Chapter 1
July 31, 2015
Chrysalis called me at a convenient time in the afternoon when I was home and not doing anything else. I was immediately suspicious.
“How do you know that I just got off work?” I asked.
“We’re friends aren’t we, Sandy?” she said, her voice sweet. Not like honey, like saccharine.
“How many guys like me do you say that to?”
“Oh, come on. You know how I manipulate the fanboys on my website and you’re the only one who knows I’m actually a changeling.”
In the two years she’d been running around Earth, Chrysalis had done well for herself with cosplay and modeling. I had heard DeviantArt was considering running a special feature on her page. She’d branded herself as Chrissy West. I was a little miffed that she’d appropriated my last name, but maybe we really were friends. Sort of.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I’m so glad you asked. I was recently contacted by the Princesses of Equestria and the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.”
My heart skipped a beat. I tried to calm myself down before asking, “What did they talk about?”
“Love and tolerance. Politics. BronyCon.”
“BronyCon, the convention in Baltimore, August seventh-through-ninth?”
“That’s the one,” she said. “The one you have tickets to attend.”
I was somewhat touched that she read my blog about my plan to go to the convention, but had to focus on the big picture. “So what’s the deal?”
“They want to go.”
“They’ll be shot on sight. Do you have any idea the stigma pony conventions have picked up, what with attempted changeling invasions?”
“A rogue changeling invasion is not the same thing as a visit by pony royalty,” she pointed out. “They’ve made the decision to formally introduce this world to theirs at BronyCon.”
“So go to the United Nations, not a group of geeks meeting in one of the top ten most dangerous cities in the US!”
“I’m just passing the message along, Sandy. If you want to argue the plan, do it with them.”
“What do you mean?”
“You should expect a visit soon.”
“They’re coming here?”
“To your house. I told them how to find it.”
“What!? Why? Why me?”
“I merely recommended a dependable person. They’ll need your services as both guide and ambassador.”
I stuttered before managing, “My wife’s going to kill us both.”
She laughed. “Oh, I doubt that.”
“Are you going to be at the meeting?”
“Why would I? This is a meeting between you and them.”
“Coward.”
“Fine,” she conceded. “I’ll be there. Does that make you a happy human?”
“It does. I’m finally getting you to do things for me for a change.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the cash register and millions of worshipers calling my name.”
“Internet worshipers,” I pointed out.
“Just be home tomorrow,” she said, and hung up.
I had more questions, such as: what time, who would be coming, and oh my God, what do I wear to meet with pony Princesses? Something long-sleeve, probably. Ponies would probably understand tattoos on butts, but maybe not on arms.
I hit the button to return the call.
“We’re sorry, this call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and try again.”
She was sneaky at everything. An untraceable phone didn’t surprise me. Then again, it could have just been Chrysalis imitating the robot network voice.
I put the phone down and the reality of the situation began to sink in. Two years ago, I’d first met Chrysalis when she’d been blown into our world after the infamous wedding incident in Canterlot. Subsequently, we’d gone to a convention, changelings not under her control had invaded, we saved the day, she’d decided to stick around and pose as a human, and now ponies wanted to meet me.
I mean, I’d had stranger days, but none not related to My Little Pony. Then again, if the ponies were coming tomorrow, it was probably going to be stranger than today. Huh, how nice to see that coming. Usually it just hit me in the face.
I would have to tell my wife when she arrived home. Knowing Maria as I did, she would be displeased. It would probably go something like, We can’t have company, the house is filthy! It wasn’t, but you know how the women in your life can sometimes act. Either they went overboard obsessive with making sure everything was just perfect for guests or they became the world’s greatest cosplayer while concealing their true identity as an alien bug horse.
Yes, I know I’m stretching the definition of woman for Chrissy, but you know how alien bug horses can be.
I decided that I needed some input. I sat down in front of my laptop and wrote out a quick blog asking for advice. It seemed like a good idea to err on the side of caution and not reveal too much.
But I couldn’t help dropping a few hints. I simply could not help it. My brony fanfiction profile had gotten super popular once rumors had begun that I personally knew the Queen Chrysalis. If she knew I secretly enjoyed it, she would definitely use it against me.
Chrissy isn’t evil, at least not anymore, but she’s never lost her manipulative streak.
The first couple of replies to my blog had started to come in when I heard Maria’s truck pull into the driveway. I met her at the front door with her favorite beverage and a smile.
I did get a hug and kiss out of the exchange before she put on a business face and asked, “What did you do?”
“Nothing, actually. But you’re still not going to like this.”
When I told her, sure enough, she didn’t.
Maria frowned at me as she stomped some dirt from her veterinary work off of her boots. “Why did you agree to this?”
“I didn’t. Chrysalis just told me they were coming and then hung up the phone.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “All right. We should get started.”
Cleaning the house wasn’t how I wanted to spend a Friday night. The comments from my blog didn’t yield much about how to prepare, beyond “bake cake.” Seemed like a good idea.
We did manage to get the place presentable to receive guests by the deadline. Saturday morning was reserved for freaking out in anticipation.
With nothing to do but wait, we gravitated towards Netflix. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic seemed like a natural choice.
We were two or three episodes in when someone cleared their throat behind the couch.
In our rush to turn around, Maria’s catlike reflexes resulted in inadvertently backhanding me across the face. I’ve got fifty pounds and seven inches on her, but she still smacked the glasses right off my nose. The spectacles went flying, but fortunately I could still tell exactly who all of our visitors were. Ponies are helpfully color-coded like that.
“I hope we aren’t interrupting anything,” Princess Celestia said. It sounded like she was and she knew it, but you don’t rule a country for a millennium and not pick up some tact. Particularly when dealing with people so jumpy.
I groped for the TV remote and turned it off. “Uh, nope. Just didn’t expect you all to appear so suddenly. I expected some sort of magic noises or a flash of light or something.”
“Sandy, you know that TV dramatizes things,” Chrysalis, who was with them, reminded me.
“Is this tee vee the system I’ve heard about that you use to watch the entertaining production that was created from observations of Equestria?” said Twilight.
Maria sensed an oncoming tangent and cut it off. “Not exactly, but before we discuss that, I’d like to welcome you all to Earth and to our home.”
We went around the room with introductions. The Mane Six, the Princesses, Spike, Shining Armor, and Chrissy had come to visit. Considering that the big ones were about as tall as terrestrial ponies and the small ones were somewhere between that and the size of dogs, our living room had gotten crowded in a hurry.
“If we want them out of here ASAP, better keep the best pony fanboying to a minimum,” Maria muttered. She waded into the crowd to give me some breathing room. I found my glasses before they got crushed under somebody’s hoof and put them back on. All the better to see best-uh, diplomat.
With the fourteen of us all talking at once, it was difficult to get a word in edgewise about international relations. Chrissy seemed to be doing the best at running the conversation. She was the designated go-between for the ponies and the people, after all.
She hooked a hoof around my shoulder and pulled me to her side, raising her voice above the crowd. “After my experience with Sandy and his wife, I was thinking it would be just lovely for all of you to experience what they call ‘The Great American Roadtrip.’ It would be the perfect way to see the sights and learn more about the local population. I can recommend it.”
“Wait a second,” I managed to break in, “who’s driving?”
Chrissy smiled. “Why, you are, Sandy.”
“I don’t own a tour bus!”
“How about a clown car?” asked Pinkie.
“It doesn’t have to be all of them,” Chrissy said. “The background ponies can stay at home.”
Applejack started to say something, but Twilight cut in. “If anypony is going, I think Celestia should get the honor.”
“What about you, Twilight?” Celestia replied. “I know you were eager to learn.”
“How about me?” called Rainbow.
“You have wings, you can fly,” Twilight reminded her.
“Me? You’re the one who’s been gaining weight since getting wings!”
“That’s different!” Twilight fumed.
“Chrysalis has done this before. Perhaps she can make a suggestion,” contributed Rarity.
Shining remarked, “If space is limited, she can sit on my lap.”
“Shiny!” Cadance scolded.
“Please stop!” I called over the noise. “I don’t want to have to shove anyone in the trunk. I don’t think it will be possible to bring any of you.”
I looked at Chrissy. “You know that we don’t have enough space after what happened to my Plymouth. All we’ve got now is a tiny Italian car.”
Chrissy frowned. “That is a problem.” She grinned. “Doesn’t mean we can’t try, though.”
“What about the truck?” Maria asked.
“Better, but still not a large enough backseat for a pony,” I advised.
“I was thinking of using it to pull a livestock trailer,” she said.
There was about half a second of silence before everyone started shouting at once.
I usually counted on Maria to be the calm voice of reason, so when she stuck her foot in her mouth and left me as the responsible one, I was lost.
It was a liberal application of the Royal Canterlot Voice from Luna that finally brought things under control. “This is neither the time nor place for misunderstanding!”
In a calmer tone of voice she went on. “Cultural differences are to be expected. Equestrian ponies are not livestock. Please keep that in mind for the future.”
Maria looked like she wanted to protest that some livestock trailers could be pretty luxurious, but bit her tongue.
“Now then,” Luna said, “We all might be interested in inspecting this ‘tiny Italian car’ for ourselves to determine whether it meets our needs.”
Well, if they insisted. I led the crowd outside to a driveway meeting around said vehicle, a white Fiat 500. Rarity was immediately taken with it, which only confirmed my own feelings: the car was mostly ornamental.
The backseat was pretty much theoretical and the trunk was worse than that. The less-than-mighty 101 horsepower engine did manage to achieve 45 miles per gallon, but at the cost of any masculinity I had left.
The car looked even smaller parked next to the truck Maria used for her veterinary practice. The ponies shied away from the diesel pickup, probably not keen on the pasture mud and manure it was splattered with.
The ponies gathered around the car, some of them leaving noseprints on the windows. And sure enough, they came to the consensus that it was too small to meet their needs.
“But it’s so cute!”
I frowned. Yes, yes it was.
It was technically Maria’s car. And she liked it. It was also remarkably cheaper for me to live with an existing subcompact car than to locate, purchase, drive, and work on a hot rod. I never liked economics.
“You could always just teleport straight to Baltimore,” I suggested.
“Teleporting is not so simple,” Twilight advised.
Much as I desperately wanted to hear the science/magic behind teleportation straight from Twilight Sparkle’s brainy mouth, I replied, “If you can get yourselves to my house, I don’t know why going to another place on this planet would be hard.”
“We’d need a specified location to aim for,” Twilight said.
“Well, you found my house. Send Chrysalis to Baltimore and have her set up a beacon or something.”
Twilight considered that. “It makes sense. How did you come up with that? I didn’t think humans knew anything about magic.”
I shrugged, pleased with myself. “I pretty much just spout ideas until something sticks. It’s like my whole approach to life.”
Maria looked like she wanted to say something about that, but Celestia jumped in. “It sounds like a reasonable idea. We will see you at the convention. Please arrange for our arrival.”
“Who’s coming?” I asked.
“We four Princesses,” Celestia replied. “After introductions, further visits will be arranged.”
“Does anyone else know you’re coming? I might have some trouble convincing the convention staff to take me seriously. I write fiction, after all.”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Chrissy.
I nodded, but before I could ask another question there was a sudden beeping and a sharp clang.
Luna skittered back from the car, holding one hoof to her chest defensively. Meanwhile, the car alarm continued to honk.
“Is it always so standoffish?” she sniffed. “One touch provoked it.”
I walked around to the side, wincing as I spotted a hoof-shaped dent in the door. Apparently, Luna’s surprised reaction to setting off a car alarm had been to punch it.
I couldn’t really be angry at a princess from another world for not knowing about car alarms or her reaction to the surprise, but it was property damage that even Saxton Hale wouldn’t be pleased with on his car.
However, Twilight was prepared. “I can fix it!”
With a quick shot of magic, the dent popped out and the paint smoothed over.
I touched the spot. “Wow, thanks. It looks good as new.”
The car alarm was still going off, though. Before Twilight tried to fix that, Celestia decided, “We should return soon. It will take time to prepare.”
“Well, thanks for coming,” I said. “See you later.”
I sounded way more casual than I expected. Huh, maybe ponies really were that easy to befriend.
We said our goodbyes over the beeping horn and they all, save for Chrissy, disappeared into thin air.
“See you next week,” she said.
I said goodbye and went to get the key fob to shut off the alarm. As usual, I pressed the wrong button and the key popped out of the fob like a switchblade. I found the correct button on the second try.
After Maria and I got everything settled down, we sat back down on the couch in the living room. The cake we’d made had disappeared at some point, but there was little else to indicate we’d been visited by otherworldly ponies.
“Sounds like big things are afoot,” I commented. “This is really going to happen.”
Maria picked up the TV remote. “Let’s just use ponies to forget our problems, like normal people.”
I couldn’t argue with that, although it was difficult not to consider the implications. This might be the beginning of a fundamental paradigm shift in government and society, and at such a visible event like BronyCon.
The revolution would be televised.
Or so I thought.
Maria looked at me. “We're still bringing the guns, right?”
I nodded. “All of them.”
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Man, if you'd posted this a year ago you'd have been smacked with a 'meta' claim. I'm glad such is still not the case.
6260737 It isn't spoiling too much. I didn't say where they were, how they got there, or what happened in the meantime.
Baltimore isn't a bad city its a real riot to visit
6260824 Yeah, the people are just so excitable.
I really loved Roadtrip. I can't wait to follow along with this one.
Eeeeyup, it's gonna be a real party.
What is a Fiat?
6261521 It's a tiny Italian car.
6261521
6261539
In olden days FIAT stood for "Fix It Again, Tony." These days with the global supply chain mechanism turning all manufactured goods into slightly different looking assemblages of the same components (e.g. there are two - count 'em - two makers of air bags in the world, and one of them screwed up badly affecting roughly 50% of all cars on the planet) it just means it kinda looks like a cross between BMW Mini and a lunch pale. And yes, it is "cute". So was my Nissan Versa until it was eaten by a Camry pulling u-turn at high speed in the middle of a major street. No one but her cuteness was hurt.
6261680 I was wondering when someone was going to pull out the old acronym
6261854
I was wondering when someone would say, "Biggie biggie biggie biggie bounce biggie bounce!"
6261892
that's the strangest thing i've seen since....
Scratch that, this is probably still stranger.
I probably don't want to know if you're bringing all the guns.
6261521 http://www.fiatusa.com/en/lineup/
I love that joke. Gets me every time.
Yes, this is good. I give you a gold star, congratulations!
Will there be a sequel where she versus a midsize Japanese Sedan?
6267347 Not that I've planned, but I have always wanted to write about a Skyline.
6267490 I meant the Civic XD
This gon be good.
Saxton Hale? Is that a Tf2 reference?
This is a very underrated joke.
And it is! She's getting taller, not wider. To say nothing of how whatever the wings themselves weigh happened instantly.
That's the neat part, they don't. On the other hand, that means they don't know what's impossible. You can get a lot done with that lack of knowledge, just look at Pinkie Pie.