"Twilight Sparkle," said Rarity in a stern tone laced with a delicate fringe of mild hysteria. "Please tell me that you did not do something silly, like reanimate the dead." The white mare's nostrils were flared in alarm. She had pulled herself back to her feet, and was facing the door with her legs splayed and head lowered in a defensive stance.
"Reanimate the dead?" said Twilight Sparkle a little too glibly. She gave a quick, nervous chuckle as if the idea was too silly to contemplate. "That would be reckless and dangerous. Especially after last..." She clamped her mouth shut with an audible click of teeth and pulled herself back to all four feet. As she was standing, her eyes darted around the room for ideas. The purple unicorn was not a violent mare as a rule; in fact she avoided conflict by nature, and considered violence to be the last refuge of scoundrels. Still, she would not have turned up her horn at an obvious weapon in the seamstress' shop. A Golem Friendship Ray would have been awesome, for instance. "Why would I ever want to reanimate the dead?" she continued cagily. "You have no memory of me doing that, do you?"
"You don't have to belabour the point, it was just a question," said Rarity tersely. Her nostrils flared again and she gave an angry whicker. "I don't care so much for the walls if it busts in here because the paint is starting to look a little shabby, but if that thing so much as rustles the faux fur fringe on my Let It Snow pre-winter line…" she said, scraping the ground menacingly with a hoof. "It shall know the wrath of a seamstress wronged!"
"Say, why ain't that thing tried to break through the wall yet?" asked Apple Bloom shakily. She lifted the hoof that had been covering her left eye while she cowered on the floor and peeked toward the door. "I was sure we was goners, but now I don't even hear him."
"That's a good question," said Twilight Sparkle in a tone that betrayed equal parts relief and puzzlement. In her short dealings with the creature, she had found that once it fixated on a target, it would dumbly pursue it over – or usually through – any obstacle in its way. The longer she thought about it, the more she wondered why there were not gemmed fists busting through the walls and showering the ponies with tacky rococo decor and shabby paint.
"Ungh," moaned Spike dramatically. The poor little dragon was curled into a foetal position, lying on his side and cradled in his own tail. Rarity gasped.
"Spikey?" she cried in alarm. She abandoned her adorably aggressive pose and bolted over to the hapless dragon. She swept him up in one motion, and reared up so that she could hold him in a protective embrace. "Poor little Spikey Wikey. What did that big, awful creature do to you?"
"Uh, Rarity," began Twilight Sparkle uneasily.
"Urp! Rarity," gasped Spike in distress.
"Hush, don't try to talk," said Rarity gently, then her eyes steeled. She hugged Spike close with one foreleg, and she shook her free hoof angrily toward the front door. "Poor little Spike, this atrocity will not go unpunished. Somepony will avenge you. Your grievous injuries will not be in vain."
"Rarity, he's not injured," said Twilight Sparkle dryly.
Apple Bloom eyed the diminutive dragon carefully as he struggled weakly in the bigger pony's grip. "I'd be careful how hard you squeeze him, Miss Rarity," warned the filly. "Leastwise after ah seen what happened with some of our hogs back on the farm."
"In her homey, backward way, Apple Bloom has it basically right," said Twilight Sparkle reassuringly. "He's not hurt, but he's very, very full. The little piggy has been gnawing the golem down one bite at a time, but he's only a tiny dragon."
"So evil… b-but so tasty…" stammered Spike weakly, "Rarity, I know I will hate myself later for saying this, but could you please not hug me so tight?" The pony loosened her grip, but before Spike could breathe a sigh of relief, there was a tremendous THUD from the door, and suddenly he found himself crushed again as two more ponies joined into a trembling group hug. Somewhere deep in the reptilian recesses of his brain, a slightly smug little voice said, "A guy could get used to this." Outwardly though, he said something much closer to "Gah!" as the air was forced from his lungs, and he barely managed to not regurgitate half-digested gems all over Rarity.
"Hey, since when do you lock this thing?" demanded an indignant voice from the other side of the door.
"Rainbow Dash?" said Rarity and Twilight Sparkle in unison. Rarity's horn flared white and the door flew open.
Another unicorn would immediately recognize that Rarity executed a simple change state spell, which altered the potential of the bolt lock and the door. She merely switched them from their current rest state of "locked" and "closed", to their simplest alternate potential state of "unlocked" and "open". Although she would never say as much to her friend's face, Twilight Sparkle found the choice to be inelegant and its execution uncharacteristically crude. This was what separated the seamstresses from the scholars in unicorns.
An earth pony would have watched it with a mix of awe and distrust, viewing it on the same level of magical miracle as water transformed to cider, or hay into apples. Earth ponies also struggled to understand things like tides and magnets, which is likely why most of them tended to end up in careers such as garbage collectors, farmers, bakers or pole dancers.
Finally, pegasus ponies were dimly aware that other, different ponies existed. They seldom bothered themselves in the affairs of the ground-pounding breeds, magical or otherwise. At best, a pegasus might have noticed that the closed door was now open and given no further thought as to how it arrived at that state. Pegasus ponies had a well-deserved reputation for being narcissistic, boastful and brash. Still, for all their faults, at least they weren't earth ponies.
"There you guys are," said Rainbow Dash with a hint of recrimination in her voice. That she had flown headfirst into a closed door only moments before was quickly pushed from her short term memory as unimportant. She fanned her wings excitedly; stirring up small eddies of dirt from the flower boxes outside. She stopped flapping long enough to fix the other three girls with a disapproving, and slightly perplexed frown. "Why are you all standing in here doing a group hug? You're missing all the awesome excitement outside!"
Twilight Sparkle ignored the question. "If you're out there, then where is the golem?" she asked, donning her own perplexed frown. The ponies remained in their tight group embrace.
"He's on his way toward city hall," said Rainbow Dash. "He's smashing everything in his path." As if in reply, they heard a distant scream and the sound of wood splintering.
"Why would he go after city hall?" asked Apple Bloom. The three other ponies blinked at her as if she'd suddenly started speaking in tongues.
"Well... of course he would" said Rainbow Dash. She pointed a wingtip at the filly and looked pensive for moment as if actually considering the question, then shrugged. "You'll understand when you're older, kid." She made a show of polishing a hoof on her chest. "I thought you guys might want to come out and see me in action, because that monster is going down." The others finally extricated themselves from their mass hug – much to Spike's relief – and trotted, blinking, out into the street.
"With the two of you helping, we might have a chance," said Twilight Sparkle. "I wish Applejack were here too, but at least Pinkie Pie's not around." She pulled a roll of parchment and a quill out of thin air and magically held them aloft. "Now we just need to formulate a plan of attack…"
Rainbow Dash launched herself into the air and hovered a few feet above the other ponies' heads. "Way ahead of you, sister," she said. "This situation calls for action, not plans, and the wheels are in motion. All I need you girls to do is stay in the clear and watch the show." She reared up in swung a couple of air punches with her forelimbs. "I know you're used to seeing me do amazing things, but could you try and look extra impressed today? Some extra whoops and applause would help. With all the noise and excitement, there might be important people watching me work." With a flick of her tail and a beat of her wings, she turned and began a swoop toward city hall before pulling up short. She swung back around over the other three ponies and dropped a small shower of leaflets.
"Oh ya, and make sure you hand these out to anypony who looks important." With a powerful beat of her blue wings she streaked off toward city hall. Twilight Sparkle picked up one of the leaflets and felt a swell of pride in her chest.
"Rainbow Dash is super grate and would make a awesum Wonderbölt."
"Wow, even I can see she can't spell so good," said Apple Blossom as she dutifully scooped up the leaflets.
"You should have seen her writing before all my tutoring," said Twilight Sparkle, who was also gathering up her friend's flyers.
In a whoosh of wind, Rainbow Dash swooped back over the others and hovered in place, scattering the rest of her ungathered papers to the wind. "OK, so I was giving some thought to that whole 'planning' thing you mentioned," she said, making air quotes with her hooves. "And I'm willing to entertain ideas. Should I drop pumpkins on its head, or do a sonic rainboom?"
"You can't just use a physical attack against this thing. It has no soul. It can't feel pain." said Twilight Sparkle. "This is going to require cunning and subtlety, and the three of us working together."
Rainbow dash rubbed her chin with the back of her right hoof in thought. "OK, I think I see where you're going with this. Sonic rainboom it is." She gave a broad wave to the three on the ground. "Later, skaters. Love to talk, but I've got a town to save. Let's see how this guy likes a sonic rainboom to the face." Before the others could respond, the pegasus pumped her powerful wings and swooped toward city hall, climbing high above the tops of the buildings as she flew.
"Wait!" called Twilight Sparkle in desperation as the three took off toward the centre of the town, leaflets scattering in their wake as they ran. As they slid to a stop near the scene of pending carnage, they could just see the pegasus climbing into the sky.
"Twilight," said Rarity frantically laying a hoof on the other unicorn's shoulder. "If she does her sonic rainboom, won't that shatter every gem in it? There has to be a better way. Those poor gems!"
The purple pony shook her head. "She won't shatter the gems, Rarity. I built this thing, and I know what it can withstand. She will shatter every window in Ponyville if she does a sonic rainboom that close to the ground, but all she will do to the golem is anger it."
"How could she make it any angrier?" asked Apple Bloom. "It's already smashin' everything. What'll it do, smash things to even smaller bits?"
"Hey!" called a distant voice above them. "How am I supposed to do this if you're not paying attention? I gave you girls one job. One job. Watch and cheer."
"I guess she's right," sighed Twilight Sparkle. "Let's watch her do her thing. At best it works, and at this point I don't think she could possibly make things worse." Spike shot her an askance look of disapproval.
The ponies dutifully watched as the blue pegasus quickly dwindled to a tiny speck in the sky. Even the dim golem seemed to figure out something was afoot, and it turned its crimson gaze toward the heavens. A hush of anticipation fell over the town, and in the silence many later swore they heard a distant cry of, "Geronimo!" As they watched, the speck in the sky began to grow in size, leaving visible vapour trails in its wake as it gained speed. The air itself seemed to stretch around the pony as she drove toward the ground, distorting like a latex balloon under the point of a dull needle.
As she neared the ground, it became obvious that the winged pony was performing a parabolic fly-over. At the lowest point of her arc, exactly ten feet above the head of the golem, the air around her erupted with the force of a housing bubble in an explosion that was felt more than heard. Ripples of rainbow-coloured air roiled away from the centre of the blast as the shock-wave thundered over the city with the force of the Friendship Express.
"Eeeeeeyaaaaa!" came the triumphant, doppler-shifted yell of Rainbow Dash as she swooped over her friends in the upward arc of her curve. A rainbow contrail followed as she passed. "Nailed it!"
Although they would later discover other consequences of the low-altitude sonic rainboom, like the birth of a two-headed pig and the collapse of Mrs Cake's prize flan, there were four immediate results. The first was that, as Twilight Sparkle had predicted, every window in Ponyville shattered. The second was that every pony within one hundred yards of the blast was sent tumbling by the force of it. The quite-unshattered golem became angered, and finally it glowed a bright shade of puce and grew to half again its size.
Finally Apple Bloom stared deep into the heart of the sonic rainboom. Her mouth fell agape, and her pupils dilated until her irises were just a memory. She stood, transfixed for several seconds before she shut her eyes tight and gave her head a violent shake.
"Ah have looked into the heart of the fire of friendship, and I have seen the truth! Cutie marks are preordained by our names at birth. Free will is an illusion!" she cried in despair. "We are kept in the servitude of blissful ignorance and ruled by a cult of personality."
As luck would have it, Twilight Sparkle was there to break Spike's fall when he was sent flying by the blast. Perhaps it was luckier for Spike than it was for the pony, who ended up with a nasty bruise to the brisket as a result. It also afforded him the opportunity to elbow her gently in the ribs and say, "Eh? Eh? Nice foreshadowing."
"This is not my fault," she said defensively, "but I will admit that I was wrong. Apparently she could make things worse."