There was a general roar of generic noise as the ponies filtered into the main town meeting area outside of Ponyville town hall. Much of their mumbling discussion concerned confusion over why exactly they had been summoned, or how the summonses had somehow managed to appear inside their homes, sometimes several at a time, all attached to various household objects. Others wondered why they had been called to meet in the dark, with a few suggesting that it was more ominous.

Then, just when they all had gathered and began to mill about, Pinkie Pie appeared on the stage. She momentarily looked out at the crowd and blinked. She was used to the fact that many ponies in Ponyville looked almost identical to each other, especially in crowds, but this time she thought that for just a moment she had seen an unusual number of identical blue, gray-eyed unicorns.

“Hey!” cried a voice from below. “You’re not the mayor!”

“Says who?” said Pinkie Pie. “I’ve got her poofy tie.” She patted the blue-green ploof tied around her neck.

“That doesn’t count!” somepony yelled back. Pinkie sighed. After all the trouble she had gone through to get it from Mayor Mare’s closet, it did not seem to be making her any more official.

“No, I’m not the mayor,” she said. “Mayor Mare is up with Twilight in the castle discussing boring stuff…while we mere mortals have a CRISIS on our hooves!”

A green pony with a bifurcated antler for a horn raised his hoof. “Um…I’m not a mortal…”

“Then get the buck out! You’re not even in this story!”

Buttery Snake sighed, and then left, sad.

“Where was I,” said Pinkie Pie, taking out a set of notes from beneath her borrowed collar. Having straightened hair was terribly annoying in that she could not store things in it, but she needed to fit the part. “Oh yeah. A CRISIS EVERYPONY!”

“What kind of crisis?” asked a pony from below the stage. “Monster attack?”

“No.”

“A changeling invasion?”

“No…”

“Discord is back?”

“Getting colllllder…”

“Poor editing?”

“I told you to get out! And NO! Worse! We have…” Pinkie Pie took a deep breath, gaining the will to speak the horror that had befallen their fair village. “A harlot!”

The crowd was silent, and a cricket sounded somewhere in the darkness.

“Uh, I don’t know what that means,” said one of the ponies, a mare named Daisy.

“She means a prostitute,” explained Cheerilee.

“What did you just call me?” said Cheerilee’s sister, Berry Punch, drunkenly.

“Pinkie Pie,” said a white unicorn, and Rarity stepped forward. “Um…don’t you think you may be…well, just a teensie little bit…overreacting?”

“Overreacting? OVERREACTING? If anything, I’m UNDERreacting!”

“Well, its just that…having a prostitute, though repugnant and, quite frankly, distasteful if not insulting to our fair community…isn’t that big of a deal. In Canterlot, it’s not uncommon for young mares to- -”

“Well, this ain’t Canterlot,” said Applejack, pushing through the crowd, her family behind her save for Applebloom, who was too young to be hearing about sex. “This is Ponyville. And I’ve seen this…this…seductress myself!”

The crowd gasped in unison.

“Yeah! Ah did! And she very nearly forced herself onto mah big brother and cousin Brayburn. Isn’t that right, Big Mac?”

Bic Mac, behind the group, squeezed his poofy sheep wife Loving Ewe closely and with tears in his eyes responded with a single long “Eeeeyup.”

“Now just wait an apple-pickin’ minute, here!” said Granny Smith, creaking out from beside Big Mac. “I think you’re mischaracterizing the situation!”

“Granny Smith, you saw what she did! She tried to rape my brother!”

“Really? You mean a little unicorn could overpower two genuine, bona-fide, full-grown Apple stallions?”

“But she had her fancy magic!”

“If Big Macintosh wanted to, he could have tossed her halfway to Appleloosa!”

“Unwanted advances are still unwanted advances!”

“That may be well and true, and that was wrong, but she couldn’t have done a thing even if she tried! And she did try!”

“Eeeyup,” added Big Mac, still shaken but now slightly ashamed now that he realized that Granny Smith was right.

“I think you’re missing the point,” said Pinkie Pie, taking back attention from the crowd. “That was just a taste of what she’s going to do to us! Do you have any idea what a harlot will DO to Ponyville?”

Fluttershy huddled next to Rarity. “Wh…what?”

Pinkie Pie dropped down from the stage and approached Fluttershy, her eyes wild. “She’ll encourage perversion, immorality, and sin within our community, leading to the a plague of debauchery the likes of which you can’t even IMAGINE!”

“Oh my,” said Fluttershy. “That’s quite a lot of debauchery.”

“You have no idea.” Pinkie Pie looked around, then popped across the crowd, leaning against a pointy-nosed pink pony and her brown, well-dressed husband. “First, she’ll come and take all our stallions, luring them into her nethers with the sickly sweet smell of peanut butter…”

“She had better not,” said Spoiled Rich, looking angrily at her husband as though just by being male he had already committed the aforementioned crime.

“Oh, she will!” cried Pinkie, stepping back. “And once she has them all in her clutches, she’ll fill them with all kinds of horrendous diseases!”

“Not diseases!” cried a pony.

“And that’s only the half of it! Not even half! More like three eights or so!” She jumped across the Cheerilee. “Once the children see a harlot in their midst, their impressionable minds will be corrupted. They’ll start having sex non-stop, in their parents’ house, in public, in SCHOOL! They’ll all be perverted freaks, all pregnant, foals having foals and their mothers joining the harlot horde!”

“Not the children!” cried Cheerilee. “Won’t somepony please think of the children!”

“And it doesn’t end there.” Pinkie Pie appeared beside Big Mac. “Her perversion will lead to GREATER sin. Soon, bestiality will be commonplace!”

“Not that! Anything but that!” cried Loving Ewe, holding her husband close.

“That’s right!” cried Pinkie Pie. “Soon we’ll all be compelled to mate with everything that moves, and some things that don’t! We’ll all be having sex with HORSES by the time the month is over!”

“AHH!” cried Berry Punch, nearly spilling her wine. “I ALREADY have sex with horses!”

“Then it’s already started!” cried Pinkie Pie, causing the crowd to begin to panic.

“No wait a minute, Pinkie,” said Applejack, stepping forward. “All that sounds…well, a bit farfetched. But we already HAVE sex with horses. Because, you know, we are. Well- -” She looked behind her at Granny Smith’s disapproving scowl. “I don’t. But, you now, we’re all ponies and such.”

“It’s not just that!” cried Pinkie Pie, jumping onto the stage. “She’s already become violent, trying to undermine our community! Look what she did to Rainbow Dash!”

Pinkie Pie produced Rainbow Dash and lifted one of her wings, showing where her blacked flight feathers had been cut away. The crowd gasped, and several Pegasi clenched their wings and several more ponies fainted outright.

“Yeah!” said Rainbow Dash. “She shot me down right out of the sky! Burned my wings so bad, I won’t be able to fly for a whole week!”

“See!” cried Pinkie Pie, the crowd starting to grow increasingly angry at the prostitute in their town.

“Although,” added Rainbow Dash. “It WAS pretty cool dodging all those lasers. Like something out of a videogame. I mean, that part was awesome. Bu the getting hit with lasers was bad.”

“Exactly!”

“Well, except that I performed the most EPIC emergency landing EVER! I mean, you should have seen it, I was totally spiraling out of control but still managed to pull up at the last second and drop into a cloud- -”

“Dash…”

“Plus, she only burnt my feathers, so now I get a week off so I can work on dees abs,” she pointed down at her pony-gut. “You know, for core strength.”

“Dash!”

“And she DID give me all that cider. I mean, it wasn’t as good as AJs, but there were like ten bottles there and that was nice. And she was actually kind of polite when she tried to- -”

“DASHIE!” cried Pinkie Pie. Then, through gritted teeth: “Stop. Undermining. My. ARGUMENT!”

“Oops. Sorry, Pinkie.”

“But what should we do?” cried a pony.

“WAIT!” called a voice. Before anypony could see where it came from, something gray and fast moving slammed into the stage, cracking through it. The ponies nearest jumped back, and then turned to see Muffins half-imbedded in the stage.

Rainbow Dash sighed. “Not his again…”

“I came as soon as I could,” said Muffins, her voice muffled due to her head being on the underside of the stage. “But I got lost on the way. Again.”

Rainbow Dash put her hooves around Muffins and pulled.

“How do you get- -oof- -lost? It’s like- -wow, you need to lay off the muffins- -like, five minutes from your house- -” She stepped back, unable to dislodge Muffins. The latter’s wings fluttered, and Rainbow Dash turned to Pinkie. “Do we have butter or something?”

“Butter later,” said a pony, stepping onto the stage. Every pony present did a double take when they saw an exact male replica of Muffins- -even down to the derped golden eyes- -step on the stage. “Pull Muffins now.”

He reached onto Muffin’s back and grabbed her by the base of her wings.

“Oh! Bread! Not while other ponies are watching! My down- -”

With one swift yank, he pulled her free, and Muffins fluttered into the air, immediately bumping into the awnings of town hall before stabilizing.

“What do you want, Derpy?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Don’t call her that,” said Bread, his crossed eyes narrowing.

“It’s okay, brother,” said Muffins. She turned to Pinkie Pie. “I just want to say that I’ve met Toaster, and she’s not a bad pony.”

Pinkie chuckled. “Clearly, you must have hit your head. Harlots ARE bad ponies. It’s in the name.”

“Har? Or lots?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“It was a figure of speech,” snapped Pinkie Pie.

“I didn’t get it,” said Bread.

“What I mean is,” said Muffins, “if we just sit down with her and explain the situation to her, she might- -”

“There is no reasoning with a harlot!” cried Pinkie Pie. “They don’t respond to logic! They just take stallions and spread filth! We need to protect our males from themselves, and get rid of her!”

“How?” cried a voice from the crowd.

“STONE HER TO DEATH!”

The crowd immediately all turned toward Tree Hugger. She was standing in the center of a large, empty circle- -because of ponies avoiding her rather pungent aroma- -and she just stared at them for a long moment. Then, slowly, she smiled and blinked extra slow.

“Oh,” she said. “I get it. Righteous.”

“Not like that,” said Pinkie Pie. “As in with ACTUAL stones! Or at least rocks!”

“Pinkie,” said Applejack. “I think we can all agree that havin’ a pony of the night in our town ain’t a good thing, but we can’t stone a pony.”

“Agreed,” said Rarity.

The entire crowd nodded and murmured in agreement.

“Well, that’s the way we used to do it down in rock country,” said Pinkie Pie. “Just ask Yulbee Magnesium-Iron-Silicate-Hydroxide.”

Muffins looked down at Pinkie, at least with one eye. “Oh! You mean cummington- -”

“Don’t you say it!” said Pinkie, pointing. “Or I will hoof you so hard!”

“If you try anything with her,” said Bread, “I will hoof YOU!”

“If you don’t calm down, I’ll hoof ALL of you!” said Rainbow Dash, who promptly blushed when she realized the double entendre.

Spoiled Rich raised her hoof. “Can we stop talking about…ehem…’hoofing’? It’s causing my husband to become aroused.”

“Sorry,” said Pinkie Pie. “But actually, I expected your response.”

“You did?” said Filthy Rich, his legs crossed tightly.

“No. Not that. That’s gross. Put some pants on. No. I may be ultra-conservative, but I’m not unreasonable. So I prepared a song…”

“Oh great…” said Rainbow Dash. “Not this again…”

“…but since songs render really, really bad in text form, I will suffice to say that having a harlot in town is not at all fun.”

“But Pinkie,” said a voice in the crowd. “What can be done?”

“Simple, really- -we just need to shun!”

“Shun?”

“Shun!”

“But Pinkie, is that something we really can do?”

“Indeed it is! I can do it, and so can you!”

“But isn’t it cruel, and wrong?”

“Why is this starting to sound just like a song?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Not at all!” said Pinkie Pie. “And it the effort it takes is just so small! If you see a whore running our beautiful day, then just turn and walk away!”

“But Pinkie,” said Rose, from below. “What if she comes and wants to buy a flower?”

“Then you slam your door in her face and glower!”

“And if she comes to try to buy a quill? What if she wants to by a couch?” asked the Sofa and Quill salespony.

“Then you leave, because staying would be gauche!”

“Okay, that one was a stretch,” said Bread.

“But it’s what you’ve got to do if you want to stop a letch! You’ve got to turn away, don’t give her the time of day, don’t even talk, just make her walk!”

“Put Pinkie,” said Muffins. “That’s mean!”

“Oh, Muffins, don’t be pistachio-green! Don’t you see, this toasty slut wants to hurt you, and she wants to hurt me! We can’t let her feel happy, or at home, we’ve got to reject her until she is GONE!”

Pinkie Pie winced. “Okay, that last line still needs some work.”

“Everypony check yourself!” said Rainbow Dash to the crowd. “See if you got a cutie mark or grew a pair of wings! Trust me, stuff like that happens WHENEVER there’s a song!”

As the audience checked themselves, a pony stepped forward. “So, you’re saying that we just have to avoid her, and not talk to her or sell her anything?”

“Yup. She’ll get the message and leave on her own.”

“Second question…does she actually smell like peanut butter?”

“I was being hyperbolic,” snapped Pinkie Pie.

“Actually, she kind of smells like burnt toast,” said Rainbow Dash.

“I like toast,” said Bread.

They all paused, and then Pinkie turned back to the crowd. “So who’s with me?”

They all cheered, ready to rid Ponyville of the great harlot threat. Not all joined in the excitement, though. Granny Smith just looked disgusted and turned away. Applejack, though she agreed, felt uneasy, and Fluttershy, still hiding under Rarity, only muttered an “oh dear”. Muffins, meanwhile, looked on the verge of tears and landed next to her brother, who put his foreleg around her to comfort her.

“There are cupcakes by the entrance!” cried Pinkie, perhaps too angrily. The crowd jumped in fright, and but dispersed slowly and evenly, moving out through Ponyville. Pinkie Pie smiled, knowing that her plan for the betterment of pony kind had been set in motion.