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// Forced Evolution 
// Story: Brief Glimpses - An Anthology 
// by Ezn 
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Forced Evolution


On a grey winter's day, Dr Genome Map put the finishing touches on a spell that would forever shatter the public's image of the alicorn. For thousands of years, an alicorn's birth had been a rare event of great significance. The few alicorns born in Equestria's history went on to become pivotal players in shaping the nation, two of them – Celestia and Luna – defeating a great evil and becoming Equestria's supreme, immortal rulers.

So it was with great scepticism that the public received Dr Map's news of a spell that could force an act of fate. All that was needed to birth an alicorn, he claimed in a press release printed on the front of every paper in the country, was a pegasus and a unicorn to conceive while enchanted with his amazing new spell.

For eleven months, the nation waited with a bated breath. Meanwhile, the burgeoning cinema industry tapped a nerve with a slew of exciting, idealised romance movies starring unicorn and pegasus leads, and hit gold with immense popularity of on- and off-screen lovers Lightning Strike and Cosmos Quill.

Nearly a year after Dr Map's announcement, during a warmer winter, he was proven right by the births of ten new alicorns. By this time, the Princesses had wisely revoked the age-old policy of inducting alicorns into the nobility, much to the disappointment of many interracial parents. However, even without that incentive to go with it, parenting an alicorn swiftly became a popular aspiration.

After the heat of Lightning and Cosmos's affair cooled down, savvy executives captured the interest of the growing teenage alicorn market with inspiring films about the difficulty of growing up as a subspecies still in the minority – the teasing, the stares, and the immense pressure of having to succeed at flying and weather-control for Dad and magic for Mom. Between a Cloud and a Leyline kickstarted the acting career of Lightning and Cosmos's daughter, Clouded Moon, who went on to achieve even greater heights of stardom than her parents.

Alicorn foals grew to be taller than other ponies on average, and many often outshone their pegasi or unicorns peers at flying and magic-usage. Studies conducted indicated that the strongest and most enduring ponies in the country were still all earth ponies, but the greater size of the alicorns meant that they were catching up fast.

Dr Genome Map retired to a mansion in Haywaai, and his eager successors soon found a way to cast the alicorn-birth spell across the whole of Equestria, permanently. They succeeded, and from then on, every foal born to a pegasus and a unicorn had both wings and a horn.

In an interesting trend, the number of children per pegasus–unicorn couple actually decreased. Behavioural scientists hypothesised that it was because both parents could now relate and teach what was dearest to them to a single child. A few unsubstantiated studies and morning television programs – most famously The Star Shower Hour – claimed that this made the families of pegasus–unicorn couples "closer" and "more accepting" on average than any other kind.

Within a few generations, it became abnormal and backward for a unicorn or pegasus to date among their own subspecies, and fewer and fewer did.

Quasar Nova, the last unicorn, died three hundred years after Dr Map's announcement, surrounded by her loving children, alicorns every one of them.