//------------------------------//
// 10. Belief Is Like A Guillotine 
// Story: I.D. - That Indestructible Something 
// by Chatoyance 
//------------------------------//


I.D.  INJECTOR  DOE
That Indestructible Something


                                                                                              By Chatoyance


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10. Belief Is Like A Guillotine
"A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light."
- Franz Kafka




Two ponies, one large and white and glowing, the other small and yellow and dressed in denim waited for the light to change so that they could cross the street. 

Gregoria shook her barrel to balance her saddlebags. She'd underestimated the weight of the two juice bottles filled with water in the right bag, which caused her saddlebags to slowly slide down on that side. It would probably make sense to just repack everything, put one bottle in each bag, but that would mean having to move the containers of oats, the muffins and all the other stuff. Gregoria had run to the convenience store down the block with money from Rachel's purse and bought a few things for the journey. They had decided they had no way to know where in Equestria they might end up on the other side of the bridge, so having water and food seemed wise. Also, they were both hungry again.

They had decided to leave just after dark, to minimize encounters and Rachel being seen. Rachel had removed all of her remaining Celestia jewelry - her neck circlet, her golden shoes - because she wanted it clear that she was not princess Celestia. If there was an Equestria on the other side of the Whinneysburg Bridge - both were calling it that now - then it must already have the real princess Celestia living there. The last thing Rachel wanted was to be seen as some kind of usurper or impersonator.

Gregoria had originally wanted to sell the royal Equestrian jewelry, arguing that this could spare them from having to walk the bridge. Gregoria was not keen on leaving the earth forever. "Rachel - come on! This, this shoe, right here, just this shoe could buy this entire apartment building! Do you have any idea how much gold this is? And the neck thing, that gem on it alone... you could buy the rest of the block and two more besides! You don't need a job! We have a fortune right here!"

"And how are we going to explain these things, huh?" Rachel was annoying when she was sensible. It ruined dreams. "Where did this much gold come from? Do you think something like all of this could just be sold without any publicity? And where, exactly would we sell it? Who to? Where do we say it all came from?"

Gregoria thought fast "You... had an uncle, a fabulous gay uncle who loved fancy jewelery and was also an explorer! He found the lost city of Teoten... Teonac... Somewhere-or-another in South America! He had no kids of his own, but you were his favorite niece so he gave it all to you when he died!"

Rachel laughed. "They'll want to know all about him. They'll ask my parents, they'll ask all of my relatives trying to find him!"

Gregoria grinned. "That's why I made him your gay uncle. See, your family are all religious nutbars and they never talk about your uncle because they're all bigots, but you alone were nice to him and that's why he left you the gold!"

"First, promise me you will never write fanfiction. Secondly, that would never work. Thirdly - even if anypony bought that story, gold dug up in foreign nations gets seized if anypony finds out. There are international laws and rules and treasure police. You can't get away with 'great explorer' stuff anymore, the days of Indiana Jones are gone, Greggy!" Rachel rotated the crown - Gregoria had fished it out from under the bed - and used her glowing yellow magic to stuff it into the pillowcase with all the other bits.

"Besides, my family weren't narrow bigots, you met them once - remember when my aunt Sylvia married her partner Lisa? You were there, or so I thought. You chowed down on the clam dip and threw up all over the..."

"Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah..." Gregoria's ears sagged and hung to the sides of her head. Her ears lifted just a bit "It was really good dip!"

"You're a really good dip." Rachel grinned and used her magic to try to tie a knot in the pillowcase to seal it. It wasn't working very well - she could lift things and move things, but trying to use a blob of light to tie a knot was troublesome. "It really would be awesome to be able to cash all of this in. I'm guessing it could be worth billions, Greggy, and that's probably a conservative estimate. This stuff is equivalent to the crown jewels of England, maybe more. And that's the problem..." Rachel frowned. "...there is no way to explain why any ordinary pony would have such a treasure. At best, we wouldn't end up in jail after years of being hounded about it. I don't think there is any way it wouldn't be confiscated as suspicious. We would never see a single shiny bit from any of it."

Gregoria watched, depressed, as Rachel finally managed to tie up the pillowcase that held the treasure. "We could take a hacksaw to it, sell little squares and..."

"No, Greg." Rachel used her magic to open her clothes hamper. She put the pillowcase filled with gold into the hamper and piled dirty laundry on top of it. "They'd question us about that, too. That especially, actually. Unless we went to some really scary place, and then we could have humans following us to get the rest."

"I still say we should take it to Equestria!" Gregoria stomped her hoof on the floor.

"And when we get taken to see the princesses, and we will be taken to see the princesses because - let's face it - I am Celestia's total double, how is also having copies of her royal stuff going to help? You want to spend your super-long pony life banished from Equestria, or thrown into a dungeon? Or banished and then thrown into a dungeon in the place that you're banished to?"

Gregoria stared at Rachel. "I bet you know all the words to all the songs, too, don't you?"

Rachel grinned. "Yup."





The light finally changed, so Gregoria and Rachel began to walk across the street. Since there was no way for Rachel to ride, the only way to get to the bridge was a long, long walk. It would probably take all night, though Rachel argued that it would be faster as ponies, and less tiring too. Gregoria had disagreed, saying that the hard concrete shocked the bones in her legs and made her hooves uncomfortable - the journey would be unpleasant no matter what.

Heading for the corner, both Rachel and Gregoria were glad to see that the few people out seemed to take no notice of Rachel, other than perhaps her size. They had come to the conclusion that she was probably being perceived as a very tall woman - Gregoria reasoned a tall, blond Norwegian woman, considering what Celestia looked like. 

There was no clothing that could fit Rachel's huge form, so they had settled on Gregoria's original trick and hoped for the best. Rachel wore a dark blue tablecloth tied over her back like a cape, leather shoes attached with wraps of masking tape to her hind legs, a bedraggled, cut-open tee-shirt around her neck, and a baseball cap which her horn had been jabbed through. It was utterly ridiculous, but it seemed to work. The humans saw what they wanted to see, or more likely, what they needed to see to keep from screaming.

"Why do you like it so much? I mean, it's cute enough I suppose, and sometimes it's kinda fun - not Pixar fun, not Spongebob fun - but it's okay... what makes it worth actually wanting... this? What makes it worth actually wanting to be a pony for real? I don't see it." Gregoria leaned and shook her body again, re-seating her saddlebags for the umpteenth time.

"It doesn't. Not the show, really." Rachel studiously avoided eye contact with a pair of men in leather jackets passing them on the sidewalk.

"Huh? Wait a minute! You wanted, dreamed, of being a pony, right? I got that right, right?" Gregoria was confused.

"Oh, yeah. In a heartbeat. I almost got my wish. Almost." Rachel fell silent for a bit, while their hooves went 'clippity-cloppity' on the concrete. "But it isn't the show I love so much. My Little Pony is a great cartoon, I love it, but it isn't the heart of Equestria, it isn't the real magic. The real heart of Equestria is in the fandom. If you take the show as canon, then most of the really cool stuff isn't there. Equestria is barely better than earth in a lot of ways, and some of the episodes conflict with each other because not all of the writing is very good."

Gregoria made an ugly face as the strong smell of cooked meat filled their noses. The city was filled with smells neither of the two had ever truly noticed before. "So it's all the fanfiction stuff, then."

"Oh, yes, Greggy! Derpy Hooves, Doctor Who in pony form, Celestia and Luna as benevolent goddesses, Equestria as a perfect land, a pony heaven where ponies are always nice to each other and the scary stuff in the show only happens to the Mane six. That's what Richard and I loved, we loved all the stories about Equestria as heaven. He wrote a few, did you know that? He wrote about getting blown..." Rachel looked away as they walked. "...I ...I hope... stories can come true."

The silence and clippy-clopping became unbearable. "Hey - maybe... maybe we can buy a last meal before we cross the bridge, okay? Maybe we could have a snack, something really nice, before we go across? A last treat to remember earth with?" Gregoria felt like she would probably be very hungry by the time they got to the bridge, and the provisions in her saddlebags were supposed to be for surviving in Equestria until they could find a town or a city. Just in case they came out in a desert or something.

Rachel lifted her hanging head and nodded. "Sure. We'll use the last of my cash. Won't be needing it after today, anyway."

Suddenly Rachel stopped. "Wait." She looked around herself and then at Gregoria's saddlebags. "I never put on the little dangly purse. You don't have it in your bags, do you?"

Rachel had put all of her remaining bills and credit cards into an old-fashioned pouch on a long chain. It was something that would fit over her big Celestia neck. It wasn't on her neck now.

"No! Last I saw it, it was on the table in the kitchen, when we were taping the shoes to your legs."

Rachel looked back over her flank. "No money, no snacks. I want to save the packed stuff for Equestria."

Gregoria watched a car slow down as it drove past. Fortunately the men in it went on by. "We're only a block and a half. Let's just go back and get it. It's no biggie."

Rachel turned and began heading in the direction of her apartment building. "Sorry. I feel like an idiot. DERP!"

"Hey, it's no big, like I said." Gregoria followed behind and caught up to Rachel. Rachel could walk faster because of her long legs. "Wait up! Remember? Small pony!"

"Sorry." Rachel reduced her speed. "Oh no! What about keys! I never expected to go back!"

Gregoria grinned, just a little sheepishly. "I have 'em. Just in case. Just in case the bridge thing didn't work out."

That got a dirty look from Rachel, who was clearly betting the farm on the hope that the Whinneysburg led to Equestria. Then the look turned to relief. "Yeah... okay. Good idea, I guess."

The corner they had rounded was ahead. As the street that served Rachel's apartment came into view, so did the line of black, unmarked, windowless vans. They were accompanied by large, expensive black cars. All were parked in the middle of the street directly outside the apartment building. Rachel and Gregoria froze.

The lights were on inside Rachel's apartment. As they stood in shock, they could see human shapes moving behind the kitchen window by the fire escape. The humans were wearing black too, black turtlenecks from the look of it, and black sunglasses in the middle of the night.

Both Gregoria and Rachel began stepping backward, unconsciously, at the same time. "Come on!" They turned on their hooves and left at a fast, but not too fast pace, occasionally glancing back over their flanks at the receding scene. When the corner had been rounded, and the edge of the building blocked the view from the apartment, they both wordlessly broke into a gallop, Rachel ahead, and Gregoria doing her tireless best as a mere earthpony, to catch up.






──── ∆ ────






The black leather gloves had special inductance patches in the fingertips. Mr. Crown insisted that everyone use modified iPhones that he had 'fixed' himself. Supposedly they could not be traced or breached or recorded despite using Verizon. Not even the US Government's secret 'PRISM' system could listen in according to Mr. Crown. He claimed they were among the only truly secure phones in the world, and that only a very small number of people had anything like them. It was something built in, something only for those in the know. "Congratulations, sir, you are wise, you are handsome, and you dance well too."

Nadzieja felt clever saying that. It was an old Polish saying about having gold in the pocket. It was important to be serious on a job, but never grim. "About forty, maybe fifty kilograms, I would estimate. One gold crown with purple jewel, a large gold hoop with purple jewel, and four large gold drinking steins without handles. They were hidden in a pillowcase, inside a dirty-clothes basket." 

Thibault held one of the heavy steins - they must be drinking steins, what else could they be - and stared at it like a dog hungry for meat. He hefted the weight of it, the mass of it, and whistled. "Now I know where daddy gets his money. Daaamnn."

Nadzieja nodded, still on the phone. "No, nothing else. It looks like a fast leaving, there is mess everywhere in the kitchen. I am thinking many men eating very much. All the food is gone." She gave Thibault a whack on the shoulder and pointed to the pillowcase indicating he should bag everything up again. "Yes sir. One final sweep and then we place package and leave. Yes sir, Bill is using iPad to photograph everything... yes sir, especially books and pictures on walls. Yes... one scrapbook, no diary. We think a woman lives here normally. Computer is already copied. Bill has done this. Of course."

"Guillaume." Strong, black-gloved hands scanned the room holding an iPad. "My name is Guillaume."

Nadzieja smiled. "Yes, as I said. Bill."

Guillaume shook his head. There was no reasoning with the woman.

When everything but the gold had been replaced as it had been before, Nadzieja set a shining object, tied with a bow, on the dining room table. She carefully placed the card. Guillaume struggled to lift the pillowcase sack full of golden artifacts, only to find the rip that had already started in it began to give way. He motioned to Thibault, and began stuffing the golden objects into the pack on Thibault's back, now empty because of Nadzieja's efforts. 

Thibault groaned as they left the apartment.

"Stop complaining, baby, it's not every day you get to walk off with more than a hundred pounds of gold on your back!" Guillaume smirked - he wasn't the one having to haul the weight down the stairs.

"Unhh..." Thibault staggered as he descended the stairs. "At least the beer's good."






──── ∆ ────






Rachel was almost prancing as she crossed the Whinneysburg Bridge. She could definitely see it now, the real bridge under the illusion that humans perceived, and every bit of what she saw pleased her. Occasionally she would stop to just take in the view - not of the water, but of the bridge itself, of the gold and marble and jewels and precious inlaid stonework. 

Because it was still night - though morning would soon arrive - there was a new feature that Gregoria simply hadn't noticed. Lamps. The bridge was lined with hanging lamps on elaborate fixtures, ovoid things made of some curious opaque yellow glass. They were large, at least a yard wide, and the smooth, curving surface was divided by metalwork done in an organic, vine-like style. Rachel said they looked like the lamp that hung off of Twilight Sparkle's library tree, though Gregoria couldn't remember it well enough for that to matter. 

"It's never been pinned down what makes lights work in Equestria on the show." Rachel was the happiest Gregoria had seen her since her transformation. She was almost giddy now. "Faust herself suggested that magic would run everything, but there was that episode that had an electrical dam in it, and they've shown switches and buttons in several episodes. I don't agree with that, neither did Rick. We always went with magic." 

Rachel stopped to study one of the lamps, which hung from a metal curlicue that grew out of the marble of the bridge. "Now a few fan authors have come up with little magical bugs, like fireflies, as the source of all lighting, and that's because it's been shown in some episodes, fireflies in jars for light, stuff like that. Rick liked that one. I bet there are magic insects in there!" The idea made the face of Celestia smile widely in the lamp light.

"Rachel?" 

Rachel had moved on, Gregoria was following again, very conflicted but with nowhere else to go. Rachel looked back over her flank as she walked. "Yeah?"

"What do we do if this works? You got a plan, right? You've thought about this at all, or are we just winging it?" Gregoria thought for a brief moment and added "Only you've got wings, though."

"Ah... yeah." Rachel wasn't impressed by the comment. "I've thought about it. A lot, actually. Don't worry, everything will work out pretty easily. It'll be fine."

"Mind cluing me in?" Rachel hadn't turned into the character she resembled, not exactly, but it did seem that having such a grand and impressive alicorn body had made her act a little superior sometimes. Then again, maybe she was trying to convince herself that she knew what she was doing. Gregoria decided Rachel was more likely just whistling in the dark with her pronouncements.

"I figure that the bridge probably leads straight to Canterlot. That's the only place big enough to warrant a bridge like this. But if it doesn't it probably leads somewhere civilized. It would be pretty silly if it just opened out into the Everfree or some desert or something." Rachel nodded at a cluster of lamps near the middle of the arching bridge that were particularly large and elaborate. "Look at this thing, Greggy! This is designed, sculpted, created. I don't know by who or what, but this bridge is a work of art, and that means purpose is involved. It isn't some random thing. So it has to lead to some place, and not just... um, noplace. See?"

It seemed a large number of leaps of logic were involved with all of that, jet-assisted leaps at that, but Gregoria let it lay. "Okay then, so we end up in Canterlot or some other city. Then what? Just walk up to the nearest pony and say 'Pardon me, but we've just strolled in from another world, which way to the immigration center?'"

Rachel giggled at that. "No, no... we're already citizens of Equestria - we're ponies! We're not human anymore, we don't even belong on earth anymore. The only place with ponies like us is Equestria, we don't belong anywhere else!"

More rocket-car Darwin Award logic, but there was no point in arguing now. That could come later, after something terrible happened. Gregoria shook her head and sighed as they walked. At least that part of her human mind had survived transformation. Hopeless resignation was not a pony trait. "Then, granting all that, where DO we go. We'll need help, money, shelter... all kinds of stuff. We're just showing up with whatever is on our back! We're... 'earthbacks' without a green card!"

"Don't need a green card, silly. Like I said, we're already in, because we're ponies. We're going home, not to a foreign land. That - " Rachel stopped briefly and waved a hoof at the city they had come from "...is the foreign country. You're an Equestrian now, you'd better get used to it."

They walked in silence for a while. Then Rachel added "We'll just ask directions, then head straight to Canterlot castle. We'll present ourselves and ask to see the princesses. I think they'll let us in, considering me. Then we just explain everything, probably over tea and cakes. Then we find out."

Gregoria's ears perked up. "Find out what?"

"What made us ponies, of course! There has to be a reason for all of this. Maybe its Discord. Maybe Twilight messed up a spell. Maybe it's some... being... that isn't even part of the show, or even the fanfiction! Maybe Celestia is doing it for some reason. But if anyone knows, or can find out, it has to be Celestia, right?"

Gregoria plodded on, the end of the bridge was finally in sight. "If you say so."

It was a very long bridge, but the end finally came. It didn't look any different than the other side.

"Um... I'm not seeing Equestria." Gregoria had mixed feelings about this fact. On one hoof, answers and help would be very nice indeed. On another hoof, being stuck as a pony in magical ponyland wasn't exactly the worst possible thing, but it wasn't what she wanted, and it felt exactly like failure to her. She would have to give in, to just completely go native and be a pony simply to survive. The last of her humanity would only get in the way in Equestria. On a third hoof - if this didn't work, they were out of options. She kept her fourth hoof open, in the hope some idea or new hope might appear.

Rachel was clearly becoming upset, her voice sounded nervous, and her movements, previously grand and flowing, had become jerky and halting. "Um... I would have expected some change by now, I expected the view to sort of slowly change, but... that's not... maybe we have to cross some threshold or something." The thought seemed to cheer her. "That's it, it's probably like a flat barrier, like a wall, and it's invisible, and we just haven't passed through it yet!" Rachel began trotting to the stairs that led down from the bridge. "Come on!"

As they clopped down the echoing stairwell, Gregoria felt her heart begin to sink. This was not working out, only Rachel couldn't admit it yet. 

"When we reach the bottom, we'll walk out into Equestria! I can feel it! We're nearly there Greggy!" Rachel sounded frantic now, she was trying to convince herself that her faith was real. She had constructed a religion for herself, and it was failing in the face of cold reality.

Then they were out, standing under the bridge, on urban sidewalk, in the light of early morning. They were beaten, they were hungry, they were thirsty. 

And they were clearly in Brooklyn.

Gregoria briefly considered just heading home. Rachel was the only one really in the Everfree because of this. Gregoria knew she always had a bed with mom and dad. Rachel wanted to be a pony, well, she got her wish. Leave her to it.

The pony mind inside Gregoria reared up then and bucked her hard, right in the conscience. "SWIRL!" She couldn't abandon Rachel and her insane fantasies. It wasn't because Rachel had made her clothes, or let her sleep on the couch, it wasn't because Rachel was the only other pony in the world that Gregoria knew of. 

She tried to fight it, she tried to do what she would have done if she were human. But her legs wouldn't move. Gregoria started to cry, tears running down her yellow muzzle. She couldn't leave, even though she had a home to go back to. Rachel's parents were gone, she didn't have a home to run back to, and Gregoria knew her parents wouldn't be willing to support Rachel for long. 

The pony brain had won. All the 'Friendship Is Magic' pony swirl had finally won, it had beaten her. This was a sour deal, there was no solution for Rachel, she was a loss, this whole bridge thing was a failure, the sensible thing would be to part ways and there was no way Gregoria could do that.

Because Rachel was her friend and friends didn't ever abandon or betray friends.

"SWIRL!" Gregoria stomped her hoof. "SWIRL! SWIRL! SWIRL!" She couldn't even swear right because of the pony brain, and she couldn't do what she would have done as a human, and she couldn't be Gregoria Samson because now she was a pony and she had to take care of little miss precious princess over there and share her fate because pony friends stuck together no matter what. "SWIRL!" the tears made saying the infantile curse burble and distort.

A long, massive pony neck lay over her own. Gregoria felt herself being held tight by the large frame of Rachel's Celestia body. "Shhh.... shhh.... come on, let's head home. We'll figure something out. Come on. Come on Greggy." The voice was soft, motherly, kind beyond measure. This must have broken Rachel's heart utterly, yet there she was, thinking about her friend first. Rachel had been a pony before her body even changed. The last shred of humanity within Gregoria had just enough fight in it to be offended at that.





 





The key in Gregoria's left saddlebag was levitated out, wrapped in glowing, golden light. Gregoria stood silent, as she had been on the long, numb walk all the way back. It wasn't that she was physically exhausted, it took a lot to wear out an earthpony, though she was fairly sleepy. Rather, Gregoria was emotionally wrecked. The last two days had been fear, horror, confusion, hope, and finally, having that hope utterly crushed.

As they approached the apartment building, both had been alert for any sign of black vans or strange humans. There was no sign the bizarre invasion had ever occurred. Rachel just wanted to get into her apartment, and Gregoria was too destroyed to argue. Besides, they really had nowhere else to go. 

There was a nervous moment when Rachel opened the door with a glowing blob of magic, but there were no lurking ninjas in the rooms. The door had been locked when they got there, and everything seemed untouched. The black vans and cars and humans in the window seemed like a dream. Maybe it had been. Maybe it hadn't really happened.

Then they saw it. On the kitchen table, surrounded by scattered oats and bits of carrot and wheat grass from their messy meal. A brand new iMac, tall and flat and shiny, with a metallic keyboard and a single, white, soap-shaped mouse. It had been built onto some kind of custom base, unlike anything either Rachel or Gregoria had ever seen - though to be fair, neither knew much about Mac stuff at all.

The base looked custom, tacked on. It wasn't corporate design. It had a light, it had power, it probably was power for the machine. The Mac was active, it was on, but it wasn't plugged into the wall or hooked up to anything external.

There was a note, a little card, set up near the flatscreen. The flatscreen had a bow around it, a pretty pink bow.

Rachel used her magic to lift the card. Gregoria had forgotten her funk with this development, this was truly bizarre and all she wanted now was to see what this was about.








Hello.

Please accept this little gift. It will allow us to talk.
I think you may find we have a great deal in common.
I have been watching you, not for long, just a day.
I have information about Richard, Rachel.
Or should I say - Celestia?
One Equestrian can always see another.
I look forward to being friends.
Friendship is magic, after all.

- Malus Crown








Rachel lowered the card to the table, the golden glow fading from horn and card simultaneously. She quickly looked around, as if afraid she was being watched in the moment. Then she looked at Gregoria, a mixture of fear and wonder in her huge violet eyes.

"W-whaddya... what do you think?"

Gregoria stared back, stunned. "I guess... I guess we talk to the guy."

"How do you know it's a guy?" Rachel tilted her head slightly.

"It sounds like a guy."

"Okay." Rachel looked down at her hoof on the linoleum, and idly scraped a bit of carrot with her hoof. It had been a very messy meal. "Why?"

"He sounds like a creepy stalker."

Rachel blinked. "No, I mean... why should we talk to... this guy?"

Gregoria's ears sagged on both sides of her head. They were just flopped sideways, as if they had given up. "Got any more bridges?"

"...Um ... no."

Gregoria stepped forward and pressed her head into Rachel's tall neck, feeling the comfort of her warm, soft coat. "Then... we talk to the guy."