"With fronds like these, who needs anenomes?"
Applejack raised her eyebrow. "Just a hunch," she replied, "but it looks like everypony that ain't us."
"Well excuse me for wanting to reassure us," Discord said, huffing. "I swear, these ponies. So pessimistic! You need more chaos in your life."
"We have you," Rainbow Dash droned, and Discord opened his mouth. And closed it.
And then opened it again. "Touché." He reached into the pocket of his suit and threw various, unrelated items and contraptions out into nothingness. After a few moments of staring, the ponies ignored him and went back to business.
"Well, at least they aren't hurting each other," Rarity said, relieved. "But the insults are so gauche. I feel sick hearing them." This was not an act. They could hear all sorts of horrible things: racial attacks, very private secrets, and many other hurtful things.
"Let's just not listen to them..." Pinkie Pie said, sadly. Luna helpfully put up a soundproof barrier, and then they all turned to Sweetie Belle, who had started crying.
"She called me pathetic..." Sweetie Belle said, between sobs. "I thought she liked me... I thought I was doing so well..."
"Oh, Sweetie Belle-" Fluttershy said, but Sweetie interrupted.
"Stupid no control!" she cried, slumping down further. "Stupid stupid stupid! I can't even get knowing my own self right. How dumb is that? I'm a disgrace to my sister."
"Sweetie Belle, you are not a disgrace to me!" Rarity exclaimed. "Not anywhere near so! if it's anypony's fault you can't control your emotions, it's mine.
"It's not your fault... It's mine! Now because of my lack of control, the Nightmare Paring Knife is back, and Amoris is evil, and Luna hardly got to be with her mom, and- and-" She couldn't say any more. The tears came back full force and she buried her ivory face in the snow.
Fluttershy suddenly pulled Sweetie Belle up out of the snow and into an upright position. "Now, listen here, young lady!" she exclaimed, firmly. "This is not your fault! All that was was a mean, arrogant 'queen' who doesn't know how to treat her subjects, especially her student! It's only unfortunate luck that you're like this, and nothing else!"
Sweetie Belle woke.
She shook off the neurosis and the snow off her face. "I shouldn't have said those things about myself," she said, reassured. "You're right. Queen Amoris is just jealous. She said so herself."
Fluttershy deflated back to her usual demeanour. "Good," she whispered, sheepishly. Sweetie Belle giggled. Before they could keep conversing, Rarity gasped in horror as a fire broke out in an empty building.
"Ponies may not kill each other," Luna gasped. "But they can destroy!" She had completely forgotten that. Twilight jumped to the action and starved the building of oxygen to put out the fire.
"By the way, if you hadn't noticed by now," Discord declared, pulling out a map of Equestria from his pocket and displaying it, "this same thing is probably starting in every city in Equestria. Just thought you should know," he finished in a singsong voice.
Their eyes widened in horror. "We need to come up with a way to spread out and keep Equestria under control, and fast," Twilight said, frantically. "I can handle[AN 1] the biggest city, Manehatten. The Crystal Ponies in the Frozen Nurth are too far away to be affected, but if they are, Cadence and Shiny can get them under control."
"Wait," Rainbow Dash interrupted. "The Frozen Nurth?" she asked, incredulously.
"The Frozen Nurth." Twilight chuckled. "Nopony knows why it's called that. It's been that since before Celestia was born, in fact. They never ended up changing it. I think we're too fond of it by now."[AN 2]
"I shall take Canterlot," Rarity said, confidently. "I know best how they act, and I'm sure I can get Princess Celestia to help."
"I can do Cloudsdale," Rainbow Dash added. Applejack volunteered for Appleloosa and the buffalo, in case the spell affected more than ponies, and Discord and Pinkie could go around to the scattered towns around Equestria.
"I can handle[AN 1] Ponyville with my animal friends." She had tamed some friends in the Everfree, and the other animals could carry things like buckets of water or even ponies around if there were enough. The cockatrice would be especially useful in temporarily freezing especially hostile ponies. Fluttershy was loath to use it often, though.
"I learned quite a bit from the Tirek incident," Twilight began to explain. "What happened to us is something I'm calling Supercharged Harmony Magic. If we go about it right, we can temporarily enhance our skills enough to do the things we'd need to do for the places we're going."
"Well then, let's do it!" Applejack exclaimed. "We don't have time to waste." The others nodded quickly.
"Okay then. We need to share one mindset altogether, that mindset being to protect the towns and cities of Equestria." Twilight gathered them into a circle. "Now, think about our friendship, and how with it we've solved so many other problems."
They began to feel magic permeating the air around them, and they rose into the air, their eyes beginning to faintly glow. Twilight called upon the magic she remembered from that time and distributed it among them, enhancing them, making them stronger, faster, better. And then just as quickly as it began, it stopped and they lowered to the ground.
"Ah don't feel no different," Applejack mused, scuffing the snow with a hoof. But she seemed to feel a stronger connection to the earth, even through the snow, which usually impeded that.
"Woah, Applejack, you're taller!" Pinkie cried in wonder. In fact, they were all taller--almost as tall as Luna, with longer horns for Rarity and Twilight and larger wings for Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.
"Awesome! I feel like I could fly from one side of the world to the other!" Dash exclaimed, invigorated. "Actually, probably not, but I feel like it!" Applejack rolled her eyes.
"All the parties I'm going to throw...!" Pinkie's hair finished poofing out again. "Well, after we save all the towns and cities and stuff!" She giggled and pulled a ball out of her mane to play with.
"I would love to teleport myself to Canterlot, but I don't think testing the limits of this Supercharged Harmony is a good idea, considering the circumstances," Rarity said. "Twilight, would you be a dear and teleport me there?"
"Of course. I'm going to send you to Princess Celestia and Applejack to Appleloosa. I'm sure Rainbow Dash can get out Cloudsdale easily, and Pinkie is Pinkie. With Discord. So that's covered."
"I shall stay here with Sweetie Belle and her friends," Luna added. "While you keep Equestria in order, I shall try my best to give Sweetie Belle control."
"Well, it's settled then. Are you all ready?" Twilight's friends nodded their heads in affirmation. They were going to do this. They had to. Without further ado, Twilight teleported Rarity to Princess Celestia and Applejack to Appleloosa. Rainbow Dash shot off in a rainbow blur, Pinkie and Discord exploded into a cloud of feathers, and Fluttershy flew off to get her animals.
Rarity appeared next to Celestia in a flash. "Why, hello, Princess Celestia!" she exclaimed, her height bringing her mane level with Celestia' muzzle. "Twilight has sent me to help you keep Canterlot from being destroyed by all the affected ponies."
They were in the empty court, Celestia having just teleported all of the agitated Nobles, petitioners, and guards back to their homes. "I take it you are immune to whatever hate spell has taken over Canterlot?" the princess asked, eyeing Rarity with a bit of suspicion.
"Certainly. I don't think I would have gone here otherwise." Rarity's eyes gleamed. "I get to protect Canterlot with Princess Celestia!" she whispered to herself, ecstatic. The nobles would never be able to ignore her after this.
Celestia laughed lightly. "Well, we have no time to waste." Then she noticed Rarity's height. "Are you... Taller?" she asked, curiously.
"Why, yes! Twilight calls it 'Supercharged Harmony'. I will have more power with which to deal with the destruction."
"Good. I am sure we will need it." Celestia teleported them out of the castle, activating the wards which sent any remaining ponies inside the castle to their homes. "I'll take the west side of Canterlot, you take the east."
"My pleasure, Princess," Rarity said, bowing and squeeing internally.
The princess chuckled. "No need for that, Rarity; worry not."
Applejack appeared in the town square of Appleloosa, where there was already a commotion forming. A few doors had already been broken off their hinges, and she could see the inside of the bar in shambles. Of course the bar would be the first thing to get ruined. But there was nopony in it now.
She extended her awareness into the earth. Earth ponies could do this to an extent, able to sense some things involving the plant life or the soil or the type of rock. But Applejack could now feel everything.
She felt ponies clamouring around a building, ready to destroy the windows, and she galloped to the area in record speed, expertly lassoing the rocks out of the path of the windows as they were thrown. But as she continued to extend her awareness, she knew that she wouldn't be able to be everywhere at once, and that was soon going to be a necessity.
Rainbow Dash sped from Ponyville to Cloudsdale in seconds. She did a sweep of the city, and a mess was already forming. Some cloud houses had been smashed into wisps, and one of the weather factories was being assaulted.
Rainbow rocketed toward the factory and extended her innate control of the air outward, holding the cloud walls intact as she quickly picked up and deposited each of the riotous pegasi far away from the factory. Satisfied, she performed another sweep to find the biggest problems.
Fluttershy sent the closest bird she found to gather up the animals and bring them to her. In a minute or two, the first birds began arriving, and then came the many other land animals she took care of. She didn't know what exactly to say until a fire broke out in another building.
"Birds," she began, confidently, "I need you to find buckets and fill them with water so we can put out that fire." Suddenly, she felt magic flowing out of her and into the birds, empowering them to perform the task quickly and without much effort. They sped off, and Fluttershy continued to give orders.
"Harry, you and the raccoons should keep the ponies away from breaking things as well as you can." Magic empowered them as well and Fluttershy more and more confidently directed the animals around.
Pinkie Pie and Discord appeared in Baltimare, a town-like city a bit bigger than Ponyville. "Ooh! Ooh!" Pinkie cried, bouncing. "We get to throw a party for a whole city!"
"Now this is going to be fun," Discord said, rubbing his claw and paw together gleefully. Pinkie began to pop in and out of buildings, firing her party cannon all over the place faster than she'd ever done before.
As Pinkie set up parties all throughout Baltimare, Discord placed faint persuasion to play the games and eat the food as a much higher priority. So, instead of destruction, it was just furiously competitive partying, which was messy, but not nearly as destructive.
Twilight appeared above Manehatten, her wings spread out as she seemed to glow in the sunlight. There was nothing wrong with a grand entrance; Celestia did that all the time. Magic filled the air as she reached throughout the city, permeating every nook and cranny with her presence.
It was a big city, though, with a lot of ponies, and even with her enhanced power it was admittedly hard to keep track of everything. There was a new fire practically once every five seconds, and that wasn't counting the riotous ponies bent on the very and destruction of windows, furniture, and other property.
She put out the fires easily, and she pulled bats and bludgeons out of hooves while making sure ponies didn't hurt themselves punching glass with their own hooves when they had no weapons. But it was getting gradually worse.
The effects in Canterlot were much tamer than in the other cities. Instead of too much wanton destruction of property, the nobles were breaking down centuries of hard-earned control over each other with secrets proclaimed to all who would hear.
Rarity herself was tempted to listen to what would undoubtedly be many juicy secrets, but she held back. Only the divines knew what trouble that could cause, even after the curse was broken, so she would have to stop it before it got out of hoof.
She erected soundproof barriers around every noble she saw or heard, and extended her magic to find the rest. She teleported swiftly throughout East Canterlot, restraining guards with clothes of all things and protecting the occasional house or store.
As fast as she could teleport, though, Canterlot, even one side of it, was fairly large. She could only cover so much at a given moment. The problem was slowly spiralling out of hoof--when she got around to repeat places she'd already done, there was more trouble than before, so it took longer. Gradually, she knew, this would get worse.
"You know what we need?" she asked herself, her eyes lighting up.
Applejack, although she was an earth pony, and a fast earth pony, and a faster earth pony with her enhanced abilities, was not Rainbow Dash. Well, she could never be Rainbow Dash. But Appleloosa was a town with a fairly large area in perspective.
Sure, she could keep up with most everything in the town at once with her heightened connection, but that didn't mean she could actually be everywhere at once. And moving from place to place was not very efficient in the long run.
That came to a head when two groups of ponies on opposite sides of the town gathered to trash a building each. If she went to one, she'd lose the other. If she went to the other, she'd lose the one. And every apple tree counted--if you just said "It's only one tree," collectively you didn't care about any of them, in her perspective.
Which is why it was a great boon when she realised that the subtle manipulations earth ponies had over the shape of the earth would be enhanced, too. She smiled widely and dug her hoof into the ground, a wall of earth surrounding both buildings to keep the mischievous ponies from doing any damage. Now she was much more confident in her ability to keep the town under control.
Then she saw the buffalo.
And there were a lot of them. She quickly erected thick barriers of earth to block their paths, but buffalo were nothing if not magically hard-headed, and with a few good hits they smashed right through the barriers. She created new ones just as they would get through the first, but they were getting the idea and moving around the town for other entrances.
Applejack suddenly smiled. "You know what we need?"
Rainbow Dash was, true to her name, dashing through Cloudsdale at high speeds, solving problems left and right by weather magicking them away or literally throwing the ponies out of the picture. But even though she was much faster, Cloudsdale was big, very big, and there were always a few places left to accumulate problems.
The problem came to a desperate head when she, like Applejack, was faced with sensing two imminent problems where only one could be solved and not the other. While she did not hold to the same philosophy as Applejack regarding this, both problems had to do with important companies and neither could be neglected.
Then she smirked sinisterly. "You know what we need?"
Fluttershy had a lot of animals. Those animals were currently prowling the town, looking for problems to solve, ponies to separate, or buildings to save. Fluttershy felt that she was pretty well equipped for the town. Her animals were very thorough.
Then, suddenly, as she flew up to look over everything, she realised that her animals were only taking one side of the town, and the other was in absolute chaos. She started back, horrified that she had made such a blatant mistake.
Then she gasped, realising exactly what was needed. "You know what we need?" she whispered, to nopony in particular.
Discord and Pinkie, having just finished Baltimare, teleported to Las Pegasus, a city almost as big as Manehatten. Before she started creating parties again, Pinkie asked, "I wonder why there were no yaks there!"[1]
[1]: Manehatten was also called New Yak City. This is because the city had once been an extension of the territory of the yaks. When Equestria acquired the territory once more, they kept the name out of courtesy. The current widely used name was adopted because the first mayor was known for a very large hat which kept his mane from view. Nopony ever found out exactly what his mane looked like.
"Oh well," Discord said, dismissively. "Yaks are terrible partygoers." With that, the began the same routine as before, although the parties were decidedly more rowdy than the previous. Not to the point of wanton destruction, though, thank parties.
However, they quickly realised that if they did one city at a time, all the other places they weren't at yet would be in complete chaos. The bad kind, not the good kind. Discord for all his attempts to take over the world was only into the harmless kind of chaos.
But then Pinkie was glad. She knew that they were all connected by the solution that was rapidly forming in her head. Pinkie gasped. "Gaaaaasp!" she exclaimed, drawn out. "Dissy, you know what we need?"
Twilight was not having any problems like the others. With a bit of tweaking on the fly, she was much better able to keep track of everything in the city from her position up high. This was a breeze, and she hoped the others were doing as well as she was.
Then, in a painful moment of clarity, she remembered the two large cities on the other side of the Country: Vanhoover and Tall Tale. She didn't know if she could extend her magical grip there, and if she tried, what if she used too much magic and passed out?
However, she began to feel new connections forming between them. It felt familiar, kind of like what she felt when Sweetie Belle was singing... Then she knew. "You know what we need?" she asked, stretching in reinvigoration.
At exactly the same time, six ponies scattered all over Equestria said the exact same thing at the exact same time. They also at that same time felt an eerie sense of contrivance which they decided to ignore. "A montage!"
Then, completely explicably, instruments played and a song started.
"There are too many places to be, and only one me," Rarity sang, as she teleported around Canterlot frantically, stopping problems left and right.
Sweat dripped from Applejack's brow as she repeatedly erected barriers to protect the town from the buffalo while also having to deal with the ponies inside the town. "These obstinate buffalo are getting too close for comfort!"
The song thankfully solved both of the imminent problems so that the lyrics could continue, but Rainbow Dash still zipped from place to place, trying to deal with the aggravated pegasi who were more than eager to resist her efforts. "Yeah, sure, I'm fast, but the pegasi? They're rowdy!" She barely managed to pry a group of pegasi away from smashing a building.
Fluttershy, stressed out, tried in vain to spread out her animals in a different way to cover the whole town. "The town's too big for my animals to guard stalwart," she sang, sadly,
Pinkie and Discord had started trying to go from city to city by doing only a few places in one city, going to another city or town and doing the same, and continuing that routine. It got through all of them, sure, but not anywhere near all of the city.
At a slower rhythm than the earlier lines, Pinkie and Discord lamented, "E-ven chaos can't put parties everywhere at once."
As Twilight teleported between the three cities, her eye twitching as she tried to solve every problem in every city as quickly as she could. "Why wern't two huge towns found in my cognizance?"
"Mind tellin' us what that word means?" Applejack asked, from at least a hundred miles away.
"How about never?" Rainbow Dash asked. No time for an egghead rant about a word she already knew.
As the music rose into the chorus, the six began to feel further empowered.
"But with friendship, (Friendship), and a song found deep inside our souls,"
"With friendship, (Friendship), We'll protect each one of our patrols!"
As the chorus finished and an instrumental part dominated by violins kicked in, a pulse of magic reinvigorated the friends. Rarity rose up into the air via magic, enough to see all of her side so she could take care of all the problems with expert finesse. Telekinesis was one of her fine points, of which she had many.
Applejack dug her hooves deeper into the ground and started actually moving her barriers back, strengthening them enough that the buffalo couldn't break through any more and pushing them back out of the town. She was much more able to keep track of and take care of the attempted destruction from the ponies.
Rainbow Dash began zipping around even faster than before. She, like the unicorns and Applejack had done, actually kept track of Cloudsdale using the weather magic. She kept the ponies in order as she shot about, fixing what damage she could and reinforcing buildings she couldn't get to at the moment.
"Souls?" Sweetie Belle asked, from Hollow Shades, where Luna was currently keeping the bat ponies in order and trying to figure out solutions (this to no avail). "Why not hearts? It's more accurate." They were connected to the song too, despite not singing for it.
"I think 'souls' has more rhymes to it," Fluttershy replied, as from her position over Ponyville she called for animals from both Whitetail Woods and the Everfree to come and fulfil the duties she had for them, like (gently) restraining ponies or stopping riots in progress.
"Ooh, yeah, that makes sense! I was wondering too!" Pinkie exclaimed. Contrary to their previous lyrics, Pinkie and Discord were now practically spreading parties everywhere at once. The others didn't know if that was copies of them in each town they had to do, or just them moving really, really fast. Either way was good enough.
Twilight rose up higher, teleporting herself at the centre of the triangle between the three cities. Rather than extending her grip across the whole of Equestria, she beamed out her grip to the three cities, keeping track of and solving every problem as it came up. It was hard, but not to the point of harmful straining.
"With friendship, (Friendship), and a song found deep inside our souls,"
"With friendship, (Friendship), We're protecting all of our patrols!"
But as the music would have stopped with the finale, the tune became more sinister and Amoris' voice echoed through the song. "So, you're somehow protecting all of Equestria from destroying itself. Very resourceful!" The sound of clapping was heard. "In case you didn't think so, Luna, I do know that ponies don't kill each other. Obviously, that wasn't my plan.
"I took the time to prepare something much more lethal. One that you can't stop like it was stopped the last time. But a little tip: You don't need to protect the towns any more. I doubt the ponies will be able to do anything other than hug their own selves and back away from others. Slowly, though."
The music grew dramatic as Twilight scryed for what Amoris could possibly be talking about. Then, as she saw what was coming, and the others started to feel colder, they all gasped. "Ta-ta, my friends! Sure, you'll probably survive, but everypony else will be dead before they leave."
Then, once more, to end the song, they cried, "Windigoes!"