"Daddy!" Flurry Heart whined. "Don't be so stupid!"
Shining Armor struck his head against another tree trunk. His smile was unimpaired, unlike his skull's contents. "I'm sorry, dearest. It's just, sometimes it's hard not to walk into things." As if to prove his point, next he got his horn caught in a decorative shrubbery.
Flurry Heart shook her head. "Don't worry, Daddy. It's fine."
But it was not fine. Deep inside, Flurry Heart seethed. Ever since evil King Sombra conquered the Crystal Empire, his oppressive new rules really cheesed the alicorn filly off. She didn't like the way school now started at a different, random time every day, or the fact that ponies were now required to eat nasty-tasting vegetables for dessert, and allowed real dessert only on leap days (which under the new calendar, would happen only once every thousand years.)
But worst of all? It seemed like the grownups didn't even care. They didn't seem to think anything was wrong with the new regime!
The grownups were just cheerful, placid idiots.
She shook her head. This kind of stupidity just couldn't be natural.
Flurry Heart tried to write yet another letter to her Auntie Twilight Sparkle, asking for help.
"Let's see," she said. "What if I mix sulphur and saltpeter with salamander's fire, and stir it all carefully into finely ground charcoal? I sure hope I get the mix right this time."
She didn't have a pet dragon to send letters for her, but she vaguely remembered Sunburst talking about a recipe for artificial dragonfire one time, back before Sombra turned all the grownups stupid and personally burned all the library books that might have contained any useful information rebel ponies might try to use against him.
She just hoped she'd finally gotten the formula right this time, or close enough at least.
Flurry rolled her letter into a scroll, thrust it into the little pot of her latest goop, and used her horn to light a spark.
When she woke up, she was on the other side of the room, surrounded by smoke and gritty ash.
A palace guard stood over her, saying, "Excuse me, I forgot how to do CPR. Do you remember how to do it?"
Flurry sighed dramatically. "Forget it. I think I'm fine." She didn't want a palace guard to even try to give her medical care, not after the last three failures. "Go away and forget this even happened."
"Yes, princess!" He saluted and marched out of the room.
As the smoke slowly cleared, Flurry noticed a scroll laying on the floor. The princess unrolled it with a hoof and her teeth, discovering a message.
Dear Flurry,
I believe the answer is to be found in the scientific method. You know something is affecting the ponies of the Crystal Empire, especially the grownups, but you don't know what that might be.
It's risky to experiment on grownup ponies, because somecreature might guess what you're trying to do.
I suggest that you try experimenting on small animals, such as mice or hamsters. Because you're living under an evil tyrant's hoof, even if somepony notices a few weird activities that could be mistaken for animal cruelty, that might seem almost normal now, as long as you don't do anything that appears too extreme.
Wrapped inside the scroll was a paperback book: "Beginner's Guide to Ethical Animal Experimentation and You."
Flurry Heart took her entire allowance to a pet store, where she purchased baby, adolescent, and adult age mice and hamsters, along with cages and other supplies.
By the end of the afternoon, she'd turned part of her bedroom into her own personal rodent zoo. She put little collars on her new pets, and named them all.
Next, she got to work teaching her rodents tricks. Roll over? Fetch? Find your way through the "Hamstertrails" maze of transparent tubes and chambers that she'd bought for 80% off because no grownups could figure out anymore how to assemble something so complicated? She tried everything!
Within a week, she had her first experimental result. Baby rodents were easy to teach. Teenagers were nearly as smart. But grownup mice and hamsters? They were very stupid. They couldn't even learn not to bang their heads into the sides of the transparent tubes.
Flurry Heart sighed, and wrote her Auntie another letter.
Within minutes, a reply arrived.
Dear Flurry,
Congratulations! You've confirmed that whatever is making grownups stupid, it affects mice and hamsters just like it dumbifies ponies. That's a big discovery! It means you really can use your little nonpony subjects to experiment with different ways to try to turn grownups into non-idiots!
I wonder if some kind of magical emanation or field is suppressing the adults' brainpower? Probably nopony is putting any kind of "stupid potion" into pet food. If it was something in the water, the water would probably taste funny (and building a still to make your own pure water supply would be the next thing to try).
But if it isn't the food or the water, maybe it's some kind of magical field effect. I wonder if you can find a way to shield adults' brains from the evil magic?
Flurry sighed. How could she ever discover something like that?
She watered, fed, and petted her rodents, before she left the Palace to take a walk.
In one of the Crystal Capital's parks, Flurry saw two of her friends from school: Snipes and Nails. Snipes had a blurry bird shape on his flank, and Nails had a hammer. Unlike most of Flurry's other classmates, these two were unicorns.
"Hey!" Snipes said. "Wanna see this cool rock I found?"
Flurry shrugged. "Why not?"
Snipes used his hoof to push towards Flurry a dull, black stone, about the size of his hoof.
Flurry looked down at the stone. "Why don't you levitate that, so I can get a closer look at it?"
Snipes giggled. "You try."
Flurry narrowed her eyes at the stone. "Is this a trick?"
Nails levitated two other stones, and slowly juggled them in the air. "See, I can lift most rocks this size, and do lots of other unicorn magic. But watch what happens when I try to do magic to the special stone!" Nails blasted a firebolt at Snipes' rock.
When the smoke cleared, the rock was unchanged.
"What?" Flurry said. "That's weird."
"It is," Nails agreed. "It's a rock that's immune to magic."
Flurry smiled. "How interesting! Show me where you got this rock, pretty please? And, uh, don't tell any grownups about this."
"Ha!" Snipes laughed. "Like they'd even remember if I told them."
A few days later, Flurry was using an old mineralogy lab in the Palace's basement to cut and grind more of the special stones. She'd tried making little rodent sized helmets, and special stone goop which she smeared all over a mouse's head, and even force feeding stone dust to other experimental rodents.
Force feeding was difficult, and not the most effective treatment. Helmets were hard to construct, and the rodents kept trying to take them off.
Goop smeared all over a rodent's head, though? That worked really well!
When Snipes and Nails visited, they laughed at the goop-smeared rodents.
"Look!" Nails laughed. "Your hamsters are covered in makeup. I think they're little goths. Do they like sad music, and sitting in a dark bedroom all day writing poetry about how life is tragic?"
"Hey!" Flurry started to protest. Then she said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe what we need is more goths."
Flurry Heart whined at her mother and father. "If you really love me, you'll do a parent-child activity with me."
Shining Armor said absent mindedly, "Sure, whatever."
Cadance grinned. "What do you want to do?"
"I want to do makeovers!"
Cadance nodded. "There's a very nice spa I've been hearing about."
"No! I want to do makeovers on you! On both of you!"
"That's nice, dear. But mommy and daddy are busy."
Flurry Heart's horn spewed magic at her parents, levitating them and dragging them behind her, deeper into the palace.
In an antechamber to Flurry Heart's bedroom, the filly showed her parents a collection of mascaras, eye shadows, pale-tinted foundations, and mane dyes, all of which she'd doctored with special anti-magic shielding powders.
"So you see," Flurry Heart explained, "you need to paint your complexions to look as lifeless as a victim of evil King Sombra's brutal oppression, and color your eyelids as dark as your hearts feel, now that the tyrant has conquered the Crystal Empire and turned everypony into his slaves."
"But my heart doesn't feel dark," Shining said calmly. "I feel fine."
"Me too!" Cadance agreed. "In fact, I feel happier than ever. I haven't a worry in the world."
"Don't you see something is wrong? Doesn't it bother you that dozens of Crystal Ponies are dying in crystal mining accidents every day? Don't you know if this keeps up, in less than ten years Crystal Ponies will be extinct?"
Shining Armor bit his lip. "Should it bother me? I can't do the math to check if it's a problem or not. So don't worry, it's probably fine."
"You used to help me with my math homework. How can you have become so stupid?"
Cadance said cheerfully, "I think he's just distracted, dear. Because we're so happy."
"What possible reason do either of you two have to be happy?"
Shining shouted, "I just can't hide it anymore! King Sombra has asked me and Cady to marry him. Isn't that wonderful?"
Flurry screamed, "No! It's not wonderful!"
"Now, now, honey. I know it can be confusing, to gain a new parent at your age."
"That evil horse is not my parent! And how can you two even think of marrying him?"
Cadance said slowly, "When Sombra explained it to us, it sounded like a good idea. Didn't you think so, Shiny?"
Shiny nodded. "Yes, dear. The best idea I've ever heard."
The door to the antechamber burst open. "Cady!" King Sombra said. "Shining! Give me some evil kisses!"
Flurry screamed. She yanked open the doors to her two largest cages, and pointed at Sombra. "Chew!" she shouted. "Chew!"
A horde of mice charged at Sombra. Sombra's horn lit up with bursts of destructive magic, which harmlessly bounced off his attackers before the rodents tackled him to the floor.
After less than a minute of screaming and struggling, Sombra was gone. Only scattered bits of fur and spatters of blood remained.
"Guess what I learned these last few weeks!" Flurry announced. "Mice can eat meat if they really want to!"
"That's nice, dear," Cadance said with a puzzled look on her face. "And that was a very nice magic trick. Now how do you bring Uncle Sombra back again?"
Flurry Heart stuck a forehoof into a pot of goo, and smeared it across her mother's face. "Makeover?"
"We might as well give in," Shining agreed. "A makeover is fine, if it will make our daughter happy."