Source
Dénouement
Things went as smoothly as you’d expect when two angry torch mobs came together.
Never mind that both torch mobs were made up exclusively of Ponyvillians, friends and neighbors, lovers and strangers, siblings and that one weird stallion who likes jelly a lot.
Never mind that both torch mobs had the same motivation and were seeking the same enemy, even if they disagreed on who that enemy was.
Never mind that there wasn’t actually a murder victim, just Tom “The Rock” Johnson and Rarity’s melodrama. There’s probably an important friendship lesson there.
Torch mobs ought to get all the facts before they launch on a crusade.
. . . There’s probably two important friendship lessons.
As the two mobs collided (not literally, everypony in Ponyville knew just how far a torch or pitchfork could reach), the shouting began.
“Cursed Pearvillians!” came from Torch Song’s mob. They should have recognized their fellow citizens, but when anger rules a pony’s heart—
“Pearvillians? You’re the Pearvillians! Filthy murderers! And you’re trying to pin it all on a poor, innocent human!”
Just then, Chell (and company) arrived. As we discussed in the last chapter, it was from a different direction than the two mobs had arrived from.
Chell just heard the word ‘human’ and while her ears didn’t flatten (she wasn’t a pony), she had a finely-honed sense of self-preservation. Being experimented on by a quite frankly insane AI developed by a shower curtain company will do that to a person. She (GLaDOS) can also de-ice fuel lines, but only if she wants to, because Cave Johnson built in the concept of consent [at least for GLaDOS, not so much her test subject]. Let’s be honest, we’ve all read the wiki.
Point is, Chell heard the word human and rightly assumed one of the two torch mobs she’d just seen was after her.
What she should have done was lobbed her Companion Cube™ at the mob as a distraction and portalized herself the hell out of there.
Option B was to start portalizing ponies until the barrel of her portal gun melted down, just to see how they liked it. Just to see how GLaDOS liked it—how would she deal with a pony? Or a whole mob of them?
Instead, she picked the ‘do nothing for now and see how that works out.’ The mobs were yelling more at each other than at her, and she had her friends with her. Derpy was hovering at shoulder-height, regarding the collected mobs, while Sparkler had adopted a defensive stance and a ‘try me’ look.
Dinky had a tactical vest on, and a 12-gauge shotgun.
She wasn’t aiming it at anypony in particular; Derpy and Sparkler had instilled the filly with good gun discipline. The barrel was down, the gun was safe.
🚷🚷🚷
The two torch mobs hadn’t yet noticed that there was no body here (nor was that really their concern; once they formed into a torch mob, they were not focused on crime-solving [has any angry mob in the history of ever actually solved a crime rather than causing new crimes?]).
Both of the torch mobs more or less simultaneously noticed Chell (and Derpy, Dinky, and Sparkler). One of them collectively pointed, said ‘there she is,’ and either lowered their pitchforks menacingly, or raised their torches. Menacingly. A couple ponies were dual-wielding; if they were unicorns they were twice as menacing; if they weren’t they fell on their faces.
“That’s just Chell,” the other mob shouted in reply. “She’s cool.”
“She is not cool.” “She’s a human!” “A murdering human!” “Humans aren’t welcome!” “Polly said so! [citation]”
“Humans are welcome!” “They have hands!” (that was Lyra) “The blog was an April Fool’s joke!” ‘The cake is a lie!” “Chell would never hurt a fly!”
“Well, if she didn’t do it, who did?”
Just then
Inconveniently
None other than
Jean
(hyphen)
Louis
Hardouin
Michelin
De Choisy
lifted his head above Tom, the tiny Tentaculite he’d just chipped free held proudly aloft.
“Another human!” both torch mobs yelled simultaneously.
“And he’s a stallion, so it must have been him!”
“Why, just because he’s a stallion?”
“Think about it, every monster that we’ve ever faced has been a stallion.”
“Isn’t that kind of sexist?”
“Androgynistic?” added a somewhat well-read pony from that same mob. If he’d been more well-read he’d have realized that the correct word is not androgynistic.
Twilight’s ears perked. The metaphorical ponies who maintained her brain had busted their hooves to get everything back in working order and now it was. Well mostly; there were still a few issues with recent memory (that was being worked on; one of the reel-to-reel tape drives had broken a drive belt when everything came to a crashing halt). Angry mobs meant friendship problems, and she was the Princess of Friendship.
The soapbox appeared naturally, and she stood upon it. “In fact, the majority of significant threats Ponyville has faced—excluding those made up of groups of creatures, such as the fruit bats, or those which are genderless, such as the apples—”
“Apples ain’t genderless,” Applejack objected. “And I know you ain’t talking about apples as in ponies, but apples as in the fruit of a tree. Fact is when it comes to tree biology”
(Nopony was listening to her)
“Flim and Flam sold you on a bill of goods, but that’s not evil. Sombra, Tirek, yeah, they were evil and I’m still salty that Tirek blew up my tree, but consider Nightmare Moon, Starlight Glimmer, Daybreaker, Tempest Shadow—”
“Tempest Shadow was working for the Storm King.”
Twilight gritted her teeth. “She was the brawn of the operation, wouldn’t have worked without her. And then there’s Pinkie Pie . . .”
KitKat wasn’t a mage or a Wizard, so she couldn’t magic Jean-Louis Hardouin Michelin de Choisy out of there. She didn’t have a portal gun, so she couldn’t portal him out. He lacked a good sense of self-preservation and she didn’t have time to instill one.
She couldn’t take on two torch mobs, especially now that it was two torch mobs and an alicorn. And also a cluster of ponies with guns (Sparkler, Dinky, and Derpy) as well as a human with a portal gun.
Maybe in a Haywood movie or an animated TV series with VAs from Vanhoover she could have rushed the mobs, caught them by surprise, wrested the portal gun out of Chell’s hands and then just portaled them out, but this was reality and any attempt to do so would have failed as utterly as a tired author trying to come up with a metaphor for failing utterly and failing utterly.
She didn’t have magic, but she did still have one of the Wizard’s spellbooks, the one with French government minister Marlene Schiappa on the cover. Who—appropriately enough, given the current discussion with the mobs about misandry and sexism in general—is France’s first ever Gender Equality Minister.
She whipped it out (the Playboy), stuck a hoof to her lips, and whistled, a piercing whistle that even a fossil-hunter would hear. He snapped his head around, and the first thing he noticed was the magazine.
Jean-Louis Hardouin Michelin de Choisy was interested in French politics, so of course that got his interest, just as well as a Want-It-Need-It spell would have done. If KitKat could cast spells. He trotted over, she grabbed the scruff of his shirt with her teeth, planted him on her back like an unruly foal, and took off at a gallop.
🦅
“—Not to mention Trixie who somehow convinced me to give her a job at Horsewarts the School of Friendship, Cozy Glow, Lily Longsocks—”
“What did she do?”
Twilight ignored the question.
Luckily, someone else answered, sort of. “She knows what she did.”
“—’Princess’ Erroria [LONG MAY SHE REIGN]. . . “