Ponyville, USA

by Rox


Chapter 9: Precedent

- CNN -

"Within just one day there is already a growing movement in the US to give citizenship to the Equestrians. Your take?"

"Now that's just ridiculous. We have legal, human immigrants who've been waiting years to get citizenship. I can't imagine it sitting well with any of them. Those people need to set their sights on a lower goal first, like, I don't know....a green card?"

- FOX & Friends -

"So you have to check out this video, now look at this..."

"Oh my gosh, how are they doing that?"

"Is this real?"

"It can't be! You're telling me they have mind powers now?"

"What reason would they have to fake that?"

- Marquette, Michigan -

A jogger, on pace to making her best time of the year for her daily run, passed by a tree.

The tree sneezed.

The runner said, "Gesundheit" before nearly tripping over herself in shocked realization a few seconds later.

- Asher -

Asher was absolutely exhausted, even though he had just woken up, and was currently shuffling down the hallway towards the family kitchen. He felt like he had just coming out of the biggest sugar crash of his life. Which, actually, was essentially the truth. Pinkie Pie's impromptu party made just about every party he had ever seen on a campus seem dull by comparison. Actually, thinking back they were dull, but the ponies' had been far and above his expectations.

Pinkie Pie was flat born to be a party planner, he was sure of it. However they decided it, her mark represented her very well with those balloons she sported on her flank. The pink pony had not only managed to keep everybody entertained for five hours, she had the energy to still be raring to go as everyone else stumbled out the door in exhaustion. She did manage to persuade them to take half a mountain of leftover cakes and cookies home with them, though it hadn't taken much coaxing for his younger siblings.

"Goooood Morning!"

Speaking of pink ponies, Pinkie Pie once again succeeded at making Asher's heart to violently skip a beat. After taking a couple deep breaths and relinquishing his death grip on the oven door handle, he shook his head and made sure he was seeing what was really there.

The kitchen was a disaster area. There was flour all over the place, including on Pinkie Pie and his own little sister, not to mention ingredients of all sorts covering the counters. Before he could say anything, Anne turned on the mixer to way too high a power, sending the mix splattering everywhere. Anne rushed to turn it off, and Pinkie came over to help, but couldn't stop it until both of them had a nice layer of batter on their heads.

"Whoo! We're making waffles!" Pinkie Pie cheered, and Anne laughed along.

"When did you get here?" Asher finally exclaimed, exhaling again and rubbing his face as he approached the table.

"A while ago!" Pinkie answered cheerily. "Anne invited me for breakfast, and really, who would want to miss that? She wanted to make homemade waffles! So..."

"We did!" Anne finished, both of them descending into laughter. Oh gosh, they're talking in sync now.

Asher thought about chastising them, but decided he was just too tired to even form a comprehensive sentence and said, "Have at it."

Not that they needed the invitation. Anne and Pinkie set to replenishing the bowl's waffle ingredients, forgetting once again to lower the power resulting in another battery explosion. Their third try they finally remembered and were finally able to put the waffles in the iron instead of everywhere else.

Asher had experienced the result of Pinkie's baking before so he figured once they actually got it together the taste would probably be worth it, still he was hungry now so he made some toast with melted butter.

Afterwards, he walked over to the kitchen counter and flipped open his laptop, wiping some batter off of the top. It had sat there all night after they posted their video, and given Pinkie's party he hadn't even looked at it since. The page was still up, so he scrolled over and refreshed it, pleasantly surprised that their internet was still restored.

For some reason Asher had forgotten to prepare himself for the numbers he would see there and he ended up breathing in toast. Seeing as humans were not biologically designed to breathe burnt bread this of course led to a hoarse coughing fit that lasted several minutes.

When he recovered he exclaimed, "600 million hits!?"

Yesterday morning his profile had a total of 45 hits, which was understandable considering every video he had posted before had been for one school project or another so usually only the teacher and occasionally the classroom ever watched them. He refreshed the page again and to his amazement the number of views increased by hundreds of thousands.

Asher started scrolling the comment section, where countless threads were already in full swing. The internet peoples had been quite busy overnight. A lot of the threads were as horrendous as one would come to expect in such a place, but there were a surprising number of people throwing their support behind this. In fact, he hadn't seen something this unexpectedly one sided since the last super bowl. Then again, it was the internet and what people did in real life was often a different story.

Switching to the homepage he was slightly less surprised to discover there were already tributes, analysis videos, even remixes covering the "popular right now" sections. He even noticed one that linked to a Facebook page where it seemed the sole purpose was to argue about which pony they liked the most.

He memorized some of the basics of that discussion, deciding that the reactions of a few ponies he knew were bound to be priceless.

Asher's train of thought was interrupted by a waffle landing on the brim of his hat, dangling off the edge.

"Oops!" Anne said, staring with an expression between "what have I done" and "I'm gonna die if I don't laugh."

"Want syrup with that?" Pinkie offered, an equally trying-not-to-laugh-but-still-contrite look spread in a smile as she held out the bottle. Asher sighed and grabbed the waffle off his head.

"Sure."

- Twilight -

After a hardy breakfast of her own, Twilight was outside trotting and enjoying the absolutely gorgeous morning. They may not control the weather here, but on the days like this it was hard to tell. So far they'd only had one downpour and that had happened overnight. While that had been somewhat unpleasant for Star Hunter and the night weather crew it still gave a familiar refreshing feel that such storms had given back home. It was nice when some things were the same.

She jumped into an uneasy flight as she reached her destination, Rainbow's house. Knocking used to be a challenge before she finally installed a pull-string bell. A groggy Rainbow Dash opened the door and grunted to let her in. As usual her place was an unorganized mess, but given company was rare it didn't exactly matter most of the time.

"Sleep well?" Twilight asked conversationally.

"A'ight," mumbled Dash. "But I'll probably avoid eating so much cake before bed from now on."

"Crazy dreams?" Twilight confirmed. She had some strange dreams the night before as well, something to do with Rarity turning into a pumpkin and creating a new fashion line that dressed everypony up like Pinkie Pie in a trench coat.

"Yep. So, what are we up to today?" the pegasus asked through a yawn, collapsing on her cumulus couch.

"Actually, I just wanted to come by and say you're off the hook," said Twilight as nonchalantly as she could muster. It took a few seconds to register.

"What?" Rainbow Dash craned her head up and stared at her.

"You don't have to be my assistant, Spike will take back over," said Twilight. "Just don't..."

"Oh thank Celestia!" Rainbow Dash burst forward and hugged her. "No offense Twillight, but I don't think I could dust another shelf!"

"Okay," laughed Twilight, trying to breathe. "Just don't do anything too crazy like that again."

"You got it!" Rainbow Dash said, letting go and saluting deliberately. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some flying to catch up on!"

And with that Rainbow Dash burst through her front door, which promptly reformed, and dove into several corkscrews made clearer by her rainbow contrail. Twilight shook her head with a smile and glided back to the ground to make the walk back into town. Specifically the Carousel Boutique.

With the business open sign up Twilight didn't bother knocking, striding in to find the unicorn already hard at work. Rarity had always been a very good early riser, even after a late night. Rarity looked up from her work and greeted Twilight warmly, though with her magic she didn't stop working.

"How's everything coming along?" Twilight asked, looking around at all the hoofwork.

"Marvelously!" proclaimed Rarity. "Some of these materials I got from Candace were impressively sturdy, and thanks to some of the patterns I was able to borrow I think I have a Human Style line that should be the talk of the fashion world once we get back."

"That's great, Rarity," praised Twilight. She took a look at some of the pieces she had put together, almost all of which were two piece sets. That was an unusual thing indeed in Equestria, but it appeared the humans used nothing else.

"What about our surprise?" Twilight asked with a grin.

"I'm almost finished, they should be ready by the end of tomorrow," said Rarity confidently.

"Awesome! By the way, I let Rainbow Dash off from helping me, so..."

"Shutter the windows in case of aerial collision?"

"Yep."

A crescendo yell and a crash upstairs interrupted their conversation, shaking the walls.

"And I would suppose that means too late," remarked Twilight, astounded by just how on cue that was.

"I think that was Sweetie's room this time. Her bed's soft so I imagine Rainbow's alright," sighed Rarity. Twilight said goodbye and headed back out, glancing up to see Rainbow Dash extricating herself from the window and inspecting the damage, cursing something about another week's pay lost.

She hadn't seen Pinkie Pie yet this morning and she was continued to be denied this when she went into sugarcube corner.

"Sorry, deary. Pinkie left early this morning for a breakfast meeting with somepony," said Mrs. Cake with a shrug, holding onto Pumpkin Cake with one hoof to keep her from crawling away while simultaneously holding down Pound Cake with her other.

"Pinkie left early?" That was surprising. While energetic, Pinkie Pie usually made up for it by sleeping in, in contrast to Rarity, particularly the night after a party. Twilight was hoping to catch her (actually she was planning to wake her up) to talk about some upcoming event planning but she supposed she could take care of that later.

After leaving Sugarcube Corner she found herself done with her checklist, a personal record time being as it was still morning. Probably not having full Princess duties during their entrapment here had something to do with that, even if she was the official magistrate. Even with Rainbow Falls now joining them it would most likely be too long a distance for her to have to do anything directly. She basically sent Rapidfire and his wingmates back with the instructions to stay calm, be careful, and carry on as best they could for time being.

Twilight decided on a whim that she'd see what was going on at Sweet Apple Acres, so she briskly trekked through the already busying town towards the south. Perhaps afterwards she'd just keep going on down to the Burgess home. Perhaps they'd have some information about when and where this supposed meeting with their President would be by now.

It was time for the second applebuck season so the family was getting everything prepared. Applejack and Big Mac could both be seen setting buckets beneath the trees, while Applebloom was pushing stacks of them out of the back of a cart right into the hands of the light-haired David Burgess. The day was already full of surprises.

Twilight greeted the family and human, to which David grunted a hello as he lifted several of the buckets off.

"What's he doing, Applejack?" asked Twilight as she watched the human lumber off.

"We got to talkin' last night an' he said he thinks he'd be out of a job, 'cause, ya know, he hasn't been able to go for a few days. So I offered to pay him some bits to work for us during this applebuck season," Applejack explained, wiping sweat off her brow.

"I thought they didn't use bits for money."

"We don't," said David, walking in to the conversation and picking up several more buckets from the cart. "But gold's still worth a lot so I can just sell it. Same diff."

He stalked off with his load and started setting them around another apple tree.

"He's been workin' hard for the last hour straight," said Applejack with earnest praise. "We ain't hired somepony to help us in years, but we just might get this done faster than ever."

"Not if'n you don't move yer caboose!" Granny Smith suddenly hollered from a little ways off. Applejack snickered.

"Alright, Granny," she said, heaving a stack of buckets with ease onto her back. "See ya Twi."

Twilight was thoroughly bemused as she backed away watching. It was just such a strange thing to see. Two species that had barely met working side by side like it was an every day occurrence. Well, I suppose at the rate we're going it will be.

Her study, both personally and with Asher, had yielded absolutely nothing. All they had was a bunch of theories, most of which would be impossible to fix with either world's current known abilities if they were the truth. It seemed to Twilight that, barring a strange miracle on par with the event that brought them in the first place, they should be prepared to be stuck here a while.

Catching a glimpse of Dash flying overhead in a southerly direction, Twilight decided to go ahead and follow her down to the Burgess estate. She gave cheerful hellos to the human guards still standing post at the orchard entrance and this time they were actually cognizant enough to say hi back. They were obviously still getting used to this new traffic flow.

She arrived in the backyard just as the back door was opened for Rainbow Dash.

"Oh, hey guys," said Asher, rubbing his eyes. Rainbow Dash cast a quick glance behind her to confirm who warranted the plural greeting before turning back to him.

"Hey, did you, uh....charge? Charge that movie player?" she asked.

"Huh? Oh yeah, come on in. Let me grab it," he said, waving them forward as he went back into the house. Twilight entered behind Dash as Asher went to one side of the living room where the device in question apparently was. A clanking noise from the kitchen startled her, though she couldn't see the cause through the doorway.

"Don't worry, it's just Anne and Pinkie cleaning up the waffle apocalypse," assured Asher.

On cue, Pinkie Pie peered around the doorframe.

"Oh hi girls! Want some waffles?" she asked brightly. Then Anne peered around her and added, "They're super good!"

"No thanks, already ate," said Rainbow Dash, settling down on a couch where she looked comically undersized from Twilight's perspective. Dash was no small pony with the powerful wings and muscles of an athlete but human sized furniture did its best to belie that.

"So this is that 'breakfast meeting' Mrs. Cake said you went off to," said Twilight amused.

"Yep! Anne and I decided it would be fun to make breakfast! And it was! Hey guess what? They put peanut butter on their waffles! I know, weird right? But it tasted deliciously amazing! It's like...."

"Frosting for breakfast?" suggested Anne. She may be young but she's quick. thought Twilight.

"Exactly!" shouted Pinkie Pie, jumping up and hanging in the air for about a second longer than those bound by the normal laws of physics would before heading back into the kitchen with Anne to continue their cleaning. Oh gosh, they're talking in sync now.

"Here ya are Rainbow," he said, handing the little machine over. Rainbow Dash early took it and tucked it close to her body with one hoof, like she was cradling something precious. "Looks like we're in for a busy few days."

"Did they tell you when they want us to come?" Twilight asked.

"Not yet but I think I can guess," said Asher, flopping down on the couch next to the multi-chromatic pegasus. "It's Independence Day on the 4th, so the day after tomorrow. That's a pretty busy time already so unless they want to give the Secret Service a heart attack I'd be willing to bet they wait until after that."

"Independence Day?" Twilight queried.

"It's the day we celebrate the founding of our country," explained Asher. "We -"

"Ash!"

"What?" Asher answered irritatedly.

His brother Patrick walked in the room from the front hallway, not fazed at all by his elder brother's acidic reply.

"There's some people on our front lawn," he said.

"You're a big boy. Go handle it," Asher replied, shrugging and shaking his head.

"They asked for you," Patrick shot back.

"Who?"

"I dunno, but he had a bunch of stars on his shoulders," Patrick replied, folding his arms with a smug grin like he had just won. Twilight could only wonder what that meant as Asher stared at his brother in silence for several seconds. Then he let his head fall back on the couch, heaved a big sigh, then rocked forward onto his feet.

"Fine. I better go see what they want," he said with a huff. "I'll catch up with you later Twilight."

Asher disappeared into the front hall and out the front door, Patrick in tow.

"Welp, I'm heading back home," said Rainbow Dash as she slid off the couch. "Ya comin'?"

"Might as well," assented Twilight. "Pinkie Pie! We're going back to Ponyville!"

"Okie Dokie! I'll be back later!"

"Don't cause too big of a mess!" Twilight added as she trotted out the door.

"Too late!" Anne called out, and both of them were heard laughing. Twilight decided to go ahead and fly back with Rainbow, seeing as she definitely needed the practice. She was getting better, but even on this short flight Rainbow Dash had to fly over and steady her two or three times.

"You still fly like a gimpy penguin," Rainbow Dash laughed as she landed gently in front of the library. Twilight, in contrast, came to a skidding halt that carved two parallel ruts in the dirt, stopping just inches from smacking into the library.

"Penguins can't fly," Twilight growled as she opened the door and wiped her dirty hooves on the mat.

"I know," Dash snickered. Twilight rolled her eyes in response and used her magic to grab the movie device.

"I think I have an idea to make the view screen bigger," she explained as Rainbow Dash first sputtered protest then perked up. "I think a little magnification spell might do wonders."

- Straub Mountain - 1 mile south of Victor, CO - Heading east -

"This is the worst idea in the long history of bad ideas you've ever had. Princess Twilight said -"

"Relax! One thing I learned last night is they like a good time about as much as we do."

"So sneaking into a city full of them, which we've never seen before, and just trying to find a 'good time' is your plan, then?"

"After making sure none of their soldiers are following us, sure."

"You're crazy."

"Hey, you came too."

"You're a bad influence on me. You do realize that we're going to have to walk over that mountain, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Dragging this thing?"

"That's what magic is for."

- Rainbow Dash - A While Later -

"When you said bigger, I thought maybe twice as big was what you meant," said Rainbow Dash in total awe. Twilight had done some spell searching, and using a white bedsheet had transformed the little player into a projector of sorts. The screen was now pretty much the size of a wall. A human wall.

"Well, now it'll be easier for more ponies to watch all at once," said Twilight. "The video we made with the other ponies yesterday made me think that we really should be getting everypony up to speed on what this world is like. Us six are not the only ones that are stuck here."

"That makes sense," said Rainbow Dash. "Does that mean we have to wait to watch something?"

Rainbow Dash had a gut feeling that this could easily turn into an addiction, but she could barely hear that part of her instinct because the rest of her body was itching to see more. That Indiana Jones character had been a good one, and even the movies obviously meant for fillies had been pretty awesome. It was almost as good as flying. Almost. Ok, not really, but it was awesome.

"Well....I don't see why not. Why don't you gather some ponies and we'll go ahead. Got nothing else to do," admitted Twilight.

"Great! I'll be back in ten minutes flat!"

- 9 Minutes, 58 Seconds later -

Well, not everypony can just drop what they're doing. But still, there was a fairly sizable group that Rainbow Dash had rounded up. Fluttershy and Rarity were sitting side by side while Pinkie Pie, who had just come back, chatted amiably with Lyra Heartstrings and Thunderlane behind them. Spike was busy popping up buckets of popcorn, and Twilight was sifting through the movies which she had early stored on an extra shelf in the library. Otherwise there were about two dozen ponies, about six of which were fillies. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were there, however Apple Bloom was still with the rest of the Apple family who were still busy getting their applebuck season underway. Dash was satisfied she had gathered enough, so she finally landed next to Twilight.

"I'm not sure what we should see this time," Twilight said thoughtfully without looking up. "Honestly, I'd probably feel better with one of the Burgesses to answer any questions we have."

"Hey, these are for entertainment anyway," Rainbow Dash reasoned. "Besides, they may be tall and ugly but from what I can tell they're not much different."

"Rainbow!" Twilight gave her a playful shove and a stern look. "Oh, this actually might help us both."

"What?"

"Asher said they're having an "Independence Day" in a couple days, right?"

"I dunno, I was barely listening," Rainbow Dash said, scratching her neck mane with a hoof. After a sideways glance Twilight pulled a single movie out with her magic.

"Well there's one here called 'Independence Day,'" said Twilight. "I bet we could learn something very useful before then."

Rainbow Dash looked at the cover levitating in front of her with scrutiny. "Independence Day: 2 Disc Special Edition" it read, and cutouts of three humans were placed above the letters with two big oval things and a blue background below. Dash wasn't really that into pony history, and frankly human history held about the same weight in her eyes. But, hey, none of the movies had disappointed so far.

"Sure. But if it's lame, I'm blaming you," Rainbow Dash said, grabbing it out of the air.

"Hey, I was going to read the back!" Twilight complained.

"No way! That just ruins what's in the movie!" Rainbow Dash rebutted. "I found that out the hard way that first day."

Twilight didn't look convinced so Dash put on her best winning smile and after a few seconds Twilight just rolled her eyes and waved her off. The victorious Rainbow Dash popped open the player and the case, slid the little, silver record into place, and carefully tapped the finger sized buttons to get it going. Twilight went and stood in front of the magical projection and welcomed everypony and briefly explained.

Everything's an event thought Rainbow Dash with amusement, as she clicked the last button on the "menu" to get the movie going. Then she flew around and sat on the floor next to her friends as it started up with a dramatic tune played on trumpets and spotlights on giant lettering.

"I bet this'll be very educational," Twilight whispered to her friends with anticipation.

- Asher -

If he had known it was going to take hours to go through everything when his brother had come to get him, he would have pretended to be sick. The military officer that had asked for him was one of the head honchos at Edwards Air Force Base, and he, plus about a dozen other people, had a laundry list of regulations and other things they wanted him to be aware of because of their intended plans to bring some ponies to Washington D.C.

They apparently were going to treat the visit with the security level of somewhere between "the Queen of England" and "Wanted Terrorists." Simultaneously making sure no one attacked the "visiting dignitaries" and that said visitors didn't try anything funny with the Commander in Chief present.

It was well after midday now, and he decided he better take it straight to Ponyville before the loads of tedious information completely leaked out of his head. At least someone wrote it all down. He passed Anne playing in the backyard with a volleyball and she said that Pinkie Pie had gone back up for some "party planning" a couple hours before. Another one? Asher was still feeling the residual effects of last night's sugar crash.

After passing the soldiers on post, he stopped to talk to his brother and the industrious Apple family when he passed by where they were working the orchards.

Asher watched, very impressed in speechless amazement, as Applejack delivered a powerful double kick into the trunk of one of the trees, causing it to lose almost its entire apple load straight into the buckets below. His limited knowledge of picking any kind of fruit let him know that the strength required to do something like that was absolutely insane, so he made a mental note not to make the orange pony angry.

"That Rainbow one showed up earlier," David remarked after they all said hello. "Said something about a movie."

"Oh," responded Asher half listening, instead watching Big Mac kick one leg out and knock half the apples out of another tree before striking with the other to finish it off.

"As in we're busy," shooed David, flicking his wrists like he was waving off a stray cat. Asher backed off, continuing to watch the impressive display over his shoulder as he headed up the path.

The town overall seemed to be experiencing a normal day. Perhaps a little bit quieter than the previous days. He made his way through the town down the quickly-becoming-familiar route to the library, where he assumed the movie was playing.

Opening the door did not reveal what he expected. For one, there was a large projection screen in the center of the room, streaming what appeared to be the beginning of the ending credits for a movie with a somewhat familiar tune. But there were no ponies immediately visible.

Asher had to step inside and peer around to find them. They were sitting awfully close to each other and without exception were staring wide-eyed at the screen. He found the familiar faces and walked up to them, crouching in front of them. "What in the heck did you watch?"

They ended up not having to answer as Asher noticed an open DVD case at Rainbow Dash's feet, which he picked up and turned to the cover.

Now, before that point in time Asher had never personally experienced the endorphin-producing sensation of "Rolling on the Floor Laughing," a curious condition that renders the subject unable to breathe let alone put together a cognizant sentence or stand up for several minutes as hiccup-like laughter overtakes them.

Ten minutes after this riotous malady struck Asher, Rainbow Dash gave her friends an annoyed glance and asked, "So are you gonna hit him or can I?"

- Twilight - That Night -

That had been kind of embarrassing. Looking back she should have known that none of it had been an actual historical account, but the fact that she had let herself even think that for as long as she did was a shot to her scholarly pride. Asher's joyous outburst did manage to lighten and allay any of the fears her ponies harbored. There was a reason Laughter was one of the Elements of Harmony after all.

He did get around to confirming the fictitious nature of the crazy story they had witnessed, and then gave what was probably a really washed down version of what their "4th of July" really was celebrating. The truth made a lot more sense than invading aliens.

But on that subject, it had given Twilight something to think about. She was well aware that they were viewed as aliens in this world, probably much like humans would have been in Equestria. Fiction, while not reliable for facts, was always a good place to pick up on the attitude of a culture, ancient and current. If that was a representation of what even a few humans thought of when someone said "aliens," then treading carefully was an absolute must.

Later, after everypony had a good laugh (with Rainbow Dash going on about how cool all the flying was and quoting memorable lines with Pinkie Pie), Asher did manage to have a conversation with them about their visit to the human's Capital, at least of this kingdom. Ten "attendants" were "recommended" as Asher put emphasis on both of those words, which Twilight took to meaning that they shouldn't consider bringing any more than that. Security would be really high, and she would get at least an hour but probably more to talk directly with the President away from the cameras. Other than that, Asher was blunt with how it was more or less a publicity stunt. A lot of greetings, appearances, and perhaps a few tours. Sounds an awful lot like what Princess Celestia goes through every day. Twilight had thought, remembering some conversations with her mentor about her duties. Politics joined the growing list of things that ran parallel with home. Soon she was going to have to keep a list of things that weren't because it would be shorter.

But one thing bothered her more than anything, something she was too nervous to voice. She didn't want to scare her friends. They would obviously be spending a fairly extended time outside the magic field. It was still growing, which continued to baffle her, but looking at a map told her it was most likely that "Washington D.C." was nowhere close to being touched. Between Rainbow Falls and Ponyville was still mostly devoid, though Twilight suspected the two fields were tethering to one another, and Rapidfire had made it through with no obvious outer symptoms.

Still, this was totally unprecedented. They would be relying entirely on the magic their bodies produced naturally, a circumstance some of their modern scholars were adamant would eventually lead to a pony's demise. Meeting with the leaders was important if they were to be prepared for the upcoming weeks and months, but Twilight resolved as she tucked Spike and then herself into bed that if anything seemed amiss, they would turn right around. At least, she spent the next hour and a half laying awake and trying to convince herself that would be enough.