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Destinies

by Sharp Quill

Chapter 20: 20. It's the Only Way to Travel

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Meg wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Zephyr. It appeared to be some sort of rigid airship, like a zeppelin, but the proportions were off. The gondola underneath seemed too big, running most of the two hundred foot length. How could this be lighter than air? It was also hard to believe it’d be much faster than a train; it wasn’t even clear how it moved, as there was no visible means of propulsion. She could only assume magic was involved, serious magic if the letters E, R, and S, as she suspected, stood for Equestria Royal Ship.

The airship was oriented towards the castle, its nose only a few dozen feet away from the wall. As they approached the front of the gondola, a door opened and a set of stairs unfolded towards the ground. A uniformed unicorn stallion appeared at the door, evidently the captain, bowing as Princess Twilight Sparkle approached.

“Captain Shooting Star,” Twilight said. “How soon can we depart for the Crystal Empire?”

“Whenever you are ready, Your Highness.”

Finding that response satisfactory, she turned to Meg. “I’ll go fetch the others,” she said, and teleported back inside the castle, leaving her alone with the ship and its captain.

Should I wait here or go inside? She looked at the captain, hoping for a hint on what she should do.

The stallion stepped back from the door and with a wave of a hoof encouraged her to enter. Meg carefully climbed the stairs and found herself in what looked like an observation lounge at the front of the vessel.

Floor to ceiling windows wrapped around from one side to the other, providing excellent visibility in all directions except the back; the windows even curved in as they met the floor, providing a view of below. From the outside, the glass—or whatever it was made of—was nearly opaque, hiding the interior from prying eyes.

The lounge wasn’t exactly spacious, but certainly large enough to accommodate eight ponies, one baby dragon, and one human. On the cherry wood floor—how do they keep hooves from scuffing it up?—were plenty of plush cushions to rest on, but not one chair. What do minotaurs sit on? Regardless, it was an oversight that should not happen again.

She walked around the windows, looking out, for lack of anything better to do as she waited. The captain remained by the door, politely ignoring her. The silence was a bit awkward, broken only by the sounds of her own hoofsteps and some background ventilation hum. Eventually, she circled around back to the door.

“Uh, Captain…” She might as well try to make some small talk.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“How long will this trip take?”

In one episode, it was implied that one could take a train to the Crystal Empire in the morning, spend the day there, and be back before it got dark. Of course, in a different episode, it took all night for a train to go from Ponyville to Canterlot. What was the reality?

“Two to two and a half hours, ma’am.”

“How long would a train take?”

“All day, at least. The Crystal Empire’s about seven hundred miles away.”

“Ah.” That cleared up that. “Thanks.”

The captain gave her a nod.

Meg wandered back to a side window, looking at the not-so-distant Canterlot, content to have had those mysteries solved. Well, we wanted to see more of Equestria, and here we are, getting an all expense paid trip. We’ll get to see crystal ponies, and meet Princess Cadance and Shining Armor. Just have to make a stop at a magic-sucking mirror and put up with a brony FBI agent.

A sudden whoosh and there were flapping wings beside her. “Hey, Meg.”

Meg continued looking out the window. “Hi, Dash. The others are on their way?”

As if in response to her question came the sounds of hooves climbing the stairs. One by one, the rest of the Mane Six filed through the door, with Spike riding on Twilight’s back. All the ponies had their saddlebags, and Applejack, Rarity, and Twilight also carried or levitated other boxes or luggage. Bringing up the rear was Agent Fowler and Steve.

Rarity inspected the lounge with approval. “Tastefully minimalistic.”

“Let’s be on our way, Captain,” Twilight said.

“As you wish, Your Highness.” He retracted the stairs and closed the outer door, bowed one last time, then opened the door to the interior, passed through, and closed the door behind him.

Not once had he reacted to the human. Had Celestia informed him of the unusual nature of some of the passengers?

“This calls for a Bon Voyage and a Welcome to Equestria party!”

“You know the rules, Pinkie,” Applejack hastily warned her. “No party cannon on an airship.”

Meg shuddered to think of what necessitated that rule.

“Well, duh!” Not deterred in the least, Pinkie quickly yanked an impossibly large picnic basket out of her saddlebag, then rapidly pulled out plates, glasses, party hats, utensils, a large jug of apple cider and passed them around. All that was left inside was a large, heavily-frosted cake; there was no way all that other stuff could have fit in the limited empty space surrounding that cake. Everypony knew better than to question it.

“How…” But not the one human present.

Pinkie put a party hat on the stunned Fowler. “You didn’t expect me to fit two picnic baskets in my saddlebags, did you?”

The agent blinked. “Suuuure… let’s go with that.” The agent desperately scanned the other ponies, hoping for a sane explanation, but got awkward smiles and sympathetic head shakes.

Meg rolled her eyes. Are you really surprised by this? Almost immediately she regretted thinking that. She was no better the first time she encountered Pinkie Pie.

Just then, the Zephyr began to slowly rise, silently, ever so gently rocking about like a boat. It didn’t rise far, only a few dozen feet, before it turned around in place, reversing its orientation, and began moving away from the castle, slowly picking up speed and altitude as it went. The Captain was still doing his best to avoid disrupting that concert.

Meg and Steve each dragged a cushion into place next to the front window and laid down upon it. Fowler stacked one cushion on top of another, the better to sit on, next to them. “I guess ponies don’t use actual chairs in real life, huh?” she observed.

“Not that we’ve seen, no,” Steve replied.

Twilight came over to them. “Sorry about that,” she apologized. “We do have chairs, for minotaurs, that you could have used, but nopony thought of it.”

“Minotaurs… right… Iron Will…” She waved a hand, dismissing it. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.”

As the mountains bordering the valley approached, the ship veered north towards Canterlot, and began rising rapidly. There was still no sound of any engines, merely a hint of wind noise, and the floor remained more or less level. There hadn’t been much sense of acceleration either. Serious magic, indeed. It was just as well, as there was nothing that looked like seat belts.

Pinkie Pie was putting slices of cake in front of them as the ship rose above the mountains. Fowler took in the view of Canterlot as it dipped below them

“The cartoon doesn’t do it justice,” she said in awe.

It wasn’t long before they were well above the mountains and local pegasi traffic. The Zephyr rotated one last time, aligning itself with the Crystal Empire, and gently but relentlessly accelerated.

Fowler watched the mountains pass by at ever increasing speed. “Are there any points of interest we should keep an eye out for?”

“Not really,” Twilight said. “The occasional small town and surrounding farms, I guess.”

They all dug into their cake. The ship must have been going hundreds of miles per hour by now, and yet there was still little sensation of speed. Meg thought of asking Twilight what sort of magic was at work, but decided she wouldn’t understand the answer anyway.

“I thought we could chat for a bit, to pass the time,” Twilight said. “I’m sure you have questions, and I have some questions too.”

Fowler finished off her mouthful of cake before replying. “Turnabout is fair play, I suppose,” she said, quickly looking at Steve. “At least I’m not restrained.”

The alicorn was a little taken aback by that. “You are our guest, I assure you.”

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand, “just a bad attempt at humor. You go first.”

Twilight thought it over as she had another mouthful of cake. “How did you identify the doll as the source of your problem? Your Geiger counter should not have been precise enough to pick it out.”

The agent was washing down the cake with apple cider. “That’s the best cider I ever had, by the way. Applejack’s, I assume?”

“Yer darn tootin!” the farm pony called out from the back of the lounge. The other ponies and Spike were passing the time playing some sort of card game.

“Uh, anyway…” she said as she gave the apple farmer a wave. “It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. We were trying to get a probe that had some really short half-life stuff in it. That might have been precise enough, but it was proving very difficult to arrange. We did narrow it down to a section of the wall, but it occurred to me that it might not be in the wall, but just on the other side of it.

“That would be easy enough to check. Simply move an object to another room, and if the effect moved with it, bingo. If we ran out of objects to move, then it really was the wall. We were prepared to cut it out; we had the tools, the warrant authorizing it and everything. The wall would have been repaired afterwards, good as new.

“Turns out you weren’t home, even though your car was still there, but we had a very accommodative judge on speed dial.” She seemed to realize how that sounded. “A benefit of an extremely high visibility case,” she added.

Not that much of that would make sense to Twilight.

“So the first thing that caught my eye was the… Pinkie Pie doll.” She nervously eyed the pink pony, but her attention was on the game. “There was no logical reason that was it, but the same could be said for every other possibility.”

“I know the feeling,” Twilight commiserated.

“And, of course, that was it. We got it on a chartered flight to Vegas as soon as possible, and, well, you know the rest.”

“Why didn’t you try to contact us afterwards?” Steve asked in a surprisingly even tone of voice.

“We didn’t know your connection to the doll.” She sighed. “Look, you have to appreciate just how absurd the situation looked to us. This might have all been due to some previously unknown, completely natural process, in which case you were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what if you had made this happen somehow? Sure, it’d still be something previously unknown, but that didn’t matter; you were still doing something illegal with it. And your behavior was a bit odd. You seemed to be aware of more than you were letting on.

“So we came up with a test. How you’d react to the doll vanishing would tell us much of your connection to it. We’d never expected you could effortlessly track it down after we moved it hundreds of miles. We know there wasn’t a conventional tracking device on it.”

Is this all on the level? It seemed plausible enough. Meg quickly glanced at Applejack. The mare was focused on her hand, but one ear was turned their way. The Element of Honesty had so far heard nothing dishonest.

Twilight waved a hoof. “It would not have mattered where in your world you moved it, I’d have found it just as easily.”

Given how smoothly things have been going since the truth came out, Meg could not help but question her earlier decisions. Could all of this drama have been avoided? Sure, their hands had been largely tied by their Pinkie Promise, but she still could have pushed back much harder, tried to change Twilight’s mind.

“If we had told you everything up front,” she asked, “what would your reaction have been?”

Fowler answered without hesitation. “That you were crazy, at best, or deliberately trying to piss us off at worst.” The agent looked at Twilight. “Without the hard proof of you physically being in front of us…”

The alicorn frowned; she must have been wondering the same thing. “I have to take responsibility for that. I believed I could deal with the doll before matters got out of hoof, and I wasn’t ready yet to make official contact with your government.”

“And we sorta forced your hand… er, hoof. So why that particular doll?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. All I can say is that those two—” she nodded her head in the Colemans’ direction “—did not cause it to happen.”

“So they really were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“That’s… it’s not that simple,” Meg said. “Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t make it happen, but it conceivably might not have been a coincidence it was our doll.”

“Meaning…?” the agent said, spreading out her hands.

Meg looked back at her flank. “You asked what my cutie mark meant.”

Fowler nodded.

“If not for that doll—our doll—pouring Equestria’s magic into our universe, I would not have this cutie mark right now.”

“Because it’s how you met Twilight.”

“Right,” she said, twitching her tail. “And one thing led to another.”

“Soooo… what does it mean?”

Meg had some cider first. She still wasn’t ready to divulge that to a government agent, to accept the full implications of what it must mean, but neither could she put it off indefinitely. “It means I’m a bridge between our worlds,” she reluctantly said.

“And that means… what, exactly?”

“I’m still working that out. These things don’t come with instruction manuals.”

Fowler scanned the other ponies, who all shook their heads in agreement. “You really think your… ‘destiny’… arranged for you to become a pony and get that cutie mark?”

Meg scooped up the last of her cake with her fork. “I don’t really know what to think.”

She brought the fork to her mouth and finished off the cake, as Fowler watched with interest. The fork differed from human forks; at the end opposite the tines was a flat disk, angled to the rest of the handle, for a hoof to magically grab.

“What’s it like being a pony, having hooves instead of hands and all the rest?”

Maybe I should write a book about it. It was a safe bet this was a question she’d be asked many times in the future—not that she’d want to encourage people to seek ponification. Destiny issues aside, Twilight and the others had better things to do than turning humans into magical ponies all day long, like some assembly line, never mind training them in their new magic.

And it was proving to be a challenging question to answer. By now, she had become so used to it that she had stopped thinking about it, and it never had felt alien to begin with.

“I guess the best way to put it is that it feels like I was born this way, that I’ve always been this way. It’s a property of the transformation spell. I can’t even tell when the transformation takes place. The only difficult part was getting a handle on my new magic, but even that took just a day or two, with a lot of help from Rainbow Dash.”

“Yep, I taught her everything she knows about being a pegasus!” Dash boasted.

“And I, naturally, tutored Steve in telekinesis and basic spell casting,” Twilight more modestly added.

“And you don’t miss having fingers at all?”

“Well, sure, in the sense that I miss being able to do some things that can only be done with fingers, like typing; but in the sense of feeling that some part of my body ought to be there but isn’t, no. Same applies when I return to being human: I don’t feel like I’m missing a tail or wings, though I sure miss being able to fly.”

“Wow. I’m really envious of you two.” Fowler was quiet for a moment. “I’d never have the guts to do what you did.”

They all silently gazed at the forests swiftly flowing underneath them. It was the only sensation of speed, apart from mild wind noise. They seemed to be going much faster than a jet plane, but that was because they were a lot closer to the ground.

These forests looked no different from the ones back on Earth—from a mile up, anyway. Who knew what odd flora and fauna existed down there, but it clearly was no Everfree. Then they spotted, in the distant mountains ahead, a full grown dragon lazily flying.

Fowler eyed it nervously. “That won’t be a problem, will it?”

Meg was sort of wondering the same thing. The other ponies suspended their card game and moved to the window.

Twilight, reassuringly, dismissed it with a wave of her hoof. “No, they know better than to mess with airships, especially one belonging to Princess Celestia herself.”

The dragon flew towards their flight path out of bored curiosity, attempting to match their speed—but maintaining a very respectful distance. In a little over two minutes, they finally caught up to and passed the dragon, but not before three phones caught it on video. It couldn’t match their speed, but it came surprisingly close.

Spike was mesmerized. “I can’t wait till my wings grow in,” he murmured, as the card game was resumed.

After a few more minutes, the forests thinned out and turned to grasslands, then farmland. A small, rural town alongside a river passed by.

“What do you think will happen next?” Twilight asked, breaking the silence.

“That’s a good question,” Fowler replied. She had her phone out again, taking a video of a pegasi cloud city they were about to pass. The ship had slightly adjusted its course to give it a wide berth.

“I really don’t know. The biggest problem is that everyone’s first reaction will be that this is all some sort of sick joke. You’re all characters from a children’s cartoon; obviously, you can’t be real. Aaron was recording it all on his phone, but…”

“Surely, that would be quite persuasive,” Rarity said, sticking her head up from her cards.

“Not really.” Steve slowly shook his head. “Stuff like that can be faked quite convincingly. Movies do it all the time. Only the fact that to do it well is very expensive and time-consuming will force them to consider the possibility it’s real. Maybe.”

“That,” Fowler agreed, “and there’s no conceivable reason for us to pull a career-ending stunt like that.”

Twilight considered all that as she drank from her mug.

“It also wouldn’t hurt,” Fowler added, “if we had an explanation of how all of this—” she waved her hand around “—could be real.”

Twilight reacted as if she had just heard an offensive joke. “And I would like to have an explanation of how one of your cartoons became a distressingly accurate documentary on all of us, and of my life in particular.”

“Point taken,” the agent said, chastised. “I have a feeling neither of us is going to get one.” She resumed scanning the horizon, full of endless plains. “This would be a whole lot easier if that cartoon didn’t exist.”

It sure would, for both universes. Humanity couldn’t take the existence of ponies seriously, and very important ponies felt that their private lives were being violated, potentially to be exposed within Equestria itself. And what will season five reveal?

The next hour was occupied by smalltalk. Fowler asked the ponies about some of her favorite episodes, discovering for herself that poetic license was sometimes taken with certain details. One example was MMMystery on the Friendship Express: the events depicted happened, but on a train to Baltimare, not on an overnight train to Canterlot—which, as it turned out, didn’t even exist.

The ponies in turn asked her about her life in law enforcement, learning about humanity in the process. Meg even showed her the numerous photos she had taken around Ponyville, since as a human she would not be able to visit those places herself.

Then out of the blue, Meg’s phone rang. “How do you have a signal?” a surprised Fowler asked. She had long since discovered that her phone, unsurprisingly, had no signal.

“Magic,” Meg quickly said, not caring to explain her husband’s special talent, as she lifted her phone into view. It was Tom. Crap. She had once again forgotten about the conference call, the one for the “best pony impression” contest planning meeting. It was tempting not to answer, but then he’d just call Steve again, and… might as well get it over with.

Everypony was looking at her. “Try not to say anything,” she told them.

She accepted the call and lifted the phone to her head, weakly saying, “Hi, Tom.”

There was silence for a few seconds. “Something came up again, hasn’t it?”

All equine ears had turned to her. Meg couldn’t fault them, really; she was only too aware herself that it was partially a reflex action. And besides, he was coming through so loud that even Fowler could clearly hear it, close as she was.

“I’m sorry, but my life has been real crazy recently.”

“You can’t keep missing meetings like this. We have a deadline.”

“I did send you my R—scenarios,” Meg defensively said, avoiding at the last second mentioning the name of the pony next to her. She just wanted this call to end.

Tom sighed. “When can you reschedule?”

Meg cringed. “I don’t know right now.”

“Look, I like your Rainbow Dash scenarios, especially the one on how she would teach a ponified human to do weather magic, and you’re certainly—”

“Hah! What human could be awesome enough to do me?”

I can think of at least one, easy, Meg thought as she gave the impulsive pegasus a sour look. On the plus side, Rainbow Dash seemed more amused than offended. Well, she did know about the Twilight/Lyra scenario. On the minus side, Tom had heard her; the pegasus had realized her mistake immediately, face-hoofing.

“Not this again.” One could practically hear him rubbing his hand against his forehead. “Fine, I get it, you know some people who can do excellent pony impressions, but if this is some joke, it’s in poor taste.”

“I didn’t put her up to this, I swear.” She glared at the prismatic mare, wondering what else could go wrong. No, no, no, don’t even think that, not here in Equestria!

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, brushing it aside. “Can you explain why it’s more important to spend your time with this ‘Rainbow Dash’ than on our meeting?”

“It’s… it’s complicated.”

It was just like Susie’s parents all over again, only this time there wasn’t going to be a pony personally introducing herself to Tom. It didn’t matter what she said; it didn’t matter what any of the others said. Could she try switching to a video call? No, she barely had a signal as it was, her last spot on Earth being in the middle of nowhere—if even that would be convincing. There was no saving this.

“I need to get back to the conference call. We’ll talk about this later.” He ended the call, not waiting for a reply.

Meg dumped her head on her cushion. “That could have gone better,” she muttered, as she felt a hoof on her withers.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Rainbow Dash said.

“If it wasn’t that,” she rationalized, sighing, “I’m sure it would have been something else.” It’s simply how her life’s been going recently. She tried burying her head deeper into the cushion, without much success.

Pinkie came over and wrapped a foreleg around her. “I think somepony needs a hug.”

A Pinkie hug did feel good—when she wasn’t squeezing the breath out of her.

“Maybe it’s just as well. I mean, can I really still be a brony when I’ve become a part of all this? For all I know, me and Steve will feature prominently in the next season premiere.”

“I have a hard time imagining the cartoon going in that direction,” Fowler said. “Introducing humans, that is.”

“And yet,” Twilight countered, “it has tracked the major events in our lives, and it doesn’t get much more major than this.”

“I guess we’ll have to wait until the next season airs sometime next year in order to find out,” Steve said.

“Or we could ask the show’s writers. They must be working on those scripts right now, or at the very least have the episodes planned out.”

That made Meg wince. The last thing she wanted was for Twilight to consider contacting the talent behind the cartoon. There was simply no way they could have the answers the alicorn was looking for, never mind the problems that encounter could cause… And Fowler had put it front and center.

To Meg’s surprise, Twilight reacted to that suggestion by walking around in circles, head down, tail swishing, clearly distressed. After a few iterations, she stopped to face Fowler and ask a question. “The episode that had Tirek stealing everypony’s magic. When was that written?”

Meg got a sinking feeling in her stomach. It had been established that it had aired close to the time the actual events took place. She cursed herself for not making the connection sooner.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Fowler said, “but animation has a very long production pipeline. First the scripts are written, then the voice actors record their lines, then the animation is done to those recordings… I know that the actors have said that they’ve recorded their lines as much as a year in advance.”

Twilight was not happy, not happy at all. “We can’t talk to the writers, or anypony else associated with the cartoon. I’m issuing a royal decree to that effect.”

“Isn’t that overreacting a bit, darling?” Rarity delicately said.

“I’m okay with it,” Fluttershy confessed. “I wasn’t going to talk to them anyway.”

Most of the ponies weren’t making the connection. They didn’t know when the episode aired. Fowler was looking just as confused, for she didn’t know when the actual events took place. That was a problem because the decree wasn’t binding on her, certainly not once she left Equestria, and she could easily contact the writers.

Meg had to make them all understand. “Agent Fowler, you need to respect this decree, even though you’re not a subject. The battle with Tirek took place about the same time the episode aired.”

Her jaw dropped as comprehension dawned. “They know your future?” she quietly said. “How’s that possible?”

Everypony looked at Twilight, wondering the same thing.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter how,” she said, punctuating with a hoof stomp. “The point is, they do, and that means we can’t have contact with them. I’ve personally experienced how awful it is to have knowledge of the future.”

Are we in a time loop? Twilight didn’t actually use those words, and strictly speaking Equestria’s future has not causally affected its past or present. That’s the point of the decree: to prevent that from happening. Celestia would certainly agree, once she learned of it.

“I see,” Fowler said. “And I was thinking an appearance at a brony convention would be a good way to introduce you to the world, but now you can’t do that.” After seeing Twilight’s confusion, she continued. “The writers and voice actors also go to these things, and it’s inconceivable they wouldn’t want to meet you if they knew you were there.”

Would that truly be a problem? They never reveal details about unaired episodes. Would they make an exception in the case of the actual ponies? Even if they wouldn’t, they might still unintentionally leak information, just from the innocent questions they’d ask of the ponies. It was risky, at best.

Twilight laid down once more on her pillow. “To be honest, I’m not ready for that kind of publicity anyway. I’ll meet selected government officials, if only to convince them we’re real, but that’s it, for the time being.”

Fowler nodded in agreement. “Taking it slowly is probably good.”

Not much was said for the remainder of the flight, and that gave Meg the chance to ponder just how deep down the rabbit hole she’d gone. She had plenty of reason herself to respect that decree, even if she weren’t in the employ of the princesses. Maybe she ought to cut her ties to bronydom, at least for the time being.

But while perhaps necessary, it was unlikely to be sufficient. There was also indirect contact to worry about. What if those government officials decided to contact the writers themselves? Telling them not to was unlikely to work, quite the contrary. Nor could they depend on the writers refusing to divulge their plans for the next season, if the Feds were persuasive enough.

They would just have to take it one day at a time.

Next Chapter: 21. Reflections on Reality Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 24 Minutes
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