“You see, Nightmare Moon, when those Elements are ignited by the... the spark, that resides in the heart of us all, it creates the sixth element: the element of... magic!”
The iconic lines boomed through the Crystal Brighthouse's main TV as Sunny and her friends were gathered to watch the second episode of the allegedly hit series, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Allegedly being the key word here.
Sunny had never heard of such a show about the Guardians of Harmony, and Zipp had been very tight lipped about where she had found those media disks, arguing that a detective never reveal her secrets. Which was a saying normally attributed to magicians, but the earth pony did not have the heart to confront her friend. Her energy was better spent analyzing the audio-visual material presented to her.
As the second episode came to a close, discussion erupted among her friends about a wide variety of unimportant topics, such as which Guardian was the best one, or how did Princess Celestia's mane float in the air. Sunny didn't allow herself to be dragged down into the unibunny hole of opinions, her mind set on aspects that were objectively more critical to the show.
Hitch was the first to notice how distracted she seemed, and poked one of her legs with a hoof. "Equestria to Sunny, do you copy? Were you enjoying the show? You seem... uh..." He stopped, interrupted in his thought by Izzy literally jumping into the conversation, squeezing in between them on the couch.
"Ooh, ooh, I know! Melancholic? Like you bought twenty boxes of Crushed Hooves, and you're still missing that one piece to complete the one of a kind, special edition, gonna impress your friends figurine of Sunset Glimmer?" Izzy reminisced, her stare going a bit distant as the traumatic failed quest for friendship played back in her mind.
The orange earth pony mare couldn't help but giggle at her unicorn friend's antics, and forced herself to smile for her sake. "Nothing like that Izzy. It's just... my dad did a lot of research on the Guardians, and I don't think I remember anything about a manticore or a river serpent in his notes. This show looks great, but I don't know... the little historical inaccuracies are rubbing me the wrong way..."
From across the couch, her friend Pipp was writing a short episode review to her fans, with the aim of releasing those disks to the general public through a no doubt lucrative deal with the Zephyr Heights Broadcasting Network, if it turned out to be entertaining. The popstar princess glanced in Sunny's direction, having long mastered the art of multitasking. "It's just some glitz and glam to spice up the show, Sunny! The production value is amaaaazing~ There's not even any jittering in the animation frames! It would make the best cartoonists jealous! Just enjoy it for what it is, not what it could be. Beside, how wrong could it really get history?"
As it turned out, it could get history extremely wrong. The first few seasons had plenty of inaccuracies that greatly bothered Sunny, but nothing that distracted too much from the adventures of her heroines. As the seasons went however, the outlandish elements grew in scope. What started as a few creatures of species that hadn't been seen in centuries, became entire towns and cities of them. Ponies and creatures thought to be mere legends even in that ancient time appeared regularly, upsetting the world balance's more times that were realistic. By the end of season nine, Maritime Bay's self-proclaimed history expert was fuming.
"The destruction of the Crystal Heart in season six by a newborn alicorn, I could tolerate. The return of the Pillars of Prehistorical Equestria, even if their existence is doubted by most scholars these days, that was really stretching out what should be possible. But the last two seasons, and that finale? What in all of ponykind were they thinking when they wrote this? The gryphons and changelings were never at peace with Equestria, and don't get me started on the hippogriffs! They're an old mare's tales! The Guardians never opened and taught at a friendship school, they were too busy spreading friendship all over Equestria! The Guardians did not grow old like that either! Princess Twilight had mastery over life itself and never allowed her friends to suffer the injustice of time! They were heroes, who lived pure and strong until they were defeated in the Dark Uprising, and sacrificed their live force to save Equestria from certain doom!
"Enough is enough! I won't allow this show to spit on the legacy of the Guardians. Who made it? Someone needs to tell them how awful it is, and fix it!" Sunny rambled, throwing the season nine disk case on the table in frustration. That was when she noticed the contact information in the back, and an idea took shape in her brain.
At a call center in Pawtucket, Rhodes Island, Mike was leaning back in his chair, waiting for the phone to ring. It was a particularly slow day at Hasbro's Customer Service Hotline, and he was almost, almost wishing for a stressful call at this point. An angry, entitled mother would still be worlds better than trying to beat his high score in Minesweeper. As if the gods had heard his plight, the phone chose that moment to ring, and he jerked forward to pick it up.
"Hello, this is Mike from Hasbro's Customer Service, how may I help you today?" He droned, stating a line he knew by heart, having said it thousands of times. What he did not expect though, was the voice on the other line. It sounded feminine, but nothing quite like anything he had heard before. The voice was too high pitched, and the cadence of her words felt almost... alien. And most unfortunate for him, one thing was universal to everyone, no matter where they came from: angry customers.
"Oh good, there's actually a pony on the line! I had my doubts when Zipp and Izzy had to build this weird machine to solve how to input this strange number. Why you would ever use a 0 in a phone number, I don't have the foggiest idea. So anyway, I watched your television program, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and there's a few plot points I could like to talk about..."
Despite company policy that required that calls be handled as quickly as possible, there was something in Mike's current customer that made him unable to stop listening to her train wreck of a story. It didn't take him more than a few minutes to realize that she believed herself to be a pony in the world of Equestria, and then ten minutes more to conclude that she was completely insane. Her actual argumentation did somewhat make sense, if you squinted at it from a mile away, but in the end, there was just one major problem with this unusual customer's complain...
"I... understand the issue, Miss... uh... Sunny Starscout, but production on this series has stopped years ago. I'm sorry that you feel so strongly about it, but there's nothing I can do to change what was produced. Would a $20 gift certificate on any of our products make up for this misunderstanding?"
Sunny slumped in her chair at Mane Melody, sulking as Jazz gave her a hooficure and Pipp worked on Izzy's mane. "Can you believe it? They tried to bribe me with a gift certificate! Not that I wouldn't have taken it, but then they got upset about me giving 'fake shipping information' and hung up on me. I thought earth ponies were mean about unicorns and pegasi before, but that outer pond pony was all sort of nasty. I bet if Pipp did something like that and betrayed everypony's trust, all of her Pippsqueaks would be asking for her head. Like they did... you-know-when..." She muttered, looking a bit sheepish as she glanced at Pipp. Mentions of her ruined concert was still a sore point among her friends. "...anyway, I tried calling them again and again, but now they're not even answering my calls. It's hard enough that I have to make those phone calls across the ocean. If only I could take my message and spread it among their kind, peer pressure would get them to change their way..."
Sunny sighed and closed her eyes. This whole situation reminded her too much of her activism days, when she was trying to convince ponies that unicorns and pegasi were their friends. It seemed Pipp thought the same, because the pink pegasus princess suddenly stopped tending to Izzy and exclaimed herself. "I got it! Maybe you're going all wrong about this? Phone calls are soooo last decade. You need to think bigger! With more glitter and glam! Why go for one person, when the world is out there, waiting to lend an ear! So here's what you're going to do..."
Julianna took another sip of coffee, staring at her screen. It seemed no amount of life juice could make the current problem go away. The Save G4 movement had started small and innocent enough, mostly a single voice being overly vocal on social media, but then she appeared. No one knew her real name, but she took the avatar of Sunny Starscout, one of the protagonists of the latest My Little Pony iteration, which by itself seemed to defeat the purpose of their message. The 'pony' took her character very seriously, acting surprised when she first got into a video call with fellow believers and 'discovered' humanity. More infuriating, no one was able to trace back her location, and the 3D effects used to animate her were incredible for someone who claimed to be working alone and live.
It had started innocuously enough, just a few tweets on the subject of the 'historical transgressions' the company Julianna worked hard for had apparently been guilty of. It all snowballed with the fan's first YouTube video, a passionate plea for truth to be restored, presented by the most realistic Sunny Starscout avatar ever made, with details and fluidity that would put Pixar to shame. That was when the rumor machine started rolling full speed. Several people started believing that this Sunny was somehow a real pony, and was trying to communicate from beyond their dimension. Mainstream media picked up on the story, networks polarized between believing the extradimensional nature of the pony, or believing that it was the most elaborate hoax of the century. No matter who you believed, Hasbro was seen as the antagonist in the whole affair, so much that even higher ups like Julianna were forced to pay attention. This 'Sunny' was invited to talk live at late night talk shows, was mentioned in the news and her persuasive influence on the Internet grew every day. At the rate things were going, the company's stocks may implode at any time depending on what this 'mare' said. This couldn't continue. Looking at the other executives in the Zoom call plus one special guess, she took another sip of coffee. It was time to end this.
"It's a pleasure to finally talk to you, Miss Starscout. When we heard you talked to Lauren Faust yesterday and asked, and I quote, 'can you tell your people to fix the MLP G4 ending, I didn't like it', we knew it was time we spoke to you directly. For your information, Miss Faust hasn't been on our payroll for over a decade, and had nothing to do with the ending you despite so much. To stop this PR nightmare, we're willing to listen to have you have to say."
Silence hung in the virtual meeting room as every participant waited for the uncannily realistic pony to answer. It always took a few seconds, as if she was on the opposite side of the planet. That information hadn't helped in the slightest to figure out where she was broadcasting from. "I'm so so sorry! My new friends on your Internet told me she had created the show, and I thought she could tell me her thought process behind the historical alterations. I understand you're an entire continent away, and there might have been some misunderstandings, but it wouldn't be very pony to stay mad about it forever. I just have a short list of corrections you would need to make in order to teach pon... people the correct history of Equestria, as taught by my dad. I was told it would cost a lot of money, and I have never heard of your currency, so I can't pay for it. Maybe Queen Haven has the bits for it? I wonder what's the exchange rate between Zephyr Heights Bits and American Dollars... I would have to ask Zipp and Pipp about it..."
The pony on the screen rubbed her chin with her hooves, seeming to think about something. Her focus eventually returned a few seconds later, and that smile, that darn smile that melted the heart of so many people, returned to the pony's face. "But that's a problem for future Sunny. Point is, there's a lot of ponies and people who believe in restoring the truth, and we can't disappoint them. If you need help getting the facts right, my father left me the most complete collection of Ancient Equestria's artifacts, such as the Friendship Journal of the Guardians, the authoritative source on their exploits. Let me go through my list here..."
It was another sunny afternoon in Maritime Bay, and for the first time in weeks, the eponymous pony wasn't in a sour mood. In fact, she was ecstatic! It had taken a long time, but with Pipp's help for ensuring her appeal to the masses, she had managed to secure enough of a following that those guilty of misrepresenting history had decided to take her advice and produce a new season of the show that would address all of the issues she had raised. She was pretty sure they didn't really believe her as she had explained in great detail what were each mistake and what data from her father's collection backed it up. Nonetheless, they had agreed to her terms, for the sake of their company. Nobody wanted to buy from a phony pony full of baloney that lied.
At long last, she held in her hooves the newly produced season ten of Friendship is Magic, courtesy of Zipp. Her perseverance had paid off. Her father would be proud of her for restoring the truth to all of Equestria and beyond. She started recording a video for him, inspired by Princess Twilight's very own letters to her mentor. Her father might never actually hear those words, but she could feel in her heart that somehow, somewhere, her father could sense her.
"Dear dad, today I learned that when you give your all into a project, something magical can happen! Convincing the blasphemers of the Guardians of Harmony took a lot of research, new magic and a touch or two of glitter, but in the end, they saw the light. Truth won over lies, and the power of friendship prevailed. I've made so many new friends during this endeavor, many of which who really want to visit Equestria. I'm still not sure where on Equus the continent of Earth is located, but I'm sure we will find out some day! Until then, I can sit back and relax, sip a smoothie and watch our revised past. All of this thanks to your lifelong effort to gather evidence. I love you dad. Your loving daughter, Sunny Bunny"
Another day, another round of stupid complains. Mike had had his work cut out for him these last few weeks, but things were finally coming back to normal. This eccentric Sunny Starscout person was still around on the Internet, but the fad around her had died down, with his company bowing to her demands. Then, the newest meme or something about Morbin' Time in theatre made her irrelevant. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening anymore. "Hello, this is Mike from Hasbro's Customer Service, how may I help you today?"
The voice on the other end had a strange bug-like reverb to it, and was very quiet. "Um... hello? This is Ocellus from the School of Friendship in Ponyville, and I was wondering if... uh... you know... when is my episode going to come out?"