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Chapter 2: Berry Punch’s Day Off
“So…United Nations, very cool, that you have something everypony agrees on, back in Equestria, just about only thing that can unite all of the nations is when Celestia is a minute late raising the sun!” Berry Punch said to the sound of crickets in the air ducts, “Tough crowd. Is this an assembly of diplomats or a deaf and mute convention?”
“YOU’RE NOT FUNNY!” someone shouted from the back of the room.
“Here here!” Said the ambassador from Luxembourg, which was an unusual thing for a francophone to say, if not for having recently dined in the British embassy the previous week and this being the only time Luxembourg had anything to say in an international situation.
“Right, stand-up not working, um, lemme see here…”
Just then Berry Punch found a short list of world problems taped to the underside of the podium, stuck there some forty years ago by then Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and having occasionally been glanced at by proceeding Secretary Generals. Among the items on the list, nestled between ‘Solving Palestine-Israel, and ‘Taco Tuesdays’ written in crayon listed the entry titled simply ‘Fix Thadinian Civil War’
Now the astute might say “There’s no such place as Thad on the map!” and they would be completely correct. You see, Thad is such a terribly poor, terribly isolated, terribly terrible place that even the Sudanese thank themselves for not being Thadinian. The pathetically small spec of a country’s map-less status is the unfortunate result of being surrounded by larger, bolder font-ed country names. Names like The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda. The cabal of cartographers who sit around and decide these sort of things all agreed that Thad was just too small to label on the map when surrounded by all these other more important country names, and since its not labeled on any maps, nobody has ever once asked directions to it, and since nobody has ever once asked for directions to it, its safe to say it was never included in any navigational assistants, and since it was never included in any of those, nobody bothered to write a Wikipedia page for it either. And since it has no Wikipedia page, it can reasonably be said to not exist at all by the majority of the world. Such a chain of events would normally be something of a laugh, if not for the tragically terribly bloody civil war that has rocked the country for many many decades.
“Oh civil wars! I’m great at those. I once oversaw a Breezie Civil war, I got this!” She said, cracking her neck and getting to work.
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Some Time Later
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“I have don’t know where I went wrong,” Berry Punch said, sitting at the edge of the UN stage, sipping from a bottle of aged red wine she kept tucked in her mane behind her left ear for times like this.
In front of her, the once pristine chamber was in ruins. Tables were overturned, papers were strewn about, name tags were switched around on tables all willy nilly. Denmark was busy in a fist fight with Norway, the Baltics were strangling the Balkans, Vatican City was in a theological showdown with Saudi Arabia, and the Canadian ambassador….
“I just feel like I could have done better,” She said to the French ambassador who had initially helped with the negotiations as him and the German ambassador dueled with sharp pointed fountain pens; Luxembourg was sadly caught in the middle, once again.
“I mean, what’s so wrong with ‘Go find a princess’? It’s worked for all our problems in recent history, maybe I’m just a bad negotiator,” She took another swig of her sad-moment wine.
At that moment, the North Korean ambassador shouted victory as he stood atop the unconscious body of their southern neighbor's representative, only to be karate chopped in the back of the neck by Japan.
“Wait a minute, maybe I’m not a bad negotiator, maybe they’re just bad listeners!”
“THERE SHE IS!” The UN Secretary General shouted, flanked by a dozen armored goons. “I want her detained, arrested, charged, and found guilty!”
“Uh doesn’t she have like diplomatic immunity or something?” Presumably the captain, who wore a sparkly helm asked.
“Who’s the Secretary General here, Captain,” He said dodging a printed copy of the 54th edition of the UN Treaty on Treaties and an associated Treatise on Treaties.
“Yes sir!,” Captain sparkly helm shouted.
“Uh oh,” Berry Punch said to herself as the goons fanned out to flank her.
“Now come quietly miss horsey person thing.”
“To tartarus with that,” She said, gulping down the contents of her bottle in one slurp, “Berry powers activate!” Spinning the bottle around, she smashed it open against the helm of the first goon that approached the stage.
Back-flipping, she withdrew another bottle and tossed it like one might a throwing knife, right into the face of the second goon to reach her, causing him to crumple to the ground unconscious.
“Woop! Sorry,” She said as she reflexively bucked another guard in the chest as he approached from her rear, her earth pony strength sending him flying backwards cracking the marble of the podium. “Didn’t mean to do that I’m really a non-violent pony, honestly! I’ve only had like 2 bottles today,” She said deflecting a tonfa with a bottle which shattered, sending glass into the face of her opponent who reeled away screaming for his mother as he rolled down the stage.
“Really could use an exit here!” She said to herself as she dove between the legs of a goon then bucked him into another, sending them both crashing through the wall. “Ah there we go!”
Diving through, she found herself in a hallway that lead around the back of the assembly room. “Luna’s so going to banish me when she finds out about this,” She said, as she set off galloping down the hall.
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Outside the United Nations building, dozens of extra police officers were being mobilized to contain the diplomatic carnage, should it extend through the after-afternoon recess and morph into diplomatic cocktail hour carnage and or even that of the dreaded diplomatic dinner carnage. To combat this, extra meter maids were dispatched to issue sternly written citations to over parked diplomatic vehicles and mounted officers were patrolling the street to deter any would be passers by from inquiring to the status of the chaos within. It was there by the exit to the parking structure that Berry found herself staring wide eyed at a black limo that was parked in front of her.
“Here little pony…”
While there was nothing particularly interesting about this limo, it like thee rest of the dozens of limousines at the UN sported the usual diplomatic plates, a pile of unpaid parking tickets, and a pair of plastic flags on the fenders, which in this case were a stylized sun above an upturned banana on a blueish background.
“Come get the bottle…”
No, what made this particular limo special was that the ambassador for Krablakastahn was standing in front of the open door waving a comically large bottle of such legendary caliber, its vintage was known across the multiverse.
“Is that… a Dom Perignon 53…” she said, stumbling over her hooves to grab it.
“chilled to 38 degrees Fahrenheit and It’s all yours if you mind going for a little drive.”
“Gimme!” she grabbed the bottle as she dove into the car, not even bothering with a corkscrew as she chewed the cork out with her teeth and sipped the nectar of the champagne gods.
Like a kitten with a ball of string she rolled around the floor of the limo as it sped along, bottle cradled tightly between all four of her knees.
“So miss Berry, we would like to know more about this land you come from, is it considered powerful among its neighbors?”
Berry sat up against the other seat sipping at her bottle. Most ponies would be nervous, even afraid to get in a limousine full of a mix of diplomats and security men, but then most ponies didn’t carry a minor fraction of their body weight in alcohol, or orbit any of the major princesses and their shenanigans.
“I see, I see, now does your nation-“
“Kingdom, we tried that whole democracy thing but then everypony agreed it was better to just let the princesses have unlimited power instead, but the parliament still meets every other Tuesday, and the communist rebels meet every third Wednesday everypony that goes gets a free doughnut, though between you and me, they never have enough sprinkle ones.”
“Of course, the COMMUNIST SCOURGE, all hail to krablakistahn!, have nothing but empty promises for those they would enslave, we too have one supreme ruler in charge of our glorious nation. Tell me of approximately what is your kingdom’s approximate military size and technological level?”
Pausing from her drink, she scratched her chin at such a strange question, but between her naivety or the nearly third of her body weight currently made up of alcohol, she thought nothing strange of it. “Oh let me see, there’s the guard for the castle, the elements of harmony, a few sheriffs here and there, that guy at the train station asking for tickets, I think we had an army but I think that was just one guy once, thats about it, yep definitely all there is, we’re really bad about getting invaded, like we’ve been conquered like five times in the last few years, though we’re getting better on technology, they say we’ll all have electric toasters in only twenty years! Do you guys got toasters?”
“A noble goal indeed, all households in Krablakistahn are equipped with such devices and more, we have advanced medicines that can even treat several types of cancers, we would provide these to your kingdom these in any sort of exchange,” He said switching to his finest diplomatic tone.
“Oh you guys get cancer? There was this guy a while back, Ionizing something or other, anyways he got cancer and they had to develop a whole new cure just for him cas he was like filled with tumors of all kinds, it was in all the papers. Apparently you’re not supposed to eat uranium ore, who knew!?”
As any usual expert on small chat would attest to, there is always an awkward pause in any conversation when someone ends their statement with a rhetorical question, in this case, the mulberry pony sat opposite the ambassador and several other krablakistahny diplomatic personnel in awkward silence as their limo trundled along the usual New York traffic.
“So where are we going?” She finally asked as the novelty of her new bottle wore off, freeing some of her limited pony attention to actually pay attention to her surroundings.
“I think she’s onto us,” the bearded man on the left whispered his boss in the krablaki tongue, “I don’t like the thought of sharing a plane with this… drunken, furry abomination, besides, we’re going to loose our deposit on this limousine if she cleans out the minibar. How are we supposed to present her to the Chairman like this?”
“Relax, we may yet fool them into signing a very valuable alliance for our isolated country, otherwise we may be able to barter her away for riches from wherever she came from. Let her drink all she wants for now, Krablakistahn is a dry country, so is the plane there, we’ll sober her up on the way.” The other diplomat, the one on the right,”
“Silence you fools! I think she may be able to understand you!” The ambassador hissed,
Indeed, she did. Ponies, like all equoids on Equis, possess a unique organ within their ears that absorb the incoming thought patterns conveyed through any form of speech and convert them to a perfectly understandable translation behind their ear drums, while as for their speech, ponies are very good learners of languages, and it is said that when visiting other countries it only takes a pony an average of five minutes of studying to learn how to ask for directions to the toilet that can be used on a Sunday afternoon before the pie is done baking.
In the case of Berry Punch, her babble organs had perfectly translated the growling backwards consistent sounding language of the Krablaki, and learned of their diabolical plan to sober her up.
“Dry….Country….” She stuttered as her eye twitched and ears flopped backwards. “Bb-b-bbberry powers, ACTIVATE!”
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Sunset Shimmers was having a reasonably good day. For the first time since she arrived in this world, it seemed like nothing could go wrong. No, not at all, since she just won an all expenses paid trip to Manhattan, a stay in a very nice hotel (minibar not included), a thousand dollars in cash, and for the first time ever, enough distance between her and the portal to prevent any magical catastrophes from ruining her trip.
All in all, it was a reasonably good day in her book, one that she’d certainly share with both of the Twilight’s when she got home.
Leaning over the railing, she adjusted the focus on her new camera and with a satisfying click, snapped a perfect picture of the harbor, busy with people going about their business. Since getting a fancy new camera for free, she realized she really likes photography.
Then her reasonably good day ended when a limousine came screeching to a halt behind her, its door burst open, dumping one of the occupants on the ground before the car screeched off.
Sunset turned around, “AAAAAAAAAHHHHH,” Nearly dropping her camera as she shouted in shock at the earth pony spilled on the ground before her.
Suddenly she realized she didn’t care about photography at all.
“Oh hey Sunset!” Berry said to the shocked unicorn-turned-human.
End of Chapter 2