//------------------------------//
// The Provocation of Creatures 
// Story: A Magic Turn of Events 
// by Comma Typer 
//------------------------------//

For decades, Manehattan was dubbed The City That’s Always Awake, and with good reason. It had been the heart of the country’s nightlife for generations, offering food, shops, entertainment, and public transportation day in and day out, night in and night out. Even past midnight, the streets and sidewalks would still be filled to the brim with people. Of course, there were other reasons, too, like the never-ending supply of caffeine in so many coffee bars that stayed open 24/7.
Not to mention being on fire would also keep the city awake.
Staggering from the catastrophe, Manehattan was still under the smelly fire of chaos and unrest—in some cases, it was actual fire, since a few of those enormous skyscrapers were on fire as dogs-turned-dragons breathed out fire on accident. Most of the buildings remained sound, though glass shards were aplenty and crashed cars turned up often. Notwithstanding the lack of panicking creatures running or flying around in confusion, there were some who trudged around, trying to help others by giving them a shoulder to lean on or by traveling with them to the local hospital.
At the edge of the island metropolis lay a tall glassy high-rise. It looked like a book whose cover was made of glass rectangles. Flapping on its grassy facade were dozens of flags representing and symbolizing many nations from around the world.
This was the Headquarters of the Convocation of Countries. Protected by several pony guards borrowed from Equestria, the building had upped its defense. Cameras were everywhere, both of the security and of the journalistic type as reporters of all different species tried to hold their equipment in their own way. Abyssinians and griffons had better luck than Earth ponies who dropped their equipment too often, sometimes putting them out of commission.
Looks like some news channels would fall back on texts and audio bites for this one.
Everyone rubbernecked towards the front doors of this grand complex. Instead of fancy cars, there were carriages parked by the entrance—over there were two carriages that looked quite identical, bearing the symbol of the sun.
“Sorry, I’m late!” shouted a hippogriff who flew into view, grabbing the attention of the citizens crowded outside. “D-Did we start yet? What about the Celestias?”
“They went out,” a pegasus answered. “She’s giving a pep talk to herself, I think.”
The hippogriff raised his brow. “Which Celestia? They both got schools, right?”



Inside, a few floors up, was the parlor where delegates would gather around to talk casually among themselves. Today, however, there was no discussion on stable geopolitics, veiled threats, and acts misconstrued as those of aggression. Instead, the Griffonstone delegate, President Gestal, was perched on a chair, taking in the familiar room with new eyes.
It was a carpeted, cozy room with tones of yellow and white, presumably to foster creativity and open forums. It did its job, for it didn’t make the furniture and the shelves look drab. Even with half the lights on, the room already looked bright. That was topped off by the citrus scent wafting through the air, refreshing to anyone’s senses.
Then, the double doors gently opened with a creak, showing two guards wearing full armor and escorting a tiny floating creature that looked like a pony with dragonfly-like wings.
Gestal got up from his chair. “Ah, President Seabreeze, I presume?”
“Are you demeaning me?!” Seabreeze shouted, pointing his tiny hoof at him. “Just because I’m the smallest head of state in the world, huh?!”
Gestal couldn’t help but chuckle. Being threatened by an insect called for a chuckle.
Even the guards couldn’t help it, betraying some snickers.
“And you, sirs!” Seabreeze yelled, turning his mad glare to his entourage. “You may be a million times bigger than me, but I am the leader of Gaothlub! One more laugh from you, and you’ll be persona non grata in my turf!”
The guards then folded their ears back, trotted outside.
Out of respect, they closed the door gently.
“I must apologize for my teasing attitude,” Gestal said right after, looking down on the floor in remorse. He adjusted his glasses. “I tried not to laugh at your appearance, but truly seeing you in real life...I just—”
Seabreeze raised a hoof, then glided his way to the top of another chair, standing on its back. “I get it. You’re a griffon, Thunderhooves is a buffalo, Celestia and Luna control everything, and here I am, the laughingstock of the news with my puny self! ‘Seabreeze turned into a pathetic breezie!’ ‘Seabreeze can’t even lift his own weight!’ ‘Seabreeze can be squashed by your old shoes!’”
Gestal placed a claw on his glasses. “I see what you’re getting at.”
“Oh, you see now?” Seabreeze said, ready to drip with sarcasm. “You’re a smart fellow! You should know I’ve lost whatever respect I’ve had here! Everyone teases me except my own constituents—and they’re mad that I can’t even literally stand up to anyone else!”
The griffon placed a claw on his sighing head. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Seabreeze crossed his forehooves. “You wish!”
Then, the doors opened again, revealing a nervous Thorax with shaky hooves in the hallway.
“Ah, and you, too, Thorax!” Gestal said, beckoning him inside with a claw. “Why don’t you come in?”
Thorax gulped, trotting inside and closing the doors behind him. “W-Wow. You look...different in person,” staring at the griffon.
“Surely, you’ve read the profiles Celestia’s sent via e-mail, haven’t you?”
The changeling trembled. “...yes?”
“What about me?!” Seabreeze yelled, pointing at himself and making Thorax look. “I exist!”
“Oh, s-s-sorry!” Thorax stepped forward, trying to be a buddy to him. “I mean, uh, yeah...sorry!”
Seabreeze huffed, sitting on the back of the chair, swaying his hindhoof about.
“So, how is your changeling form?” Gestal asked.
Thorax quickly shook his head. “Not so good. When everyone’s these weird shapeshifting bugs, it makes everything a hundred times harder. Crime’s gotten up because no one can be sure! They can turn into anyone and no one would know!” This left Thorax biting his hoofnails.
“I’ve heard your brother and his ‘brother’ have swooped in to police everyone,” Gestal noted, claw on his chin.
“That’s just two changelings against all of Cambling!” Thorax countered, stretching a forehoof to emphasize that. “I don’t know how—”
The doors opened, letting two deer stride in. “Does anyone have a manual on forests?” asked the bigger one, white and brown with long antlers. “Pamphlets aren’t enough.”
Thorax looked at him in shock. “Prime Minister A-Aspen?”
“King Aspen,” the deer corrected, “or so they tell me. I, too,  am afraid of suddenly being a king over the entire nation, so it is merely a title.”
“And I agree with him,” said Blackthorn, the shorter but armored deer beside him. “It’s hard enough as it is to keep nature from going rampant. We have our people...well, our deer running around and making potions!”
Gestal raised his claw, running late on Aspen’s manual quip. “Hold on! They brought the imported books here already, yes?” and flapped his wings and flew, creating a gust of wind.
Which threw Seabreeze screaming out of his chair.
Thorax yelped and caught the helpless head of state with his hoof. Then, he gently put him down on a nearby table.
“What did I tell you?!” Seabreeze shouted, pointing at the disappearing griffon. “Have you learned anything?!”
Aspen trotted up to him, pitying the breezie. “You poor creature!”
“I am not poor!” Seabreeze shrieked, throwing an air punch at him. “I have the wealth and power of an entire country behind my back!”
Blackthorn giggled, trotting up to him as well. “A country of tiny—”
“Say one more word!” dared Seabreeze. “Say one more word, or else!”
Before Blackthorn could reply with “Or else what?”, the doors opened again, presenting a huge buffalo almost taking up the room’s height.
“Fitting through the hallways was difficult,” Thunderhooves said in booming baritone, getting inside with the doors pulled at maximum.
Aspen placed Seabreeze on a nearby table as the buffalo closed the doors. The deer turned around and said, “I guess we should gather at the meeting table,” pointing at it in the center of the room with its projector.
Everyone else nodded, even Seabreeze though with a sour face.
Swiftly becoming an old joke, the doors opened once more, featuring two hippogriffs in the hallway: Novo and Skystar, the latter barely containing her excitement if her claws over her grin said anything about it.
“We flew all the way here from down South,” Novo said with a bit of irritation in her delivery. “However, these are extreme times. We may have to loosen up from our limited isolation, as cherished as it is now.”
They then flew inside.
Causing Seabreeze to tumble out of the table, screaming again with his life in peril.
Caught by Thorax again.
“Are you trying to play a trick on me?!” Seabreeze yelled at the hippogriffs as he was gently put down a second time on the table.
Skystar waved her foreclaws about. “N-No! It was an accident! Sorry, Mr. Seabreeze!”
Thunderhooves looked at them awkwardly, having just stood there and watched the conversation unfold the whole time. “I’ll just take my seat.” That short statement said, the buffalo went to his seat at the table.
Except it was too small for him. With a groan, he made use of the wall and leaned on it.
“I’ll take one, too,” Blackthorn said, trotting his way to the table and sitting down.
Thorax put Seabreeze back on top of the chair. “You stay there, OK?”
“You’re not my Mom!” Seabreeze shouted in teenage-like rebellion.
Aspen frowned. Nudging Thorax to the side, he confided, “Being turned into a breezie isn’t doing well on him.”
“At least you don’t have wings to worry about,” Novo said, having overheard the not-so-confidential whisper. “Or the fact that we’re technically two species.”
“Like this!” and, smiling, Skystar pressed her pearl necklace, glowing into a seapony before their very eyes, fins and tail and all.
Both deer and changeling dropped their mouths at the transformation, now knowing what the term dual-species truly meant.
Then, Thorax tilted his head, confused. “But there’s no water here.”
“Yup! Pretty crazy that seaponies don’t need that much water to breathe!” Skystar pressed her pearl again and turned back into a hippogriff. “But it works!”
Aspen smiled, inspecting the hippogriffs’ necklaces from afar. “Fascinating! Now if only magic was always helpful in running a country….” and rubbed his eyes.
Tiring their welcome, the doors opened once more an—
“This is meeting room, yes?!” bellowed Prince Rutherford, the yak charging into the room with giant steps that weren’t for mankind but for yaks.
Thorax placed hooves around Seabreeze, shielding him from the wind of the yak’s shout.
Skystar smiled, extending a claw. “A talking yak?!”
Rutherford laughed, accepting the hoofsh—no, clawsh—no...limbshake. “Good to see recognizable names here! Has meeting started yet?”
“Uh, no!” Thorax said, trembling in waves of nervousness, hoping to not get the prince mad enough to smash him. “B-But you can hang out with everyone else at the t-table!”
The yak scratched his scruffy hair, then looked at Seabreeze who had escaped Thorax’s hoof cage. “Yak apologize for upset! Promise to be quiet when breezie’s around!” Satisfied with the formal apology, he trotted to the table to take a seat.
Except it was too small for him, too. Taking up Thunderhooves’s example, he leaned beside the buffalo on the wall.
Aspen turned his head towards everyone else not at their seats.
Seabreeze was sitting on the table, pouting at his rather small reputation and thinking of the endless indignities against him because he’s a flimsy and insignificant breezie up against creatures a lot larger than him.
The hippogriff mother-and-daughter duo were talking to each other in tender volumes, Novo telling Skystar that she loves her and will do her best to protect her and help her during these times.
Thorax was mumbling to himself, trying to remember every topic to bring up at the meeting as news of Cambling in rapid descent trickled into a river of worry and anxiety, pushing him closer to a panic attack.
Aspen then turned towards those at the table.
Thunderhooves and Rutherford discussed about their own plights, being big beings ruling over other big beings like them. The buffalo, with rising distress, shared his concerns over his nation turning into one of nomad stampeders if their Equestrian counterparts were of any indication—scared of abandoning the many scientific breakthroughs they themselves have made over the past years. The yak, taking part in said distress, expressed his fears of Yakyakistan being ridiculed as a land of dummies and don’t-know-it-all’s that speak in broken English and smash everything.
Blackthorn, Aspen’s second-in-command, sat at the table, not doing anything much but fiddling around on the table with his hooves. Yet, the king-in-name remembered his assistant’s deeds right after they changed into deer: how Blackthorn rallied most of the terrified rioters outside the vine-infested House of the Prime Minister to calm down, how he disseminated proclamations from Princess Celestia and that other King Aspen on the subject of deer magic, and how he made sure all of Skogur’s political parties would not implode out of anarchy.
Thinking about that reminded Aspen of the manual he had requested for. “By the way, where’s Gestal?”
Only for the doors to open, breaking the monotony and turning everyone’s attention to the newcomers.
Or, rather, returnees in the form of two Celestias.
Everyone else froze, gawking at them with wide eyes and puckered lips and beaks. Silence had to be maintained; no one would possibly dare rend courtesy apart in front of these—
“Here you go, Aspen!” Gestal said, coming back from his foray into the book aisles, handing—no, clawing over a book entitled Deer, Forests, and You!
Aspen nudged him on the shoulder, whispering with a stiff smile, “This is not the time to talk!”
“What do you—” and looked at the Celestias by the doors. “Oh. Your Highnesses.”
Everyone bowed down before the two alicorns.
Celie took a step forward, trying to be dear to them. “You don’t have to do that, really. We’re here to help.”
Tia pursed her lips, temporarily forgetting what to say to these foreign leaders. Probably thought they were nervous, too, unsure of everything now in a world of magic.
“As you know,” Celie continued, gesturing towards her other self, “this is Principal Celestia of Canterlot. I have given her as much political training as I could in the space of a few days. Even then, I will advise her on what to do in the immediate future.“
Then, she nodded to Tia, prompting her on what to say next.
Tia took a deep breath, closed her eyes.
“I may be new to the political stage,” she began, hoof on her chest, “but, having gained absolute power over the sun, I must step up to help our world during this crisis. I will be no warmonger, nor will I subvert your countries with threats of burning your citizens, so don’t be afraid of me.”
What she got was silence. Frightened silence as all these powerful leaders—including Seabreeze—quivered on their legs, kneeling before a school principal.
A school principal that controlled the sun, yes, but a school principal nonetheless.
“Really, don’t,” Tia said, noticing that fear still lingered. “I’m just as scared as you are, maybe even more so. The lives of an entire planet rest on me and my sister, after all.”
Even so, the thought of her power didn’t go away from their heads. Being executed via the sun was not on their mental list of wishes.
Taking the floor, Tia tapped on the floor, her golden horseshoes making knocks that all could hear. In an earnest voice: “Everyone, to the meeting table. Time is of the essence; we must act now to ensure everycreature’s safety. I notice that we are not yet complete, but we must bring latecomers if they do come. We need to save everyone.”
With that, everyone nodded and got up from their knees or their equivalents thereof.
Celie nodded, then whispered to her ear, “I see you’re doing quite well, considering the circumstances.”
Tia chuckled. “Thank you, me.”
Suppressing a chuckle of her own, Celie nodded once more.
And everyone went to the meeting table.