“Surprise,” Princess Fast Change asked with an arched eyebrow, “is that a catapult?”
“Don’t be silly your highness!” the minty green party mare giggled happily, “This is a trebuchet!”
“And I suppose it would also be silly to think that is a giant bomb it’s loaded with?” Fast Change certainly hoped it was silly.
“That, your majesty, is the state of the art Pastel Family Airborn Pie Delivery System, capable of delivering 163 cream-pies with tactical precision at a distance of up to 3.4 kilometers!” Surprise beamed with pride, before shouting orders to her assembled family. “Train Wreck, secure the launch arm! Z, Carrot, adjust ballistic aim to 35% north by northwest! Diane, set the sling to release at a 32% delivery angle!”
“Yes Ma’am!” the assembled Pastels responded in unison.
“Well then,” the changeling princess replied as she backed towards the hive slowly, “That’s definitely all the answers I want to know.”
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Fleur Dis Lee was enjoying the party immensely. She truly loved hosting these charity galas in her and her husband’s private garden. She loved the pageantry of it all, the courtly intrigue. She loved seeing her normally somewhat stuffy noble peers walking around simply enjoying the beauty around them. She loved the fancy clothes, and the catered food. But mostly she loved helping gather charitable bits simply by doing something she loved so much.
It was a simply, beautifully, perfectly wonderful day for a garden gala. She was certain that her husband had spent no small amount of wealth and influence to ensure the weather teams did their part to make this simply the most wonderful event of the season. It was a perfect little distraction from the unpleasant unpleasantness.
The thought brought a brief frown to her pretty face. Why wouldn’t those unfortunate creatures simply accept her husband’s apology? Certainly they had been inconvenienced , but much of it was their own doing really. The brutish beast they called the Train Wreck. Certainly the monster meant well, perhaps, but when one runs amuck doing what one pleases without respect or regard for propriety, misunderstandings were bound to occur. She had never seen the creature, of course, but she had heard he was truly a frightful sight. Moreso since that horrible fire.
She felt a small tug of sympathy for the beast. It pained her to imagine being burned until there were only scars. To be rendered to such a state that even your own family might only dimly recognize you as the same pony. It pained her to imagine such a state, and thus she never even realized why it was that she found it so much easier to think of the creature as a thing, and not a pony. And so the thought was lost, and she once again wandered through the throngs of Canterlot Society as she made empty conversation with ponies it did not hurt to sympathize with.
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Fancy Pants truly enjoyed these little soirees. It was a welcome chance to relax and associate with one's peers. One of the costs of a position in society, was that there were very few moments when one could truly relax. Friends were most often also rivals, if not out-right competitors. And problems rarely began or ended with one’s own affairs. The stallion scowled momentarily at his failure to keep himself separated from his work for this one evening.
It was a thorny problem however, and most of its causes walked and socialized around him. His peers had lost sight of the goal. They had become too obsessed with defeating the monster that had thrust itself, unwelcome, into their own affairs. The goal had simply been to rescue miss Carrot Plate and teach this beast one does not simply snatch one’s brides from their families homes on a whim. This wasn’t the first instance he had heard of humans and former humans running amuck as if the rules of society no longer applied. They were a capricious species and it had been beyond reckless for Discord to give one so much raw power.
There had always been speculation, and most of upper Canterlot had simply assumed that trapped inside such a form, the poor creature would sooner or later devolve into the base monster Discord had made it to be. Instead it had insisted on repaying their fear with scorn. Always so condescending as if it were the good ponies of Canterlot who should be ashamed… and the more Fancy Pants learned the more he wondered if the thing wasn’t right. And the thought made him uncomfortable, so he pushed it away.
“Jolly good show!” Fancy turned to see his colleague, Civil Doctrine staring attentively at the evening sky. “You never said anything about fireworks!”
Fireworks? It was the last puzzled thought to pass through Fancy Pants' mind before the bombardment began.
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The ponies of Upper Canterlot would speak for years to come the great midsummer's pie storm. Proper Ladies and Courtesans would whisper in horror on their therapists couches until their dying day, reliving the sticky, sweet, delicious horror that had rained down upon them from a perfect blue sky. Little colts and fillies would chuckle years later as they regaled their own grand foals with the tales of laughter, the building of pie ponies, and the inevitable pie ball fights.
There was never any more talk of retribution against the Pastel family of East Decanter after that night. The unstoppable wheels of the Canterlot bureaucracy ground to an impossible halt, because there could be no question of who was responsible. Or of the nature of their great power. Noble parents heard it in the laughter of their own foals as they were pelted with balls of coconut cream. That day, the nobility had felt the unspeakable power of the Cupcake monster of Just Deserts, and when they listened hard that night, and for years after in their dreams, they could hear one family's laughter ringing across the city.