Starlight Glimmer walked from the castle doors toward the kitchen with her eyes stuck forward and her brow furrowed in thought. Her legs worked on autopilot while her mind replayed the afternoon's events again and again, combing through each iteration very carefully in order to make sure she had done the right thing. And yet, for all her focus, she was still conflicted.
She growled and her face soured. Self-doubt and double guessing herself were all too common afflictions since starting her new life in Ponyville, and she didn't care for them one bit. She reached the kitchen and sorted the groceries she had picked up in the market earlier in the day, her face never losing its dour contortions.
Spike walked into the kitchen and headed straight for the refrigerator until he noticed Starlight's distraught expression. "Hey Starlight. You look kinda worked up about something. Is everything alright?" he asked, detouring from his snack route.
Starlight relaxed and pulled her attention back to the present. "Spike, hi. Yeah, everything is... well no, not really. Kind of fine? I'm not sure yet, to be honest."
"If you're not sure then the answer is usually 'no,' I think. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Yes I do, as a matter of fact." She put away the last of her groceries and eyed Spike for a moment. "But I think it's something I'd rather discuss with Twilight first. Might be a potential friendship problem solved, might be criminal assault. I figure she'd know for sure."
Spike stood there in quiet disbelief. "She's, uh, in the throne room, I think."
"Thanks, Spike," she said as she trotted out the door. "Save me some ice cream," she called back. "I'm either going to need a reward or comfort food tonight, depending on how this goes."
Spike said nothing in reply. He walked to the freezer and pulled out two tubs of ice cream; one chocolate, one vanilla. "If I eat half of each instead of a whole one, Starlight should be set no matter what she needs later." He scooped two massive piles of ice cream into a bowl and began the slow march back to his room.
"It feels good to be considerate."
Twilight Sparkle was lying on top of the Cutie Map staring up at the Golden Oak roots when Starlight walked through the doorway. "Hey, Twilight, do you have a minute? I could use your opinion on a friendship issue. Or, maybe it's not exactly a friendship problem, but it's definitely at least a matter of public decorum."
"Of course. I always have time for helping a friend with a problem."
"Great. Just, perfect. Exactly what I wanted to hear. Starting off, there's good news and bad news today," Starlight said, a little too quickly.
Twilight cocked an eyebrow, then rolled off the table to sit up properly. "Alright, go on."
"The good news is I got all the groceries on the list, and—" Starlight puffed out her chest with pride "—I successfully resisted a very strong urge to mind control somepony today."
"That's... good. Every bit of progress is worth celebrating. Plus lunch is great. What's the bad news?"
"Well, that pony I didn't mind control I ended up punching in the face," she said half hiding her face behind her hoof.
"Starlight Glimmer!"
"Wait, wait, that's not the whole story! I'm pretty sure he deserved it, because after I did it a whole bunch of ponies cheered."
Twilight took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "Okay. Was he mugging somepony?"
"No."
"Assaulting the elderly?"
"No."
"Trying to steal kids from the school?"
"No, although I wouldn't put it passed him."
"Alright." Twilight rubbed her temples with her wingtips. "Why don't you start from the beginning so I can get an idea of exactly what happened?"
"I was shopping in town, minding my own business..."
Starlight Glimmer was shopping in town, minding her own business. She had just finished her rounds through the produce vendors and was feeling quite pleased with the selection she came away with. The day was warm, ponies were kind, food was fresh, and there was nothing wrong with the world at this very moment. A smile lit up her face and she hummed a happy tune as she left the market row and headed back toward the castle. From the corner of her eye, however, she noticed a rather hefty crowd gathered up around the town square.
"That's strange," she said to herself. During her time running a despotic village, she had learned that crowds of a certain size only gathered when something particularly interesting was happening, and that such an event was usually either a great deal of fun or a great deal of danger. She decided to act on the side of caution and investigate the gathering. If it was nothing more than a talented performer putting on a public show, then she'd have a story to drive Trixie into a jealous fit. If it was something more sinister, then it would behoove her to keep an eye on it and, if need be, call Twilight.
As she approached the crowd she found that it was, unfortunately, the latter case. Angry conversation flurried around, punctuated by sporadic outbursts of yelling. When she got closer, Starlight noticed that the crowd centered around a single pony whom she did not recognize. She worked her way toward the front of the assembly to get a better look.
"Can you believe what this guy is saying?" an irate stallion beside her asked.
"I just got here, to be honest. I have no idea what's going on. Everypony seems pretty angry though. It's... weird, for this town."
"Hey, hey now, look," the pony at the center of attention said over the jeers of the crowd. "I never said anypony was better or worse than anypony else. I just said that all you Unicorns and Pegasi should go back to where you came from, and leave the good land to the ponies who were here first. And if you don't want to leave, maybe there should be some government pressure to convince you to leave."
The gathered ponies burst into thunderous, indignant anger. Looking around, Starlight saw all the makings of a bad situation ready to turn worse.
Starlight levitated herself out of the crowd and landed directly between the assembly and the antagonistic stallion. "Alright, everypony, alright. Let's all take a nice, relaxing breath. Everything I've heard, umm... what's your name?"
"The name's Iron Blitz, professional advocate for claiming a proper Earth Pony homeland, founder and currently sole member of the Earth Pony Independence Supranational Society."
"Right then... Mr. Blitz." Starlight turned back to the crowd. "What little I've heard Mr. Blitz say is certainly novel, to put it kindly, and I can see why you're all in an uproar. I'm as shocked as you are. But, I've learned that when ponies disagree with each other, whether they're friends or not, the best options are to walk away, or discuss our feelings and opinions calmly." She smiled in a calculated effort to disarm the crowd's anger. It's harder to trample over a happy face.
The anger in the crowd lowered to a simmer and a few ponies walked away. "So talk," a mare called out.
Starlight had hoped more ponies would choose to continue about their day rather than stay and hold discourse. She very much wanted to get home and work on lunch. But, she had given them two options, and it seemed she'd have to follow through on the more time consuming of the two. "Since I only got here a few moments ago, why don't you tell me exactly what you're, umm, all about?"
"Gladly. My organization wants to establish an exclusive territory for Earth Pony kind. We believe the land between Everfree Forest and Canterlot is ideal for this goal since it was originally settled and developed by Earth Ponies, for Earth Ponies."
Starlight looked out to the crowd. "Is that true?"
A purple mare with sunflowers on either flank stepped out through the crowd. "Technically true, yes. This entire region was settled by the Apple family many generations ago. Granny Smith herself is a registered landmark. But our town has never, for a single second—" she glared at Iron Blitz "—discriminated against Unicorns or Pegasi."
Words of pride and affirmation floated out of the crowd. "What a great history lesson," Starlight said, hoping to keep the mood headed in the right direction. "You see, Iron Blitz, I'm pretty new here myself so I haven't had time to learn all of Ponyville's rich history just yet. I've been focused on a rigorous course of study since I moved here."
"Self absorbed unicorn, who would have guessed," Iron Blitz said under his breath.
"Could you say that again, please? I didn't catch it the first time." Starlight had heard what he said, but decided she must be mistaken. A good pony would give the benefit of the doubt, she reasoned. And she was trying so hard to be a good pony these days.
"Almost a shame you'll have to go back to where ever it is you came from once we set up the Earth Pony Nation." He said quickly, ignoring her question completely. "Technically, I guess, you could go where ever you wanted as long as it's not here. Your choice."
"Uh huh. And how exactly do you plan on making me leave?"
"My group intends to work entirely through legal channels. Once we're situated in local offices across the region we'll have enough political clout over sufficient geographic area to do pretty much whatever we want."
Starlight Glimmer dropped her veneer of diplomacy and good will. "What about mixed-tribe families? There's an Earth Pony couple in town with Unicorn and Pegasus twins! Are you going to break up a family to build your nation?"
"No, of course not. The parents are gone, too. Assuming the mother in question wasn't messin' around on her good, hard working husband, giving birth to non-Earth Ponies means her genealogy is all feathered up somewhere up the line. Either way, we don't have room for that."
"And when we resist your pie in the sky dream? Ponies don't like being uprooted and kicked out of their homes. I don't think there's a peaceful way to cart away hundreds, or thousands, of unwilling ponies." Sparks sizzled off Starlight's horn.
"I'm afraid there are only so many ways to deal with an occupying force. You'll be run out, turned into cheap labor, or... well, the third way ain't too pretty, but it does stick."
Power crept into Starlight's horn, and the crowd backed away. She debated on whether or not she should wipe his mind and set him loose in the forest, or give him an compulsion to walk until his hooves were worn to the bone. Perhaps teleport him to a nice frozen mountain top somewhere so far away his hateful ideology would never have the chance to spread.
No, she thought. That's not the kind of pony I am anymore. No matter how much I wish I was right now. I'm better than that.
Her horn cooled and the glow faded. She took a few slow, steadying breaths, then smiled. Twilight, she hoped, would be proud of the level of self control she exercised. But there was still the nagging feeling that she couldn't just walk away. But, for all her rhetorical talent, she was at a loss formulating arguments she could level at someone who thought the very right of other ponies to simply live was a debatable topic.
"I'm glad you calmed down, missy. Heh, hoo yeah," Iron Blitz said. His fear didn't dampen his bravado for long, however. "I would have hated for things to get rough. You Unicorns think you're tough, but you're no match for good old Earth—"
"And that's when I punched him in his stupid, smug, tribalist mouth. Everypony cheered, and then he galloped away like a scared colt after a scolding. So, on one hoof I feel kind of bad about hitting him since he wasn't right in the middle of hurting anypony, but on the other hoof I don't think I can just let something that awful go."
Twilight was now massaging her head with her wings and her hooves, desperate for any relief from the pain Starlight's story brought her. She focused upward on the wooden chandelier and lost herself for a moment in the spinning memories above her.
"Violence is very, very rarely the proper action to take, and certainly never when there's no immediate threat of harm. I've been on the bad end of more sink-or-swim situations than I care to remember, and I would have talked my way out of them if I could." Twilight paused to consider her next words carefully. "I think, in the long run, the best option would have been trying to disperse the crowd. Extremists need attention to survive. If they don't have an audience, their ideas can't spread."
Starlight sat in silence while she thought over Twilight's rebuttal. "You're right. About the long run, at least. But shouldn't we take some action in the short term to make sure ponies like him know that such blatantly malicious declarations aren't acceptable?"
"At the end of the day, all he has is words. Besides," Twilight stood up and stretched out her legs and wings. "I don't think he could do any real harm. He's just one pony."
Starlight Glimmer frowned at her friend. "So was I, Twilight. So was I."
