//------------------------------//
// This cross is your heart 
// Story: TCB: The Red Shoes 
// by Madrigal Baroque 
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"They're not going away."

Chip was looking out the duraglass door that fronted the Bureau. Featherfall could feel his trembling as she stepped beside him to see what was happening.

A group of perhaps ten people were walking in a loose circle in the plaza, waving signs and chanting. 

Hey hey!
Ho ho!
Equestria has got to go!

"Protesters," she observed mildly.

"Why can't they just leave us alone?" Chip all but wailed. 

"Some people have to have something to complain about," Feather told him. "I was in a nude production of The Firebird a while back–all we wore were pointe shoes and body paint–and almost a hundred people showed up to say it was indecent. Can you believe that, in this day and age?"

A horse is a horse
Of course, of course
But you won't make us change by force!

"Nopony is being forced," Chip objected. "Celestia said that it has to be a free choice."

"Chip, these people are morons. Besides, some of them believe they are being forced. Earth is being eaten up by Equestria, remember?"

"The Earth is dead anyway. Even if Equestria hadn't shown up, we'd have, what? Thirty years?"

"Three generations, they said. But the last  wouldn't live long."

Up with humans! Down with ponies!
Celestia is full of baloney!

Chip laughed. "Oh, they did not just say that!"

"I don't think they're taking this too seriously." Featherfall surveyed the group as it became less organized. "Not all of them, anyway."

A woman wearing a wig gone askew on her head leapt on top of one of the rusted benches. She was holding a black book–a Bible, Featherfall realized–above her head. "Begone, hellspawn!" the woman screeched at the door. "I cast you out in the name of the Most High! Forsake the Whore of Babylon and beg forgiveness of the Almighty God!"

Featherfall rolled her eyes. "Great. Fundamentalists."

"You who abandon your humanity will lose your immortal souls!" the woman shouted. "You will be cast into the lake of fire, where the devils will tear out your tongues with red-hot pincers so that you cannot beg God's forgiveness! Your bellies will be cut open and your entrails set afire! Your eyes will roast and your bowels will burst, but you will never die and the fires WILL NEVER END!"

"Let's go, Chip." Featherfall interposed herself between the yellow pony and the door and nudged him back. She was half Chip's mass, but he moved. "We don't need to see any more of this. It's lunchtime anyway."

"I'm not hungry…" For Chip, who loved eating food almost as much as he enjoyed preparing it, this was a definite first. 

"We're leaving. They're making fools of themselves." She guided him away, towards the cafeteria, dismissing his assertion that he wouldn't be able to eat anything. Thankfully the Ill feelings brought by the unpleasant drama outside were dispelled by Eun-sook's dramatic presentation of her new name, as well as by Lilac's impatient antics while the little aquamarine unicorn drew out her reasoning before the reveal. At last the unicorn named herself–Harmony–and by that time Chip was eating his haycakes with gusto. Even Featherfall managed to eat. She dismissed the unpleasantries of the crowd outside, certain that, thankfully, she'd never see any of those fanatics again. 

Or so she thought.

She was wrong.

***