“I’m not sure I understand the problem,” Twilight said, pawing the ground.
“Come on Twi, we’ve handled this kind of stuff before,” she said, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of her voice. Rainbow Dash shook her wings. “Bunch of friends want the same thing, have to decide some kind of compromise. Remember the Gala tickets?”
“Well, that was different. We all wanted to go to the Gala. I mean, I’d share some thigh meat with you if pegasi could digest red meat.” Twilight said, in her worst I’m-keeping-myself-above-the-drama-because-I’m-a-mature-and-intellectual-pony voice.
“But I don’t want to eat them,” Rainbow Dash said through gritted teeth. “You want to eat them, Applejack wants to save them, and I just don’t want everyone fighting!”
Twilight Sparkle laughed. It was an oily, bubbly laugh, the kind of laugh that she’d heard from a lot of ponies, but never from her friend Twilight. It was the kind of laugh that said you just weren’t smart enough to get the joke, but that’s okay, because I’m a good sport about it.
“What makes you think it will come to fighting? I’m sure we’re all reasonably ungulates here,” Twilight said.
“Because I’ve seen the apple family and Caramel and the other earth ponies lining up with bean-bag trebuchets and onion gas grenades and stuff like that! If you don’t leave these two-legged, furless weirdos alone, things could get real ugly!” she pleaded.
“What in Celestia’s name do they think they’re doing?” Rarity gasped. Her horn flickered with a nimbus of frosty light. “We’ve never raised a hoof against our fellow equines in centuries!”
“Unless you count the Smarty Pants incident,” Rainbow Dash mumbled. Twilight Sparkle tried to avoid looking anypony in the eye.
“That is not at all what I meant and you know it,” Rarity said. “What I mean is, nopony has been so brutish as to wage war on their fellow equines ever since the dawn of the Celestian era.”
“This is a declaration of civil war!” Lemon Hearts shouted. The unicorns began stomping the ground and muttering in agreement.
Oh Celestia please no. “No, no I don’t mean that! It’s not like they’re gonna kill anypony! I just mean, like, they’re really riled up and stuff, because it’s so important to them!” Rainbow Dash said, unconsciously hovering out of hoof-range.
“Oh, so it’s okay to leave us wheezing, coughing, and throwing up, with tears streaming down our eyes, or to beat us black and blue, but it isn’t murder so it’s not really a problem?” Lemon Hearts shrieked.
“No, I didn’t mean that at all! I’m just trying to get everypony to work out a compromise!” Rainbow Dash said, darting around the crowd and waving her forelegs for calm.
“They’re tougher and stronger than us,” Sea Swirl wailed. She shivered and wrapped her tail around her. “If they really wanted to, they could stop growing food and starve us out!”
“Now hold on,” Twilight said, “that doesn’t make sense. If they want to stop us eating meat, why would they cut off our sources ofs vegetable protein?”
The mood of the crowd cooled down considerably, and Rainbow Dash drew in a breath of relief.
“Still, it’s rather disconcerting that our fellow ponies are so quick to resort to brutal violence,” Rarity said, with a long shudder. “Maybe we should establish a few minor protective charms, just to be on the safe side.”
“I guess so,” Twilight Sparkle said, conjuring a few soft pink bubbles of whosey-whatsy magic stuff.
Rainbow Dash didn’t say anything. It sounded like a good idea, in theory, especially because it only took one stupid hothead to start the fur flying, but something in Rarity’s tone of voice and her eyes sent a chill down her spine.
“Once we explain how important this is too us, of course they’ll let us have the two-legged deers,” Rarity laughed. “Aren’t we all friends and neighbors here?”
Rainbow Dash sank through the air, along with her hopes and expectations. “Or maybe they’ll say that these ape-things are really important to them, and you can all cool your jets and go eat tofu or something?”
Rarity met her with a very penetrating glare. It was the kind of look she normally reserved for ponies who mixed two different types of plaid. Rarity was a good friend, a super-cool fashion designer, and she knew how to tie a cherry stem in a knot using only her tongue, but in that moment Rainbow Dash remembered that telekinesis might be used on very, very small things, like an air bubble in a brain stem, or a heart chamber, or even a bundle of specialized nerves.
“If you were a true gourmand, Rainbow Dash, you’d understand how deeply that remark cut me,” she said, in a voice as cold as a stone wall at night.
“Right. Okay. Um, how about I go over and talk to them? See if we can reach some kind of compromise? At least me, you two, and Applejack, we’ve all been through a lot, right? We’ve all used the elements of harmony, we saved equestrian like six times, and like…we’re here for each other. I know I can sort something out, right?” Rainbow Dash stammered.
Twilight smiled hopefully, but Rarity’s eyes were still…too bright, too stony.
“No problem!” Rainbow Dash said. She fluttered off over her house, trying not to wonder if human, bear, and bull were the only meats that unicorns enjoyed the taste of.