2. Cat's out of the Bag
After the show finished taping, Meg did not wait for Twilight and Sunset Shimmer to return to the green room. She returned to Equestria immediately. It wasn’t like she was supposed to wait for them; besides, the others were waiting for an update.
Rainbow Dash was in her face almost immediately—again. “How can you let that happen?!” she demanded.
Meg pushed her back. “They’re fine, Dash. They’ll be back any minute.”
“No, not that.” She waved a hoof at the monitor. “That.”
Meg looked for herself, wondering what the protesters had escalated to. As it turned out, the story of the hour concerned a hurricane developing in the Atlantic. It was currently projected to hit the lower east coast. “That might make them forget about the pony apocalypse for a while,” she mused.
“Never mind that! Why was that allowed to happen?”
Meg gave a blank look to the pegasus hovering annoyingly close to her face. “Allowed? On my world, Dash, no one controls the weather. You know that.”
“Even with all your awesome machines and computers and stuff?”
She didn’t need this crap right now. “We can predict a few days in advance how it will develop, what path it’ll take and how strong it’ll get, and that’s about it.”
“But, but, all the destruction that could be avoided!”
Meg glared at the weather pony. “Are you offering to divert or neutralize it?”
The weather pony sagged to the floor and folded her wings. “It’s too late for that.”
“A weather system that big would require tens of thousands of weather ponies to control,” Celestia explained. “It would also require a magical field encompassing the entire system. Isolated bubbles of magic would not suffice.”
“But we lacked the means to precisely model the dynamics of a weather system,” Twilight said. “Evidently, they can.”
Meg practically jumped at the unexpected voice. She hadn’t noticed their return. “Can you do something in, like, the next day or two?”
The alicorn’s head lowered. “No. It’ll take a lot of research and experimentation. It might not even be possible. In your realm, the energy of the system cannot be destroyed; it must go somewhere.”
The mood had grown somber. “Look, everypony,” Meg began. “This isn’t your fault. Hurricanes have been happening forever. We’ll survive. It wasn’t that long ago that we couldn’t know one was coming until it was too late to evacuate.”
“You’re right, of course,” Twilight said, sighing. “Let’s talk about the interview instead.”
“Excellent idea,” Princess Celestia said. “Meg, what’s your assessment?”
She quickly decided to stick to what had happened on camera. “It went as well as could be hoped for. Will it stop those protests? No, it’ll take more than mere words to do that.”
“I just can’t get over how much they liked me,” Sunset said. “I did some pretty horrible things, and they know it.”
“Yes, but they saw how reformed you were in the second movie. They like the reformed Discord too.”
“But none of that happened! We even told them that!”
“To be fair,” Twilight said, “that first one made you look worse than you really were, so maybe it balances out?”
“What matters is that you have learned from your mistakes, and have become a pony I can be proud of. They are not wrong to adore you, even if they do so for the wrong reasons.”
Sunset gave Celestia a wan smile. “If you say so, Princess.”
Once the meeting had ended, Twilight returned Meg to her home. The question of the Pinkie doll consumed her. Should she bring it up? That could be done without mentioning the mysterious message, after all.
“Do you have family or friends in the path of that hurricane?” Twilight asked.
“What? No. Why do you ask?”
Twilight looked at her with concern. “You seem… preoccupied?”
“No… well… sort of… There’s something I need to take care of, right now, actually, so…”
“Sure, no problem. Talk to you tomorrow.”
The alicorn vanished into thin air.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t around, unfortunately.
Meg hit her head a few times with her fist. “Don’t get paranoid.”
She dropped into the chair in front of her computer, plugged her phone in, and transferred the picture of that message. The word processor she used came with an OCR tool, and it had no trouble converting the image of hexadecimal digits into an actual text file. A quick and dirty script later, it had become a binary file.
“So now what,” she said to herself.
If she was supposed to make sense of that data, then it ought to have been encoded in a way she can decode. As she had mentioned to Jessica, the apparent randomness could be explained by either compression or encryption. Or both.
Compression was easy enough to test. She tried every compression utility she could think of, to see which one understood the file format. None of them did.
That left encryption, and decryption required a key.
“What am I supposed to use for a key?” she asked.
There was no obvious answer to that. For that matter, she did not know which encryption algorithm had been used.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t encrypted. Maybe it’s an application-specific file format—which begged the question of which one. Or maybe this was all just a bad joke after all, and it really was nothing but a bunch of meaningless, random bytes.
The sound of a key being inserted into the front door lock could be heard. Seconds later the door opened. “In here!” she called out, not bothering to hide her accumulated frustrations.
She continued to stare at the hex dump on the screen, hoping for some miraculous insight. She’d even settle for one of those apocryphal Pinkie Pie deus ex machina explanations.
“Did those protesters manage to get inside the theater?”
Meg looked up to see her husband leaning against the doorway. “No, nothing like that. The taping went as well as could be hoped for. Well… the audience did almost lose it when Twilight announced the Daring Do book deal in the works, and also the DVD commentaries that they’re working on with Hasbro.”
“Music to A. K. Yearling’s ears, I’m sure.”
Meg had resumed staring at the screen. She sighed. “Come over here.”
By the time Steve got there, the picture of that mysterious message was on the screen. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked after reading it.
“Your guess is as good as mine. It just appeared out of thin air on the snack table when I looked away for a moment. Jessica’s doing forensic tests on it right now.”
“And Twilight’s guess?”
“She doesn’t know about it, not yet anyway. Jessica thought it a good idea to wait until the tests are done. Maybe it’s nothing, just a bad joke.”
“Twilight has tests, too, you know, and since magic is implicated in its appearance…”
Meg pushed back from the desk and clasped her hands on her lap. “And what if she really is hiding something from us?”
Steve walked over to the shelves and retrieved the infamous Pinkie Pie doll. He stared into its eyes, as if answers might be found there. “Like what? It’s just an ordinary doll now.” He turned it on its side. “An incredibly valuable autographed doll.” He gave Meg a smile. “But we don’t need Twilight to tell us that.”
She sagged in the chair. “I don’t know.”
“And even if, for the sake of argument, she is hiding something, she probably has a good reason. She’s not the villain.”
She pointed at the monitor. “Well, someone or somepony seems to have different thoughts on that matter.”
With an air of resignation, he returned the doll to its place on the shelf, next to the still un-autographed Derpy doll. “I don’t know. I guess we wait for the forensics to come back and take it from there.”
She swiveled the chair to face him. “On a different subject, I just received an invite to a hastily planned staff meeting for the convention. Tomorrow.”
“Since when do you attend staff meetings?”
“Since ponies became real, obviously.”
“But they can’t possibly know… oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
Meg made her way towards the back of one of those trendy cafe breweries, where the house microbrews held the starring role on the menu. It was too public for her liking, but with the background noise of everyone talking at the same time, there wasn’t much danger of being overheard. Nor did it hurt that ponies were the topic du jour. Last night’s Late Show must have gotten record ratings.
She had little trouble finding them. The senior staff were all there, maybe a dozen in all. She didn’t know most of them. A large bronycon had many moving parts, and she had never been that interested in how it operated, much less doing the operating.
As she looked for an empty seat, her eyes met Tom’s, confirming her fears. His presence at a staff meeting was slightly less unlikely than her own.
Maybe it was a good thing. They’d likely want to know why she’d kept it secret; but then, until just recently, Tom was guilty of the same. After his encounter with Twilight and Sunset in her home almost a year ago, he had somehow convinced himself it never happened. Meg hadn’t brought it up again, and Sunset never did participate as a judge or contestant.
I guess he can no longer deny it happened.
She choose a seat on the other end of the table, on the same side so their eyes could no longer meet, and sat down. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Help yourself to some beer,” someone next to her said.
She waved off the offer. “That’s okay.”
Andrew, the president, addressed her. “I might as well get straight to the point. What would it take to get Twilight or the others to appear at the con?”
Exactly as she suspected. “I’m not her agent or secretary,” she simply said, knowing full well it wasn’t going to work.
“You know how to contact her, right?”
She wanted to give an answer that would make Applejack quite unhappy with her. It was her word against Tom’s. But to what end? The ponies weren’t going away, and neither was her connection to them. She settled for a non-answer. “Are you aware of the security implications? The Ed Sullivan Theater was crawling with Secret Service agents yesterday.”
He gave her a flat look. “One may wonder how you’d know that.”
Ouch. Fortunately there was a good explanation. “Because it’s their job to protect foreign heads of state?”
“Good point,” he conceded. With a smile, he added, “But I noticed you haven’t denied being able to contact her.”
It was a lost cause. “Yes, I can, but there’s no point. It’s not gonna happen, not this year anyway.”
“If we can make our case directly to her…” said the woman next to her, the one who had mentioned the beer. The head of PR & Marketing?
“I can assure you that Twilight is well aware of bronycons.”
“How do you even know her?” It was the vice-president this time.
What non-answer to give? “It’s a long story, one I’m not allowed to tell, so please change the subject.”
“Not allowed by who?”
Meg did not answer, choosing instead to help herself to… it was fried, whatever it was.
“Okay, different subject. Have you really been to Equestria?”
That made her take a quick look around her. No one at the nearby tables seemed to have noticed, what with the loud background noise.
Once again she wondered whether to disappoint the Element of Honesty, and came to the same conclusion. “You all saw Colbert last night, right?”
They nodded.
“And you saw all those photos of Ponyville?”
More nodding.
“I took them all with my phone.”
She helped herself to another fried something. It was cheesy.
“Did you use Twilight’s balloon? There were a lot of aerial shots.”
Didn’t think that through.
Before she could decide whether to just say yes, Tom finally said something. “She didn’t have to. She’s a pegasus there.”
Meg glared his way, but of course she couldn’t see him. Whatever, the cat was out of the bag.
“You were… turned into a pony,” Andrew said.
“I got better,” Meg helpfully pointed out.
No laughs.
No one gets the reference.
“Maybe you should have been there,” he said. “On stage, sitting next to Twilight. You’re a member of that exclusive club of humans who not only have been to Equestria, but got to be a pegasus.”
“Wasn’t gonna happen.”
“Oh, come on. How could they turn that down?”
The assumption behind that question sunk in. “They? Who says they even knew. I have no desire to become a freak show.”
“I would’ve done it a heartbeat. Think of all the fame.”
That look on his face… he probably would have.
“Look, you all must think I’ve been living the brony dream come true, and maybe I even thought that at first, but you have no idea what it’s done to my life, especially now.” She pushed her chair back and started to get up.
“Don’t go,” Andrew hurriedly said. “We get the point.”
Meg sat back down. “Do you? Here’s a small sample. You know all those ‘conversion bureau’ protesters?”
“That’s all nonsense, right?” the guy across from her asked.
“Guess who got to explain to Celestia what a ‘conversion bureau’ is.”
Pained looks on everyone’s faces.
“And yes, it’s all nonsense.” Meg decided to pour herself a beer after all. “The point is, this stopped being make-believe for me a long time ago.”
They waited until she put the mug down before asking another question. “It has stopped being make-believe for all of us,” Andrew said. “So what can we do to help?”
Meg’s eyes drifted over the other tables, full of people. She wondered how they would react if a pony walked in the front door. Would ponies ever be able to go about their business in public, with no one caring that they’re ponies? How to make such a world possible?
Is that what her cutie mark really meant?
What they were really after, especially Andrew, was the fame and glory of being the first bronycon to have actual ponies, of that Meg had little doubt. Nonetheless, bronycons—and bronies in general—could be a useful resource. Did their motivations really matter?
I’m not even thirty and I’m already becoming cynical and jaded. How does Celestia manage it?
Her eyes returned to Andrew. “What do you suggest?”
“How about we auction off some of Derpy’s muffins?” someone new asked. “Proceeds to charity, naturally.”
Meg shook her head. “Derpy doesn’t make muffins, she just eats a lot of them. That’s what Pinkie tells me anyway.”
“Really? There was this really popular fanfic about her talent for baking muffins—”
“I don’t care if it got to the top of the featured box. It’s not reality.”
“Really? Uh, okay… Wait, what about Pinkie’s cupcakes instead?”
“I suppose that might be doable. No promises.”
Murmurs of agreement halted when Andrew spoke. “Good idea, Penny, but how do we prove the cupcakes are what we claim them to be?”
Right, Penny, head of charity and sponsorships. She really ought to learn all their names, if she was going to become a regular attendee—as seemed inevitable. “A prerecorded video from Pinkie shouldn’t be a problem.”
“That ought to be adequate,” Andrew said. “Any other ideas?”
The head of events and programming spoke next. Meg knew who he was, as he was Tom’s boss. “Daring Do books are going to be sold here, right? I assume that A. K. Yearling will do a book signing tour. Why not at our con?” Tyler look at Meg. “By the way, who’s going to sign the books, Yearling or Daring Do? Are they really the same?”
Meg wasn’t sure how to answer that. Daring had been informed of the big reveal of Daring Don’t, but she could still choose to claim the cartoon got it wrong. If her true identity was widely known here, it was only a matter of time before it got back to Equestria. It wasn’t her place to make the decision for her. Nor, for that matter, was a book signing tour a given. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
No one pressed her on that, to her relief.
“Auction off zap apple jam?”
“Not a good idea to remove a highly magical item from a magical field.” Not after that “potion” incident in her office at work. “Plus, I don’t know if it’s safe for humans to eat in a magical field.”
The implications of that sunk in before the next suggestion came. “Apple cider?”
“That’s safe enough, but… not that I want to discourage ideas, but I don’t think Twilight would view auctioning off a lengthy list of items as being all that helpful to her.”
“Rainbow Dash could do something about that hurricane that’s about to hit Florida.”
Meg grimaced. “No, she can’t. It’s way too big. Even in Equestria, it wouldn’t be practical. Standard operating procedure is to stamp them out as soon as possible, while they’re still small and poorly formed. Dash was rather shocked we didn’t do that.”
The flow of suggestions dried up for the moment. Meg took advantage of that by drinking more beer.
“The problem, as I see it,” began Andrew, “is that we simply don’t know enough to know what would be helpful.”
That had become quite clear. How could it be otherwise? Their only sources of information was a cartoon—a cartoon that had stopped tracking reality as soon as ponies had discovered humanity—news stories that stretched the definition of “objective,” and a late night talk show.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Meg hurriedly got up and left, going straight to her car. Once inside, she got her phone out and called Twilight, praying she wasn’t too busy to answer.
“Meg? It’s not time yet.”
“I’m still at the staff meeting. Tom told them everything, it looks like.”
“Is that going to be a problem for you?”
Meg looked around, to see if one of them had followed her. “I don’t know.” None had. “They’re willing to help, but apart from auctioning off stuff of Equestrian origin, they don’t really know what would be helpful.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Pinkie’s cupcakes, AJ’s apple cider, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
“What is it that can’t wait an hour?”
“I’d like you to spend a few minutes with them when you come to pick me up. Even if there isn’t much they could do for you now, you should still cultivate a relationship.”
Twilight did not immediately respond.
“Okay, but no more than four, including Tom.”
“You specifically want Tom?”
“Sure, why not? He can consider it a reward for what we put him through. I’ll be there fifteen minutes earlier to make time to talk to them.”
“Okay, bye.”
She stared at her phone, the call concluded. “A reward? Really?” That wasn’t like her, to consider the chance to meet her again a “reward.”
After returning the phone to her purse, she got out of the car. As she headed back, she considered the logistics. They would have to come to her apartment. Tom knew the way, but not anyone else. Well, they’d just have to figure something out.
All were present and accounted for when she sat down. They went silent, waiting for her to say something. “Twilight has agreed to meet with three of you—plus Tom—for a few minutes. We’ll need to leave soon.”
“You just spoke with her?” Andrew asked, somewhat incredulously. “How?”
“I have her phone number.”
“She has a phone,” he said, even more incredulous.
“I know. Season five somehow missed that detail. Go figure.”
“An Equestrian phone?”
Meg decided she’d had enough fun. “No, a smart phone of human origin. Yes, she’s in Equestria right now. Yes, she can get a signal there. I can, too, on my own phone. No, other phones won’t have a signal. It involves magic. Enough said.”
“She specifically named me?” Tom asked, fidgeting.
“Yes she did, Tom,” she replied. “I assume you’ll be one of the three, Andrew.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”
“I guess you get to pick the other two.”
He didn’t need long to decide. “Joe and Elaine.”
That would be the vice-president, who was sitting next to him, and, judging from the way she was bouncing in her chair, the head of PR and marketing. “We should leave soon to make sure you get your full fifteen minutes.”
Meg arrived at her home last, as she had to first call her husband to give a heads up. The four of them were waiting near her parking spot. None of them could’ve ridden with her, as she would be going to Equestria with Twilight. The staff meeting would resume without her once they went back.
Meg got out of her car and simply said “follow me” as she walked past them. They silently followed her to her front door. She checked the time on her phone. “It’ll be ten minutes before she shows up.”
Upon opening the door, she stood aside and invited them in with a wave.
“Over here,” Steve called out.
A second later, Elaine brought a hand to her mouth. “Ohmygod… you’re really here.”
Twilight Sparkle was lying on the sofa, giving a friendly smile to the new arrivals.
Steve got up from the recliner. “I won’t get in the way of your quality Twilight time, so I’ll just be in the other room,” he said, and left.
The four gathered around the pony on the sofa. Twilight looked up at Tom. “Nice to see you again, Tom. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry our last get together ended the way it did.”
“I-I’m not sure the blame is yours,” he stammered. “Meg obviously didn’t have any trouble accepting your reality.”
“Oh, yes she did,” Twilight said with a smile.
“But I did get over it quickly,” Meg countered. “You got here early.”
“Indeed, I did. I managed to free up some more time.” She stood up on a cushion and beamed. “Why don’t we continue our conversation at my place?”
That was not the plan. “In Equestria?” Meg asked, dreading the answer.
“Seriously?” asked Andrew. “We get to visit Equestria?”
“Don’t get too excited,” Twilight said. “Just for a few minutes, and you’ll be inside my castle the whole time.” She caught the look on Meg’s face. “You can wait here, Meg, until they come back, if you want.”
“Why wouldn’t you participate?” Andrew asked.
Why indeed, she thought. Twilight knew; that’s why she offered her an out. Why that should matter, when they all already knew, was the question.
Because there’s a huge difference between hearing about something, and seeing it.
It wouldn’t be the first time. She hadn’t wanted Special Agents Holmes and Fowler to know her as a pony, but that had worked out okay in the end. Luck, or destiny? If only her cutie mark had come with an instruction manual.
“What Twilight isn’t saying,” she said, “is that if I accompanied you to Equestria, I will arrive as a pony.” Before any of them could respond, she started walking. “Let me get my saddlebags.”
She went to the home office. Steve was on his laptop. “I heard,” he quietly said.
Meg fetched her saddlebags off the table and put them around her neck. “Maybe this is what I’m supposed to do. I dunno. Call it a leap of faith.”
“I don’t know either, but if things go wrong, our options are a heck of a lot better now. If nothing else, the Feds are with us this time, not against us.”
She could only hope it would turn out better than that as she transferred her phone from purse to saddlebag. Not that her destiny problems would impress Twilight, the mare who had dealt with Nightmare Moon, Tirek, and others. If this was the worst destiny had in store for her, she was getting off pretty damn easy.
Meg gave her husband a kiss. “Be back in a few hours—assuming there isn’t a windigo attack… or whatever.”
“Be sure to take plenty of pictures if there is.”
That was almost enough to make her smile.
Almost.
She went back to the others. Twilight was standing on the floor, the others in front of her. She stood beside the alicorn. “Let’s go.”
“Is that supposed to be a cutie mark?” asked Joe, pointing at her saddlebags.
Meg ignored the question for now. “Twilight, just do the return spell already.”
“One return spell coming up,” the alicorn obligingly singsonged.
The spell took them all to Twilight’s throne room, between the circle of thrones and the imposing double doors, now closed. The ones who were still human looked around, but their eyes quickly converged on the one unfamiliar thing in the room: a pegasus standing next to Twilight.
“You look so adorable!” Elaine squeed.
“Try being a pony that isn’t adorable,” Meg deadpanned.
She watched Joe move to her side. “That really is your cutie mark?” he said. “Why that one?”
“You’d have to ask whatever it is that passes them out. I had no say in its design.”
“How did those saddlebags move from around your neck to your back?” asked Elaine.
“Magic,” Meg replied. “It’s part of the standing transformation-on-crossover spell that’s in place.”
“If it’s a standing spell, why are we still human?”
“Because none of you have ever been ponified.” The pegasus walked into the circle of thrones. “This is where it happened to me,” she said, turning back to address them. “The Mane Six went Rainbow Power, zapped me with rainbows and harmony, then Twilight did her stuff. Same spell as that breezies episode.”
“With your permission,” Andrew asked. “Right?”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Of course with my permission. If anything, Twilight tried to talk me out of it.”
“Hard to believe that was a year ago,” the alicorn said.
“Talk you out of it,” Joe repeated. “Why? What’s wrong with being a pony?”
“When I became a magical pony, well… like I said, whatever it is that passes out cutie marks noted my existence. I acquired a destiny. Or maybe I always had one, and that’s why I encountered Twilight and got ponified.” She sighed. “Who knows what’s cause and what’s effect.”
“You’re… not wearing anything,” Tom stuttered.
Meg spun to face him. “Is that a problem for you?” She scanned the others. “Any of you? Turned on by naked horses?”
"But… but… you’re not really a pony!”
Why did I do this?
“And that is why I would never do a talk show.” She took a deep breath. “Just change the subject.”
After an uncomfortable silence, Elaine obliged. “You can really fly?”
Meg spread her wings, started flapping, and lifted a few feet off the floor. “It’s as awesome as you think,” she said in an unenthusiastic imitation of a certain rainbow-maned pegasus.
Andrew pointed up at the ceiling. “What happened to the roots of the library?”
“In the ground, where they belong,” Twilight answered with a smirk. “Don’t bother believing anything you see in the fifth season.”
“But it was destroyed by Tirek, right?”
“Discord restored it as an act of contrition.”
“Indeed I did,” a solemn voice declared.
Out of the shadows—which weren’t there a moment ago—a figure dressed as a medieval monk shuffled forth, head bowed in penitence.
Elaine raised a hand to point at the hooded figure. “Is that… who I think it is?”
The robe and hood were doing a surprisingly effective job at hiding his identity, somehow, though why he was bothering was another matter. Meg flew over to Twilight, returning to the floor as the alicorn asked, “Discord, why aren’t you waiting for us at Fluttershy’s?”
In a flash of light, he ditched the outfit and shadows and replaced it with a hurt look. “And miss the opportunity to meet more humans?” He looked them over with an approving smile. “Such chaotic potential. Just look at how your kind are responding to ponies!”
“Well, we’re not freaking out!” Andrew said.
He was suddenly among them. “You misunderstand. It’s not about how any specific human reacts, it’s the variety of reactions! Some proclaiming the end of the world, others eagerly seeking the nearest conversion bureau, and some…” He jabbed an eagle talon at Andrew. “Some taking it all in stride.”
Discord appeared next to Twilight. “Same stimulus, an incredibly chaotic smorgasbord of reactions!”
Dishes popped into existence around the humans, each full of hors d'oeuvres.
Joe carefully picked up a T-bone steak that had been shrunk to only a half-inch in size. He examined it as if it might suddenly sprout fangs. “It won’t turn me into a pumpkin, will it?”
“Why? Would you like it to?”
He threw it back onto the plate.
“Don’t encourage him,” Meg said.
Discord pouted. “Party pooper.” No one was touching any of the food. “Not even the banana worms?” On one plate, tiny partially peeled bananas, only two inches long, moved around in a worm-like fashion, unmolested by humans. “Oh very well…” The plates all vanished.
“Perhaps we should be getting to the point.” Meg looked at Discord in irritation. “We’ll have to leave soon.”
“I heartily agree!” The draconequus snapped his talons and a blackboard appeared. He tapped it with a rod that was now held by his paw. “We can auction off this…” The words “Pinkie’s cupcakes” appeared in pink chalk. “Or this..” He tapped the blackboard again, and in yellow chalk the words “Applejack’s cider” appeared.
“How does he know—”
Meg shook her head at Tom, silencing him.
“But if you really want high bids, you need to auction off this.” He tapped it one last time, and on the blackboard appeared a miniature multi-colored chalk outline of Discord. It waved at the humans. “A chance to meet moi in person!”
Meg couldn’t deny Discord might be right. He probably would get a high bid. How that would help human-pony relations wasn’t so clear.
“I’m not sure our legal council would sign off on that,” Andrew said. “They might find the risks… uh…” He gulped. “You know.”
The blackboard and rod vanished. “I’m reformed,” he said, crossing his arms. “I can assure you the winner will be returned in the same state in which he or she arrived.”
“I think it’ll be best if we continued this conversation at another time,” Twilight said. “I need to go fetch something, then I’ll take you right back.”
She teleported away.
“This is what you’ve been putting up with for the past year?” Tom asked Meg.
“I’m still here, you know.”
Meg rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “Look, I know Discord can be… I guess what I’m saying…” She returned her hoof to the floor. “I can vouch for him, sorta.”
Discord rolled his eyes. “Such a resounding endorsement.”
This was getting worrisome. Fortunately, there was one card she could play that usually worked. “We can talk about it later, with Fluttershy.”
The draconequus grumbled. “Fine.”
Meg was sighing in relief when Twilight teleported back. The alicorn walked over to the humans. No plaid pill was visible. Was it already in her mouth? “I’m taking you back now,” she said in a slightly slurred voice.
They disappeared, leaving just Meg and Discord.
“So,” Meg said, breaking the silence. “You left Fluttershy all alone with the Smooze.”
“His self-control really has improved,” he said, waving off her concerns with a paw.
Meg said nothing in return.
“Point taken.”
Discord snapped his talons and the two of them were gone.
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Conrunners! Keep an eye on those people, ponies. They get paid in ego. You can turn your back on a paycheque, but never, ever turn your back on an ego.
Well, things are certainly starting off exciting, which is nice - it would have been far too easy to start at an earlier point in the timeline and build things up slowly.
Definitely looking forward to see how this all plays out.
will the ponies get to see the rest of the world? id love them to see my home country of canada, aj and dash would fit right in at a hockey game.....maybe either ottawa senators or my fav team the toronto maple leafs.....fuck the habs
Glad to see the sequel up. I can't wait for more.
Wonder what they'll talk about...
So something's up with Twilight. Part of me is hoping it's just stress and perfectionism, but another part of me is wondering if she's somehow been replaced by a changeling. That point about offering a meeting with her as a reward instantly struck me as just the sort of thing her changeling replacement would've said in To Where and Back Again.
Meanwhile, of course, I'm eagerly awaiting more information on where the portal came from and all the other mysteries of the connection between the two worlds.
I’m really excited to see this setting is continuing!
Perfect timing, too! Just after Pandemic, another excellent “human world meets pony world” type story that I was following, concluded.
I was just thinking about Destinies the other day and wondering if it would update anytime soon, then bam, new chapter and a sequel.
Hmm, if magic absorbs or impedes radiation this would make things a bit interesting. The most radioactive object in our solar system is, of course, the sun. If Equestria's sun is magic, it would not emit any radiation beyond light and infrared, and maybe some other wavelengths, but no cosmic or gamma rays. Also, Equestria's sun is able to be 'connected' to and moved by an alicorn. Even Equestria's moon, which would reflect and absorb the sun's magic field, is able to be linked to and moved by a pony.
Does that mean that to jump start our magic field, we need to 'awaken' our sun?
If so... all hail Solara and Celeste*, the human princesses of the sun and moon. (names are tentative until the ladies who can hit you with a cosmic-sized object kindly inform us what they would like to be called)
i realized something in the last fic were the cmc showed up in the human world did the cmc take the plaid pills? its been awhile since i read the last fic but its seems very irrisponsible for twilight to leave what could have been medication around for little foals to get at them
8531346 They did. Twilight thought she'd kept the whole thing a secret, but upon learning the Crusaders had overheard things, she actually locked up the pill machine.
Unless the bags contain either pure sugar or fat-filled snacks, you want "sugar-" and "fat-filled" so it's clear that the "and" is being used to remove a duplicate "filled" from "sugar-filled" and "fat-filled".
More generally, include a hyphen whenever you're building a single adjective from multiple words... with the exception of adverbs. "quick-witted guy" vs. "quickly running water".
(As I understand it, you omit the hyphen for adverbs because it's already unambiguous that "quickly" is modifying "running" rather than both of them modifying "water" directly. "quickly water" is nonsense.)
Actually, compression is not that easy to test because the header which the compression tool looks for to recognize the file isn't an inherent part of the compression.
...plus, If it's compressed in a way a compression utility will recognize, then it can be recognized without trying to decompress it. For example:
"Compression utilities" don't generally expose support for working with blobs of raw compressed data (eg. DEFLATE is the algorithm used in Zip and gzip) because, without a header/footer to identify the format and provide an integrity check, the only way to tell if something is compressed is to decompress it and see if the output "looks right".
(If a compression algorithm is well-designed, every possible compressed string is a valid representation of some decompressed string. It's up to you to ensure you only compress meaningful stuff because any input the decompressor refuses represents a wasted opportunity for the compressor to pack things more tightly.)
The only situation where headerless "try and see what we get" behaviour is the standard is deniable encryption like TrueCrypt, where the data is supposed to be indistinguishable from the gibberish a secure erase utility might leave behind when you're preparing to throw out an old hard drive. (When you enter your passphrase, TrueCrypt tries every decryption algorithm it knows and, if it finds a valid header, it keeps going with that method.)
A more viable option. Not every format follows the convention of using recognizable ASCII characters like "PK" (Zip), "Rar!", "PNG", "GIF89a", or "MZ" (The initial form of the EXE format was created by Mark Zbikowski) for the "magic number" (the part of the header which identifies the format to the application).
For example, "JPEG" files have a non-alphanumeric "magic number" (identifying string). The "JFIF" (JPEG File Interchange Format) that you're likely to see a few characters into the file if you open one up in something like Notepad just indicates a specific variant of the format.
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...though I doubt they'd say no to "Sol Invicta" as a title. ("Sol Invictus", literally "The Unconquered Sun" was a roman deity, with "Invictus" being the masculine form because, as in modern descendants of Latin, Latin nouns have gender, adjectives agree in gender with their nouns, and the sun god was male.)
Also, related trivia: "victim" comes from the Latin for "conquered".
Like the fact they thought to seek some help from bringing groups, not a bad idea. Xd thou I can understand some concerns of certain people within those groups.
But what's up with meh? See seems extremely stressed out, and goes into attack mood under the smallest at times unintended provoktion.
Also, will we see how the rest of equestria (whatever the planet's name is) reactions to humans being revealed? Extremely curious how the minotaurs react. Xd
Those banana worms sound delicious. And a miniature T-bone steak? Bah, those humans have no sense of taste or adventure. Hmm, a meeting with Discord... the only question is, who gets it? Will they even be a US citizen? What if it's Patrick Stewart?
Typo.
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Right? I quite like this discord :P
Twilight.... Suspicious....hrm