The Wrong Thing At The Wrong Time
Rainbow Dash did not consider herself to be Equestria's Greatest Authority on dresses.
There were a fair number of topics on which Rainbow did consider herself to be Equestria's Greatest Authority, all of which she was happy to tell other ponies about given any excuse whatsoever and none of which she would entertain any countering opinions on because hello, Equestria's Greatest Authority over here, come on, I know more about this than anypony in the world, maybe even in history, and as I was saying... Chief among those topics were the Wonderbolts (history of, current members and past, classic tricks, noted amateur fliers who were the talk of the flight camps and somehow tragically never made it), the Daring Do cycle (canon, Expanded Universe, and fanfic inclusive), plus just recently, tortoise care. But not dresses. That was Rarity's department, and while that part of the knowledge store wasn't as lame as it had once seemed, Rainbow had no personal interest in trying to take over the counter.
Her trip into Canterlot normally wouldn't have found her looking in the windows of the capital's dress shops at all: she had flown in because the latest Daring Do novel was being released, she could have it a few hours earlier than the rest of Ponyville by traveling to the point of initial distribution, and the way to stay Equestria's Greatest Authority was by being that much faster than everypony else. Under normal circumstances, she would have gone directly past the dress shop after no more than the most casual glance -- at best -- and then it was down three more blocks, turn left, over four, and hope the line wasn't too long yet because she'd overslept just a little bit and after finally getting her belated morning weather coordinator duties out of the way...
...well, right now, Rainbow was taking the fact that her current location wasn't the visible end of the line as a hopefully positive sign. (The idea that such a line would be unlikely to turn a corner hadn't quite penetrated yet.) But something about that dress in the window of the closed shop (a little too early still for their business hours) had caught her attention, made her stop and give up precious seconds she didn't have and that was in no way her fault, it was her dumb bed for being so comfortable, and...
Oh, right! Rarity was working on that one last moon while I was in the Boutique and she was all hello Rainbow darling I'm sorry but I truly have to complete this order right now and something something blah blah blah no I haven't stitched your favorite pillow back up yet dreadfully sorry maybe tomorrow. I guess she managed to get an order from this shop. Good: more money for the next card game...
...huh.
Y'know, that really didn't turn out the way she was going with it. Wasn't she mostly going with shaved hematite for the edges? She was talking about blah blah hard to keep the sheen -- yeah. And that's not hematite, I know that, she only tried to show it to me like a thousand times or maybe even twice. Looks more like plain old slate according to that one rock farmer mineral expert Daring consulted in EU Seven.
And those aren't diamonds down the hock line. That's quartz. She never uses quartz unless she at least gives it a really good polish first and never in that kind of quantity and Celestia, how did I pick up this much about her dresses? Maybe I'm hanging out at the Boutique too much --
-- oh, come on! She's never used that kind of color wheel offset in her life!
Rainbow examined the garment more closely. Yes, at first high-speed passing glance, it did look like one of Rarity's creations -- as long as you were moving really fast and not paying any real degree of attention. But the pegasus was used to picking up small details while moving entirely too quickly because that was frequently the only way to avoid, well, let's just say -- unintentional stops. Yeah. Let's go with that. But this small detail had gotten her attention to the point where it had stopped her and buck it, the details had gone plural and were multiplying at the speed of parasprites...
She hovered a little higher, enough to try and peek at the label. And yes, Rarity's name was there. Official Carousel Boutique product. But it wasn't quite her fieldwriting or her chosen label font, both so unnecessarily fancy that the three days required for the unicorn to be very nearly satisfied with a new dress could easily turn into four just from the flourishes involving in signing the thing.
This was a knockoff.
Somepony had copied Rarity's work -- poorly. Was trying to pass it off as the original product. Rarity would never see a single bit from this dress, ponies would think less of her if they believed she'd had anything to do with it and Rainbow knew there were ponies who were exactly that dumb...
Rainbow was getting angry, and landed so as not to burn off the rage in a burst of acceleration. Daring Do could (incredibly) wait for a few minutes. Somepony had betrayed Rarity, and that had to be dealt with first.
Oh, she knew something about knockoffs. Rainbow had once paid forty bits plus a Tartarus-forged shipping charge to get what she'd been told was a Daring Do novel which was only available in Saddle Arabia -- and furthermore, it was the ultra-limited print run which had been run off for Equestrian expatriates living in that distant nation, so it would be in a language she could actually read. And when she'd gotten the package a moon later, it had turned out to be a copy of Canon #4 which had been translated to Saddle Arabian and then possibly to Griffonant followed by Ancient Crystalia before going back to Equestrian again, resulting in a huge number of howlingly bad errors within the text, including entire chapters where Daring kept randomly turning into a manticore and an entire novel where, for no reason she could understand, Ahuizotl was continually referred to as 'Jedi'. That little horror had been on the verge of being hit by every lightning bolt she could muster before Twilight had found her rounding up the vaporous firing range, asked what was wrong, and eventually managed to work out a request for the thing through her giggles. It was currently an intermittent part of Foal Time in the library, and the goal was to see who could read the most out loud before laughing. None of which had gotten her forty bits plus oh, Luna's shoes, that bucking shipping charge back because by the time the angry letter Spike had sent for her arrived at the publishing company, they had conveniently stopped existing.
Well, nopony was going to hurt Rarity like Rainbow would have been hurt if she'd actually cared that much about anything -- beyond, of course, losing her money and not getting to read a lost classic which the back-page small-print advertisement had totally assured her was canon and --
-- the point is that somepony's betraying Rarity's rights as an artist by ripping off her work and I am not gonna stand for that! This could really hurt her business, and I can just hear her ranting and losing it and probably swooning at least twice when she finds out this is happening...
...but what am I gonna do about it?
Rainbow frowned thoughtfully as she stared at the dress. What were her options here? Clearly breaking through the window was right out...
The voice behind her had an audible false smile in it. Female, high-class, native Canterlot accent turned up two notches too high. "Seeing something you like, dear? Feel free to admire it, but I'm afraid that no pegasus cuts are ever available..."
Rainbow, who wasn't paying complete attention at the time and only got the exact words back on memory later, answered with "Uh-huh... hey, do you know anything about knockoff laws?" Because there was always a chance she'd get that lucky, right?
The audible false smile very audibly vanished. "...what did you say?"
"Knockoff laws. You know, to punish ponies who try to rip other ponies off. Because let me tell you, the pony who designed the original and I are like --"
"Get out of here!" And there was a hard sharp poke in her right flank, right next to her mark. "Get away from my shop!"
"OW! -- wait a minute, your --" She was hit again, harder, lifted off before a third attempted spearing could reach her, hovered just out of targeting range. "Quit trying to horn in!"
There was a unicorn mare on the ground below her. Middle-aged. A sort of shoddy pearl coat color which looked as if it wouldn't feel gritty on anypony's teeth. (Celestia's mane, how long had she been listening to Rarity blather in order to know that?) Mane and tail which approximated sapphire without ever quite getting there. Off-hazel eyes, and given that they were hazel, that 'off' was for just about everything. And -- smiling. A very slow smile, one which was visibly spreading as Rainbow watched.
"What did you say to me?" the unicorn softly asked, sounding far too happy about the question.
Rainbow didn't care. "I said, quit trying to horn in! You nearly poked a hole in me! And this is your shop? Did you know those were knockoffs when you bought them? Or did you make them --"
The smile turned into a grin, threatened to go beyond the unicorn's jaw...
"-- did you hear what she said to me?" the unicorn screamed. "Did you hear her admit to those words?"
Rainbow heard a murmur off to her right. It was not a happy murmur, and it seemed to be coming from considerably more than one pony throat. She risked a look.
There were a lot of ponies on the street. She hadn't been paying any real attention to that before because she'd been flying above it, none of them seemed to be in line and it was Canterlot, so for pretty much any hours under Sun, there were going to be a lot of ponies on the street. Since the location had remained Canterlot in the time since she'd started that thought, pretty much everypony around was a unicorn. And every last one of them was -- not happy. In fact, they would have needed Pinkie to throw them the party of their lives just to bring them up to 'not happy'.
The murmurs were getting louder. A number of horns were beginning to display primary coronas. Not so with the shop's owner, who was now looking as outraged as it was possible for a pony to be -- but still with that dark smile in her eyes.
"But -- you poked me! And you're selling knockoffs! Doesn't anypony care about --"
"BIGOT!" somepony in the crowd shouted. "Get out of Canterlot, you prejudiced horse apple smear!"
"Get down here and say that to all of us!" somepony else challenged. "Go ahead if you've got the guts!"
"We'll teach you a few things!"
"Isn't she one of those Element-Bearers? And that's what's allowed to hold an Element? Well, I'm on Murdocks' side now! Down with The Element Of Bigotry! Depose! Get some real Bearers in!"
The crowd stopped murmuring for a second, seeming to listen to that last part -- and then the sound got even darker. The shop owner looked like she'd just pulled a signed Daring Do #1 first edition in mint condition out of a tenth-bit bargain box. Everypony else just seemed as if they'd decided to go carnivore and the first thing on the menu needed to have the feathers plucked first for best flavor. And even more horns were surrounded by those first signs of glow.
Rainbow looked around, took a very fast head (and lit horn) count.
Her natural response to being challenged was to challenge right back. Her first instinct on having somepony pick a fight with her was to select a good location for the first blow and land it before they could ever move.
Her automatic reaction to being outnumbered by forty-eight (and climbing) to one was to do neither of those things. Brave, yes, foolhardy, that was for her friends to keep insisting, suicidal, no.
"Oh, buck you!" she yelled at the shop owner. "I'm going to go find somepony I can report you to! I'll get that dress out of your window, just wait and see!" And she flew off at what was very nearly her best possible low-level speed, the wind she created rearranging several manes.
Poking me... if I'd just had some privacy to finish things...
Well, there was no help for it. She'd just have to go and find the proper authorities. It was Canterlot, home of every agency in Equestria, so there had to be a proper authority for this sort of thing --
-- somewhere...
It was the next morning. Bureaucracy had happened.
Rainbow dealt about as well with being shuffled around from one pile of paperwork, regulations, and "Now that I think about it, you should go to the office across town," to another as she did with two a.m. weather shifts and being asked to create the conditions for a birthday snowstorm in the heart of summer: the pony involved had better be worth it. As such, she had ground her teeth, lashed her tail, flicked her ears a thousand times, and forced herself to stumble through the maze's continual redirections until she was finally certain she'd talked to the right ponies at the right place while filling out all the right forms to just make things right. A process which had very literally taken all day: by the time she'd finally finished, the Sun had been lowered and Luna's shift was minutes old, with the bookstore closed and no way to pick up a copy before morning because Ponyville's little shop would have shut down an hour before that...
She had tried to pull rank as an Element-Bearer to make things move faster. It worked about as well as it ever did when the situation wasn't a continent-threatening crisis: not at all. Much to Rainbow's forever-irritation, she typically only got recognized when she didn't want to be -- 'not wanting to be' did happen, even if she personally had trouble believing it -- and few ponies ever seemed to believe her when she needed them to. And it wasn't as if Twilight would just let her keep the necklace out of the vault at all times...
Oh, buck it, they'd probably say it was a fake or something. Rainbow stretched and groggily tried to get out of bed. It took two attempts. At least it's Cropduster's shift this morning: nopony's going to give me grief for being late because I don't have anything to be late for. Maybe Pages & Preens still has a few copies. Just gotta get out there, get some wake-up juice, find a copy and a place to read...
Rainbow staggered towards the front door, opened it, stepped outside onto her vapor landing.
A glow-covered newspaper hit her in the face.
"Take that, you stupid pegasus bigot!" somepony yelled at her from below. "Go ahead and see what real ponies think of you!"
Rainbow went into a dive, headed for ground level, tried to find the thrower -- but it was already too late: all she found were a few faint fading lights from where the paper-slinger had teleported out.
"What did I do?" she angrily asked the universe, rubbing at her sore nose. The universe, at least in the sense of any booming voice calling her name from above, decided not to reply.
The newspaper, which had fallen back to ground level, the tight cylinder unrolling to show her the front page, took the job instead.
Rainbow read it.
Four times.
And that was just the headline.
"'Rainbow Dash, Hero Bigot Of Equestria'?" Rainbow yelled, somehow managing to find a vocal way to imply the headline's slashed-out word on sheer tone. "'Canterlot learns what the so-called Element Of Loyalty is actually loyal to'? 'Unicorn hater'? 'Demand the immediate deposing -- emergency sanctions -- call for a vote from the Day and Night Courts -- Princess Celestia should override because it is known the pegasi faction in the Courts would block any real attempts...' Guys, what is this? What the buck did I do?"
The rest of the Bearers, whom she had practically (and in a few cases, literally) scooped up from their respective homes and workplaces, blinked up at her from the floor of the temporarily-closed library. And just going to get them had been an exercise in surrealism, with so many of the town's ponies cursing at her as she went by...
She'd had to move fast. Some had been doing more than cursing.
"...Rainbow Dash?" Fluttershy timidly began, "...I was kind of in the middle of the morning --"
"-- yeah, yeah, the ones who aren't housebroken yet will still be pooping on the floor when you get back," Rainbow quasi-diplomatically pointed out. "This is important!"
"It would rather help," Rarity carefully proposed, "if you would tell us exactly what is going on rather than rushing in and nearly taking the doors off their hinges before grabbing me and dropping me off here, then going for the next..." The unicorn's mane still had a few curlers in it. "...don't you think?"
Twilight sighed. "Rainbow, we know you're upset and I'm guessing it has something to do with the newspaper sticking out of your right saddlebag, but you've got to tell us what's wrong."
Pinkie nodded. "We can't fix anything if we don't know what's broken!"
Spike groaned. "From the middle of my bath, Dash? Really?"
Applejack went with a simple "An' when we're done takin' care of yer problem, yer gonna take me back along the exact same way we came in on until we find where mah hat fell off!"
"Oh, that dropped when I picked you up, it's back at the Acres -- what? It's not in any danger! Listen, guys! I'm in trouble here! Maybe big trouble! And -- um... yeah, maybe I'd better kind of tell you about yesterday first, huh? Okay. You know I was going to pick up the new Daring Do in Canterlot, right? Well --"
They let her talk. This was followed by the group listening to Spike reading the Murdocks Press article aloud.
And when the last muck-covered flaming punctuation mark had hit the floor, Rarity sighed. "Oh dear, oh dear... Rainbow, darling, I know what you were trying to do and I truly appreciate that all your efforts were on my behalf, but you must understand, there are certain -- phrases which one tries to avoid with unicorns..."
"Horning in?" Rainbow asked. The wince on the white face gave her the reply. "But -- Rarity, she was shoving her horn into my flank! She was literally horning in on me! It hurt! You can see the bruise! What if she had one of those sharp horns, like what Pokey's got? Is it okay to say then?"
"Well, then she's assaulting you, of course," Rarity assured her. "And in the strictest legal sense of the term, she was doing so even with a duller horn. But you didn't report that to the authorities -- only the counterfeiting attempt..." Another sigh. "I'm afraid she may rather -- have you."
"Have me?" Rainbow was incredulous. "What did I do?"
"Well -- did anypony witness her poking you?"
"I don't think so... you know Canterlot, a lot of ponies are in so much of a hurry that they ignore things which aren't happening to them... I guess they mostly turned around when she yelled..."
Twilight slowly shook her head. "Rainbow Dash, the problem is -- the words -- no, let me talk: this isn't a long lecture. You know -- okay, maybe you don't, but you're about to -- there was a time in Equestria's history, before the Princesses, where a lot of unicorns raised armies and tried to take over portions of the continent, or even the whole thing. It got really ugly for a while. And even after the Princesses took the thrones, there were a few who would try to make moves and get power."
"Yeah, like the way Murdocks is always yelling about 'Depose!' and getting somepony else to run the country," Rainbow said. "So?"
Twilight frowned. "You know, I've never seen a picture of him. I'm not sure he's a unicorn -- but that's not the point. The thing is that when those unicorns tried to use their magics to take over things, ponies called it -- horning in. And when you say that today, when we've had peace for so long -- it's an anti-unicorn statement. It's calling somepony a conqueror or a despot. That they don't care about anypony's rights, let alone Harmony -- they just want to take over. It's -- one of the nastiest things you can say about a unicorn."
Rainbow blinked. "So -- why didn't anypony ever tell me this?"
"I didn't know it either!" Pinkie declared. "I could have said it just as easily!"
Rarity was getting a lot of gallops out of her sigh. "Because -- you were educated in pegasus schools and on a rock farm, respectively. Without unicorns present. Why would anypony have told you what would be offensive to us? And since the term simply isn't used in polite company, which I certainly hope we qualify as..."
Spike nodded. "Some of the students at Twilight's school would throw it at each other if they thought somepony was getting too full of themselves. Unicorns can say it about other unicorns. But nopony else can say it about a unicorn."
"...that's just strange," Fluttershy decided. "...it's only bad if the wrong pony says it?"
Twilight looked mildly ill, and her tail was flicking to suit. "Language doesn't always make sense that way. And -- neither do ponies."
Rainbow was starting to feel a little sick herself. "But -- look, if you talked to me about the sieges pegasi used to create before the Hearth's Warming Eve Accords, and all the things which were -- part of them -- I'd kind of have to admit it, right? Because that's history. You could call me a land-swooper and all I'd have to do is say I wasn't around then! And she was still poking me with her horn! Literally -- those words!"
Rarity, resting against the floor, spread her front hooves slightly: relax. It didn't help. "Rainbow, I certainly know you didn't mean anything by it and I assure you, so does Twilight." (The purple unicorn nodded.) "And given what she was doing to you, they were natural words, in a way -- but very few other unicorns are going to see that. Even if some had witnessed the events directly, there would always be a few who would make an effort not to see it..."
Spike burped. The scroll hit Rainbow in her still-sore nose.
Twilight's field recovered the rolled-up paper, unfurled it. The librarian carefully, silently read through the missive.
"Oh my," she softly said. Too softly. "Oh no..."
Like everypony she knew (and she didn't know anypony who worked in the press, not personally), Rainbow loved the Princess -- in her way. In this case, that was the way of respect and dedication and service and a background suspicion that Princess Celestia could pull off some totally awesome flying tricks if she really wanted to, maybe even things nopony else could do or even dream of. And that even knowing how totally awesome she truly was -- the Princess was still content to just fly around normally, stand on a cloud or two, and let everypony else be awesome in her place. Rainbow kind of respected that, although there were times when she wasn't quite sure why. Maybe because she never could have done the same thing.
But Rainbow hated talking to her one-on-one.
It was -- the height thing. Celestia was the tallest pony anypony had ever seen. Even when she folded her legs underneath her, she still wound up looking down on many ponies. And she was standing now. It made Rainbow feel like she was about two dozen moons younger than Scootaloo. No matter how old she actually was, the height difference and sense of majesty and age created an inherent sensation of My mommy is not happy with me.
And Rainbow couldn't tell just how unhappy Princess Celestia was.
"I assume you saw the protest outside the palace when you flew in?" the Princess asked.
Rainbow bit back her first twelve responses. "Yes, Princess." Oh, she'd seen them. And they had seen her. Actually, given the speed she'd been moving at, it was amazing how close some of those field-slung items had come. And given the direction they would have been headed in, some of them probably would have come down -- on the Solar Guards.
Tomato-covered Solar Guards.
Among other things.
The Princess nodded. "I thought you might have," she said. "I believe the largest delegation is from Canterlot Unicorns Need Equal Treatment. They used to be Canterlot Unicorns Negating Traditional Swears, but for some reason, they decided that name wasn't working out... They are not happy with you, Rainbow Dash. Not in the least." And her tone of voice in no way betrayed her own level of unhappiness. Or if there was any at all.
"But..." Rainbow was trying not to scrape her front left hoof across the Solar throne room's marble floor like a trapped schoolfilly. If she could just take off a little, get high enough to at least look the Princess in the eye... "I told you what happened, Princess... doesn't that -- mean anything?"
A small head shake. "It does not change what was said, Rainbow Dash."
"But -- but she was selling knockoffs!" Almost pleading, "She was still stealing from Rarity!"
"She claims," the Princess told her with just the slightest emphasis on the one word, "that she was conned by a supplier. A suppler who mysteriously seems to have ceased their existence. Also that the fabric and stone scraps we found in her shop were from her attempting to restore two or three of the eighty false garments which had been in even more blatant less than perfect condition, that the multiple pictures of Rarity's originals were simply to help her decide how to best place her order, and I believe she had a very creative reason behind her shoddy printing press, but it escapes me at the moment. The receipt, however, is simply said to have gone out in the trash. The dresses have been confiscated and will be broken down into their components for recycling into clothing for foals, presuming we can find any whose skin will tolerate that kind of harsh fabric. But legally, Rainbow Dash, all the evidence would probably be seen as circumstantial -- and given the spreading of the story around Canterlot, an untainted jury would be difficult to come by. The prosecutor's office is considering the matter closed as long as no further knockoffs appear in her shop -- and there may be some difficulty in getting them to check back regularly, given some of the current sentiment..."
Rainbow closed her eyes, hoped desperately not to feel any moisture at the squeezed-shut corners. Even that failed.
"So now," the Princess continued, "there is the matter of -- the apology."
Rainbow just barely managed to get her eyes open again. It did nothing for her flattened ears. "Ap -- apology?" Disbelief, stun, incredulity -- if they all had a foal together, her name would have been Rainbow Dash.
"Apology," the Princess nodded. "Miss Lue Viton has insisted on a public one. She claims that if you make -- appropriate reparations, she might be willing to say something in the way of vague forgiveness in the papers. Eventually. The terms will be given to you in front of an audience composed of Canterlot citizens, members of the press, and anypony else who cares to show up in the Solar Courtyard at the time. I have already been given a copy of her demands to review along with her planned statement, and she does not object to my letting you know what both of them contain in advance and coaching you on the appropriate responses before the actual meeting two hours from now. She wishes you to be, shall we say, appropriately contrite for the occasion. Although the words she used were closer to 'humbled'. Or perhaps even 'brought down'. I have spoken to many ponies about her over the last several hours. I have learned many things about how she thinks and acts. I know it must be done."
Rainbow knew her tail was lashing. She couldn't stop it. But her voice was still weak. "Princess... will it -- help anything? Anything at all?"
The Princess looked down at her. Rainbow felt her mental age lose another twelve moons. "They are asking for much, Rainbow Dash. They willfully blind themselves to the fact that your connection to the Element of Loyalty is for life and another Bearer cannot be chosen in your place. They will continue to do so. Should you do this properly, those demands will stop. There will no longer be petitions demanding that you be removed from that, and your job in Ponyville, and those calling for your deportation... again, something that would never happen, but it is making the demands stop, my little pony. Regardless of the circumstances, or the justifications, or even the bruising which so many are claiming you inflicted upon yourself, along with planting those dresses in her shop to begin with -- all so many are willing to understand is that the words were said. And so you will be in front of an audience in two hours, with Miss Viton and myself and so many others present, and you will speak as I have coached you."
Those words stopped the lashing of her tail. They made her tail droop. And the perpetual sunlight in the Solar throne room warmed no part of her.
"So," the Princess went on, "now we will discuss exactly what you will say. Listen carefully, Rainbow Dash. You will have to memorize this, and I do not wish you to deviate from it. We will cover a number of responses should Miss Viton vary her own words somewhat, but you will know everything you have to say for every circumstance under which you would speak. Do you understand?"
It took the last bit of strength Rainbow had to nod.
The Princess trotted down from the throne. Sat down, tucked her legs underneath her so that she could speak to Rainbow as closely as possible. Told her exactly what had to be said.
And in the end, Rainbow agreed with all of it.
They were in the gold-riddled Solar Courtyard, which naturally faced east and was magically always bathed in sunlight at the angle which would exist if the Sun was rising at that very moment, during any hour when the Sun was aloft at all. Miss Lue Viton was there. So were about five hundred other ponies.
Rainbow had taken a long look at things as the Princess had led her in, or as much as she could manage with her head dipped so low. There was a raised marble platform upon which she was supposed to stand and face Miss Viton from about ten feet away. A back projection at the center gave the Princess a place to supervise from without being in their visual way. Roughly eighty members of the press -- mostly Murdocks': as always, the broken scales with a secondary cutie mark icon in the non-fallen end was the clue -- crowded towards the front, although there were some from other agencies as well, including a few bearing the distinctive fedoras with chin straps of The Cloudsdale Breeze. And unicorns. Lots and lots of unicorns -- although there were also a number of non-press pegasi present, mostly towards the back and of course, above.
Miss Viton was already waiting on her portion of the platform. Her face was not smirking. Her entire body was.
The Princess took her position. Rainbow found her own. Waited.
The magical enhancements made Miss Viton's voice sound clearly through the Courtyard. "Are you ready to hear my terms, Miss Dash?"
Rainbow nodded.
"Good," Miss Viton said, and some of that non-smirk made it into the sound. (Several of Murdocks' representatives chuckled.) "First of all, you will admit, in front of the Princess, the gathered audience, and Canterlot, that you are prejudiced. That you are, in fact, a bigot of the first water. You despise unicorns and all the magnificent things they have achieved. You hate anypony with a horn. Is that not so?"
And Rainbow said "I'm sorry, but could you explain some of that?"
Miss Viton's non-smirk froze. "...explain?"
"Yeah. Because, you know, you kind of used some really big words there. Like -- prejudiced. What does that mean, exactly?"
Miss Viton's eyes widened. Narrowed again. "It means, Miss Dash, that you hate unicorns."
"Well -- does it? I mean, I know I don't have a Canterlot education or anything, but the way I sort of understand it, you can be prejudiced against something or towards it. I mean, personally, I'm prejudiced towards the Wonderbolts like anything. And tortoises. I could not be more prejudiced towards tortoises if I tried, even though I kind of have trouble explaining to most ponies why I would be prejudiced towards them at all. There was this race -- but anyway, I just wanted to make sure you didn't want me to say I really loved unicorns more than anything else in the world. Because what I love more than anything else in the world is flying. We wouldn't want anypony to get those two things mixed up, because then we'd have flying unicorns who I loved, and while it sounds really cool when you put it that way, it's kind of a small dating pool."
The shop owner's face was working in a way which suggested that somewhere inside her mouth, an invisible piece of steel was just about ground down to the point where it could be swallowed. "It means hate, Miss Dash," and now the words themselves were being worried between her teeth. "Plain and simple hate."
"Oh, okay!" Rainbow declared. "All right -- now, about that first water stuff...”
“...what are you going on about now?”
Rainbow very carefully did not notice the increasing tension in Miss Viton’s muscles, much less the way the shop owner’s legs were beginning to widen their stance. “I’m supposed to be saying I’m a bigot of the first water. Okay, ‘bigot’ I kind of get. I’m not that big, but I’m sure somepony can tell me where I’m ot and what size my ot is. But ‘first water’? Do you mean when I hit my fountain in the morning for that great cold drink which gets my whole day going? Or is this about a few hours later when that’s gone all the way through me and -- well, you know. Because that second option? Is just weird. So I really wanted to make sure on where we were before I went ahead with that.”
Certain members of the press had stopped chuckling. Others were staring. The brighter ones were taking notes. The Princess was steadily gazing at a point exactly between the two ponies, and her blinks were perfectly even.
“Miss Dash,” the shop owner spat out as several small veins began to stand out along her forehead, “I am not certain you understand --”
“-- and then there’s ‘despise’. Because I’m not sure we’ve got the same word. Maybe that’s how you say it in Canterlot, but in Cloudsdale, it might be the word we say like this: ‘this-pise’. Because if it is, there’s some more things we’ve got to work out. Because we’ve got this-pise, but we’ve also got that-pise, which you can just imagine is something else entirely, and I don’t even want to get into those-pise unless we absolutely have to, but don’t worry, I’ll keep going at this as long for as it takes until I understand exactly what I’m responding to, even if we have to move into the Lunar Courtyard --”
Miss Viton screamed.
“Enough! Why does every pegasus in the world have to be such a moronic featherbrain?!?”
The magically-enhanced words carried perfectly across the Solar Courtyard and beyond.
Several seconds passed without speech, during which the only sound was that of Murdocks’ corps shuffling out while trying to pretend they’d never been there.
“Oh, I'm not a featherbrain at all, Miss Viton,” Rainbow smiled. “But you? Are a bigot.”
Five days had passed.
The Cloudsdale Breeze had been doing a lot of work on the story. There had been quite a bit to find. For example, there were all the pegasus customers Miss Viton had turned out of her shop, not to mention the earth ponies who’d been hustled away right behind them. In fact, it seemed as if the shop door frequently had a way of mysteriously locking itself whenever a member of either of those two pony races approached. And then there were some of the organizations Miss Viton belonged to: those had come out on Day Two. The picket lines outside her shop, however, had appeared immediately after the apology conference had broken up. Plus there was the counterfeit-storing warehouse which she tried to burn down on Day Three, that had given the headlines a certain degree of boost...
Rainbow had met with the press a second time, carefully gone over the actual event, displayed her bruise and apologized for her lack of understanding on unicorn culture. The Breeze and several other papers had given her a front-page vindication story while numerous editorials suggested that schools needed to pay a little more attention to cross-cultural terms in order to avoid such incidents in the future. The various Murdocks publications buried the retraction so deep into the printing that it nearly fell off the back of the classifieds.
No more field-thrown objects had targeted her. Nopony outside of her friends mentioned the events at all unless they were updating her on the newest round of scandal Miss Viton had brought on herself. And her friends waited for her on the evening after the apology conference, ponypiled her and laughed throughout the night.
Although there was a seven-minute break so Rainbow and Fluttershy could carefully try to explain exactly what ‘land-swooper’ meant.
Nopony else got it.
