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// 21- Conventional Chaos- Part 2 
// Story: Newfound Neighbors 
// by FrostTheWolf 
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In the days leading up to our trip to San Francisco, I had mixed feelings about everything that was going on. On one hand, I was excited to travel outside my home town and visit a city that I’ve heard so much about and never saw for myself. On the other hand, I was very nervous about my friends and I possibly attracting too much attention to ourselves. Not because of who I was with… but more because they knew nothing about some of the things that Ryan and I were very familiar with.

Such was the case when we arrived at the airport and picked up our tickets. “Sam? Ryan? What is this ‘TSA’ thing that everything’s lined up for?”

I let out a deep breath as I looked back at Luna, who was already dawning the human form from her spell rather early, as well as Gizmo. “It’s a security measure. You can only have certain things in our bags and if they don’t meet specific requirements, they could be confiscated.”

“Why would they do that?” the unicorn now asked, looking just as puzzled as Luna was.

“It’s more or less meant for safety purposes,” Ryan added as he walked past me, “I’m pretty sure we don’t have anything in our bags that would cause any issues. So, if you just follow our lead, we’ll be in and out real quick without any problems.”

Despite his reassurance on the matter, I couldn’t help but notice quite a few odd glances towards us as we got in line. If I had to take a guess, it probably might be because they didn’t think that they would see an Equestrian in line for a flight. In fact, it seemed like the only times that I noticed Equestrians around the airport would be those who were waiting on people that were incoming arrivals or working with air traffic control. It seemed rather rare for them to actually be passengers.

Then again, when most people probably think of Equestrians, they think of magic and being able to fly from point A to point B. So, I could probably see why some of them might be confused.

As for the line itself, it did not seem too long. Although, there were a lot of young children here and many of them seemed to be paying a lot of attention to Gizmo. So much so that it distracted her each time we had to move up in line and probably caused it to be much longer than it was supposed to be.

Luckily, going through the TSA checkpoint was not as nightmarish as I thought it would be. At least, for most of us. For Gizmo, it took a bit longer than it was supposed to. “Ma’am, you’re supposed to place any electronics and jewelry inside the containers outside your bag.”

“But this isn’t jewelry though,” I heard her say, just as I recognized the bands on her forelegs. Still, the gray feathered griffon with yellow eyes that was talking with her wasn’t buying it.

“It’s still metal and I’m just doing my job. It’s just standard procedure.”

Begrudgingly, Gizmo followed along and did what she was asked. Though, at the next step, things became a little more complicated for her. “Okay, Miss. Just walk on through.”

“W-What’s this?”

“Just a metal detector. Nothing too serious.” The griffon assured her as they looked to another attendant that was nearby. Nervously, she stepped through and for a moment, it seemed like things were okay.

Then there was a small beep. Something that I personally was unsure about.

“W-what was that?”

“Sounds like it picked up something,” The griffon said, “Do you have anything in your pockets or anything that could’ve-?”

“I’m not wearing any clothes. I don’t have pockets.” Gizmo deadpanned. Yet, that was when I noticed something. Looking back at her mane, I happened to notice a band that was holding it altogether. As she looked at me, I tried to point at her hairline to send some kind of message. The only result I got was Gizmo giving me the look of a confused kitten.

At least, at first. “Oh!”

With a simple spell, she pulled at the ring that held her ponytail and handed it to the griffon. “Sorry. I use this to keep my mane tied up-”

The griffon rolled his eyes, before shaking a claw, “Keep it. Just make sure to take it off whenever coming through here. Make it less of a headache for us.”

Quickly, Gizmo fixed her things back up, gathered her things and joined back up with the rest of us. Just at a glance, it looked like the unicorn was trying to put as much distance between herself and the metal detectors like a cat that just saw its reflection. Once she was with us, Gizmo then looked at me, “Are t-those things always that complicated?”

“Sometimes,” I shrugged, before pulling my luggage as we started to walk towards the gate where our flight was going to be at, “From personal experience, it sort of depends on how much you’re bringing with you.”

“And how many bins you need to fit your stuff.” Ryan added from a few steps behind us. “Still, we’re here and we have some time to ourselves for the moment. Why don’t we sit down and find a place to get something to eat?”





For the next hour after we got past TSA, our time was spent doing a handful of different things. Mainly, it revolved around three specific things. First, trying to find the gate where our flight was departing from. Second, a place where we could eat that wasn’t too far… and third, having to stop every time a young child or someone else noticed Gizmo and approach her like how Jotaro would approach Dio.

With how many times we were being stopped, Ryan wondered if getting a vest for Gizmo that said ‘Emotional Support Unicorn- Do not pet’ would help. Personally, I didn’t think it would really make that much of a difference. Plus, she didn't seem to pay any mind to it.

From that point onward, very few strange occurrences happened. Waiting in the lobby didn’t take too long as we had to wait only an hour before our plane was ready to leave. What was even more surprising was that there were a couple of Equestrians on board our flight as well. Some of them were even members of the flight crew, which seemed to have Gizmo stay calm during the whole flight.

As for Luna, she seemed to be taking everything in stride. Not too bothered by things for the most part. Though, I think she was using magic before we took off and got in the air to try and keep her spell up. The flight crew did ask for any equestrians to not use their magic while on board the plane. So, if I had to take a guess as to why, it would be similar to why we’d put our electronics into airplane mode in the sense that it may interfere with crucial systems.

It roughly took us an hour and a half in order to reach our destination, give or take a few minutes because of the weather upon arrival. Though, that wasn’t exactly the hard part of going through San Francisco’s airport.

The difficult part was trying not to get lost once we landed

You see, compared to the size of San Diego’s airport, the airport in San Francisco was massive. So much so that a tram station was in place in order to help people getting on flight’s at certain gates and getting off. And from where we landed, the bags that we had to check in were coming in on the opposite side of the airport.

So, straight out the gate, we had to immediately haul flank over to the tram we needed just to get to baggage claim to get our stuff… Gizmo’s words, not mine.

Not to mention that once we got there, it was busy. It seemed like we weren’t the only ones who had the idea of traveling all this way for this convention, for there were numerous other Equestrians of all different species just hanging around just in the baggage claim like we were. 

And just as we got our stuff and we’re walking outside, things… got weird, “Hey, isn’t that girl the Princess Whisperer?”

Oh for god’s sake, why now of all times? “Ryan?”

“I’m already working on getting an Uber. Should be here in a few minutes”

“Yeah, it does look like her. What’s she doing here of all places?”

“Maybe she got invited to go to Babscon? They did say that there were some special guests coming this weekend.”

“Well, aside from that unicorn with her, I’m not sure. I don’t see anypony else that looks like a princess with her.”

Now I was noticing that Luna was looking a bit anxious like I was. Based on how she was taking this, I could only assume that she was just hearing about this for the first time. Which seemed a bit odd, since this has been something going on for practically a few months now. Though, I personally just want to get out of this before crowds start to form.

“Excuse me, are you-?”

Before I could even say anything, I felt a tap on the shoulder as I turned around. Luckily, instead of a stranger, I saw Ryan holding his phone. “Hey, I hate to be rude, but our ride’s almost here. We probably don’t want to keep them waiting.”

Immediately, all of us followed him out the door as quickly as we could. Traffic was crowded outside, so we had to be extra careful as Ryan flagged down the Uber that was picking us up. As we put our bags in the car, I thought that we had a chance to catch our breath.

Then I realized that our driver was a talking cat. Not like something out of Lackadaisy, but something more casual. “Is one of you named Ryan?”

“Yeah, that’s me. And you’re Chipper?”

He nodded, before putting the car out of park and started to drive. Though, as he looked at our destination, the cat… had a question for us. “Let me guess. You’re heading to the event at the hotel this weekend?”

“Um, yes,” Luna paused, “How-?”

“Well, let’s just say I’ve noticed more than my fair share of folks heading the same direction. Not every creature’s here for that of course, but it seems like we have more of the Equestrian clientele as of late. Heck, before this drive, I had to drop off a Yak and Earth Pony that came here for their anniversary.”

“Are Equestrians really… rare around here?” I asked, just as we started to leave the airport and arrive on the highway.

“Not exactly. It’s just…” He paused, before turning on his blinkers as he moved over a few lanes, “When most folks think of San Francisco, they think of it by what humans call it. City by the Bay, Sunset City, City of Love, all that Jazz. Although, that only seems to be the case when the fog’s playing nice. Otherwise, the weather from the bay tends to blanket some of the better parts of San Fran. Pegasi love it though, that’s for sure.”

“They do? Why?”

That had Chipper chuckle a bit, before looking in the rear view mirror at Gizmo. “When most folks see all the fog and clouds around, they aren’t exactly thrilled. However, when a pegasus see’s clouds, they see it as free real estate if you get what I mean. So much so that some of them started making homes up there and what not. Locals mostly don’t tend to mind though, unless you’re one of those real estate folks that get rather stingy about it.”

… Now I can’t help but think about if one of those cloud homes gets stuck at the Golden Gate bridge.

“Now, why don’t you-” Around that time, he paused as I noticed his glance at me, “Wait a minute. Have I seen you somewhere before?”

Oh no. Please don’t tell me it’s happening again. “Not that I… know of? I haven’t been here recently.”

“Oh, sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” Chipper quickly apologized, “I tend to pick up a lot of folks, so sometimes I end up mistaking new passengers for ones who I picked up previously. It’s a habit of mine.”

As we talked with one another, I soon realized that the drive to where we were headed… was actually rather shorter than I expected. A trip that I thought would be an hour or so actually lasted six minutes and before I knew it, we were pulling up to the front of the hotel and taking our bags out. All the while, Chipper was helping us out.

Though, as he was driving off, the last thing we heard still stuck with me. “Hope you all have fun. Welcome to the City by the Bay!”