This had to be the most nerve-wracking, no the most terrifying social event I or any other human being ever attended in the entirety of human history.  Every pitiful primitive survival instinct I had was scrabbling at the back of my skull, desperate to send me running for the nearest hole to hide. Instead I had to sit there with what was surely a rigor mortis grin frozen on my face and a cold teacup in my hand while my employer tried to make small talk with a fanged, fire-breathing monster right out of humanity's worst nightmares. Forget the potential political implications of our little tete-a-tete; I was sitting down to tea and biscuits with a predator whose head was larger than my first car.

And oh, let us not forget; we were trying to stall for time, in the hopes of making sure this building-sized engine of destruction didn't find out it had reason to be very angry with us.

The fact that he and his two compatriots did not seem nearly as unnerved by my presence as I was by his did nothing to engender confidence.

The chamber was enormous, big enough to be an airplane hangar (apropos, I suppose.) Celestia and I were sitting in a balcony jutting out from one wall, while our guests were lounged about the floor of the cavern, their heads about on level with our own seating arrangements. There were three of them, a green and a blue, with an enormous red who was the obvious leader. They supped tea from a pot the size of a locomotive engine and did their best to make small talk.

Introductions were made (the lead dragon's name, upon my oath, was Sid. That's all, just Sid. Not an abbreviation for a tonsil strangling fourteen syllable Klingon-sounding nom de guerre, just... Sid. Apparently after fourteen clutches, his mother had run out of ideas for names.) And, after a few niceties, Celestia had deftly handed the opening conversation off to me. "And I understand you said you had some fascination with my new advisor. Perhaps you two could get to know each other better, I thought?"

"Indeed, Indeed I would, your Highness," the ambassador said cheerfully. He raised his bathtub sized cup to her. "Among the things I hoard are the stories and lore of distant races and peoples, and I would be remiss to miss this opportunity." He regarded me. "So, sir Arcturus... tell me a bit about yourself and your people?"

"Ummm," I said, idly stirring my drink with a spoon, "I must confess that I am at a bit of a loss for conversational topics at the moment." I fervently hoped the sound of my spoon clattering on the rim of my cup like the clapper on an alarm bell was too faint for him to notice. "Allow me to turn the tables on you, Ambassador Sid... when you heard of humans, what was it that aroused your curiosity most?"

"Ah." The ambassador sat back. "Well, it's been rather an eclectic mix of odds and ends we have received second-claw. An odd mix of bits of your history, culture, folklore... but, ah, at risk of succumbing to stereotypes about my own race..."

pleasedon'tsaysaintgeorgeandthedragonpleasedon'tsaysaintgeorgeandthedragon... "yes?"

"I understand you have some fascinating perspectives on money and economics." He cocked his head to one side.

For the first time since walking into the chamber I felt a bit of confidence return.

****

As to the girls, things were a bit more complicated than expected. It seems that the Treasurers had gotten clever, and had moved the vaults to what they had hoped were more secure locations. They were now laid out in the old crystal mines below the city, a random, sprawling anthill of tunnels and chambers, in no particular pattern anypony could perceive. The tunnels that poor Cadence had been imprisoned during her own wedding were just a tiny branch of the entire complex burrowed through the mountain, and searching them methodically was, well, something of a challenge. Against a typical foe, such mazelike security would be quite effective; against a draconequus, a creature that lived and breathed randomness, not so much. And the defensive measures were working against the defenders, this time...

They ended up racing back and forth in random directions, backtracking several times, dragging the poor Assistant Treasurer after them (poor stallion wasn't really up to all that running around after a lifetime at a desk job). After the third frantic run-around and the third near-mass-collision at a tunnel intersection, Twilight had had enough. She came in for a landing to try and organize. "Everypony, this isn't working," she said. "We need to be systematic about this! Rainbow Dash, take this chalk and scout ahead. Find a vault, then fly back to us leaving chalk marks to lead us back to it."

"Got it!" Dash grabbed the chalk and arrowed off.

"Okay, Princess Luna? You need to fly back to the castle and bring the guards and the treasury ponies. Tell them to bring carts; we're moving the gems out of the vaults and to a new secure location." Luna nodded and darted off, nearly as swift as Dash.

"Everypony else, take your accountant and be ready to follow Dash's chalk trail, one pair of ponies to each one. Got it?" Everypony still present nodded. "All right, we have the tools, we have the talent, we have the plan. Let's do this!" Twilight said.

It was a good plan. Unfortunately it met the same fate as most plans upon encountering the enemy. The jinx laid on the tunnels soon had them all separated from one another, chalk marks appearing and disappearing at random whenever the mares took their eyes off them. In short order, the methodical search was in complete disorder, and the groups of ponies were well and truly lost.

Fluttershy in particular got badly drawn off.  Within minutes she wasn't even in earshot anymore, and the clerk that had been buttonholed to accompany her had taken a detour to the washroom and promptly disappeared. Her timid nature got the better of her in those dimly lit hallways, and she was soon quaking in terror of stumbling on their quarry alone. But credit where it's due, she didn't find a corner someplace to curl up and hide. She kept going from room to room, even if she was inching her way down every hall with the air of someone who desperately wanted to be yarding their way up it.(2)

Her entire attitude changed, however, when she heard the whimpering...

In passing, I've noted that fan artists from my world have certain trends and stereotypes when they draw the mane six, particularly when they're portrayed in alternate forms. Gentlemen, I know them in person, I've seen them in alternate morphologies thanks to magical experimentation, and I assure you-- you're getting it terribly wrong.

One thing you have to keep in mind in transmogrification is that lifestyles and levels of activity do translate over from one form to the other. A swimmer's build doesn't turn into a weightlifter's, for example; whatever your species in your new form, your attributes are transformed to match the target equivalent, automatically.

Celestia for instance is anything but Amazonian---it has been a long time indeed since she strode forth on a battlefield, and she has never been particularly physically aggressive. While tall in her human form, she actually comes out as surprisingly slender and graceful... and by the way, the legends of the solar badonkadonk are explicitly untrue. Really, she doesn't eat THAT much cake.

Luna is of course smaller,  and she is closer to the warrior-princess build-- strong shoulders and hips, modest bust, powerful stance, every inch an equine Artemis.  Rainbow Dash is built along similar lines. While being athletically toned, though, neither of them is flat nor mannish in human form;  Dash in fact is actually middling in the hourglass build, though with a cut, muscled look.  And, well, a c-cup. She learned the importance of jogging bras that day...

Applejack, when humanized, is pretty close to the typical portrayals as a robust farm girl, I will grant-- broad shouldered and buxom. Rarity has a similar build to Rainbow Dash, surprisingly, albeit not "cut" like her. In any form she is the picture of carefully cultivated fashionable looks. Twilight? Perky and petite--- and in better shape than she should be, thanks to Rainbow Dash's incessant nagging to get her out of the library for some physical activity out in the sunshine.

One of the broader mistakes you make is about Pinkie Pie. Having met Pinkie Pie in person, I cannot imagine why anyone would imagine her to be a pudge. (1)She's an earth pony, gentlemen; she spent her formative years doing heavy labor on a rock farm, the equivalent of pure strength training that has stuck with her ever since. She has only become more physically active since leaving home. Seriously, she exercises every morning with the Cake twins, works her fluffy tail off in the bakery, pronks everywhere she goes rather than walk... As a human she's the original brick house--- short, thick in limb, deceptively soft looking and round in face, but not really an ounce of surplus fat on her. Her core body strength is terrifying. I've had opportunity to pick her up and hold her in pony form; under that huggy pink bubbly fluff she is a literal superball of muscle.

If Pinkie Pie were a Porky Pie, she wouldn't be able to run circles around the others like she does. While I was having tea with a dragon, she was tearing back and forth through the sub-chambers of the castle, checking all the vaults for sabotage by our still-invisible invader, dragging a bewildered assistant treasurer behind her. He was run ragged; if she even got winded I would have been surprised.

But the biggest mistake human artists and writers make is with Fluttershy. Firstly.... B cup in human form, gentlemen, so please rein your hormones in. (She was a supermodel, remember? And in Equestria, Celestia is considered the beauty ideal.So they don't tend to hire badonkadonks or  "jug kittens" in either world.)  And secondly yes, she is just as sweet as she looks,  but no creature who knew her would ever mistake that gentle soul for weak. She worked as hard as any of the Apples in her veterinary calling; the frogs of her hooves were tough and callused from endless days of work in the care of animals great and small ; it was only Rarity's constant fussing and the tender ministrations of Aloe and Lotus that kept her hooves as pristine as they were. And you can't see it on the show, but under her coat her forelimbs have dozens of thin white scars from scratches and bites and from plucking lost woodland babies out of briar thorns. Under that rosepetal and velvet exterior she has a tenacious strength. I've seen her manhandle grizzly bears, and put on bursts of speed in the air that actually rivaled Rainbow Dash's... when she was angry enough to forget herself.

You see, that's the key to it: I think her only real problem is that she thinks she's weak... or perhaps she's afraid of how strong she might be. Yes, actually; I think the thing she's most afraid of is herself.  

 

 

 

---

 

It took Twilight about half an hour to remember their cell phones. She stumbled to a halt in the middle of the hallway, facehooved, and tapped the speed-dial for a conference call.(3) The others picked up quickly. "Guys! Any results?"

"Most of the vaults seem okay," Dash said. "Least I haven't found any coal in any of 'em."

"Likewise," Rarity said.

"Clean as a whistle, here," Applejack said.  "What about you Fluttershy? You seen anything?... Fluttershy?" There was nothing but an ominous silence. It didn't take long to draw the obvious conclusion.

"Oh dear," Rarity said. "Oh dear oh dear--"

"Fluttershy? Fluttershy speak up!.... Hang on Fluttershy, I'm coming--" Dash started revving up into her typical overdrive.

"WAIT EVERYPONY!" All of them froze at Twilight Sparkle's shout. "Rainbow, hold on. It won't do anypony any good if we all start running around higgledy piggledy. We need to regroup, THEN we can track down Fluttershy together!"

"Yes, we do need to stay calm," Rarity said. "Fluttershy may have just forgotten to switch her phone on, the poor dear."

"Great, now how do we find each other?" Dash said, frustrated.

Twilight looked over at the clerk she'd brought along. He shrugged in confusion. "Don't ask me. I've worked down here for years and nothing looks the way I remember!"

Twilight huffed in annoyance. "Hold on. Girls, switch on the Geeps."

There was a pause. "The whaaat?" Rainbow Dash said for all of them.

"The Geeps! The little blue button at the top! It's something I added to our phones. Arthur described something similar, it's not quite the same and it still needs a lot of fine tuning but it's a system so that you can always know where you are and find each other... It bounces signals off the highest tower of Canterlot and triangulates with---"

"Oh, oh THAT button," Rarity said. "I wondered what that was."

"Uh, Twi? I think it's pronounced "Gee-- Pee-- Ess," Applejack said.

"Whatever! It's an abbreviation!--- oh just turn it on." Multiple hooves fiddled with slick metal and glass rectangles, and soon tiny screens showed little maps of Canterlot, with seven tiny glowing dots. "The map is just an overlay. But the dots show where each of us are and..."

"Haha! Triumph!"

"Oh! Princess Luna, I forgot you were searching too. Did you find anything? Did you find Fluttershy?" Twilight said.

"Nay good Twilight. But I have made a monumental achievement. I have finally activated the "game" folder on yon device!"

"Luna, this really isn't the time--"

"Hah! And it hath 'Angry Birds' installed! Excelsior!"

"Wait, these things play games?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"I found I prefer 'Bejeweled,' "Rarity said.

"Y'all would--"

"GIRLS! FOCUS!"

 

---

 

Fluttershy was not, as others would measure it, a brave or bold pony. But perhaps they used the wrong metric. She would not easily go forth on risky endeavors and excitement was the last thing she would ever seek. But she would follow a tug on her heartstrings through the fields of hell, if that was where it led.

At that moment it was leading her to a gem vault that stood open at the end of the hall. Light spilled out from inside, glittering on a loose handful of gems scattered across the floor. Fluttershy could see bits of coal and gravel scattered amongst them. More importantly, she could hear something rooting around inside, the sound of hooves or paws digging through piles of gemstones... and frustrated muttering and weeping. Breathlessly, she crept to the vault door and looked inside.

It was the draconequus. As always, it had to be, because nothing else in the world would look like it. It's alien form and geometry was obvious to anyone. It most resembled a broken slinky shoved inside a tube sock. It had googling, mismatched eyes beneath a tuft of scraggly hair, skinny sticklike limbs with long bony fingers, and a mouthful of crooked teeth at the end of its crumpled sock-snout. The other end didn't so much have a tail as much as it tapered off into a kinked and crooked vapor trail that vanished into nothing. It was nothing like the energetic creatures that had come before it.

In fact it looked... sickly.

It was digging through piles of gems with its stick-like fingers, muttering to itself and sobbing faintly. "Not enough, not enough," it, or maybe he, was saying. As she watched, he plucked up a tourmaline the size of a baseball in his hands and clutched it. The stone shimmered and glowed, and something seemed to drain out of the stone and into his hands. The gem turned black and crumbled to dust, littering the floor. for a moment the creature seemed calm, but then he shook his fists and pounded them on the floor. "No!" he sobbed in a voice like a disconsolate kazoo. "It's just not enough!"

"Um, Excuse me?"

The creature spun around to find himself facing a pink maned, yellow pegasus. Or at least he gathered that much from what he could see, peeking around the door at him. "Who dares?" he hissed. "Who dares interrupt the terrible Clutter at his repasssssst?" He loomed up and clawed at the air, trying to look intimidating.

"Yeeep!" Granted, it didn't take much to intimidate Fluttershy. "Mister Clutter? I- I'm Fluttershy..."

He cocked a pencil-scribble eyebrow. "Come again?"

"I'm Fluttershy..."

The eyebrow rose higher. "Almost got it that time..."

Fluttershy took a deep breath. "I'm FLUTTERSHY!" she yelled, making both of them jump. "Eep! I'm... Fluttershy. I'm one of the Elements of Harmony, and um, I'm going to have to... place you under arrest? I think?"

She hunkered down in a ball. She expected him to cackle maniacally and throw lightning about like Discord. She expected him to turn her to stone, or into a cloud of flying guppies, or turn the universe inside out and send her to the far side of the world. What he actually did she never saw coming... he grimaced in terror and tried to flee. It was a short flight; he thwacked into the wall of the vault and crumpled to the floor in a heap.

"Oh my!" Fluttershy said. She'd gotten up and run over to help him before she'd even thought about it. "Are you okay--"

"AWAY FROM ME, PUNY MORTAL!" he honked. He rose to his full, crooked height and unleashed chaos magic from his fingertips. The room rippled and swayed. He swelled, growing larger and larger, trembled for a moment... then shrank again like a fatally punctured balloon. The room snapped back to normal with the alacrity of a rubber band. He slumped to the floor, groaning, barely bigger than a ferret.

Fluttershy scooped him up in her hooves without a thought. "Oh no, you are hurt! No, wait." She looked him over, took in his shaky hands, his wheezy breathing, and corrected herself. "You're sick. Aren't you."

Clutter obviously felt he should rant and rave and "nyaaah nyaah puny mortal" a bit, but he apparently didn't have the energy to care. "Yes," he admitted in defeat. "Yes, I am."

"What's wrong? How can I help you?" Fluttershy said.

His eyes goggled in disbelief. "Why?" he said bluntly. "What do you think you'll get out of it? Think you'll buy your way into my royal court when I take over this---" he stopped to cough and hack.

Fluttershy smiled and shook her head."No." She pulled out a kerchief and wiped his face. "It's... it's just who I am," she said. "Really. So what's wrong?"

He looked up at her. "Simple," he said. "I'm dying."

 

---

 

"Look, each of the dots is one of us. Just use it like a compass, follow it till the dots come together and we meet each other," Twilight said patiently as she trotted down the hall with the phone floating in front of her.

"I'm trying I'm trying," Pinkie bleated. "But every time I start to, the ghosts eat the one I'm following and I have to start over!"

Twilight stopped and facehoofed. "Pinkie, that's the pac-man game!"

"You're kidding," Rainbow Dash said. "You've been following the little yellow mouth thing?"

"Uh huh."

"Man, I've been trying to follow the little blue ghost..."

"ARgh." Twilight gently but firmly thumped her head against the wall.

 

---

 

"Dying?" Fluttershy exclaimed. "What, but why?" She lay down, cradling the shrunken draconequus in her forelimbs.

"I'm... I guess you roundsiders would call it starving to death," Clutter explained.

"Roundsiders? And, starving?"

"What draconequi call people who live inside the round universes," Clutter said. He sighed. "And... I don't know how much you roundsiders can understand about this but... my kind, we sort of, well, we feed what we call Potential. The energy difference between Chaos and Order. It's an oversimplification, but..."

"I understand," Fluttershy said simply. "Mister Arcturus explained some of it."

Clutter nodded. "Anyway, I'm not one of the big shots in this contest," he said, his voice wheezing like a leaky accordion. "Never been. I've just been a shrimp getting by, scraping up a little to eat in the outerverse, just enough to get by, and keeping my head down. Never even been able to claim  a roundsider universe for myself...

"Anyway, word gets around that another universe just opened up for a Tournament, and they needed a twelfth. And since the rules were for altering one single cosmic constant, the high rollers were even going to spot everyone a few Quatloos of Potential so the table was even.  This was my big chance. It cost me every bit of hoarded Potential I had, but I bought myself a seat at the table.  This was it! Me, sitting down with some of the Big Boys...

"But I overestimated myself. I didn't realize just how much it would cost." He stopped to wheeze and spasm, interference patterns like a disrupted TV broadcast dancing across him. "when my turn came up I was already going to be on dregs. But then the rules changed... so now I didn't have enough. The moment I came inside your universe, I started starving."

He went staticky again for a moment. "You see? It's costing me more Potential to keep going than I can get back. I've been running a deficit ever since I hit this three-dimensional burg. I don't even have enough juice left now to climb back out the way I came in.

"I've been leaching the Order out of these gemstones to keep going but it's getting harder and harder..." He raged for a moment, seething. "That Shazbot Ataxia! I can't believe I fell for it! He just needed a patsy to fill in the twelfth slot. I never had a chance. He's been sitting back in his fatcat pocket dimension, laughing at me as I fizzle away..."

"I'm sorry," Fluttershy said, stroking him with her hoof. "I wish I could help you. I really really wish I could."

Clutter scoffed. "Don't mock me, roundsider," he spat. "I'm a chaos spirit. And not a particularly nice one. Why would you care?"

"Because you're a person," Fluttershy said gently. "And you can't help how you have to live."

The draconequus was struck speechless.

 

---

 

"Left.... now right... Rarity, take a left.... we're just around a corner...!" Twilight shouted out directions as she galloped through the maze, the clerk panting along beside her. They turned one last corner and all of them collided in a tangled heap of hooves and tails. The moment they met, with a groan and a pop the distorted corridors snapped back to normal. They all clambered to their hooves, wincing at their bruises and shaking out ruffled feathers. The way was clear; a single straight corridor with a trail of coal-crumbs scattered down its length. "That way, girls!" Twilight shouted.

"Tallyho!" Luna shouted, and the group was off at a gallop.

 

---

 

"You... you're being kind to me," Clutter said, marveling. "Even after the damage I've done. Even though you know what I'd do if the tables were turned. You'd really try to help me?"

"I really really wish I could," Fluttershy said sadly. "Sometimes, like with my little animal friends, sometimes I can't and....It's the hardest thing in the world, when I can't help." She blinked a tear away. "I wish I could help you. But I'm just me. Fluttershy. I'm not magical like Twilight or brave like Rainbow Dash or Applejack or clever like Pinkie Pie. I'm not anything."

Clutter scowled, squinting at her like he was looking through her.  "No, you're not nothing," he said. He seemed to see something, like someone seeing a glimmering in the bottom of a deep well. "In fact you're full of potential. Extraordinary potential. You just don't know it, do you."

"Potential?" Fluttershy blinked, her eyes wide. "Oh. Oh! Potential! if you can use it, if it will help you... then go ahead and take some of it---" She held out her hoof to him. "I... I know it'll hurt, but... if you just take some, just out of my hoof, then---"

Once again he was struck speechless. It was true; the Potential, the Order in a living thing was astronomically higher than that of a mere crystal. And yes, he could extract some, but--- Surely she had seen what had happened to the gems? He saw it in her eyes, saw it in the tiny, faint scars on her leg where tiny animals in terror and pain had drawn blood as she mended them; that didn't matter. She was saving a life, and her own wounds would heal; she would bear the hurt.

What a pity it was the one taboo even a wretch like himself would never break. "No no, not the kind of Potential that I can use," he fibbed,  "the other, metaphorical kind that..." he coughed, staticked, and seemed to shrink in on himself. "Oh never mind." His sly smirk returned. "Though come to think of it..." He jerked and shuddered and shrivelled smaller still.

"Oh no!" Fluttershy said tearfully. "Hold on, Mister Clutter, I-- I'm sure my friend Twilight can help you---!"

"I think it's a little late for that." He patted her cheek with one spindly hand. "Fluttershy, you were kind to me. And now I'm going back to where I came from as a Null. But I think I can make use of that potential in you. Well, indirectly."

"How?" Fluttershy asked. "What for?"

Clutter chuckled vindictively, his voice honking. "Why to help upset Ataxia's apple cart." He held up something in his withered hand; a crystal egg, clear as water.

Fluttershy gazed at it, entranced. "What is it?"

Clutter chuckled like a broken music box. "I guess you'd call it my nest egg." He tapped it against her forehead, it shattered in a cloud of snowflakes. The glittering vault blazed with light...

 

---

 

"Really," Sid said, cocking an eyebrow. "And they buy into this... what did you call it?"

"Fiat currency."

"...Fiat currency system over and over again?"

"Yep," I knocked my tea back and went for a refill. Celestia graciously poured me another cup.

The conversation was going quite well. I've always been a policy and economics wonk, and the dragons, of course, were always interested in ways to increase their hoards. Understandable; it was their bread and butter, quite literally, as well as their heritage, mating display, and preferred sleeping mattress. We both warmed to the topic quite readily. They had been fascinated by the idea of investments and stocks, and the topic had drifted around to some of the more cautionary tales of moneymaking: fractional reserve, fiat currency, and the abominable so-called "federal" reserve. Being creatures with a very concrete idea of wealth-- they slept on it after all-- they were flabbergasted that any species could be so gullible as to fall for such obvious flummery.

"To give you an idea," I went on, "an investment research company once did an analysis of fiat currency systems. They wanted to know how many fiat currencies had been used and how they had turned out. By the time they were done they had examined over six hundred currencies around the world--"

"Six hundred?" Sid's scaly eyebrows nearly jumped off his head. "There have been that many?"

"Far more, actually. They did the search alphabetically. They decided to quit halfway through the B's. You know what they found?"

"What?"

"All of them defaulted to zero; that is, they became worthless. The average lifespan of a fiat currency is about five months. And nearly all of them ended in a massive crash: hyperinflation, total collapse of the economy..."

"Great Maker," Sid rumbled, sipping his tea. "Why on earth would anydragon-- er, anyone-- go in for such a system?"

"Greed and gullibility," I said as I used the tongs to drop three sugar cubes into my cuppa. "The worst combination of vices since wrath and pride. See, it always starts out the same way: they begin with commodity currency. Precious metals such as gold and silver, usually.  But the very thing that makes gold standards so stable is the one thing they don't like: unlike other commodities that have been used as money such as cotton or tea, the amount of gold available is very very stable. It doesn't corrode, or get consumed, but neither does it increase in volume. That cramps the style of politicians, bankers, and other plutocrats who want to spend more than is actually in the vault.

"It doesn't take long to find a loophole, though. Eventually, to make things easier than lugging around all that gold, they start using banknotes... usually paper receipts for the gold... as if they were money.

"So eventually some bright, ambitious and amoral individual thinks: Everyone is using the bank notes , the receipts, for the gold as currency, just as if they were the actual gold. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just print more bank notes without having to bother actually earning more gold?" And so they start printing more receipts than they actually have deposited as gold and using those empty receipts to buy more stuff. Oh, they keep a little gold in the bank at first-- what they call "fractional reserve." But they're still circulating more paper receipts for gold than actually exists. If anyone raises a fuss, they just blow smoke about how they'll get more real money to back the paper receipts "later...." from interest on their investments, or future taxes on the populace, or other imaginary places.

"And they get away with it. So long as there isn't a run on the bank when the reserves are low. That's when people get mad that their gold has been turned into empty vaults and emptier promises, and the lynchings start."

"If they manage to pull it off long enough, they say "let's just forget the gold altogether. People only spend PAPER, so let's print as much as we need. Free money forever. Wee! '  And if the lawmakers agree with it-- and they're usually greedy and gullible enough to do it---  the presses never stop rolling." I snorted. "The presses print and print, and the value of the banknotes falls and falls, till finally they print so many banknotes that one shiny day everybody realizes that the paper is worthless and the ones printing all the money have been robbing them. Then things REALLY get fun."

"People get hung, governments fall, bodies hang in the streets. And everyone goes back to tangible commodities for money. But the loss is already there. People who have worked all their lives, saved thousands or millions of banknotes from the sweat of their brow, wake up and their blood, sweat and tears are gone.... and the bankers and politicians have flown off with all their ill-gotten treasure. The people find they've built their masters palaces and yachts, and in the end been paid in bags of newspaper clippings."

"I see now," Sid rumbled, lip curling.  He huffed. "Deplorable. Such cowardly thievery! And this has happened six hundred times?"

"Way more than six hundred. Always started by the same five words, " I said. " 'It won't happen to us.'  I was incredibly lucky, actually, to escape to Equestria when I did. My own country was brewing up for a massive collapse of its own... one that will break the back of most of the world."

"How bad was it?" Celestia asked.

"Let me put it this way." I pulled out an old American $20 bill. Don't ask me why I still carried it; nostalgia I suppose. "You see this? This is twenty dollars. From 1792 to 1930, this was about the price of an ounce of gold. About that point, we went on fractional reserve.... printing fifty dollars for every twenty dollars in gold we had in reserve. And the price, of course, jumped up almost instantly to 35 dollars, and rose steadily to 38 dollars by the year 1970.... after over a century of stability, the value of the dollar essentially dropped by just under half in forty years. Then, we went on fiat currency-- and the price of an ounce of gold jumped to $151 an ounce by 1975.

"it increased fourfold in five years?" Celestia said.

I shrugged. "Of course, the shrinking didn't stop. It even accelerated, as the government printed more and more fake money to spend on real goods and services. By the year 2011, it took 1,531 dollars to buy an ounce of gold."

"A tenfold increase??" Sid said, sparks shooting from his nose in surprise. "In such a short time?"

I nodded. "Or an increase of about 7500 percent from 1792," I said. "It's probably a matter of years or even months now before the inevitable."

"Why couldn't they just keep on going?" one of Sid's companions pointed out. "They could just print larger and larger bills, forever."

"Not if they no longer believe in it," Celestia said soberly. "If the ponies, the people decide something is worthless, then there is no power under heaven that will make them consider it valuable any more."

"It was probably a matter of months before the collapse when I left," I said, sadly. "The last warning signs were all there."

"Warning signs?"

I sat back a little. "You know of tidal waves, correct?" My audience nodded. "Well, when a tidal wave is coming, the last warning sign is that the ocean draws back... the tide goes out. And keeps going out, and out, and out, further than it ever has. Then the wave comes roaring in and sweeps up over the beach, up over the harbor, up over the village, destroying everything in its path.

"Historically, one of the last warning signs before hyperinflation sets in is that the price of gold, which was going UP all that time, suddenly drops dramatically. In 2011, gold was fifteen hundred an ounce. Right when I left, four years later, it had dropped to $1100.  The tide was going out.

I nodded. "No, we don't have Draconequis where I come from. But we have chaos aplenty. It wasn't hard to see the coming of the storm."

The conversation was cut short. Celestia's cup suddenly fell to the floor, shattering. She rose to her hooves, her horn glowing and an indescribable expression, mingled euphoria and pain, on her face. "Oh mercy," she breathed. "It's happened again! but... in the joy, such sorrow..." She gathered herself. "Forgive me,  Ambassador," she said. "Something... extraordinary has happened that I must attend to--" She vanished in a flash of light.

"Is there something we should be aware of?" Sid asked.

"Oh, nothing bad, I assure you," I said, beaming in spite of myself. Save for the strange bittersweetness, I had seen that expression on Celestia's face once before... when a certain purple protege'  had her life radically changed. "But I think I'll leave any announcements to Her Highness." I sipped my tea and wondered which one of them it was this time...

 

---

 

Luna and the Bearers tumbled into the last vault at the exact same time that Celestia teleported there. By a miracle they avoided a seven-way collision, sliding to a halt around the sun princess' legs. All of them had been riding to the rescue, but now they all stood gaping at what they saw.

Lying on the floor, between piles of unimaginable treasure, was Fluttershy. She, there was no other word for it, glowed, residual magic gathered around her like a mantle of spring. She was cradling a strange, crumpled something in her forelegs and looking down on it, weeping, her wings mantled around them both as if to shelter them from a storm. The shrunken thing reached up a withered claw to her.

"Beep," it said. "Gotcha nose."

Fluttershy giggled through her tears and gave it a watery smile. "Better," it said. "No tears. Not really dying. Just being... diminished." It coughed and briefly turned into a cloud of static. "We might. Have been friends....Maybe I'll see you again. Someday. In. An eon or two."

Fluttershy sniffled. "You'll probably forget me by then," she said.

"Never," it said. "You were. The first. Creature. Who was ever..." He paused to breathe. "...Kind to me." The word was a benediction.

"Goodbye," Fluttershy whispered, lowering her head till her spiral horn touched his forehead.

"Good. Bye..." Starting at the crumpled tail, the creature slowly faded away, till there was nothing left but a single brightly flickering spark. It rose up out of her hooves into the air, circled once and vanished.

The newborn Alicorn of Kindness got to her hooves and smiled through her tearstreaked face at her friends. "Hello everypony," she said. "I guess I should tell you what happened.... If you don't mind."

 

---

 

1)Before you mention her confectionary consumption, I really should point out that the "sweets" the ponies consume are startlingly healthy. They use cane sugar as well as honey, brown sugar, molasses, agave nectar, sweet leaf, fruit juices-- nutrient-rich, natural sweeteners. Their flour is whole grain. They use whole milk, eggs from free range grain fed chickens, whole sea salt, olive oils, flavorings made from concentrates...  even their candies could probably legally pass for vitamins back on earth. Their diet is still distressingly high in carbs, at least by human standards, but it's offset by a staggeringly high vegetable fiber content, and the simple expedient of using nutritious ingredients rather than using the bleached flour, white sugar, and corn and rapeseed oils(a) we humans guzzle. The differences in flavor and texture were barely noticeable, and my palate quickly adjusted; they are quite good bakers. And so long as I made sure to supplement my diet with a little meat, well--- while the pounds weren't exactly melting away like snow, I was losing a little bit of my ponderous belly...

A)Yes, vegetable oils (other than olive oil) are bad for you. In retrospect this should be obvious: consider how much corn you'd have to squeeze to get one bottle of vegetable oil. Is there any reasonable way you would get that much corn, and hence that much corn oil, into your diet naturally? Rule of thumb: the harder it is to turn into something digestible, the less likely it is to actually be healthy to digest. Another hint: what do they feed cattle to fatten them up for slaughter? Yup. Corn. What do we feed our kids? Corn oil, corn syrup, corn and wheat based breakfast cereal.... Mooo, y'all.

2)Make no mistake, when I heard about this later and pictured poor Fluttershy creeping her tearful, whimpering way down those tomb-like passageways all alone, my Inner Brony wanted to teleport me through time and space to her side with her blankie, her teddy, and a plate of cookies and milk to make everything better. FlutterCry: a fearsome power in its own right.

3)The girls were natural early adapters. As expensive as they are, Equestrian cellphones have marvelous advantages over Earth cellphones. Being partially quintessance based they rarely if ever needed a recharge, and you could still get four bars even deep underground. Of course unless you were a unicorn dialing them was a bit tricky, so speed-dial was a must. That and really really big buttons.