Politics

by Dai Kirai

In the Air

5/5/14 10:00pm Equestrian Territory, Earth

Rainbow Dash was letting the wind whip through her mane and feathers. Anything to get her mind off the previous afternoon when she had slammed snout first into Twilight’s purple shield spell. Rainbow still couldn’t get over the fact that she had almost died. How could I have known that humans can explode? She kept questioning, and then a second thought came to the forefront of her thinking. Can they explode twice? Does their technology allow them to do that too?

Rainbow never saw her friend standing there trying to figure out how to save them both. But Twilight’s shield had held, placed around the human it had contained the explosion. Afterwards Twilight practically collapsed from the exertion, never having expended that much magic at once before. “How did you know what it was?” Rainbow had asked as she carried Twilight to her own little house. All the half asleep unicorn would say was, “On TV” Before completely losing consciousness.

So Rainbow Dash flew, had been flying circles for the past hour. She’d been given a few days off and the blue skies just asked for her to test a few tricks. The ground below looked different than she was used to, a few houses scattered about. The pegasus had just flown forgetting about air-space rules and regulations, even forgetting the regulation earbud to receive orders from the Captain of the Royal Air Defense forces for the Embassy.

5/5/14 10:48am Cheyenne Mountain, Earth

Lieutenant Robert was sitting at his radar station at Peterson Air Force Base outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. He worked at NORAD, keeping an eye on all aircraft in American and Canadian air space. A small area about 40 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada had been added to his observations. This was in case any pegasi left the area they could be tracked and kept out of air lanes; a pegasi ‘bird strike’ was the worst fear. There were several blips in the general area not associated with planes and read as organic, but since they remained outside of any flight paths they didn’t concern him.

Normally, Robert would be joking or talking with his coworkers to pass the time and the tedium of sitting at his desk staring at computer screens all day. But that morning his son was playing with a toy airplane, a Lockheed L-188 Electra. There was nothing especially unique about the toy; he just never remembered buying it. A love of planes ran in the family, but that one would have stuck out since it was the victim of the worst bird strike incident in history. Robert was just shaken, that old propeller driven aircraft had run into a flock of starlings at takeoff and destroyed all four of its engines, causing it to crash into the Boston Harbor. It boded ill for the rest of his day.

A small blip diverged from the rest and headed towards Las Vegas. The blip originated from the location of Area 51, and the US Government made sure to do their test flights at night so any evidence would be attributed to UFO’s. This was still early morning, and there hadn’t been a warning posted about abnormal flights. The little knot in his stomach from seeing his son playing with the airplane instantly turned into a boulder.

Robert pulled out the keyboard beneath his display and turned to the screen at his left. The basic information for the NOTAM, Notice to Airmen, was automatically filled when he pulled up the form. The radar operator set the location to Area 51 to Las Vegas and began typing in the warning which would be shortened by the program and then sent to all civilian control towers in the affected area and to any Air Field in the area. Civilian aircraft would be told to avoid the area with flights being diverted to nearby airports. A pair of interceptors would also be launched from the nearest base to ‘escort’ the ‘blip’ to its destination. A call would also be made to the Equestrian Embassy, since that was the apparent originating location to see if they had information on a stray flier.

10:58

The wind felt blissful going through her mane, and her wings felt truly used for the first time in weeks. Rainbow Dash pulled up into a gentle loop and watched as her vision shifted from clouds to the ground under her and then back to level with the horizon. She was surprised to see a small settlement of houses below her. Where am I? She asked herself, finally broken out of her reverie. The wind and the speed temporarily removing all her worries. The cyan blue pegasus banked to her right to return home. After an hour of flying, she still had a friend to check on. “No reason to take a direct path though.”

11:00

Jumper and Mosely took off from Nellis AFB on an intercept course. They would be at the objective in less than five minutes. They were both part of the 64th Aggressor Squadron, one of the harshest training squadrons in existence and a standard for playing the enemy in war games. The two birds were painted in the blue camouflage of Russian Migs and were kept in top running order. They were both equipped with the standard 20mm Vulcan gatling cannon and two Sidewinders that could lock on to body heat.

“Any word from their Embassy yet?” Mosely asked.

“They said there is one missing pegasus.” Jumper replied. “But, we are still to escort the target as planned. Preventing a bird strike and keeping it from causing any damage. They expect her to cooperate but be ready.”

The two fighter pilots continued their northwestward flight, radar constantly updated with the rogue pegasi’s location; they were just a few moments out.

“I have a visual.” Jumper said.

11:15am

Rainbow Dash heard a loud mechanical sound come from behind her. She looked back and spotted two aircraft. Bubble canopy, single engine with an under the nose intake, single vertical stabilizer, fixed wings. She counted off the characteristics of the blue painted craft that had appeared behind her. F16’s? What do they want? She asked as the two jets came up on either side of her. The one to her left was making some sort of downward motion with his index finger.

Rainbow increased her speed a little to see what the aircraft would do. They kept pace with her, if she turned they followed. The same human made the downward motion again. I’m not going down. “You wanna race? Let’s race.” The pegasus stated knowing that she was the only one that could hear it and looking forward to a chance to see how human aircraft stood up to her skills in the sky.
Rainbow put on a burst of speed, a cone of mist enveloped her flank. It couldn’t be a sonic rainboom, it didn’t have the same feel, and there was no magical pressure. The air resisted her efforts to push past its barrier, and Rainbow complied with its wishes. The two F-16’s were still following her, similar cones in front of their vertical stabilizer. She could force her way past, pour on the speed; but she didn’t know how much energy that would expend on Earth. Now she regretted not getting enough flying time in. Time to change tactics.

Rainbow Dash cut her speed from something approaching Mach1 to nothing almost instantly, the two F16 flew past as they overshot her. Then each banked a different direction, bubble canopies facing each other to watch out for hidden targets. They aren’t as inept in the air as I thought. Rainbow confided in herself. Nothing she could do would shake them, even if they lost a visual on her, it would only take a moment for them to lock back on.

How can their radar spot such a small living target? Rainbow Dash wondered, everything she’d read that radar could only spot metal objects or large flocks of birds. It was hard to prove in open desert with no cover, but they would bank and come straight at her too quickly for anything else. They didn’t fire, but they kept herding her towards an unknown direction, she had lost all sense of direction in her flying. Earth didn’t have the same magical magnetic directions of Equestria. And unless she wanted to attempt a sonic rainboom with this little energy left, nothing would shake them.

Mosely sat in his cockpit, so far he and Jumper had been successful in herding the rogue pegasus out of civilian airspace but he was close to bingo fuel. If they couldn’t get it through the pegasi’s head to go back to the Embassy they would either have to switch with another pair of fighters or treat her as a threat. Thankfully all the cyan flyer had done was to dodge and try to escape. If it had even looked like she would attack they had permission to go weapons free, regardless of the political damage. But that wasn’t what Mosely wanted, this wasn’t a war, there was no terrorist threat or enemy combatant. Just a threat to civilian aircrafts.

“Backup is on the way.” Jumper’s voice issued from the speakers. “The Embassy is sending one of its experts to talk her down.”

Rainbow Dash grinned; her latest plan would shake them no matter what. She was headed straight towards the approaching planes, but this time she wouldn’t veer. There was no way she could get sucked into the small engine.

Rainbow was headed right above the rightmost aircrafts canopy. The goal was to get him to turn so she could shoot past at her current top speed. As her velocity increased, a small cone of moisture formed around her flank. When Rainbow was only a hundred feet away from her pursuers, something hit her in the side and threw her off course. The cyan pegasus struggled to free herself from the entangling mass, a mess of legs and fur.

Rainbow finally disentangled herself from the pegasus that had given her a flying tackle only to hear a familiar female voice.

“Thank you for keeping her safe. I’ve got it from here.” The newcomer stated to no one.

The two fighter craft left, waggled slightly and then Rainbow staring at the last pony she expected to see. “Spitfire?” Rainbow stuttered from awe and shock. “What are you doing out here?”

The brilliant yellow pegasus glared at the wayward pegasus. Her brilliant orange and amber mane being the only way Rainbow had recognized the leader of the Wonderbolts without her telltale blue uniform. “Keeping a foalish pegasus from getting herself killed.”

Rainbow just stared at her idol, unsure what to say.

“What? Because you almost got killed you thought you would just go out for a small flight and ignore all the regulations?” Spitfire continued her rant.

“What regulations?” Rainbow Dash tried to interrupt, it was the worst thing she could have said.

“And you want to be a Wonderbolt?” Spitfire scoffed. “You didn’t even check the flight regs before leaving Embassy airspace. You failed to file a flight path or check what lanes were cleared and when. Do you realize how many planes are in the skies here and what would happen if you hit one? Or did you just not care?”

“B-b-but…” Rainbow started only to get cut off again.

“And you didn’t even grab a radio in case of an emergency. I had to be sent out here to grab you because nopony could reach you!” Spitfire’s ire started to abate. “It’s a good thing you aren’t a Wonderbolt.” She spat. “Or you would be kicked out so fast your eyes would be spinning.” The leader of the Wonderbolts took a deep breath to calm down. “We have a town to get back to.” She offered. “You don’t want to miss your friend waking up.”

Rainbow fell in line behind her idol, vowing to never again ignore regulations, and to make sure she knew what the regulations were.

5/5/14 12:00pm Ambassador’s Residence, Earth

“Ughh.” Twilight woke with a groan. Her head pounded and her magic had yet to fully return. How big was that blast? Moving an Ursa Major didn’t require that energy even accounting for the increase in magical entropy of Earth.

The purple mare rolled out of her bed back in Bridle Lake. “Wait, this isn’t my bed.” Twilight looked around at the familiar four poster bed and the small ponyquins on the other side of the room. “Rarity’s?” She questioned. What am I doing here? She wondered.

“Twi darling, are you finally awake?”

Twilight turned to the white mare, her indigo mane slightly disheveled. A small tray was levitating in her light blue magical aura, two cups of tea sitting on it. Rarity had obviously stayed up during the night to watch her friend.

“You look absolutely dreadful.” Rarity gasped. “Here have some tea and then get a shower.” Rarity offered as she levitated one of the cups to her friend.

Twilight took the teacup with a hoof, taking a small sip. The warm liquid felt good going down her throat, calming her nerves.

Rarity set her own tray down. “Now off to the shower with you.” She motioned with her hooves getting her friend to move towards the bathroom.

“But I have work an-“ Twilight started

“I will have none of it.” Rarity warned. “Get cleaned up and then you can work.

Twilight started to disagree but her head starting to pang again and she quietly trodded to the adjacent bathroom. The shower was separated from the toilet by a separate door. The shower was done all in earth-tones with a majority of it made out of sandstone colored granite and large enough for a pony to lie down in if they wanted.

Twilight turned on the water and let steam fill the room before she stepped into it. The warm water felt wonderful just coursing down her body and mane. The mare just stood there and let her mind wander. It inevitably settled on the previous day’s events. Thoughts of what would have happened had she been slower, had her magic not reacted by itself.

Then her mind hit the thing that worried her most. Why was the explosion so large? Her mind was so entranced so the flow of water became background noise as she started going through the force calculations. Her calculations kept coming up with an explosive velocity well over 10,000 meters per second. Twilight may not have been an expert but she had taken a look at the blueprints for the Embassy which had been designed to withstand a large explosion by ground personnel which topped out at approximately 8,200 meters per second. How could anybody get ahold of something powerful?

Was this an intentional attack by some government? What about those wires in the portal? Were the humans trying to control it somehow? Twilight knew the history of this world, of the Trojan Horse and traps laid on the dead, mines strapped to children so they could jump under tank treads. And, only governments could get their hands on something that powerful. The only other option was that magic increased the energy of an explosion, but that theory had been tested and debunked early on. Magic didn’t work well with anything from Earth and there was no thaumaturgical energy to indicate magic.

Twilight darted out of the bathroom and back into Rarity’s bedroom.

Rarity was sipping tea and working on a new dress design when the purple blur came out of the bathroom sopping wet on the carpet. “Twilight dear. What seems to be the problem?”

“Letter. Princess. Immediate.” Twilight stuttered, grabbing at the nearest parchment and quill to send an immediate letter to Celestia.

2:00pm Equestrian Embassy, Earth

Celestia was sitting at a small desk in her private Embassy quarters. She had planned on resting today, but fate and bad timing dictated otherwise. There had not only been a bar fight in Equestria between humans and ponies but an attempted attack on the human Ambassador in retaliation. There had also been a suicide bomber attacking her ponies and the hero of the incident flying into a prohibited zone. This ignored the other incidents: Sweetie getting shot weeks prior and the trap the musicians had walked into. It also ignored one key aspect that still didn’t sit well with her.

Celestia had an idea, especially after Twilight’s quickly scribbled notes that arrived by dragonfire spell, but no proof.

Twilights letter had read:

Princess Celestia,

There was a communications outage between Earth and Equestria yesterday. The only problem found was a misaligned step at the time of the attack. I don’t know if anypony has found a solution to this or not. There is also a large power source in the steps with wires leading into the portal. Is this part of their ‘science’ to study it?

Also the bomber from yesterday had advanced explosives, something bigger than we knew they had.

Your Faithful Student,

Twilight Sparkle

Celestia knew about the communications failing and how they were mysteriously up when Celestia called more backup through the portal. The more time she spent around humans, the more they seemed like the griffons of old. Could Lulu really be correct in her assumptions? She did predict some of their actions accurately. They had the cold thought and tactics and worked better together. The explosives hadn’t surprised Celestia. Not when it forced her prized student to use up her entire energy reserve just to contain it. But just how similar are they to griffons? That was the question she had to answer.

The Great Griffon war had been started on the pretense of peace. Then when an ambassador was sent, they attacked him to steal information on Canterlot’s defenses and made it look like a group of bandits. When Celestia herself had gone to investigate, they attempted an assassination that only succeeding in killing Royal Guards and drawing her royal ire. Griffons had used the known fact of their fragmented political system to wage a strategic united attack against her ponies. And they had paid.

Celestia, with her increased study of human history, knew she would have to stay vigilant. It was their first President after all that had stated in his farewell speech: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them…Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” About how Brent and Tow were trying to use her ponies for their own gain, but for the moment their needs matched up.

She knew about the genocides of millions, the cradle of civilization that killed 150,000,000 million of its own people throughout history, a war that ravaged the whole world and the atrocities that followed. They had to be defensive, but they also grabbed for power. Celestia would have to fight lest they try to grab her power; after all, in their eyes a pony wasn’t human. Just like a pony wasn’t a griffon 1500 years ago.

My Most Faithful Student,

I am aware of the troubles concerning both the loss of communications and the explosion. You are to tell nopony about either incident, especially no human. I will put the best ponies on it.

Princess Celestia

P.S. There is a surprise for you in your study

Celestia sent the note away in a burst of magic. A small smile graced her features. While both Shining Armor and Princess Cadance, Twilight’s brother and sister-in-law, had wanted to wait at Twilight’s bedside for her to regain consciousness, but they agreed this would be a much better surprise.

Shining Armor was the best shield caster Celestia had ever seen and had been responsible for covering the entirety of Canterlot Castle during the changeling invasion. The changelings had only gotten through by trickery and weakening the stallion. Cadance could also increase Shining’s power output. If events were leading where Celestia feared, that would be invaluable to have on hoof.

Comments

[BlackJack27356]

The ponies in this story are gigantic hypocrites.
I hope they all die.

[Cicero Niche]

If this story really goes where I think it is, we are going to have problems. Really.

[silvadel]

She has very good reasons for the positions she is taking, and every reason to distrust the humans' intentions. As a rule, ponies do not have suicide bombers and that one was very close to taking out many many ponies.

In essence the ponies lucked out, she knows they lucked out, and she will do what is in her powers to protect her own.

[Jacob Hoove]

If you turn this into a ''humans are evil'' story then I will find you and hurt you

[Jacob Hoove]

2900385 sorry but how are they hypocritical

[Mecha G]

I agree. What's so hypocritical?
Also, why is it that in stories like this, Americans=humanity? When will they encounter other cultures and languages?

[Octavians-Resolve]

Both sides are kind of at fault, while humans are Violent, the ponies have over stepped there boundaries way to many times. One wants to be noticed and the other is curious, but when humans find something else to drive their curiosity like space, well the ponies will not longer get that huge attention.

[The Dimension Traveler]

The stupidity on both sides...IT'S OVER 9000!!! The ponies are being arrogant pains and the humans are being consumed by their scientific curiosity/paranoia!

[Dai Kirai]

2900151
I think we are going to have problems. First, how are they hypocrites? Second, 'they should all die'? I don't like hate and I abhor death. I think words like that explain everything that is wrong with humanity! Right up there with the people who just wanted to nuke Afghanistan. I know I shouldn't say things like this to a reader; but, I don't care. This was never about ratings or views. This was about learning and trying something new. And what I have learned is that humans can be so much worse. While you can never underestimate the amount of good they can do, you also can't underestimate their penchant for evil.

2900185
We will most likely have problems then, for a while at least. All things do lead to peace.
If I continue it that is.

2900515
This is not a humans are evil story, I have said many times that it wouldn't be. Both sides are good, and both sides are evil. Its about how people play politics and are distrustful of anything. I don't think either side is perfect. Again, I have seen too much Doctor Who and Star Trek to ever hold that view, regardless of what the news may say. I hate to give spoilers but all things end with peace, given enough time and an honest effort, it will be achieved. Just look at the world, when all European countries hated each other.

2900718
Really? Did I portray Americans = all of humanity? Celestia did start reaching out to other countries like China, Europe, and Russia thinking they may be better allies than the US. The reason is that many people are from the US and know it best and don't think outside of it. Mine is because international politics is sooooooo hard. Just the relationship between any two countries is complex. I do have experience with that, unfortunately. But that is commented on later, if I get there.

2900491 2901130 2901595
Thank you. For trying to understand, and for speaking up and being reasonable.

This part is more out of annoyance at the people who think humans are purely good or evil. You can't write about the best of humanity without covering the worst. Light shines brightest in the dark. Do you know why people like war stories so much? Because that is when people show who they really are, shows what they can do when up against the wall.

If you want to see the ills of humanity. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Trail of Tears? Internment? Nanking? Hiroshima? Water boarding? Car battery attached to sensitive areas? Drug wars? French Revolution? Spanish Inquisition? There are so many across the world.
If all you see is evil. Then how do people have hope? Why do they still help each other? The people who have risked their lives to save the life of another, maybe even a complete stranger? It may be more subtle, but it is there. And just as powerful.

[The_Stone_Carver]

I must say I'm loving your story so far, there are far too few story's about Equestria and Earth interacting on globe scale.

[Just Sandy]

a shield like that whould do shit against modern weapons and if it manages to hold somehow a nuke or a hydrogen bomb will do the trick