//------------------------------// // 5. Settling in // Story: Pinkie Pie takes Earth // by Goldstar //------------------------------// Logan had cooked homemade cheese pizza for dinner. “Don’t get used to this you two,” Logan informed, “If Pinkie is going to be here for a while, we’re going to have more normal sized dinners, even if that means extra TV dinners. And we really need an answer if Pinkie can or wants to consume any meat or fish, or just stick with meals not including those.” Pinkie froze for several seconds. “We could try something small, like a chicken nugget, for this Friday. No pressure if that’s not your thing, but regardless of if you eat it or not, the animal is already gone and not eating the meat isn’t bringing them back.” After dinner, Heather brought Pinkie into her room. “Alright Pinkie, I’m hoping you won’t, but if you’re going to be here for any real length of time, we need to get you familiarized with life around here.” “What about all the sweets and fun past times you have?” “Getting to that.” Heather pulled out her purple cell phone. “This is a cell phone. Most people have one. Just like with your identity cards, you don’t leave the house without it.” “Like my party cannon?” “Err... yeah, sure. What does that even do?” “Shoots confetti. I have it with me.” She went outside of Heather’s room and then returned with her party cannon. “How did you even... you know what? I’m becoming a broken record.” “You’re a record? You don’t look broken to me.” “Figure of speech, meaning repeating myself a lot.” Pinkie then fired the party cannon, spreading confetti all around. “Pinkie! You’re making a mess out of my room! Clean this up!” “Give it some time, it’ll disappear. You know how much cleaning trouble it saves me because of that?” “You, with limits? Anyway, cell phones are for way more than just making phone calls. Naturally, I don’t use it for phone calls, well, except to talk to dad. There’s a camera and even video recorder built in and they’re high quality. Professional photographers will still use a dedicated camera, but this works well for most of us. You can even surf the web using this, but we’ll get into that much later, there’s quite a lot to explain about that.” “You can surf webs?” “Another figure of speech. You can basically look up all kinds of information on the Internet, the super information highway, and no, it isn’t an actual highway.” “Sounds fancy enough to be magic.” “That’s often-what people think when you present them technology they don’t understand. Part of me makes me wonder what you call magic in Equestria is really just a form of science and you guys are way higher tech than us Earthlings.” “It’s magic alright. Twilight is one of the smartest ponies in all of Equestria and she knows a lot of science.” “So, there is a difference between the two. It’s been so hard taking all of this in and I haven’t even been to this Equestria. I mentioned before that Earth lacks real magic, although it does have unexplained mysteries and science is far from having all the answers. Now I don’t entirely know what to think after you arrived here.” “Fun, parties, cupcakes, friends.” “Fantasy is supposed to be make believe, made up, and you have really shaken things up. To get back on track, we also have computers. Mine is over here.” Heather pointed to her desktop computer that had a tower with glowing lights on the inside. “Is that a smaller TV?” Pinkie asked about the screen on the desk. “That’s the monitor, so technically, yes. You can hook up the TV display to the computer. Anyway, computers have all kinds of things you can do on them. Our world is heavily operated by them. There’s apps, or programs, that can do things like word processing, drawing, playing and creating music, and plenty more. It’s something you’re likely to find many people have. Although if not a desktop, what we call this type of computer, then there’s laptops. They’re pretty much smaller computers that you can easily carry around with you and often go on your lap or a table you find. I hardly go out of the house enough aside from school and shopping to bother with having my own laptop. “See this? It’s a keyboard. I don’t think you ponies could ever operate something like this” The keyboard lighted up several colors over time. “So colorful!” “Yeah, fancy gaming keyboards these days like to do that. Most keyboards don’t look like this. Also, this isn’t a super high-end top of the line PC, personal computer, that some people own. We live paycheck by paycheck. I can see why you wouldn’t have something like this back home. There’s no way hooves could manage to use a keyboard, unless it was like really, really big and that could get highly impractical. While we’re on the subject of computers, this over here is a mouse.” “That doesn’t look like a mouse.” “It’s just what they call these devices. You move the mouse cursor on the screen to interact with all these different things within the computer. I’ll go into more details later, it really is a lot to take in for someone who hasn’t really witnessed one before. “Come to think of it, I haven’t really talked to someone nearly this much before since my ex-friends.” “Progress!” Pinkie fired the party cannon again. “That kind of noise is going to spook the neighbors! They might think we’re firing something dangerous or that we’re under attack. Maybe in Equestria you don’t have stuff that would signal danger like this, but here, we do.” “Oh, that’s easy. I can modify it to sound less loud when firing.” “I would prefer you not fire it at all, but you gotta Pinkie, I guess. My throat is starting to get sore from all this talking, so I’m drinking a bottle of water. I suppose you can use this chance to talk more about your world. So, you and your five best friends are supposed to be really special?” Heather briefly left her room to get that bottle of water and returned. “We’re the Elements of Harmony holders. Applejack is honesty, Rarity is generosity, Fluttershy is kindness, Rainbow Dash is loyalty, I’m laugher, and Twilight is magic.” “I can get most of those, but really, laugher? Of course, you would be the one to have such an element. Magic also sounds so different from the rest, but I suppose that means Twilight is extra special, like main character special if she were a fictional character. Between being an alicorn, building a friendship school, and whatever else you haven’t told me yet, Twilight sure seems to get a lot done. Would be nice if destiny chosen me to be awesome, but that’s not a really proven thing on Earth. I’m the main character of my own life, so there’s that.” Pinkie explained the time that she and her friends took on Nightmare Moon and reverted her back to Princess Luna. “So, she spent a thousand years on the moon? No food, no water, no heat, no entertainment, completely alone, and whatever else? That sounds absolutely horrifying. That’s about ten human lifespans. Well, she’s clearly immortal, I guess that’s an alicorn trait. Geez, your world has dark elements I wouldn’t have expected.” “Best not to think about how I would have turned out up there.” “Indeed, and that’s considering if you were also immortal. I think that’s enough tales for today. Oh yeah, I should show you the basement.” Heather shown Pinkie to the basement. “Down here, there’s a gym room. Dad got tired of traveling to the somewhat faraway gym, plus the fees of gym membership. So, he made his own down here. He has been trying to get me to work out lately. I guess since you ponies act largely like humans, you probably already know what this stuff is? Well, how would dumbbells even work? Putting them in your mouth?” “With our hooves, of course.” “But how would you get any grip? Or are the dumbbells shaped oddly, like a glove, for hooves to lift them?” “The same as yours.” “But hooves couldn’t possibly...” “Sticky hooves.” “That would explain a lot and sound less like a handicap to not having fingers. It’s getting harder for me to be surprised anymore just how different you ponies are compared to Earth ponies, I mean, ponies on Earth. Anyway, I should show you how one of these machines work. Here’s the bench press. You’ll want to have a spotter before using this, basically to make sure the person using this won’t get hurt. That spotter will be you. Now pay attention.” Heather set down and got into position to lift the weights. She had it set to forty pounds. She struggled to lift a few times before stopping. “Okay... I’m not exactly in shape, but, you get what I mean, right? Good, now let’s switch positions.” As Heather got up to let Pinkie take her place, she swore Pinkie performed a movement so fast, she couldn’t determine what happened. Once Pinkie got in position, she managed to lift all the weights rather easily. “Pinkie! Did you really just set this to three hundred pounds? That’s really dangerous! How are you even doing this so easily?” “Earth pony strength. If you think I’m strong, you should see Applejack. But even she’s not as strong as her brother, Big Mac, who can pull entire houses and is one of the strongest ponies in all of Equestria.” “Wow, I guess this isn’t a totally Pinkie answer of just roll with it. At least the males get something if none have been alicorns. It does seem like all your powers and abilities transferred into your human form. I didn’t expect you to be so strong form the looks of it. From the pictures you drew, you all have the same body shape, although Twilight looked slightly bigger.” “Big Mac is as his name implies, really big, duh.” “Would muscles even show up on a pony? Seems like I can’t tell how strong a pony is by looking at them. It’s not like with humans where you can tell someone is jacked.” “There’s Bulk Biceps.” “Must be quite the strong Earth pony in that case.” “He’s actually a pegasus with tiny wings and yes, he can fly, with a lot of effort.” “Well then, I guess your world is full of surprises. On that note, how do the wings lift ponies? Wouldn’t they be too small to do so?” “Pegasus magic. They can walk on clouds as well. Unicorns can cast a cloud walking spell, but I only seen Twilight and Starlight Glimmer do that.” “Hard for me to not think unicorns might be overall more powerful than earth ponies and pegasi. There I go again. I would be the biggest critic of your society ever if I ended up there, like if we switched places.” After Pinkie put the weights down, she ran upstairs at a speed that Heather thought was instant. Right, don’t question her. She’s clearly not limited by the same laws of physics that us mere humans are. Heather thought. She went upstairs to discover balloons, sweets, and other things that was the unmistakable sight of a party. Logan and Luna were wearing party hats. Heather’s jaw dropped, although not nearly as much as Pinkie could do even in her human form. “You set up a party?!” “You do remember who I am don’t you?” “Err... yeah, I just didn’t think it would be so quick. I don’t know if I should be pleased or upset.” “I suggest pleased, it’s the way better choice.” “I haven’t had a party since early last year. Who else is coming?” “Just you, me, Logan, and Luna.” “Good, because the last thing I want is a party with a bunch of strangers or people I don’t like anymore. I don’t like surprises.” “I was told to start small, so I plan on throwing even bigger parties later on.” “I know you said you had other parties planned, but can we just keep this on the down low?” “You know what’s better than a party of four? A party of five. And even better than that? A party of six.” “Anyway, no time like the present like this party going on right now. I rather not do something like dancing, that’ll be embarrassing. Considering the silly things you do already, I’m sure your dancing will be no exception.” And right on cue, Pinkie managed to spin on her head like a top. “Just about what I expected.” Once Pinkie got up, she grabbed Heather’s hands. “Pinkie!” “Just follow me lead, you won’t make a fool of yourself because I won’t judge you.” “But dad is right here. Not like you’re giving me much of a choice, are you? Figures.” Heather tried to mimic Pinkie’s movements, which mainly involved her hopping on one leg off the ground. Logan was smiling but didn’t say anything. After another few minutes of dancing, Heather smiled, but then quickly tried to hide it. “I know what I saw Heather,” Pinkie admired, “That smile doesn’t lie.” “I was err... oh fine, I’m not totally against this now.” “Heather Young moving on up in the world!” After the dancing stopped, Heather set down to eat cookies and cream topping cupcakes. “How did you know these are my favorite?” “I simply asked your dad.” “Right, no weird spying thing or whatever. I sometimes overlook the mundane things you do because I expect something unexpected.” Heather finished her cupcakes. “These are the best cupcakes I ever had! I mean, I admit, I didn’t have that many, but this is top tier!” “I’m something of a professional baker and party planner.” “I believe it. Sweets 2 Go is going to bloom with you helping them, especially with your beyond human abilities. Probably not like Ponyville where you compete on a more even playing field. Oh right, Elements of Harmony, saviors of Equestria a dozen times over. And you have me, unremarkable Heather.” “You’re not unremarkable Heather, you’re special!” “And so is everyone else. It’s just the thing they tell people to try to cheer them up.” “Don’t be so down on yourself Heather. You have positive traits; we just need to bring them out. You made more progress today than yesterday. I should throw you a progress party.” “Err... can we please not have that right away? Most humans don’t have the amount of energy you do. You might be getting me to be happier, but there’s still the issue of other people to deal with, especially a school.” “I should show up there to handle them, Pinkie style.” “They’re not going to believe you’re a pony turned human from Equestria, however far that is. Sure too far even for our best telescopes to see.” “That’s okay, they don’t have to. Just like I don’t need the cutie map to give me a friendship problem to know there’s friendship problems to help you with.” “I’m wishing more I could visit Equestria. Aside from that whole eternal night thing that Nightmare Moon tried and whatever else other villains probably attempted. At least you and your friends seem to always come through before things get bad for long. Anyway, I’m getting tired.” “Your smile is great! You should smile more often.” “Good luck with that. Bring up other people and I might as well wear a frowning mask. That is still next level stuff, compared to how easy it is to please you. Anyway, I’m showering and going to bed.”