//------------------------------// // 9. Sitting In The Balance Without Knowing // Story: I.D. - That Indestructible Something // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// I.D. INJECTOR DOE That Indestructible Something By Chatoyance ═════════════════════ 9. Sitting In The Balance Without Knowing “Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.” - Franz Kafka When Gregoria Samson had first awakened from troubled dreams to find herself transformed into a golden yellow earthpony mare, she had been filled with a feeling of horror and confusion. At first she had thought herself still dreaming, only with time had it become clear that what had happened to her was no dream but a world-shattering truth that had smashed her sense of reality entirely to ruin. For nearly a week since arriving at her friend Rachel's apartment, Gregoria had become increasingly complacent and even at some ease about her strange situation. Rachel had given her both acceptance and support enough to allow her to come to an uneasy truce with a universe where people - and megastructures - could suddenly become entities of fantasy, stolen from a random cartoon among thousands. The truce had been broken, and whatever peace Gregoria had obtained over the last many days had been stabbed savagely through the heart, its throat slit and belly eviscerated. The small stability within Gregoria rushed wetly out of her soul like severed intestines writhing on the bedroom floor. Gregoria was nose to nose in the three o'clock dark, her yellow muzzle turned orange in reflected neon from the window with the fire escape, just beyond the door to Rachel's room. The lump in Rachel's bed had sat up, alerted by Gregoria's clumsy rush to check upon things, and the resultant fall and scramble to regain the mattress. It must be Rachel she was nose to nose with, in the neon glow, in the dark, but it smelled of vanilla and musk, shone with the colors of reflected creamsickle, and as the blankets fell away, filled the room with shining, tri-colored light. "...princess..." - that was the word which Rachel had mumbled in her sleep, the word which had brought Gregoria hoof-over-poll to tumble into the space between bed and wall. "...princess..." - Gregoria had feared, deep in her heart, that Rachel had been dreaming the same dream that had besieged herself - a week of nights of meeting Princess Celestia from the cartoon, a week of dreams of being asked if she would consent to being a pony, a week of hearing the voice of her heart betray her waking will, begging with mindless dream logic for that very abhorrent boon. "R-Rachel?" It had to be, unless madness itself had stolen the world. But whatever the answer that might come, it would be a nightmare - if the creature in front of Gregoria was indeed Rachel, then insanity would reign, and if the answer was that it was not Rachel, then only terror and doom would rule. "Greggy? I feel funny." Pale, neon-lit eyelids, large beyond possibility blinked, trying to focus. "What's all the light?" Shifting teal, yellow-green and violet softly bathed the walls of the room, competing now with the insistent neon from outside. As Rachel regained wakefulness, the light intensified, revealing all in pastel softness. Gregoria knew well who, or what, she was pony nose to pony nose with. Rachel had indeed transformed, in the night, without sparkle or flash, quietly, gently, and without sound or fuss. It could have happened at any time. Gregoria could have been looking into Rachel's room at the moment of her metamorphosis and failed entirely to notice it, hidden under the covers. Gregoria Samson stared into the waking face of the prime diarch of Equestria itself. Rachel Priss had become the character of Princess Celestia. "Greggy? Oh... I'm a pony now, aren't I?" She seemed delighted, lifting a hoof and wiggling her new ears. "What kind am I? Oh! I've got wings! I'm a pegasus! I wanted to be a pegasus!" Gregoria began instinctively backing away, sliding down the bed, pushing herself with her forelegs, trying to vanish within the space between bed and wall that she had only just escaped. She wanted to hide, to shrink, to find a mouse-hole in the baseboards and cower within the walls. "Greggy? Where are you going? What..." Rachel had finally noticed her mane, waving and softly glowing with the colors of night giving way to morning. "...oh ...oh no. Not this. No." The face of Celestia displayed a mixture of deep disappointment and grief. Gregoria stopped her effort to crawl away down the corridor made by the side of the bedframe and the wall. Rachel, within the body of Celestia, appeared so incredibly sad that Gregoria's pony heart was moved instantly from terror to sympathy. She waited, peeking over the edge of the mattress, and watched her friend slump, the long neck of Princess Celestia arching down, the great violet eyes slowly fixing on a wrinkle in the bedsheets, halfway between her gold-shod forehooves. Rachel had transformed in the night, but whatever happened had been more than what had occurred to Gregoria - the Celestia body that Rachel now wore was clothed. Gold shoes covered white hooves, a gold circlet armored the base of her neck, a purple jewel set within. She wore a crown, gold also, with another cut gemstone. Rachel had not merely become a pony in the shape of Celestia from the cartoon, she had apparently been granted the trappings of Equestrian royalty as well. The vast violet eyes closed, and Gregoria saw the beginnings of tears pool along the thick, dark lashes. "Rick always called me his Celestia, his princess. I never wanted to be Celestia, I never wanted to be anypony's princess. I just wanted to be a simple pegasus. Or an earthpony. Or a unicorn. Just an ordinary pony, if I'd had a choice I would have been Fluttershy." Rachel said the words with the voice of the actress that spoke for Celestia in the cartoon, but her words were not grand or sweet, just sad, and lonely, and so very, very let down. "I kept telling him..." The Celestia on the bed sniffed and wiped an eye with a foreknee. "...I was his little Fluttershy, but no, no he wouldn't have any of that. He always put me on a pedestal. Now just look at..." Suddenly anger flashed across Rachel's muzzle as her eyes flew open "DID YOU DO THIS? IS THIS SOMEHOW YOUR WORK, RICHARD?" At that, Rachel collapsed fully onto the bed, her crown tumbling from her radiant mane to thunk heavily on the floor after a roll over the end of the mattress. Rachel, the body of Princess Celestia of Equestria, wailed and cried as Gregoria stared, frozen by confusion, insecurity and not a little horror. Before her, her friend had become a truly unearthly creature, an entity strange even by pony standards, an eldritch creature of unknown power and fearful elegance. Gregoria fought within herself to regain some measure of composure and determination of how to respond to this inconceivable event. The entire issue of transformation seemed set on ruining lives. Rachel would have likely sold her very soul to have what Gregoria possessed, an ordinary pony body, small and cute. Gregoria, for her part, wished devoutly only to be human again, to have her proper life back - she had no special love for cartoon ponies, and certainly had no true desire to become one. There was no doubt in Gregoria's mind that had Rachel awakened as a simple pegasus, it would have been the single happiest day in her entire life. Instead, she had become something grand, and powerful and terrifying - at least to Gregoria - and could never hope to live the sort of pony life that she so clearly fantasized about. Her mind swirling with feelings and thoughts, Gregoria suddenly found one idea taking a firm center stage. Around it, her consideration began to focus into diamond clarity. Rachel had become powerful. Not by any means the most powerful pony on the show - that was clearly Twilight Sparkle, who seemed to command magic better than any other creature in Equestrian history, or so the writers would have it. Luna would come next, surely, she had been shown to at least possess shape-shifting abilities and the power to zap pony guards with what looked like lightning. Actually, come to think of it, Celestia had never truly been shown to be very good at anything. She was rubbish against that bug monster in the wedding two-parter, and her own sister had apparently kicked her flank off-screen even in the opening pilot. She was the princess of the sun, yet Gregoria couldn't remember her ever doing a trick, not even a card-trick. She must have done something besides sipping tea and making the sun rise. Taken alone, the latter was noteworthy, to be sure, but... as far as she could remember, Gregoria could not think of a single truly impressive thing Celestia had ever done. She could fly, but then so could a third of all ponies. Teleport? Twilight certainly could... maybe Celestia had teleported in an episode... Gregoria had some vague memory of something like that. "Lesson Zero?" Yes! ...um, no, not exactly. She had just been shown hovering or something, with no obvious power, it seemed. It was hard to recall, there were a lot of episodes and Gregoria wasn't really that interested. Huh. Mostly, Celestia just acted smug and sipped tea. She could float things, that was something at least. Gregoria didn't like how her profile of Celestia was turning out - she deeply wanted the Celestia that Rachel had transformed into to be powerful, indeed she was desperate that it be so. If Rachel had gained some kind of incredible powers - then she could fix things! If Rachel had become even half the pony god that most of the fanfiction writers and fans seemed to think Celestia was - despite all evidence to the contrary - it would be trivial to be... ...to be changed back. To be turned back into a human again. "Rachel?" The huge body of Celestia continued to weep. Occasionally Rachel used one of her large, gold shod hooves to paw powerlessly at the sheets and blankets, the whole bed was a mess now. Her hind legs seemed to have torn the sheets toward the bottom, where some of the covers had been shoved off of the bed. Celestia was a really big creature, Gregoria realized. No wonder she had toppled off of Rachel's new body as if it were a mountain under the covers. "Rachel? ...Rache?" If she would just listen, everything might work out, it might be possible to solve this situation right now, tonight. Gregoria felt frustrated - the answer to her own nightmare had landed right into their hooves, and Rachel was just blubbering because she got turned into a princess instead of a pegasus. Gregoria could feel human outrage, real human outrage overwhelming her pony brain at this thought. How dare Rachel waste time whinging about turning into a magical super-pony when that very thing was the only real chance either of them - perhaps even the entire world - actually had? "Cinnamon slurping SWIRL, Rachel! Stop blubbing like a schoolgirl and pull yourself together!" Gregoria had moved to the foot of the bed, reared up and stomped her forelegs firmly on the mattress. The entire bed shook, although Rachel's massive Celestia body barely bounced. It must be fairly heavy. "Don't you UNDERSTAND? You just won the muffin lottery! You have the power to..." "SILENCE!" The command was regal, imperial, stunning, and seemed to echo in the room, but this is not what stopped Gregoria's rant. She felt herself impact the wall above the couch, just beside the window that led to the fire escape. She saw Rachel's long Celestia horn slowly dim as golden light left it. As Gregoria fell, she saw Rachel's eyes widen in horror, the light from both her glowing mane, and the reddish neon shining in their wetness. Then gravity took over and the world became pain in her tail, and tumbling and rolling and a loud, hard whack to her head as she hit the cushions, bounced forward and slammed painfully into the floor. Gregoria lay still, her vision blurred, the taste of blood in her mouth. She couldn't breath and began to panic. Somehow, she struggled to her feet, and then stumbled to her foreknees again. She fell down, her entire barrel impacting the floor for the second time. That seemed to work somehow, and with tears in her eyes she gasped a long, whinnying breath, filling her starved lungs. She must have had the wind knocked out of her, the blow of falling to the floor shocking her diaphragm. She licked her muzzle, tasting iron. She must have cut something, maybe part of her lip on a tooth or maybe her tongue - it was hard to know exactly what had been damaged, but it didn't seem to be serious. She must have been picked up and thrown through the door like a doll, then pinned against the wall next to the ceiling. Looking up from the floor where she lay, it struck Gregoria that had that window been just three feet to the left, she would dying now, splattered on the asphalt far below. "Oh Greggy! I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, are you alright? Are you OK?" Somehow Celestia was there, Rachel rather, beside her, terrified at what had happened. "I didn't mean to do that, I didn't even know I could do that! I don't know how, it just happened and when I saw you on the wall like a bug I... I just... " Rachel was crying again, only this time in horror and self loathing at what she had done. Gregoria was too stunned to be angry. It had all happened so fast, there was no time to think, and her emotions hadn't caught up either. What she could make sense of was that her friend was really, really sorry and sad, and her pony brain desperately needed to do something about that. "I'm alright, Rachel. I'm a little sore, but I don't think anything's broken." Rachel pressed her massive head into Gregoria's side, tears soaking into the yellow coat. "I am so sorry. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to... I didn't want that to... I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." "Kinda got the wind knocked out of me, but it's OK now. I think I bit my lip. Do ponies have lips? Are they called lips?" Gregoria was babbling a little, she knew it, but she felt compelled to say something and that was the best she had. "I'm OK, Rachel, really. It was almost kind of cool, if you think about it. I mean, ba-zam, magic, your horn was glowing and everything." Rachel was sniffling now, trying to pull herself together, and somehow Gregoria talking about pony lips and the word 'ba-zam' was just the funniest thing ever. She started giggling through her tears. "Ba-zam?" Gregoria was giggling now too, which hurt her bruised ribs but she couldn't seem to stop. "Yeah, 'Ba-zam'. Magic. It's the sound of magic. Ba-zam." Rachel was full on laughing now, not because anything was funny, but because the entire situation was so bizarre, so overwhelming, so terrible and so sad. "Ha ha ha - that's... that's not how magic... you don't know anything about magic..." Gregoria was laughing because Rachel was laughing, and she had no idea why. "Hee-hee-ha... Oh, so the great Celestia is pulling magic rank on me now, is that it?" The laughter died with that, as reality hit home within both of them. This wasn't going to change. This wasn't just going to go away. Rachel had awakened stuck as Celestia, and she had nearly killed her best friend with an idle thought. It wasn't funny at all. It was scary. "You're bleeding." The head of Celestia nodded at Gregoria. "Yeah. I know. I think it's stopped." Gregoria found it difficult to stare too long at Rachel. Those huge violet eyes, that familiar Celestia face, the glowing, waving mane were unsettling to see. "Why, is it on my fur?" "Hair. Ponies have hair, not fur. Yeah. You have a streak of blood on your muzzle." Rachel sniffled again, then snorted. A large mass of glistening snot came out of her pony nostrils and began to drip down her own muzzle. "EWW!!!" She began frantically trying to wipe it off with a gold-shod hoof but she was unsteady with her new limbs. There was no way to know how she had managed to get to Gregoria in the next room. Probably crawling on her belly. Gregoria calmly lifted her right pastern, bending her hoof away from her friend's face, and sopped up the mucus with a gentle wipe. She just did it without thinking. Only after did it strike her human mind what she had just done. "Greg?" Rachel was touched, and also surprised and perhaps a little grossed out. Gregoria had no idea. It must be her pony brain. "You... are the princess." Rachel scowled. "No. No I am not!" She seemed offended now. "I don't care what I look like now, I never wanted to be Celestia. I'm not Celestia, do you understand? I'm NOT Celestia!" She looked like she might cry all over again, now. "I understand. I'm sorry, Rachel. You're Rachel, and you're my friend and you are NOT Celestia." Gregoria used a hoof to try to scrap the snot off of her pastern. It only drove the translucent goo deeper into her yellow coat. "Though... you do have an awful lot of jewelry. To be fair." Suddenly a thought struck Gregoria. "Rachel! Do you have those Harmonic things on you? You had a crown, I know, it rolled under the bed. You've got gold all over, if you had those harmony things..." "Princess Celestia doesn't carry the Elements Of Harmony, Greg. She keeps them locked up. Or did." Rachel sniffed again, this time carefully, and thought. "I see where you're going though. That would make everything easy. Maybe." She thought some more. "Maybe not, though. It takes six, and there's only two of us. That we know of." "Oh, yeah." Gregoria tried to lick where she figured the blood on her muzzle was, to get it off. "A little to the left. There." Rachel studied Gregoria's tongue intently. "No, you had it. Right there. Yeah, that's it." Gregoria tasted iron again. It had dried into the hairs and took a bit of licking to get it all. "Gone?" "Yeah..." Rachel stared, huge violet eyes close to Gregoria's jaw. "I think you got it. You're sure you're all right?" Gregoria took a brief inventory. Bruised, battered, but still in one piece. "Yeah. I'm okay." The neon light edged Rachel's profile in orange, while her glowing mane bathed the rest of her in pale greens and blues. "I think I'd like to wash up though." The first rays of daylight were beginning to tint the sky outside the window now as Rachel gradually emptied her refrigerator and pantry. Rachel was a big pony, easily seven, perhaps eight feet tall from hoof to poll, and her horn went beyond that. Fortunately she was reasonably thin, or it would have been impossible to get through the doors of her apartment at all. She walked her home with bowed head, careful not to whack her horn on anything. Again, anyway. "My left hoof but I'm hungry!" The last of the oats vanished inside the ravening muzzle. Rachel used her long tongue to lick the bowl clean. "Oh... that's better, but... oh my." She looked around the table and the kitchen, noting the empty, open shelves. "This is going to be a problem." She stared at the empty oat-bin she had bought just days ago. "No. It's a disaster." "Rachel... I'm sure we can make this work somehow. Don't lose heart!" "Greggy - how am I going to work anymore? How am I supposed to even GET to work anymore? If I were an ordinary pony like you, I could do it. If I was just a simple unicorn, I could ride the bus, use my horn to type and file and answer the phone - I don't think I could even get on a bus now. There's no way I could sit down, and I'd probably crush somepony. I'm gigantic, Greg, I know how big Celestia is. Some guy on the internet figured it out a long time ago." "What? Seriously? How?" Gregoria was constantly being amazed at the insane dedication of pony fans. "Apples. He took the average size of an apple, and used that to work out how big the ponies and Celestia were. Celestia is like eight feet tall. I mean, look at me!" Rachel was sitting not in a chair, like Gregoria (always careful with her tail), but right on the linoleum floor. It was the only way, and the table was comfortable for her like that even so. "I'll lose my job, we'll lose this apartment. There's nothing I can do about it." Rachel noticed Gregoria's expression. "No, don't even suggest it. Maybe I can learn to fly, maybe I can't, but even if I did, what would the humans make of a great huge horse flying around because that is what I am. I'm not even a cute little pony. I'm a big, huge horse." Tears were on their way. Gregoria had no answer for any of this. Perhaps it was time to try to breech the subject of magical solutions again. "Wait! Rachel, I think there is a solution - for both of us. It's what I wanted to tell you before I took up wall diving." Gregoria grinned, trying to lighten the thought of what had happened. "You aren't Celestia, I get that. But you look like Celestia, because you are inside a Celestia body. You clearly have Celestia's levitation thing down!" Rachel looked momentarily hurt at that. "No! I didn't mean anything bad by that, what I mean is that you have powers!" Gregoria leaned forward at the table. "Do you understand? You probably have Celestia's magic powers, you can probably do anything Celestia could do. You could fix things, maybe you could even make me human and make yourself into anything you wanted to be!" There, it was said. She had to comprehend, it was obvious. It was like a light had gone on behind Rachel's eyes, one even brighter than the constant glow of her swirling mane. She nodded her large Celestia head, but then a strange look crossed her face. "I'm not the one making that happen, if that's what you mean." Gregoria gestured with a golden hoof at the first traces of morning light shining through the window. It was still dark outside, but the sky had become a brighter shade of dark, and the edges of the buildings across the street could be seen more clearly now. The traffic was starting to pick up, the sound of it a slowly increasing rumbly hiss. "No, no, I don't expect you to go raising the sun or anything. But Celestia has to have some serious powers, right?" Gregoria was referring now less to the show itself, and more to the larger body of fanfictions that Rachel had shown her. It had struck Gregoria that whatever the mysterious transformation represented, it clearly wasn't interested in cartoon canon. There was no bridge the size of the Whinneysburg Bridge (it was hardly the Williamsburg Bridge any longer), because there was no city in Friendship Is Magic that was even close to the size of New York. Even Manehattan was clearly massively smaller than the real city it was named after. Truly large megastructures were limited to one thing - Canterlot Castle. There was no need within canon Equestria for a massive bridge like the Williamsburg. Canon wasn't part of this. "Well..." Rachel looked around for anything more to eat. The kitchen was basically bare. "Most fans think of Celestia and Luna as pretty darn powerful, that's true." "Those weird ones you like, fanfictions, the one's where people get turned into ponies? They drink grape juice and stuff?" Rachel had tried to get Gregoria interested in some of her very favorite online stories, but that had fallen flat. Gregoria had particularly disliked the ones where humans actually chose to become ponies. That was the last thing in the world she wanted to hear about. That said, Celestia was a minor god in most of them, or so Rachel said. "If those were what all of this was based on, I should be able to reconstruct the both of us just by wishing it." Rachel seemed uneasy. "Then again, my favorite author says such things aren't easy even for alicorns. If I mess up, I could vaporize us or even destroy the world. I thought of that too, Gregoria, but frankly, it scares me to even try." "But it's a chance! You could also save the world, too, have you thought about that?" Gregoria didn't like the sound of Rachel not wanting to use powers. Using magic seemed like the only real option, the only authentic hope to her. "Something or someone is turning earth into Equestria! Me. You. The bridge! It could be the whole planet, everypony everywhere! You don't want that, do you?" Rachel looked at the table. "Do you?" Gregoria's heart sank. Of course she did. It was obvious she did. Rachel was perfectly happy with the notion, the only part she didn't like was having to be Celestia, rather than whatever image of herself as a pony she had in her mind. The only pony that might have a chance to stop whatever was going on and she wanted it to happen! "You can't be serious... come on Rachel, no... no... you can't want this..." Rachel sat upright, her horn tall above her head. Her expression was hard, her eyes narrowed. "Pollution, everywhere. Global climate change. Animal species going extinct by the hundreds per day. Starvation, poverty and homelessness in the richest nations purely because of greed. Wars, Gregoria. WARS! My Rick is dead, he was blown up, ripped limb from limb because humans fight all the time, everywhere, over anything, forever and ever! "Do I want this? I don't want to be Celestia, not one bit, but you are out of your little pony mind if you think I am the least bit happy with how things are. And don't give me that look - none of this is new, there have always been wars and there always will be because that is what humans do. My Rick, the man I loved more than anything in the world is dead off in some stupid place and do you know why, do you Gregoria? Huh? Do you know why he went into the army?" Rachel as Celestia was nothing less than terrifying when angry. Gregoria could barely squeak out a "no?" in response. "He couldn't get a job. He tried, everything was outsourced. WHY?" Rachel's eyes were like searchlights, seeking enemy ships, and Gregoria felt like she was on the losing side. "Greed, Gregoria! Sheer, unmitigated greed. That's all, just so some super-rich suit could make even more money than too much!" Rachel was sitting in the main room, by the couch, staring out the other window. She had clomped off, her royal golden shoes slamming into the floor. Then, with nowhere to go, she had just sat down, her back to the kitchen, her back to Gregoria, and stared out the window, unmoving. Gregoria sat for a long time, in silence, before noticing that her flank had fallen asleep and her tail hurt terribly. Clumsily, but as quietly as she could - she was frankly afraid of upsetting her Celestoid friend - she had clambered down from the chair, and stretched on the linoleum to get the circulation back into her rear. Human furniture was not ideal for ponies - with the exception of the couch, which worked fairly well as a bed. Once, Rachel had raised her great bulk to go to the bathroom and also to get water to drink. Gregoria started to speak, to offer her advice about using the toilet as a pony, but the look that Rachel had given her caused her to fall silent instantly. Rachel had returned to her spot in the main room and resumed her silent vigil, looking out the window in the far wall. Lunch came and went without any change, and Gregoria's stomach began to growl, so she tried to search for any hidden food to nibble on. This clearly seemed to upset Rachel, massive, scary, Celestia Rachel, so Gregoria settled for a big bowl of water. She kept it by herself, and occasionally lapped at it like a dog. She felt like a dog, or at least as if she were in the doghouse. Finally, as the rosy smog colors of sunset in the city tinted the world in pink, Rachel spoke. At first, the moment didn't entirely register with Gregoria, for she had drifted off into daydreams and brief snoozes to cope with the endless, tense day of silence and uncomfortable stillness. "I know what to do." "What?" Gregoria's ears pivoted, locking onto her friend. "I know what to do. What we should do. What we are supposed to do." Gregoria tried to answer as gently and politely as she could. Rachel was probably still mad at her, and the fact was, Rachel was magically powerful whether she wanted to deal with that or not. Gregoria's ribs still ached from finding that out. "What?" A silent moment passed. "What are we supposed to do?" Rachel worked to turn around to face the kitchen and Gregoria. It wasn't easy for her, it was clear her legs had probably gone to sleep, or that her flanks were stiff and sore from sitting upright for so long. Eventually she sat facing Gregoria, her waving, glowing mane flowing behind her. "We need to cross the bridge." "Cross the bridge?" Gregoria was incredulous. "We don't belong here. Not anymore." Rachel seemed more like Celestia now than her usual self - her words were quiet and dignified, like the voice actress from the show. "There are many stories of fairy bridges, Gregoria, magical bridges to other worlds. We can't live here. The lease is up at the end of the month. I can't hold down a job, and I know you haven't been able to find one. We aren't human, Gregoria, this world is not our home anymore." Gregoria didn't like where this was going, but she had no other ideas to offer, and even if she had - she did not feel entirely safe suggesting anything. "You think Equestria is on the other side of that bridge - is that it? But humans and cars were crossing it while we watched! They didn't vanish into another world - they just went across!" Rachel finally, thankfully smiled. It was just a small, soft smile, but it spoke clearly that she wasn't angry anymore and that made Gregoria feel intense relief. It wasn't just that Rachel was scary powerful with her horn, it was also that Rachel was her best friend, and the only other pony in the world that she knew of. Rachel was all there was for Gregoria right now. "Yes, they went across." Rachel sounded almost as if she were presenting a paper on quantum chromodynamics at a TED conference, her voice filled with scientifically verified smugness. "They... weren't ponies."