Ponies vs. Pizza
Admiral Biscuit
Everything about the human world was strange and confusing, from the portal to the airplane ride to Florida. The four mares had all thought that they were ready for it; they’d met with humans and read through So You Want To Go To Earth. They’d seen newsreels and corporate training films, and as a result none of them froze up as they got their first actual view of Earth, unfiltered through a window.
It was close, though. Cherry Jumble in particular cast worried glances around at all the cars zooming by on the other side of a grass island populated with weeds and stunted trees. She’d never been any further than Ponyville until just recently and still hadn’t completely come to terms just how big and diverse Equestria actually was—she was completely unprepared for Earth.
Penny Ante finally poked her with a snout to get her moving. There was a lot to do and only so many hours in the day.
•••
“Sometimes it takes animals a while to get used to their new environment,” Wrangler said. “I’d expect the same holds true to ponies. Like, I don’t feel relaxed at all even though that bed looks nice.”
“It is.” Posey tapped it with her hoof. “It’s soft and springy. I wonder how they do that?” She leaned over the edge and started examining the bottom sheet. “You couldn’t put springs in a mattress, could you? They’d just poke through.”
“At least we’ve got a good view.”
Cherry shook her head. “I don’t like it. It’s too high. I’d rather have my hooves on the ground, not up in the air like this.”
“It’s only the fourth floor,” Wrangler protested. “That’s not so high. The airplane flew a lot higher.”
“I didn’t like that, either. We should have taken a train. What happens if the building tips over?”
“It won’t, it’s very strong.” She tapped her hoof against the wall, then pulled it back out of the divot she’d just made in the drywall. “Hmm.”
“See?”
“The floors are strong,” Penny said. “I didn’t feel them move underhoof, did you?”
“Lots of buildings don’t carry their structure in the walls, anyway. Just the beams that hold up the floors and the roof. Our barn had lots of flimsy partitions in it, just enough to divide up the space, that’s all you need.”
“Well, I don’t like it. Maybe I’ll get used to it.” Cherry rolled on her back and sighed. “Does anypony have any food?”
“There’s lots of restaurants we can order from, if we want to experiment with human food.”
“Not today.”
“Posey?”
“I should because I’ll be grouchy in the morning, but my stomach’s still not settled from that stupid airplane.”
“Penny?”
“Same.”
•••
The dorm didn’t fall over in the night, and by the next morning the four ponies were feeling more comfortable with their new surroundings.
They were ready when there was a soft, polite knock at the door. Wrangler stood up on her hind hooves and peered through the peephole—she’d figured out what that was for last night.
A dark-haired woman was standing in the hall outside. Wrangler assumed she was, anyway; it was hard to tell with humans.
She dropped back down and pushed the door lever, then tried to work out how to make it open. It wasn’t easy to pull by hoof and she didn’t like the taste of metal in her mouth.
I could put a short length of rope around that. A project for later; they still had plenty of moving-in to do.
“Hi, I’m Haruna.” The girl crouched down to be more at their level. “That means ‘Spring Flower’ in my language.”
The ponies all made their introductions, Wrangler first.
•••
Breakfast was provided downstairs in a large buffet. It was a chance to meet all the other ponies in the dorm, and to go over some ground rules before the intense training would start. It contained a mix of human foods and traditional pony foods.
The afternoon was another training session, covering the basics of the dorm, including how things in their rooms worked. Cherry didn’t have to ask about the soft walls; another pony raised her hoof first and brought the subject up.
They got a full tour of a sample room and explanations of how all the machines in those rooms worked. Haruna demonstrated how the telephone worked, how to look up telephone numbers; how the TV worked and how to look up TV shows; how to get a DVD player or a computer if they wanted one for their room.
After all the training was over, they all returned to their dorm room with Haruna. She put a card up with her telephone number as well as the telephone number for her office, in case they ever needed help. And she prompted them to order food for delivery.
The number of choices were overwhelming. They finally settled on China Spring, since Penny not only knew what egg rolls were, but liked them. Her hometown had a Chinese restaurant with a cook who had been trained in San Francisco which was where Chinese food had been invented.
It took an hour for the food to arrive and they had to go downstairs to get it. It came in trays that seemed to be made up of cloudstuff.
Haruna didn’t bother to explain how the chopsticks were meant to work. The ponies simply ate out of the styrofoam cartons.
•••
A week in, the training sessions weren’t any less intense, but they’d all started to become accustomed to Earth. Wrangler had tied the rope to the door handle like she’d intended, which made it a lot easier to use. Haruna noticed it, reported it to her bosses, and before too long every dorm room had them.
The ponies got tours of the park, including visits to the various attractions. Some of those were at night, after the park had officially closed—the ride engineers were diligently working to make the rides more accessible to ponies, and needed volunteers to test out the modifications.
That was optional, but Wrangler at least got a thrill of seeing some of her ideas implemented.
Group training fell off, and were replaced with individual training. Cherry had to learn how to use a cash register and a bar code reader, while Wrangler got to practice her rope show and practice her part in a stunt show with other cast members.
Posey got intense park training; she was a tourist group leader. That meant she had to be familiar with every attraction the park had to offer, as well as what was pony-friendly and what wasn’t.
Penny, meanwhile, got her training in Frontierland.
For now, their dinner breaks all lined up, and for as long as that lasted, they agreed to all meet back in the room for a group meal where they could both unwind and experience some new human cuisine.
•••
“What’s a pizza?”
“It’s kind of like a bread bowl, but flatter,” Penny said. “You know how sometimes you can get soup in a hollowed-out loaf of bread?”
“No.”
“Really?”
Cherry shrugged. “We didn’t have those. What keeps the soup from leaking out?”
“The crust, I guess.”
“Don’t they have cheese soup that’s called fond dew that’s served in bread?”
“I heard somebody talking about it,” Wrangler said. “You take little forks and spear the bread on it and then dip it in the cheese. I don’t think it’s in bread, though, I think it’s in a special sauce pan.”
“Do you want to try a pizza?”
“We could, we haven’t had that yet.” Posey tapped her hoof on the restaurant guide. “There are a bunch of them, so it must be popular. You can choose your toppings, or get one that’s pre-configured.”
“Wasn’t that one of the things that humans sell frozen in grocery stores?”
“I think so,” Penny told her. “We should go to a grocery store on our day off, just to see what they have. We’ve got an electric icebox, we could put some snacks in it.”
“They’ve got four different crust options,” Cherry said. “Which is the best?”
“The hand-tossed has a nice border that would keep the toppings from spilling off,” Posey suggested. “That’s probably the best.”
“What about sauce? They have tomato, buffalo, creamy garlic, and barbeque.”
“I don’t like red sauces, they make my muzzle and throat tingle.”
•••
Half an hour later, the ponies had successfully made their order: one large hand-tossed pizza with creamy garlic parmesan sauce, extra cheese, mushrooms, onions, and black olives. Jalapenos on the side—both Wrangler and Penny enjoyed them, while the other two hated them. An order of Quepapas with blue cheese dipping sauce, and a triple chocolate brownie for dessert.
A half hour after their order, the food arrived. Penny used their plastic money card to pay for it, then brought the food back up to the room and laid it out on the table.
The food looked and smelled delicious. Posey popped a Quepapa in her mouth while Cherry struggled with the foil lid on the blue cheese dressing. Meanwhile, Wrangler and Penny studied the pizza.
“How do we eat this?”
“I think . . . just lick the topping off? I don’t know why they cut guidelines in it, that would make the topping leak through.”
“The box was greasy,” Penny said. “I could feel it on my back.”
“I can smell it on your back.” Cherry grabbed one of the leftover China Spring chopsticks and used it to stab the foil open. The chopsticks had been surprisingly useful for stabbing foil lids, poking telephone buttons, and poking television remote buttons.
“I can’t help but feel—” Posey began, but then Wrangler stuck her muzzle in the pizza and started licking off topping.
“This is really good,” she said, after she’d swallowed her mouthful. “The sauce keeps it from sticking to the bottom.”
•••
It was two full months before they learned how they were actually supposed to eat a pizza.
Author's Note
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