//------------------------------//
// Student and Princess 
// Story: Friendship is Revolution 
// by ultiville 
//------------------------------//

Twilight takes a couple of deep breaths, trying to tell herself it's just like her coronation.  When she looks up from her hooves and the marble platform, though, out over the large crowd of humans staring at her, she can't keep herself convinced.  There really are quite a lot of them, and being so tall and compact compared to ponies, they can really cram into the space.

Okay Twilight, you can do this.  You're a Princess, after all!  And your friends are right here!  Well, most of them.  And all you have to do is say thanks, after all.

"Hello everyone."  Lame start, but got the job done, and you didn't say 'everypony'.  B+.  The crowd is still silent, apparently waiting for some kind of content.

"Thank you all for coming."  Okay you're just getting worse and worse here Twilight, get it together!  "When I first got here, I thought I was lucky to meet humans that accepted and befriended me right away.  When I started researching your history online, I read a lot of scary things.  Well, you probably know that," she chuckles, "my diary got published, after all."  Some scattered laughs echo up from the crowd as well.  Positive response, excellent!  Your grade is improving, keep it together, we'll ace this one yet.

"But since then, I've realized it's more complicated than that."  Right, good, 'turns out you're all awesome, thanks for being my friends' move on to the chatting, short and sweet.  "In Equestria, we're lucky in many ways, but especially in our leadership.  No pony alive picked Celestia, but I think all of us would, if asked."  

What are you doing, Twilight, this isn't what we agreed on!  Short and sweet!  Twilight forces down the nagging student voice, that little part of her that still thinks she'll fail at anything unrehearsed.  The one that always wanted to go back and study, the one that told her having friends wasn't worth risking rejection.  Instead she thinks of the recently-dubbed Polaris, Cygnus, and Sirius, and of the six curiously-familiar humans that befriended and helped her when she arrived, and of Mary and even David.  She thinks about the numbers she saw online, and the mismatch between them and the result of the vote in Congress.  She feels her friends close and warm, even on the summer day, and smiles.

The crowd's been silent all through her pause, silent and still. In the absence of waving signs and hands, she notices not only the eyes on her, but the machines as well: countless people are holding up smartphones, and several of the now-familiar camera crews linger in the back.  If you go off-script here, Twilight, the whole world will know!

When she replies, she hears echos of all her friends in her mind's voice.  Buck you, past Twilight.  I want it to.

"As I said, I really appreciate you coming out here to support me today.  But you shouldn't have to.  Last night, we all," she gestures to her friends with her wing, "saw the numbers online.  It isn't just most of you here that wanted to accept us, it is most of you everywhere.  On Equestria, we're lucky to have leaders that are better than we are, and that want to be better still.  I've seen it in Celestia, and felt it in myself, just now, when I was thinking about what to say to you all here.  It makes me so happy that you all came here for us...but it makes me so sad that you had to.  To see that where our leaders were better than we deserved, yours are worse than you do."

No one's cheering or saying anything, and there's still a part of her that's terrified it means she's lost them, that wants to vomit off the side of the marble, to fly into the sun and hope to find Celestia there to tell her she passes.  Her legs shake, just a little, but she forces them to stop, and looks into the eyes of a few of the nearby humans instead.

"When I came up here, I just wanted to thank you for the support, to say that I'd be glad for it as long as you wanted to give it.  But looking out on how many of you care about this, I realized that isn't right.  I'm not even from this world, and I don't know how long I'll be able to stay.  I'm honored to be the thing that made you come here today, but I don't want to be the reason you stay.  I know this isn't the first important issue where your leaders have ignored you, and if you just let the be about me, it won't be the last.  This should be about you, and about them.  If you stay, please make it about that."  She takes one last deep breath.  The crowd is still silent, but she doesn't think they look hostile.  If she's reading them right, mostly they're shocked.  Now virtually all of them have their phones or tablets out, a whole sea of little boxes and waiting faces.

"I don't know what you should ask them to do," she says, softer now, "but I'd love the chance to help you figure it out.  And I do know, if you want to have a better world, you need to build it.  And you need to build it by making sure that the people who make those calls, day to day, are as good and wise and accepting as you are.  You need your leaders to be your friends, to care about you and what you need and want.  If you stay here, stay because you want to make that happen.  Then you won't need to make them let us stay; they'll do it themselves."

The silence remains.  Well, you've done it now, Princess.  Did she always sound that sarcastic?  Now the people and the leaders will agree all right.  They'll all want us gone!

A few humans are moving to the back now, obviously getting ready to leave.  All of them are lowering their cameras and tablets.  Then they're just standing, staring.  She's still smiling at them, but mostly out of inertia.  She's got an image of Annie-Jane's farm in her head, ready to teleport - she's not sure anywhere closer will be safe.

Then someone in the middle of the crowd starts clapping, and somehow it spreads, slowly for a few seconds, and then like a match catching it's all around her like the roar of water around a tiny boat, and they're waving the signs again and calling her name, and in her head, the little voice is quiet.





Applejack wakes up falling, tangled up with another pony.  It's a short fall, and then they're lying in a pile on a wooden floor, a tangle of yellow and orange limbs, slightly sore from the impact.  There's a butterfly-covered flank in her face, and her head is all fuzzy.

"Ugh."  She's great with words in cases like this.

She disentangles herself from Fluttershy and stands up, a bit shakily.  The room she's in is a little bigger than her bedroom in the farmhouse.  About half of it is filled with boxes, the rest, near where they fell, is bare and clean, like something's recently been removed from it.  The room is curiously cool despite the warm sunlight spilling in through the front window.  There's a second in the rear, but it's filled with a strange box, making a kind of soft clacking noise.  Curiously, there are two small stuffed ponies on the floor near them - one looks like Rarity, the other like Pinkie Pie.

"Oooh-ee, my heads fuzzier than a sheep on shearin' day," Applejack mutters, then nudges Fluttershy with her hoof.  "Y'all right there sugarcube?"

"My head feels funny too," Fluttershy says, getting to her hooves, "but I think so."  She looks around.  "Where are we?"

"I was hopin' you knew."

End of Act 2