//------------------------------// // Chapter 12: Story Time (P. Rarity, P. Applejack, H. Celestia, Abacus Cinch) // Story: On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice // by McPoodle //------------------------------// P. Rarity—Earth, Canterlot Church of the Goddess. Early evening, Day Two. The Pie truck pulled into the parking lot alongside the church, and the four individuals inside got out, carrying the luggage they had picked up from their two houses. Waiting for them were two men: Father Gnosi, and a nervous middle-aged gentleman with pale blue skin that none of them had ever seen before, wearing a white suit. “This is Archbishop August, the titular head of our religion,” Gnosi explained. “Archbishop, these are our guests, Rarity and Pinkie Pie, and the sisters of their counterparts: Pinkie’s sister Maud, and Rarity’s sister Sweetie Belle.” “Hello!” the man said brightly. “It is such a great honor to meet you!” He extended a fist in greeting. Rarity and Pinkie exchanged fist-bumps with the Archbishop, Rarity with some caution, but Pinkie with exuberance. Pinkie even mimed throwing some glitter into the air immediately afterwards. The Archbishop then shook hands with the two siblings. “I appreciate you putting up with these current extraordinary circumstances,” he told them. “Be assured that we are doing everything in our power to get this situation resolved as fast as humanly possible.” “We know,” said Maud. The Archbishop did a subtle double-take at the flat way Maud answered him. Father Gnosi then stepped forward, holding a pair of cufflinks in his hands. “I need you to put these on,” he instructed Pinkie and Rarity. “And try to keep them on your current clothing going forward. They are tracking devices.” Rarity picked up her cufflink and held it up to the light, admiring the holographic depiction of her cutie mark that floated above its outer face. “Your technology continues to amaze me.” “You can thank Crystal Prep Academy for that,” Gnosi told her as she attached the device to her sleeve. “Their alumni continue to produce high tech gadgets for their exclusive use, such as the wrist computers every student wears. The tracking chip has been part of the device for nearly a decade, as the sons and daughters of the richest Markists in the world are continual targets of kidnappings. Unfortunately the kidnappers figured this out and had the devices removed from their victims. Hence the development of the cufflinks.” “Hey look!” Pinkie exclaimed, shaking the hem of her dress. “I attached mine down here! That way the kidnappers won’t even notice I’m wearing it.” “Pinkie, you’re just doing that so it will fall off,” Maud remarked. “Now why would I do that?” Pinkie said, batting her eyes. “So you’d have more time to have fun with the kidnappers,” Maud replied. “...Yeah...” Pinkie admitted, bending down to move her cufflink to a more appropriate location. “Well if that’s settled, the others are waiting for us inside,” Archbishop August said, leading the way into the church. Father Gnosi positioned himself next to Maud. “Where’s the rest of your family?” he asked. He already knew that Rarity’s parents were out of town. “They have a firm grasp of the situation,” she explained. “They can best take care of themselves at home. Pinkie will take care of all of us. And I’m here to take care of Pinkie. It is the most-logical arrangement, yes?” Gnosi said nothing, instead looking over at Pinkie, who had just expressed her eagerness to be “kidnapped”, assuming she even knew what that word meant. He knew that the ponies had brought their full magical abilities with them to Earth. But Pinkie was an earth pony—what could she do compared to the force field abilities of a unicorn or the agile flying of a pegasus? # # # The Archbishop led the group through a side door from the main entrance of the church, and past a reinforced door down to the basement. “This place is enormous!” exclaimed Sweetie Belle. “This used to be the official bomb shelter for the whole of Canterlot, back in the 60’s,” Gnosi explained. “It was set up by the federal government, over massive protests.” “Did you say ‘bomb shelter’? Why were you expecting bombs?” a wavering voice asked from the back of the room. “Were you at war?” As the group approached, they could see two families sitting at one end of a massive table, which had an assortment of veggie and cheese take-out pizzas on it. (And one anchovy pizza, for Rainbow Dash—she actually needed the energy this time after what she had done on the plane.) The voice had come from a yellow-skinned young woman. As the newcomers focused their attention on her, she hid her face behind her pink hair. “It was not an armed conflict, but rather a ‘cold war’,” explained the woman sitting at the head of the table. “Two great superpowers split up the planet between them, always on the brink of war, but never starting one, because the weapons they possessed would have laid waste to all life on Earth.” The ponies looked at the woman with a mix of wonder and horror. “So...?” The young woman tried to say, fighting through her social anxiety. “Yes, Fluttershy?” the older woman prompted. “So...why was the shelter opposed? Didn’t everybody want to be safe?” “They opposed the shelters,” the Archbishop explained, “because that would mean giving up. It would mean accepting the fact that there was no way to prevent the war, and its devastating consequences. The Markists of my father’s generation refused to accept that inevitability. They spread out through the world like never before, becoming negotiators and translators. They made movies watched by millions on both sides, movies that showed that the people of the two superpowers were not that different, and had no cause to hate one another. And then, twenty years ago, one of the two powers collapsed, and the Cold War was over.” “The bombs were dismantled, and the threat of nuclear annihilation was ended,” the woman concluded. “Nuclear?!” Rarity asked with some alarm. “Your technology is that advanced?” “The bombs that were going to be launched harnessed the power of the sun,” Maud explained. “Blasphemy!” Rarity shouted. “The Princess would have erased both of these ‘superpowers’ if she was here!” “Well I suppose it’s a good thing that she isn’t,” Maud said. “Because we’re living in one of those superpowers.” “Erased?” asked a fearful Sweetie Belle. “Our princess is the sun,” Rarity explained to Sweetie, kneeling down. “And a hot enough fire can destroy, well...anything.” She felt bad now for saying something so terrifying. “She’s never actually done it,” Pinkamena remarked, disappointed at the growing fear among the crowd. “It’s just like you said earlier, with the superpowers being able to destroy your world—they could, but they didn’t. Princess Celestia didn’t even threaten. Not once. Because she’s not like that. It’s just that ponies seem to enjoy panicking, and when there isn’t a logical reason for it, they’ll make one up.” There was an uncomfortable silence among the crowd. Maud took this moment to pace between the others and Pinkamena, so no one actually saw her turn back into Pinkie. Only Rarity—and of course Maud—really noticed Pinkamena as someone separate from Pinkie in that scene. The others were more impressed with her words than her change in appearance. “What happened to the loser?” Fluttershy asked. “In the Cold War?” “We helped prevent their government from collapsing,” Gnosi said. “The world today is certainly not as wonderful as Equestria, but I do believe that it is closer to the Equestrian ideal than it was fifty years ago.” Unseen by the others, Archbishop August sat down hard on a bench. He had always had a hard time dealing with the progressives in Canterlot, with their constant notes of doubt that the “Perfect World” of Markist teachings might not perfectly line up with the actual Equestria. The brief moment when it looked like Princess Celestia was a Goddess of Terror rather than a Goddess of Harmony was bad for his heart. Gnosi walked over to stand beside the woman. “In case you don’t know, this is my co-bishop, Mother Meridiem Tempest. Over here are Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, these are the other two ponies that we’ve been able to find so far, Pinkie Pie and Rarity.” “Oh, so you’re the one to blame for our landing on this strange alien world!” Rarity proclaimed, walking right up to be in Rainbow Dash’s face. Rainbow Dash flinched. Then Rarity hugged her. “Thank you!” “Uh...you’re welcome?” Gnosi introduced everyone else in the room to each other. “Now as to why you are here at the church, there are two reasons: First, we are confident that Princess Celestia will be able to help us find the two missing ponies and get all of you home tomorrow. And second, there is the possibility that you all are in danger.” He told them about the attack on Rainbow Dash’s plane, emphasizing that there was no way so far to tell if the act was a deliberate attack, or a freak accident. Rarity took out her phone. As she expected, there were no bars of coverage. “May I be permitted to go upstairs and call my parents? Privately?” “I’ll go up with you,” Gnosi said, picking up a baseball bat. Rarity gave him a look. “I promise I’ll stay far enough away to protect your privacy. But I’m also protecting you.” Rarity sighed. “Very well.” She turned and walked back to the stairs at a fast pace, not bothering to look behind her. # # # When they got upstairs, Father Gnosi led Rarity to one of the confessional booths. “I’ve always found that this one had the best coverage,” he said. “Thank you,” Rarity said, before closing the door. Squeezing herself into a corner where Gnosi couldn’t see her through the hole in the door, she dialed Applejack. “What is it, Rarity?” an extremely wary Applejack answered. “Look, I am not breaking my promise to you,” Rarity said. “I’m at the Church, but they have no idea you’re one of the ponies that they’re looking for. I just had to tell you that somebody tried to hurt one of us. So you don’t have to come down here, but you should find some way of protecting yourself.” Rarity waited for a few seconds. “Applejack?” “Yes?” “Did you hear that?” “Yes,” Applejack said curtly. “Thanks for telling me.” “So are you coming over?” “No. I can take care of myself.” P. Applejack. Applejack hung up her cell phone, and then returned to the living room of the Apple house. “Pa?” she asked, a bit nervous. “You know how you offered to take me out target shooting yesterday? Is there any way we can do that today?” “Sure,” said Bright Mac, rising up from his easy chair. “Ma, could you put off dinner for a half hour?” # # # Applejack watched as her father nailed some sticks to the top of four fence posts, and then put empty tin cans over each stick. He then walked the twenty feet back to Applejack and lay down on his side, beckoning Applejack to do the same. “Now pay attention,” he said, as he methodically inspected the shotgun beside him before loading it with two shells. He put on his headphone ear protection, and Applejack did the same. Then, lying down on his stomach, he carefully lined up his sights with the can on the left, and fired. Applejack jerked at the sound of the gun firing. It had been so loud that she had thought that her father had blown himself to bits, but no, he was still there, with a little wisp of smoke coming out of the barrel of the gun. The leftmost can was nowhere to be seen. “Now you try,” Bright Mac probably said. But Applejack could not hear the words through her headphones. She carefully went through the same steps she had been shown, until she was laying on her stomach, lining up the gun. It was at this point that she communed with the weapon. “Communing” is one of several magical abilities possessed by earth ponies that are not well understood, not even by earth ponies themselves. It is a sort of subconscious link with the set of thoughts associated with a tool—not just the thoughts of those who had handled or created the tool, but the thoughts of the individual who had invented the tool, anyone who was using the same tool at the time of the communing, and anyone who had spent any significant amount of time thinking about the tool. Communing is a shortcut to instantly becoming proficient in using any tool, no matter how complex. The shotgun told Applejack that it was an tool of protection, not of murder—there were far more effective human tools out there for the latter function. It protected America from its enemies, foreign and domestic. It protected families like hers from those that sought to hurt them. If a pack of wolves wanted to hurt Applejack’s family, the shotgun would deter them. (Applejack flinched—that argument was way too close to home.) It showed her what using the shotgun against that pack would look like. Applejack was aghast—some of those wolves later died of their wounds. It was far more violence than was acceptable to a pony, in a world of Harmony. But this was not a world of Harmony. Last night, when the sound of Sweetie Belle watching late-night movies had woken her up, Applejack had turned on the television in her own room, to see what kind of idle entertainment was available. She caught the opening monologue of a talk show, where the unbeliever host mocked Markists for their worthless compassion and harmony. “Has Harmony ever made a Markist rich?” he asked his audience. “Has forgiveness ever stopped a criminal from stabbing them in the middle of the night and taking their things?” This wasn’t exactly what he had said. He was a comedian, and he had phrased these cruel questions as jokes. And the audience had laughed uproariously at every one of them. So no, there was no Harmony on Earth, despite the efforts of a small minority of humans who followed Markism. Protection on Earth required more force. Required tools like the shotgun. Applejack resumed her communion. Alright, the shotgun “replied”, perhaps it wasn’t the best tool against smaller creatures. But it worked really well against evil humans, all of whom would survive an encounter against it. If the humans who wished to kill ponies came here, the shotgun would send them running. And if Rarity went against her promise... Applejack jumped up in terror, dropping the gun after seeing the vision of Rarity’s pristine skin being torn open by the shot. “Applejack!” Bright Mac scolded her after jumping to his own feet and throwing down his headphones. “Never drop a loaded weapon! It could have gone off.” “I’m sorry, Pa,” Applejack said after removing one of the cups of her own headphones so she could hear. She reached down and picked up the gun, her communion power firmly repressed, so the tool was just a collection of metal and wood. “You look like you’ve got the jitters,” Applejack’s father said, his voice softening. He reached out for the gun. “Do you want to just call it a night?” “I’d like to take a couple of shots, if that’s alright,” Applejack said. “Alright.” The pair put their headphones back on and settled back down, side by side. Applejack looked lovingly over at her father, and then over at the tin cans, imagining them as enemies trying to part her from her parents. “Never again,” she told herself. She lined up the sights, braced herself, and pulled the trigger. The recoil was intense, but not as bad as she had imagined. The targeted can was unmarked, completely expected given the lack of communion. She looked over to him, and he signaled that her shot had gone to the right and up. With a nod, she tried to compensate, and fired again. The can spun as it was clipped. Given that this was a shotgun, that meant she was still quite a ways off, but still closer than before. She got off two more shots before it got too dark to continue. Applejack returned to the farmhouse much more confident in her ability to protect her family. P. Rarity. Rarity tried to call her parents, but she got the hotel’s answering service instead. She figured they were probably cliff-diving, or something equally insane. “Hello Mother, Father? This is Rarity. I won’t begin to explain everything that is going on. I would advise that you keep this recording of my voice to treasure, just in case the next call from Canterlot is to inform you of my admission to the local hospital. Good day.” As you might be able to tell from the message, Rarity was not happy that she had to talk to a machine. # # # Sweetie Belle took one look at Rarity when she returned, and knew exactly what had happened. “Machine?” she asked. “Machine,” Rarity replied. “Definitely not my favorite use of technology so far.” She sat down to eat some reheated pizza. When she was done, the Archbishop got up to address them. “I’m sure you ponies will be meeting the Princess in person when this is all done, but I thought I’d warn you right now: The Princess does not believe that opening contact between Equestria and Earth would be a good idea at this time. For this reason, both She and I need all of you to keep the existence of other worlds a secret. Do you all promise to do this?” He waited until they had all nodded their assent. “With that out of the way, I thought we might while away the time by telling each other stories.” The members of the collected group all looked at each other. “Do you humans know about the First Hearth’s Warming?” Rainbow Dash asked. “No,” said Mother Meridiem. “Well that’s basically the first pony story, I’ll tell that one.” She stood up from the table and put a fist to her chest in a declamatory pose. “Long ago, before Celestia was ever Princess, the ponies lived in a far-off land. They lived in the three tribes of unicorn, earth pony and pegasus, and those three groups all hated each other...” When that story was over, Father Gnosi countered with a streamlined version of the Odyssey. Rarity knew that this story, unlike Rainbow Dash’s, was fictional, but she said nothing. She honestly wondered if there were any stories in her World History textbook that would make for an uplifting story. Even the founding of America involved massive amounts of (justified) violence. Actually, the Odyssey also ended with a slaughter. It was just that Father Gnosi rewrote the ending so that Odysseus merely convinced the suitors to apologize instead of killing them all for what they were about to do to his wife. Just then, Pinkie Pie sat down next to Rarity, and pulled her into a hug. “If you think about it, the ponies before Hearth’s Warming were not too different from humans,” she said. “They were just blessed with Harmony as an actual thing, while humans only have it as a thought. The fact that the humans didn’t blow themselves up when they had the chance is the amazing thing. I wonder what they’ll be like in a couple hundred years?” “You were peeking into my thoughts again,” Rarity said gently. “Yes,” Pinkamena admitted. “Thank you.” The stories continued late into the night. And so ended the second day on Earth for our main characters, but I do wish to include two last bits: H. Celestia. Principal Celestia worked late into the night to catch up on her administrative duties for the day. Catch up, and build up a backlog. “There,” she said, rising from her desk and straightening her back. “That should free both of us up tomorrow for whatever we end up having to do.” She dropped a small pile of pages on her nightstand—the relevant details about the known and unknown ponies she needed to tell Princess Celestia about. The Principal had the ability to contact the Princess in their dreams, and vice-versa. Normally, this privilege was allowed but once per lifetime of a mortal Celestia. But in this case the two Celestias got on especially well. Also, this was the first human Celestia to have Luna as a sister, and the Princess was always eager to talk to her. Principal Celestia walked over to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Vice-Principal Luna waited at the doorway connecting Celestia’s bedroom with the hall. “Are you finally ready to hear my news?” she asked impatiently. “Oh, did you have something?” Celestia asked around the toothbrush in her mouth. “I’ve only been trying to tell you all evening,” Luna retorted. Celestia went into the bathroom, spit, and emerged into the bedroom, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Alright, what is it?” “Your group of six are not the only ponies in Canterlot City,” Luna told her. “Our mystery student Sunset Shimmer made a slip of the tongue today—she’s a pony as well.” “Sunset!” Celestia exclaimed. “Was anything she told you true?” “The stuff about her mother, even if that mother is not who she said she was,” Luna replied. Celestia shook her head. “That poor girl. Is there any kind of connection between Sunset and the others?” Luna shrugged. “That’s for the Princess to figure out.” Celestia nodded and got up, then stopped herself and looked back at her sister. “Was there anything else?” “Trixie finally knows about Somnia,” Luna said. “Are you going to make another try to contact her tonight?” Celestia asked. “It hurts me to see how much pain she keeps to herself.” “It hurts me as well,” Luna said stiffly. “But I think I should be present for tonight’s conversation with your counterpart.” “That’s probably for the best,” said Celestia. “Besides, the horse goddess always gets so giddy when she sees me. One of these days, I should change my dream form into that of Pony Luna.” “Don’t you dare!” Celestia exclaimed. “Oh, I would never actually do it,” Luna joked. “The Princess would probably banish me to the moon, purely on instinct.” “That was not funny,” Celestia said. “It was to me,” Luna said with a smirk. “Good night, Sister.” “Good night, Luna. Pleasant dreams.” “Assuredly.” Abacus Cinch. The dim light in Principal Cinch’s office stayed on deep into the night. She kept looking at the photographs in the folder her spies had sent to her, over and over again. Two students, two ordinary students of hers, were being treated as royalty by one of the bishops. Were being personally greeted by none other than the Archbishop of Baltimare. Those two, and two students from Canterlot High. That was the damning part. What could any student at Canterlot ever do to equal the brilliance of her students? What were they hiding? What did they have in common? As near as her research could show? Nothing. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy knew each other from childhood. The others? Rarity and Pinkamena had never been known to associate together, and their families came from oppositional strata in the socio-political world of Canterlot City. And neither of them had anything to do with Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy before today. It just didn’t make sense. And Principal Cinch hated situations that didn’t make sense, that gave her no handles to manipulate. So she would just have to work with the handles she did have. She picked up the phone and dialed a specific answering machine. “Boys,” she said, not bothering to disguise her voice this time. “This is your previous employer. If you’re up for a substantial increase in payment, I have some...physical work that I require.” She hung up the phone, and looked around her, her mind’s eye taking in not only the office, but the entirety of Canterlot City. “There is power at the heart of this matter, I’m sure of it,” she said out loud. “And tomorrow, that power will be mine.” The fact that she would finally show the faithful that the Markist Church was nothing more than the paper tiger she always knew it to be was just a bonus.