It was rather late in the afternoon when Pinkie came out of Rarity’s fireplace.

Rarity, of course, was shocked. Where in Equestria did Pinkie come from? How did she get in Rarity’s fireplace? Why was her fireplace filled with green flame for a moment there? What on earth did she do to her soot-covered mane?!

“respectively,” Pinkie answered, “I came from Canterlot; I didn’t choose to go to your fireplace, Celestia teleported me there; everything Celestia teleports comes out in green flame, I guess; and the soot is from your chimney. How often do you clean that thing?”

“Well, if I did, I’d get soot in MY glorious mane!”

Pinkie rolled her eyes.

“Anyways, dear, what were you doing in Canterlot in the first place?”

Pinkie began to recite what Celestia had told her, only to have Dash, AJ and Fluttershy appear halfway through and cause her to have to start all over again.

After Pinkie had finally finished her relay of Celestia’s briefing (and Rarity had washed Pinkie’s mane upon insistence), the five wasted no time heading for Lyra’s place.

After a walk through ponyville, they arrived at a small cottage. Pinkie rapped on the door. At least, she was about to. Just as she was about to knock, a pony with a buttercream coat and a pink-brown-striped mane stepped out.

“Bon-bon!” Pinkie said happily.

“Hey, if it isn’t my favorite customer, the Pink Pie!” Bon-bon said cheerily. She had an odd voice, which seemed to change with every sentence. “I was just about to head out to the store, but if you want, I can whip up some strawberry suckers for ya!”

Pinkie chortled. “Not today, Bon. Actually, I came to see Lyra.”

Bon-bon seemed to deflate just a tad. “Erm… I wouldn’t bother her right now… she’s kind of in the middle of something…”

“Please, Bonny? It’s really really REALLY important!” Pinkie begged, widening her eyes and quivering her lip.

“Oh, darnit, Pinks. You know I can’t resist the face. Alright, fine; she’s up the stairs, first door on the right.”

“Thanks, Bon! We’ll only be a second!” Pinkie replied cheerily, bouncing past the sweetshop owner into her store/home. The rest of the five followed, giving respective nods to Bon-Bon.

Bon-bon’s store was an awful lot like Pinkie’s store, but focused less on cakes and pastries, and more on chocolates and suckers and things like that. Behind the counter was a stairwell, which the five went up.

As they headed up, they heard an odd mumbling coming from upstairs. Once the girls reached the upper floor, they saw a green light creeping from under the door Bon-bon had directed them to. Quietly, Pinkie eased open the door.

Inside the room was Lyra Heartstrings herself, hunched over a cauldron like she was flipping Zecora. Lyra was muttering unintelligible words under her breath as she picked up a cup with her magic and dipped it into the brew, which glowed green and bubbled.

Before the mane 5 could do anything at all, Lyra downed the mixture in one gulp. With tangible excitement, she threw the cup against the wall, and stared at her front hooves.

A full minute passed, during which nothing happened. Lyra was just staring at her hooves, and the mane 5 staring at her.

Eventually, Rainbow said “oh for the love of pete” and slammed open the door, drawing lyra’s attention.

Lyra squeaked when she saw her guests, and threw a sheet over the cauldron. “Hey! Hi! Hey Pinkie, did you do something new with your hair?” Lyra said, casually leaning against the bedsheet-covered cauldron and wearing a fake smile that Pound and Pumpkin Cake could have seen through.

“Nah, I’m just using ‘Maximum Bounce #4: Cotton Candy Cascade’ as usual.” Pinkie said, giggling.

Rainbow broke in, saying “What’s in the cauldron?” This earned her a jab in the ribs from Applejack.

“Oh, you saw that, did you?” Lyra said, sighing. She slowly took the sheet off of the cauldron. “Yeah, this is attempt #37 for me to grow hands… it’s a pity. I had high hopes for this one.”

“hands?” Fluttershy asked, tilting her head.

“Yeah, hands. You know, like on hoo-mans.”

“Hoo-mans?” Fluttershy questioned.

The rest of the mane 5 groaned. “here we go…” “I hate it when Lyra does this.”

Fluttershy looked at them, confused, and when she looked forward again, Lyra was inches from her face. Fluttershy squeaked and leapt backwards.

“You’re serious? You really don’t know what hoo-mans are?!” Lyra cried, a big grin growing across her face. “Oh boy, it’s been forever since I’ve told this story! Now where’s my script? I’m sure I put it somewhere around here…” She ran to her desk, which sat over in the corner near her bed, and began shuffling through papers, beginning to make a large stack.

“Darling, I’m sure your tale about humans is… fascinating…” Rarity said, “but we’re kind of in a rush here. We just came to ask about… about…. Ruins of something…

“The Ruins of Manehattan?!” Lyra cried, looking back over her shoulder. “Well, that changes everything!” and with that, she began to make an even larger pile of notes.

Everyone else groaned again. “Lyra, please. Just give us the short version. We really need to get going as soon as possible.” Rarity continued.

“Oh, fine. Spoilsports.” Lyra said, pushing away her stack of notes, which was now almost as tall as she was.

Lyra cleared her throat, then began to speak in a dramatic, well-rehearsed voice. “roughly ten thousand years ago, long before the reign of Celestia and Luna, long before Discord, heck, long before any creature which more than vaguely resembled a pony… There lived another race, one completely different from our own. According to ancient artifacts, these creatures were called… hoo-mans.”

“Were they owls?” Pinkie asked.

“They… wait, what?” Lyra said, slightly startled.

“You know… ‘hoo! Hoo!’ like owlisi… awulish… allish… Twilight’s pet owl!”

“…no.” Lyra said rather slowly, trying to get her dramatic voice back. “No, no, it’s actually spelled H-U-M-A-N. And trust me, these humans were like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

Lyra reared onto her back legs, and made a horrible face, raising her arms out in front of her. “They were twelve hooves tall (2 hooves = 1 foot) and had shoulders five hooves wide! They walked on two legs, and their hind hooves were stretched and deformed. That’s not all; they could take off their own hind hooves!” Lyra mimed taking off her back hoof. Under their hind hooves were – you won’t believe this – a second pair of hooves. This second pair was weird and squishy and called “feet”, and so they wore a harder, primary pair of hooves called “shoes” to protect their feet!

“You know how we ponies wear dresses and clothes for special occasions?” Lyra continued. “well humans wore clothes all the time! All the freaking time!”

“Wouldn’t that be uncomfortable?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“It might… but the humans had no coat! No protective fur or feathers or even scales, just disgusting, orangeish-pinkish stuff called ‘skin’! It was all dry and greasy and lumpy, and made the humans hideous!

“But that’s not the scariest part of the humans’ bodies. No, the scariest part was…” Here Lyra looked around, then leaned in close to the five, as if she was telling a secret.

“The humans had SPIDERS for front hooves!”

Fluttershy squealed in fright, and almost fainted.

“They called these spiders ‘hands’ and had complete control over them! While I admit they technically weren’t actual spiders, they still had five flailing legs on them, and to be frank, that’s close enough to a spider to be counted as one in my opinion. Of course, the humans called the spiders’ legs ‘fingers’ or something weird like that.

“But that’s not the truly magnificent part… the truly awesome part is that the humans could actually pick up stuff with their hands! They didn’t have to use their mouths or magic!”

Everyone gasped. “How is that even possible?!” Fluttershy cried.

“I don’t know, but it helped the humans build incredible things they called ‘technology’! There were so many things, I don’t even know where to start! Cars; cairrages which weren’t drawn by pony; they pulled themselves! Eckeltricity; harnessed lightning which humans used to power their magic devices! Phones; long-range communicators which used electricity to talk to any other human all over the planet! Internet; an invisible network of magical signals in the sky which contained whole universes, all of which were created by human minds! Satellites; miniature moons which orbited the planet at unfathomable speeds, drifting around and maintaining the internet! Television; a magical screen which broadcasted using more magical invisible signal thingies! Forks; miniature hands which-“

“WE GET IT, LYRA.” Applejack said. “Now what the hay do these humans have to do with the ruins of Manehattan?”

“Patience is a virtue, my dear apple farmer.” Lyra said in a maddeningly patient voice. “Now, I’m certain you all have a question on your mind which you are dying to ask.”

“Yeah, like how many licks does it take to get to the center of a berry popper?” Pinkie said cheerfully. “Speaking of which, we should go and get some of that candy right now! I’ll be right back!” She tried to leave, but, of course, was stopped by the others.

“What I meant was the question, ‘what happened to the humans?’” Lyra continued. “Well, among the humans’ more terrifying inventions was these things called bombs; basically sonic rainbooms, only with less “OOH” and more “AAH!” these ranged from tiny ones, called grenades, to big ones, called A-bombs, to the biggest, baddest bombs of all: nukes.

“Nukes could travel to any place in Equestria, and reduce it, and any place within miles of it, to smoldering rubble. Of course, nopony in their right minds would use such a terrible device, but these weren’t ponies, these were humans, and they were either very crazy or very stupid, because on one horrifying day, hundreds, if not thousands, of nukes were launched, and blew the surface of equestria to smithereens!

"Every last human – indeed, every living creature – died painfully, and for thousands of years, the planet was a half-frozen wasteland, due to the nukes’ energy blocking out the sun’s light.

"Eventually, though, after about five thousand years, the dust literally settled, and life began to bloom once more.

Skip forward another two thousand years or so, and Equestria was finally regaining some of it’s former glory. Finally, about three thousand years ago, the first ponies evolved and gained intelligence, and from there, you’ve learned about it in your fillyhood history classes.” Lyra shrugged. “So that’s it. Human history, in a nutshell.”

Everyone stared at her. “Soooo… What does any of this have to do with the ruins of manehattan.”Rainbow Dash said rather impatiently.

“An excellent question!” Lyra said cheerfully. “You see, many pony cities are secretly built from the ruins of human cities. While the nukes were strong, they couldn’t possibly obliterate all human-made structures whatsoever. And so, the earliest ponies found many ruins, where they made their homes. There they found artifacts, remnants of the lost human civilization. Later on, when they grew more intelligent, they sort of adapted the human designs, and in some cases, rebuilt the relatively intact buildings to become their homes. This scenario played out all over equestria; ponies found human ruins, ponies built using human ruins, and the human ruins were rebuilt with pony influences.

“Of course, some of these sites were preserved as they had been found; sometimes for memorials or parks, but mostly for historical research. One of the largest remaining intact human relic sites is in the dead center of Manehattan. Heck the city of Manehattan itself was once a human city, called MAN-hattan. Rather ironic, isn’t it? In any case, there in the center of Manehattan, there are many human buildings which have been left in their devastated state, so that scientists could study them, and find out more about the humans. In fact, the ruins of Manehattan have the most intact fully-human-made building on all of Equestria, which, according to ancient inscriptions, was called ‘The Empire State Building.’”

“Okay, Ruins of Manehattan. Thanks for the help, Lyra!” Pinkie chirped happily, as the five said their goodbyes, and began to head out.

“Wait!” Lyra said, rushing after them and carrying something with her magic. “If you’re going to find out about the humans, take this with you. I have a feeling it’ll be a big help.” She gave them a rather battered journal. “It’s everything which I’ve managed to find out about humans, all in one compact package.”

“Thanks, Lyra. I’m sure this will come in handy.” Pinkie said, taking the book from her. And with that, the mane five waved goodbye, and scampered off, with Lyra wishing blessings of good fortune upon them.

“It’s a pity they cut me off.” Lyra said to herself. “The fork – now THAT was an incredible human invention.”