Ponification Nation

by PrincessColumbia

Prologue

Ponyfication Nation
by
Princess Columbia
(a.k.a. Christy “Dame Helen” McFarland)
Disclaimer: My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic is not mine, now go away before I banish you to the moon.
Author’s note: Yes, there’s quite a bit of Self-insert-Mary-Sueism in this fic. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Yes, I’m aware I’ve driven away my audience with that.
Chapter 1
The Night. That’s what the press have started calling it since the change started happening. Nobody is really quite sure why, but the changes only happened once a given timezone had rotated away from exposure to the sun.

The changes were, of course, first notice on Twitter. At first no-one took it seriously. It was assumed that “OMG, woke up as a pony! #ponyfication” was a joke, a new meme that rode on the popularity of the TV show “My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic,” but then the video hit YouTube.

Amongst the usual cat vids and yet another dumbass kid dropping their crotch onto a stair rail as they attempted a skateboard trick came a video of a talking pony. Pastel colored, as one would expect from the show, but shockingly lifelike. Interacting with physical objects in the room, perspective was perfect. Within seconds accusations that the video was faked and was a stunt from Hasbro to promote the upcoming season of the show from which the meme came. Debates started raging on 4chan, ponychan, Equestria Daily comments, Facebook pages...even the transgender social network Pink Essence got in on the act since the pony in the video was a female who claimed to have been male before it happened, presenting a sort of twisted ray of hope to the transgender community site.

It remained something to be dismissed as a trivial fan phenomenon with an odd twist until eight hours after the start of the phenomenon. With the first tweet of the phenomenon coming from Hawaii and the video coming from Australia, it was only natural that there be no serious societal problems that should arise. While the idea of a person spontaneously transfiguring into a pony wasn’t one that could ever be taken seriously, at the least the inclination in so-called “western” nations would be to first quarantine then examine the subject. The third-world nations of asia and the middle east were not quite so...liberal.
The next video was the game changer. It showed a pony, a pegasus, tied by it’s neck and hooves with a horrible clamp fashioned from jumper cables pinning it’s wings together. It was being slowly dragged behind a car as veiled women and heavily bearded men threw stones at it. Even to this day, the poor pony’s gender has never been determined, due to the poor quality of the video and what happened next.

Some sicko backed another car up to the pony, and the jumper cables, still clamped to the wings, were looped over the car’s tow-hitch. Later analysis of the video’s audio track revealed the men driving the car’s counting down. It was hoped that there would be something to identify them, but all that could be heard was the arabic words for “three...two...one...” The revving of the engines, the chanting of the crowd, and all the background noise was drown out briefly by the terror and pain filled shrieks from the pony as it’s wings were ripped off. When it wouldn’t stop screaming, a terrible mix of a human-like voice and the high-pitched neighing screech equines have, some of the men from the crowd stepped forward with makeshift clubs from rebar, broken chairs, whatever they could find, and silenced the pony with their violence. It was dead in minutes.
The worst part, and what caused the entire free world to stop and take notice, was that the pony was clearly a child. It was a tiny pony, and there was no cutiemark.

The executives at Hasbro were woken in the middle of the night by media inquiries. The mainstream media was still treating the videos and social media storm as nothing more than a publicity stunt, now taken a terrible turn for pure tastelessness. The PR department from Hasbro, now on very good terms with the brony community, quickly and vigorously denied any involvement and began making calls.

At first the calls didn’t make it through to the nominal “leaders” of the bronies, the ones who’d organized events like BroNYcon and sites like Equestria Daily. Indeed, the mostly American editorial staff of EQD were in bed and weren’t expected to be awake for several hours yet. The European bronies who were awake and able to receive emails and Skype calls also denied any involvement in any viral campaign or marketing stunt. It was only when the Down Under bronies were finally contacted on video-chat that things went pear-shaped.

When the first brony who’d been ponyfied managed to answer, (hooves being significantly harder to use a mouse and keyboard with quickly) Hasbro and the bronies started comprehending the full import of what was happening.

Naturally, the governments were trying to keep things quiet. The middle eastern governments, especially Pakistan, where the first pony torture video came from, denied the phenomenon was occurring. The more progressive government were stuck. They didn’t want to openly acknowledge the issue, but as usual for governments they were slow to move. This proved to be a saving grace for the ponyfied ex-humans, as by the time any western government might have actually done something on the national level, it was already too late.

By the time the United State’s eastern seaboard started waking up, the Eurobronies were nearly to the last one ponyfied. Only those countries with an exceptionally high count of migrants from third world countries had any problems with violence, and those movements were quashed almost as soon as they started, especially when some of the police turned out to be converted bronies. It turns out that unicorn police, even those with less than three hours of experience with their magic, can hurl a shockingly large number of tear gas canisters with startling precision, and pegasus ponies, even when they’ve only been flying for the few hours since they woke up with hooves instead of hands that morning, are unbeatable at crowd control.

As news reports began showing more and more ponies, now in the uncountable tens of thousands and climbing, emerging from their homes. Some fearful, some proud, some just plain too happy for words, it was suddenly clear that there was a new minority population in the world and they were it. The morning news was blanketed with pastel furred faces, some with wings, others with horns, and not a few bouncing and doing just plain impossible things as the made their way to school, work, or just to be out in the world as ponies.

A mere five hours later, the remainder of the Americas was being swept into the light of day, including the state of Arizona.

This is where my story begins.

I was woken up with a scream