Penn & Teller Debunk Equestrian Magic
Penn & Teller Debunk Equestrian Magic
Penn & Teller Debunk Equestrian Magic
From Las Pegas to Canterlot to Appaloosa, they had performed to sell out audiences. And that was hardly easy for a magic show in a land where one third of the ponies could do magic with little effort. But Penn & Teller were Earth ponies instead of unicorns, and billed themselves as " the bad colts of magic." Loud and proud crude dudes, they reminded everypony in the audience as they went on that they didn't need any bullshit magic to do the seemingly impossible. They had tricks. In fact, they often made the controversial assertion that there was no magic, which had played a big part in their eventual success.
This evening, they were going to do their first performance in Ponyville, having to stop in such podunk towns being an unfortunate side effect of performing on tour. A crowd of eager earth ponies and pegasi, the citizens of Ponyville naturally most inclined to hear Penn Jeanette insult magic, were gathered before the amphitheater. The crowd was abuzz in anticipation. Making the most noise naturally were two familiar earth ponies trying to make an honest coin off the huge gathering on opposite sides of the audience.
"APPLE FRITTERS! APPLE PIE! GIT 'EM WHILE THAR HOT! APPLE FRITTERS! APPLE PIE!" Because of their self-identification as "carnies," Applejack's commoner food was selling like crazy.
"CUPCAKES! DONUTS! TREATS WITHOUT APPLES IN 'EM! IF YOU DON'T LIKE APPLES, BUY OURS! MUMPMAMES! MOMUMS!" Pinkie's pitch was a little garbled by her slightly overenthusiastic sampling of the product, but at least every pony that didn't like apples seemed to shopping exclusively with her. Which was just three ponies. Pinkie was especially appreciative of the little white vendor's outfit the Cakes had provided her.
Eventually the Marester of Ceremonies came out, asked for the house lights to be dimmed and for the audience to quiet down.
"Mares and gentlecolts, get ready for an experience you will never forget!" As the Marester spoke, the red velvet curtains behind her parted, revealing a small end table with a box atop it. At a glance, it looked to Pinkie just large enough to include a double layer cake. "Newly arrived from Las Pegas, it's the bad colts of magic!" At that the light on the Marester switched off and a spotlight came up on the table and box. In a flash of light, the box opened, and out popped a giant pony with his with glasses and his long mane in a ponytail and regular-sized curly-haired pegasus who was tiny in comparison, both dressed in immaculate gray suits. Pinkie's mouth fell open at that: that was something she'd never seen magic do!
"Hello, Ponyville! I'm Penn, this is my partner, Teller." Penn Jeanette said as the pair came to a stop at the edge of the stage. "And tonight, while I'll be doing all the talking, we've both got one thing to say: MAGIC... IS BULLSHIT!" At the quotation of their catchphrase, the fans in the audience began stomping their hooves and cheering. Pinkie merely blinked in confusion.
"'Bullshit?' What does that mean?" she asked nopony in particular.
"It literally means 'bull poop,' but it's an expression for something being untrue." Pipsqueak said as he gave Pinkie her coin, collected his snack, and then rushed back to his seat to catch the show.
"Untrue? But bull poop is true... why, there's some over there." Pinkie observed. By then, the fan response had died down and Penn could continue.
"As you can see, we're just regular Earth ponies, so we can't do unicorn "magic" even if we wanted. No horns on our heads or wings on our ba..." Penn trailed off as he glanced behind him and saw Teller's wings unfurling with Teller making a naively pleasant expression. The audience laughed as Teller slowly spread his wings to their maximum width. Penn sighed loudly. "Sorry, Teller, but you know how I hate to be wrong." At that, Penn swung his head so that both Teller's wings were in his jaws, and then he viciously tore them off. Teller's face contorted in horror as blood spurted from his back. Penn turned his head away and spat the wings out so that they fell on the ground with a wet *thunk.* Many in the audience gasped, while others laughed.
"Now, one of the most imporant parts of-"
"AAAAUUUGH!" Pinkie yelled. She ran onto the stage, tearing of part of her uniform as she went. When she reached the surprised magicians, she kicked Penn away and then began to wrap fabric around the stumps where Penn had torn Teller's wings off which were spurting blood. "Get away from him, you big JERK! Now, try to keep your feet lowered, and stay calm! We're going to get you through this! IS THERE A VET IN THE HOUSE!?" Pinkie looked around frantically, not being able to really make out anypony's voice in the hubbub. It was a few seconds before she noticed theater security officers on either side of her.
"Ma'am, please leave the stage. Everything is under control."
"Are you veterinarians? Did you send for them?" Pinkie asked, having tied off the strips of fabric and begun applying pressure to try and stem the bleeding. Another big spurt came out, spraying through the bandages.
"He's not really hurt, ma'am." Penn said, having recovered from his surprise and being kicked while still standing behind the security guards. "We use a blood prosthesis."
"Prosthesis?" Pinkie said. While she was confused, Teller stood with annoyance, pushed a clasp under his suit, and then removed the blood prosthesis from his back. While he held it up for Pinkie to inspect, stage blood spurted from its nozzles again. Pinkie's face turned at least as red as some of the spurting blood, and she began to slowly slink off stage.
"I'm sorry." Pinkie squeaked after she'd crawled a few meters away, turning away from the magicians and security guards. At that, the audience seemed as one to realize she'd been sincere in her concern and burst out laughing.
"Not at all," Penn said, now that it was clear they hadn't lost the audience and Pinkie wasn't one of their more dangerous fans. "Give it up for the Pink pony, the only mare that's ever cared about Teller's safety!" The audience cheered, stomped and laughed some more, which at least replaced Pinkie's humiliation with bewilderment as returned to her booth. After a moment, she bemoaned that she'd turn a strip out of her uniform.
"Now, one of the most requested tricks we do is... the bullet catch!" Penn resumed, pulling out his gun somehow. Teller pulled out his. "It's very important to be careful with any type of fireleg, eve-" Penn's gun went off while, from the audience's perspective, it was aimed at Teller. A spray of blood appeared out the back of Teller's skull and he flopped over. Penn stared at his fallen partner for a moment.
"...Even when it's not loaded."
"NOOOOO!!!" Pinkie yelled as she ran back on stage, tearing another strip of fabric off her uniform.
***
Having been properly restrained in her booth and having caught on to the nature of act, Pinkie settled into being fascinated with the performance as they moved to the "debunking" portion. First, there was the levitation.
"Everypony's seen some unicorn asshole levitate things. You know, like this." At that, Teller stared intently at Penn, and Penn was encased in blue magic. He began to levitate and float over to Teller. Teller grabbed a big hoop with his mouth and moved it back and forth around his partner. "You're probably wondering why those two assholes on stage are letting some blue unicorn do their magic work." At that point, a blue unicorn came on stage, her horn aglow. She was very skimpily attired, which somehow looked more obscene than all the ponies trotting around naked.
"Is there something wrong with the magic I'm doing?" She asked, her tone wooden in a campy way as she came very close to Penn.
"Yes." Penn said. "The fact you're not doing any." With that, Penn kicked the false horn off her head with a front hoof, not even coming close to kicking the Earth pony's actual head. She gasped and turned to watch the horn spin through the air, losing its glow as it went. The glow around Penn faded with it. Many in the audience gasped. Outside of Discord or wires, nopony had ever seen anypony just levitate without a tell tale magical glow. Teller again ran the hoop back and forth across around Penn.
"That's right folks: no magic holding me up!" He turned to somepony offstage. "Turn off the science, Jonesy." With a click, Penn suddenly plummeted to the stage, landing hard as planned and getting another laugh.
Similar acts followed. They demonstrated how even non-unicorns could use trickery to do the things unicorns prided themselves in doing with magic through mere tricks, and then explained how that was done. Teleportation was debunked. Magical transmogrification beams were thoroughly debunked.A good number in the audience could have facehoofed at the obviousness how the duo was doing them.
"It's so simple..." Pinkie whispered more than once.
At the end of the show, the pair pulled out their edgiest, most provocative material. Something that would completely eclipse in the minds of many in their audience the site of Teller's gunshot to the head, Penn's being sawed in half (lengthwise) or the thing with the monkey.
It was a libertarian rant.
"As important as rationality is," Penn said as they began wrapping up, "there's something more important that we want to leave you with: a respect for freedom. Freedom from princesses and their supposed magical "divine providence" or whatever horseshit they want to call it. They owe their over-sized authority to making you think the world is too strange, complicated, and unknowable for you to control your own destiny."
"Truth is, all that is just a lot of smoke..." Penn made a puff of smoke with illumination that looked like unicorn magic appear above his right front hoof, then turned his hoof around to reveal to the audience that he had a flashlight and smoke charge concealed on the other side of his leg. Teller grabbed at what looked like empty air back at the table where they'd emerged at the beginning of the act. "and mirrors." Teller pushed the angled mirror over, revealing the box he and his partner had been hiding in before the beginning of the show, the one trick they hadn't explained so far.
Most of the rest of the audience cheered as the duo took their bows, although like any other audience, they'd hardly sewn any seeds of rebellion or coups against unicorns. They'd just been entertaining and edgy.
Except for how one pony felt.
***
Twilight Sparkle was enjoying a nice breakfast of hay frosted straw flakes when there was a loud, urgent bunch of knocks at the door. Clearly someone was in considerable distress. Not even dropping the spoon she was levitating, she ran to the door and swung it open, just barely avoiding hitting herself in the face with it.
"Twilight, darling, there- eck!" Rarity was cut off suddenly when Twilight and the spoon she'd been levitating came to a stop and a spoonful of cereal kept going and splashed on her face.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Twilight said as she floated a rag over to clean Rarity's face.
"It's nothing." Rarity said. She put her forehooves on Twilight's front shoulders, and unconsciously began to push her friend back inside. "Twilight, something ghastly and befuddling has happened with our friend, Pinkie Pie." Rarity paused, expecting Twilight to ask what, and Twilight waited for Rarity to continue. The pause went on for twenty seconds, with the two seeming to alternate between which one was about to speak before noticing the other open her mouth. The silence was broken by another pony coming on the scene.
"So! You've run to talk to another member of this huge conspiracy!" Twilight and Rarity turned as one to Pinkie and the sight of her glaring daggers at them.
"Pinkie, I-I assure you, it's, it's not like that! I wa-" Rarity stammered as Pinkie walked up to her friends in an almost predatory manner.
"HA!" I've got nothing to say to you! But you..." Pinkie growled at Twilight, "to think of all the time you alicorn princesses have been pulling the wool over our eyes! All the times you've lead us up against big scary beasties, and you knew, you knew that all your precious magic was phony as baloney! Maybe even phony as ravioli!:"
"Oh colt." Twilight responded, it now being evident that this was just Pinkie pulling an unusually elaborate prank or something.
"But Pinkie, our magic is as real as you or me! Here, let me show you," Said Rarity, not catching on in Twilight's opinion. Rairty used her magic to pour a bowl of cereal, pour some milk, place in a spoon, and then hover it over to Pinkie without so much as taking a step. "See?"
"Nopony's saying that you haven't been good." Pinkie said, pointing an accusatory hoof as she took a bite of cereal. "Youp paied a peally good, putt- hey, is that straw frosted? Nummy!" Pinkie chowed the rest of the bowl down, licked the bowl and then her lips. Then she was serious again.
"But that doesn't mean you get to lie to everypony about your 'magic!' Especially when you imply magic is a big part of our friendship!" Rarity gasped at the insinuation.
"Darling, that you would even suggest our friendship is based on a lie... I don-"
"Rarity," Twilight said with a shake of her head. She leaned over and whispered into her ear. Rarity mouthed "oohh" as Twilight turned from her to Pinkie.
"On behalf of all unicorns and alicorns, I congratulate you on your brilliant deduction, Pinkie." Twilight said formally. Pinkie was taken aback.
"Well, thank you for admitting it, but I can't take all the cre-"
"Yes, Pinkie. How could all of us unicorns have believed we could fool you?" Twilight put her hooves Pinkie's cheeks and squeezed them together, like an obnoxious grandparent admiring a grandfilly she hadn't seen for years. Her tone switched to a baby voice. "You're a biiiiig filly and you're way too mature to believe in silly-filliness like magic." Twilight and Rarity both had a good long laugh at that. It was fun to turn a prank around on the pranker. Pinkie Pie merely glared very, very sharp daggers at them, her mouth a small but deadly frown.
EIGHT MINUTES LATER
The last of the unicorns not inside the protective barrier around the Ponyville Library was being dragged to the improvised detention center. Such had been the surprisingly persuasive power of Pinkie Pie on the warpath.
"I tried to send a rescue signal to Canterlot, but I don't know if they could get here in time!" Twilight told the huddled, scared unicorns. They were few in number but a scant few might have escaped were they more willing to use their abilities against the brainwashed earth ponies and pegasuses in Ponyville in a more destructive manner. But even as hordes of Pinkie's anti-magic zealots bucked against the magic barrier or dove against it from the sky, they didn't want to risk hurting any of their former friends and neighbors.
"We're doomed!" Rarity yelled with a sob. "Why don't those ruffians believe that our magic is real!?!"
Meanwhile, outside, Pinkie Pie was urging her rationalist minions on, galloping around the library.
"Just a few more bucks and we'll break through this scientific forcefield that they're using! And then on to Canterlot, and we'll take down this phony magical dictatorship of lying meanies once and for all!" Pinkie yelled. Twilight's magic was nowhere near Shining Armor or Princess Cadence's and so the magical barrier shattered apart sooner than even Pinkie had dared hope. "Let's get 'em!"
Pinkie's army poured into the library. The unicorns tried desperately to freeze as many as they could where they stood, but there were too many coming too fast and from too many directions. Soon even Princess Twilight Sparkle herself was seized, a cover placed over her horn, and dragged outside with her horned fellows.
"Pinkie, I'm sorry I made fun of you!" Twilight Sparkle yelled as she was brought before the earth pony. "But I promise that magic is real! I don't know why you don't believe it is anymore!"
"HA!" Pinkie said. "Take her away and tickle her until she'd ready to be a good mare and tell the truth! Which she will! They all will! Every one of them! HA HA HA HA!"
"PINKIE PIE!" a voice rang out from a few dozen hooves away, cutting through the racket. Pinkie and seemingly every other pony in the vicinity turned to the pony it belonged to.
It was Penn & Teller. They'd stuck around Ponyville longer than scheduled because their flight out was delayed in case you were wondering, which seems unlikely. They were glaring at the pink pony.
"IT'S YOU TWO!" Pinkie squealed. She dashed up to in front of the magicians and bowed. Following the leader, many of her zealots joined her in bowing. "Thank you so much for teaching us the truth so that we can get rid of those unicorns that are holding us down, oh Smart Ones." Teller and Penn looked down upon the ponies bowing before them and sighed deeply while rolling their eyes.
"Stand up, everypony." Teller said. Almost as one, all the ponies gathered before them complied. "Pinkie, while we taught you something, you also taught us something."
"I did!?" Pinkie yelled with a smile. "YAY!"
"No 'yays' about it!" Teller yelled in response, and which completely smashed Pinkie's good mood. "You taught us what a dangerous philosophy skepticism is! You taught us that in the while good ponies will do good things and bad ponies will do bad things, it takes skepticism for a good pony to do bad things!"
"But Teller, you taught us that they're lying! They've been ruling us for forever because of their phony baloney 'magic!'" Teller sighed wearily again, and so did Penn when he saw that was his partner's reaction.
"But you've been trying to bring about change through something we would never condone: Violence. Almost nothing good ever comes from violence!" Pinkie blinked, having no idea how to argue with that. She turned to Penn.
"Mr. Jillette, you unders-"
"DON'T TALK TO HIM! HE TALKS MORE THAN ENOUGH ALREADY!" Pinkie fearfully looked back to Teller. Teller softened when he saw Pinkie's fear, seeing that she wasn't malicious. She was a confused pony just looking for guidance.
"Look, Pinkie, the fact they believe they have crazy magical powers isn't bad. Every pony should be free to believe whatever they want, just so long as they don't use force to hurt themselves or others."
"Yeah..." Pinkie said, shuffling her forehooves in embarrassment.
"Besides, if I know you Ponyville ponies, and I don't, all of you have something much truer than magic could ever hope to be. Something so powerful, it's in a sense it's own magic."
"Science?" Pinkie asked.
"Friendship. Compassion." Teller said.
"But that's what made all those lies hurt so much! They were our best friends!" Pinkie insisted.
"She's got a point there." Penn said. Teller shot him a withering look. "Sorry."
"Pinkie, have you considered the possibility that they aren't lying, that they really have a crazy belief that there's magic?" Pinkie was about to argue, but the urge was quickly killed off as Pinkie thought for a second.
"That... that makes sense!" A wave of chatter went through the Earth ponies and pegasuses as the mob reached an agreement. "Thank you so much!" PInkie yelled. Pinkie galloped over to let her unicorn friends free, and her former followers didn't need to be told to join in. In minutes, the unicorns were all freed and receiving heartfelt, practically desperate apologies.
"I'm so sorry that I did all that stuff because I thought you were lying instead of just insane!" Pinkie apologized to Rarity and Twilight Sparkle. She glanced out the corner of her eye back to the pair of magicians.
"I guess our work is done here." Penn said, out of anypony else's hearing range.
"Sure is! Beam us up, Jonesy!" Teller ordered. The pair became enveloped in dancing blue light, and quickly became white silhouettes of themselves before vanishing completely.
"Well, Darling," Rarity said to Twilight after she was freed and had regained her composure a bit. "I suppose it's not so bad that all these Earth ponies believe the ridiculous notion that our magic is scientific!"
"Um... yeah." Twilight said, her eyes darting about, "Ridiculous. Yep. Totally ridiculous."
END!
