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// 1 - 2 
// Story: Heroes Never Die 
// by Shimmerist Ari 
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Ponies were quite a bit more social than humans. When one of them latched on to something, it spread way faster than Twitter would even normally spread it.

A leader of one of the pony communities saw Ari’s tips about typing, opening jars, and the like and decided to share them. She sent it to the leaders of a bunch of other communities and then they all spread it through their communities in a sort of hub and spoke network.

Ari very suddenly had a ton of followers on the Twitter account she created just yesterday! And nearly all of them seemed to be ponies. There was no way to check but she had no idea why a human with functional hands would follow this account.

They were incredibly organized and efficient at… a whole lot of things as Ari was beginning to learn.

It wasn’t something that Ari fully appreciated until just now, but there were suddenly about a hundred million people in America alone that had more or less the same condition as Ari. That was one of the things that appealed to her originally… that she’d be normal among the ponies.

But her abject defeat and failure made her forget that they were still like her in the end. She was no longer a bizarre outlier in this world… maybe the advent of ponies would eventually lead to a golden age of accessibility for people like Ari.

And now she was getting about ten thousand questions asking advice from someone who had way more experience with this sort of thing.

She found herself smiling madly at the chance to do something useful for once in her life! Sure she’d tried to be useful but… well this was something that would work! With clear, tangible benefits.

Ari grabbed one of her unsharpened pencils with her teeth and strapped it onto her hand. Then she began furiously typing up answers to their questions, faster than she’d ever written before.

She went through question after question, explaining how to do this and that chore. Recommending accessibility programs and appliances. Explaining how accessibility devices she had worked so the ponies could make their own.

They were further behind than Ari thought. Some of them claimed they hadn’t brushed their teeth since transforming because they just couldn’t figure even that much out.

It did feel like she was in a bit of a race. Ari was hardly the only person with this type of disability, where she couldn’t use her fingers but still had her motor skills and muscles, giving her near-perfect overlap for what they were going through. It’d only be a matter of time before they found solutions themselves or elsewhere.

She stayed up way too late that night helping as many of them as possible before finally having to go to sleep. And she spent the whole next day at work with only half her mind, waiting eagerly to get back on Twitter and answer more questions.

Something she’d been mocked for her whole life now made her ‘cool’ and a ‘genius’.

At least, among the ponies.

The other humans at work didn’t seem to appreciate Ari’s mood flipping and becoming so chipper. Not when all of them were depressed and scared out of their minds. Like Ari, none of them knew if they’d have food or shelter a month from now. And Ari could tell they found her smile to be in poor taste.

Maybe Ari should be more worried… she didn’t have nearly enough followers or content to save her from the poor house. At best, she’d be popular for a couple of weeks until she had nothing further to share. But damn if it wasn’t exciting for now.

But the chasm of moods made her feel like she needed to hide the truth. She tried not to smile whenever they looked.

Typically at work, Ari kept her hands in her pockets through lunch. She’d bring in a thermos with a thick smoothy to drink. One she could take out of her bag, unscrew, put a straw in and drink it all without taking her hands out at all.

Today, one of her coworkers teased her about ‘acting like a pony’ for doing something they’d seen her do a hundred times. The comment stung deep into Ari’s heart and her smile was gone for the next few hours. But more than anything else, she felt like she was hiding a horrible secret now.

When work finally let out, Ari jogged all the way home, hands deep in her pockets, rushing past the specter of the homeless camp to get back to the safety of her house.

And now it felt as though Ari had returned from a fairy world, the kind where you spent a single day there to find ten years had passed in the real world.

After just one more day, the ponies had gone through another permutation. They had now appointed specific agents for gathering and disseminating information through their communities. They’d designed a more efficient setup where Ari could talk to ponies who’d ask more pointed, less redundant, prioritized questions they’d gathered, then those specialists would catalog and pass on the information.

The first of this new breed, who also became Ari’s fast favorite was Spring Breeze, from a 100% pony community somewhere in Washington State… only about 3,000 strong. The purple pegasus wasn’t the leader of her community but the head of what she called their ‘internet and information operations’.

That sounded way more professional than anything a town of 3,000 should have, especially just days after total upheaval. Yet every pony community from Denver to Dinkly seemed to have a pony like Spring Breeze for Ari to talk to.

It made ponies seem like beings of supreme order and efficiency… though she knew not to get carried away. The survivor bias was a thing. Ari would only be talking to the communities on the ball enough to get things up and running. Most of the ponies didn’t even have internet right now. Entire states were suffering near-constant blackouts in the west.

Spring Breeze’s explanation of her community’s situation confirmed this much to Ari.

SB<Since the entire town either transformed or ran off, we have absolute control over the local government. You’d be amazed at how much power that gives you. We pooled all our money together to buy out as many mortgages as possible. Between that and the ponies who already owned their houses, we got about half the town to ourselves. We can do pretty much whatever we want.

SB<But the other half is what we call ‘blight’. Houses the bank owns and is playing hardball with, refusing to sell it to us. So for now, there are just endless rows of houses all over the nation that no one is allowed to enter.

SB<Other towns have it way worse. Entire cities are blight-land right now. There are places where thousands and thousands of ponies were forced out into the woods while all the houses, they used to live in are worthless shells.

It was messed up. Too many people saw this disaster as a chance to be greedy.

Still…

Spring Breeze and the others soon took a special interest in the gloves Ari made for holding her phone and gripping utensils.

Ari had a special glove made of Velcro straps around her right hand most of the time. On the back of it was a slot to strap in her phone. That was where her phone stayed except when charging, strapped to the back of her right hand so she didn’t have to get it out of her pocket all the time. She even had a little mechanism letting her turn it 90 degrees.

Her ring finger (her only finger) was too weak to type more than a few letters without Ari getting exhausted. So to use the phone she let it hang down and moved her hands instead. Repeatedly raising and lowering them was enough to type.

On the bottom of her glove were straps that could be loosened or tightened to allow her to grip small utensils. She even had little bits of silk and rubber at the edges of the straps to make it easier and more comfortable to grab them with her mouth.

It also had one more benefit: hiding the worst of the deformities on her right hand. But that last one wouldn’t appeal to the ponies. They had cute little hooves instead of the grotesque lump of flesh and nails Ari did.

It didn’t take long for them to design cruder, leather ‘bracer’s for them to wear over their… fetlocks? But they’d get better at making them before long. The big advantage being these could be easily made without waiting for mass production to become possible.

The part of her desperate for cash told her to try and gatekeep the information, try to monetize this somehow. But Ari always despised that kind of thinking… she couldn’t complain about taking advantage of others for profit while doing it herself.

It wasn’t like this was hard to figure out, anyway.

Her friendship with the ponies she met was way more valuable. Ari had been intensely interested in ponies from the start. Maybe if she couldn’t be one, she could at least live vicariously through them. All the ponies she chatted with were incredibly friendly and wanted to talk to her about more than just accessibility.

The contrast between her life and that of the ponies was immense. While Ari was stuck doing the same boring job, while half the population was destitute, and no one knew who’d be out on the streets next… the high-pony areas seemed to be doing fine.

Better than ever, even. They had unlimited food and were uniting in tighter communities that didn’t just leave people by the wayside, doing actual work instead of pointless labor.

And of course, discovering what were effectively superpowers.

So when Spring Breeze asked Ari what her job was… she didn’t even want to answer.

A>My job sucks. Do you do anything interesting?

That was a stupid question, she realized. Spring Breeze was off building her own civilization with ponies and magic. Instead:

A>Were you always an ‘internet operations officer’?

SB<That’d be an odd way to phrase my old job. I was a Vtuber. I can’t do it right now because the internet barely works. There’s way too much stuff to do around here before I even think about streaming again.

SB<That’s another part of ‘internet operations’. Keeping our internet from exploding. Most towns around here don’t even have internet access. Even keeping the lights on is a bit of a struggle, but that’s a different pony’s job.

Ari was reminded once again that the east coast did have it better in some ways. No blackouts here so far.

Ari looked up Spring Breeze’s old handle. She had just over 100K subscribers. Her Vtuber rig really did have similar hair to what she did now. They were nearly the same shade of blue, only the silver highlights making up a significant difference.

A>See, that’s an interesting job. Are you going back to that at some point?

SB<I’m still going to be an influencer. But for one thing, all my fans seem to like the way I look now better than my old rig, even. They’re all like ‘You’re way cuter like this’! So… I dunno. Maybe I’ll just be a tuber from now on? Or maybe set up a pony rig once I get everything in order out here.

Ari had never been super big into Vtubers, but she wanted to watch Spring Breeze’s old streams now. It was kind of cool being friends with someone who was a sort of minor celebrity.

Looking into it, the Vtuber community was hit hard by ETS for whatever reason. 6 of the top 10 Vtubers were ponies now. Half the ones on the list she found had been transformed. Ari wondered why that was. True, America and Japan got hit harder than most places. Maybe there was some super spreader event at a con somewhere. Something like that…

There was one interesting, controversial case on her list. One Vtuber who did not become a pony started using a pony rig, seemingly rushing to make sure she was the first to have one, beating the actual ponies to the punch. Everyone was having a big fight about whether that was… racist? Who could know the whims of Twitter? It was silly but…

Ari decided to test the waters a little. She really had no idea what other people, human or pony, would think of her… darkest secret.

A>Hey, what do you think about that human Vtuber using a pony rig?

SB<Oh, I like it! We need humans seeing more ponies right now, you know? Normalization. Even if I’m pretty sure she’s just doing it for attention.

A>Maybe she’s doing it because she secretly wanted to be a pony?

Ari hesitated to send that last message. It felt like she was about to jump into an ice-cold pool. Finally, she hit the enter key and pulled back, watching the screen for a reply with bated breath. The die was cast.

SB<Even better. Humans who want to be ponies are cool.

Cool? It implied Spring Breeze had heard of at least one other.

SB<I know I don’t have to worry about them being mean to us for one thing. And I could understand somebody feeling that way. I don’t want to give up my wings… so somebody probably wants the ability to fly too. Do you know?

Ari let out her tension with a sigh. So Spring Breeze was safe.

Though it wasn’t like Ari was ready to confide that deeply in Spring Breeze yet.

A>You aren’t worried she’ll steal all the attention from the actual ponies? I don’t know how hard it is for you to operate your stuff.

SB<Actually, becoming a pony will make my show a hundred times better! And not just because I’m cuter. I was the first around these parts to get my cutie mark. Magic courses through me, making me the most powerful Vtuber!

SB<You know, other than the hundreds of other Vtubers who also became ponies.

SB<But seriously, it’s great.

Cutie marks…

Ponies had magic powers, often crystalized in the form of that brand on their flanks. Once one appeared, it was like a gateway to their soul had opened, granting you powers reflecting your truest self.

No two cutie marks were the same, but they always gave you some amazing ability. Something you’d always be happy with because it reflected your truest self.

Ari would give anything for one of those! She didn’t even care if her cutie mark was a cardboard box. That’d be better than literally nothing. If she was going to be homeless, she might as well be a mystical homelessness wizard.

The closest thing Ari had to magic was crippling depression.

There was already some talk that without magic, humans might have serious trouble competing in certain professions. It sure as heck looked like a human farmer couldn’t possibly compete with an earth pony.

Could a human plumber really compete with a pony that had plumber-related superpowers? Would ponies with programming cutie marks always be a step ahead of human programmers? Could a human Vtuber compete with a pony with powers like Spring Breeze?

And if so, would that just mean ponies would always be at the top of their hyper-specialized field? Or would there be enough to make hiring a human for anything an act of charity?

Nobody knew right now.

Especially not Ari. She tried but couldn’t imagine what magic powers would help you make Twitch streams.

A>You got a Vtubing cutie mark? What does it look like? What kind of powers does it give you?

Ari wasn’t sure how appropriate that question was to ask. She was basically asking for a picture of Spring Breeze’s butt. Then again, the ponies seemed fine running around naked.

Spring Breeze posted the picture of her cutie mark. It was a flower with a bunch of stars around it. Ari knew even less now.

SB<It’s not exactly that.

SB<My special talent is spreading positivity and motivation! I can inspire enthusiasm in other ponies, you see! I’ve sort of been helping motivate the rest of my community to press on with our projects. We have a lot of work to do over here.

SB<But really, I’ve always been all about optimism and encouraging others to fulfill their dreams. That’s how I got mine so fast, I already knew who I was and what I loved to do. It’s just now… well I can be more me than before!

SB<So often, I think becoming a pony unlocks your truest self, you know? That’s closer to the truth than all this talk about brainwashing. You become more you, not less.

That was another common talking point. No one doubted that ponification changed your personality. Most strongly, it increased your sociability, and gave you a ‘herd instinct’.

But some people seemed to be overreacting to that fact. They went ahead and argued that ponies were therefore brainwashed and shouldn’t be allowed to make any decisions for themselves, that the government could do whatever they wanted to them ‘for their own good’.

That seemed to be the main thing the ponies were worried about right now. Even a hundred miles away, Ari could see it. They were all terrified of being declared invalids, rounded up, forced to ‘rehumanize’… possibly worse.

Ari decided not to go down that route.

A>Does that power work over the internet? Are you ‘spreading optimism’ to me right now? I do feel a little better when I talk to you.

A>And for the record, you have my permission to shoot me with the motivation laser as often as possible. That sounds better than coffee.

SB<It’s not like that. As far as I can tell, I can’t force ponies to feel motivated. It’s more like I have this supernatural intuition and empathy. I can just feel what I need to say! I can feel which ponies need my help, what they’re down about, what’s blocking them from their goals. And I just have this endless well of positive energy to draw on.

A>That still sounds like an incredible power! We can use ponies like you right now. The world is in a state of total disaster and everyone around here is too depressed to even try to do anything about it. It’s like they’ve all given up, just waiting around for the next horrible thing to come around and ruin our lives even more.

Truth be told, Ari was no better than that. She felt largely the same.

SB<Friendo! Don’t despair because the future is brighter than ever!

Ari had a lot more empathy for the people at work who found her smile in poor taste now.

A>Bright for who, exactly? My life has been like… I went from not being able to afford a house to not being able to afford peanut butter.

SB<Well for one, we’ve gotten rid of our main existential crisis for the future. ETS means global warming is gone just like that.

Ari read the message a few times and sat up far straighter.

A>Holy crap, you’re right!

Pegasi could control the weather… meaning the apocalyptical predictions of global warming would never come to pass.

Ari had always been very far left. The curse that came along with that… global warming had been a constant specter in her life, a major source of her depression and increasingly defeatist mindset. She’d slowly come to think it all pointless… the world would be destroyed and no one in power had the will to stop it.

So why even bother? Everything Ari worked for would come to nothing in a few decades…

But not it was like a death sentence had been lifted.

A>Why is no one talking about that? This is the best news ever!

A>Thank you so much for pointing that out to me! You have no idea how big my smile is right now! I believe that you have the power now!

Ari found herself laughing madly, alone in her room.

Maybe… was Spring Breeze right?

A>But I still can’t get any oatmeal…

SB<I promise everything you’re going through is temporary, friendo. With magic introduced into the world, we’re about to enter a new golden age.

SB<Think about it. Was this one really a disaster? Nobody died, and maybe a million of lives were saved by ETS. Nothing was destroyed. Now that America has tens of millions of ponies with magical powers, we’re more capable than ever. So how can the economy possibly be flagging?

It was a good question. Maybe an economist could answer, but not Ari.

SB<If this were a disaster, the areas directly impacted would be the worst off. But the states that got no ETS are doing worse than the states that hit the heaviest. Why is that?

An even harder question…

SB<It’s because the only disaster here is a failure of the system!

That much was just preaching to the choir.

A>You’re right about that part, at least. We really were standing on a house of cards, weren’t we?

SB<But no longer! You’re worried about food being scarce? Earth ponies can produce endless food. It’ll be free in just a few years. Us ponies are fighting even now to make sure every American can have guaranteed food security.

SB<And it will be even better than before. We managed to grow coffee up here in Washington, even. Do you know how big of a deal that is? You’ll be able to eat any food you want any time you want at almost zero cost, grown fresher and closer to you most of the time.

It was ironic that they had more food than ever and yet the prices had doubled. Anyone could tell you it was because the government wasn’t allowing humans to eat the endless supply of food that earth ponies could produce.

The official line was that the government wanted to make sure eating food grown with magic wouldn’t give you cancer. But there was another reason…

They were worried major corporations like Cargill wouldn’t be able to compete any longer. Anything related to food was directly threatened. Then there were the human farmers who would lose their jobs. Corn had significant political sway. Ari knew enough about politics to know the government couldn’t just tell them to cope.

Still even if Spring Breeze were right, it was just so hard for Ari to imagine a bright future of any kind.

A>I dunno about that one. I hear a lot of ponies repeating these lines about ‘protecting jobs’ or whatever.

SB<My opinion? If those jobs and corporations are obsolete, we should just let them die.

Ari nodded along.

A>Yeah. Where’s all this talk about the free market I always hear? Now they’re propping up these corporations at the expense of all our food security. I’d rather you guys take it over.

SB<That’s the real problem. They’re just afraid of ponies having control over the food supply.

A>Then what’s all this talk I hear from like… Citrus and Branch and Skylark? They all seem on board with that thinking.

SB<Well all the ponies you just named are a bunch of Lunists. That’s why.

A>What’s that?

SB<Did you hear about the vision?

A>Yes? A little.

Ari wasn’t sure how sensitive the subject was. That was something the government used to claim ponies were brainwashed and shouldn’t be allowed to make their own decisions in life from here on out.

Basically… well Ari still needed to investigate it more. But her understanding was Sunset Shimmer sent them all a vision of her perfect world or whatever in their sleep. And a ton of ponies decided that they kind of liked some of her ideas. So the government was freaking out about that.

But what those ideas were, Ari couldn’t say. Something like ‘be nice’? There had to be something more.

SB<The government keeps calling that brainwashing, but guess what? They literally did the exact same thing to us. The government sent out their own vision with their own message exactly the same way Sunset Shimmer did. So I guess brainwashing is okay when it’s their propaganda.

A>Wait. Did that really happen?

Ari had to admit she was still ignorant of most of the events, having spent the last few days of ETS stalking about the forest.

A>I know they call it brainwashing but… like they, seriously used it themselves despite being the people who labeled it that, to begin with?!

It seemed almost too insane to be true. Ari needed to fact-check this later…

SB<Yeah. And the craziest part was that they couldn’t even bring themselves to say that Sunset Shimmer’s vision was wrong. They’d look too stupid and heartless. They just tacked their own message onto the end of their vision.

A>And what was that?

SB<Something about ‘reunifying’ with humans. Or more accurately, going back to the collapsing system we escaped from. You know, if I wanted to start a commune before ETS nobody would have said that was immoral but now that everypony is doing it they’re suddenly worried enough to resort to what they themselves see as brainwashing.

SB<Lunists are what we call the ponies who swallowed the government’s propaganda vision uncritically. They think we just gotta go along with whatever stupid thing the human government comes up with because that’s ‘helping’ or whatever.

SB<Like, it was okay for me to criticize things before? It was a good thing, even. Why should it be wrong now? I’m still an American, aren’t I?

Ari wanted to say she couldn’t believe the government would resort to something like that but… who was she kidding? They totally would.

But would the aliens? They were the ones with the vision technology. Who the hell knew?

SB<But don’t worry! Not all of us drank the Kool-Aid like the Lunists. Most ponies kinda want to leave all that stuff behind us and push for radical change. At least around here. Me and my community will fight to live the way we want to live.

That was good. At least somebody could be happy. Or rather somepony.

A>Wasn’t the original vision propaganda too? You sound like you like that one.

SB<Maybe. But yeah. I liked it! It was such a beautiful message! Even if there was some agenda behind it, that hardly matters now that Sunset Shimmer is too dead to push it.

SB<And for the record, I don’t think either was brainwashing. It’s them that say that. Both were just propaganda, I suppose. Just one was saying ‘peace and love’ and the other was ‘do whatever your human overlords tell you to’.

That made sense.

SB<Really, you should read up on the original vision when you get the chance! Talking to you, I know you’d agree with its message. You’d love it! Here’s a great video talking about it.

Spring Breeze sent Ari a link to a YouTube video of somepony explaining the vision. There seemed to be a bunch of them already…

Ari decided she’d watch a bunch of those later. The curiosity was too much to resist.

SB<PS! Never lose hope!