Friendship is Revolution

by ultiville

Friendship is Awesome

Twilight scrambles to her hooves. She's shocked for a moment, but then can't help but grin.

"Ohmigosh, Rainbow!" She bounces like Pinkie Pie, then collapses on her friend. Rainbow stirs and turns to look at her.

"Geez, Twi, can't a girl nap in peace?" She looks around, and her look of annoyance fades. "Wait, where in Tartarus are we?"

"Not Tartarus or Equestria," Twilight says, "oh I'm so glad you're here, I've missed you girls so much!"

Rainbow Dash wriggles out from under her and sits up, looking at her strangely.

"What are you talking about? I just saw you, uh, well...it wasn't long ago, I'm sure!"

"I guess you don't remember how you got here either?"

"Nggg, I guess not," Rainbow says, face scrunched up. "That's freaky, Twi. I remember Tirek and your awesome castle and a bit after that but then it just sorta all gets fuzzy. What the hay?"

"I don't know, but I've been here for months," she looks at her sidelong, "you're not a robot, right?"

"What?"

"I just need to make sure," Twilight says, "let me check your side for a minute."

"I always knew you were into me," Dash smirks. Twilight rolls her eyes and presses her magic on Rainbow's barrel, where the switch used to be on her own. Despite checking most of her midsection, she doesn't find anything.

"That tickles. Also it's weird," Dash complains.

"Sorry. I guess I should explain," Twilight says, and does so. It takes some time.

"And right before I went to bed, your doll fell off the dresser, then I woke up and you were there. Wait a minute," she looks around for the plush, but it's nowhere to be found.

"Ugh," Rainbow says, "you got to start out as a robot and I had to start out as a lame doll? That's rough."

"Look on the bright side," Twilight says, "at least you're way cooler compared to what used to be here."

"Yeah, good point!" Dash perks up. "So, just so we're clear: we're in a strange world full of weird flesh creatures, they're bucking the whole place up, and one of them tried to kill you."

"Well, most of them are very friendly! And they made some stuff that's really wonderful too!"

"Oh come on," Dash says, "what in the world could be worth all the stuff you told me they screwed up? Also, they tried to kill you."

"I'm not happy about that. But I guess I didn't tell you about television and refrigeration! Or the Internet! I guess the Internet's only mostly good, but it's so easy to get information!"

"Great," Rainbow rolls her eyes, "they made a better library. Only you could possibly consider that a fair trade."

"You don't understand! There's so much information there, about everything! They have millions of articles just about us!"

"They have articles...about us? How do they know about us? I'd never even heard of a human before you told us about that mirror world."

"Uh...there's a television program about us here. It's like movies, except there are more of them, and they're shorter."

"Wait, they're about us? And there are millions of articles about them? That's--"

"I know," Twilight shakes her head, "it freaked me out too."

"Are you kidding? There are millions of articles about me? That's awesome! Show me!"

Twilight sighs and levitates the tablet over. She opens Google and types in Rainbow's name.

"Whoa," Dash says, looking on, "that's some serious magic even for you. How come you never made one of these in Ponyville?"

"Because it isn't magic, it's some kind of machine. Humans can't use magic at all. Remember how I said getting all the energy for it was messing up their air?"

"Oh yeah, should we stop using it?"

"We aren't using anywhere near enough to make a difference, it's fine. I'm going to try to make a spell to fix it anyway, I bet you can help. Anyway, look!"

The tablet's a bit slow, and the results have just now come up: a list of links relating to the pegasus.

"What am I looking at?" Dash asks. "I see my name a lot."

"Each of those underlined sentences is an article, if you press on it, it'll take you to the full thing. Look," Twilight presses her nose on one of the links, and a picture of a vinyl Rainbow Dash figurine appears.

"They've got toys of me? Awesome! Though it doesn't look much like me. Bring the list back, I want to check this out!"

Soon Rainbow Dash has the hang of using the tablet, despite the slight awkwardness of having to use her nose to interact with the screen. She clicks every link, and Twilight rolls her eyes as she basks in the new-found fame.

"Oh, hey, related searches. 'Rainbow Dash r34', what does that mean?"

"Err," Twilight says, "you don't want to know."

"Yeah, right," Rainbow rolls her eyes, "you didn't even think to tell me I was famous here, what do you know about what I want to look at?" She presses the related search, then the first link to pop up.

"Don't blame me," Twilight says as the tablet loads.

"Wha...what?" Dash looks at the images and pauses. Twilight tenses, then Dash breaks out laughing.

"They...they drew porn of me? This is hilarious! And totally not what I look like, but come on, why wouldn't you show me this? This stuff is amazing!"

"You don't mind that humans drew all this stuff? You look half-human in that one! And in that one you're mating with one!"

"Eh," Rainbow says, pressing her head against the bedroll to clear up the tears of laughter, "not like I haven't thought about the Wonderbolts like that. And Spike told me about those Daring Do stories you wrote before we knew she was a real pony."

"He'd better hope I never make it back to Equestria," Twilight murmurs.

"So yeah, they're just fans," Dash shrugs.

"I freaked out when I found out there was stuff like that of me," Twilight admits.

"Wait, you too?"

"There're actually more of me," Twilight blushes.

"Okay, now I know humans are crazy," Dash shakes her head, "that's just wrong. I'm going to have to fix that."

"How do you plan to do that?"

"I dunno, I'll figure it out. But uh, Twi, you're the big planner here...what are we going to do about the important stuff? I can't exactly work a bar like you; I'm awesome, but carrying trays isn't what these wings are for."

"Yeah," Twilight frowns, "well, I can earn enough to pay for food for both of us. It'll be a bit cozy sharing the bedroll, but I think we can make it work. And I'm so glad to see you, Rainbow. I felt so alone here."

"Well," Dash snickers, "you won't feel alone when you're sleeping with the second-hottest mare on the planet."

"Now I'm forgetting why I missed you."

They both fall, laughing, onto the bedroll. Dash collects herself first.

"You've gotta introduce me to Rachel, too," she says. "We're gonna find that human who shot you, and then he'll have to deal with the Rainbow Dash."

"I think we can do that too, yeah. And I want to talk to you about weather magic, see if we can do something about all this carbon. But Rosie should be here soon to get ready to open the bar. I'll ask her if you can stay. I'm sure she won't mind, but she'll probably want to meet you. And I'll have to work until around 11. Think you'll be able to keep yourself amused here until then? I'd rather show you around myself, this place takes some getting used to."

"Yeah, sure," Rainbow nods, "I've got millions of hilarious images to look through."

Twilight sighs.

Comments

[Zerodius]

I was... really not sure about the story at first. I admit I cringe at mentions of shipping and it made me almost drop it. But I soldier-ered on through.

Then came the robotic reveal... and I actually found it really original and decided it was worth it. Then, there was the discussion between AJ and Twilight that veered in mysanthropism and I was tempted to drop the fic again.

... and now, Rainbow Dash is in the story.

The story does veer quite a bit. It gave me bad tastes at times but I find myself finding it to be worth it to bear with these. I can definitely understand why the ratings for the story are so divided, with half positive and half negative.

In particular, I'm wondering why the cast is seemingly starting to trickle into the setting. From my guess, they're not so much physically there as incarnated via avatars ; my guess is that this more realistic Earth is completely incompatible with a full travel attempt, meaning only their minds fully travel, with their avatars being reshaped to fit their minds.

As for how and why this entire thing take place... I wouldn't doubt it if a powerful force was at work. And even if not, there's quite a few stories that could be explored ; a more realistic Earth world has a lot of inertia to it. It is far more difficult for an individual, even an exceptional one like the main cast, to affect history. But on another hand... to achieve great things in it is to be immortalized in history in ways that their native setting would not allow.

So... I'm actually curious as to where this is going.

[ultiville]

4556379 Thanks for the feedback! I admit this one is pretty weird, and I'm also hoping the plot won't collapse under its own weight or go so far off the rails it ends up not working at all.

I've got at least as many words of a much more traditional adventure/romance tagged story that I'll probably finish and post after I'm done with this one; it'll likely be less divisive (though since you dislike shipping probably won't be for you, alas). But I've always had a serious case of project-ADD that prevents things from getting finished so I'm going to try my best to finish this one before moving on.

I admit all the dislikes are a bit sad, but at the end of the day several people have followed or liked it as well, and if there are people happy to be reading the story, that makes it worth posting, even if some people aren't; after all, they can just not read it and no harm is done. Glad you're liking enough to stick with it.

[Zerodius]

I think I must clarify regarding the shipping.

Namely, on shipping, I'm one of those weird people who tend to be in 'they grey zone'. On one hand, I tend to be very intolerant of shipping as a general rule. On another hand, some of the stories I love most, both canon and fanon, are romantic ones (and when rating allows it, even going 'to the final step').

But one thing that really make it hard for me is that I tend to be pretty strict with character traits. I prefer romance to be born of character interactions, of characters fitting together organically. Which brings me to a tiny problem that is more a product of MLP.

Basically, I don't like the 'mostly female cast therefore lesbians' aspect of fanon created by settings with predominently female casts. Especially when the guesses are not based on what I see as solid evidence/hints. This is not to say I have a problem with same gender pairings at all (this would make me hypocritical) but well, more that I tend to be critical of romance that is 'told' instead of 'shown'.

Basically, an earlier chapter had a case of 'told' romance through Twilight's memories. This was one of my turn-off points where I considered dropping the fic. I considered this to be an innoffensive, non-plot-affecting point and carried on anyway. I'm glad I did ; the point was really a minor one regarding the greater plot and actually played an interesting role in the revelation that Twilight's memories have been tampered with.

In short, it's not that I hate shipping. It's just that I'm a grumpy kitty. Given it's well-writen, I can endure or even like it.

[Akeion98]

Story gets better and better ........Dislikes are starting to get annoying......You my good sir are my next james patterson.