Ponyville
Darkness hung over Ponyville as the clock tower struck nine. The stars twinkled in the sky as lights dimmed in the houses in the unicorn area of town, while there were no lights in the earth pony and pegasi area at all.
Inside of the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ clubhouse, the trio sat around a table, illuminated by a flickering candle and the green glow of Sweetie Belle’s horn. The dusty windows were entirely boarded up, concealing the light. On the table, a bag of chips and a bowl of salsa sat, along with several drinks. Apple Bloom swatted away a spider that tried to land in the salsa, as she returned her eyes to the playing cards in her hooves.
“I’ve got nothin’,” said Apple Bloom, letting out a sigh as she set her cards on the table.
“Me neither,” said Sweetie Belle, putting hers down, too.
“Oh, that means I win!” Scootaloo proclaimed, grinning, laying her rather meager cards down.
“No fair, those cards aren’t even good. Apple Bloom didn’t shuffle the deck right. Redeal!”
Scootaloo shrugged. “Well you might not have won, Sweetie Belle, but you get to go to the unicorn district of town, so there’s that,” she offered.
Sweetie Belle let out a laugh, taking the cards in her magic as she shuffled them around in the air. “Well you guys didn’t have to stay in Ponyville once the Second Kingdom took it over and segregated it.”
“What was I s’posed to do? Go to Appleloosa with Applejack and leave my best friends behind? My architecture talent don’t have too much to do with apple farming,” said Apple Bloom.
“It was a joke,” said Sweetie Belle, grinning as she fake-punched Apple Bloom on the shoulder with her hoof. “That does remind me to ask: how is your family doing?”
Apple Bloom said, “Big Mac, AJ, and Granny Smith went to Manehattan. Rich ol’ Aunt and Uncle Orange are hostin’ em in their penthouse while they get back on their hooves. Applejack just sent me a letter the other day.”
“You got a letter from Applejack and didn’t share?” Scootaloo demanded, her brow furrowed.
Apple Bloom shrunk back in her chair. “It was mostly about family stuff that you wouldn’t find interestin’ anyway. But she’s doin’ fine. Manehattan hardly felt the war at all; it’s so far from the front lines. Not like Ponyville.”
“Maybe your family can say hello to Rarity in Manehattan for me,” said Sweetie Belle. “I haven’t seen her in two years, she’s so busy with her fashion stuff. The city is so far away.”
“Why don’t you go there and make it big on Broadneigh? You deserve better than singing to local dive bars. Then you’d be closer to your sister,” said Scootaloo.
“Dive bars are how you get a start, though,” said Sweetie Belle. “There are probably a million other ponies in Equestria besides me whose special talent is singing. I have to have something to put on my resume first before a theater company would even think about hiring me.”
Scootaloo nodded.
“Besides,” Sweetie continued, “you’re the one who should leave Ponyville and go pursue your dreams, miss wannabe physical therapist. Go back to college!”
Scootaloo chuckled. “Do you know how expensive a doctorate is? I need a ton of savings. Why do you think I’m doing grunt work down at Ponyville General?”
“Uh…” said Apple Bloom, scratching her head. “‘Cause it’s fun?”
“I enjoy working with the patients, but cleaning up vomit isn’t fun,” Scootaloo scoffed.
“Maybe if you’re Pinkie,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Shame she had to close up Sugarcube Corner and go back to the rock farm in Whinnsylvania,” said Apple Bloom. “Stupid Blueblood’s economy.”
“It seems like everypony has moved away but us,” Scootaloo sighed, counting the numbers off on her feathers. “All our old friends: Snips, Snails, Twist, Featherweight, Pipsqueak…”
“Even Fluttershy,” said Sweetie Belle. “Twilight named her Head Warden of the Equestrian park service.”
“And what about Rainbow Dash? I ain’t seen her in ages,” Apple Bloom said.
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle both looked at Scootaloo expectantly.
Scootaloo shrugged. “What am I, a rolodex? I have no idea where Rainbow Dash is. I haven’t seen her since Cloudsdale split off. It’s like she just disappeared.”
“Shucks,” said Apple Bloom.
Scootaloo’s head sunk low, and she sighed. “It’s a shame. Her stunts were so awesome.”
“Like the sonic rainboom,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Yep. Rainbow Dash was so awesome, she had her very own move that only she could do!” Scootaloo exclaimed, throwing her hooves in the air.
Apple Bloom chuckled. “Well she ain’t the only pony who can do the rainboom anymore, after Appleloosa.”
“What?” Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo both exclaimed, their eyes widening.
“Yup,” said Apple Bloom. “You guys remember Pound Cake? He did one in Appleloosa. Wiped out all the Second Kingdom troops. From what Applejack said in her letter, it was a sight to see! Of course, she wasn’t there to see it herself, but—”
“I thought that you said that Applejack didn’t say anything interesting in her letter!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed.
Apple Bloom scooted back in her chair, shaking her head. “Sorry, I thought y’all had already heard about it! It was in this morning’s paper.”
“Really?” Scootaloo asked.
“Front page,” said Apple Bloom. “Here, lemme show you.”
She reached onto the floor next to the table, where her saddlebag sat. The bag crinkled as she sifted through a bunch of belongings, before finally pulling out the paper. It was a copy of the Tall Tale Times, and the front cover showed a photo of a completely demolished Appleloosa, with nothing but wood splinters and apple mush remaining. Below and to the right, there was a picture of Pound Cake’s face.
“Ew, you read the Tall Tale Times?” Sweetie Belle cringed.
“What a rag!” Scootaloo scoffed.
Apple Bloom blushed. “What’s wrong with the Times?”
Sweetie Belle asked, “Didn’t you read what they printed about Zecora? It’s a lying tabloid. Even we ran a better paper when we did the Foal Free Press for school, and we were eight!”
Scootaloo scoffed, “Yeah, at least our stories were true.”
Apple Bloom shook her head. “Look, I’m sorry, but it ain’t like I got a lot of options. The Ponyville Express is local news only, and the Canterlot Cornucopia is hogwash. The Tall Tale Times is the only national paper from Equestria that Blueblood didn’t ban.”
“Which should tell you how wrong it is, if it’s the only one he wants you to see,” said Sweetie Belle. “Derpy sneaks in copies of the Manehattan Monitor when she comes to deliver the mail. I’ll let you read it. That paper get the facts right.”
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. “Fine, whatever, but I do know that the rainboom news story is true at least, since Applejack gave a secondhoof account that was the same. She wouldn’t lie, right?”
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo nodded.
Apple Bloom smiled. “Then why can’t we just read the Tall Tale Times, keepin’ in mind it’s a tabloid? Just ignore the gossip and rumors. Like AJ would say, eat the apple and spit out the seeds.”
A few seconds passed, but finally, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo reluctantly nodded. Sweetie Belle lit up her horn brighter so that they could read the paper.
TALL TALE TIMES
“Bringing you the stories that other papers don’t dare to cover!”
June 5th, 2025
EXCLUSIVE: POUND POUNDS TOWN DOWN
By: Inter View
The farm town of Appleloosa is no more, having been consumed by a powerful explosion known as the sonic rainboom. The town was wiped off the map yesterday, as the rainboom crunched the buildings, felled the apple trees, and killed the fascist occupiers. Much like when an apple is eaten and only the rusty brown core remains, all that is left of Appleloosa is wooden rubble and apple mush.
Ever since the Second Kingdom famines, worsened by Equestrian military attacks against their farming machines, Blueblood has been hungry for more land and crops to feed his starving unicorn nation. Appleloosa and its apples were a prime target to be gobbled up. As reported in a previous issue, Twilight Sparkle refused to send troops to help defend the small town of a few hundred earth ponies from the buffalo and unicorn hordes, arguing that Equestrian troops were needed to defend population centers of millions.
The Appleloosa Self-Defense Force, or ASDF (not to be confused with the labor union) was an unsanctioned local militia, and the only line of defense standing between the town and a fascist uni takeover. The militia was denied weapons by Manehattan, but miraculously fended off assault after assault for a year. Though the militia was finally defeated in battle in April and the town was occupied, the famous pegasus prodigy Pound Cake returned to take his final revenge.
We have obtained an exclusive interview with fifteen-year-old Pound Cake (pictured, right)
“I did it to save those ponies, to stop the Second Kingdom from taking their food, and to avenge the death of my sister, Pumpkin,” said Pound Cake. “I had no idea I could do it, and I never did it before that day, but when I felt the wind in my mane, the breeze on my wings, the vengeance in my heart, it just… happened.”
Once believed to be a myth by the general public, the Sonic Rainboom was proven to be as real as this paper had long predicted before. A decade ago, famed wingmare Rainbow Dash brought the boom to bear at the Best Young Flyers Competition in Cloudsdale, once again proving the unwavering accuracy of the Times. Now, Pound Cake is the second to perform the maneuver. Like Rainbow Dash, he has confirmed he can do it at will.
Due to a lack of data and test subjects, scientists can’t yet precisely measure the strength of a Sonic Rainboom. It is believed to vary by occurrence and by the intent of the pegasus who performs it, with Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainbooms ranging from harmless to devastating based on the context and her self-reported emotions at the time. Magical properties have also been ascribed to the rainboom, such as enhancement of unicorn spellcasting, and destinies being revealed. Based off of the devastation of Appleloosa, a theoretical physicist at Tall Tale University estimated for the Times that the strength of Pound Cake’s recent sonic rainboom was equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT.
About his plans for the future, Pound Cake insists that he isn’t a one-trick pony, and that he will repeat his successes. “I have a message for Blueblood: I’m coming for the crops everywhere. I’m going to wreck your farmland until you surrender. You can’t stop me. I’m too fast for you to catch. You’ll never see me coming, and will never know exactly when or where I’ll strike. Surrender, or your country will starve this winter.”
Our readers should note that the Northern Flatlands, where over 90% of the Second Kingdom’s total farming operations take place, is roughly 10,000 square miles, thousands of times bigger than the orchards of Appleloosa. However, only about 2,000 sq. miles of this area is currently farmed, due to operations by the Equestrian military to sabotage farming there.
Despite the daunting task, Pound Cake is determined to fight fascism to the death. “The Wonderbolts might have failed to destroy all of the crops, but they didn’t have me or the rainboom. Besides, I don’t plan to act alone,” he remarked.
Other stories this issue:
Zecora and Zarek Turn Tables on Twilight, Launch Lawsuit, Pg. 2
Pics of Star Celebrities… Fully Clothed!, Pg. 3
Are We Alone? Changelings Descended From Ancient Aliens, Says Expert, Pg. 4
Prior issue corrections: Zecora has been granted a princess pardon from Twilight Sparkle, who it turns out was an old friend of Zecora’s the entire time. Sounds a bit too convenient, but technically a correction must be made.
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” said Apple Bloom. “I mean, it’s just like a regular paper.”
“Yeah, one that says ‘fascist’ a million times. What does that word even mean?” asked Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “No idea.”
“I think it’s what you call somepony when you don’t like them,” said Apple Bloom. “Like ‘scalawag’ or ‘nincompoop.’”
“Did Pound Cake really say that he was going to destroy two thousand square miles of farmland by himself?” asked Sweetie Belle.
Apple Bloom chuckled. “Well, he said he wouldn’t ‘act alone,’ whatever that means. But I think he’s bluffin’ and it’s just him. Seems like he’s biting off more than he can chew. He’s just one pegasus. Maybe he gets a group, but hundreds of our army guys have already been attacking the Flatlands.”
“As awesome as the sonic rainboom is, you’re right,” said Scootaloo. “Appleloosa was small pota—er, apples—compared to the giant Flatlands. Thats a lot of boasting he’s doing. Like, Trixie levels of boasting.”
Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow. “Wait a minute. Why did the Second Kingdom even attack Appleloosa to begin with? Why are they taking all of our apples, if they grow their own food up there anyway? They have thousands and thousands of acres, and Appleloosa can only give them a small part of what they need.”
The trio was silent for a moment, until Scootaloo spoke.
“Maybe they thought Appleloosa would be easy pickings, and that it wouldn’t come under attack by Equestria. I mean, because earth ponies live there and might get hurt in the attack, or they might starve later. Think about it: you don’t see Equestria trying to attack the farmland in Ponyville. Though with Pound Cake in Appleloosa, they thought wrong.”
“Plus, apples are really healthy for you,” said Apple Bloom. “Got all sorts of vitamins, nutrients, calories, and whatnot. One good apple tree is worth a whole acre of wheat or corn, and that’s all they can grow in the flatlands with their mechanical farming doohickeys. You can’t just live off of one staple, and maybe they wanted to get all the food groups,” said Apple Bloom.
“Then they shouldn’t have started a war,” Sweetie Belle scoffed.
“Cloudsdale is lucky they can still trade the weather that they make for Equestria’s food, or else they’d be in the same boat,” said Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle said, “I still think that Pound Cake is just going out—”
Suddenly, she was interrupted by a low humming sound. She blinked for a minute, but then continued, figuring it to be one of the Second Kingdom’s warplanes.
“—on a foolish—”
The sound grew louder, drowning out the sound of Sweetie Belle’s voice.
“—crusade!”
Suddenly, there was a tremendous, deafening explosion. The treehouse shook and tremored as the Cutie Mark Crusader’s ears perked up.
“Bomb raid! Take cover!” shouted Scootaloo.
They all huddled under the table, hugging each other in their hooves. The deafening boom continued as the bowl of salsa on the table rattled repeatedly, eventually falling onto the floor and shattering almost noiselessly, the sound drowned out. Blinding light shone through the cracks in the boards of the windows, illuminating the entire room.
After five seconds, the roar died down to a low rumbling, until finally subsiding ten seconds later. The light that shone through the window cracks was still bright, but slowly dimming.
“What the hay?” asked Apple Bloom.
“That wasn’t like other bombing raids we’ve been in,” said Sweetie Belle.
“It was almost like...” Scootaloo started.
She rushed towards the door, opening it slowly and peering through the crack until she confirmed that it was safe to exit. Her two friends still stayed under the table until she beckoned them to come out, which they did.
The Crusaders glanced at the sky, far off in the distance, beyond Sweet Apple Acres and the outskirts of town, as their eyes widened in awe. A great, bright, beautiful dust cloud of the entire spectrum hung in the sky. Teal, aquamarine, and crimson threads shimmered directly up above their heads in waves like auroras, and oranges and purples settled to the horizon like a gorgeous sunset.
Scootaloo blinked and turned to Sweetie Belle. “You were saying something about a crusade?”
Pound Cake soared high above the sky in Ponyville, surveying the damage that his rainboom had done. He had been sure to only attack an area far away from farm homes, or any civilians who could have gotten caught in the explosion or shockwave, plotting his attack to cause minimum property damage in Ponyville, but maximum damage to the apple trees of the former Sweet Apple Acres and the surrounding farms.
He smiled as he landed on the ground on a nearby hilltop. But then, he reached over to his back and rubbed his wings. They were agonizingly sore. His head, too, was throbbing and aching from the blast.
He remembered a conversation that Spitfire had had with him about G forces, and about knowing one’s limits and knowing when to stop. He had done anything but that over the past few weeks, and he realized that he would kill himself before even destroying a tiny fraction of the Flatlands farming operations. He might have had a concussion at that moment and not even realized it, he thought.
Shaking his head, he sighed. Maybe his little interview with the Tall Tale Times was premature boasting. He hadn’t been the one to initiate it, but the reporter kept asking him questions, and he was so euphoric and excited after Appleloosa, that he didn’t really stop to think about what he had committed himself to with his answers.
He wouldn’t have a prayer of even putting a dent in all of the crops by himself. But it still needed to be done. With the war effort in a stalemate, it was the best way of bringing it to a speedy end. A starving army is a weak army, and a weak army surrenders or dies. But Pound Cake would need some sort of help. He couldn’t sonic boom all of the crops dead by himself, but maybe, with some help, he could burn or poison them.
He looked up towards the sky, where the lights of the stars intermixed with the lights from the city of Cloudsdale to the northwest.
And I know just where to find help, he thought.
Pumpkin Cake sat with her head against the wall, her eyes closed and stinging, her throat dry as a bone. She gritted her teeth, coughing slightly. Behind her, the babbling sound of rushing water filled her ears. Her thoughts started to wander back to her first several weeks in her prison, anything to distract her from the latest torment that Trixie and Doctor Stekton had dreamed up.
She had tried to escape several times, by teleporting out of the room and into the hallway, but with no luck. The hallway would fill with sedative gas that took her down in just a few seconds. Even if she teleported again, she could only get further down the hallway, where the gas still awaited. Perhaps if she had ever seen any place in the research lab besides her room, she could teleport straight there and bypass the hallway. But without any known destination to visualize, she was stuck with Trixie’s torments.
Trixie was trying everything in her power to get Pumpkin to use the intangibility spell on one of the electronic sensors, to give the researchers some solid data to go off of. They’d implanted sensors deep under Pumpkin’s skin that would detect the magic if she used it on herself, and sensors on the door and other areas of the room if she used the spell on any of those. But it had been futile so far.
Trixie had tried employing physical pain at first, but the trouble was getting Pumpkin to be in pain without being able to escape it with other types of magic besides intangibility. This was easier said than done. For instance, on her first day, when faced with the wasps, Pumpkin quickly found that she could grab them out of the air with her telekinesis and crush them before they ever reached her, so they never stung her. Apparently, the researchers had a limited wasp supply, and weren’t willing to release any more than a single jar of them into the room.
So next, Trixie tried rubbing Pumpkin Cake with poison oak all over her body. That was excruciatingly itchy… for a while, until she realized that she didn’t have to use her intangibility spell to get out of that, either. Rather, she discovered that by teleporting from place to place around the room constantly, just a meter or so, it provided temporary relief for a few seconds after she re-materialized. It was enough to get through the discomfort. Pumpkin only had to do that for a few days until Trixie gave up on using physical pain and decided to use psychological pain instead.
They started off with sleep deprivation, playing loud music in the room and dumping ice water on Pumpkin’s head whenever she dozed off. It wasn’t effective, since by the end of it, she was so tired that she couldn’t cast magic even if she wanted to. Then, they tried giving her psychoactive drugs, but those weren’t effective either. In fact, she found the hallucinations to be a nice change of pace from her current predicament. They also tried mind control on Pumpkin such as the want-it, need-it spell, but thankfully for Pumpkin, Zecora had taught her some mental techniques for resisting the spell, making it ineffective on her.
Finally, Doctor Stekton suggested to Trixie that he trigger the survival instinct in one of the most basic, primal ways that Pumpkin could not weasel her way out of. And it would only take a short time for it to work, he said.
Pumpkin Cake hadn’t had a drink of water in three days. This was—as Trixie constantly reminded her of over the loudspeaker—entirely her choice. They didn’t give her any water in a bottle or a cup. Instead, they put about six liters of water of a small, entirely sealed square fishtank, the normal glass walls of which had been replaced by solid steel walls. The walls themselves had sensors embedded inside of them.
The tank wasn’t breakable by way of conventional spells. She had tried that already, using her telekinesis to attempt to smash it. She even turned around and bucked it with her hooves, but it didn’t break. Teleporting the water to herself wouldn’t work, since teleportation didn’t work on liquids. And she couldn’t teleport herself inside of the tank, since she was too big to fit.
If only I had studied transformation spells. I could just turn myself into a fish and fit right in, she thought. But I’d never drink enough water as a fish to be enough to last me once I changed back to a pony again.
Pumpkin Cake’s thoughts were fragmented and incoherent by this point, with every other word being “water.”
Unless I could turn into a medium size fish instead of just a small little goldfish or something. Or maybe an octopus. They drink plenty of water, sometimes even enough water to meet the water needs of a pony. Water, she thought.
One thing she knew for sure, was that she had definitely trained her intangibility spell way too much, to the expense of learning other types of magic that might have come in handy. There were almost fifty different types of major spells that existed, and hundreds of minor sub-types, maybe more depending on how they were counted. She only knew a tiny fraction.
Though Pumpkin was adept at the few spells she did know, such as teleportation, telekinesis, or intangibility, she had mostly focused on mastery of these few skills, rather than on a broad knowledge of others. Zecora had taught her great focusing techniques and discipline, but as a zebra, Zecora’s knowledge of various sorts of unicorn magic had been limited. Pumpkin Cake now wondered if she should have gone for breadth over depth. For instance, Starswirl the Bearded knew over thirty different types of major spells. He’d have escaped from the room by now, she thought.
Or at least gotten himself some water.
Another hour passed, with Pumpkin’s randomly incoherent thoughts being eclipsed by the word water, images of water, and the stock sounds of water that Trixie pumped into the room through the speakers. Churning waterfalls. Rushing brooks. Pitchers of ice water being poured into glasses. The pitter patter of rain falling on the sidewalk. All coldly calculated to drive Pumpkin Cake mad until she cracked.
Finally, she could stand it no more. She summoned what little strength she had left, walked across the room, and lit up her horn as weakly as she possibly could, making a hole in the side of the container only a centimeter in diameter. The water didn’t come out in any more than a few drops. She widened the hole a little bit more, and finally it came out in a steady stream.
She latched her lips onto it, drinking in the sweet nectar in great gulps, a great sense of relief washing over her. But there were other, more powerful emotions… shame, guilt, and fear. Shame that she had finally been broken, that Trixie had finally found a way to conquer her. Guilt that she hadn’t been clever enough to come up with a magic solution that didn’t involve her calling card, go-to intangibility spell, guilt that she had almost exclusively focused on training it and a few other spells her whole life instead of more practical magic. Fear, that now that she had given the researchers the data they needed, they would simply have her killed.
Instantly, the piped-in sound effects ceased. Pumpkin could hear the scientists talking over the loudspeaker, the beeping of their machines in the background. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be hearing it, or if they just left the microphone on by accident, but she listened regardless as she drank.
“Subject has triggered the sensing mechanism,” said a voice she recognized as Doctor Stekton’s.
“What does it say? What does it say?” said Trixie.
There was silence for a few moments, interspersed with beeps from the electronics in the observation room.
Finally, Stekton spoke. “Nothing. It says nothing.”
Pumpkin’s heart skipped a beat. She definitely wasn’t supposed to have heard that.
“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?” Trixie demanded.
“I mean that it says nothing. I’m getting a flat line. Look here,” said Dr. Stekton.
“You fool! You forgot to set up the sensors in the tank walls, didn’t you!” Trixie scolded.
Stekton sighed. “No, Snips remembered to install them, and they were working just fine after he did. I tested them myself. And they indeed were triggered… for a fraction of a second, but now, there’s nothing. No usable data.”
“How could there be nothing?”
Stekton chuckled. “Perhaps because an intangibility spell would render sensors entirely useless, as I told you before we started trying to get the subject to use the spell on them?”
“No, that’s not true. It’s a magical sensor. It should sense all types of magic, this type included,” said Trixie.
“It registers nothing, because that’s what the spell does. It takes an extant, physical object, and temporarily turns it into nothing. How can a non-existent sensor return any data at all? It can’t, which is what I have been telling you for weeks, and yet you ignore—”
“Watch your tone! I am your superior, and I will not tolerate insubordination!”
Stekton sighed. “Yes, Trixie.”
Pumpkin Cake breathed a sigh of relief in between gulps. They hadn’t found anything, meaning they still didn’t know how she cast the spell. Which meant that they still needed her to give them more data. Which meant that she got to live.
But they would think of new ways to test her, and they would come up with new sensors, maybe ones that could detect her magic. Or they’d use a different method than sensors to study her. She might not be safe forever.
Pumpkin walked back away from the tank and sat down. She would have to find a way to escape between now and when they no longer needed her. But she couldn’t do it using her current meager repertoire of a few spells. She would have to learn to cast more types of spells.
She sighed as she realized the enormity of the task. There were no spellbooks in here, no magic teachers. The only way that she would cast new spells would be if she experimented and figured them out herself, without any guidance or teaching, just as the great magical trail blazers like Starswirl and Twilight Sparkle did. Was Pumpkin really up to their caliber? Or was she just a one-trick pony?
Even if she could learn new magic all by herself, she would have to wait until the times when the magic suppression field was down, which was only when the researchers were trying to coax her into giving them data. Otherwise, she was left entirely powerless. So how could she learn whole new branches of magic, that she had never cast before, during limited windows of time? Pumpkin set her head down on the concrete and closed her eyes. It was probably a flight of fancy.
But then she sat back up again. Trixie always talked about unicorn supremacy, about being the master race. What if there was some truth to it? Not the “kill inferior ponies” part, not the “surrogate parents” part. But what about the “a unicorn can do anything he sets his mind to” part? Surely those ideas must hold more water than the small tank that there were likely a dozen different spells she could have used to open. She could have hypnotized somepony into opening the tank, or shrunk herself down and teleported inside, or made the entire tank surrounding the water disappear into thin air, or turned into a dragon and crushed it in her talons, or froze the water inside and teleported out the ice block, if only she had known how.
In terms of sheer variety, unicorns as a race were certainly quite versatile, having many spells at their disposal. And yet Pumpkin had only mastered three. Maybe when Trixie said that Pumpkin was an embarrassment to the unicorn race, that was what she meant. Pumpkin had yet to live up to her potential, to her special talent in magic.
But from that moment on, Pumpkin decided, she would. She would use every spare second that she could to devise new spells, new ways of escape. And when the time was right, she would strike.