The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville
Chapter 8: The Auto-Fetching Forehoof
Applejack raced ahead of the others to have a talk with Big Mac, who was standing outside the tree house. Piles of paper with Apple, Inc.’s letterhead had been stacked all around the tree’s trunk, and something was smoldering from behind Big Mac’s back.
If Apple, Inc. had made itself rich off of illegal slave labor from Ponyville, then the moment when a rescued Princess’ representative was about to spill the beans was the perfect time for an evidence-eliminating “accident”.
Pinkamena walked right up to Big Mac, then reached around him and knocked his torch to the ground, quickly stomping the embers into charcoal. She then walked back around and looked him in the eye for a few seconds before turning her attention to Applejack. “‘Too civilized to burn the books’, huh?” she asked, before walking into the tree house. Although she was doing her best to hide it, inside Pinkamena was trembling in fear at the thought of the tree house burning around her.
Crammed into the room at the top of the stairs were Applejack, Graphite, Vinyl Scratch, Pinkamena, Rarity, the two pegasus guards assigned to watch her, Soarin’, the Empress Rainbow Dash, and the Empress’ enormous ego. Big Mac was relegated to peering in from the top of the stairs. All of the remaining space in the room was taken up with hundreds, if not thousands of books. They had originally been stacked into precarious towers, but those towers had long since collapsed, leaving books shoved into the spaces between the furniture, and covering said furniture to the point where that furniture became completely unusable. Rather like sand dunes, the chance of a further collapse, a “book avalanche”, or “book-alanche”, was a near certainty the moment anypony was foolish enough to attempt to remove just one of the books within a hoof’s reach.
The lack of space reminded Vinyl rather strongly of Celestia’s teleportation room.
“I’m ready for your proof, Miss Scratch,” said Rainbow Dash, climbing up on the bed so she could be higher than everypony else.
Vinyl Scratch looked around her at the haphazard piles of books and scrolls. She noticed that Pinkamena was in a sense of awe—with her sheltered upbringing it was possible that this room contained more books than she had ever known had existed before. “OK, Exhibit A. Let’s see...what was the name of that book...Predictions and...no wait, my world, here it would be...” By this time she was mumbling to herself.
“Speak up!” exclaimed the Empress.
“Songs of Things to Come!” Vinyl exclaimed. “Which...I brought with me!” She retrieved the libretto from her saddlebag and placed it on the table in the center of the room. As she did so, the letter from the Princess to herself fell unnoticed to the floor. “Canzone 42,” she read. The page the book was opened to was covered with sheet music and lyrics. “The Maa-aa-aaaayaa-aaaa-aaaaare ii-iii-iiiiiiinnnnn...” she attempted to sing. “Attempted”, because Canzone 42 was a baritone solo, and therefore a bit of a stretch for her. She turned the page. “Thhheeeee-eee...”
“GET ON WITH IT!” screamed Rainbow Dash.
“Right, I’ll paraphrase,” Vinyl said, flipping through the yellowed pages of the libretto. “The Mare in the Moon was once a rival to Princess Celestia, but was then banished to the Moon for a thousand years. She had been so powerful in fact that only the artifacts known as the ‘Elements of Harmony’ were able to do even that much to her.”
Soarin’ leaned over the pages then flipped a few of them back and forth to scan the lyrics within. He then turned and nodded up at the Empress.
Vinyl put the libretto carefully back into her saddlebag, then searched them in hopes that she’d find the other book she needed there. No such luck.
“Exhibit B?” prompted Applejack.
Vinyl sighed. “There’s a book all about the Elements in this room, I’m sure of it.”
The ponies looked around them, several of them twisting their heads around to read the titles of upside-down books. However, most of the books were inaccessible to all but mountain climbers.
“Missy, it looks like you done run outa luck,” said Applejack.
Vinyl Scratch froze for a second, then suddenly relaxed. With a suspiciously casual tone, she addressed a distracted Pinkamena from over her shoulder while reaching a forehoof back towards her. “Pinkie Pie, could you please get me The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide?” she said quietly.
“Here you go,” Pinkamena said, balancing the book on a forehoof. She then did a double take as Vinyl took it. “OK, two things,” Pinkamena then said. “First, don’t ever call me by that name again. And second, what kind of freaky powers does this Pinkie friend of yours have, anyway?!”
As she looked around her, Pinkamena suddenly realized that she saw little labels floating in front of every book with their titles and possible uses. Next to each earth pony and unicorn was an information box with their birthdays, likes and dislikes. As far as she could tell, the only reason the pegasi in the room lacked these boxes was because they hadn’t been around Ponyville long enough for her to suck the information out of their skulls.
“No!” Pinkamena exclaimed, slamming her head sideways into a nearby pillar. When her vision cleared, she nodded at what she was no longer seeing. “Much better.”
“Oo, I wanna try!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, hopping down from the bed to stand beside Pinkamena. “Pinkie Pie, could you please get me The Great Big Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind?”
“Here you go,” Pinkamena said automatically, then stared goggle-eyed at the book the Empress then took from her.
“Neat!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, putting the book down on the table and starting to flip through it. “I’m gonna look up exactly what kind of ‘crazy’ you are!”
“Oh yeah?!” exclaimed Pinkamena. “Pinkie Pie,” she ordered herself, “could-you-please-get-me Bigby’s Book of Non-Unicorn Mental Magic?” As she said this, she stared at her left forehoof. She saw it flick, so fast as to be nearly imperceptible, and come back into focus with a book balanced upon it. She couldn’t be sure, but in that split second she also thought she saw her foreleg stretch far more than should be physically possible. “Gah!!” she shouted, nearly dropping the book. Shaking her head to recover, she then slammed it down on the table and started looking for something nasty to do to the Empress.
Vinyl used her magic to pull both books roughly away from the two readers. “Ladies, ladies!” she pleaded. “We’re here for the Elements. Remember?”
“Fine!” the pink and blue ponies said in unison.
Vinyl glanced down at the reference book open before her to be sure it said what she already knew that it would say, and then recited the text from memory: “There are six Elements of Harmony, but only five are known: Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty and Loyalty. The sixth is a complete mystery. It is said the last known location of the five elements was in the ancient castle of the royal pony sisters.”
“But that’s in the Fluttershy Forest!” exclaimed Rarity.
“Exactly,” said Vinyl, before doing a double-take. “Wait, the Fluttershy Forest?”
“It used to be known as the Everfree Forest,” said Applejack, “until a day...”
“Wait, let me guess,” said Vinyl, putting a forehoof to her eyes in exasperation. “It was on Skybreak, wasn’t it?”
Applejack blinked in surprise. “As a matter of fact, yes, it was on that day.”
Pinkamena caught Rainbow Dash turning her head away in shame during this discussion.
Vinyl Scratch looked around the room. “I am going into that forest to get those Elements, all six of them.”
Rainbow Dash looked her in the eyes then walked over to stand beside her. “As am I,” she stated confidently.
Pinkamena took a deep breath, glanced briefly at her “auto-fetching forehoof”, and joined the other two. “I’m in,” she said quietly.
Vinyl looked her up and down. “Do you still need to wear the mask?” she asked.
“Oh, right,” replied Pinkamena. “‘My quest is at an end,’ and all of that. Here goes nothing...” She removed her mask, to absolutely no reaction from the others. “Well...that was disappointing. Of course, if I actually had a secret identity, the big reveal might have meant a bit more.”
Vinyl looked back and forth between the two ponies committed to this quest.
According to the script on her world, there should have been at least two more volunteers from among the ponies in this room.
“What are you looking at me for?” Applejack said in response to Vinyl’s baleful look. “I’m a rich businesspony. I pay other ponies to do the physical work.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I suppose you need brains as well as brawn. Very well.”
Rainbow Dash looked back and forth between Vinyl and the last pony she was looking at. “What are you looking at her for?” she asked. “She’s a suspected felon!”
Vinyl nodded. “You’re right—we should do something about that.”
Vinyl led the others back to City Hall, along the way spotting Spike watching their progress from a second-story shop window. Surrounding the building when they got there were several panicked unicorns and earth ponies, frozen in the act of fleeing for their lives; the hall itself contained dozens more.
Vinyl turned around and confronted Rarity at the entrance of the hall. The former Mistress of Ponyville looked awful. Her mane hung over her face like a tattered mop, and her tail resembled a rough purple rope. “Release them,” Vinyl ordered her. “I’m going to get us through this in one piece, but if I don’t, you owe it to them to release them before we go.”
Rarity nodded nervously, and then closed her eyes. As her horn started glowing, a single sweet-sounding note started building in volume around them, like each of the frozen ponies was blowing on identical flutes. As the volume swelled, the note developed into two notes an octave apart, then into a major chord, then a minor, then a minor seventh, then a diminished seventh, the sound becoming more and more discordant. As a music student, Vinyl could barely stand to listen to it, while Rarity was visibly gritting her teeth. Finally the sound broke into pure noise, and then faded away.
All of the frozen ponies swayed for a moment before collapsing to the ground. Rarity herself nearly lost her balance as her horn’s light went out, but was able to catch herself in time. Inside the hall, the sound of the Mayor crying uncontrollably could be heard.
Most of the ponies recovered rapidly, with Rainbow Dash’s guards helping the rest. The Empress made a speech about putting aside her differences with the ground-dwellers for the extent of the emergency, and extending all the resources of Cloudsdale to assist in their recovery. She then sent a guard back to her capital to make good on her word.
An earth stallion, faded scarlet in color, spotted Rarity and made his way straight to her. “You!” he exclaimed, pointing. “You ruined all our lives!”
“I only did what I thought was best!” Rarity pleaded.
“You made me break up with my fillyfriend!” he shouted.
“She was no good for you, I assure you!”
“But who gave you the right?”
This question was taken up by the others: “Who gave you the right? Who gave you the right?!”
Rarity hid her head under her forelegs and trembled.
The stallion stepped forward until he was towering over her. “Something needs to be done,” he proclaimed somberly.
The others nodded grimly to each other.
Vinyl Scratch shoved her way between them. “She’s coming with us,” she told the crowd defiantly.
“There’s more of us then there are of you!” the stallion shouted. “How are you going to prevent us giving her what she deserves?”
The ponies in the crowd murmured among themselves, trying to come up with an appropriately gruesome punishment.
The Empress, watching the confrontation, decided to stand back and see how this pony who had assumed a position of authority over her would handle this situation.
“I’m going to give you a choice!” Vinyl said loud enough for all to hear. “Either you can ‘give her what she deserves’, now in this square without a shred of legal authority to hide behind, or you can watch the sun come up tomorrow morning. Your call.” She then turned and walked away.
The self-appointed leader of the mob looked around him warily. “How do we know you’ll bring her back?” he asked at last.
“Cuff her,” Applejack told Rainbow Dash. After a moment’s thought, the Empress nodded, and Rarity was chained and shackled by the pegasus guards.
Rarity raised her head to look in the eyes of her accusers, her former victims. “I will return and do penance for what I have done. This I swear. Please don’t hurt the Mayor; she had no idea what she was doing.” Then she turned and shuffled her way out of town behind the departing group.