Side Story: Mythological Creatures
“Are you sure about this?” Fluttershy asked. “I mean, it is asking a lot of you.”
Rainbow Dash bucked an encroaching vine. “Come on, Fluttershy!”
“He’s already agreed,” Twilight hurriedly pointed out. She spotted another vine and with her telekinesis tied it in a knot.
“Well, yes, but he doesn’t really understand what he’s agreeing to.”
Meg tried to stay as far away from the ground and the surrounding trees as possible. “If he doesn’t understand by now, he’s not going to.” She watched as the manticore absentmindedly stabbed an invading vine with its scorpion tail. It withered away. “I’d really like to get out of here, if you don’t mind.” Why did I let them talk me into this? Was it really asking so much to bring him to the edge of the forest first?
Manny—that’s what Fluttershy called him—gave the butter yellow pegasus a nuzzle. This was the same manticore the Mane Six had encountered during their very first adventure together, when Fluttershy had removed a thorn from its paw. Meg didn’t know whether to be awestruck or terrified; it was still a manticore.
“Just make it clear to him that he is in no danger,” Twilight said, “no matter what crazy stuff he sees.” She got out four plaid pills from her saddlebag. “That last thing we need is for him to go out of control.”
Meg snatched a pill out of the air as a thought suddenly came to her. “Be sure to tell him that the cage we’ll find ourselves in is to protect him. It won’t keep him from returning here.”
That wasn’t a lie, exactly. The main reason was to protect everyone outside the cage and prevent him from getting loose. They wouldn’t be staying long anyway.
Fluttershy nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
Rainbow Dash and Twilight made one last pass to temporarily secure the area as Fluttershy repeated the message. Once that was done, everypony gathered around in front of Manny.
“Let’s go,” Twilight commanded as she magically grabbed hold of the manticore.
Meg thought of their destination, an allegedly unused warehouse in Bethesda, not far from the White House. She was there a week ago, standing inside the caged area in preparation for this. She signaled for everypony to swallow their pill.
The first thing Meg noticed, upon crossing over, were the camcorders on tripods that now surrounded the cage, recording everything. A few dozen feet away were several tables full of monitors, laptops, and other equipment.
One of the scientists got up and and nearly stumbled his way to the new arrivals. “This is… incredible.”
None of these three had seen a pony in the flesh before, much less a manticore. They weren’t skeptics, exactly, but there was no substitute for seeing in order to believe. “We shouldn’t drag this out any long than necessary,” Meg told him.
Fluttershy was making cooing sounds to Manny. “See? There’s nothing to worry about. They’re friends.” The manticore was taking it all in stride, so far.
“Uh, right,” the scientist said. He looked down on the orchid pegasus, suddenly realizing who he was talking to. “That really you, Meg?”
Meg was starting to lose her patience, but she didn’t want to spook Manny either. “Look, Ryan, we went over this last week,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “I’m sure you thought I was playing a huge prank on you or something, but here we are, and you’re not the one in a cage with a manticore, so could we please get started?”
Without taking his eyes off the impossible creatures in the cage, Ryan waved his arm at an assistant, who rushed over with a specimen collection kit. She opened it up and took out a syringe. “Uh… you don’t expect me to go in there, do you?”
Meg sighed. She should have seen this coming. “You want a blood sample?”
“I don’t think sharp needles are a good idea,” Fluttershy said after looking at the instrument in question.
The assistant put back the syringe and took out a brush in a sealed tube. “How about a cheek swab?”
“What’s a cheek swab?” Fluttershy asked.
“I’ll explain,” Meg said. “Twilight, I think you’d be the best one to do this. It’s important that we don’t contaminate the sample.”
“Just tell me what to do,” Twilight said with enthusiasm. A lavender glow engulfed the tube, but the assistant didn’t understand what was happening. “Please let go,” the alicorn said politely. “I’ve got it.”
Confused, she looked down at her hand. Upon seeing the glow she dropped the tube in shock. It didn’t fall, of course. Twilight maneuvered it through the bars to herself. She looked at Meg for further instructions.
“We need to scrap the inside of his mouth with the brush, along the inside of his cheek. That’s it. Then return it to the tube and seal it. Don’t let the brush touch anything else.”
“Scrape against the cheek for thirty seconds,” the assistant added, having recovered her wits. “But not so hard as to draw blood.”
As Fluttershy got Manny to open his mouth wide, exposing those awfully sharp teeth, the remaining person approached the cage. Meg didn’t recognize him, though he must’ve had the requisite clearance if he was here.
He sort of pointed at Manny. “You sure that’s a manticore?”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “I think we know a manticore when we see one.”
“Um, right.” He wasn’t sure how to proceed. “Well… it’s just… that isn’t exactly what a manticore looks like, according to Greek mythology.”
Twilight joined them at the bars. “What’s different?” she asked as she floated the sealed tube back to the assistant.
Manny also stepped forward, his curiosity overriding Fluttershy’s attempt to keep him back. The man reflexively stepped back as the manticore sniffed him. At least that barbed tail was not poised to strike.
“Uh, well, the lion body, the bat wings, the scorpion tail, those are the same. It’s the head that’s different. It’s supposed to be a human head, with multiple rows of teeth.”
“A human head?” The alicorn looked at Manny, as if expecting an explanation from the manticore.
None came, of course, unless the licking of his paw was it.
“Maybe your manticores are different from our manticores?” Fluttershy offered.
“We don’t have manticores,” Meg said. “They’re purely mythological. There is zero physical evidence they ever existed.”
“And yet, somehow, manticores got into the mythology of these ‘Greeks.’” Twilight mused. “The similarities are too many for it to be pure coincidence, never mind the other creatures.”
“Obviously, our worlds must have interacted in the distant past,” Ryan said. “The descriptions of the creatures got corrupted over time.”
Twilight sighed. “Humans are not in our mythology, your silly Lyra fan-fiction notwithstanding.”
The assistant held up the tube. “Maybe we’ll get some answers when we sequence the DNA.”
Something clicked in Twilight’s mind. “Is that why you wanted that?”
“Uh huh.” She put the tube back in the kit and exchanged a look with Ryan.
He nodded. “Uh, Meg… would you mind?”
The pegasus watched as the syringe was taken out once more. She stared at the sharp needle. “This wasn’t mentioned last week.”
Ryan looked apologetic. “We, uh… we didn’t really believe you.” He got down on his knees, the better to see her eye to eye. “We’d like to compare your blood makeup and DNA to that of your human self, to see what’s different and what’s the same.”
“You didn’t get any of my human blood,” Meg said, hoping that would get her out of this.
“An oversight we’d have to correct, obviously.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea!” Twilight chirped. “Be sure to send me a copy of the data.”
Meg shot the alicorn a dirty look. Twilight gave a what-did-I-do? look in return.
No, there might still be an out. “You don’t know that my biology is typical of ponies. I wasn’t born one, after all.”
Twilight shook her head. “You should be physically indistinguishable from somepony born as a pony. That’s what the spell does.”
You’re not helping, Twilight. The last thing Meg wanted was to be turned into a lab rat. It was a safe bet the tests wouldn’t stop with a mere blood sample. “Does the spell take the existence of DNA into account?” she asked, still hoping to derail this somehow.
“Well, no, we didn’t know DNA existed until recently, but it doesn’t have to. That’s not how it works.”
“How does it work?” Ryan asked, intrigued. “And please don’t just say ‘magic’—we get that.”
“Well…” Twilight’s muzzle scrunched as she tried to come up with a comprehensible explanation. “I don’t think I can,” she finally said apologetically. “Extremely few unicorns are capable of understanding this level of magic, and none are capable of performing it—even I couldn’t before becoming an alicorn.”
Ryan was not deterred. “Fortunately, there is a way to resolve this. There should be a second cheek swab in the kit. We simply need a second DNA sample, preferably from another pegasus.” He looked expectantly at Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.
“I’ll do it.” The prismatic pegasus stepped up and stuck her muzzle through the bars. “You won’t find more awesome dee-en-whatever than mine.”
Meg stuck her forelimb through the bars as well. It was a lost cause. “Get it over with.”
Ryan tapped a key on his laptop. “Here we see a comparison of Rainbow Dash’s DNA and Meg’s as a pegasus.” The projected slide was gibberish to Meg. “In plain English, the differences are minor, no more than the typical variations you’d expect to find between two individuals of the same species.”
Twilight had a smug look, as if to say “I told you so.”
Meg found it strangely reassuring. It was proof she was a “true” pegasus, not that there had been any real reason to doubt that—ignoring the fact she was currently human.
President Serrell silently observed from behind his desk.
The next slide was displayed. “This is where it gets interesting. This compares Meg’s human and pony DNA. The two are eighty-two percent identical.” Ryan turned away from the screen and faced his audience. “This is both more and less impressive than it sounds.
“Less, because humans share ninety percent of their DNA with mice and about a third with fruit flies. Even plants share a surprisingly large amount with us. We need to look more closely at specific genes for a deeper insight.
“We checked some genes that appear to be shared between humans and ponies, and in most cases they both had the exact same nucleotide sequence. This was true even when multiple alleles, or variations, exist in humans. In several cases, Rainbow Dash had a different allele for these genes; with two exceptions, those alleles are also known to be present in humans.
“The bottom line: the transformation preserves DNA to the extent possible.”
Ryan paused to take a breath. “Ordinarily, it wouldn’t mean much that ponies and humans share most of their DNA. The problem is, the reason we humans share a third of our DNA with fruit flies is because we had a common ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago.”
“And ponies did not evolve on our planet,” Serrell said, looking at Twilight.
“I don’t see how,” she replied.
“There’s a solid fossil record of the evolution of equines,” Ryan added, “and none of it includes wings, horns, or skulls capable of speech or containing a large brain.”
The President dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “What about the manticore?”
Ryan brought up the relevant slide. “More of the same, I’m afraid. It’s DNA clearly places it amongst mammals, similar to felines but with non-trivial differences.
“And here is where it gets quite impressive.” Yet another slide appeared. “There’s also mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from the mother. It’s quite different between humans and horses. The transformation left Meg’s unchanged.” He paused. “Rainbow Dash’s is only slightly different; if I didn’t know better, I’d say it was human too.”
The silence became deafening.
Serrell broke the silence. “I can only imagine what the tabloids would make of this if it ever got out.” He met the princess’ eyes. “Even after you go public, I think this should be kept secret.”
Twilight nodded. “That’s probably for the best, at least until we know what it means.” She addressed Ryan: “What about the manticore’s?”
“Uh, definitely not human—or pony. Not sure what it is yet, but I’m guessing feline.”
Serrell got up from behind his desk and paced around the Oval Office. “This raises more questions than it answers, I’m afraid.”
“We need more data points,” Twilight said. “If you could provide us with a large number of cheek swabs, we’d be happy to collect samples from numerous ponies.” She got pensive. “We could also include samples from non-sapient animals, like cats, dogs, and rabbits, though I think we can all guess what that will show.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to confirm it,” Ryan said. “I’ll get them to you. Plant clippings would be nice, too.”
“I’ll add that to the checklist.”
“What about other mythical creatures?” Serrell asked as he continued his pacing. “The manticore seemed to go smoothly enough, based on the video I watched.”
“We could do that,” Twilight said. “The manticore was the easiest due to his relationship with Fluttershy.”
“You can leave me out of that.” Meg gave the President a wan smile. “You didn’t see the vines attacking us in the Everfree. I don’t need that kind of excitement in my life.”
“We’ve dealt with far worse in that forest,” Twilight said.
“My point exactly. You now know where that cage is, so you don’t need me for that anymore.”
Meg noticed that Ryan was looking at her, as if searching for the right words to say. It didn’t give her a warm, fuzzy feeling. “What?”
He exhaled. “I know you don’t like being researched on, but in light of these developments…”
Meg remained silent.
“We’d like to compare the functioning of your brain in both forms using a PET scan. Apart from administering a small quantity of a radioactive substance—”
Meg giggle-snorted. “Sorry… couldn’t help myself.” She rapidly got herself under control. “A PET scan won’t work on ponies.” At least not without jumping through some hoops. She hoped Twilight wasn’t eager to do that.
“Why wouldn’t it?” Ryan asked. “It’d work on any mammalian brain.”
The President, who was now back behind his desk, came to her rescue. “She’s right. Their magic suppresses radioactivity.”
“Really?” He gawked at Twilight, who nodded in response. “Uh, well, we could go with an electroencephalogram instead. Completely non-invasive.”
“I can only encourage you to do it, obviously,” Serrell said. “But surely you, yourself, must have wondered how your mind differs between the two forms.”
“Like being aware of having wings versus being aware of having fingers?” Meg couldn’t help snarking as she conspicuously flexed her fingers.
He brushed that aside with a wave of his hand. “There are obvious differences, to be sure. Perhaps I should have phrased it in terms of how similar they are.” He looked at the sole pony in the room. “On the surface, it appears that ponies have minds very similar to humans’. It would be interesting to see how deep those similarities go.”
“I don’t think this is what my cutie mark means,” Meg said under her breath. It appeared to be a losing battle.
“I’ll participate in these tests also. We need a natural born pony as a control.”
And… battle lost.
“Fine,” Meg conceded. “And for what it’s worth, I think they run pretty deep.” She looked at the alicorn seated in the chair next to hers. “In light of these developments,” she distinctly repeated, “isn’t it time you followed up with Guiding Star?”
Twilight’s ears folded. “Yes, I should.” Lyra had finally gotten ahold of her former marefriend, and she had expressed a willingness to show the princess where those odd musical instruments could be found. “It’s just that the site in question is overseas in minotaur territory, and it’s going to consume a lot of my time, and they’ll want to know why they’re being visited by an Equestrian princess…” She refilled her lungs with air and exhaled. “I’ll get started on it.”
“International politics,” Serrell said, cracking a smile. “Something else we have in common.”
He addressed Meg once more. “I think you should be there, too, as our representative. If there are any resources we can provide that will help, let me know.”
She was about to object that she wasn’t an archeologist, but then it sunk in what the words “our representative” meant. And to be fair, humanity had a vested interest in knowing whether there had been humans in Equestria’s distant past.
Twilight picked up on her unease. “It’s not like it’s going to be something out of a Daring Do book. We won’t even have to sleep in a tent.” She gave a big smile. “Just think of it as a paid vacation to a foreign land.”
The Zephyr was docked at the top of a Manehattan skyscraper. The view from the observation lounge was breathtaking, but Twilight and Meg had long since switched to other means of passing the time until Guiding Star showed up.
The pegasus sluggishly tapped away on the keyboard of her laptop with the aid of a hoof attachment. “This is the latest simulation,” she said as she brought up the data. “Sunset’s in the process of creating a suitably enchanted crystal. Soon we’ll know if this works.”
Twilight absorbed the data, her eyes going wide. “You really think this is possible?”
Meg shrugged her wings. “It should work. The laws of physics do not care which direction time flows. If you made a movie of subatomic particles interacting, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether you were running it forwards or backwards.
“According to the laws of our universe, magical energy spontaneously breaks down into photons. If you went backwards in time, you’d observe photons being being turned into magical energy. As the laws do not change when the direction of time is reversed, it must be possible to create magic in our universe.”
“Yet it doesn’t,” Twilight said, pointing out the obvious.
“That must be due to entropy. Consider a dropped glass. It easily shatters upon hitting the floor. It will never spontaneously reassemble and leap up into the air. That could happen—it’s permitted by the laws of physics—but the odds against it are infinite for all practical purposes.”
The alicorn went through Sunset’s notes, furrowing her brow. “But these spells wouldn’t do anything to photons—”
There was a knock at the door.
“Later, I guess.” With a sigh Twilight closed the lid and put a cushion on top of it. She went over to the door to let Guiding Star in.
This was the reason Meg had come across here in Manehattan and not once the Zephyr had arrived at its final destination: to avoid an awkward explanation of how she got there. Likewise, it was the reason she wasn’t wearing her phone. It had also doubled as an opportunity to bring the alicorn up to date with their research.
The door opened revealing a middle-aged pony standing on the gangway, with a suitcase in tow behind her. She had a light gold coat, mostly covered by a purple cape, and a grayish mane almost completely covered by a dowdy gray hat, a hat that was wrapped with a white ribbon tied in a bow. The pony gave Twilight a mirthless smile as she adjusted her red rimmed glasses. “May I come onboard?”
“I, uh, I mean… sure.” Twilight stepped aside to let her enter.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Meg couldn’t help herself from saying.
The newcomer gave Meg the once-over as the door closed behind her. “From what I was told, I’d assumed you’d be accompanied by the other Element Bearers, not…” She looked at Meg expectantly.
Twilight answered for her. “This is Meg, a Royal Advisor to the Court. She has our full trust, A. K. Yearling. Why are you here instead of Guiding Star?”
The disguised pony merely smirked. “Perhaps we should be on our way?” She looked out the panoramic windows at the pegasi gawking at the royal vessel from a distance. “Too many prying eyes here.”
It was apparent no explanation would be forthcoming until they were underway. Twilight stiffly went over to the intercom. “Captain, we’re ready to depart.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.”
The Zephyr detached from the dock and began leisurely accelerating towards the ocean and climbing to a cruising altitude. The surrounding pegasi, who were never that close to begin with, got the message and retreated out of the way. Within minutes, Manehattan was a rapidly shrinking dot behind them; in front of them, nothing but water and clouds as far as the eye can see.
Twilight figured they were far enough away. “Are you going to wear that this whole trip?” she asked.
She seemed to give the question serious thought. “I hadn’t planned on it, no; but then, I hadn’t expected somepony who didn’t already know me.” She fixed her gaze on Meg. “Well, I suppose you couldn’t be a more annoying fan than Rainbow Dash.”
“She can be trusted, I give you my word,” Twilight said.
Not to mention I already know. Meg wondered how she should act upon “discovering” her true identity. Not like a certain pegasus, that much was clear.
Yearling fixed her gaze on Meg once more. “Fine. Just try to keep your shock under control, okay?” With a swift sweep of a hoof, she removed her cloak, revealing her compass rose cutie mark; with another she removed that dowdy hat, revealing Daring Do’s iconic pith helmet and monochromatic rainbow mane.
“You forgot the fake glasses,” Meg droned.
Daring removed the item in question with an exasperated sigh. “Who says they’re fake?”
“It’s obvious. They don’t distort the face behind them.”
“Huh.” She looked through them at arm’s length. “Nopony ever noticed that before.” The pegasus gave Meg another look over, noticing her distinct lack of shock and awe. “You don’t seem terribly surprised.”
“I always felt those books were autobiographical in nature,” she replied with a straight face.
Daring snorted. “Yeah, right. Sure, they’re based on actual events, but they’re still mostly fiction. Nopony would want to read about the boring banality that’s the actual life of a tomb raider.”
“Ahuizotl seemed real enough,” Twilight snarked.
That freak of nature is real? Yes, those were the events of Daring Don’t, but there was always the possibility that the episode had played loose with the facts. It did happen.
Daring shrugged. “Like I said, based on actual events, just awesomely embellished.”
Twilight’s eyes bore into Daring Do’s. “You still haven’t answered the question: Why you and not Guiding Star?”
The pegasus adjusted her helmet, unfazed. “Let’s just say it was in our mutual interest.” She gave a smile that promised adventure. “Don’t worry. I’m quite familiar with the site in question.”
Daring took hold of her suitcase and headed towards the hallway. “Which way to my cabin?”
“Third door on the left,” Twilight replied, sighing.
It was going to be a long flight.
The Zephyr set down on barren ground. A massive mountain range not far in the distance, its peaks perennially topped with snow and ice, acted as a rain shield. No pegasi managing the weather here, Meg thought as she looked out the panoramic windows.
In the opposite direction, on the wide-open plain, lay a motley collection of tents, wide pits and mounds of excavated dirt and rocks. A few minotaurs were carefully removing millimeter layers of dirt in their search for ancient artifacts. One minotaur was walking towards the ship.
An alicorn, a pegasus, and a pegasus disguised as an earth pony deplaned onto the cold ground and waited for their host to greet them.
It was the first minotaur Meg had ever seen, and she tried to study his form without being obvious about it. He was humanoid in shape, unsurprisingly, a shape that was powerfully built, had a bull-like head, had two legs like a human, and possessed two large hands each with five fingers.
Greek mythology stated that the Minotaur—literally translated as the Bull of Minos, as there was only one—was completely human from the neck down, except for the presence of a tail. It appeared, once again, that mythology diverged from reality. This minotaur was covered in dark brown fur, much like a pony, and his feet… not exactly human, but not really a hoof either. Mechanically, they seemed to work like human feet, but each foot had but a single giant “toe” with a hoof-like toenail.
He was also wearing shorts—and nothing else, despite the chilly air. Meg decided she wasn’t going to pursue that line of thought.
The minotaur came to a stop in front of the princess and bowed out of respect. “I am Dr. Herodotos, project manager for this site,” he began, in an accent that Meg could not place. “I am honored, though honestly surprised, that an Equestrian princess has taken an interest in our work here.” His eyes fell on the disguised pegasus. “And I was not informed that you’d be accompanied by the renowned A. K. Yearling.”
“My apologies,” Daring Do quickly said, taking a step forward. “That was at my request. I’m sure you can understand how a pony as famous as myself would acquire a habit of secrecy.”
“Not a problem,” the minotaur said, waving it away with his hand. “Your presence honors us as well. May I assume you’re doing research for a future book?”
“No pulling one over you!” the tomb raider facetiously exclaimed.
“Indeed,” he replied likewise.
I gotta hand it to her. This ruse was all Daring’s idea. Twilight had agreed that the archeologists’ reaction to the actual Daring Do would be uncertain at best. Left unanswered was the question of how Daring had become “quite familiar” with this site in the first place. This minotaur certainly wasn’t acting as if they’d been visited by her in the past—in either identity.
Dr. Herodotos turned to the last of his guests. “And I’m guessing you’re Meg, or is it Guiding Star?”
“Meg,” she answered.
“Please excuse my ignorance.”
Meg found that a bit strange. If Guiding Star had worked here, wouldn’t the project manager be familiar with her?
“Why don’t I give a quick tour,” Dr. Herodotos said, heading off to the nearest pit. Meg couldn’t help but notice the short tail sticking out through a hole in the minotaur’s shorts.
It was only a minute’s walk for them to reach the edge of the pit. From there, one could see a series of deeper pits, one nested within the other, forming a flight of stairs that surrounded the entire perimeter. The deepest pit, in the center, must have been about two dozen feet deep. That was where two minotaurs were focusing their efforts.
“What you’re finding must be very old to be buried that deep,” Twilight said.
“Thousands of years, easily,” Dr. Herodotos replied. “It’s uncommon, but when it does rain, flash floods wash sediments down from the mountains. We can count the layers, but unfortunately we have little else on which to deduce age.”
Twilight turned her head towards Meg. “Would you happen to know of any way to date artifacts?”
“Carbon dating?” she replied, before realizing her mistake. “Uh, never mind, that won’t work here.”
“Strange,” the minotaur said. “I’ve never heard of that.”
Quickly thinking on her hooves, Meg said, “It requires circumstances that are extremely rare. I should have realized sooner that it could never work for dating artifacts.” Not in this universe, anyway. The vastly increased half-life of carbon-14 could be taken into consideration, but what would even make the stuff here? “I can fill you in on the details later,” she told Twilight.
Twilight had heard enough to know the topic of conversation needed changing. Addressing their host, she said, “I’ve heard rumors that unusual artifacts have been found, musical instruments, I believe, that had been made for unusually small hands.”
Dr. Herodotos looked like he ate something disagreeable. “It’s regrettable those rumors have reached Equestria. It’s become a somewhat sensitive subject. Obviously, they were made for children, but some choose to interpret their existence… in other ways.”
Meg had noted that these adult minotaurs possessed, compared to humans, quite large and robust hands. Yet neither had she ever heard of earthly musical instruments designed for small children—at least, nothing that wasn’t a pale imitation of the real thing.
“Would it be possible to see some of the artifacts in question?” Daring Do asked.
“I’m afraid not,” he replied a little too quickly. “All the ones found so far are in the lab back in Naxos.” He held out his hand to lead the way. “But enough about that; let’s continue the tour.”
“And I’m saying he’s not telling us the whole truth.”
“Are you the Element of Honesty now?”
“Twilight…” Daring shook her head. “I’ve been around enough to know horse apples when I see them. There’s more to this than unusual artifacts, and I know I can find them.” She nodded to her cutie mark. “It’s my special talent after all.”
“I don’t think they’ll let you dig around unsupervised,” Meg pointed out.
She dismissed it with a wave of a hoof. “Forget about this dig. There are other places we can check out they don’t know about. In fact, a few miles over to the mountains, I’m pretty sure there’s a buried structure. We just need to make them think we went away.”
Twilight got a mug out of a cabinet, a jug of cider from the refrigerator, and filled it. “You have been here before, correct?”
The explorer rolled her eyes. “Yes. You’re satisfied? I heard the rumors and paid this place a visit when they weren’t here. Left to my own devices, there wasn’t much I could do.”
“Like check out a deeply buried structure?”
“You got it.”
The alicorn let out an exasperated sigh. “How deep.”
“I dunno. Deeper than that dig site, that’s for sure. Has to be, given that it’s closer to the mountains. More accumulated sediment. Nothing your alicorn powers can’t handle, I’m sure.”
Twilight washed down her growing frustrations with a deep gulp of cider. “Finding valuable stuff is your special talent, not mine. I need to know where it is.”
“My talent doesn’t work that way,” she said, her self-confident façade finally cracking. “It’s more of a gut feeling.”
“Meg, are you aware of any way to quickly locate that structure?”
“Uh…” She looked at Daring Do. “Yes, but she’s not authorized to know about it.”
“Hey, I trusted you with my secret,” she said in mock offense. “You can trust me with yours.”
Twilight finished off the rest of her cider, washed out the cup in the sink, then set it down on the counter. She turned towards Daring Do. “These are royal secrets. Do you understand the consequences of divulging them?”
“I’m a mare of secrets,” she flippantly replied. “Don’t worry.”
Twilight continued to stare at her.
“Yes, I understand.”
That satisfied the princess. “Meg, I’m granting Daring Do authorization. You may answer the question.”
She was ready to answer, having used the time to recall what she knew. “Ground penetrating radar comes to mind. I don’t know much about it, but I’m pretty sure there are portable units, probably aerial units too. Aerial would be best for scanning large areas, but the chances are those are designed to work with GPS, and that won’t work here.”
“Okay, send a message requesting one. See if we can pick it up tomorrow morning.”
“Radar? GPS?” Daring said, mystified. “And how the hay are you going to ‘pick it up?’”
For once, Twilight got to smirk at the pegasus. “You haven’t even begun to learn our secrets.”
Meg, Twilight, and Daring Do hovered in the air, each laden with saddlebags. The Zephyr sped away from them, climbing rapidly to cross the mountains, allegedly on its way to rendezvous with an Equestria ship at sea in need of assistance. It would return once the “emergency” had been dealt with.
After the ship had dwindled to a dot, Daring scanned the heavens. “We’re in luck,” she said, pointing. “There’s a cloud, and I have a cloud-rated tent. No way those minotaurs can stumble upon us.”
Meg glared at Twilight. No tents, huh? She had hoped she could sneak home for the night. Even the Zephyr wouldn’t have been so bad. But, no, a tent it would be.
“Why don’t you start setting it up,” Twilight said. “We’ll be along shortly.”
“Want a private conversation, eh?” Daring adjusted her helmet. “No problem,” she said, and flew off towards the cloud.
After waiting for the pegasus to get out of hearing range, Meg spoke first. “She’s going to find out tomorrow anyway when we pick up the radar.”
“Will she? So she’ll see me disappear then reappear a bit later with the device. She’ll think I teleported.”
“All the way to Equestria?”
“So it’ll be a mystery. I’m under no obligation to say how far I went or explain how I got there.”
“I could also mysteriously disappear for the night, like right now. We don’t have to explain that either.”
“I’d still have to fetch you in the morning. One mysterious teleport is bad enough, don’t you think?”
Or we could just tell her about my world. But Twilight had obviously considered and rejected that option, and could she really blame her? There’s trusting that self-described tomb raider, then there’s trusting her.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Let me call Steve first and let him know.” Meg sighed as she shook her head. “He’s never gonna believe this.”
The following morning, the three ponies hovered over a patch of rocky soil indistinguishable from any of patch of rocky soil around them. “I think this is the general area,” Daring Do said.
Meg yawned. She had not gotten a good night’s sleep. The cloud itself was fine; she now got why Rainbow Dash sweared by it. It’s just that the tent was rather cozy for three ponies. She noted Celestia’s Sun in the east, thankful for the impossibility of jet lag on this world.
Twilight touched down on the ground. She retrieved a jar from her saddlebag—Discord’s always full pill dispenser was back on the Zephyr—unscrewed the top, removed a plaid pill, then resealed the jar. “Hold on to this for me,” she said as she levitated the jar over to Meg’s saddlebag and inserted it. She then swallowed the pill, closed her eyes, and vanished.
That odd little detail hadn’t gone unnoticed, naturally. “What’s with the funny looking pill?” Daring asked, interrupting another of Meg’s yawns.
“Don’t start,” Meg irritably said.
“Whoa! Just asking a simple question!”
“And I can’t answer. You know the drill. And don’t even think of helping yourself to one of them.” Meg wasn’t even sure what would happen if a pill was swallowed without a destination in mind, as the magic leak was now history. She had half a mind to let her have one if she persisted just so she could find out.
Twilight returned at that moment, rendering it moot. Floating beside her was an odd looking contraption. It had two, large, triangular feet made out of thin metal rods, connected by other thin metal rods forming an “L” shape to the controller that was between them. The controller itself utilized a standard tablet for the display, user interface, and analysis software.
She carefully set it down and turned it on. The documentation was on the tablet, and she quickly paged through it. “Do you know how to operate this?” she asked Meg.
“Not a clue. Absorbing information from books is your thing, so go for it.”
And she did. Within a few minutes, she felt ready enough to try it out. A rather random-looking image appeared on the display. “I’m guessing there’s nothing below us but rocks.”
Daring Do wasn’t exactly impressed. “So what does that thing do—or am I not allowed to know that?”
Twilight picked it up and moved it about a dozen feet. “It sends a beam of radio waves into the ground and looks for reflections off of stuff, more or less.”
Daring was still skeptical. “And that’d actually work?”
The alicorn’s eyes were glued to the screen. “I think it may have found something.”
The other two pegasi hovered on either side of Twilight so as to see for themselves. There was something in a corner. The alicorn moved the device so as to get on top of whatever it was. They were definitely on top of something.
Twilight adjusted a slider on the tablet up and down, zeroing in on where that something came in the clearest. “About ninety five feet below us, give or take.” She brought up a menu. “I’m going to try the 3D mode and see what that gets us.”
The tablet crunched on the data for a few seconds, and a series of fuzzy tunnel-like structures appeared. Twilight rotated the view. No question about it: tunnels.
Daring Do let out a whistle. “Where can I buy one of these? I can afford it, whatever it costs.”
“You can’t buy one,” Twilight flatly said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Well, let me know. I’ve never seen magic like this before, and that’s saying something.” Nopony corrected her assumption that magic was involved.
“So how do we get down there?” Meg asked. “Is the air even breathable after all this time?”
“I wouldn’t recommend leaving physical evidence behind for the minotaurs to find,” Daring said, “so no digging a deep hole, not if we can avoid it.”
“Which leaves a blind teleport as my only option.” An option the alicorn was clearly unhappy to consider. “We better hope this machine is accurate.” She oriented her body with the tunnel directly beneath them. “Line up behind me facing the same direction. I’ll try to put us in the center, to provide a margin of error, so be prepared to drop two or three feet. I’ll hold my breath just in case the air is unbreathable; let me know as soon as possible if it isn’t.”
Meg and Daring Do lined up behind Twilight as requested, the explorer already having placed a lit crystal on her helmet. The alicorn closed her eyes, concentrated on the necessary calculations, then took a deep breath.
They teleported.
Meg was in free-fall. She resisted the urge to spread her wings and instead braced for impact. Before she knew it, her hooves hit the frigid ground, colder than the already-cold surface. She was glad for the added insulation of her saddlebags.
The tunnel was being lit both by Daring’s helmet and by Twilight’s horn. It was rather spacious, with a particularly high ceiling, but then it had probably been dug by minotaurs.
“I’d say the air is good enough,” the Daring said, “if you don’t mind the smell.”
Meg allowed herself to breath. The odor of dirt and staleness was strong, but tolerable. “So which direction?” she asked.
Daring spun around to face the opposite direction. “My gut says this way.”
“The machine stays here,” Twilight said. She had brought the radar along with them. “I can easily reverse the teleport from this point.”
“Noted,” she said approvingly. “Follow me.”
They only traveled a few dozen feet before encountering a series of shelves carved out of the walls on both sides. “We’re in a catacomb,” Meg said, looking at the desiccated and naturally mummified bodies resting on the shelves ahead of them, rather small minotaurs apparently, wearing the tattered remnants of their clothing—far more clothes than their modern descendants wore.
“Welcome to my world, fellow tomb raiders!” The pegasus got closer to one of the bodies for a closer look. “I’ve never seen a minotaur like this before,” she said as she checked out its head. “I wonder if this is what’s got Herodotos all spooked.”
Meg practically flew to a shelf on the opposite side and inspected the head of the mummy resting there. There was no mistaking it. There was nothing bovine about that head. “These aren’t minotaurs.”
Twilight was at the other end, carefully peeling back the fragile footwear covering a foot. Toes were exposed, five of them. “That answers that question.”
Daring Do came over to look at the uncovered foot for herself. “And what question might that be?” she demanded.
“We should bring one… back. Our scientists have many tools at their disposal to study it—many non-invasive or nearly so. The DNA alone could tell us from what part of the world they, or their ancestors, originated, maybe even how long ago they came here.”
“I’m guessing that’ll take longer than a few hours,” Twilight said. “Sounds like a one-way trip for whoever we take. It won’t be easy for me to return here.”
“Yeah,” Meg said in empathy. “I guess you can look at it as returning him to his ancestral lands, if that makes it any easier.”
“Could somepony please fill me in?!”
Twilight slowly turned towards the increasingly frustrated pegasus. “By Royal Decree, you are not to mention anything we have discovered here.”
Daring Do’s jaw dropped. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Twilight grimly nodded.
“I don’t get it. This is just an embarrassment—maybe—to the minotaurs. Why do you even care?”
“This has nothing to do with minotaurs.” The alicorn removed the jar of plaid pills from Meg’s saddlebags, removed a pill, then placed the resealed jar on the ground between the legs of the radar, to take its place as the marker of where they’d arrived.
“You may need to stay there a bit, to magically keep it cold and dry until they can arrange for that themselves,” Meg said. “It’s something I saw in a documentary once. Warmth and humidity will accelerate its decay.”
She thought that over for a second. “Understood.” The mummy was encased with a lavender glow and gently lifted off the shelf.
“Are we to wait here in this buried tomb, then, hoping you’ll return before the air runs out?”
Twilight met the determined explorer’s eyes. “You do know what you’re asking, right? I could also simply return you to the surface right now. I have a feeling you’re perfectly capable of getting back to Equestria on your own should something happen to me.”
“This is what I do,” Daring said, shrugging. “Maybe it’ll be the end of me one day, but my luck hasn’t run out yet. This doesn’t even sound dangerous.”
“Danger isn’t what I meant.”
“Okay, I get it. I know too much already, and I’ll know even more if I accompany you. I accept the responsibility and the consequences.” Her eyes darted about as she searched for a more compelling argument. “Look, will this ever be declassified some day, even partially? I could put it in a book—and I swear that you’ll be the first to read the draft and I’ll remove whatever you say is still secret.”
Meg thought that was incredibly self-serving, but Twilight was actually thinking it over. “That might be useful,” the princess said. “We’ll discuss it when the time comes.” The mummy resumed it cautious journey to the center of the tunnel.
Twilight did not, to Meg’s surprise, get another pill out of the jar. The intrepid pegasus was about to become the first pony to visit the human realm sans magic. She doubted it was an oversight.
The alicorn added the radar, Meg, and Daring Do to her magical grasp. “Crossing over now.” She closed her eyes, popped the plaid pill into her mouth, and swallowed.
They were in front of the spacious cage in that Bethesda warehouse. Meg half-wondered if Twilight would shove Daring Do inside the cage and close the door, but she did no such thing.
The now-human Meg spotted someone at the table, preoccupied with a monitor, and briskly walked towards him. The sounds of her footsteps made him lookup. He immediately stood up.
“Anyone else around?” she asked him.
“N-no.”
“Okay,” she said as she put a hand down the back of her head. “We’re done with the radar, I guess.”
He picked up the carrying case, made his way around the table, and walked towards the radar. Upon reaching it, he disassembled it and put the components back into the case. Daring Do watched him do that with interest, but remained silent.
Wait till she tries to fly, Meg thought. It was only a matter of time; she was a pegasus after all. She brushed those thoughts aside as she retrieved her phone from the saddlebags hanging from around her neck. There was a call she needed to make.
She dialed the number. It was promptly answered. “Ryan speaking.”
“Ryan, it’s Meg. We’ve hit pay dirt. We’ve got an ancient mummy for you, a human mummy. We’re in the warehouse. Twilight’s keeping it cold and dry for now.”
“I’ll be over ASAP.” He hung up.
“We installed a walk-in freezer.”
After putting the phone away, she noticed the assistant standing in front of her—Dave was his name, if she remembered correctly. “You did? Where?”
“Through that door,” he said, pointing, “and to the right.”
Twilight went in the indicated direction, the mummy floating above her.
Daring Do remained where she was, intently focused on the two humans.
Meg walked over to her. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“It facilitates observing,” she said, shrugging.
Meg got down on the floor and sat cross-legged. “I might as well give you some facts. First off, this is not your realm.” The human made flapping motions with her hands. “Try to hover.”
The pegasus looked askance at her, but complied. Her flapping wings accomplished nothing. She tried flapping even harder.
“You’re not going to get off the floor. There’s no magic here. Not even the tiniest speck.”
She stopped flapping, but left her wings open. “I just saw Twilight levitating that mummy.” It hit her. “It’s that funny looking pill, isn’t it?”
“Yeah… basically,” Meg conceded. She rested her chin on her steepled hands. “And this is my true form.” She figured Twilight would have given her a pill if that was to remain a secret. “I’m only a pony in your realm thanks to some high-level alicorn magic.”
The pegasus looked Meg over from top to bottom, as if seeing her for the first time. “And what are you, exactly? Not a deformed minotaur, I’m guessing.”
“Nope, human. There are no minotaurs on this world, no physical evidence there ever have been. No unicorns, no pegasi, no hydras, no manticores, no griffons, no dragons, no cockatrices, no magical creatures of any kind. Just us humans. There are no other sapient species with which to share this world.”
“But the odd thing,” Twilight said as she returned to them, “is that all those magical creatures exist in human mythology going back thousands of years, including us unicorns and pegasi. We’ve also established a curious level of biological similarity between them and us, and we’ve just now proved they were in our realm in the distant past. Yet, somehow, they are not in our mythology, or legends, history, whatever.”
Daring Do’s face bore a wide grin. “Sounds like you’re still in need of my services. Oh, and you’re welcome.”
“I was expecting the services of Guiding Star, which you still haven’t explained, and don’t worry about your cutie mark fading.”
“My what is fading?” She removed her over-stuffed saddlebags, hampered by the lack of hoof magic, and looked at her flank. Sure enough, the compass rose had faded. She looked back at Twilight, fuming. “Don’t worry?”
The alicorn couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. “Honestly, it’s nothing to worry about. The lack of magic is causing it. It’ll come back once you return to our realm. Or you could stand close to me.”
The pegasus stamped a hoof. “Next time, I’m taking one of those pills.”
“Fair enough,” Twilight said. “And I’ll talk to Celestia about retaining your services.”
That seemed to mollify her. “Out of curiosity, how much does Rainbow Dash know about all this?”
“Everything,” Twilight said.
“Yup, everything,” Meg confirmed.
“Okay…” Daring looked back and forth between the two. “And how do you two know each other?”
“That… is a very long story,” Meg said.
“But it’s a long flight back to Manehattan,” Twilight added.
“And I’d still like one of those radar thingies,” Daring herself added.
Meg sighed. “I’ll look into it.” I better get an autographed doll out of this.
The sound of running footsteps caught everyone’s and everypony’s attention. Ryan burst into the warehouse, shouting, “Where is it?!”
“In the freezer,” Twilight calmly said.
That’s when he noticed the unexpected pegasus standing by the alicorn. “Is that Daring Do?”
The explorer’s eyes squinted. “I don’t recall getting any royalties from this realm.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “It’s going to be a long flight back.”
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Biology! Something I grasp WAY more than physics! Is this all there is to the side story, this tantalizingly delicious premise and tease, or is there more to come?
When I was six years old I found a book about mummies in my grandfathers house and I got interested in human history.
So I naturally want to know what happened in the distant past of Equestria and Earth :)
hah. Nice, this area of topic would make an interesting sequel.
Ancient humans in Equestria and Daring Do?
Please tell me there will more at some point, this is far too good to leave hanging.
Now that IS odd... even assuming "common descent" is junk (a reasonable postulate, given the issues it has here), those genetic similarities are FAR too close to be coincidence...
7235084 There is more to come, but probably not until the sequel.
7235177 Be patient
7235253 It would, wouldn't it?
7235332 At some point, yes.
7235491 Yeah, just think of what the tabloids would say.
7235524 I can wait! I have the patience of Job!
i.makeagif.com/media/9-27-2015/qcSyP6.gif
Okay, so maybe not Job, but the promise is enough!
Without carbon dating, you're basically reduced to artifact chaining - comparing similar artifacts found in situ with new artifacts, assume they're contemporary, and build your time lines for new sites based on what's found in what layers. If your logic chain contains any errors or distortions, you can be hundreds of years off.
Carbon 14 dating is a blunt tool at its best, within 50 years plus or minus, and there are eras with particularly bad conditions where the range of uncertainty is off the chart. The Late Bronze Age is an era of particular concern, because everything dangles from Egyptian dynasty lists which may have certain dynasties listed in sequence instead of contemporily as rival sovereign powers in a divided land. Telescope that error out by artifact chaining and it makes Palestinian time lines controversial, late Hittite history nonsensical and may have created the Greek Dark Ages out of whole cloth.
Applesauce!
7236670 And carbon dating will become even more problematic in the future. Fossil fuels have no carbon 14, as they've been sitting underground for millions of years. All the CO2 released from their consumption is diluting the C14 in the atmosphere, which will make formerly-living stuff look much older than it really is when it's dug out of the ground by future archeologists.
7237012 And the atmospheric atomic tests spiked the hell out of the radioactivity on the C14 generation side of the curve. But the carbon cycle is just that, a cycle, and there will continue to be nitrogen irradiated into C14, even in archeo-CO2. There will be an era adjustment, the same way they adjust for van Allen Belt flux, and then the cycle will converge towards the mean. Carbon dating's only really good for 100k anyways.
Well, I have read all the chapters and man, that was a hell of a ride. I come late but better late than never as we say.
Firstly, the story is great and I enjoyed following all this characters through their adventure. The meeting between ponies and humans isn't original but I think you handled it well (original doesn't automatically imply good). You took time to present and resolve the main issues and not rushed them. However, I found myself enjoying the interactions between humans and ponies more interesting that the whole imminent destruction threat. I don't know if that served as an excuse to make them interact or if it was a huge part in your plot.
Secondly, I was afraid that the references about the brony community and their creations would take too much place and would ended in fan-service but you kept it at minimum. It just added comedy and I laughed more than once to them.
Thirdly, I liked the light tone of the story. It may be the reason why I felt more involved by the interactions than by the threat of the magic leak.
And finally, I have a small regret about Steve and Meg. I think they didn't have enough interactions to describe their relationship. I know that they are married and that their love are not new, but I would have loved that you show them interact more in private moments. What I liked is that you didn't avoid the sex topic. You didn't describe it, because it's not what the story is about and I think this is not necessary to go full details, but I sometimes regret that some authors don't at least mention it.
In conclusion, it was great and it is apparently the first story you wrote on this site. That is a pretty good start. So fav and upvote of course.
At least none of those present had one of the books printed on THIS side.
Yeah, it occurs to me that Daring Do will either take this better or worse then almost any other Pony.
Better because she has had her life published before, and a STRONG case could be made that once this all comes to public info she could get a publishing deal with Hasbro and make some serious money.
On the other hand, all the humans who like MLP know who she is, and she can't claim royalties on the past episodes due to magical magicness. (Yes that is clearly a legal term.) Likewise the royalties situation for season 5 and 6 are....complex. Magical magicness may still apply, however they have used her image and its not a coincidence, NOR is was the actions of the show writers guided by destiny anymore. But.... they weren't aware of it.
But ignorance is no excuse under the law.
But they couldn't even imagine this was a situation. Thats an unusual level of ignorance normally not seen. You can imagine you should be going a slower speed because you didn't see a speed limit. You can respond to your ignorance. You could not do that here.
Holy cheese, what a fascinating chapter! Shame it's "just" one of the side stories!
Hopefully all these hint drops in the comments means it made it to the sequel! (If not, still going to love it, but still going to have a mystery-boner for this plot thread)