“Are Equestrians an existential threat?” The question caught Kate Rubinian offgaurd to the point that she almost smashed the dish she washing into a million pieces against the iron sink. Especially as the question came from a pony of all things, specifically her roommate, a mid sized light green earth pony mare named prickly pear. Prickly Pear or Pear for short, was at the same college as Kate for the agricultural history masters program, with the two shacking up to save money on the exorbitant cost of housing in California. Pear wasn’t really that bad of a roommate, though true to her name she was usually rather aloof and unsentimental. Still at the moment she looked more downtrodden and depressive than Kate had ever seen her.

“What?” Asked Kate a bit stunned at the words used by this pony to describe her own species, barely managing to turn off the faucet as she walked over to her diminutive roommate. “Do you mean like the potion thing…?” She said in a desperate attempt to parse out just what the hell this gloomy little horse was saying.

“No not the potion technology, that is also an existential threat.. I mean Equestrians themselves.” She said eyes a mix of utter despair and hard willed steel.

“Uhhhh…. I’m not really sure how to answer that.” Said Kate as she sat bow legged next to the mare, her jeans still uncomfortably soaked from the 5 minutes of dishes prior to the start of this bizarre and one sided Socratic dialogue.

“How much do you know about Equestrian history?”

Kate shrugged feeling a bit guilty at her answer, “Basic stuff, unification of the tribes, griffin war, Starswirl, other than that not much.”

“Unfortunate.” Pear said with just a bit more of her trademark brusqueness. “Do you know why Equestrian doesn’t have a word for genocide?”

Kate now felt even more confused, and as an Armenian a bit uncomfortable, “Because you’re herbivores and therefore more peaceful?”

Pear shook her head as if lecturing a distracted child, eyes still staring off blankly into the distance. “Because it wasn’t seen as a war crime, it was just an accepted part of war.” Pear took perhaps her deepest breath yet, “As you probably know Equestria is…. Was a multi species planet with around 20 sentient races altogether. Many of whom are either relatively solitary migratory groups or exist in large multi species villages with the exception of various ceremonial sites such as Griffonstone. Because of this true nation states are relatively rare.”

Kate looked at Pear with equal parts nervousness and confusion. “I’m still not really sure where you’re going with this..”

Pear paid her no heed and continued her morose rant in a way that showed who she was talking to wasn’t important, she just wanted to be heard. “The on exception of this was Equestria.. which species wise is both the largest and most homogenous state on the planet. Despite a history of settlement by other species, sometimes predating ponies.”

Kate shook her head, “Let me get this straight… you’re saying that Equestria was built on Genocide?”

Pear nodded still not making eye contact “Precisely.”

Kate began to stroke Pear’s neck in an attempt to console her, “Pear… you do realize that America did the exact thing to its natives right?”

“That was due to arrogance and culture clash with the key idea being to displace, scatter and assimilate via hundreds of unrelated programs. The Equestrian founding was a single concentrated effort done for the purposes of ‘protection’.”

Kate's eye lit up, thinking that perhaps she found a trump card to stop her roomie's self deprecating nihilistic spiral. "What about Neanderthals? Us humans owe a lot to wiping them out."

"You bred with Neanderthals." Said Pear as if Kate was a complete idiot for not thinking about that, "They went extinct because you couldn't stop fucking them. The rest was just a mixture of resource competition and natural selection."

"Oh... silly me." Said Kate. Normally she'd think of a snappy comeback but Pear was much too distressed at the moment for Kate to pull that on her.

“Humans were not the first species that ponies had decided were ‘abominations’ that must be destroyed due to actual or theoretical threat potential, simply the most numerous and widespread. Beforehand we simply allowed them to stay outside our borders but with your technology and numbers that was not an option.”

“I-I’m sorry.” Kate said shaking her head, hands involuntarily streaking through the air, “But this is kind of hard to believe? Aren’t ponies supposed to be super peaceful? Y’know miniscule homicide rate, barely any violent crime? Wasn’t the reason that ponies wanted us gone in the first place was because we were so violent.”

“Not exactly,” Pear said with an emotionless whine, “Humans were perceived as incredibly dangerous due to your advanced weaponry and your tendency to go to war over miniscule issues. The Equestrian government saw this as a potential threat to their expansion and acted thusly, just like the Changelings when they were still led by Queen Carapice 700 years ago.” Pear awkwardly pawed the ground. “As for the niceness I can assure you it is only shared among ponies, due to our nature as herd dwelling prey animals in a world with inter sapient conflict we are quite collectivist by necessity. It’s the same reason why all ponies, as a general rule of thumb think ponies are friends, and all non ponies are threats, or beneath notice.“

Kate strummed her finger on the carpet eyes averted now that she was fully aware Prickly Pear wasn’t willing to make eye contact. “So basically, what you’re saying is that ponies are the Borg and the whole ‘potion slinging’ thing was inevitable.”

“That’s an unsophisticated way of saying it, but yes.”

Kate shook her head, “But that doesn’t make sense aren’t ponies supposed to be super peaceful? Doesn’t Equestria have only around 150 homicides per year?”

“Homicide is a crime of individual against individual, with ponies, violence is almost always an action undertaken by a mob. And mob violence done either out of fear or group interest is quite common… perhaps more common than any species that ever lived on Equus.”

Kate tried to speak but once again Pear continued on, “I’m not even at the worst part. Like all organisms, ponies are intent on growth and territorial expansion, but due to our ‘natures’ we will not splinter off into various factions if there is even the possibility of non pony races existing. Nor will we try to integrate or even form equilateral relationships with said races due to both our innate species wide collectivism and the cutie mark and tribe division of labor rendering them redundant. We also have a nasty habit of hoarding life saving knowledge and threaten withholding it to get our way, and will guard it with our lives. After all what’s a few hundred in exchange for the dominance of ponykind?”

‘The sun and moon’ though Kate, the horrible realization slowly sinking in.

“In short, I have come to the conclusion that the minute ponies reach a certain level of dominance, the extinction of all other sapient species is only a matter of time.” As she finished a few small tears began to form, staining the fur around her eyes a slightly darker green.

“I’m…uhhh. I’m not exactly sure what to say to that.” Said Kate awkwardly placing a well manicured hand on Prickly Pear’s withers.

“There’s nothing to say.”

Kate rolled her head back, admittedly she wasn’t exactly close with Prickly Pear, fitting name and all but still she was more a friend than an enemy and it hurt her to see anyone deal with that level of mental anguish. Even if it was hidden over by a mask of either trained or naturally occurring stoicism. “If it makes you feel better. Even after what you said I’m probably more likely to snap and kill you than the other way around.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I belong to a race of monsters.”

“Well.” Said Kate with a sad smile as she walked over to get one of the many lukewarm beers on the counter before returning to her seated position on the floor before downing it. “At least we can be monsters together.” Prickly Pear let out a small and uncharacteristic laugh that intermingled with a few choking sobs, maybe the sheer emotional overload let some of her real feelings get past that ever present stoic barrier. Kate simply took another sip of the stale lite beer and wrapped her arm around Prickly Pear, and for once Prickly Pear responded by leaning against her.

Prickly Pear smiled, "I guess. Let's just hope no more aliens show up and have to deal with either of our species." She said half jokingly. Kate was shocked.. prickly pear tell a joke? The shock of it made her laugh, and that made Prickly Pear laugh. A rare event that only made Kate laugh creating a positive feedback loop. Until it was just the two of them, laughing on the floor uncontrollably.

Author's Note

Long time no see, for the last few months I've been on a dig and doing grad school stuff so I haven't had much time for fanfics. Anyways, I've seen a lot of posts on how 'humans are way too warlike as a species' but I've never seen anything that looked at ponies that way. Besides I figure it'd give context to why Equestria would be willing to do what it did without just d