//------------------------------// // Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack // Story: The Platonic Pony Petting Café // by FrontSevens //------------------------------// “…And that’s how the portal teleported us here to your world!” Twilight said, sitting tall in her chair.   Calvin massaged his temples and blinked, resting his elbows on the table. “Interesting,” he said. “I have to say, you really know your science. I think.”   The two sat next to each other at a small, round table with rustic wooden chairs. Their table was roped off from the rest of the café, which was packed with people standing in line. The lines snaked around their table and out of the café, stretching out down the sidewalk and around the block.   “Thanks!” Twilight beamed. “I’ve probably told that story a hundred times today. Everypony—sorry, everybody—always seems curious to know. And, plus, you know, I love talking about it.” She held up her paper cup of tea and took a sip, then scooted forward on her chair. “So? Any questions? I’d be happy to elaborate on the time rift or how the portal’s circuitry works and my current hypothesis on why it overloaded—”   “I’m good, but thank you,” Calvin said, straightening out the sleeves on his t-shirt. “So… the first thing you did when you teleported to Earth was open up this café?”   “Well, no, not the first thing,” Twilight said. “But we got stuck here once the portal broke down, and I was just fascinated by you humans, and I really wanted to study them, so Rarity said, ‘Let’s open up a café to talk with the humans’, and a café seemed like the perfect, comfortable setting to get to know humans instead of being swarmed on the street, and the café here was eager for the business, and—”   “And the petting part?”   Twilight blushed. “Well, ah, with the first human friends we made, one of them asked politely, and it’s just… it felt so good! And we all got to try it, and we thought, well, that’s how we could get humans to come to the cafe, because humans like petting animals, right?” Twilight lifted her iPad with her magic. “I’ve researched this—you have zoos just for petting. So, I thought, a café isn’t a stretch.”   Calvin picked up his plastic water bottle and took a sip. “Yeah, just like a petting zoo, except now with coffee.” He tipped the water bottle at Twilight. “And, you know, ponies that can talk.”   “Yes, that’s new for you humans. And you humans are new for us.” She took a sip of tea and ran a hoof through her mane. “So, um…” Twilight straightened up and held her hooves out in front of her politely, glancing up at Calvin. She twiddled her hooves. “You can start petting me anytime. Y’know, for research.”   “Oh, right, yeah,” Calvin said, scooting forward on his chair. “For research.” He reached out after a moment’s hesitation and stroked the fur on Twilight’s shoulder.   Twilight’s wings relaxed and splayed out as her mouth curled upward in a grin. “Oof. That’s good, yeah.” She cleared her throat. “Under the chin, please? You know, to see if there’s a different effect. Scientific method and all that.”   “Okay, sure,” Calvin said, moving from the shoulder to the chin. He smiled. “Wow, you ponies have really soft fur. This is kind of relaxing.”   Twilight practically melted at the human hand stroking her on the neck. “Thank you, ahh. Human hands… so soft…”   ~ ~ ~   “…And then I said, ‘And then I said, “Oatmeal, are you crazy?” ’ ”   Trisha almost snorted water out her nose. “Pff, no way! Pinkie, you’re a riot!”   “I’m more of a rumpus than a riot, but thank you,” Pinkie said, taking a sip of her orange pop through a curly straw. She pointed to her ear. “And hey, keep the pets coming! This ear ain’t gonna scratch behind itself.”   “Sure Pinkie, whatever you say,” Trisha said, doing as instructed. “How’s that?”   “Mmm, yeah, that hits the spot,” Pinkie said, her hind leg twitching as she sighed. “Lemme tell ya, Rarity’s idea to open up a place called The Platonic Pony Petting Café was the best idea ever.”   Trisha squinted. She pulled her hand back, and with it, a quarter. Trisha turned it over in her hand. “Where did this come from?”   Pinkie squealed. “Ooooh! I love it when ponies play the ‘pulling a quarter out from behind your ear’ trick. It’s so fun!” Pinkie rested her chin on a hoof and watched Trisha intently. “How do you do it?”   Trisha shrugged. “I have no idea. This was already behind your ear.”   Pinkie giggled. “Okay, okay, I get it, it’s magic and stuff. But this has happened at least three times today and none of you humans have real magic. So tell me, how’d you do it?” Pinkie leaned forward. “Did you get Twilight to teleport a quarter into your hand? She did that trick once for my birthday. It was amazing! Twilight doing magic tricks? Who knew!”   Trisha hid a laugh behind her hand. “Oh my God, you actually think I did it. This is adorable.” Trisha set the quarter down on the table. “No, look, I’ll do it again. There’s—wait, huh?” Trisha furrowed her eyebrows as she pulled out another quarter.   Pinkie clapped her hooves. “Wow! Do it again!”   Trisha reached behind Pinkie’s ear again, pulling out yet another quarter. “What on Earth…” she said as she pulled out another quarter, then another, then another. “This is insane. How’re you doing this?”   Pinkie stared in awe at the small pile of quarters on the table. “How’re you doing this?”   ~ ~ ~   “…And that’s how I broke three academy records all in one day!” Rainbow Dash said. She sighed as Gavin ran his fingers through her mane. “Yeah, get in there. That’s the stuff.” She took a hoofful of hay from the hay bale next to her and munched, leaning back in her chair. “Man, this all-you-can-eat hay thing is a pretty sweet deal. This is the life.”   Gavin rested his chin on his hand, stroking Rainbow’s mane with his other hand. “Uh huh.”   “So? How was that?” Rainbow puffed up her chest. “Worth the wait?”   Gavin took the opportunity to scratch her fluffy chest. He glanced over his shoulder. “Well, honestly, I was hoping to pet Fluttershy, but the line for her is like six hours.”   Rainbow glanced at Fluttershy’s table across the room. The human sitting at her table not only petted her, but she petted the human back. The people standing in line around their table were watching and suspended in a blissful trance. Anyone who simply looked at Fluttershy had their hand clutching their chest at the adorable sight and a tear in their eye when she spoke in her soft, sweet voice. Never before had a pony captured so many hearts and given nopony any reason whatsoever to be jealous.   Rainbow sat back and folded her arms. “I don’t get why she’s so popular. I mean, no offense to ‘Shy, she’s great I guess, but what about me? Why wouldn’t you want to wait in line for me instead?” Rainbow pouted. “Don’t you want to hear all about my amazing accomplishments? My death-defying feats? All for free? I’ve been talking about nothing but myself all day!”   “Yeah, no wonder,” Gavin muttered. He looked up from his phone. “I mean yeah, I wonder. Why your line is the shortest.”   “It’s the fastest line,” Rainbow Dash said, whapping Gavin’s hand away and scowling. “Shortest means fastest. And I’m the fastest in Equestria.”   Gavin glanced down at his phone. He pulled up the camera app, hesitating before saying, “Technically, you’re not. The line for coffee here is faster. It’s, like, five minutes.”   “That doesn’t count!” Rainbow said, her face turning red. She squinted. “Hey, did you just take a picture of me?”   Gavin froze. “Well, it’s, uh…” He hid the phone under the table. “It’s just a Twitter thing, you know. Just wanted to show how awesome you are to my friends.”   “Give it here,” Rainbow Dash said, frowning deeply.   Gavin’s thumbs tapped furiously on the phone’s keyboard. “Give what where?”   With the fastest hoof in Equestria, Rainbow snatched the phone from Gavin’s hand and leered at it. She turned the screen to Gavin, pointing to a photo of herself, which was accompanied by the caption ‘#angrydash is even cuter in person’. “What is this?” Rainbow said, her eyebrow twitching.   Gavin squirmed in his chair. “Look, I was sharing a picture with just my friends, you know, because you’re so awesome and all that—”   “Just your friends? I know what Twitter is. I’m not stupid. What’s this hashtag for? ‘#angrydash’? This sounds like a thing.” She shoved the phone in Gavin’s face, her voice escalating. “Why is this a thing? Who made this a thing? Was it you?”   Gavin shrank back, reaching up for his phone, only for Rainbow to yank it away again. “Well, you know, some people, not me, have noticed that, well…” Gavin looked down at his shoes, almost whispering. “You’re kinda cute when you’re angry.”   Rainbow turned the cutest shade of angry she’d ever been before.   Gavin scooted his chair back an inch. Then a foot. “Look, it’s, um, it’s not that popular of a hashtag, it’s just a small—”   “ ‘not that popular’?” Livid, she held up another picture of herself to Gavin, captioned ‘That’s her secret, Cap. She’s always adorable. #angrydash’. Both of Rainbow’s eyebrows were twitching now. “This is trending!”   Gavin hid behind his chair. “But that means you’re popular! Didn’t you want to be popular?”   Rainbow stopped herself from throwing the phone at Gavin and reconsidered. She looked down at the screen and scrolled down, at all the pictures of her with likes, retweets, little heart emojis… Her muzzle scrunched and she pouted. “I guess it means I’m popular, yeah. I just wish it wasn’t for this.”   Gavin crawled up back onto his chair, and chose his words carefully. “Being cute is what got Fluttershy popular, so… maybe this is the way to do it?”   Rainbow grumbled, scrolling some more on the phone, then slid the phone across the table back to Gavin. “Fine, take a picture.” She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “But be quick about it so we can get back to the petting.”   Gavin picked up the phone and switched to the camera app. “Yes, ma’am.”   ~ ~ ~   “And you’ve been working on that ranch for how many years?” Applejack said.   “Fifty. Ever since I was old enough to ride.” Suzanne grinned as she ran her fingers behind Applejack’s ear. She pushed up her horned rim glasses. “Not to toot my own horn, but our family knows how to treat a horse.”   “Gadzooks, I can tell,” Applejack said, rolling her shoulders back. “You sure seem to know all the sweet spots.”   “And speaking of sweet,” Suzanne said, pulling a sugar cube out of her plain brown purse.   Applejack’s eyes went wide. “Is… is that…”   “For you,” Suzanne said, holding it out to her.   Applejack dipped down and nibbled on the sugar cube. Her ears folded back as she chewed. “Oh my stars… how’d you know?”   Suzanne winked. “Like I said, we know how to treat a horse.” She zipped her purse closed and resumed stroking Applejack behind her ear. “You said you grew up on a ranch, too. What kind of ranch?”   “Well, more a farm than a ranch, I s’pose,” Applejack said. “We grew apples, not horses. Well, both, if you count ourselves.”   Suzanne chuckled. She moved her hand down from the ear to the mane. “When do you go back home?”   “Well, uh, I’m not so sure. We’re kinda stuck here for the time being until Twilight can fix our portal back.” Applejack took a swig of apple juice, her ear twitching as Suzanne stroked her mane. “But I can’t say I mind it in the meantime.”   “Oh, yes, I can see that,” Suzanne said. “I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be for you here.”   Applejack nodded. “You know it. It’s hard work bein’ pampered all day.”   Suzanne smiled as she stroked Applejack’s neck. “Is this the real reason why you opened up a café?”   Applejack leaned forward, smirking. “If you ask me, yeah, we’re all in it for the pettin’. But, it depends who you ask. Twilight was in it for the research, o’ course. Rarity wanted to learn about human problems and chitchat and whatnot. Fluttershy was mighty curious about this newfangled ‘human’ animal. Which, I guess we all were in one way or another.”   Suzanne tilted her head, her long blue earrings swaying and jingling lightly. “And how about yourself?”   Applejack winked. “Why, I was just waitin’ for you!”   Suzanne laughed. “Oh, dear, you’re too much, Applejack.”   Applejack frowned as the clock on their table flashed ‘5:00’. “Well shoot, Suzanne, time’s up, but it was mighty nice to meet you.” She smiled and stuck out her hoof.   Suzanne shook Applejack’s hoof. “You too, Applejack. You’re a sweetheart.”   “Make sure to give Spike over there a scritch or two on your way out,” Applejack said. She pointed to the young dragon laid back in a small plush chair and sipping diamond water. “He works hard on security duty.”   Suzanne smiled. “Sure thing. Take care, now.”