Chapter 4: Sunset
Tonight on Fox News. A storm of controversy erupts as the alien princess, Celestia, steps out of her Canadian shadows and onto the world stage. In an exclusive interview granted only to Fox News, our own Phil Bartiromo spoke with the extra-dimensional monarch on a wide ranging set of topics. Phil, what was your take on Princess Celestia of Equestria?
Thanks, Steve. The princess is very much a ‘people person’, and carries with her a surprising amount of personal magic, emotional magnetism and charisma. She is fully aware of the effect her appearance has on people and certainly isn’t afraid of using it.
When you say “personal magic” you mean that literally. Don’t you, Phil?
Indeed, Steve. We discovered, quite by accident, that everyone in the small hamlet of Brightly is under the effects of Equestrian magic, whether they choose to be or not. Magic that was part of the supposed “accident” that created the portal between our worlds over a hundred years ago. When we discovered this, Celestia smoothly diverted us by charming one of our staffers into becoming part of her personal entourage and demonstrating her ability to create objects from thin air.
What happened to our staff member, Phil? Are they going to be okay?
We can only assume so, Steve. Fox News Team member Jessica Velasquez was directly influenced by the princess into becoming a translator for her, and as part of that has come into direct contact with Equestrian magic. Using her magic, Celestia demonstrated her ability to manifest a person’s hopes and dreams by bringing into existence a piece of Miss Velasquez’s cultural history as a gift.
Do we now have a pony on staff, Phil?
Not yet, Steve, but if prior examples are any indication, it’s only a matter of time before our Fox News Team member embraces the magic around her, and accepts being transformed into another member of the species that seems to be establishing a foothold on Earth. One hoof at a time.
It’s interesting to note that others share your misgivings, Phil. Pastor Eli Fannin, of Onward Baptist Church in South Florida, said the following to a gathering of three thousand people at his weekly service:
DO NOT BE TAKEN IN, MY BROTHERS! This thing, this fiend from the pit, is truly a minion of Satan! Is it not said that the Devil will assume a pleasing form in order to lure us away from God’s mercy?
The Lord says that we were made in his image. As human beings! As Men! But this creature, she seeks to unmake us all! By changing our form, she seeks to change our relationship with God, claiming that she can grant us happiness by forsaking God and accepting her by changing us into her unholy form.
My brothers in Christ, not since the Tempter walked alongside our Lord has such blasphemy set foot on this good Earth. Her name “Celestia” is a claim upon the heavens, but her nature shows her to be a demon of the pit. For truly she is of the whore of Babylon! And I HAVE PROOF!
Was it not at Babylon that God confused the tongue of Man, to stop us from blaspheming the heavens? And what is the manifested power of this alien temptress? To unmake that holy work of God, Himself. To return us to a state of blasphemous existence, where all languages are understood, even that of the Devil. We must fight this creature of darkness with all we have, my friends...
“Now that is what I expected from a Fox News interview,” Ernie Harding commented, turning off the television and looking around to those gathered in his rec room.
“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised at their change in tone from the original meeting with them,” Celestia replied, taking a sip of what had become an ever present cup of tea. “Any idea what caused the change in tone, Jessica?”
“Um,” dodged Velasquez, looking very uncomfortable as she sat cross-legged in front of Princess Celestia.
“Is something wrong, Miss Velasquez?” asked Ernie’s wife Lynn, who was putting the finishing touches on yet another pony harness. Of the roughly 1500 residents of Brightly, roughly eighty had become ponies on a regular basis and Lynn’s harnesses had become de rigueur wear for them.
“Well, don’t take this the wrong way,” Jessica began, looking down at the notepad with questions for later in her lap, “but exactly how safe am I here? If you’re planning on doing something to me, it’s not like I can stop you, but I’d rather know it was coming.”
Everyone in the room looked shocked at the question. The shock wore off in moments, giving way to looks of outrage and disappointment in the long-haired woman. Only Luna, whose mug of coffee was as enduring as her sister’s teacup, showed sympathy.
“You are loyal to your nation, I take it?” Luna asked, gliding forward and then laying down so that she could look the seated woman in the eye.
“I am proud to be an American,” Velasquez replied, back straightening. “I may not always agree with the people in charge of my country, but that’s the right of every American.”
“You would lay down your life, to keep your country and its peoples safe?” Luna asked, taking Jessica’s measure, much as her sister had.
“I would,” the woman replied, the steel of two hundred years entering her voice as she quoted, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots...” She looked over her shoulder at Celestia before adding, “and tyrants.”
“I am not some sort of Solar Tyrant,” Celestia commented, a small scowl coming over her face as she set her tea down. “I’ve laboured long and hard to keep myself from becoming seen as some sort of goddess figure by my ponies. What have I done that makes you feel you might be in danger from me?”
“That show reminded me that I’m very much alone here,” Jessica stated to everyone in the room. “I’m an American, in an isolated Canadian town. I’m a human, within arms length of two… beings, who have the power to take that away from me, if they chose to do so. I’m a rational woman, who’s finding out that all of my grandmother’s stories might be true.”
“What can we do to ease your mind?” Luna asked. “We need you with us.”
“I don’t know,” Velasquez lamented, blue-black highlights glinting off her hair under the fluorescent light of the rec room. “You and your sister have so much power. Either of you could squish me, or make me into a pony, or make me want to be something I’m not, and there wouldn’t be a single thing I could do to stop you.”
“They aren’t the only ones with that kind of power,” Ernie replied, with haunted eyes. “Everyone has that power. Right now, if I chose to, I could beat you, or force myself on you, or just about anything else I wanted.”
Ernie paused, looking down and slowly clenching his right hand into a fist, while utter silence stalked the room for long moments, as four sets of female eyes widened at the revelation of the predator in their midst.
“You wouldn’t be able to stop me, and even with the princesses here, the odds are still pretty good that I would succeed,” Ernie continued, and as he looked up the four women saw that his eyes now blazed with determination and purpose. “But I choose not to do those things. I choose to be better than that. I choose to respect the choices that others make for their lives, even if I don’t agree with them. And with God’s help, I will keep on making that choice. This day, and for all the days I have yet to come.”
Lynn’s only response to her husband was to clasp his hand, and smile at him with eyes bright and shining with love for the man she had chosen.
“That… that… um, wow,” Velasquez replied, taken aback by Ernie’s declaration. “Okay, um. That’s pretty good, but what about the princesses here? Princess Celestia, you made me your Voice. Are you planning on making me into anything else?”
“Only if you wish it, or if it is needed in the defense of life,” Celestia replied.
“You are safe in your body and your mind,” Luna pledged. “We will not work magic upon you, unless you ask for such, and perhaps not even then depending on the request and circumstances.”
“Can’t ask for anything more than that I guess,” Velasquez replied, touching the brooch Celestia had created for her. “Anyway, about the pivot. I could go into a lot of explanations but the truth of the matter is that bad and scary news sells, while good happy news doesn’t.”
“Is this true?” Celestia asked, looking over at Ernie and Lynn. “That doesn’t make sense. Good news should be celebrated.”
“Put it down to a quirk of being both a predator and a prey species,” Lynn replied, looking away from her husband, a soft smile still gracing her face. “Good news means we can ignore it and go about our business. Bad news means we have to sit up and pay attention.”
“That does make sense of a sort,” Celestia commented, before turning back to her Voice. “Thank you, Jessica. And I hope we’ve put your mind at ease.”
“I have to admit I’m kind of curious what I’d look like,” Jessica replied, with a smirk. “Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews with people about the Battle of Brightly, and with the mayor’s permission I did some digging in the town’s archives and found something interesting.”
“Oh?” Ernie, ever the amateur historian, asked.
“Mr. Leung kept a lot of his records and writings,” Jessica began, flipping to a page of her notebook. “Tucked in among his first store invoices there was a very interesting list. Princess Celestia, do you happen to remember how many gems you gave him?”
“How many gems?” Celestia asked, blinking in confusion for a moment at the non-sequitur. “Let me think for a moment… I believe it was around fifty or so. In Equestria, gemstones are relatively common, and their regular structure is perfect for enchantments.”
“Well, here on Earth, they are fairly uncommon. Not to mention extremely valuable,” Jessica continued, shuffling through the papers she had. “Leung was smart enough not to saturate the market, and after the first couple he must have developed some pretty impressive contacts in the diamond cartels.”
“So that’s where he got all his money from,” Lynn commented. “You know, ‘Leung’s Loot’ has been a topic of speculation in Brightly for decades. How much did he get for them all?”
“If I’ve worked it out right, the equivalent of nearly half a billion dollars in today’s money,” Jessica calmly stated, knowing the number would be explosive.
“WHAT?” Ernie burst out. “How? He only had fifty gems.”
“My sister would have given Lee-Ung only her best and most flawless gems,” Luna chimed in from the kitchen, where she was refilling her coffee mug. “Am I wrong, Tia?”
“Considering that they were going through a portal to another world, it only made sense to send gems I could be sure would retain their enchantments,” Celestia answered, musing on that time long ago. “Even if toward the end they held only simple things like light spells, or revealing the presence of other magic near them, it felt good knowing that I was giving a friend the best I had.”
“So, fifty gems. Of which exactly three are accounted for,” Jessica said, and Celestia again saw a spark glimmer for a moment in the American woman’s eye. “If everything I’ve been told since yesterday is accurate.”
“It is,” Ernie assured Velasquez, taking a glance out the window toward where the sun was heading for the horizon. “Too many people know what happened to try to hide it. It’s why we were going to go public at the awards ceremony in the first place.”
“Why is this so important, Jessica?” Celestia asked, leaning forward a bit.
“Don’t any of you get it?” Velasquez asked, spreading her hands in frustration and looking around the room. “Any of you?”
“This is why my sister often seeks the counsel of others,” Luna replied, re-entering the room. “You are different from the rest of us. You see things from another perspective. Tell us, Voice of my sister, what has escaped our gaze and not yours?”
“Forty-seven precious stones,” Jessica replied, and then, frustrated by the continued blank looks. “Forty-seven magical precious stones. Forty-seven gems that carry with them some random flavour of magic from your world. Forty-seven gems each capable of holding a billion watts of power.”
“Wait. What?” Lynn asked, confused. “I don’t think Celes—”
“McRae!” Jessica shot back, interrupting. “I mean, Polaris. Or whatever his name is. He shot that windy-go thing with a ruby that had been sucking up power from one of the dam turbines for decades. It had to be packing a billion, if not billions of watts of power. And that was ONE ruby!”
“Oh crap,” Ernie said, into the sudden hush that followed the realization of what Jessica was driving at.
“It could be more than forty-seven,” Celestia added, and all eyes swiveled to the pony princess. “If a skilled lapidary cut one of the stones along its natural fault lines, the enchantment of the mother stone would be mirrored in the daughter pieces.”
“I’ve got to get this out,” Jessica replied, jumping to her feet. “The network is going to shit a brick when they hear this.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Lynn asked, subtly moving to intercept the woman. “It could trigger a panic.”
“A panic, no,” Velasquez replied. “A treasure hunt, yes.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ernie asked, getting up from his chair, as he echoed his wife’s words and actions
“Are you going to stop me?” Jessica asked, a determined look on her face. “This is part of that liberty thing we talked about earlier, Princess. Am I at liberty to make my own choices, or is this where you break out the chains?”
“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings,” Celestia quoted, making sure to catch both Lynn and Ernie’s attention. “Let her pass. If she is to be our friend, we have to trust in her judgement and choices.”
“Thank you, Princess,” Velasquez replied, ducking her head in thanks. “I’ll be back as soon as I call this in.”
The short slim woman slipped around the older couple who looked at the pony princesses in concern.
“We have no right to try to stop her from reporting what she has learned,” Luna stated, taking a seat. “Although my sister has pulled her into our orbit, she is first and foremost loyal to her nation and she must be allowed to do what she feels is right on behalf of her people. Otherwise she will never trust us.”
“But—” Ernie began.
“There’s a song of yours that I heard the other day,” Celestia interrupted. “In it there’s a line that goes, ‘Silence, like a cancer grows.’ If we keep silent about this, or worse, force Jessica to keep silent about it, it will become like a cancer gnawing at us. It will undermine everything we try to do or say from this point on.”
“We’re going to get swarmed under,” Lynn said, looking at Celestia. “Brightly’s bending as it is. People will be everywhere, in everything.”
“Only at first,” Luna replied, her voice calm. “Think it through, Windweaver. If there are forty-seven or more Equestrian gems scattered out amongst your world, I think it far more likely people will be looking for them everywhere but here.”
“Oh,” Lynn responded, scrunching her face in thought for a moment. “That… actually makes sense.”
“I am hopeful that I am correct,” Luna said, yawning. “But if you will excuse me, I hopefully have a date.”
“Wait, what?” Celestia demanded in shocked surprise. “Who is this stallion you’re going on a date with?”
“You are not our mother, big sister,” Luna reminded Celestia, while poorly hiding a smirk. “Besides, who said I was meeting a stallion?”
Celestia sputtered, sending a spray of tea in all directions while Luna calmly walked out of the room and toward the house that had been put aside for them, snickering under her breath the whole time.
It was in reality a few more hours before Luna was able to bed down and step into Earth’s dream realm to make her intended rendezvous. As one would expect, Earth’s dream realm was both similar and different to Equestria’s. In this new land, the moon shone over a twilight landscape that was speckled with glowing spheres, each marking a dreamer and their dream.
As Luna stood in the place between the waking world and the Dreamtime, another figure came up to stand beside her. The figure was a rough, flowing black mirror of the princess herself, but despite this Luna greeted the being warmly.
“Hello, my Tantabus,” Luna said, smiling at the being of dreams and shadows. “It is good to see thee, this night. Are you prepared to keep watch here while I venture beyond?”
The tantabus nodded, but Luna got the impression of inquiry as well from the mute being.
“I am hoping to contact Captain Rios this night,” Luna answered the unspoken question. “I was not able to touch him last night, and I hope that was only due to his choice and not a failure of the token I gave him.”
Again the impression of understanding, along with another request for understanding.
“Why? When the Canadians are more than willing to be our allies and our friends?” Luna responded, contemplating the heavens around them. “Because the Canadians are alike, yet different from the Americans. Those here in Brightly burn with a warm, enduring flame that persists, no matter how hard the storms around them howl. The Americans however, hold a different fire in their hearts. It is a flame that burns both bright and clean, and I asked Celestia’s Voice the questions I did of her so that I could get a taste of that fire.”
A flow of acceptance and understanding filled Luna as the Tantabus leaned close and gave its creator a heartfelt nuzzle. As the two shared a hug, Luna’s keen senses felt a new dreamer enter her sphere of influence.
“Ah, I think that is him now,” Luna said, rising up into the ethereal winds. “Keep watch over my friends, brave Tantabus. I shall see thee anon.”
Time and space in the realm of dreams is much as it is in dreams themselves. An elastic concept that has no basis in reality, and so it was both an eternity and no time at all that Luna found herself approaching a tan sphere. The Princess of the Night paused for a moment to touch the globe, and could immediately sense the mind of Captain Rios. More, she could tell that the dream he was experiencing was an old one and that it had the scent of a nightmare on it. Luna did not hesitate for another moment before plunging herself into the world that was the nightmare of Captain Rios.
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Oh come on, can't these people go a day without embarrassing us? There's no hope for them to preserve their own dignity, but one wishes they could at least manage not to tar everyone else with their own brush.
No you don't, she's eminently replaceable. And there's throngs of xenophiles out there who would be honored and ecstatic to make the swap.
Of course, with Magic so thick in the environment it's perfectly capable of acting on its own. That's how this whole mess started.
Story of her career, that's for sure.
But this is where they came from. And if there's going to be more, this is the place to be. I'd bet on the sure thing, personally. And, as an added bonus, I'm not involved when someone inevitably turns one of the things into a bomb.
Now isn't that marvelously convenient? I'm sure he'll be most appreciative of the sudden succor.
Huh, I appear to be in a contrary mood. Apologies.
Great. One of these types.
10175731
No worries. At least you're contrary with reasoning.
10175731
exactly while those gems could be helpful they could be used for evil.....also freedom is the right of all sentient beings heh I see celestia mayhap has been watching a certain Hasbro cartoon......since it obvious that g4 doesn't exist in this world im wondering about if the past 3 exists and what luna and celestia may think or even if of one the pony residents of brightly was a fan growing up ….hmmm now that I think of it Laruen Faust is Canadian from that area so while she would not be alicorn but unicorn Faust would be awesome
10175731
Well, she wouldn't be a Princess of Equestria if she considered the new friends she's made to be expendable.
As for Fox... while they'll always have their fanatical viewers remaining loyal to them, I wonder how many other citizens, news outlets and even just the ordinary American citizens are looking to strangle Fox News for this performance. This is, after all, a First Contact scenario, and this was the first time the aliens got to meet Americans, in an exclusive interview nonetheless, only for said Americans to stick a knife in their backs the moment it was turned in good faith. An act which is not going to endear the aliens to America, which means even less chance for America to gain a political/economical/cultural foothold in the alien society.
No, I imagine there will be a lot of pressure on Fox, from multiple angles. Possibly even leading to some sudden resignations.
10175753
that transformers quote by celestia was she watching a certain Hasbro cartoon. also if it exists does that mean g1 to g3 exits only miss faust never made g4. finally miss faust is from around that area right if she was in this fic would she have been affected if she was living in brightly but not a alicorn obviously maybe a unicorn but I don't remember if shes Canadian or not
edit.....you where on a reality show which one
10175860
Several of the shows VA's are also Canadian, including Tara Strong. And I was on Canada's Worst Driver, holding on for dear life in two separate seasons.
10175875
Loved that show. Learned from it, too.
Have to cringe at Fox News at every mention, just the name makes me want to retch. Still, another impressive chapter showing the various types of social manipulation. Also, wow, you really get around a lot too!
10175732
There's always people like that. Those who shit-a-brick over the next new thing to get undeserved attention.
Once upon a time, there were people who said the Simpsons would be the downfall of civilization.
10175875
Now I gotta go and view the show.
10176229
Yeah, especially if they can stir up the more...conservative or radical religious folks, like those nutjobs who believe their fellow Christians should rise up and take over the Government. Now, I'm a Christian, but even I realize how stupid that would be.
10175860
I do recall at least one fic where Lauren ends up in Equestria. Had a, sadly on hiatus, sequel where the crew end up on Earth, and John DeLancie meets Discord