Starlight cocked a brow at me. "You're ending it like that?"

"What?" I held up two hands. "I was completely honest."

Her eyes rolled. "Right until that ending, then you went right off the rails. You already agreed to not just magically fix it all, but then you do? Nopony's gonna believe that! Why didn't you tell them the truth?"

"It's complicated and--" I took out the script and waved it at her. "This was already long enough."

Starlight's hoof came down lightly on my hand, nudging down the pile of papers. "Give me a chance? I was there too, I can explain it."

It was hard to be mad at Starlight, my friend. Shoot, mother of my child. But, mostly, friend. "Alright. Recorders are live."

"What rec--" She jumped a bit, realizing there was a boom mic just over her head, recording everything she said. Not to mention the many cameras peering at her from every angle. "Right. You are something else sometimes." She was smiling though. "So let's get this explanation underway."

She cleared her throat and assumed a third person narrative.

So, alright. Let's start with the most important bit. No, Eri did not just magic it away. With better understanding of the flow of magic, Twilight went nuts getting translations of the existing spells over to something approaching English, fed that to Sunburst, and pow, that sent him off in a tizzy.

But to what end you may be asking? Glad you asked. Eri suggested he make the song of each race we knew of. One for earth ponies, one for pegasi, one for dragons, one for kirin, get it? This was a lot easier this go around. Imagine making a song with only syllables instead of words. I do not envy what Sunburst went through to get the first to transformation spells.

Oh, right, forgot. Two versions of each song. What's the point if you didn't differentiate between girl ponies and boy ponies? That took a bit, but he could do it, and he did it. He claimed some new technique for 'listening for it'. I didn't get it, but he took a pony, or whatever, or each type with him as he worked on their spell, and it worked out, all I needed to know in the end.

Then came the fun part! Each of us, one by one, got zapped back to humans. We were in a special isolation room that kept the air moving away from us as we did it, sucking ponid-flakes away as quick as it could. Pop, humans!

But then the next part. Those of us who wanted to have hooves or claws or whatever, like me, were put right back on them. But it was by magic, not Ponid. What did that mean? We weren't infectious anymore.

Susan and Autumn covered each other. I mean one of them did it, then the other cast the spell for the other. Humans suck at magic, as you are well aware. I'll stick with being a magic unicorn.

This had us with a facility full of, well, us, without ponid. Now you may be wondering about that other facility. Despite Eri's best efforts, they did not budge on leaving that just as it is. The ponies there, still got ponid, still infectious. Sucks for them, but not a lot we can do without starting to break laws.

It was only then that we got down to making this place a resort. As Eri said, that really wasn't that big a leap. The hugest change was in staffing. Less scientists (minus the magic division) and a lot more hospitality. People to check people in. People to wait rooms. People to prepare more than simple, but tasty, meals to elevate things to a luxury standard to really lure people in to live in style with us ponies!

Speaking of that! Bon Bon soaked up what that book had, and the one after it, and she just kept on going. As soon as she started with the candies and treats, she fell in. She hates it. I mean, not really, but she is not shy to throw things at Eri if she wanders into Bon Bon's kitchen. "You made me a cook!" she'd shout, but also get right back to cooking, and smiling.

Lyra tells me she's pretty happy, and those two are thick as thieves together. Hard to separate them, not that we're trying. Lyra was there when Bon Bon was pushed back to humanity, an act she was really nervous about. I don't blame her. Poor thing already felt the sting of Ponid twice.

But the end result was a half-pony, half-human, all happy, minus her grudge on Eri, Bon Bon.

Oh, right, me. Eri is waving at me, suppose I should, what? Oh, this isn't third person. Whatever, I'm talking, I can talk how I want, Eri. So... I got fatter and rounder and rounder... By the time we even had the spells ready, it was already time.

So, no, I did not transform twice with a belly full of life. That would have made me super nervous. Long before that date, I was laying down on a medical bed, huffing and puffing as my body betrayed me viciously. Well, alright, it wasn't that dramatic. I was giving birth. It was... I was excited, and scared. Eri was there. Shining was there. They each had a hoof in hand, encouraging me on.

Dorks. But we got through it, as a strange family. Soon there was a +1! She will not be appearing in this story. I know, I know, I can hear you complaining from here, but too bad. My child was not part of the ponid outbreak, so I am vetoing her appearance. You know she's a girl, and that's something, right? Happy and healthy little unicorn mare, all you need to know.

What? No, Eri, I can't literally hear whoever you're making these recording for. Pretty sure that's a 'you' thing, which I am not.

About those guests. The first set were from a subculture. Ever hear of 'furries'? Turns out some of them have cash, and 'vacation with talking animals' was way up their alley. They showed up with big smiles.

And were a bit touchy. Too touchy for me, but hey, some ponies like that, so we got the right ponies in the right place, and the vacation completed without anyone getting punched, or kicked.

From there, the ball was rolling. People told people, and we had a marketing budget that we put to work. Each month, we inched towards capacity. As Eri mentioned, the time of year wasn't a big problem for us, being an indoor thing.

Speaking of that! Not everyone wanted to be inside all the time forever, but, at first, we kinda had to. Nohuman knew about us ponies. But that slowly changed. Advertisement and people actually coming and seeing shifted us from 'unknown' to 'curiosities' to 'Oh that thing from TV' step by step. We never hit banal, since your odds of seeing a random pony on a street corner were pretty close to zero.

I mean, seriously, even a perfectly normal horse, which is not magic and does not talk, would get plenty of attention if it showed up in a lot of places outside of, like, a horse ranch. Even there, people visiting said ranch would want to interact with the horses. They're not everyday, even without anything else.

So, back to the ponies. Once people got it in their heads that they existed, no really, seeing one became a reason for intense curiosity instead of 'oh shit call the cops', which was a step up. The problem there was the slow painful crawl towards being recognized. I mean, more than just 'funny talking animals'. Animals had very specific rights and obligations, and they were not human ones.

But I had an idea on that, oh you'll love this. I hope? Well this is how it went. I walked up to Twilight as she was working and I casually grabbed one of her fancy scientific dealy bobs. She squeaked and chased me a bit, but I'm a fitter pony than that lovable nerd. "You want it back, sue me!" And I was off.

That was not a joke. I had a lawyer stop by to talk to her. I had one of my own.

We went to court. Pony vs Pony. To even recognize that either of us had a legitimate side to argue was a huge legal precedent that shook the world. A cat can't argue a case in court, no matter how adorable it was. It was an animal. Animals could be argued for, but not with.

But there we were, Twilight and I, in sharp business suits.

The judge started by calling a recess. Not a single word out of us but our names. I couldn't blame the guy. He had to review all the literature and options. I bet he would have rather gotten the case off his plate, but eventually, he came back and so began the trial, for real.

I lost that case, by the way. Lost it hard. I mean, are you surprised? I was on camera. I did steal it. I even taunted her. It was an open and shut slam dunk.

But that was part of the point. You can't levy much of a judicial levvy on a horse.

But a pony... I was fined the price of what I had taken and a little extra in emotional damages on Twilight. Twilight also insisted I apologize publicly, little jerk she was! But I did it, and I paid her, even though it was technically the resort's equipment!

Still, mission accomplished! Bonus, I wasn't sent to jail. Eri backed me up that, technically, the resort had no beef with me and didn't want to press any further charges. It was a purely civil suit, from start to end.

Which meant we were civil.

Which led into the next problem, woah boy... See, if we were citizens, that meant we were undocumented citizens. A lot of us still had no working ID. Now... see... there is no questionnaire that can prove that you, magic pony, were, in fact, random human person.

One of us got a bit lucky. Turned out little Apple Bloom used to work in heavy security places. She could jam her eye, the one that didn't change, against a retinal scanner and, beep, match. Now, funny thing. Retinal scanners are scary accurate and hard to pull the wool over. If you came up a match, the odds that you were that person were basically 100% with some rounding errors.

So Apple Bloom had the US Government confirming that she was a very human citizen, and her identification was flicked back on.

Good for her, but it didn't fix the rest of us, many of us lacking such an obvious out. But! It did wedge open that door. It at least showed that we could not be lying. So the questions came. Family and friends were brought in to check us out and confirm or deny that we were the person we claimed we used to be.

Not going to lie, not all of us passed those tests. Our personalities had shuffled. Some of us got happier. Some of us got sadder. Some of us just got stranger. Being a pony is not a small step, and sometimes that was a step too wide for someone to recognize you after over a year of separation, back when you were human, to what you were, on all fours, with hooves.

Which started a new round of issues. While some of us had new shiny IDs with our Equestrian faces grinning out of them, others were being hounded by Immigations and Customs. They were aliens, illegal aliens. That was a whole new round of trouble...

Trick though. You can't export somepony if you have no idea where they came from...

Author's Note

The original commissioner (who was not the one supporting it recently) demanded more details on this wrap-up, so here we are. They paid for 4 more episodes, this being the first. Do you have questions? A fine time to ask them!

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