Chapter 9: Ponies revealed
“Ms Swan,” Twilight pressed the first chance she’d gotten after the test had ended. The written exam was done and everyone was wandering about stretching their legs.
“How can I help you?”
Twilight held up the wand, her wand. “Grandmother?”
“Nova Moon Silverwood, Princess of Hope,” Ms Swan offered.
“Princess Hope?” Sunset asked. “I remember a Princess Hope. Only her name was Ki something, Nova Moon. Showed up in Canterlot in Equestria when I was still a little filly. I’m going to assume you know about Canterlot Equestria?”
“Oh yes, I’m actually a pegasus myself. A large percentage of the English pegasi are descended from the survivors of Nightfall, and not descended from the Greek line of Pegasi who tend to be a bit on the dumb side for some reason despite having shared ancestry. Though I suspect it’s because they allowed themselves to be domesticated early on.”
“Hang on, how…?” Twilight was about to ask how Ms Swan knew she was a pegasus when Ms Swan pitched forward and transformed into a beautiful black pegasus.
“How?” Both Twilight and Sunset asked in astonishment having completely forgotten what they'd been talking about. A moment later Isabela had glomped their teacher.
“Izzy, leave Ms Swan alone. Honestly, what am I to do with you?” Goth Starlight scolded, pried loose Isabella, and drug her off.
“Does that every time,” Ms Swan informed Sunset and Twilight as she transformed back into human form.
“How did you do that?” Sunset pressed.
“The basic form is fairly easy, but there is a caution to it, a couple actually. Do it wrong and you’ll anthropomorphize yourself, and quite possibly get stuck that way. The second is that the basic form changes only the body. It’s an animorphous ability available to most native Equestrians on Earth, if they’ve got a knack, and requires a secondary spell to properly displace clothing. And as such, people with Akkadian-Equestrian ancestry are not required to register as an Animagious for a pony form.”
“I think I can manage the clothes. I’m not exactly a beginner in the use of magic.”
“Considering how well you plowed through that test, I don’t doubt it,” Ms Swan mused.
“To be fair it kind of kicked my flank; what with no preparation and over three years of not studying any magic.”
“But you still managed to do it, and yes I took a few peeks at what you were doing. What I saw looked good. As for how to do the transformation what you do is reach down inside yourself, find that other self, pull that individual forward and be the pony, or human if you are going from pony form.”
“You going to give it a try?” Twilight asked only to be delighted by the emergence of a fiery maned unicorn where Sunset had been a moment before.
“Unicorn!” Isabella shouted. More of a battle cry, really. A moment later she’d glomped Sunset.
“Izzy!?” Starlight protested as she raced after her friend. “Aw come on, you can hug me anytime you want.”
“But you can’t turn into a pony.”
“Miss Moonbow, do try to show some restraint,” Ms Swan scolded. “Sunset, are you alright? You look pained.”
“I missed this me so much,” Sunset responded quietly.
“Just be careful about where and when you do transform yourself,” Ms Swan cautioned as Sunset transformed back to her human self.
“Izzy, you can let go now,” Sunset requested.
“And you even managed the clothing exchange, I’d say you are doing really good,” Ms Swan praised as Starlight dragged her friend off again.
“Twilight, why don’t you give it a try?” Sunset suggested. “Might simplify things too.”
“How’s that?” Twilight asked.
“I can have Philomina take you home. No having to smuggle you out that way.”
“Why would I need to be smuggled out?”
“Dean Cadence,” Ms Swan informed her. “She’ll be on the lookout for our Twilight to take her home.”
“Ah, yes, that could be problematic. But why would transforming best facilitate Philomena taking me home?”
“I’d asked Philomina to fetch my sister, and she brought me pony Scootaloo,” Sunset explained.
“Ah, that would simplify things immensely if she can take me straight home, and I don’t have to worry about cutting you off from access.”
“Pardon?” Sunset prompted wondering why Twilight was worried about cutting her off from home?”
“Hang on, Scootaloo, pony Scootaloo?”
“We talking another double?” Ms Swan asked.
“It’s a peculiarity to where I live,” Twilight offered. “Sunset, I’m thinking of moving the door. I’m not happy knowing the government here might know where it is, and to be honest, it’s in a rather exposed location. Which is something else I needed to talk to you about.”
“If you feel that moving it would be the best course of action, then, by all means, move it.”
“Right now, I don’t even know how to go about doing it.”
“If I remember correctly it has something to do with the crystalline structure,” Sunset offered in a hushed tone having realized that their conversation would undoubtedly be overheard. “Why I threatened to smash it.”
“We aren’t talking about a normal door, I gather?” Ms Swan prompted.
“Well,” Twilight had to think for a moment. Ms Swan did seem a trustworthy person, not just a person, but a pony as well. “The portal to our Equestria.”
“Ah, I am aware that there is a portal somewhere here in Canterlot city. Kind of have a rough idea where it might be but don’t know the exact location. I suspect that Grandmother put a spell on it to keep people from finding it, or accidentally falling through.”
“Ah… It had occurred to me that given the law of probabilities I really should have had some unannounced guests,” Twilight observed. “But then again, that’s going to make moving it that much more problematic.”
“Afraid I don’t know what to tell you,” Ms Swan offered. “Grandmother tried to show me the computations behind creating a portal, but it’s way over my head.”
“A portal is formed in much the same way as a teleport, reversing the polarity of the neutron flow thus creating a negative gravitational displacement within the space-time matrix which causes a vortex to form thus sucking the traveler through hyperspace and with luck and training spits them out where they want to go,” Sunset offered. “Unlike a teleport which is one way and only needs to be held for the duration of travel a portal is especially difficult because it must be stable and allow two way… travel.”
“Nope, she’s glazed over already,” Twilight offered with a grin.
“Wow. I hadn’t even gotten into gravimetric computations and particle dynamics yet,” Sunset replied as she too formed a smile on her face.
“Ya, she’s a bit like that,” Zachary offered as he joined the group. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good teacher, she just has issues with that college-level stuff.”
“Any chance you can snap her out of it?” Asked Starlight. “It’s time to start the practicals.”
“What? Oh hay, time to start the practicals,” Ms Swan announced.
“Before you start, let me see if I can manage that transformation,” Twilight suggested.
“Oh yes, by all means,” Ms Swan offered, and a moment later they’d an alicorn in their midst complete with saddlebags that had previously been a backpack.
Glimmer somehow managed to restrain Izzy as well.
“Sunset, I’d say this is going to be a game-changer. We’ll be able to use our abilities to their fullest, plus go back and forth without having to worry about being tracked,” Twilight announced. “Listen, as much as I’d love to stay, there is something I want to check up on.”
“Princess, if you’d like to take the book I loaned you, go right ahead. Just be warned that if you attempt to deconstruct your wand it may never work again,” Ms Swan offered.
“Understood,” Twilight replied and levitated the book to herself. She dropped it into her saddlebag and was delighted to find her wand in the bag. Also inside was a pen and a small two-way diary which she made a quick notation in. “Well, I should probably get going. Philomina?”
“Philomena, if you could be a dear and take Twi… Princess Twilight home?” Sunset asked. Philomina made an agreeable chirp, flew over to Twilight, landed on her, spread her wings, and then vanished in a bright flash.
“Ponies!” Izzy proclaimed. “You are ponies. That’s what Twilight meant about the boobs shifting locations. You are ponies that can turn into humans and not the other way around.”
“Ah…” Ms Swan started.
“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that it’s true, is that going to be a problem?” Sunset asked cautiously.
“I’d say it’s awesome,” Starlight offered. “I mean, that’s got to be about the most anti-establishment thing ever.”
“The Pure Bloods over in England would have fits if they knew,” Zachary added. “Non-humans who can do magic better than they can. And Izzy, that is something we kind of need to keep quiet. The last thing we want is to give them an excuse to start another clenching. That’s what got my family killed.”
“Don’t you mean cleansing?” Starlight asked.
“Maybe,” Zachary replied with a smile.
“My lips are sealed,” Izzy offered and pulled a hand across her mouth like she was zipping up her lips.
“Afraid that was a whole section of the test I wasn’t able to answer any questions on,” Sunset admitted. “There’s a lot of history I’m afraid I’m ignorant of. What even is ethnic cleansing? I'm familiar with speciesism, but you are all the same species... are you not?”
“The non-magical text calls it forced deportation or population transfer. Attempts to clear whole populations via mass murder are known as genocide. Nearly every nation teaches about the Holocaust perpetrated by the Germans, while unarguably the worst atrocity in recent history, no one likes to admit that people were being targeted because of skin tone or background in their own country," Ms Swan began. "When they do they’ll say things like Wounded Knee was a battle despite all evidence that it was, in fact, a one-sided massacre. Or they excuse the use of Internment camps to lock up their own citizens because of national security concerns. And don’t even get me started on the atrocities perpetrated in the Southern states just because of skin color. Tulsa massacre, May 31, 1921. Rosewood Massacre, Jan. 1, 1923.” She had to stop and take a deep breath knowing full well Sunset had no way of knowing. "Violence just permeates this world. Thinking off the top of my head; the Philadelphia Police Bombed the home of a radical group on May 13, 1985. The fire that broke out after the bombing destroyed sixty-five homes leaving over two hundred people homeless. The history of this world is just full of atrocities. Human on human. The Magical community likes to pretend human on human acts of wanton violence never happened because it upsets the people who like to pull the strings and watch us all dance."
“Because of skin color?” Sunset asked astonished. The very idea honestly befuddled her. After all, ponies came in every color of the rainbow, and Canterlot high, despite its shortcomings, was a fairly cosmopolitan mix of people. To arbitrarily pick out one color or range of colors was truly a foreign, even alien, concept to her. Worse yet was the idea, the horrible possibility that the real reason she'd been targeted was because of her cultural differences. After all, she hadn't been able to grow up in Canterlot City as a small child and every community had its subtle little quirks that outsiders simply wouldn't have. Plus there was the fact that any time someone wanted to know where she came from she'd be forced to find ways to redirect such questions simply because she didn't dare tell anyone about Equestria. Even if this was her homeworld, Sunset was still a foreigner in a foreign land.
"Oh, afraid it's a little more complicated than that, and it's not just skin color. Racial purity, ethnicity, religion, social class, even an individual's preferences in who they'd like to have as their special some pony or how a person presents themselves can get an individual or group of individuals targeted for violence."
"I, I hadn't known," Sunset said softly. "It makes no sense?"
"You are absolutely right. It makes no sense. It's a sickness," Starlight confirmed. "But we, we will fix it. We will make this a better world a little at a time."
That afternoon Sunset would have quite a lot to think about while everyone in the class made their end-of-quarter demonstrations.
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I don't doubt that humans would find more "inventive" ways to discriminate against each other than just skin color in a world where skin color is a lot more varied and not necessarily tied to your race/ethnicity.
I think that there was a Deadpool comic where in one story someone had everyone's skin turn the same shade of blue (cyan?) and Deadpool lampshades the flaws in this idea by pointing out that you can still tell a person's race, ethnicity, and national origin by their language, body build, facial structure, and clothing.
There was a story posted a few months ago where the implications was that EQG humans used to have the same skin tones as regular humans but that Starswirl letting in magic into the world thousands of years ago caused everyone's skin tones to change dramatically. This was completely by accident and Starswirl was shocked by this.
11120875
I like going with the idea that those from Equestria have an extra color receptor that causes Equestrians to see everyone in pastel colors. Something I hinted at in my "I am my own OC" stories. In this one I wanted Sunset to be coming from a personal place of truly being ignorant and honestly finding the very notion to be the most bizarre absurdity she'd ever heard of.
11121012
Ah, so it's a "we see things how the main character sees things". It wouldn't be anything out of this world for ponies to see things differently, butterflies can see ultraviolet light so they ought to have a pretty different view of the world.
I wonder if and how often that came up while Sunset was living in the human world. Like someone is mentioned as being "White" but Sunset sees them as blue or pink or something and she just goes with it.
11121172
Or the converse where she is like... but they are blue, and Pinkie is the only one who goes with it.