Babs Seed to the Cutie Mark Crusaders:
Why the hay did you girls kill me with a parade float? Eh buck you too.
They say a butterfly flapping its wings there can make a hurricane happen here. Events in Ponyville often have causes that are just as minor, yet equally far-fetching. For instance, Coudkicker was distracted by an actual butterfly, and ended up dropping the hay-burger she had been eating. The burger fell close enough to a certain mare to elicit a cry of "TWITCHY TAIL!" a split-second before. Applejack, having heard Pinkie Pie's warning, stopped walking towards her little sister's group and ducked down for a few seconds. Seeing that nothing was going to hit her, Applejack resumed her walk towards Applebloom. Because of this, her conversation started and ended a few seconds later than it would have if the burger hadn't been dropped.
In that time extra time elapsed, the golden apple and the lettuce head floats both covered ten yards more before the Cutie Mark Crusaders started pursuing. By the time the CMC were able to catch up to the golden apple, slight variations in the positions of the crowd had delayed them further by a few more seconds. When the lettuce was pushed off the road, it fell a few more meters because of the topography of the ground. By the time the trio had finally climbed to the road again, the trapped float was already carrying its passenger off the road.
Due to the delayed confrontation between the floats, the apple was in a different initial position when it finally went off the cliff. It laded far more deeply in the mud than it would have, and with only one occupant instead of three. That did not matter though, because the filly inside had been hit in the chest. If it had been fifteen milliseconds sooner or later, she would have walked away just fine. Instead, Babs Seed suffered a lethal case of commotio cordis, heart failure due to a perfectly timed impact.