//------------------------------// // Extras Wanted: Apply Within // Story: I Think It's Called Ponytown // by Lasairfion //------------------------------// Back at the Castle of Friendship, Celestia sat in deep thought. The Elements were sitting in their usual places around the map table, and a few extra chairs had been brought in for Celestia, Luna and Starlight; filling the gaps. Obviously the right thing to do was to close the rifts and push back the changes that had occurred in Equestria, but there were a few complications. The first issue was how to deal with the current government without being locked up for treason, or causing mass confusion amongst the entire populace. Yes, she and Luna could return to the palace (castle) and blast Blueblood, and perhaps the Chamber of Peers with the beam magic Twilight had come up with; but what about the civil servants, the guards, the palace staff and the entire rest of the population who might see this as some sort of weird coup. It was a guarantee that someone was going to turn up here very soon after what had just happened in Ponyville. It could be seen for miles. The second issue was how to produce enough power to affect the entire Kingdom, because they couldn't carry on attacking this piecemeal as they so far had done. The accidental Rainboom did give her an idea though. She would have to send a message to Cadance and Shining Armour. Her mind locked up. That was if they were even in control of the Crystal Empire; or even called Cadance and Shining Armour. She needed to grab someone still affected by the flux and pump them for information. The third issue was that some of the changes had knock on effects. Some of the crowd during the Rainboom manoeuvre hadn't changed back after 'magic the slathering' because they hadn't existed before at all. Celestia's blood ran cold at the thought of all the possibilities of what could have happened to all those ponies. She didn't think there were enough parks in the Kingdom to pass off fifty new public works art installations had they all turned to Discordian-like statuary for instance. It was bad enough as it was. She didn't even want to think about the mare who suddenly realised that the stallion she was with wasn't her husband at all. Perhaps Cadance could be some use there as well. Fortunately, harmony-be-blessed, the extra ponies still had the majority of their personalities intact but their personal history was going to be an act of creative writing for Mayor Mare; who would also need to register all these citizens that were likely to disappear from the records once they blasted the Mayor's Office. What was these extras' purpose? Did their cutie marks even have real meanings? It all got rather meta. What is life? Is it nothing more than the endless search for a cutie mark? And what is a cutie mark, but a constant reminder that we're all only... one Sock Rift attack away from oblivion? And what of the poor non-ponies? Flank, forever blank, destined to an existential swim down the river of life to... an unknowable destiny. She shook her head. Once the infrastructure started to change back, where would they all live or work? Davenport's new old shop was very nice and quaint, but it couldn't keep up with the demand for sofas or quills from all these extra ponies; and since now only he was needed to run the shop, a good number of the former staff members had no workplace. In that respect it was probably good news that Davenport intended a big expansion plan as he moved (back) into a wider range of furniture and stationery; but he was probably going to need some government assistance to do it so quickly. Celestia wondered if she could put it under the usual 'Major Incident Fund'. Which brought her back to the first issue. --- The State Administration for Press and Publication office had been unusually quiet lately. The SAPPo handled the majority of copyright claims within China, and despite the People's Government having signed up to the World Intellectual Property Organisation back in 1980, and having the Sino-US Agreement on Intellectual Property Rights with the US since 1995, everyone knew that Chinese factories constantly tried to rip off conscientiously improve on protected American designs. So a quiet spell was... disquieting. Something big was brewing; this was the calm before the storm. Ma Chonglin could feel it. --- Rainbow ordered a takeaway. While the area around Sofas and Quills had been... indiscombobulated (credit given to AK Yearling for the word) the outer reaches of Ponyville had not been affected. This meant that the Cake's (or was it Bun's still, since they hadn't been zapped yet?) Lucky Dragon Takeaway was still in existence and considering what had happened to their bakery, Rainbow felt it only fair to throw some custom their way. Besides, their Cream Cheese Wontons and Peanut-Braised Tofu Noodles were too good to pass up on. The map table was covered with cartons, chopsticks and napkins. Ponyville's 3D representation had been obliterated by a lost spring roll and Canterlot Castle was dripping sweet and sour sauce. Rainbow lossocked upside down on her throne feeling very satisfied and very full of mango pudding with condensed milk. She really hoped that Pinkie was going to keep on making those after all this was done with. After several hours of serious discussion, Twilight was putting the finishing touches to a long letter to Cadance. It turned out that her brother did still exist as co-ruler of the Crystalline Empire, along with his wife Cadence. Slight spelling differences aside, there was little change other than a large export business in sparkly bubble bath and related ephemera. Luna had insisted on a post-script putting in an order for personalised bath towels and rubber duckies. After talking to Celestia about the three concerns, Twilight and Starlight were doing research into matrix twisting to try and mitigate some of the knock on effects of sealing the rifts. Twilight felt slightly guilty that sparkly bubble bath was her motivating factor for ensuring that some things could survive the purge. She was working on some technomagically fancy Starswirl matrix twist algorithms that could possibly help. Starlight was looking at brute forcing the problem with sheer power. Her current list included 4 Alicorns, Shining Armour, Rainbow Dash, Starlight herself, Pinkie Pie and Vinyl Scratch.