The Trouble With Unicorns

by CartsBeforeHorses


Chapter 12: The Death of the Party

A loud screeching sound pierced the air, and plumes of steam and smoke surrounded the train station as the 7:00 PM train from Ponyville arrived.

“Here we are in Canterlot, everypony!” the conductor yelled.

The six ponies exited the train onto the platform.

“Ooh, this is going to be so fun!” said Pinkie Pie, her fake horn bouncing up and down on her head as she hopped.

“Pinkie, you may need to fasten that horn down. Here, let me help you out,” said Rarity, using her magic to fasten the thin, clear fishing wire holding the horn down.

"It's kind of like wearing a party hat," said Pinkie.

“Much better,” said Rarity, “You four need to be convincing unicorns. I would ask that you stop hopping around, Pinkie; such conduct is unbecoming of a unicorn. A unicorn must conduct herself with beauty and grace.”

“Geez, bein’ prejudiced there, aint’ ya, Rare? Earth ponies can be classy, too,” Applejack chuckled, hatless.

“And that’s another thing. Though you followed my advice and got rid of that unsightly cowpony hat, there probably isn’t a unicorn alive who has your accent, Applejack. I would tone it down a notch.”

“But that’s how I talk; I ain’t changin’ that!”

“Fine, if you want us to be caught,” Rarity retorted, “Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, are your saddles firmly hiding your wings?”

“Yes,” said Fluttershy.

“Do I have to wear this thing? I want to fly!” complained Rainbow Dash.

“Unicorns cannot fly,” said Rarity, “Unless of course, they happen to be alicorns.”

Twilight responded, “Yeah. Sorry that you all have to wear this stuff."

“That’s okay, sugarcube. You got us on the train for free, remember? Bein’ a princess has it’s perks n’ all,” Applejack said.

“Ahem,” grunted Rarity.

“I mean... thank you kindly, darling, for allowing us to be admitted onto the train free of charge. Pip pip, wot wot, cheerio,” Applejack said. The other five ponies laughed.

“Well, we have a long walk to get to the events center,” said Twilight, “It’s clear on the other side of town.”

They started their walk towards the coliseum.

*****

Blueblood sat in a seat in front of the stage, sipping his wine. Though Blueblood did not normally listen to any genre of music other than classical, he had stood around and watched the bands play for about an hour.

DJ Pon3 he found to be entirely insufferable. He wondered how anypony could ever listen to such synthesized garbage. Lyra Heartstrings, however, had played some interesting rock-influenced jazz fusion pieces interspersed with lyre solos. She had even broken out an electric violin, which the crowd (and even Blueblood) enjoyed. Finally, she finished up her set.

“That was the Lyra Heartstrings Band, everypony!” the crowd cheered as the mint-green unicorn played an encore riff on her electric violin, and her band bowed.

Blueblood walked towards the side of the stage. He figured that now was a good time to try and go backstage. He found a set of stairs at the rear and walked up until he reached the door to the backstage, which he climbed, only to be met by another black-shirted bouncer.

“Sorry, sir, only performers and guest speakers are allowed backstage.” He held up a hoof to block Blueblood’s path.

“I am a guest speaker. I am Doctor Fritz Blueblood, and I am supposed to be speaking this evening.”

“Where’s your badge?”

“That’s my problem. Nopony informed me that I was supposed to be speaking; I only found out about it after reading an airdropped flyer. I showed up early, and the pony at the front gates rudely informed me that I was not on the list.”

The bouncer pulled out a clipboard and scanned his eyes over it. He spoke into a headset microphone that he wore, consulting with whatever pony was on the other end.

“Yes, we have a Doctor Fritz Blueblood here,” he said.

Blueblood could hear talking from the other end, but couldn’t quite make out words.

“Uh huh. Yeah, he was on the flyer,” he continued, “And he actually showed up, yeah.”

More mumbled talking on the other end.

“What do you mean you didn’t expect it?”

Yet more mumbled talking on the other end, of which Blueblood could make out, “...none of the others showed up.”

“Well, he’s on the flyer. I guess he found out about it and decided to come.”

Blueblood could make out a snippet from the other end this time, “...escort him out so he's not not still here when...”

“Yeah. Yeah. Alright, I’ll pass it along to him,” the bouncer said. He then looked at Blueblood, “That won’t be necessary, sir. It appears that you have been removed from the list of guest speakers.”

“WHAT? When did this happen?” Blueblood gasped.

“I don’t know, sir; that’s what our coordinator just said. So, you will be leaving the party?”

Blueblood grimaced and groaned, “Absolutely, and I can not leave here fast enough. How dare you all waste my valuable time with these shenanigans!”

“Allow me to show you to the door—”

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” said Blueblood as he teleported off towards the door, eager to leave as quickly as possible.

How rude! How unprofessional! How—

“Octavia!” he heard the announcer yell as the sound of a cello and a classical orchestra started.

—How beautiful! Hypnotized by the music, Blueblood instantly forgot that he was about to leave the party, and instead sat down in a seat and listened to Octavia and her orchestra play. They played for about half an hour, after which the chocolate-coated unicorn walked on stage once more and spoke.

“That was Octavia and the Phillyharmonic Orchestra, everypony; give them a hoof! Now, we have a special guest speaker. He’s a royal prince of Equestria, a doctorate in magic, former professor and university dean, and the author of the best-selling Useful Magic Made Simple books, DOCTOR FRITZ, a.k.a. PRINCE BLUEBLOOOOOOOOOOOD!”

Blueblood grinned. He hadn’t been removed from the list, after all. Good thing that he had stayed. He began to walk over towards the stage, pushing his way through cheering ponies in the crowd. As he was about halfway through the crowd, however, he saw something which shocked him.

There, up on the stage, stood a pony which looked exactly like him. The crowd applauded as this fake took the microphone and spoke, in a voice which sounded just like Blueblood’s.

“Hello, Canterlot. I am Doctor Fritz Blueblood, eager to speak to you all about magic!”

Blueblood’s heart jumped in his chest as his doppelgänger levitated the microphone up to his mouth with a dark green aura of magic. Green was not his color, blue was. Green was the color of Changeling magic.

“The idea for the book came to me in a dream, of course. I was visited in a dream by Starswirl the Bearded. He told me that I should educate the masses on magic, and of course I had to oblige. After all, it was freakin’ Starswirl for crying out loud!”

The crowd gave a laugh. Blueblood’s stomach churned. They couldn’t even get his backstory right. His idea for the book was his own, not Starswirl’s! And he would never be caught dead saying, “freakin’ Starswirl for crying out loud.”

“So I came to this little shindig along with my friend Vinyl Scratch. She invited me. And since I admire her so much as a musician, I said well sure, why not?”

The crowd cheered, and Blueblood flinched. Vinyl Scratch, the fount from which that wretched rave drivel spewed, a good musician?

The changeling’s eyes glowed green as he absorbed the crowd’s adoration of Doctor Fritz. He continued, “So anyway, I’m glad that you all like my book. I’m real proud of it, myself. Hope it has helped you to more better use magic.”

Blueblood gasped. More better use magic? MORE BETTER!? Why, he isn’t even grammatically correct! At that instant, a spark shot from his horn as he disappeared in a flash of white light. Blueblood reappeared on the stage along with the phony and pushed him aside with his telekinesis, grabbing the microphone himself.

“Don’t listen to this charlatan! You’ve all been duped! I am the REAL Doctor Fritz Blueblood. This pony is a changeling, and he's absorbing your love and adoration of him!"

The crowd of ponies gasped and excitedly muttered amongst themselves.

“It must be some sort of duplication spell.”

“Yeah, he must be just hamming it up for the crowd.”

“I wonder if the spell will be in his new book?”

Blueblood stood on the stage attempting to convince them that it was no spell, but suddenly the brown unicorn ran back on stage. He grabbed the microphone from Blueblood and spoke,

“Well, that was Doctor Fritz! And next up we have—“

“WHAT SORT OF OPERATION ARE YOU RUNNING HERE, SIR?” Blueblood shouted out. However, the brown unicorn ignored Blueblood, simply throwing him off the stage and out into the crowd with his magic. Blueblood’s fans grabbed him and passed him around the crowd as if he were a rock star. While he was involuntarily crowd-surfing, he could hear the brown unicorn speak above the din of the excited crowd.

“Yes, and that was Doctor Fritz Blueblood with his duplication spell, coming up in his newest book. Unfortunately, we are running low on time, so he will not be taking questions. So I have another announcement to make before we begin.”

The ponies in the crowd simmered down, setting Blueblood back on his feet towards the rear of the auditorium.

The brown unicorn said, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that our next guest will be none other than Princess Celestia!”

The crowd went wild. Some of them booed and hissed, upset at Celestia for the ivory tower tax. Many others applauded for her regardless; either they were not from Canterlot or simply wanted to show due respect.

“But the bad news is that unfortunately, the Princess could not quite make it in pony, as she is deathly ill. Fortunately, she has given me this audio recording to play for you all. So without further ado, here is Princess Celestia!”

The brown unicorn set a phonograph machine down next to the microphone, which began to play Celestia’s voice.

“Unicorns of Equestria…”

The crowd leaned forward in anticipation.

“I simply do not trust the unicorns as a race.”

The entire crowd gasped. Though they did not know it, they were listening to a recording of Celestia’s conversation with Twilight which Discord had secretly taped while he was eavesdropping on them.

“I have taken steps… limiting gatherings of large numbers of unicorns… Do you think that it is a coincidence that there are no unicorns-only cities, when both the pegasi and earth ponies have their own cities? I must approve all land grants for new cities. Do you honestly think in all my years of ruling I have never gotten a request from a group of unicorns to form their own city? I have, but have always had reasons to say no. ‘Oh, that’s where some endangered fox lives.’ ‘I already have another request for a city in that location.’ ‘You want to call your city WHAT now?’ And the unicorns are none the wiser.”

Discord grabbed the microphone and shouted, “That’s right, Unicorns. Princess Celestia cares nothing about you! No large gatherings. If she had her way, you all wouldn’t be here in this room enjoying my party right now!”

“BOO!” the crowd shouted. The chocolate unicorn who was Discord in disguise simply turned up the volume, drowning out the jeering of the crowd.

“I discourage the use of magic... Every unicorn who discovers that his special talent is actually embroidery or cooking or painting instead of magic is one less potential threat to my rule, after all. Every time that somepony on the Board of Education brings up teaching magic in schools, I simply argue that magic is too dangerous to teach in schools to young fillies and colts, and that curriculum such as reading, writing, and arithmetic should take precedence.

“Why has Useful Magic Made Simple has been so popular lately? Blueblood is teaching magical spells such as teleportation, telepathy, dowsing, and other spells which any unicorn fifth-grader could learn, but were never taught in any public school. The book is essentially remedial magic.”

"As so many of you have learned from Doctor Fritz's book," Discord said, "These spells aren't rocket science."

“TYRANT!”

“DICTATOR!”

“FRAUD!”

A few of the ponies looked back towards Blueblood. Blueblood yelled, “It’s true! She hates the unicorns! I wrote those books to help everypony learn magic where she refused to teach them!”

The crowd threw tomatoes and other assorted food onto the empty stage. Discord put up a small, yellow force-field around the phonograph machine to protect it from the culinary onslaught. Discord grinned as the crowd became more and more unruly and upset.

The recording continued, this time with Twilight Sparkle’s voice:

“I can see your point… unicorns are more dangerous than the other two pony races.”

The ponies gasped briefly at the selectively-edited recording, and continued to boo. Discord grabbed the microphone once more and said, “Yes, you heard right everypony, Celestia’s lackey Twilight Sparkle even agrees with her! She was promoted to alicorn, so why should she have any sympathy with unicorns anymore?”

“BOO!”

“RACE TRAITOR!”

“EGGHEAD!”

The tape concluded with a single statement from Celestia, “My position in power would be a lot more secure if the unicorns were gone.”

The chocolate unicorn took the microphone and said, “That’s right, unicorns, you heard it correctly: Celestia wants you DEAD!”

The thousands of ponies in the stadium became furious. They knocked over tables, they threw even more food at the stage, and they even lit a few small fires.

Blueblood ran towards the doors to the hallway of the entrance of the events center. He did not want to be caught here if there was a riot. As he approached the door, however, he noticed that it was closed. He attempted to open it, but it was locked from the outside. Several other ponies waited near the door; apparently they had had the same idea of leaving.

“Why aren’t these doors unlocked?”

“When will they let us out?”

“Let me at her, I’m gonna go smash the palace windows!”

Blueblood looked back behind him towards the stage. A green gas began slowly emitting from the fog machines. The musical stars and his own doppelganger all walked back on stage and revealed their true forms. They were all changelings. The ponies gasped.

Discord revealed his true form to the crowd. He took the microphone in his lion paw and said, “That’s right, everypony. Princess Celestia wants you dead, and it is my job to ensure that it happens. No, don’t thank me, don’t curse me; all the credit goes to Celestia. If any of you survive, you can go thank HER for this wonderful evening.”

Screams rang out all throughout the audience. The ponies in the front row began gasping for breath as the changelings all donned gas masks. Discord was going to gas the entire stadium, thousands upon thousands of unicorns, to death.

*****

"Well, we're finally here!" Twilight exclaimed as they walked onto the grass in front of the Canterlot Events Center.

"It certainly was a long enough walk," said Rarity.

"Eh, not so bad when you're an earth pony disguised as a unicorn," Applejack responded.

"Wait... are those screams I hear?" said Fluttershy.

"Oh, everypony must be having a blast in there!" Pinkie exclaimed.

"Uh, those sound more like screams of terror to me," said Rainbow Dash. She removed her saddle, took off into the air, and flew around the side of the stadium towards a window. She quickly zipped back.

"Uh... guys... there's changelings in there with gas masks, and a bunch of ponies convulsing on the floor. I think that they're gassing the stadium."

"OH NO!" the other five ponies yelled out.

"Alright gang, I've got this," said Twilight Sparkle. A flash of light enveloped her as she disappeared. About a minute later, she reappeared with a case containing the elements of harmony.

"That was quick," Rainbow Dash said.

"I hid them inside of the Princess' vault. Thankfully, her castle is just right up the street," Twilight responded, "Alright, let's go in there and save them!"

They ran towards the front door, where the old grey mare stood.

"Yeah, nice try. I just saw that rainbow-maned one fly around. You aren't real unicorns, are you?" she said.

"No, but you'd better let us in! There's an attack or something going on!" Rainbow Dash demanded.

"Nope," she said. But Fluttershy took off her saddle, silently flew up to the gatekeeper and looked her straight in the eyes with a menacing glare. The gatekeeper had a sudden change of heart.

“Uh, I guess I can make an exception,” she said, and walked over to the door, opening it with a key. Fluttershy had used the stare on her.

“You might need one of these, though,” she said, and grabbed a box out of her booth. The ponies glanced in the box and saw about ten gas masks.

“Oh dear! Discord is gassing the entire roomful of ponies!” Rarity gasped.

"That's why they were convulsing!" Rainbow realized.

“Let’s hurry!” Said Twilight with a renewed strength. The six ponies donned the masks and ran through the doors.

They ran down the hallway leading to the colleseum. As they reached the end of the hallway, they say the two unicorn stallion bouncers wearing gas masks and blocking their path, standing in front of a second set of steel doors. The door had a large bar in front of it.

“Halt! No earth ponies or pegasi allowed!” one of them yelled, noticing Rainbow and Fluttershy flying. He held up his hoof in warning. As he said this, Rainbow Dash zipped towards him, landing a blow on his muzzle. He fell to the ground.

“Aah!” He yelled.

The other pony grabbed Rainbow Dash’s tail with his magic and threw her back towards the other five. However, as he did this, Applejack ran up to the stallion, flipped around 180 degrees and bucked him in the chest. He fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of him. As he fell, his true form was revealed: he was a Changeling drone.

“Okay, let’s open this door, hopefully we’re not too late!” Twilight said as she lifted the bar off of the door with her magic.

At that instant, the door burst open, and dozens upon dozens of unicorns streamed through. They were coughing and wheezing as they ran, pushing against the mane six as they desperately attempted to escape. Many flashes of light banged out as the unicorns who knew how to teleport escaped through the open passageway. (Teleportation only works when there is a clear path for the unicorn's body to move through, which is why none of them used that method to escape before the door was opened.)

The hallway quickly filled up as unicorns ran through. Many were trampled underhoof in the mad frenzy, and they screamed as the hooves of the others stomped on them.

Rainbow Dash grabbed Applejack, Fluttershy grabbed Pinkie Pie, and they all flew up to the twelve-foot high ceiling of the hallway to avoid being trampled. Twilight flew up and joined them, but forgot to grab Rarity. Rarity, gasping at the oncoming crowd, levitated herself up to the ceiling. Now they all were safe from the frantic crowd below.

“We need to see if Discord is still in there!” Twilight yelled over the screaming of the fleeing ponies, “Let’s get in there and find him!”

“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” The alicorn glanced down and saw a white unicorn stallion with a blond mane yelling at her from among the crowd.

“Prince Blueblood? What are you doing here?” Twilight yelled out to him. Blueblood levitated himself up to the ceiling to meet his former student. Twilight used her magic to rip one of the gas masks from the unconscious bodies of the changeling bouncers below, and gave it to Blueblood, who put it on.

Blueblood began speaking, “Discord is here, and there are Changelings too—“

At that moment, a bronze-coated unicorn in the throng of escaping ponies glanced up at the ceiling and saw Twilight Sparkle.

“IT’S CELESTIA'S LACKEY! She's wearing a gas mask; SHE’S IN ON THIS PLOT!”

Other ponies looked up above them and gasped at Twilight Sparkle. The bronze unicorn fired a powerful blast of energy from his horn, which hit Twilight Sparkle square in the jaw. The alicorn recoiled from the blow, falling to the ground below.

She was quickly trampled as the escaping unicorns stepped on her on their way out. A few resentful unicorns even stopped to kick her. She yelled out in pain. One of them stabbed Twilight with his horn. Eventually, she stopped screaming as she blacked out.

“We have to do something to help her!” Fluttershy cried out.

“It’s no use, they’ll just go after you, too,” Blueblood yelled, “Discord played a rather unflattering audio recording of her. Everypony thinks that she hates unicorns.”

“Wait, what? But she IS a—” Applejack asked.

“I’ll explain later, there’s no time!” Blueblood said, “You have to stop Discord!”

“But we can’t, Twilight is the Element of Magic and we need her,” Rarity explained.

"Then I will be the Element of Magic!” Prince Blueblood said. He magically lifted Twilight’s tiara from off of her head and placed it upon his own head.

“Follow me!” he yelled. A white flash of light emanated from his horn as he and Rarity disappeared and reappeared inside of the colleseum on top of a large snack table about five hundred feet beyond the door. The two pegasi saw him and followed, with Applejack and Pinkie in tow. They flew above the maddened throngs, safe from being shoved and trampled.

“Well this is awkward,” said Rarity, standing atop the table with Blueblood as they waited for the burdened Rainbow Dash and the slow Fluttershy to catch up.

“I only teleported you with me because I figured your levitation spell would be wearing off soon."

“Well, thank you, sir,” she said, blushing. But then she added, “Now if only you would have been so considerate of my needs at the Grand Galloping Gala!”

Blueblood flinched. “You’re still upset about that? Why, I would think that you would be grateful that a forty-year-old Prince like me would be willing to spend any time at all with a young commoner mare like you.”

“Why, I never!” Rarity exclaimed, raising a hoof at Blueblood until Fluttershy, who had just arrived, flew in-between her and Blueblood.

“You two, focus!” she commanded. Rainbow Dash was soon there as well, and set Applejack and Pinkie Pie down on the snack table.

“Okay, Discord is on the stage, right over there.” Blueblood said, pointing about five hundred feet down towards the stage where the Draqonequs stood, laughing at the crowd. He did not seem to even notice the six element holders, as he was far too busy watching the hundreds of dying ponies below him.

The six ponies could still hear Celestia’s voice over the sound system, repeating over and over again in an endless loop, “…if the unicorns were gone… if the unicorns were gone… if the unicorns were gone…"

They could also see that in front of the stage, hundreds upon hundreds of ponies were coughing and wheezing to death, attempting to escape through the haze. Ponies shoved each other in a frantic bid to escape. The changelings, wanting their share of the action, were busy capturing ponies inside of cocoons. They also blocked the stairwells to escape the colleseum, preventing ponies from leaving.

Blueblood formulated a plan, “So, I want you five to fly down there and confront Discord. He will notice that Twilight is not with you, and he won’t run away. But then, I will sneak up on him by teleporting behind him, and then we will seal him away. Remember, Discord doesn’t know that I am with you, so I am the element of surprise in this.”

“But I thought that you’re the element of magic!” Pinkie Pie joked. The others groaned at the pun.

“Fluttershy, darling, do you think that you can carry me down there?” Rarity asked.

“Oh, sure thing,” she said, lifting Rarity into the air. Rainbow Dash grabbed both Pinkie Pie and Applejack and they headed towards the stage, keeping at a high altitude so as to avoid the changelings’ sight.

Once they were in position above Discord, they dropped down onto the stage and into his view. He looked down at them and smiled.

“Ah, the Elements of Harmony! I was wondering when you would show up. But where is your sixth member? Oh, that’s right, I seem to recall hearing her tortured screams from all the way down here! I knew that the crowd of angry unicorns wouldn’t let her in here after what she and Celestia said about the unicorn race! Even if, by doing so, they were inadvertently preventing her from re-imprisoning me. But then again, an angry mob isn’t exactly logical in that respect.”

“Yeah, but we’re ready to fight you anyway!” Applejack called out.

“Oh, without the element of magic? Hah! That’s the most important element of all. How do you expect to fight me without that critical element?”

“We don’t.”

Discord glanced behind him to see Prince Blueblood. Before he knew what was happening, the six elements had united and sent a rainbow wave towards Discord, and he was quickly turned to stone.

"I'm going to do something which should have been done a long time ago," Prince Blueblood said, "You have tried to kill the unicorn race and tax them to death with your devestation elsewhere. For that, I hereby put you to death."

Prince Blueblood’s eyes began glowing blue. A blue beam emitted from his horn towards the stone statue of Discord, which crumbled to dust.

The five other ponies gasped. Discord was no more. They had no idea that the elements could be used to kill anyone. Had they known a bit more about the element of magic, they would have known that it was a magical enhancer, which multiplies the wearer's skill with magic. So the normally non-lethal magical energy beams were now, with the element of magic, powerful enough to kill.

Blueblood turned towards the changelings and fired beams at each one of them. They vaporized one by one. He then fired beams at the fog machines, which exploded and stopped emitting the deadly gas.Then, he cast another spell which dissipated the gas that had already been spewed out into the room.

The entire room went silent. The surviving ponies in the crowd stared blank-faced at Blueblood. The only sound that could be heard was the drone of “…if the unicorns were gone…if the unicorns were gone…” from the stereo. Blueblood looked over at the phonograph, looked back at the crowd, grinned, and then fired one final blast from his horn at the phonograph, destroying it.

Then, one by one, the surviving ponies stomped their hooves on the ground and cheered.

“DOCTOR FRITZ!
DOCTOR FRITZ!”

Eventually, a second line was added to the cheer,

“DOCTOR FRITZ! HE’S OUR PRINCE!”
“DOCTOR FRITZ! HE’S OUR PRINCE!”

Prince Blueblood took off his element of magic tiara and his gas mask and took a bow. The crowd roared even louder. The other five ponies who stood on stage with him looked at each other and rolled their eyes, letting him bask in his fame as they ran back towards the entrance to check on their alicorn friend. Hopefully she isn’t dead, they all thought.