Chapter 1
The nation of Equestria had been alone for thousands of years. Its glory days were behind it. There was too much peace everypony said. Too much they said.
Discord was somehow working for the good of everypony when he first escaped, they thought.
They were right, after thousands of years of stability, the nation of Equestria was bored, but too long ago had fighting occurred, nopony could remember the word “war” let alone the meaning.
Then something changed. A little blip, that Celestia noticed in the flow of magic around the world of Equis.
This dot was strange, it was not a surge, it was a null zone, no magic flowed there on its own.
Celestia sent scouts. They reported a civilization with towers of glass and steel that rose to the sky, of machines that flew on their own, taking their occupants to a destination at a wholly unreasonable rate, spewing toxins into the air.
The lack of magic flow in that part of the world was not an issue, Celestia thought. The flow of the world’s magic there did not harm the ponies at all. She knew that this civilization could become a threat, but frankly, peace was beginning to look like a problem in itself. Even the fun that her student Twilight Sparkle had accidentally inflicted upon the residents of a backwater town, was not enough to remove the tedium from the task of ruling a nation whose only practice was peace and love and tolerance.
So she waited. Celestia did not tell another pony, she knew that at some point, the cutie mark crusaders would try to go exploring and encounter the civilization for themselves. Or maybe the civilization would be interesting, they might make the first move, as they liked to say, or maybe that was a twenty year old trend that the scouts had not recognized as obsolete.
So this continued for a few days. Then Twilight Sparkle, of all the ponies in the world of Equis wrote a frantic letter about Rainbow Dash being kidnapped and experimented on. The Princess was feeling particularly apathetic so she took out a stallmark card under the sympathy section of her own stationery collection and sent it to Twilight. She received another Hoof-written... no that wasn’t the right term, no it was magic writing, of course ponies didn’t write with their hooves... anyway Twilight went through the effort of writing her a tale about how her card had given her the inspiration to figure out what to do to resolve the issue. Amazingly, she had already entered into diplomatic relations with the “hymens” whatever they were. maybe it was “humans” or something but Celestia was by that point, so bored that she couldn’t see straight.
The next day or two were quite odd. The hymens(as she found out, must have been the embarrassing way to refer to them as the ambassador blushed when she introduced herself to the hymen race).
She realized something about the humans though. They lacked peace, they were abundant in their chaos, but they also had enough power to order their environment sufficiently well to make sure that they weren’t being surprised by buffalo ballerinas every time they walked down the street. They desired peace, the ponies(or well celestia at least desired chaos, and the mixing of cultures would be interesting enough to make it a worthy trade.
She asked the ambassador to her castle, her name wasn’t really important enough for celestia to remember, so she simply took to calling her Miss Hands. For some reason, when she attended the royal buffet, she wore a pressurized environmental suit. The human made an attempt to explain why she wore the suit, something about magical-biological disruption on a lethal scale, but Celestia didn’t need to know why. She had an important offer for the ambassador.
“Miss Hands, you know that we are a nation that has never known chaos, or real hatred right?”
“You told me so over the phone, your majesty.”
“Please, call me Princess Trollestia.”
“But your name is Celest-”
“Shh.” the alicorn got really close to the human’s helmet when she shushed her, exposing her lips as they undulated.
Even through the “Space suit” celestia could perceive the stress that the diarch put on the human by acting this way.
“Okay Princess Trollestia... What was it that you wanted to propose to me?”
“You know how you can’t come to Equestria without being a pony, or wearing one of those silly anti-magic environmental suits right?”
“Does it look like I’m wearing one or not?”
“I knew that you had to be smart. I was thinking about possible emigration set ups.”
“How?”
“Well... We’re, as your species has said before, goddamned magical horses, right?”
“Sure, but I don’t support-”
“Look, Miss Hands, I don’t care. I want to know if your government would allow two way immigration if we were to set up a species exchange.”
“How would it work if it was two way?”
“Three ways actually, first a pony could move in without changing, or to make it easier, we could turn them into a human. then we could turn humans into ponies to enjoy the benefits that living in a ‘freaking magical utopia’, as one of your bloggers said.”
“You read the internet?”
“No, but I can imagine that such a poorly rounded development that your species must have in such an environment as your civilization. It doesn’t often work out well, does it?”
“Actually-”
“Well, you can say goodbye to that my friend, we’re doing this whether you like it or not.” The alicorn sat down by the human and wrapped her foreleg around her, gesturing towards the sky with her other foreleg.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing that a little bit of chaos wouldn’t fix.” Celestia of course smiled at her own comment. The human was confused.
“What?”
“Nevermind. Just tell whatever leaders that this is what’s happening, whether they like it or not. We’ll have ads all over your city. There won’t be a human there at all in three weeks.”
“Nobody in my government will accept this.”
“Nobody in your government has any say in this matter.” The princess opened a curtain on the side of the room, revealing a pile of vials and beakers and other things. “Here’s the transformative liquid. Push it on your humans, preferably tell them that magic will kill them otherwise.”
“What about an equal exchange?”
“Nope!”
“Do you like bananas?” The ambassador turned towards Celestia, waiting for an answer.
“No”
“good.” the ambassador said.
“Because you’re going to the moooon!” Celestia hit a well concealed button.
A cannon resembling a can of pringles swallowed up a table, then shot the table to the moon.
“Hmm. Must be a sign that sending you to the moon wouldn’t do anything for our foreign relations.”
“Maybe I should just go to the moon so I don’t have to do what you’re asking of me.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Why did you shoot a table to your moon?”
“It seemed like the least I could do for my sister when she has another break down again would be to provide some catering for her on the moon.”
“I’m sorry Princess, I can’t follow.”
“Good, because if you could follow, imagine what your hunters would be able to do.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“I’m sure that I have. Just another thing that chaos will do, snap me back into my senses.”
“So, you’re losing your mind?”
“Yep.”
“all because of the boredom of your existence?”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t you just kill yourself and go out leaving my species in peace?”
“Nah.”
A few minutes of talking later, the ambassador had come to realize that there was nothing to be gained from the princess in her current mood. Somehow, Celestia even convinced her to bring back the “Transformative liquid” with her.
Celestia sat back in her reclining chair, which had remained unused for almost a thousand years due to the lack of free time that comes from being the goddess of both day and night. The rusted springs poked through the once supple leather. Celestia bled onto the springs... “Soon.” She cackled.
Of course the ambassador had imagined that the stuff would alter the person’s character to some degree. During some startlingly unethical research about the stuff by the Food and Drug Administration(at least the part that ended upon on Equis when the city of Longmeadow was mysteriously transported), the participants answered the same to all the questions. Ambassador Dexter was surprised that there were so many willing participants, she shrugged. She guessed that there was in fact a reason that nobody on earth had heard of America’s largest city, which was Longmeadow City.
The participants were mostly composed of drug addicts looking for something new to get high on. Naturally the happiness that resulted from the group was overall unwholesome, making Ambassador Dexter glad to find herself on the other side of the observation room’s glass.
They were overall satisfied with their new existence if they were before they were ponies. They were suffering from the same exact challenges, addiction, personality, loneliness. Those that went in sick came out sick, but non-contagious, Celestia had planned ahead well enough to know that there would be no use to unleash a new disease upon her... ponies.
The ambassador sighed. The princess made it sound like she would force it on the humans if she refused to force it upon them herself. Dexter was always comfortable with her hands, even if they could magically pick things up with their hooves, or their horns, she preferred the good old fashioned five-finger system that she already had. She glanced at her hands, she had little but bad feelings about what was going on. Naturally, she shrugged them aside. It was her duty to the people of Longmeadow to maintain a strong face in the eve of such adversity; of course, the ultimate effect that this twisted little experiment would achieve was a bunch of ponies which are no doubt mad about their stolen humanity. After all, she was the only representative of the federal government that apparently could be placed into a position of power legitimately.
The ambassador pushed the intercom. a crackling came from it. “Ambassador?”
“I’ve decided that this will end here and now. We’ll let Celestia fight us if its that important to her that we are screwed up psychologically.”
The intercom crackled louder this time. “Yes Ambassador. I’ll see to it that the subjects are peacefully disposed of.”
Dexter was furious. “Dammit! I told you to end this experiment.”
“These are sapients. We’ll have to take care of them, or shove them somewhere for them to die, we can’t have their blood on our hands, right?” The voice through the speaker was calm, too calm for someone who was dealing with the last supreme power over humanity.
“Dammit! If we don’t take care of this the right way then it will be blood on our hooves!”
The speaker suddenly cut out, the crackling was completely gone, and the sing-song voice of that princess crept out of the speaker.
“You see, Miss Hands, you can’t really stop me, hell, the integration of humans into my society will be more of a destabilizing force than even the bloodiest war that you could stir up.”
“We have a few nukes.”
“PFFFFT! Yeah, like you even have the launch codes.” Of course, the ‘Alicorn’ had a point, but Dexter didn’t really care, she could attempt to carry out her bluff anyway.
“We disabled their safeties the first day we came here.” Of course, it was a bluff because Longmeadow was not the sort of city that any sane government would place a missile facility in, let alone the defenses for such a thing.
“Good for you. I still don’t think that you understand your situation. Your species is currently confined to a small island thousands of miles from my nation. I suppose that you could threaten the various other nations, like the Diamond Dogs, or the Zebras into helping you, but frankly, I have so many trade agreements with all of them, that their economies are virtually part of ours.” Celestia laughed.
“What do you want from us?”
“Your misanthropy, your anger, your hatred, your bigotry, hell I’d even let one of those crazy religion thingies into Equestria, Anything to reduce the boredom.”
“Really? You’re immortal, you’ve conquered disease, famine, and war for yourself, now you want it back?”
“I asked you directly for those very things.” The human knew that she had, but it had seemed too odd. Maybe back during the “First Contact”, she had thought it was some kind of joke. With her mouth morphing into a frown, she stared at the speaker.
“You are aware that by not solving any of our social issues before you change us into ponies and break our souls, or whatever you expect to do with us, that you might bite off more than you can chew.”
“I’ve ruled for five thousand years, or something. I don’t really remember, but Discord’s tricks are getting old, and even the trouble that my student causes isn’t enough to eat away at the boredom.”
Dexter recalled the one thing that such people used to find entertainment but, alas, it was not with her now. “I’d introduce you to the internet, but I’m afraid that it was cut off from us when we were brought here.”
“Sure. I don’t really care for that though.” The voice in the loudspeaker sounded the most sane that Dexter had ever heard from that strange horse.
“You are also aware that our technology will disrupt your economy greatly. I understand that you have some basic steam engines, but we can so greatly outmatch them that-” Dexter’s appeal to reason, at least fiscally, died suddenly with the interruption.
“You have no oil, nor is there any on this planet. There is some coal. Perhaps when you discover the magic of friendship, as my student likes to call it, you might figure something else out.” When the Alicorn mentioned the magic of friendship, her voice oozed poison, strangely, and sadly.
“Its nice to think that we still have our solar power plant, and we were the number one manufacturer of solar panels in the United States.” Dexter thought to herself about the stigma of Longmeadow, and then that stigma being the reason that the United States lagged behind so much.
“Shut up or I’ll alter Planck’s constant, you’ll no more energy than a small child.” There was a moment when Dexter wondered whether or not that was a joke. Unfortunately that moment passed, leaving a rather psychotic, super powerful, god-like mare talking to her using unknown magic that could very well spell the doom of every single human that had inexplicably been brought here.
“That would doom us all.” Dexter let out, sarcastically. Living without electricity, while not pleasant, would be possible, if not for all of her people, for most of them at least. Of course, if it was really possible to alter Planck’s constant, the lack of electrical power would be the least of their problems.
“I know my little human.” The voice on the speaker paused, “So, will you work for us?”
“Can we have a city on the moon with whatever amenities that we require to make that a productive civilization?”
“Sure!”
There was a silence. The strange horse-god-being had just agreed to fund, or support something that would tax the most heavily mechanized nations on Earth, on a mere whim as it seems. “Are you serious?”
“I catered the moon in case of another unlikely episode of my sister’s malfeasance. I think that I shall have no issue doing the same to a city.”
“One where we can survive?”
“Sure...”
It was hard to explain how the pause was made awkward over the speaker, but Celestia somehow managed to do so.
“I don’t trust you.”
“I’ve been wanting another kind of pony.” Celestia began.
Dexter had not read the file on ponies, the scout’s reports were very brief, mostly because scouts had no use when their species was limited to a relatively small area where they could survive on the planet.“Go on...”
“You see, the moon always seemed too lifeless, too sterile. It’s full of magic and radiation up there, since they are virtually the same thing, I wondered to myself, what if I made moon ponies.”
“Fuck...”
“Dear me, I’m sorry, I’ll continue anyway. So I asked my sister if she would be okay with it, being the spirit and essence, and controller of the moon and all, she agreed, it would be interesting when the moon could have a civilization twinkle back at you when you looked up.”
“Go on, What would they be like?”
“Somehow, you’ve almost convinced me. What kind of chaos would that bring?”
“None. You’re right, if you would just leave a few of your most unstable people here, I’d let your civilization ascend to the stars... Okay not the stars, the moon.”
“Are you sure that this is a good idea?”
“No, but another threat from the moon in a thousand years would really make my day better when it finally came.”
“Sure.”
Celestia’s head stuck through the speaker, Dexter, not knowing that that the Alicorn had the ability to push her head through speakers, recoiled in terror.
“That sounds lovely dear.”
“How can you do that?”
“Magic, something I’m sure that you’ll discover soon enough.”
Dexter shook her head. “Can you give me the time to choose the ‘Crazies’ that you’ve requested. They’ll probably happier here, rather than on the moon.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
The alicorn tried to pull her head back through the speaker. By tried of course, she really ended up failing. Dexter grinned, seeing the greatest threat to humanity that has ever existed stuck with her neck magically pinned to a speaker was quite a pleasing sight. “Do you need help?” Dexter was only being half sarcastic, the princess had given her people the license to essentially do whatever they wanted to the moon, on the moon, without her direct supervision, and implied that she would rather enjoy the prospect of a moon pony invasion some time in the next thousand years. Of course the fact that Celestia said that she would probably enjoy it meant that she was confident that she could keep the invasion under control.
The Alicorn smiled. “Yes, would you mind just sort of...” she blushed. “You aren’t going to like what you have to do.”
“Ughh! Why! Why must you torment my species?”
“Shut up. I need chaos. I control the sun around here, without me, the world would freeze to death.”
“Except for one side where everyone got baked.”
“Anyway I can’t afford to commit suicide like any normal immortal can do, because overall, I want to do good. I can’t create the scale of chaos that Discord brought because it would make me a demon in the eyes of every single pony on this planet.”
“You can’t be serious.”
The Princess sighed, “You beings are the first I have met, travelling across the entire planet, with all of its many intelligent inhabitants, that have shown potential to create the right kind of chaos.”
“What do you mean? We keep our society relatively well ordered.”
“No, you don’t. The difference between your species and the other troublemakers of Equis is the desire to find peace and order in the world, despite your tendencies towards chaos. Humans are special, they fight for tranquility on an individual basis, but as a society, your species typically fails to realize that the fear of rejection is balanced by the will to prove that society can be deceived. The best part is that even when a human thinks that they have found something that they are good at, they are never given confirmation of their skill, so they always search for their talent, even when they have already found it.”
Dexter simply rolled her eyes. “What was it that I was going to hate?”
“Oh yeah, in order to get me out, and mention start your new race, suck my horn.”
“What? Really? You want me to engage in fellatio with your horn?”
“I see that subtleties of our biology are not beyond you.”
Dexter groaned, she was sure that she had read about this exact occurrence in some ridiculous story on the internet some time ago. “So let me guess, you will have a magical orgasm that will transform me into the eternal goddess for my people?”
“Wow, you’re really good at guessing.”
“So that’s how I became the eternal goddess of our people.” The not quite alicorn signed. It was not quite an alicorn because instead of wings it had two large horns used for telekinesis in a vacuum. It was also not an Alicorn because it lacked lungs to speak with. The not-quite alicorn did not speak because it lacked lungs, thus it had to use sign language. The not quite alicorn sat in a throne room, on her haunches, illuminated by the dual light of earth and sun alike.
In front of the throne, sat a single not quite unicorn. Her horn was larger than her earthly(perhaps Equisly) counterparts, her eyes were wider, but she lacked the strength of those bound to the larger world above them. The not-quite unicorn also wore clothes, despite the fact that her hide was created for the purpose of living on the moon, and the vacuum itself was generally quite a good insulator, the descendants of the humans still preferred to cover up their genitalia.
“So, you essentially gained your godhood by degrading yourself?” The moonicorn asked with a mixture of irritation and sarcasm. She was a good student, but she was not of the same cloth as Twilight Sparkle, who even made occasional visits to see how well the construction of the new civilization was going. Twilight of course, had aged considerably since that day when First Contact was made.
“Yeah, I guess that I did give that alicorn a blowjob in exchange for godlike powers and nigh-immortality. But come on Rita, you would have probably have done the same thing.” The near alicorn would have laughed, but without lungs, laughing is quite difficult, so she smiled instead.
“Yeah, I might have done that if I was a whore or something.” The moonicorn was brutal in her slightly sadistic humor and her disrespect for authority, her histories would no doubt become quite helpful during the task that lies ahead, mostly defining the past so that it is not lost. “Of course, if I was an old bat like you, I wouldn’t need this kind of tutoring.”
“If you were normal, my little friend, then you would not need this tutoring, you turned your parents into plants or something, and no matter how sexy your father was as a cactus, plants don’t live very well on the moon, unless they are moon cactuses of course.” The moonicorn glared at the not alicorn. “Yeah, of course you know that. Its too bad that you managed to kill two of our best moonicorns though, they were instrumental in the search for things that grow on the moon.”
“Why would we waste time on that? We just synthesize food with magic now, why not just do that forever?”
“It’s not sustainable. The solar wind might ebb one day, and our magic would find itself without reserve, while we are still bathed in the light of the sun, but without the magic which destroys our forebearers. If we grow things, then we can wait for it to return. If we can grow the plants all over the moon we can-”
“Survive more catastrophes than we would before. I’ve heard that speech a thousand times before, and while I think that you underestimate the power that we can store up, I leave you to this folly.”
“You are aware that you are being graded on your questions, right?” Dexter was not particularly harsh as a teacher, but she had lived just a little bit longer than most people or ponies(assuming, of course, that earth had not made marvelous advances in medical science while they were gone). “After all, you justified your visit today by asking about how the civilization progressed early on. I hoped that it would not turn into a session where you insult me for doing what I felt was necessary.”
“Come on, seriously? Call me Princess or your majesty, queeny doesn’t cut it. I’ll have time to allow liberalism to develop as soon as we have been around for a few thousand years.”
Rita examined the queen’s expression, surely enough, there was a substantial amount of irritation beneath it. “Okay then. What happened at the advent of our civilization? How did our ancestors take it as humans?”
The queen tried to sigh, of course, this came out rather awkwardly since she did not have lungs. “Are you okay, Princess?”
“Just an old habit. One that kids like you force me to continue.”