A Series of Great Ideas (Or Not)

by TheGuineaPig45

Chapter Nineteen: The "Magic of Murder"

Shining Armor opened his eyes.

The force of the crash had knocked him, Flam, and Boomer backwards, sending them hurtling into a wall. As they fell on the floor, coughing, the prince looked through the thick cloud of dust to see a giant hole in the wall, letting in the light of the early evening. Scattered around it was a pile of debris, mixed in with the remains of a stained glass window. The room felt like it was ever so slightly shaking.

Shining slowly made his way off the floor. “Well, that didn't feel great,” he wheezed, helping Flam onto his hooves. “As if I needed to get more injured today.”

“What was that?” Flam asked, bushing bits of brick out of his mane. The two stallions stumbled toward the hole and looked outside, where they saw an extravagant zeppelin floating near the castle.

From the deck, the Cutie Mark Crusaders waved at them.

“Oh no,” Shining Armor gasped, stepping back. “I forgot about our rescue team.”

A door on the giant aircraft opened, and Starlight Glimmer stepped out. With the glow of her horn, she slowly levitated herself and Rarity off of the zeppelin, and they flew into the castle through the large opening they had created.

“That’s one way to get past the Canterlot security system,” Rarity said, running her hood through her mane to make sure it wasn’t damaged. “Not my first choice, but…”

“Hey, it worked, didn't it?” Starlight replied. She turned to the stallions. “The Unicorn Squad is here to rescue you!”

Shining Armor and Flam looked at each other, then at the beaming mares. The former put his face in his hooves.

“We appreciate the gesture,” Flam began, “but--”

“But smashing a giant zeppelin into the castle?!” Shining interrupted. “What were you thinking?!”

“Well, once you were captured by the guards,” Starlight explained, “we realized that the only way to save you was to think way outside of the box. So, we thought, What would Shining Armor and Flam do? And eventually, we came up with the idea to find a battering ram.”

“And a zeppelin just seemed like the most logical option, of course,” Rarity added, checking to see if her hooves had gotten dirty from the rubble. “Stealing one from the docks was surprisingly simple.”

“We just had to help our friends.” Starlight grabbed onto Shining’s hoof, and began pulling him toward the exit. “Now, come on! Let’s get out of here while we still have the chance!”

Shining pulled his hoof away from her and stayed back. “Guys, you’re going to be in so much trouble!” he cautioned. “We don’t want to escape!”

“You don’t?” Apple Bloom asked, flying in on Gallus’s back with the rest of the Crusaders. “Why?!”

“The princesses were going to give us a second chance to fix things! They showed us what happened last night. We got drunk, and made a bunch of bad decisions.”

“This is an important lesson for you, children,” Flam said, turning to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “Alcohol is very dangerous, and you definitely shouldn’t partake in it until you’re much older.” He paused. “Although, I know you’re growing up, which means you’re gonna want to start experimenting with certain things, which is fine and you should, but--”

“Flam,” Rarity said politely, though the look in her eyes sent chills down the stallion’s spine. “Please stop encouraging my little sister to start drinking.”

“Yup, sorry.”

“They weren’t going to send us to Tartarus,” Shining Armor continued. “They were going to send us back in time to redo this mess from the beginning!”

“If we picked that option,” Flam clarified. “We were undecided.”

Starlight and Rarity’s ears flopped down, and they frowned at each other.

“Looks like we might’ve made a small mistake,” the former admitted. “But, fear not! We can fix this! We’ll just explain to the princesses that you had nothing to do with this plan, and everything will be good.”

“That might be a little hard,” Boomer said in the distance. The Unicorn Squad and their company trotted over to him, and gasped.

There, lying on the ground, surrounded by rubble, were all four princesses, unconscious.

Shining Armor ran to his wife. Flam’s jaw dropped. Gallus covered the Crusaders’ eyes with his wing. Rarity nearly fainted.

“Cadance!” the prince cried out, hugging his wife. “No! You’re going to be okay, honey!”

“They must’ve been knocked out by the force of the zeppelin,” Boomer explained. “I checked their pulses. All of them should be fine.”

“This is what happens when you follow the example of two very drunk stallions!” Shining shouted.

“For the record, I was very against this idea,” Gallus stated, blowing his top feathers out of his face.

“What?” Sweetie Belle asked. “You were the one who suggested a zeppelin! Gave us a whole sob story about wanting to ride one as a kid!”

“Hey, it’s not my fault Starlight can’t pilot one of those things!”

"Aww, man!" Flam whimpered, his breath speeding up. "Look at what the 'Magic of Murder' has done to us! We're falling apart, and--"

The stallion was interrupted when a rumbling noise started echoing throughout the room. Without warning, the entire throne room started to shake, and all the curtains fell down to the ground, cloaking the Unicorn Squad. This ended up being a good thing, as one of the stained glass windows shattered, and the fabric protected the group from the pointy shards.

“What is happening?!” Rarity exclaimed, peeking out from under the curtain.

“This is it,” Flam gasped, hugging onto Shining Armor. “The gates to Tartarus are opening! We’re doomed!”

“Or the blow from the zeppelin destroyed the infrastructure of the castle,” Boomer suggested, “which is now falling apart with us inside.”

“You say that so calmly!” Gallus shouted, his feathers ruffled.

“Eh, we deal with a threat to Equestria, like, every twenty-six days. Nothing phases me anymore.”

Flam started hyperventilating and pacing. “This is bad. This is bad. This is really, really, REALLY bad!”

“Are we gonna die in here?!” Scootaloo panicked.

Shining Armor’s ears perked up at those words. “No!” he shouted, his voice confident and full of authority. “We’ve come too far to die from a crumbling castle!”

“So, what do we do?!” Gallus asked.

“We need to evacuate the castle, and get everypony outside before the building caves in.”

Starlight nodded. “Gallus, could you bring out the princesses and Crusaders outside and keep them a safe distance from the building?” The griffon hesitated. “I’ll give you extra credit.”

“Sold!” he said, letting the fillies climb onto his back. “Now I don’t have to worry about that dumb decoration final!”

“Hey!” Rarity shouted. “Decoration is not dumb, it’s art, and--”

“Not the time!” Shining interrupted. “The rest of us will scour the castle halls and help everypony else escape. Is that clear?” Every creature nodded.

“Seeing you in action makes you that much more attractive,” Flam mused.

As Gallus flew away, the others formed a huddle and put their hooves together in the center.

“We got this,” Shining Armor said. “If we could get away with kidnapping Apple Bloom, amongst many other things today, we can definitely do this.”

“Right!” Flam affirmed. Together, the group smiled at one another and tossed their hooves up into the air. “Let’s go, Unicorn Squad!”

“And also me!” Boomer exclaimed. The others looked at him, eyebrows raised. “What? I’m not a unicorn.”

“Just go.”

---

Boomer was doing a headcount.

Him, Shining Armor, Flam, Rarity, and Starlight Glimmer had all dashed through the halls as fast as they could, peeking into every door and warning everypony to get out. With the assistance of several Royal Guards, within five minutes, they had everypony out and safely away from the castle.

Or so they thought.

“I think this is everypony,” Boomer called out to Shining Armor, who was trying to calm down the frantic crowd. “The princesses are here, all the Royal Guards on duty are present, the scheduled visitors are accounted for, and of course, us.” He patted the prince on the back. “Look at that. We pulled off this dangerous stunt without any drama. I think that’s a major accomplishment, considering... well, everything that's happened.”

“Maybe,” Shining Armor replied, looking around.

The sea of panicked ponies who had escaped was growing in size, as several bystanders watched as small pieces of Canterlot Castle began falling. It was only a matter of minutes before the whole thing went down. Starlight was trying to stop it from crumbling with her magic, but to no avail.

"I'm not powerful enough!” she said, straining her horn. “I’m sure the princesses could fix this, but they’re unconscious!”

“They are not going to be happy when they see we destroyed they’re castle,” Flam sighed. “They probably won’t be surprised. But they will definitely be upset.”

“They’ll be pleased that we took matters into our own hooves to save everypony’s lives,” Rarity assured, putting her hoof on Flam’s back. "At least there's that."

As the myriad of ponies watched the fall of Canterlot Castle, Shining Armor continued scanning the crowd. Sure enough, it seemed like Boomer was right. They had been successful in their mission. Until…

“BLUEBLOOD!” Shining realized, searching through the myriad of mares and stallions. “Where’s Prince Blueblood?!”

Boomer and Gallus took to the skies and looked for him from above. Both shook their heads.

“He must still be inside!” Starlight gasped.

“Oh no!" Sweetie Belle squealed. "Somepony has to save him!”

“There’s no time!” Scootaloo shouted. “The castle’s gonna fall at any second!”

Shining Armor and Flam looked at each other. Simultaneously, they both heaved a heavy sigh, then nodded to each other.

Without an glimmer of hesitation, they dashed back into the castle.

The crowd gasped in horror.

"Those two are either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid," Gallus said to himself, watching them disappear. "But probably incredibly stupid. I'd bet on that."

Starlight glared at him. "Gallus!"

"I mean, I wish you two the best! Good luck! Try not to die! I mean, it wouldn't drastically affect my life if you did, but try not to anyway!"

Starlight shrugged. "Better."

Comments

[Starlight Glimmer1]

Starlight glared at him. " Gallus !"

He’s not wrong, Starlight.

[Dashie04]

This entire story is,”From Bad To Worse: An MLP Fanfiction”.

[TheOnlySaneDraconequus]

“Eh, we deal with a threat to Equestria, like, every twenty-six days. Nothing phases me anymore.”

Too true!

[Ploish]

Shining Armor acting in character? In this story? What the—?

[Bookeater_otaku]

It's the magic of murder alright.