Earth and our years compared?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Details, mere details, darling." She spoke in Pranch to a human. "The tour guide says there are renovations underway, so please do stick close to me and be careful? I shan't put the leashes back on you—"
"'Cuz ya left them in the car," interrupted Apple Bloom.
"—but I shall not hesitate to levitate you three up and drag you back to the hotel. Twilight will be most disappointed in you three, when we meet up with her in Köln, if I tell her that I wasn't able to take my notes and sketches here at the cathedral. The entire point of this trip is to study human architecture for our embassy construction projects."
"Meet Twilight in Cologne," said Scootaloo.
"Köln," replied Sweetie Belle, drawing out the vowel.
"Y'all're both colons," said Apple Bloom.
The afternoon sun poured through the stained glass of the Rose Windows into the nave of the Cathedral, and Rarity lost herself in its beauty. Her jaw dropped open, her tail drooped, and she levitated her sketchpad and colored pencils out of her saddlebags. She sank down onto a pew and began to draw.
And draw.
And draw.
The Crusaders looked at each other. They'd been on Earth four days now, and were getting accustomed to being stared at.
Rarity, levitating over a dozen colored pencils and a pencil sharpener simultaneously, slowly producing a photographic-quality rendition of the Rose Windows, earned more than the usual number of human whispers and elbow-nudges.
Several dozen humans pulled out cell phones and filmed Rarity.
"Stunning..." Rarity gasped. "Exquisite... Gorgeous... girls, do you see this?"
The Crusaders crawled under a pew.
"Ah'm bored," Apple Bloom said.
"What're we gonna do?" Sweetie Belle asked. "I've seen Rarity's creation trance before. She's not gonna notice anything short of a large kitchen fire for at least thirty minutes."
"A 'large kitchen fire?' That's... suspiciously specific," Scootaloo said.
Sweetie Belle frowned. "Now I'm only allowed... look, this is our chance."
Scootaloo wrung her hooves together with a smile. "They said renovations were going on."
Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom grinned at each other, then at Scootaloo. "Cutie Mark Crusaders Gothic Cathedral Renovators?"
"Yes!" Scootaloo said, and flared her wings. "Ow! Oh, those still kill. Let's go." Scootaloo began belly-crawling underneath the pews.
The other two followed, also belly-crawling.
"Those are the stairs," Scootaloo said from under a pew.
"Uh-huh," agreed Sweetie Belle.
"Yep," said Apple Bloom.
"Do you know any Pranch words?" Scootaloo asked.
"Well, not those words," Sweetie Belle said. "But the pictogram is pretty clear."
"'Do not enter,'" Apple Bloom interpreted.
"Restricted areas give the most cutie mark potential," Scootaloo said.
"When my sister's done drawing, she's gonna be mad at us."
"She's already mad at us, and if we all have our cutie marks, she'll be too proud to be mad," Apple Bloom said.
"Thar's lotsa humans around," Apple Bloom said.
"We need a distraction!" Scootaloo looked around. "Sweetie Belle, can you, like, unicorn over that stone bird bath?"
Sweetie Belle looked at the ornate marble holy water font. It was free-standing, near a door. "It's far away. I'll try, but I've never cast that far..."
She stuck out her tongue, bit down on it, squinted her left eye, and grunted. Her ribs showed through her muscles as she sucked in breath. Her grayish-green magic pushed, and the font tipped over with a clatter, spilling water across the floor.
Humans spun around to look at the source of the noise.
Sweetie Belle popped the door's lock with her magic.The crusaders were out from under the pews, across the aisle, and through the restricted door in a flash. Apple Bloom bucked the door shut and Sweetie Belle relocked it.
"Stairs?" Apple Bloom said, craning her neck up.
"I guess they're renovating the attic," Scootaloo replied.
Sweetie Belle led off, up the stairs, prancing happily, mane and tail bouncing, pleased with her improving magic.
The cathedral's attic was a veritable forest of ancient wooden beams and flooring. Windows brought in light, and dust danced in the beams of sun.
"Why ain't there no workers?" asked Apple Bloom.
"C’est la France," Sweetie Belle said with a shrug. "Must be on break."
Scootaloo found a welder's helmet and brazing torch, then she looked at blueprints spread out on a plywood table. "I can't read Pranch, or French, but it looks like they're running pipes for a fire-sprinkler system."
Apple Bloom touched her tongue to one of the beams. "This wood's about a thousand years old," she said. "An' really dry. Addin' sprinklers is a good idea."
"I've helped my aunts run water pipes out to the guest house." Scootaloo used her flight feathers to turn the gas on the torch and and stomped the flint and steel striker tool to light the torch, sparks flying everywhere. The flame kissed the wooden flooring. She flipped down the welder's helmet over her eyes, holding the torch with her forehooves.
"Levitate up some of this conduit, Sweetie, and we'll see if we can help the humans get some work done on their break."
With Apple Bloom hoofing up fresh solder, Sweetie Belle levitating the conduit, and Scootaloo wielding the torch, they ran thirty feet of sprinkler piping in Notre Dame's attic at about human eye-level.
Sparks flew. Molten metal dripped.
Scootaloo stood on a barrel marked "essence / petrol" so she could reach high enough. (The Crusaders didn't know either word.)
After several lengths of conduit, Scootaloo used a wing to flip up the welding helmet and dropped the live torch.
"Cutie marks yet?" she asked.
All three crusaders looked at their flanks.
"Nuthin'," said Apple Bloom.
Scootaloo used a hoof to balance the torch facing up, and let it burn, idling.
They looked around.
Apple Bloom grinned at Sweetie Belle. "Hey, clean freak!"
"I'm not a clean freak! I just like being neat. I'm not as bad as Rar—"
An oily rag hit Sweetie Belle right in the snout, and then Apple Bloom tossed another one at Scootaloo, hitting her left wing and leaving a greasy smear.
"Oh, it's on!" Scootaloo yelled, and threw the oily rag back at Apple Bloom.
"Yuck," Sweetie Belle said, levitating up the rag, but then grinning and throwing it back at Apple Bloom.
"Oily rag fight!" they chorused.
Sweetie Belle grabbed some rags out of mid-air with her magic, so Scootaloo and Apple Bloom joined forces and concentrated on throwing the rags at her. She missed several catches and ended up looking like a dalmation, black splotches covering her white coat.
Oily rags flew past the burning torch.
Sweetie Belle backed up, watching the other two, horn sparking, and tripped over an electrical cord.
"Yalp!" she cried, and fell over onto her back. A flailing leg knocked over a four-liter metal can of paint thinner, and it spilled, glug-glug-glugging as it emptied.
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo ran to Sweetie Belle and helped her stand.
"Whooo-heee!" Apple Bloom said, pointing a hoof at the paint thinner. "That stinks!"
They tilted the can back upright, and then gathered the oily rags to sop up the liquid before it soaked too deeply into the wood.
They left a pile of thinner-soaked oily rags on the dry wood floor.
It was about ten feet from the torch. Which still burned.
"I didn't really expect cutie marks in oily rag fights," Apple Bloom said, "but tha' was fun."
Scootaloo squinted, then trotted about fifteen feet to a gray-painted metal box affixed to a wooden beam. She looked at it. "This one's labelled in Pranch and Ponish."
Apple Bloom said, "It says 'dis-junk-ter' and 'circuit breaker.' If them circuit's are broken, maybe we can get cutie marks in fixin' them?"
Sweetie Belle nodded and levitated open the the circuit breaker box.
"Just switches," Scootaloo said. She took a deep breath and flapped her wings to land on Apple Bloom's withers, bringing the breaker box to eye level, and began flipping switches back and forth. Lights flashed up and down the cathedral's attic, and she heard a few power tools turn on and off. And electric welder sparked and she flipped that switch back off fast.
"The circuits ain't broken," Apple Bloom said. "They're just off."
"I'm bored," said Scootaloo. "Let's go back downstairs see if we can give Rarity a fit over how greasy and dirty we got."
"I hope she finished her sketch," Sweetie Belle said. "That'll calm her some."
"Qui êtes-vous tous?" they heard from behind them.
The Crusaders spun around, and saw a human in work coveralls and a hard hat stomping toward them.
"Uh-oh," Sweetie Belle said. "Break time's over and still no cutie marks."
The human yanked a cigarette from his mouth, gestured with it, and repeated, "Qui êtes-vous tous?"
"Do ya' speak Ponish?" Apple Bloom said. "Or English?"
He blinked and took a pull from the cigarette. "You—why are you here? You are ponies, yes?"
The Crusaders looked at each other. Scootaloo looked at the human and said, "What was your first clue?"
"You—you cannot be up here! You are pony children, oui? This place is dangerous. I shall call sécurité! No child must be injured up here!"
Sweetie Belle pointed her horn at a Ne pas fumer! sign that showed a red circle slashing over a cigarette. "We'll call the security on you, ami."
He looked at the cigarette and blanched. He stubbed it out against a wooden beam, and then tossed the butt away.
The butt landed on the pile of oily rags the Crusaders had used to soak up the spilled paint thinner.
"Let's..... go find my sister," said Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo flared her wings. "Fast."
At Cologne central train station, Rarity stormed off the train, dragging three leashed Crusaders off the red Inter-City Express train and onto the platform. Scootaloo's backpack was snapped across her belly, instead of her back, leaving her wings free and uninjured.
The aforementioned wings flapped indignantly.
"Girls!" Twilight said, teleporting to them, and hugging the Crusaders with her wings, clenching them tight. Twilight sobbed. "I'm so glad you're safe. When I heard about the fire I—"
Twilight stopped, reared up to her full height, and flared her wings. "Girls, why do you smell like smoke, paint thinner, and oily rags?"
The Crusaders looked at each other, turned side-on to Twilight, and pointed at their flanks, which now each bore identical cutie marks of a flaming stone church.
"Cutie Mark Crusaders Gothic Cathedral Renovators?" they said.
Author's Note
Too soon?
I wrote 8,000 thousand words of the CMCs catastrophizing their way across Earth. I cut it from this fic for pacing purposes, but I hope to publish as a stand-alone sometime soon.
Constructive criticism always welcome.
