It was five minutes to nine in the morning, the sun had risen only two hours ago. Princess Celestia had seen to the solar cycle then ate a light breakfast, like she had done for so many days before. Routines were important, after all. Like so few ponies outside of the castle, Twilight Sparkle knew the princesses schedule very well. Having concluded her breakfast, in five minutes the Princess would walk out from a door behind the dais and seat herself on the throne, then the grand door to the throne room would open.
Twilight Sparkle needed answers and she knew just where to get them. It took a little more effort but she managed to gather her wits and notes well before sunrise, make herself presentable, and appear at Canterlot castle just as it opened to the public for the morning. Several hundred minutes stretched out before her as she waited, seated out in the hallway in front of the massive, reinforced double-doors that lead into the throne room. Twilight had made sure that she was going to be the very first in line to see Celestia today. Twilight had done whatever little research she was able but had been drawing too many blanks. Today was the day when she would fill those blanks from the very source of the mystery itself, Celestia.
Twilight had invited Rainbow Dash to join her for court but she had to decline. Dash’s weather roster had her scheduled to bust storm clouds that floated out from the Everfree. While she wouldn't be able to make the initial court appointment, Dash did promise to meet up with Twilight at Donut Joe’s after her shift ended in three hours from now for refueling and to catch up.
In the glow of her lavender magic, Twilight floated a lengthy checklist that she went over for the nth-hundredth time since she started keeping it last Monday. She had only stopped reading it when one of the guards assigned to the throne room doors cleared his throat.
“Ahem. Your attention, please. Court will commence momentarily.“ the guard spoke loudly.
The rest of the proclamation went unheard by Twilight as she was busy rifling through her saddle bag, checking over its inventory for the fourth time since she sat down.
“First petitioner, please. Make your way to the throne. Mind the carpet.”
That was her cue. Twilight Sparkle shuffled her saddle bags, fluttered her wings and walked up to the waiting line of guards.
“May I have privacy for my meeting?” She asked the guard.
“Of course, Princess,” was his reply. Guards assigned to duties involving the public, like being a chamber guard, were infamous for their curt replies. They preferred to maximize efficiency by minimizing unnecessary conversation. One could not keep their ears open for suspicious activity if they were filled with chatter.
“Thank you.” The guard may not have been very polite, but it never hurts to be kind in reply. Twilight continued past the guards and they closed the grand door behind her.
The plush red carpeting under her hooves made her approach nearly silent as she made her way across the throne room to the front of the dais. Not unnoticed as the eyes of many guards watched her approach the throne. So did the magenta eyes of the seated princess.
“Twilight, it is good to see you up so early. Did you have a pleasant night's sleep?”
Twilight stopped her approach and sat a hoof space before the bottommost step of the throne where petitioners were to make their case to the crown. Like many before her, Twilight was there with a purpose.
“Yes, thank you.”
Princess Celestia had an addition to her usual royal regalia. A thin, red strip of fabric looped loosely around her neck. From it dangled a small silver medallion with some sort of impression she couldn’t make out from where she stood several trots away.
Princess Celestia’s right ear flicked. Many years of tutelage under the princess had Twilight come to understand that movement to be one of amusement.
“What brings you here today, my little pony?” Celestia had stuck to the script she would use for petitioners, as Twilight had planned. Not a plan for anything untoward, but she missed the familiarity of being one of Celestia's little ponies.
Twilight lit her horn and levitated a bundle of paper from out of her saddle bag. She unfurled and carefully floated it up to the princess and laid it at the princesses hooves. It was last Monday’s copy of The Equestrian Daily, Canterlot’s most respectable source of printed news.
“I would like some clarification regarding the front page story of this paper.”
“Ah, of course you would. What would you like to know?”
Twilight levitated a feather quill, a bottle of Perle Noire’s fast drying writing ink, a scroll filled with questions, and a stack of parchment from her saddle bag in preparation to take many notes. She was renowned to be thorough.
“Let’s start from the beginning, I suppose.” Twilight unfurled the scroll of questions and readied the quill in her magic above the stack of parchment. “You entered a race.”
Princess nodded her head. “Several races in fact. Four separate race events held around the world, to be precise.”
Twilight made a few notes. “The article didn’t go into much detail. Where were the races held? I couldn’t find any reference in any other local city publications since this initial one in The Equestrian Daily.”
“The human world.” The princess said matter of factly. “Kansas, England, Hong Kong, and Africa.”
Twilight recognized those names for they were unique to the other side so she elected to not write any of the place names down. She already knew that locations and events involving the humans and the human world were a closely guarded state secret. Having a written document would be a breach of security. So she moved on to the next question in her list.
“You were an Alicorn in the hu-, um, over there.” She wanted to say ‘human world’. It was a place beyond the magic portal mirror created by Star Swirl the Bearded. A place filled with exotic looking, sapient creatures known as humans.
“Yes. I suppose you won’t be asking how I accomplished that feat?”
Twilight smiled at that question. “I assume you disabled the part of the spell matrix that dictated the transformation process. I did study the mirror for several months following my return. When I finished I had sent the Royal Archives the originals of all my notes. I assume you had used those.” Normally, Twilight would create a duplicate set of her notes and send those in to the Archive, but again, humans are a state secret which meant all of her research had to go. Perhaps one day, many years from now, those notes would be declassified and unsealed and provide to be a valuable primary resource for future magic research.
“Of course. Precisely that. Your notes were thorough and very helpful in that regard. I would have expected nothing less from the Element of Magic.”
Twilight blushed at the praise. “So, the hu- um, the event hosts allowed a well known Equestrian princess enter a race?”
“Of course not. I went without a Royal entourage and forgoing the royal vestments. I even went as far as to dye my mane and wings purple to better disguise myself. The color turned out a half-tonal shade darker than your own coat. I even wore marching purple racing flares upon my ankles. No one, human or pony, would have recognized me.”
“And that worked?”
“Of course it did. Humans only see what they want to see, after all.”
“Err… right. So, uh, how many other…” Twilight had wanted to say ‘humans’ but she would not have been able to write down anything regarding the humans and writing ‘ponies’ would not have been factually correct, so she went with, “… participants were there?”
“Including myself, there were ten racers in total.”
“You are known across the land to be an excellent long distance sprinter. Your speed and prowess without any equal. How did the other participants manage to keep up with you?”
“How well versed are you with the human world, Twilight? Do you know of the metal carriages they construct to help them get around?”
“Yes, princess.” Twilight had seen many human gas-powered motorized vehicles while she had spent several weeks attending Canterlot High. Sunset Shimmer’s motorbike held a special place in her heart. Perhaps one day she would own one of her own and ride it along the Equestrian coastline.
“Did you know they have highly modified versions of those carriages specifically designed for high speed?”
Twilight nodded in reply. “I am aware.” She had spent time in Brad’s car, a Ford Crown Victoria. Most of her time had been in the back seat for extracurricular activities, but she was aware of how quickly many things moved in the human world, both with the carriages themselves and the humans that drove them.
“That is how.”
“So you raced against several carriages that were of equal to your own might and speed?”
“Several different types, in fact. There were three different models of cars, a very large truck, a police cruiser, a fire truck, two different types of buses, and Edgar.”
“I’ve never heard of Edgar. What kind of carriage is that?”
The princess smiled, “Not a type of carriage. Edgar was the name of one of the other race participants, like myself.”
“Fascinating! Were they all able to keep up?”
“Oh my, yes. They were all quite fast.”
“But none of them were any faster than you.”
The princess covered her face and tittered. “Oh my, no. Not even Edgar. But they all did try their best.”
Twilight regarded the trophy metal around the princesses neck. “If they were not able to keep up with you, how did you manage to come in second place? Was it this Edgar po… person?”
The princess smiled down upon the red ribbon around her neck, on which dangled a silver medallion with a stylized number 2 embossed on the front.
“Yes and no. I let Edgar win. I have no shame in admitting it.”
Twilight was confused. “You let Edgar win?!”
“It was for the best, really.”
“In what way was losing a race ‘for the best?’”
“Second place is hardly losing, Twilight. You didn’t see Edgar. If you had you would understand. He was three meters long and had hundreds of teeth the size and shape of arrowheads. He looked to be quite the predator. When I saw him inhale three bottles of nitrous oxide, burst into flames, then pop a wheelie across the first finish line, I decided it was best not to get in front of something like that. Thus, second place.”
Twilight was at a loss for words. What kind of creature could Edger have… No. Was Edgar… Could he have been… ?
“Celestia, please tell me. Was Edgar a shark?”
“Very good guess, Twilight. Full marks! He looked to be a variety of hammerhead shark, to be exact. Unfortunately, we don’t have any that look like him in Equestra, which is a shame for he looked to be a very lovely juvenile specimen of his breed.
“Edgar. He… it was a shark? But sharks are known to be ocean creatures in the hu- on the other side just as they are here.“
“I could hazard a guess, if you would like.”
“Magic?”
Celestia gave a sharp nod in agreement, “Magic. I’m afraid that the mirror portal had been leaking far more magic for much longer than any researcher could have guessed. Sharks that swim on land being one such result.”
Twilight was at a loss for words. Princess Celestia kept going on about her racing adventure in the human world. About the many exotic locations filled with ramps, jumps, flips, and tight turns but most of the conversation went in one ear and raced right back out of the other. Her brain was on cruise control. Not just any kind of shark, but a street shark, in the human world! Rainbow Dash would need to hear about this.
As it had been previously decided, after her visit with Celestia, Twilight Sparkle waited for Rainbow Dash to join her at Donut Joe’s. She had ordered her favorite, a honeymooner donut and a mug of jasmine tea, alongside a half-dozen crawlers for Dash. She grabbed a vacant patio table outside, pulled a book from her saddle bag, and waited for her adrenaline loving friend to arrive.
Twilight was more than half way through her personal copy of ‘Daring Do and the Curse of Skull Island’ when a whoosh of wind fluttered her napkin off the table and onto the cobblestone patio.
“What did Celestia say? Can I go racing with her next time?”
Rainbow Dash had arrived. Twilight placed a bookmark, closed her book, and returned it to her saddlebag.
“You may want to be seated for this,” She slid the box of crawlers across the table to her friend. “Have a donut.”
Twilight did her best to relay her conversation with Celestia. All the important double-you questions that were left out of the newspaper article were finally answered and the true, other worldly origin of the second place medal that Celestia had been wearing around her neck for the past week. Then she got to the truly important part.
“… and that’s when she told me that Edgar was a shark!”
Rainbow Dash was at a loss for words. Her mouth hung open, remains of donut glaze on her lips. The now empty box was left forgotten. “Aaah-are you sure? Sharks, I mean?”
“Yes.” Twilight nosed. “The events line up from what Sunset Shimmer wrote to us about in the communication diary. Celestia went beyond the mirror portal and had been street racing sharks. I was just as surprised as you are.”
Suddenly, Dash jumped back to her hooves. “Aw yes! You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Contract work.”
“Hay yeah it does! Super glad we signed up with The Center when we did. Come on Twilight. We gotta get to the mirror. We gotta get over there! Those sharks aren’t going to punch themselves.”
Rainbow’s enthusiasm was infectious. Twilight couldn’t keep a smile off her face.
“You’re right, Dash. But we should go get the other girls first. You know Rarity has a score to settle and the others will want to join us.“ Twilight fluttered her wings then, with steady flaps, lifted off the ground completely. “Race you to Ponyville?”
A flurry of flaps, in very little time the sky-blue pegasus and the lavender alicorn princess were not but specks on the horizon. Happy hooting and hollering could be heard the entire way to Ponyville and to adventures beyond. The portal to the human world awaited them in the Crystal Empire.
There are creatures out there, many ponies and humans alike, who just don’t understand why. The deep science, the pure artistry of it all. Why Twilight and her friends punch sharks. Why punch them in the face? Because they can’t do it themselves. Because they’re sharks. Because they have fins, not fists or hooves. And if they don’t punch sharks, who will?