I stumble into the office in a haze of pain. I opened a bottle of Jack Daniels last night, and seriously made a sincere attempt to finish it off. As a human, I could have, but I'm not that big anymore. There were a few swigs left in the bottle when I finally opened my eyes this morning. My alarm had been going off for nearly an hour at that point. But I wasn't the only one nursing a hangover. Soarin and Flash were, so was my wife, once I told them the news about Victor. It was a very subdued night. But I'm here. With four ibuprofen starting to work their magic, and the half gallon of water I guzzled once I was able to stumble out of bed. I hop in my office chair and don't even touch my computer. I just lay my head on the desk for a long time. After a bit I hear the sound of a cup being set on my desk. The smell of a coffee with plenty of sugar hits my nose. causing me to sniff more. That smells good. I strain to lift my head and I look at the cup. Rainbow Dash's face smiles at me from the cyan coffee cup. How cute. But I'm not in the mood. "Couldn't find a Lightning Dust coffee cup?"
I hear Pat chuckle. "No, Lightning. I couldn't. But I saw this at the store, and I couldn't resist." She hands me a stack of checks for me to sign, ahh, payday is tomorrow, better get the checks signed for those who elect to receive actual checks rather than direct deposit. And the per diem checks for the north crew are there. I pay them a hundred bucks a day in addition to their hotel rooms for staying out of town. That's not counting the out of town pay they get as well. To be on that crew, you can bank some dollars.
I take a pen in my mouth. "This is going to be weird,” I say around the pen as I scribble my usual unintelligible scribble of a signature on the first paper. In ten minutes, Pat smiles at me as she gathers the checks.
"Lightning, I heard about Victor. We all know about him now." Her face falls. "He was good, he was going places."
"Yeah, he was going to be a pony. We would have loved to have him. He needed help." I lay my head back on the desk. "I should have helped him."
"He refused your help, you said you went to his apartment and talked to him."
"I should have said something different, I shouldn't have given up on him."
"What, you would have forced your help on him?" I'm hurt by the sharpness of her voice.
"Well… No. But…"
"No buts, missy." That causes me to look at her sharply. In the decade I've known this woman, she's never raised her voice to me. "You can't save them all," she says much softer.
"I shouldn't have given up so easily. I thought he would come to us."
"And he didn't, he made his decision. You did your best. If you beat yourself up over that, you won't be able to help any other ponies. You need to focus on the ones you can save."
I sigh. "You are right. Thank you Pat."
She smiles. "It's all part of the service." She heads back to her office as I finally fire up my computer.
A few minutes later, I pump a hoof. Closing on the ranch will be in three days, but if we want, we can start moving stuff over today. At least some good news. Shortly, I'm immersed in my daily work. The amount of work I have to do is pretty large. I've been told I should hire some more office staff to handle my paperwork, and I've seriously considered it. But not yet. I get to work, hunting a pecking with a pencil in my mouth, wishing I had a better way to operate a computer.
***
It's still mid morning when I hear indistinct voices at the front office, then shortly I hear hoof steps heading to my office. Must be Soarin or Flash. A moment of silence then a hoof knocks on my office door.
"Come in," I call out.
The door handle depresses and the door opens, admitting two ponies, but not the two ponies I was thinking of. My eyes widen, an earth pony, and a unicorn, both mares. "Hi," The earth pony says.
I open my mouth and try to speak, but my mouth doesn't want to cooperate with my brain.
"We got the email from Soarin, we just got into town and were told to come here."
"Uhhhh."
The unicorn speaks up, "We used to live in Cody, Wyoming. And I have no clue how Soarin tracked us down, but all of a sudden an email pops up, and I would have deleted it, but some of the details in the email were exactly how my dreams have been. We talked quite a bit, then this morning we got in the car and came here."
I smile, my little bro has been busy. "Soarin was my sister. She was really close to her masters in computer science. She can do things that I wish I could do on the computer. Including some things that would probably be considered e-crimes. But that doesn't matter, she found you." I hop from my chair and come around my desk. "When was your 25th birthday?"
"We both have birthdays on the 3rd of May. We just finished changing yesterday." They look at each other. "We really don't even know our names. We are both bronies, but when we discovered our cutie marks we had no idea who they belonged to. We researched, and we couldn't find them. Apparently we showed up once in one of the episodes in season five, but that was when the mane six visited Baltimare. We were on screen for about three seconds. So, I look at them critically. The earth pony has a box of cherries for a cutie mark, and her body was we've stayed with our human names until we find out our pony names."
Her coat is the color of a bing cherry, that red almost purple color, and her mane is jet black. The unicorn, surprisingly enough has Pinkie Pie's cutie mark, but the balloons are different colors, hers are purple, pink and red. Her white mane is bouncy and curly just like Pinkie Pie's, and her coat is magenta. Oh crap, I know her name, some old memory from Equestria floats up. I look at the unicorn. "Mindy, I can't believe you are here!"
She looks confused. "Mindy? Me? How?"
I have to chuckle. "I remember growing up in Baltimare, just like I remember growing up in Corpus Christi." I sigh and raise a hoof. "Don't ask." I smile and walk up to Mindy. "As a filly, I remember growing up near you. We played together! Oh my God, I can't believe you are here."
As I'm talking, the earth pony's ears wilt. I notice this and turn to her. "I really wish I knew you from before. But no memories are surfacing of you. I'm really sorry."
We are interrupted by a knock on the door frame, and a young woman looks in. "Are Carl and Louis here?" She spies us ponies. "Oh, so you were right about that email. Just come to Lightning Electric and you'll find what you are looking for." She smiles. "I'm Mary, I'm Carl's little sister." She appears to be barely eighteen years old. She comes over and accepts a hoof shake.
Mindy bounces up to her little sister. "Lightning Dust here told me my name, I'm Mindy."
She looks confused. "That doesn't sound like a pony name."
I smile. "She's not your typical pony, and neither were her parents. If my memories are correct, she can give Pinkie Pie a run for her bits when it comes to being a crazy pony. I loved this pony to death! We were the best pranksters in Baltimare. Always had to watch for the Guard, because when something happened."
Mindy picked it up, "Double Trouble was behind it." She looks shocked. "How did I remember that?"
Things get serious for a moment. "Discord couldn't erase your memories, your memories are part of you. He just made it to where you couldn't access those memories easily. As you are around ponies, you'll find some of your memories come back. Especially around ponies that you knew before the curse."
"The curse?" both ponies ask in unison.
I take several minutes to explain what Soarin, Flash, and I have come up with about the fight with Discord, and the curse that brought us to this world. As I wind down both ponies sit on their haunches.
After several moments. "This is all real, isn't it?" Louis says.
I nod. "And the unwilling gender changes as well." I get a wince from both of them. Mindy jumps up. "I don't care about that, this new body is amazing, and look what I can do."
She concentrates and my desk starts to glow. Then with a loud sound like a party horn blowing, it turns into thousands of butterflies. My mouth drops open.
"Oops, sorry, I was trying levitation. But I guess I don't have as much control as I thought," she says as she concentrates again, my window opens and a breeze picks up, blowing the colorful insects outside.
I turn to her, and she wilts. "I'm sorry," she whimpers. I surprise her by grabbing her around the middle and flapping my wings to pick us both up.
"You can do magic! Oh my God, you can do magic!!!" She laughs as I zoom around the small room, hugging her hard. "Mindy, I've missed you!"
Pat sticks her head in the room, she notices my lack of a desk and me zooming around the room, she pales and backs slowly from the room.
***
I haven't been in a vehicle very much since I've transformed, and now I'm in my truck, the crew cab cleaned out of tools to take a total of five ponies for this drive. My wife is driving, I do miss my hands, I think as I watch her manipulate the stick shift. She wanted her SUV, but this farm is down some really rough roads. I'll get them smoothed out with some of the shops equipment. Owning earth moving equipment can come in handy. I smile as I look out the window as we crawl down the road, yup. First thing is to grab the bobcat and start smoothing out the road. We jolt around the pickup cab a bit, my wife cringing at the jolts my truck is taking. We still haven't figured out how to get seat belts on. In a few minutes, we are turning onto the actual driveway to the farm. I've been emailing the former owners, and since they are glad to be rid of it, they were happy to inform me where the keys were, and were ready to sign the paperwork. Usually the purchase of property like this can take weeks or months, but a big cash payment is incentive to work much faster. I know my lawyer is pretty busy right now, I'll be receiving his bill, and grumbling about how much he charges, but he's always done good work for my family, and my business.
"Well, we're here," my wife exclaims. I look out the window. The two story farmhouse is pretty big. A quick flick of a hoof and I've got the door open. Mindy has been practicing her magic and opened the door herself. Hopping out with a huge grin, she looks around and starts hopping around. I swear she must be channeling Pinkie Pie. Every question is what's this, what's that, and a lot of ohhhhs. My wife kindly opens the door for me, I rub against her as I walk past and flick my tail to whap her in the rear. Her eyes go wide for a moment, then a grin for me. I grin back then look around. Whomever shut down the house for preservation did a good job, heavy tarps over all the furniture, no obvious drips from leaking water, and no apparent animal damage. I trot up the stairs, noting the five bedrooms. Then glide back down the stairs, my favorite way to go down any stairs. A big kitchen, with older, but serviceable appliances. All in all, I think a good deal. I let the ponies run around and inspect anything they want, my wife and I check out the outbuildings. Two large barns, a few equipment sheds. An emergency generator. That causes my eyes to light up. I trot over to its control panel.
"Hmmm, two hundred amp, that will be good for our needs." I move over to the main power, noting the meter had been removed, will have to call to set up service. "Also two hundred amps." A quick look tells me that the service feeds the house and all the buildings. That could be a problem. I flick my ear and my blue tooth chimes.
"Call shop."
In moments Pat has answers. "Hey Pat, we are going to need a crew out to the old Paulsen place tomorrow morning, bring a trencher. And grab a hundred thousand kva pole mount transformer set. Three phase." My wife looks at me questioningly. I finish giving instructions and flick the call off with my ear. I look at my wife.
"How many ponies could comfortably live here long term?"
She looks around. "Well, if you bed some of them down in the barns, maybe a couple of hundred."
"We are going to need room for over a thousand, I would think."
She starts in surprise. "How many ponies did Discord banish?"
"I have no idea. But I suspect the number is going to be larger than I'm going to prepare for." I look around. "And I'm going to prepare as best as I can. The Equestrians are refugees. And I'm not going to allow them to live in squalor. Not under my watch."
"What are you going to do?"
I look around at the equipment. "We will have grazing rights on forty sections. We are going to have to grow hay, it may not be the tastiest thing around, but it will be food for the ponies, but most of all, we will need living space." I look at my wife. "What do you think? Military barracks style, or like those man camps up north?"
She looks thoughtful, then opens her mouth to speak. "Oh Lightning, this is so awesome!" Mindy pops out from behind my wife and bounces in front of me. "This farm is huge, and there are fields for growing crops, and there are bales of hay, those big round bales. And it even looks like they built a paintball course here. And there is all kinds of equipment for working the fields, and trucks, and everything anypony can think of." She stops to take a huge breath. "And I love it!" Her scream actually blows me back a couple of feet. I shake my head and I look around, Mindy is bouncing around on the roof of the farmhouse now. I have no clue as to why. I look at my wife and get a smile in return.
***
Early afternoon and I'm back at the shop. My wife, Soarin, and the rest of the ponies have been spending most of their time getting the farmhouse habitable. I took delivery of the meter and installed it, so power is on, and that brought the water well pump up, which after a bit of priming, was producing plenty of water. How many ponies are coming, I don't know, but we are going to need the space. Distantly I hear the phone to the shop ring. I look around my office, I had a nice office desk, it was in two pieces, one sticking out into the room for me to do paperwork, and another part against the wall, with a hutch that had my computer, printer, and a few more pieces of office equipment on it. The part Mindy had destroyed was the flat portion, so I could still use my computer, but I'm going to have to order a new desk now. I sigh.
My door slams open, Rose is there, a look that chills me to my bone on her face. "Mike, we've got a problem."
She now has my complete attention. "One of the north crew, he fell off a fourteen foot ladder, it's bad, he fell onto a process vessel, then to the ground. He's bleeding, and he has at least a compound fracture. Ambulance has been called, but it will be a good forty minutes for it to reach them."
Oh, shit. "What site are they at?"
"Tioga, North Dakota. Why?"
I brush past her and head out to the shop. I see a couple of apprentices helping with organizing a materials delivery, one of them is the apprentice who had the little bang up earlier in the week. I trot over to the first aid station, and grab one of the big duffel bags that has a good deal of first responder gear. I head over to the apprentices.
"Joe, I need you to grab one of the spare trucks and head up to Tioga, as soon as you can. If you get a ticket, I'll pay for it, but I need you there as soon as possible."
Rose comes up from behind me. "But even driving a hundred, it's almost three hours there at that speed." I turn and look at her as I finish strapping the bag to my body, leaving my wings free.
"I'm not driving." I turn to Joe. "GO!" I shout at him in my best command voice, and he runs to the garage where we keep a couple of spare trucks, in seconds I hear the screech of tires as he hauls ass down the driveway. I push the button to open up the bay door. "I'll be back as soon as possible, let the other ponies know where I've gone." I spread my wings and take off like a bullet, north and east, that's my direction. I'm shortly above ten thousand feet and I'm hauling ass myself. The ground flashes beneath me, I hope I'm not making any windows break with my sonic boom. I'm actually maintaining flight above the speed of sound without much effort. I smile. This is awesome! The drag from the duffel bag shifts me around a bit, but I'm able to compensate for it pretty well. I would howl in delight if the situation weren't so dire.
After about twenty minutes I'm starting to feel tired, but I know I'm close to my destination. I look down critically. Ahh, there's Tioga. And to the south and east of the town itself, there is the transfer station that's my destination. I can see a group of people crowded around one of the bigger pump buildings. I shift from flight to a dive, wings folded back, and speed being my only objective. The ground rushes towards me and I finally judge it being time to pull out of the dive, I can feel the pressure on my wing joints as I backpedal my wings to slow down. My hooves touch ground gently to a trio of dropped jaws.
"I don't have time, I'm your boss, where is he?"
My north crew left Monday, they didn't know about my transformation. I just chuckle as I follow the pointed hands into the building. The lead man for my north crew is holding the injured man.
"Did you move him?" I ask.
He doesn't even look up, or acknowledge the stunned looks at me from the rest of the crew. "No, all we've been doing is keeping him warm and trying to stop the bleeding."
I shrug out of the duffel bag and toss it to him. "This stuff should help." I trot over and use my teeth on the zipper, opening the bag, I get out some materials and look at the young man. He's wincing in pain. "I wish I could give you pain medication, but the paramedics will have to do that."
I hear a confused sound, "Aren't you the paramedic?"
"No, I'm Lightning Dust, I just grabbed our emergency pack and hauled ass here."
"That's impossible…" He trails off as he notices that a blue-green pegasus has been answering his questions.
"Rose got the call and told me, I grabbed this, and I took off at full speed." I look at my phone strapped to my foreleg. "twenty two minutes to travel about three hundred miles. I'd say that's pretty good."
My north foreman is apparently a math whiz. "That's a bit over eight hundred miles per hour, or about mach one point one."
I smile. "I guess I was in a hurry." I rummage in the bag. "My advanced first aid training is rather rusty."
He grabs the bad and brings it close. In minutes he's got compression bandages on the leg, and on the poor journeyman's side, stopping bleeding from a large gash caused by an exposed valve as he fell. We continue working, I just basically do what he tells me to do. Finally the door into the building crashes open and the paramedics arrive. In moments they've taken over the situation and we move back away from our injured man. In a matter of minutes he's on a backboard, his head stabilized and his body strapped down. They carry him to the ambulance and all of the north crew follow me to the back door of the oversize van. The door is shut and it takes off. I sigh in relief as they don't activate their sirens for the return trip, so they aren't worried about him dying in the ambulance. That is a good thing.
I turn to my north crew. "Hey guys, just pack everything up and go back to the shop. Take Friday off and I'll see you guys Monday."
Nobody moves, all their eyes are glued to me. "C'mon people, time to move."
I laugh gently as they all keep looking at me. "My name on Friday of last week was Mike Shaw, I'm still your boss."
One of the older apprentices recovers first. "My boss has turned into Lightning Dust. You sound just like her!"
I roll my eyes. Am I going to find bronies everywhere? "Yes, I'm Lightning Dust. But I'm still the same hard ass who is also your boss. Now get yourself moving. I'll have Joe meet you at the hotel to help you grab your stuff." I watch them move to the various trucks and start putting away tools and equipment. I flick my bluetooth to call the shop so they can get a hold of Joe. "Want a ride?"
I think about it for a moment, I just exceeded the speed of sound on wing power alone, and after about an hour on the ground, I'm good as new, though I'm pretty hungry. "Nah, but I left my wallet at the shop, can someone spot me a twenty?"
***
I make it to Williston faster than the crew does. I love being this fast. I have to laugh out loud as I walk through the door into McDonalds in Williston. In a moment I put my forehooves on the counter as the young lady behind the counter shrinks away.
"I'm not going to bite you, unless you won't give me food." She yelps as she moves as far away from me as possible.
"I'm kidding, but I am hungry, can I order some food?"
"What the heck is going on out here?" comes a voice from the office. In moments, the manager comes out and every employee behind the counter points at me.
"Who's dog is this?" he says after a quick glance.
"Excuse me, but I'm not a dog, I'm a pony. And I want to buy food here." He does a double take, then looks at his employees, then finally slowly moves up to the register.
"Uhhh, what would the pony want then?"
I take a moment to look at the menu, my ears swiveling around, I can hear the sounds of smart phones being manipulated, I'm pretty sure that video is being taken of this encounter, I smile to myself. This will probably go viral pretty quickly. "I'll take two chicken sandwiches, a large fries, and four salads, and a big cup of water."
"Just for you, miss?"
I nod, and pay for the food once he rings it up, with a promise to bring the food out to me personally. I trot over to one of the tables, cursing the fixed in place nature of the benches that are not shaped for ponies. I drag up a chair and hop on it. Patiently waiting.
"Um, Lightning Dust?" Oh god, another brony, but wait a moment, this is a young female voice. I turn and see a little girl, about seven years old, looking at me with huge eyes.
"Oh, hi kid."
She holds out a slim hand to me, and I gently hold out a hoof, allowing her to shake it. At the same time I glance at the humans that are apparently her parents, they are holding stock still, as though they are afraid the wild pony will maul their child, when she pulls her hand away, they visibly relax. "What are you doing here, Lightning Dust, aren't you supposed to be in Equestria?"
I sigh. "Discord banished me, and a lot of other ponies to this world, we've been living the last quarter century as humans, and now we are back to being ponies."
"Aren't you going to go back there?"
I nod in thanks as my food is sat down in front of me. I start struggling to unwrap my food as I look at the little girl. "I don't know how. But I've got a family. In fact, my daughter is a few years older than you. And she's a human, just like you." I ruffle her hair and she giggles.
"I'll let you eat, but Twilight went to the human world in Equestria Girls, the My Little Pony movie." That takes me by surprise, I've finally been able to see all the episodes, but I've never heard of Equestria girls. I need to do some more research.
I smile at her. "Thank you." I dig into my food, and think. Equestria Girls, I had better check that out.
***
On the flight home I notice a lineman crew working on stringing new power lines. I smile. It's time to have some fun. I land on top of the power pole right next to a lineman in a bucket truck.
"Hi there."
He looks at me, then nearly falls out of the bucket.
"Whatcha doin?"
I have to contain my laughter, he really doesn't know what to say to a four foot tall pegasus perched on the top of a power pole.
"Working."
I smile. "Do you know what I am?"
I know I've broken him, he just stares at me.
"I'm a pegasus pony."
Silence from the dumbfounded human.
"What are you?"
"Uhhh, human, I guess."
"Oh, well, nice to meet you Mister Human." I smile even bigger as I remember a line from a cartoon I watched when I was young. "Okay I luv you, buh bye." I laugh as I take off from the pole and head south. That was fun.