Philip Ree

I'd been expecting the same debilitating transformation—in reverse—as what had brought me to Equestria. The slow-motion pulling and twisting, adjusting my body to fit another world's norms. Which is why it was so surprising when it didn't happen.

I blinked at the crowd of people standing around me. Humans standing around me. The odd thing was they were all taller than I was, and when my brain finally caught up with me, I realized I was still a pony.

"What happened?"

"Did a pony wander onto the platform?"

"Who is that?"

"Where's Philip Ree?"

Pony bodies crowded around me on the platform. I realized it would be the unicorns that operated the machine. They were guiding me—trying to move me off the platform. Right. Just like Starlight said. Five minutes.

"I'm Philip Ree. What happened?" I asked.

The whole room went quiet. The military people to one side—including a group of five soldiers who seemed to have shiny, silver blankets around their shoulders—stared at me incredulously, along with a team that looked like paramedics, and now even the ponies.

"What?" I shook my head this time to clear the last fuzziness of the teleport. "Why didn't it work? What happened?"

Of all those present, it was a pony (a unicorn) who walked over and put a hoof on my shoulder. "We'll get it worked out. You need to move off the pad in case Starlight Glimmer sends anything else." It wasn't just pragmatic, it was something I needed to hear—somepony telling me to do something.

Walking with her, I exited the side of the teleport platform in a bit of a daze. I could hear people talking all around. Most of them were just talking to each other, but two voices were speaking a lot more directly—one was talking into a dictaphone (the man looking to be a civilian in his sixties, the other was talking into a telephone.

While the older man was talking into his recorder, it was the other I was focused on. He wore a black suit and stood as tall as the soldiers in the room. There was a name for men like this—muscle. "Mr. President, we've had an incident. No fatalities, but Ambassador Ree's husband didn't change back. — Yes sir, I'll escort him up now."

Secret Service didn't usually play the part of errand boys, but I guess under the circumstances I could be counted as a VIP. When the big man in black approached me, I nodded to him. "We're going to see Jeff?"

"Yeah. The doctors can come too, but the president wants to speak with you." He turned and scanned the room for possible problems, then started walking. His size meant that there was a convenient gap opening up in the throng of people in the room, so I quickly chased after him.

Most of the medical people were arguing or looking over the group of (once more) thirty-something-aged marines and Frank, only one noticed me exiting the room and gave chase.

"Mr. Ree! You can't leave before you're fully examined to ensure you aren't—Mr. Ree!" The woman chasing me held a clipboard and sounded insistent. "Mr. Ree!"

"Mr. Philip Ree has been instructed to follow me, ma'am. You are permitted to examine him when we reach our destination," Mr. Tall and Broad Shouldered said. He had a deep voice, but there was an air of gravel to it that made me wonder if he'd broken it in shouting at cadets in a training center somewhere.

"R-Right. Can I ask questions on the way there?"

"So long as it doesn't slow us down."

I was too used to only having ponies in power being taller than me—having just two humans standing over me already made me feel like they should be in charge. Come on, Philip, shake that off. "What can I help you with…"

"Dr. Peters."

I turned my head and looked up at Dr. Peters. She was a much younger woman—probably in her late 20s early 30s—with deep red hair and a skin tone somewhere around tan, she sported piercing brown eyes. If she were a doctor, that meant she wasn't an idiot. "Okay, Dr. Peters, what do you want to know?"

"I've been studying your reports." The blasted reports they had us send. Be honest, they said, Everything you write will be held in the strictest confidence. Dr. Peters continued, "Your comments on the sex drive of stallions outstripping mares intrigued me. I'd like, if you could, to sit down and discuss the various methods each society you mentioned uses to offset this physiological imbalance."

Of all the doctors to actually notice me leaving, and I get what's probably some psych looking to make a name for herself. "That's going to take a while, and besides, I've already put everything into my journal that I was told."

"The bars you mentioned. Do you have any details on them you didn't include? I-I'm sorry if it's a touchy subject, but this asymmetric sex drive is an important topic, and one I'd like to—" She cut off when Mr. Tall and Broad Shouldered turned sharply to the right into a corridor where two more of his brethren stood beside a door I knew.

"If you're asking me if my increased sex drive has gotten so bad as to make me seek extramarital assistance, you—like almost everyone who's met her—have underestimated my wife. What exactly are you a doctor of?" I walked toward the door of the Oval Office for the first time on four legs.

Dr. Peters was shoved in behind me before the door was closed.

Behind the Resolute Desk sat Jeff Miller, President of the United States of America. He was jotting down something before he looked up at me and smiled. "Philip. I heard there was a little mix-up with your trip. Wrong luggage or something?"

"Something like that, Jeff. You wanted a chat?" I walked to one of the couches and jumped up on it. Equestria had done no better than a comfortable couch for pony seating, and I had no compunction about possibly making a mess on the cushions of what was probably a hideously expensive piece of furniture with my hooves.

Jeff looked at Dr. Peters, then back to me. "Dr. Sandra Peters. When I asked for medical staff to be allowed to accompany Philip, I intended on having a physician who could assess his physical wellbeing." The disapproval in Jeff's voice surprised me. What was this Dr. Peters' story? "So, what do you think happened, Philip?"

"If you're asking could Starlight Glimmer have messed up and not transferred me properly, the answer's no. If there's anyone I've met who's anally retentive about doing everything just right, it's Starlight Glimmer." I thought about the other possibilities. "So other things it could be…"

When I didn't say anything, Jeff raised an eyebrow. "Glad to see I'm not missing anything."

"The only thing different between us is our ages." Without a second thought, I reached out with my magic to pluck up a glass on the table beside me and took a drink. It wasn't until Dr. Peters' stare practically bored a hole in my head that I realized magic might not be all that common here… yet.

"Your cutie mark." Dr. Peters said. That's when it hit me she wasn't staring at my head but my flank. "Could that have tied you more firmly to your—uh—current… form…" As soon as she realized she had both our attention, Dr. Peters lost all track of her thought. "Sorry."

"So far it's the only explanation I've heard that didn't start with 'maybe there was a problem with'," Jeff said. "But until someone with more letters after their name comes up with a better idea, that will have to be considered."

I turned to look at my flank and the cutie mark there. It had come to be something amazing—something I could rely on. It was, like everypony had said, very personal magic. And it also itched because I knew Saffron would be grabbing the nearest edible thing, Riley wouldn't eat anything until she was actually starving, and Clair would snack on the wrong things all—Stop it, Philip. Clair and Saffron are adults, technically. "If it is, then I'm a pony now."

Could I literally just say that? Just acknowledge that even when this was all over with, I'd be a pony for the rest of—of a very long life? This would need a very long talk with Clair and the kids to sort out. Saffron's plans I already knew, and I was fairly sure Riley would stay if we gave her a chance. Clair—Clair is pregnant with a foal.

My emotions were sloshing about like an ocean. So I was stuck as a pony forever. Well, it wasn't like I could change anything if that was the case.

"Philip?" Jeff's voice pulled me from my distracted thoughts and I looked up at him. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." My voice sounded all odd—cracked and worn out. I took another sip of water. "Sorry, Jeff, some heavy thoughts there. What did you want to know?"

"Everything about your cutie mark. How you got it? What it does? What's the likelihood of others getting one? Are they removable?" Jeff Miller had a way of speaking when he was wearing his president hat. He was wearing his president hat right now.

"It comes when you find that one thing you're really good at—You've read the reports?" I asked.

"Pretend I haven't."

"It's almost seen as a ritual by some young ponies. They try to experience as many different things as they can in the hope of finding what they're good at. Their school system is practically built around this coming of age thing.

"So, when it happens…" Don't do it, Philip. Talking about getting your cutie mark is like offering a drink to an alcoholic. "It's kinda personal, but that talent becomes part of you as if it had always been. My talent is knowing what ponies—people too, probably—need. Jeff, you…" Even here on Earth my talent was able to do its thing. "You need some bananas. Potassium probably. High blood pressure?"

The look I got back from Jeff said all I needed to know about that.

"I didn't know, but when Clair started—" My eyes slid to Dr. Peters.

"Dr. Peters has been vetted, Philip. Doctor, I trust nothing you hear in this room will leave it?" Jeff asked.

Dr. Peters nodded, then shook her head. "Mr. President, I wouldn't—"

I didn't bother waiting for her to continue whatever she was going to say. "Clair's pregnant. The moment she started having cravings, I knew what they were. Probably before she knew she was having them. It's been the most surreal of all our pregnancies. Ponies' bodies carry offspring a lot easier than human ones."

"This position may outlast me, Philip. Clair's position, that is. If this,"—Jeff gestured at me—"is the normal outcome of too much times spent in Equestria, we can't just allow people to go there as they please. It will be considered a permanent assignment."

I thought about that. What it would mean, and how things could be if American ponies came back to live this side. So far ponies hadn't shown much interest in exploring Earth, which meant the number of ponies wandering around America was just a little less than one. How would a family react to their grandfather coming home as a young stallion?

"That's up to you—and your successor—to handle. Clair told you about the offer we got?" I used my magic to fill my glass back up from a pitcher of water and took a sip of it.

"Too honest by half, your wife, but that's why I asked her. You're referring to the offer by Princess Celestia that the moment your retire, you are granted dual citizenship? It's not common, and certainly not done here. I've kept that side of things quiet, you understand?" Jeff asked, looking at Dr. Peters.

"S-Sir, why am I still in the room?" Dr. Peters asked. "You keep hinting that I'm a liability being here, but you keep me here."

"Because so far you're the only person who's come up with a plausible answer for Philip's condition. It fits the situation nicely, and no one else has managed to jump to that conclusion yet." Jeff tapped the side of a screen on his desk. "I'm reading the reports from downstairs as they come in, no one has any clue."

Jeff, I had to remind myself, was not just a good talker, but he was also a very clever man. He was following our conversation in here and reading reports as they were being submitted, and I could bet he wasn't missing a trick in either. "It's good to have a new pair of eyes on something."

"That's—That's why I'd like to volunteer to go." Dr. Peters looked terrified, but at the same time she looked excited. "To Equestria. You said you want a new pair of eyes, I can—"

Jeff shook his head. "There's two problems with that, doctor. The first being that given you'd be working in your field, you'd probably get your cutie mark very soon. The other is that you're not thirty-five yet, which means you'd be a young pony. You saw the photos of our marines?"

She looked more distracted now than argumentative. I'd not dealt with a lot of science types, but Dr. Peters seemed to fit perfectly in the stereotype of scientist genius jumping around a conversation. I waited to hear what she had to say.

"Dr. Peters?" Jeff asked.

"Could it have to do with his age? The other marines were all much younger. Maybe there's something about the return process that doesn't work for older people?" Dr. Peters pulled a notepad out and started jotting something down.

I thought about it more, and I think she was missing something bigger. "What about mindset?"

"The spell could read your intentions?" The way Dr. Peters said spell had grave implications for what she thought about actual magic.

"Pony magic is…" I rolled my eyes a little and waved my almost-empty glass of water in the air with my telekinesis. "… magic. The only thing about it that you should ever take for granted is if Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, or Moon Dancer ever tell you that magic does X, you better believe it does X."

Jeff cleared his throat. "They said it would turn people into ponies and then back into people again."

"Exactly," I said. "But what if the person winds up thinking so much like a pony, it can't tell they're human anymore?"

"You've gone native, Philip?"

"A little. I mean, you dunk someone into another culture and they're going to soak a bit up, Jeff." It was a slight admonishment, but he deserved it for that. Jeff in front of a camera was the smoothest of smooth—Jeff having a frank conversation was a deal less so.

"I deserved that. Okay, so what if that's the case? Spending time away from native ponies would help fix it, right?" Jeff looked at Dr. Peters.

Dr. Peters looked like a deer in headlights. Her eyes twitched a few times in what I hoped was her mentally rejoining the conversation. "Right. Being plunged back in human culture again could fix that. It's true that this might be the trigger—assuming the spell can read minds—since the soldiers haven't shown as quick an integration as Mr. and Mrs. Ree."

Nodding, Jeff gave me one of his best smiles. "It might be good publicity. Come back for a few days. We'll use the conversation again, and in the meantime you try to spend as much time as possible focusing on humans. Maybe some extra time with the troops over there."

I turned my head from Jeff to look at Dr. Peters. "Would that help?" If Jeff was going to keep her in as an authority, I was damn-well not going to give up my spare time for their little project without a fight if I could use her as a shield.

"Well, err, no. If you were trying to retain your existing ethnicity, it might help, but if this is the cause and you have already adapted, only full immersion back into your parent society would be of any benefit." I wasn't a politician, I couldn't stop my smile from getting wider at Dr. Peters' words—plus if this was all true and I had gone native to some extent, smiling was practically built-in now.

"Alright, alright. So bringing them all back here for a week would help test this?" Jeff asked.

My hackles raised. "Not Clair."

"Philip?"

"Sorry, Jeff, but even if you took personal responsibility for our unborn child, I would still fight you on this."

Fortunately for my opinion of Jeff Miller, President of the United States of America, he blanched. So he hadn't thought of that. "Sorry, you're right. So, you and the kids go through, with the transmogrifier, and Clair comes through without. Is that okay with you?"

"Fine with me, but there's a certain young man who is legally an adult now and doesn't have to listen to your orders. I'll ask him for you." The look of annoyance that flashed across Jeff's face was so fleeting but strangely legitimate. "You know, he hasn't even touched his computer?" It was rubbing his nose in it, but sometimes a dad likes to be proud of his son's achievements, and the way Saf had gotten under Jeff's skin—even without being here—was a treasure to me.

He heaved a sigh. "Ask him for me." The defeat Jeff showed was feigned, but I doubt it was by much. "Now then, with the future decided, we can get back to the present. Dr. Peters, I'm authorizing your travel to Equestria should you want to go. My secretary will be able to find you a stack of papers big enough to delay you for enough time for Philip to undergo a complete physical, at which point you will confirm to me before witnesses that you are aware this may be a one-way trip."

"But it's not, Mr. President." Gesturing toward me, Dr. Peters focused her attention on Jeff. "Even if I do get stuck, as it were, I can still do all my work once I return. Do we know if human-turned-pony live as long as native-born ponies?"

Jeff looked as surprised as I felt. "Very well, Dr. Peters. Please see yourself out, and do make sure not to breathe a word of this to anyone."

In the back of my head I made sure to take note to not feel any sympathy toward the woman when she winds up as a foal.

Standing up, Dr. Peters made her way out of the Oval Office and left Jeff and I alone.

"How's the gearing up for the election going, Jeff?"

All of Jeff's masks fell off and a tired-looking man in his sixties sat behind the Resolute Desk. "All the polls show it being a landslide. That medication Clair secured has completely turned around healthcare. A single pill that can kill viruses dead. From the flu to AIDS and more are quickly on the decline. At this point I could ask for a referendum to get a third term and I don't think even the other side would object—but I won't, and you didn't hear me say that."

I lifted my hoof to my mouth and made a zipping motion. "And all it costs you is a few computers. Why do you want us back?"

"All the reasons stated, Philip, and political. Clair Ree—your wife—is a hero. No ambassador in the history of the United States has gained so much recognition. The public want to see the woman—or the mare—who saved them from the pharmaceutical companies' clutches."

"And you'll be standing beside her, smiling and shaking her hoof."

Jeff just smiled at me, but it wasn't one of his fake smiles—this was a real one. "Philip, I won't lie to you about that. Even if the polls say I'm ahead at least 80% on whatever the other side will throw at me, I won't take chances."

"So we come for a week and parade around. Jeff, I'm glad you're not a bastard, because you're so good at this." I drained the last of my water. "I'm assuming that once word gets out that Dr. Peters has permission, you're going to be busy fending off similarly enthusiastic requests?"

"I've been fending them off constantly since your family safely arrived in Equestria. The smell never varies, Philip, only the depth. They'll all be stirred into a frenzy by your psych's permission, which is why I'll throw them a bone to keep them busy." The mask came back into place and Jeff gave me one of his very expensive campaign-smiles. Reaching for his intercom, he pressed a button on it. "Caroline? Please furnish Dr. Peters with every form you can think of to get her cleared to go to Equestria. Talk to the military if you need to. And also let the doctors know that Philip Ree will be at their disposal shortly."

"I'm not going to vote for you, Jeff."

Sampled, prodded, poked, sampled some more, and then asked to put blocks in holes. The stay-over on Earth was only for two days, but already I was sick of it. It was subtly harder to use my magic, or so I'd found, and I'd managed to get my lunch break off to go down and talk to the unicorns who run this side of the portal.

Getting away from the doctors was the hard bit, however. After Jeff had arranged me a special pass, the security guys let me go pretty much wherever I wanted so long as it wasn't somewhere actually secure. The room the portal was in was such a secure room, but the guards apparently knew that I was allowed in there—or they mistook me for one of the ponies working here.

Inside there was a lot of work going on. They looked to be unpacking the equipment the other group of humans had provided. Apparently it involved lots of crystals and framework, as well as a huge set of instructions the ponies were trying to decipher.

I walked over to them. "Hi, anything I can help with?"

A bunch of heads shot up, and it wasn't until all of them were staring at me before I realized I'd spoken in their language. "You're Ambassador Ree's husband, aren't you?" The speaker was a stallion sporting a small tuft of beard on his chin and white markings around his lower legs.

Then it hit me. He was the unicorn who'd helped me off the teleport pad. "Sure am. Thanks for the help getting off the pad. I was a little surprised at still being a pony after the process."

"I'm sure when you get back, Starlight will have a lot to discuss with you. We'd investigate it ourselves, but the arrival of all this has had us busy trying to make head and tail of the instructions." What struck me as odd about his speech was mentioning Starlight Glimmer by just her first name. Ponies, in general, used full names most of the time. "My name's Sunburst."

I walked closer and clopped my forehoof against his offered one. "Philip Ree. Maybe I could help you with it? I wasn't very good with electronics and stuff, but Ikea furniture? I can do that."

"I-I don't know what Ikea furniture is, but the biggest problem we're having is these instructions aren't in Ponish." Sunburst levitated the papers over and held them up before me. He was right, they weren't in Ponish—or English. "Can you read them?"

"Not a word, but that's okay. These diagrams are pretty self-explanatory." And they were. Maybe ponies were just more dependent on written instructions, but the diagrams almost seemed like they assumed people wouldn't be able to read the writing. "Okay, you have the two big pillars done, but that one's backwards."

Sunburst followed the line of my hoof to one of the assembled pillars they were trying to bolt to a frame. "That explains a lot, actually. How can you tell it's backwards?"

Holding out the instructions with my magic—now that he'd passed them off to me—I poked the pillar they were having trouble with. "See the screw-lines there? You had the screws on the inner edge. Okay, so get that turned around and bolt it to the support frame with the—the middle-sized screws."

"We used all those on this other pillar. What screws were we meant to use?"

"Shorter, but not quite shortest, ones," I said. "Hey, have you noticed it's harder to use magic here?"

"Of course it is. Not only is there less ambient magic here, but what we do manage to scrape up is being sucked at by the teleportation crystal batteries. I'm surprised you can't feel it," Sunburst said.

We both watched the other unicorns undo all the wrong screws that were used and replace them with shorter ones. When it came to the nitty-gritty of assembling things, however, unicorns didn't need the tools to do it.

"Won't this make it worse?" I asked.

"That's what's going to be great about it. It uses magic from a different wavelength, so it should make it easier for us because it won't be sucking so much regular magic." Sunburst watched, along with me, while the device was further assembled. Given the assistants we had, us stepping in would have just gotten in the way. "Okay, everypony, now we can assemble the array."

Assembling the pieces together was a lot easier. The kit that the other humans had sent had spare parts in it, but they were all labeled as spares, so when it got to the last few pieces we knew exactly what we were working with. As soon as we bolted the last pillar into the array, I felt a strange tickling sensation along my horn. It wasn't painful or intense, but something was happening.

The last item was a harness with a group of cables coming out of it. Sunburst levitated the harness over the main crystal for the teleportation pad while the others all plugged each of the cables into the sockets at the base of the towers in the array.

There was a building sensation as the cables started to glow in various colors, and the odd tickle built to an itching for a moment, then was gone. "Was this it?"

Sunburst nodded. "Let's see if it works. Philip, do you know the spell to examine something's basic magic properties?"

"Spells?" Shaking my head, I looked at the big crystal that powered the teleporter. "I haven't exactly learned any spells yet."

"Okay, I guess you haven't been in Equestria that long. Let me adjust this one to let you see it too…" Pausing and staring off into space, Sunburst seemed completely distracted for a few moments before he lowered his head and blasted a gold beam out at the huge magic battery.

A mass of what should have been arcane and mysterious runes started floating in the air around the battery crystal, but the odd thing was I recognized them as being pony words. The power capacity was rising quickly. "What's the maximum capacity?"

"Well, at this rate it should be charged fully in a short time. Wow that's going up fast." Turning to look at me with a big smile, Sunburst passed me the handbook. "Thanks for the help!"

"You're welcome. This will mean I get to go back and see Clair a little sooner, hopefully."

A pang of homesickness hit me. It wasn't for Equestria itself (though the place was pretty good to live in), but for my wife and kids. Clair sometimes had business trips—when we lived on Earth—that would take a week or more to complete, but me leaving her to come here was different.

And, just like that, I decided I'd ask Jeff if I could go home right now. A glance around revealed none of the ubiquitous men in the black suits that were the defacto uniform of the Secret Service. "Excuse me, Sunburst, but I need to go talk to someone."

"Hey, um, I'll be going back to Equestria soon. If you'd like, I could take some time to teach you a little more magic. Starlight said that Moon Dancer had taught you a little while you were at the Castle of Friendship before you moved away."

My brain tried to do some mental gymnastics. Was Sunburst something to Starlight, was he just being nice, or was he coming on to me? Ever since the Shining Armor/Braeburn thing, I've been struggling to get my signals straight. Learning magic should be to sort out.

"That'd be great, actually. What with all the getting settled in in Canterlot, I haven't exactly had much time to talk to anypony about learning more. I'll hopefully be back in a minute." I slipped through the door by touching my badge to the reader and waiting for the soldier to check me through.

Walking back through the hallways of the White House, I stopped at the first Secret Service officer. "Is the president free?"

The man's eyes narrowed for a second, but he eventually lifted his wrist to his mouth and spoke quietly into it. A human wouldn't have heard what he said, but pony ears were better than what I'd been born with. "Station A 3. VIP one requests meeting with boss." There was a slight pause as he obviously got a reply, but my ears weren't quite that good. "Thank you, over." He lowered his hand down. "He's in a meeting right now, but if you start down there now, you shouldn't have to wait more than ten minutes."

"Thank you." It was force of habit to thank people, even before I spent enough time in Equestria that I smiled when I said it. I found myself prancing as I walked through the hallways of the West Wing. The building might have been designed for business, but getting to the garage wasn't the highest priority when it came to floor plan.

Up to the first floor I went, and then through to Jeff's secretary's office. When I walked inside, Caroline Rogers was behind her desk. "I'd like to see Jeff if I could."

"He's very busy, Mr. Ree, but he left instructions that you were to be seen as soon as possible whenever you wished. I'll let him know you're here." I didn't see what she did, of course, but I could assume she knew her job and had settled in a little better since Saf had tried to get his computer.

"Thank you. I hope you're having a nice day?" I found the nearest seat in the room (a comfortable-looking couch meant for waiting, apparently) and climbed up.

"Err. I guess." Caroline Rogers looked like I'd just surprised her. She paused for a few moments before I watched a smile brighten her face. "Actually, I am. You probably wouldn't be surprised that this job can be a little boring, but…"

She reached down under her desk and lifted up a gift basket of chocolates. "… I was given this today."

She'd seemed so dour last time, but now—Was this something to do with me being a pony? I know the pony bug had bitten me hard, but could it latch its teeth onto someone so quickly? "They look delicious. An admirer?" Why not go all in?

Caroline bit her lower lip and nodded. "After high school, I was too busy getting by with secretarial work to find anyone. I threw myself into my work… It was a surprise to find someone at work."

Okay, so maybe not completely the pony effect, there might be a bit of young love at play here. "Congratulations! He's a lucky guy." Hoo boy did that do the trick.

She blushed, laughed, and then quickly put the basket behind her desk. "The president will see you now." Reaching to a device on her desk, Caroline tapped some buttons. "I'm sending him in now."

"Good luck, Caroline!" I jumped up from the couch and walked toward the door that led from her office to the Oval Office, only to have Jeff open it from the other side.

"Come on in, Philip." Once I was inside and I used my magic to close the door behind me, Jeff gave me a questioning look. "First, I don't think I've ever seen Caroline smiling so much, what did you do to her?"

I laughed and jumped up on one of the meticulously clean and expensive-looking couches. "Pony charm. Or something like that. Don't you ever just feel a little happier when there's a smiling pony talking to you?"

"Maybe sending one of our more talented psychs to Equestria is a bad idea, or maybe having you and Clair stand beside me, smiling, is the best idea ever." Jeff sat on the opposite couch rather than retreat to his desk. "What can I do for you, Philip?"

"I want to go back to Equestria so I can try to get this mad plan of yours happening. Also, I want to see my wife." I didn't make it vehement and I didn't lose my temper, but the fact was I didn't like being away from Clair, and it had nothing to do with my sex drive. Love makes a man, or a stallion, do crazy things.

"I'd love to grant that request, I really would, but the pad won't be ready to go again until tomorrow."

"About that. You know the system we brought over with us to test?" I waited for his nod. "It's up and working. The teleporter should be fully charged in an hour or two."

"You're kidding? That's great news. How long will it take from full-empty to recharge? What kind of turn-around can we expect in future?"

"You already know everything I know. Their chief down there, Sunburst, let me see a lot of numbers about the big crystal battery, but then I needed to get him to explain it to me. The long and the short of it is, Clair and these other humans back in Equestria might have just pulled a master stroke out of this. So, can I go back in an hour or so?"

"Now, I know it'll upset the research guys, but I can probably get away with it if I promise to let them have greater access to you later." Jeff didn't have to make any such promise, and we both knew it, but he'd make it look like he was under the thumb just to keep the science types happy. "Do we have a deal?"

What else could I say? "Deal."

Author's Note

Clair: With a foal or filly on the way, would you seek to raise them as a pony, a human, or somewhere in-between?

"We're deciding on that. Given the circumstances, I could request a transfer back—and set back relations between our nations by months or possibly years if the wrong person replaces me. Staying means I will be able to continue my work, but will have a completely new experience to go through. I... I don't know what to settle on yet. I need to talk to Princess Twilight and some physicians." Clair Ree looked a little weary, but at the same time a presence of stony determination backed her words.

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
A.P.O.N.I.
Canary in the Coal Mine
Daremo
Dio-Drogynous
Ender Voidwalker
KFS Crimson
Sirion123
Vi Watch

And special thanks to the following, for careful eyes and friendly words:
Lab