4 - 2
The conference left Ari on a high that lasted for days and probably would for several more. Everything was up and up from there and seemed like it would only get better from then on.
She quit her job the next day, not even bothering with a two-week notice. She’d no longer be stuck in the wage cage, that was for the ‘misanthrobros’ from now on. And what a liberating feeling it was to know such a thing!
The day after that she met up with Dresden to tell him about her experience at Shimcon. Ari could hardly sit still going through all the things she learned and seen. The ponies were so on top of everything it seemed, in a way the corporate-enslaved human politicians never were.
She went over all kinds of accessibility devices to be excited about. About how the ponies intended to maximize their political influence so as not to become an oppressed minority. Black people, for example, had been twenty percent of society and America successfully stomped all over them. Ponies were a bit larger of a minority but would have to struggle to keep from ending up just as oppressed.
“See, the main advantage is that ponies vote in much higher numbers than humans. Pony turnout is 95% in an uncontentious election, whereas human turnout never goes over 60%, especially now that they’ve made it harder to vote than ever,” Ari explained across the table. “So even though ponies are 25% of the population, they can easily become almost half the voter base in years that are less contentious than 2020 was. Get it?”
“I guess I never thought of that one,” Dresden admitted. “That’d be good for us since ponies tend to be much more pro-transformation rights than humans.”
“Uh huh! And it gets better! Conservatives are reacting to this by putting up even stronger barriers to voting… but since ponies have stronger communities, they’ll be able to help each other through that so the human government is just shooting itself in the foot. And! Since ponies are more organized, they’re able to do this whole relocation program. Basically, the SSP is helping ponies strategically relocate to make their votes go further, allowing ponies to take over more states.”
It still wasn’t a done deal. The human majority would still do everything they could to stomp ponies into the dirt and make sure only billionaires benefited from the introduction of magic. But there was an actual plan to keep them from being crushed and oppressed!
It felt more than ever that something could actually change!
“I have never seen you half this happy before this,” said Dresden. “Was it really that great?”
“I almost feel like… like I got to have the vision myself!” Ari leaned back in her chair, spreading her arms to the sky. She couldn’t even imagine something being better than this feeling, how glorious the actual vision must be! “It really was a life-changing experience.”
“Damn. How expensive is going to one of these again?”
“You have to be invited. But I’ll put in a good word for you.” Ari stirred her coffee with her straw idly. She had to bring her own everywhere since the straw ban, but she was already used to it.
“So none of them were racist to you or anything?” Dresden asked.
“Well there was this one mare,” said Ari. “But I’m not sure if she was racist or just a bitch.”
Ari sipped her coffee.
“More important than any of that. For the first time in my life I feel like there’s something I can actually do. I finally have confidence that we can actually help all these poor heathen apes!”
“Heathen apes? That’s a new one you picked up. Am I a heathen now? I don’t really believe in God or anything…”
“No, no. I’m an atheist too. A heathen is specifically a non-Shimmerist human. No ponies are heathens and no Shimmerists are heathens, so you’re cool.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“What’s good is that we have a plan, Dresden!”
“’We’ do? As in you and the SSP or…?”
“That’s why I brought you here. The ponies came up with a mission for me.”
Ari paused with a sly smile; her eyes closed to let the mystery linger just long enough for Dresden to not have a chance to ask outright what it was.
Ari straightened out and spread her arms wide. “We’re opening an all-human Shimmerist community center! Right here on long island! And you’re member number one. Or two. Whatever.”
He reacted the same way Ari had upon first hearing the idea. Yes, such a thing sounded impossible. But when you thought about it for a second, it went from impossible to merely stupid.
“This would be a dangerous thing to do,” Dresden pleaded with her. “How would we even get members for that? We can’t run around asking everyone if they’re a Shimmerist. First of all, hardly any of them would admit it. Second, we’ll make too many enemies that way. And around here somebody’s bound to shoot us up if this thing is public.”
It was a valid concern. The number of mass shootings had skyrocketed to twice what it had been at its height. All of the shooters were humans but that was another issue.
“Ah! But ponies will help us, Dresden! And ponies…”
Ari leaned to her side, toward Dresden, waiting for him to fill in the blank.
“Make it possible?” He guessed.
“Bingo!” Ari pumped her hand in the air. “They’re bringing in a pony with a ‘high value’ cutie mark. Like, they have some OP magical ability lowly humans like you and I can only dream of. They’re going to help me start the community without any of these misanthrobros noticing.”
“And where are you going to get the money for the actual community center?” Dresden asked. “And the crazy security systems we’d need to not die?”
“Ponies. Obviously.”
“They’re really going to fund all that?” Dresden asked. “Doesn’t it sound suspicious that the SSP would spend so much for… what are they even getting in return?”
“It’s part of a political battle with Blackrock. Trust me. I know the plan and it’s a good one. But they need an all-human Shimmerist community center all the way out in the middle of nowhere for it to work.”
It was weird she thought of a country right next to New York City as the middle of nowhere but with so few ponies around…
“I dunno.”
“Please?” Ari put her hands together and leaned across the table to plead to him. “If I can get just one human to join the Shimmerist community center on my own, it’ll make me look good! You won’t even have to stay that long if you don’t feel safe.”
He still hesitated.
“Don’t you want to live to see a future where transformation is legal?” Ari asked. “This is the biggest move you’ll get to make in your life toward that end! You’ll be able to make an actual difference, to actually push toward your trans-pony future.”
“Well.” Dresden folded his arms. “Maybe.”
“Great! Then we’re picking up Magic Card from the train station in an hour! You’re fine with driving us around town for a while, right?” Ari asked. “Thanks.”
“Ah. Dang it. What did I sign up for?”
Ari moved back and forth from her heels to her toes, hands deep in her pockets, as she waited for the train with Dresden. A fairly large crowd had gathered to receive it. But it hardly mattered.
“So what magic power does this OP pony have anyway?” Dresden asked.
“They didn’t say. All I know is her name is ‘Magic Card’. She’ll be a pink earth pony and have one other pony with her.”
Not that anything beyond ‘pony’ was needed to tell who they were. When the train pulled up and opened, only one pair of ponies came marching out.
It was an uncommon enough sight that the other people on the station had to take a moment to gawk, either stealing glances or just blatantly staring at the sight.
Magic Card had to go up on her hind legs to look around for Ari but finding the one human with green hair wasn’t much harder for her. The two locked eyes moments after her arrival.
“Friendo!” Ari ran straight up to Magic Card.
“Friendo!” Magic Card repeated the greeting, pumping her hoof in the air before falling back to all fours. “I found you!”
Magic Card was the mare. Her fur was a dark pink and her mane a darker purple, kept shorter than most ponies did. She was rather slim but had a wild smile and her eyes darted about constantly, never lingering on anything for too long. Even when standing still, she’d press her weight back and forth between her front and rear hooves, never truly stopping. Ari kind of did the same thing. She could relate.
Her companion (a unicorn) was her opposite in many ways. His dusty brown hair could have been something a human had and the lighter shade of the same on his body wasn’t much more fantastical. He had long hair for a stallion, the bangs covering one side of his face. His motions were muted, always sitting down, always focusing on something off to the side. Didn’t look like he was paying attention now.
Imagine being a partial but your hair just turned brown.
Though Ari did have to admit he was a very handsome stallion despite the plain colors! When did she start thinking of stallions that way, anyway? This was well past the point of no return, wasn’t it?
Both of them had a cutie mark that Ari figured was a card. Magic Card’s was the back of one anyway. The backing was brown with a circle made of five gemstones decorating it. Dresden’s eyes lit up with recognition at the sight.
“Oh, I get it now! Your cutie mark is a magic card?” Dresden pointed to it. It must have been a card from some video game. “I take it you play Magic the Gathering?”
Yeah. Some video game.
“My name is Magic Card!” She beamed with pride.
“So… so yes?”
“No.”
“What? But you…”
“I only collect magic cards! I don’t actually play the game. You see my talent is, well you could say that I’m the ultimate collector!” Magic Card put a hoof over her brow and looked out from the platform as though scanning the horizon.
“Ultimate collector?” Dresden hesitated. “So are you a fan of Danganronpa, too?”
“What?! You too? Yes!” Magic Card bounded up close to Dresden, any distance between them gone in that one instant. “I love Danganronpa! And ponies are so much like the Danganronpa characters, aren’t we? I wanted to call them ‘ultimate talents’ instead of ‘cutie marks’ but I guess Danganronpa just isn’t popular enough because that never caught on.”
“This again?” Ari interrupted their little bonding session. “What the heck is Danganronpa?”
“All you need to know,” said Dresden, “is that the people in it have ultimate talents which are kind of like cutie marks.”
“Exactly.” Magic Card nodded approvingly. “And my ultimate talent is collecting things. I am the ultimate collector. My magic guides me toward the completion and expansion of my various collections. Take magic cards, for example. I can look at a pack and tell you if it contains a card I don’t have yet. I can drive past a garage sale or flea market and know instinctively if a missing part of my collections are there.”
Ari was already starting to see where this was going. It all made sense now.
“More importantly, my ultimate talent can be used to bring ponies, or in this case humans, together! To assemble the teams we need by finding all the right members. Right? One of my side projects is collecting ponies that correspond to the cast of Danganronpa and bringing them all into Shimmerism. I already got the ultimate detective, ultimate team manager, ultimate cosplayer, ultimate programmer, ultimate martial artist, ultimate detective again, ultimate imposter… er, spoiler alert by the way.”
Ari was surrounded by nerds.
“I really don’t get half of what you’re saying,” said Ari. “But I think I get it anyway. You’re going to ‘collect’ the human Shimmerists we need for our community center without drawing any attention to ourselves.”
“Exactly!” Magic Card licked her lips, her eyes widening in increasing excitement. “Once I start collecting something nothing can stop me! And you already did that hard part for me by getting it started.”
“See, Dresden?” Ari prodded him with her elbow. “You’re helping.”
“Thanks.” Dresden pointed down at her boyfriend or whatever. “And what’s this one’s ultimate talent?"
“Oh, that’s Wild Card.” Magic spared him a glance. “And before you ask, we’re not family. Yet.”
Magic Card began nuzzling him affectionately. Wild Card’s reaction to this was so muted that Ari had no idea what he made of such an advance.
“What does Wild Card do?” Ari asked.
“I’m the one who’s good at card games.” Wild Card brushed the hair from his eyes, smiling at last. Though he still made nothing of the nuzzles.
“I see,” said Ari. “How does that help us here, though?”
“It doesn’t,” Magic Card answered for him. “Wild’s just here so I don’t get bored. You’ll understand when you’re ponies, but we really don’t like being away from our own kind very much. I’d go bonkers without a friend along. Heh. You know, people always talk like greed is the one advantage humans have over ponies, but our only actual weakness is just that we can’t function on our own. I wonder why no one ever brings that up.”
“Because extolling greed as the one true virtue of humans plays into the hands of our capitalistic overlords?” Ari offered.
“Exactly! You really are one of us. Together we’ll spread the light of the vision to all these poor heathens.” Magic spun around on the spot, then swept her hoof across the dispersing crowd. “I’ll get you the people you need, and the rest will be easy!”
“Well this is great! At last, I have some kind of advantage in life.” Ari started toward the car, leading the rest with her.
“And now that you’ve been whitelisted into the SSP darknet,” Magic went on, “you have access to thousands of Danganronpa characters! Isn’t that amazing!”
Being able to call up a pony like Magic Card whenever she needed to felt like a superpower in itself. This power alone was amazing, but the SSP had access to so many other powers as well.
The only problem was that Ari was in the middle of nowhere, with a huge gap between her and her new community. Magic Card and whatever other ponies she needed couldn’t just swing by whenever. Ari would need to have a reason that justified a full day of travel to get one out to New York.
But even then, there were plenty of ponies like Ragnarök, Data Sphere, and Spring Breeze who could offer their talents over a long distance.
“It’s just like Ragnarök promised!” Ari smiled brightly. “Through the power of friendship, I’m no longer helpless! Praise Sunset Shimmer!”
“Right on! Praise Sunset!”
Stats
Page generated in 0.017 seconds
Total duration
1,114 users online
1,716,333 hits today, 1,960,719 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Social shimmerism where we bring transformation to the whole nation
I wonder who the imposter is I hope it's not red
by the way ari check your bag i slipped some oats for you to enjoy at home
You know ari
You want the power to spread Shimmerism?
I know a spell
Its called the Harmony Rising spell
Its HIGHLY illegal
But I can tell you how it works
You will need to Stab a cutiemark or Something similar but thats how the spell works
It works by Damaging the Symbolism of something Giving power but also corrupting them
It can be dangerous to the wielder as it affects the mind to
To reverse it
Someone has to Take the person down
Usually someone who also is in a harmony rising state But has control
Or it also works to remove all the magic
(That can happen through cutting a wing off)
So yeah I give you this spell now
Use it carefully
Finally got around reading this story, and I have enjoyed it a lot, I love the universal food right and the trans-existentialist elements of the story. The humor was fun, but I am afraid that she is setting herself up for massive disappointment with Ragnerok, but at least she doesn't follow him as an idle and also keeps her own interests at mind with involving with the group. It's apparently amazing what native ponies can do collectively and and individually. With the constant pressure to adapt and counter capitalist groups, and just in a few months to rapidly organize, I wonder what they could do in just a year if they could actually out maneuver Black Rock and the others. For the pony food I am surprised that despite they haven't tried to reach out to normal farmers and reach a deal to heal them to flood the market with their cheaper better food and maybe event process some of it.
2020 onward was a period of revelation for me as well as the show of how still wider spread social inequality is and that discrimination and racism was still very much rampant.
Looking forward to seeing more of this story in the near future.
11646503
Like they need a spell like that just let the humans explode and then rise from the ashes
11647331
As a pony?
11647392
Yes ari as a pony more specifically a alicorn
11646503
Hey is it weird if my cutie mark cracks or changes shape when I am using certain powers