I read the newspaper, stunned, as the newest inductees into the Darth Vulcan diamond dog tribe played around my feet. The colt, at least, was already picking up his parents' more doggy habits; he was attacking my boots and chewing savagely on the buckles. "They're cutting them loose to swing?" I exclaimed. "This is not exactly what I expected."

Chrysalis looked at me, puzzled. "Why not? Wasn't the destruction of those towns your goal? Didn't you decide that they deserved to be wiped off the map?"

I folded the paper. "Yes." I brooded for a second.

"You weren't WANTING them to rebuild that hole, were you?"

"No--" I reflected. "Actually, maybe? It certainly would have tied up more of their resources, which would have been to our advantage."  I frowned behind my mask. "And this decision by Sparkles seems unusually ruthless for her..."

"And you disapprove?" Chrysalis asked. She was clearly baffled. "Odd that you should get so soft hearted after the fact."

"I'm not soft hearted," I snorted.

Artful Dodger looked up from sorting the daily reports and squinted at me. "This is one o' them 'human' things again, innit?"

"No. Yes. Maybe?"  I scowled. "---I'm just a little confused that the Powder Puff Princesses decided to cooperate with me on destroying one of their own villages. I expected her to come down on the judge and the mayor and the like, but the whole town?"

Chrysalis and Dodger traded a look. "It rather sounds like it is a 'human' thing," Chrysalis said. She stroked her chin with a finger. "Tell me... what would you have expected a human to do?"

"Rebuild the town," I said, with a verbal shrug. "I expected the usual response; that the town was full of 'innocent people' who didn't have anything to do with what happened to that class full of pegasus kids." I hoped my snort of disdain got across what I thought of that excuse. "A slew of firings and jail sentences, and then all the good people of Hilltop get their houses rebuilt."

Dodger nodded. "A human thing, yep."

"Definitely," Chrysalis said.

I threw my paper down in my lap and looked that them. "All right. Explain."

Chrysalis spoke carefully. "Lord Vulcan, do you know what a 'Toxic Community' is?" At my blank stare she continued. "It's a pony term, but changelings carry a similar idea, 'anti-synergy.' It's the idea that, even though all the individual parts are passable, sometimes, something about putting together this place, in this time, with these ponies, produces something... toxic. Dysfunctional." She tossed her green mane. "Some would say that was what happened when I took lead of our Swarm..."  she crossed her arms defensively. "Any way, something about that community just doesn't work. It's even self-perpetuating... different leaders, new ponies, changes in the rules, nothing seems to change it."

"And so the only solution is to break up the system," I concluded. "Dissolve the municipality, or whatever. Scatter the ponies to the four winds, so that whatever went wrong, dies."

"It happens, guv," Dodger insisted. "Ain't there no human towns or cities that just never seem to get any better, so bad that the only solution is to ruddy burn it to the ground?"

I considered that one. There were certainly a lot of legends of cities like that in human folklore; places so decadent or depraved that the gods had to destroy them. Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel, Atlantis, Ninevah, ... and a lot of real ones, too, if the theologians are right about God's opinion of those cities. Ubar, Port Royal, Helike, Pompeii... kinda showed a predilection in human nature to approve the divine 'kill it with fire' approach to city renovation.

There were more than a few where the human race didn't sit around waiting for God to clean the slate, too: The sacking of Carthage.  The destruction of Troy.  Flattening a town or city to rubble was a standard practice back in the bad old days. City rebelled against the Emperor or the Khan? Make sure there wasn't any city left to ever rebel again.

"Still. In this case. Did they really think the town was that far gone when I showed up?" I asked.

"Better to lose the town easy than to wait and let it kill itself, I suppose," Chrysalis shrugged. "Think about it. Think about what the ponies there did to their own children. All that petty cruelty." She sniffed disdainfully. "You and I may agree that ponies are soft and sugary and insipid. But they're certainly not cruel to their own. What happened there-- does that sound like normal ponies to you? Cruel, sadistic, unfeeling? It was certainly enough to send you into a rage. Something about that town was so abnormal that the ponies living there stopped acting like ponies."

Now that was a thought to ponder.

"Do you truly stand by this judgment, Twilight?" Celestia asked, her brow creased. "Even as heartless as their treatment of those poor foals was, to deny them the aid of the Crown?" She looked worriedly at her student over her cooling cup of tea.

"Forsooth, we did not think thou didst have such steel," Luna said from her own divan. "Art thou certain this is not.. excessive?"

Twilight took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded. "I stand by my judgment," she said. "The Crown should not give a single plugged bit to Hilltop or Cirrus."

"But what of the ponies there?" Celestia protested. "What of the many families, and children, and businesses? Do you truly believe that the guilt of their leaders extends down to all of them? What possible corruption could be so deep that you, of all ponies, would condemn all of them?"

Twilight sighed again. "I'm not condemning them," she said. "I'm just cutting off the source of the problem."

The alicorn sisters shared a look. Celestia cocked an eyebrow. "Explain."

Twilight looked into her teacup. "Prin... Celestia... did you ever hear the story of Zekwantu and the snake hunt?"

"I... can't say I have," Celestia confessed. "A zebra folk tale?"

"Zebra history, actually," Twilight said. "Zecora taught it to me. Zekwantu was a great chieftain in the Zebra lands. He ruled many tribes. There came a time when one of their lands became overrun with poisonous snakes. Cobras. They got into the henhouses, bit foals, became a deadly nuisance. To solve the problem, Zekwantu offered a bounty of one silver bit for every cobra caught. He offered it for many years, and handed out many thousands of bits... but the problem did not lessen. In fact it only got worse.

It wasn't until he investigated that he discovered that his generous reward money had funded the creation of a whole new industry in the land." She paused for dramatic effect.

"And that would be?" Celestia asked.

"Do-it-yourself snake farming," Twilight said dryly. It took Celestia a moment to get it, but when she did she exploded into gales of laughter. Luna joined in, snorting in amusement. "I assume he ended the bounty," Celestia said, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

"Yes," Twilight said. "Of course the farmers just released all their snakes into the wild... and thus they ended up with more poisonous snakes everywhere than when they started out."  Celestia exploded into gales of laughter again, Luna joining in. When the laughter finally tapered off, Luna looked at her sister's protege'.

"Tis an amusing tale, but what doth it relate to the fate of yon Hilltop?"

Twilight set her cup down. "Did you know that the Crown has a special fund for communities that set up remedial education programs?" she said. "And that the amount of the payout is directly proportional to the number of 'at need' students in the program?"

Luna paused. "Dost thou mean--"

"Yes," Twilight nodded. "Hilltop-Cirrus' 'Remedial Flyers' class was a dumping ground for even the most mildly inconvenient students. It was poorly staffed, perpetually underfunded... at least according to the town treasurer... overcrowded, and a perpetual cash cow for the city. Every year, for every 'troubled' student in that class or any related class, the Crown dropped a lump sum straight into the city treasury."

Luna swore, and Celestia looked like she'd bitten down on a lemon. "That was just the beginning of the mess," Twilight said. "Did you know that Hilltop-Cirrus was the recipient of a special grant for towns at risk for weather disasters? It seems they're right in what my friend Rainbow Dash calls "tornado alley." The town actually lost out on a substantial cash payout when those children stopped that tornado.

"Their weather patrol payroll is funded entirely by a grant from the Crown. Their orphanages and child welfare services get another royal grant as well. They're on the short list for farming subsidies-- we literally PAY them to grow nothing but empty fields... " she shook her head. "Even their founding was due to a royal handout. They heard of a royal subsidy for 'dual tenancy' towns and literally pushed Cirrus over top of Hilltop so they'd qualify!

"When Zekwantu put a royal bounty on snakes, he got what he paid for: more snakes. When the government hands out bags of money to people to solve problems, it gets what it paid for: more problems to solve. Hilltop-Cirrus was a community whose backbone was built on a chronic flow of 'compassionate help' from the crown in the form of gold coin: grants, relief funds, subsidies.  And the constant promise of Royal help, Royal handouts, and Royal solutions made them more and more heartless. I spoke to the refugees from those towns. I saw how they would scarcely lift a hoof to help each other, not even to help carry a box of belongings. Do you know what the most common response was, when I pointed out that they had neighbors in need?

"...Ain't there a program from the Princesses for that? What do I pay my taxes for?"

Twilight sighed, like a pony setting down a massive load. "That's why I cut them off. I didn't revoke their municipality; I just told them the Crown wasn't going to give them a plugged bit. If there was anything like a real community there, if they have any compassion for their neighbors, or pride in themselves, if they can learn to stand on their own four hooves and learn to lean on one another, they'll get together and rebuild. And they'll be better ponies and a better town in the end for it."

The three Princesses sat in silence, mulling over what had been said. Celestia reflecting painfully on the thousands of royally funded handouts and gratuities she had created over the centuries; Luna brooding darkly over how her sister's overweening compassion and clever plans had produced such a bitter crop... "So tell us," Luna said finally. "How did Zekwantu get rid of the snakes, finally?"

The corners of Twilight's mouth curled up as she took a sip from her teacup. "He didn't," she said. "The village idiot from his home town did."

"How?" Luna said.

"He got tired of getting bit, and bought a mongoose."