“Thank you, come again!” the woman with the bubble gum pink hair shouted after the pair of teenagers exiting the gas station. She sighed as the glass and metal door swung close behind them, and shifted her shirt around. Taking on the guise of a human, Celestia had gotten a job as a cashier at a gas station far enough away from Pete's apartment that the odds the human would find her were slim. Going by her short hand, Tia, getting the job had been the easy part, dealing with customers was not.

Within her first week on the job, she realized just what made Pete so upset with the planet. All it took was one newscast to make one question the state of the world. Not because of the disastrous reports of murder and global catastrophe, but simply because of how much fluff there was. Each piece of news got less than a minute of air time, a minute and a half if it was the talk of the evening, and the level of bias in them was obvious even to an outsider. After that first week Celestia could almost predict the news word for word, and they wouldn't even cover a fourth of the whole story.

Aside from that, the attitude of the average person was disinterest at best, and callous more often than not. Too many times during her short working time has Celestia nearly leveled the business because some impatient man berated her over situations far beyond her control. Of course there were those that understood, but more often than not if someone had to wait more than a minute you'd think the world was ending for them. Humans were demanding, and Celestia had a suspicion that if the roles were reversed they would complain about the ones complaining.

And all of this of course ignored the sickening demands of the job itself. By cashier, she apparently also signed up as janitor and stocker. Neither of which would bother her too much, except no one seemed to have any sense of maturity. Someone always felt the need to silently make a mess in the back of the aisles, which was strange considering there were only two short racks of goods. These spills were never mentioned by the customer that would create them, but she would certainly hear about them under the breaths of the following ones. Then there was the bathroom. Quite simply, it was disgusting. It seemed to Celestia that humans used the bathroom in the gas station when they simply wanted to make a sickening mess and not clean it up themselves. Thankfully, magic was not outside of her reach as a human.

Overall, she surmised that humans were rather self involved, where as ponies thought and acted more as a group. Where Pete saw an inherent evil, Celestia simply saw nature. Ponies were of a herd kind, they lived in groups before and continued to live in them even now, they were limited in number. Humans on the other hand had developed a sense of self interest, and it was a thought prevalent in the media. They were encouraged to do everything in their power to raise their own status, even if that meant dragging others down and few outwardly complained about it. It was seen as normal, profiting off the uneducated, the weak, the sick. Capitalism at its finest.

Celestia sighed again and changed the channel on the television behind her. The night was slow, and she was still some what tipsy from the party she had just left at Pete's apartment. Luckily for her, Pete had decided to break his usual rule of not drinking, allowing her to slip off unnoticed. The princess knew that she would have to explain to him one day, but for now it was best if he didn't know. Pete would insist that she stop, that she would be in danger, which might be true, but was more likely part of his overstated prejudice against his kind.

“What makes one so vehemently against his entire species though?” Celestia asked herself, tapping a finger against her chin.

Sure, Pete was thrown off by media bias, bigots, a possibly untrustworthy government, and all of that, but that doesn't drive someone to be so violently opposed to the whole of his kind. Celestia had studied the workings of the mind, psychology, when her obliviousness to her sister's envy cost her 1000 years of time with Luna. The psyche was a fragile thing, she knew this now, and wounds to it did not simply heal on their own. It was her only idea. Something had happened, possibly a series of events that cultivated his distrust for others. Even the perception of abuse can be as damaging as real abuse when it comes to the mind. Of course, she wasn't exactly able to simply tell Pete to lay on a couch and ask him how he feels. She had to be more subtle, however, being subtle took more time, and their time remaining was indeterminate.

In either event, the princess was determined to help the human who had given her and her subjects such deference. She realized they could have ended up with someone much worse than Pete, and one good deed does deserve another. Helping him overcome some form of trauma would perfect, in her mind. To leave him with a higher quality of life, whether that means fixing his issues or...

Celestia pressed a knuckle to her lips in thought. If Pete was against humankind, perhaps he would feel better among ponies. She knew it was a silly idea, the differences between the two races were much smaller than Pete believed them to be, but if he really believed he would be happier in Equestria then it might be worth taking him back.

“It wouldn't be difficult,” she muttered to herself, “Assuming we figure this whole thing out.”

Progress still had not been made on the spell to take them home, despite the efforts of, what Celestia believed, to be the three greatest minds of magic pouring over the problem day and night. Twilight was convinced it was a problem with her numbers, either she missed something or had forgotten something when she copied the notes from her memory. The unicorn had since started rewriting the formula, recreating it almost from scratch to make sure she had missed nothing. Meanwhile, Celestia and Luna had gone through what she'd already written down at least a dozen times. The theory was sound, but had failed in practice.

Tests would be required to figure out what was wrong, but they couldn't simply bounce from reality to reality. The fabric of time and space was already potentially damaged, getting back home would be risky enough.

Celestia shook her head and sighed again. It had been less than ten minutes. Her thoughts were going to consume her if she didn't do something. The princess in disguise spent the rest of her shift attempting to keep busy, even if it meant checking the shelves sixteen times over. An odd sense of relief washed over her whenever a customer entered, and a strange feeling of boredom was left when they exited.

It was close to three in the morning when she teleported back home, to Pete's home. Turning back into her normal alicorn self at the sound of loud music, Celestia was surprised to find the group passed out in various places around the room. The princess walked over to the stereo and turned it off, her head throbbing enough from the late night, and surveyed the aftermath of the party. No more alcohol, each mare collapsed in her own area, except-

A knock at the door startled Celestia. Realizing that Pete was likely totally unconscious in his bedroom from drinking, she quickly changed back into her human form, rushing to ensure the person knocking did not wake the other four legged occupants, and opened the door. A slightly older man, clean shaved, well groomed, and wearing a blue uniform, was at the door. A police officer, Celestia recognized the uniform from the news.

“Yes, officer?” she unintentionally yawned, the late night catching up to her.

“We've gotten several noise complaints,” he replied, looking unamused at her yawn.

“I'm sorry about that. We had a bit of a soirée tonight and-”

“Yeah, yeah, a party is a party, and unless you're a nightclub with proper soundproofing this city says you quiet down at 12:30pm.” he said all of this while scribbling on a pad of some kind. Without missing a beat he pulled the page out and handed it to Celestia.

Somewhat confused, Celestia took the paper and stared at it. A citation for noise violation. By the time she looked up the cop was gone down the hall. Quietly, the princess stepped back inside, closing the door, and slid the ticket under some items on a shelf. She would take care of that herself by the end of the week. There was no need to trouble Pete any more than they had.

She released the spell, reverting to an alicorn yet again, and practically collapsed in a corner. At least the party had done its job. There would be a distinct lack of tension for the next few days, at least, while everyone recovered.