The Ponyville train station was playing backdrop to an unusual event.  Granted, this was Ponyville;  nopony was even sure what qualified as “unusual” anymore.  Frankly, if anypony had witnessed or remembered, they would have considered it a rather run-of-the-mill occurrence; most of them had seen stranger things burst out of one of Pinkie Pie’s party cakes.  Then again, that was probably what made the event so unusual: its subtlety.

In particular, Princess Celestia came to town.

Again, not unusual.  The method of conveyance might have raised a few eyebrows; the Princess never rode by train.  Her garb most certainly would have generated some commentary; rather than her usual golden collar, tiara, and elegant gold hoofshoes{1}, she was wearing a business tie, a bowler derby, and – strangest of all – a handlebar mustache.  This, too, was not unusual.{2}  What made this whole scenario unusual, at least from an objective, outside perspective, was that absolutely nopony on the train or at the station so much as gave her a second glance.

From time to time Celestia and Luna had desired to move about the countryside incognito, whether to secretly examine the state of their nation, or to simply get away from their more pestiferous royal descendants for a few hours.  Celestia could have used any number of shapeshifting, disguise, or illusion spells that she and her sister had tried over the centuries, but the most effective one had always been a simple suggestive aura she had named (in modern parlance) the Not My Problem Spell.

Long ago Celestia had realized that the point of disguising oneself was not to take on a whole new identity, as the spy novels would have it, but simply to make ponies ignore you.  From that revelation arose the Not My Problem Spell.  The N.M.P.S. worked by the simple expedient of influencing anypony who looked in her direction to decide that whatever they were looking at was uninteresting and, more importantly, probably troublesome to bother with – and therefore, Not My Problem.

The reason for her strange garb was that the N.M.P.S. had an almost paradoxical attribute: the more unusual the pony or object it was hiding looked, the better it worked.  The reasoning was that at a certain point, the pony’s mind started doing the field’s work for it and started exerting effort convincing the pony to not pay attention to the most certainly strange thing just a few feet away.  An ordinary-looking Princess, that was something to pay attention to.  An ordinary Princess dressed in drag as a member of a barbershop quartet?  That was something any self-respecting survival instinct screamed at its owner to avoid, look away from, ignore and forget.  Thus both Celestia and Luna had a closet full of strange odds and ends of clothing set aside for assembling outfits guaranteed to make even the most observant pony subconsciously tell themselves to just look away and forget about it.{3}

Thus it was, Celestia had enjoyed a marvelously uneventful and quiet train ride from Canterlot to Ponyville.  She had bought her ticket at the Canterlot station, boarded the train with all the other ponies; and now, with a few quiet apologies for tripping over her fellow passengers with her excessively long legs, she had disembarked.  She stood on the platform, idly looking about, and by coincidence nearly tripped over the Bearer of Honesty and three young fillies.  She mumbled a hasty apology and stepped aside, standing still long enough for the N.M.P.S. to settle back down over her like a shroud.  As fate would have it, Applejack and her three companions simply stood next to her, discussing the day’s events.

Apparently Applejack and the three fillies – the Cutie Mark Crusaders, ah yes, Celestia recognized them – had just seen off some relative or other on the train back to Manehattan.  And apparently, this “Babs” filly had been something of a hoof-full, and had been the center of some troublesome friendship-related event.  Long conditioned from listening to Twilight’s Friendship Reports, Celestia leaned in and eavesdropped.

“...Now y’see, Applebloom?  If’n you had been honest right from the beginning and told me ‘r Big Macintosh ‘r Granny Smith that Babs was bullying y’all, we coulda fixed all this and you woulda been friends right from the start!”

The younger Apple’s expression could have curdled milk.  For some reason, she glanced down the length of the station to where two fussing fillies had fallen off the end of the platform into a mud puddle.  “Yeah.  That coulda worked,” she muttered.

Applejack scowled.  “Now I can’t say I care for that tone, missy...” she said warningly.

Applebloom didn’t back down an inch.  “Well dog-gone it, Applejack, why in tarnation was I supposed to think this time would be any different?”

Applejack was taken aback.  “This time?” she repeated.

All three of the Crusaders gaped at her like she’d sprouted a second head.  The orange one was the first to speak up.  “Are you kidding?” she yelped.  “Don’t you remember why we all became Cutie Mark Crusaders in the first place?”  She pointed to the muddy fillies at the end of the platform, who were being sprayed down with a garden hose by one of the conductors.  “Shoot, don’t you remember what happened five minutes ago?  Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon have been bullying Applebloom and the rest of us just like that for years!”

“Now rein it in, there,” Applejack said, obviously displeased.  “Ain’t we just gone over this?  I cain’t help y’all if you don’t tell me what’s going on...”

Sweetie Belle looked downcast.  “She’s right, guys,” she said.  “I mean, Applebloom, you can’t blame her for not knowing what happens to you at school...”

“That’s right,” Applejack said.

“Or in town...” Sweetie Belle went on.

“Er...”

“Or at Sugarcube Corner...”

“Um...”

Sweetie Belle sat down and gestured wildly for emphasis.  “I mean, she didn’t even notice it when Babs smashed our first parade float, or threw us all out of our own clubhouse, or how she was making you sleep in the floor right in your own house!” she said.  “If she didn’t notice that, how would she ever notice Diamond Tiara teasing you and making fun of you and coming out to the farm to laugh at you for months and months and...”

“She was right there at the cuteceañera,” Scootaloo pointed out dryly.

“Well yeah, but so were a bunch of other grownups, and none of them remembered either,” Sweetie Belle said.  “Why shouldn’t she not notice something happening right under her nose?”

Applejack pursed her lips.  “Layerin’ on the sarcasm nice and thick there, aintcha, Sweetie Belle?” she said to Sweetie Belle.

Sweetie Belle blinked.  “I was?”

“Like I said,” Applebloom said.  “Why should I have thought this time would be any different?”

Sweetie Belle shrugged.  “It was kind of different.  Babs actually threatened to pound us if we told.”  At Applejack’s horrified expression, Sweetie Belle hastened to reassure her.  “Oh, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon never go that far,” she said.

“Well thank the Maker for that,” Applejack muttered, staring into the distance in horror.

“She doesn’t care. Nopony ever punishes her anyways.”

“...I’m going to learn the hard way with you, ain’t I, filly,” Applejack said.

“Anyway, she never uses threats... um... unless you count the time she blackmailed us into doing the Gabby Gums column...”

“That was... she blackmailed you into doing that?!” Applejack actually looked sick.  “Applebloom, why... why didn’t you ever tell me all this was going on?”

Applebloom glared at her.  Even her hair ribbon was radiating righteous indignation.  “Ah did!  You just kept tellin’ me t’ never mind about it and ‘just ignore it’, an’ when Ah’d tell you Ah was bein’ made fun of for bein’ a blank flank, you’d go ‘oh your cutie mark will come in’... like that woulda ever made Diamond Tiara shut up...”

Celestia felt a swell of pity for the hapless earth pony.  She looked as if someone had just handed her the first place trophy in the “World’s Most Horrible Parent” contest.  Celestia couldn’t help herself; she tweaked the spell hiding herself so that they would notice... well, somepony... standing there with them.  She cleared her throat to catch their attention and did her best to give herself a more masculine-sounding voice.

“If you’ll excuse me for saying so....”

Applejack started slightly and turned to look at who’d spoken.  “Excuse me, feller?”

“If you’ll excuse me for saying so,” Celestia went on.  “I couldn’t help overhearing, and I must say, your older sister may have overlooked some of your problems, little filly,” she said to Applebloom, “but she knows now.”  She looked up at Applejack.  “That’s right, isn’t it?”

Applejack nodded.  “Darn right,” she said bleakly.

“And I’m sure she’ll do her best to try and make things better now.  After all, she did fix things with this ‘Babs’ filly, am I right?”

There was an overwhelming silence.  “Actually, no,” Scootaloo finally said.  Her voice was flat enough to serve as a level.  “She didn’t.”

“Ahh?” Celestia vocalized.  “Well, when you told her...”  She looked at Applejack.  “Well, you obviously punished the girl for bullying them – picking on them, breaking their stuff...?”

“Uh,” Applejack looked to the side.  “No.  No I didn’t.”

“Not even a scolding?”

“Actually... no.”

“Oh.  So, you told her parents, and they handled it?”

“Ummm... no.”  Applejack slumped.

“You at least gave Applebloom and her friends advice on how to deal with... no, you didn’t, did you.”  It was a statement, not a question.  Applejack merely shook her head.  “You at least told them they could defend themselves...?”

Applejack looked shocked.  “Ah didn’t want them to become bullies too,” she said plaintively.

Celestia cocked her head and chuckled.  “When I was a fil... ahem, when I was younger, a bully was somepony who picked on those who hadn’t done anything to them.  And any negative consequence they suffered was because they invited it on themselves by being bullies.  Have things really changed so that just standing up to somepony who’s hurting you, gets you called a bully?”

Applejack looked like she’d been punched in the gut.  You’ve got to be kidding me, Celestia thought.

Celestia put her head down close and muttered to Applejack.  “So, um, before I dig us both in any deeper... what exactly have you done to help your sister deal with this bully problem?”

The lid on a nearby rain barrel popped open.  Pinkie Pie’s head emerged from the barrel, balancing the lid on her frizzy ‘do.  “Nothing!  Absolutely NOTHIIIIIING!!”  That said, the pink party pony vanished back into the barrel, the lid closing with a “plop.”

It said much about Ponyville that nopony present even stared long after this event.  The three fillies just turned and stared at Applejack with blistering scorn.

—— —— — —— — —— ——

On the far side of town, Pinkie Pie pulled her head back out of a cupboard and closed the door.

“What in Equestria was that about?” Twilight asked her.

“Oh nothing,” Pinkie said with a grin.  “Just felt the urge to scream into the void.”

Twilight sighed and took her to-go bag.  Sometimes she wondered if getting breakfast pastries at Sugarcube Corner was worth the damage she took to her grip on reality.

—— —— — —— — —— ——

The awkward silence slowly grew to ursan proportions.  A tumbleweed, at the end of an incredibly long detour from Appleoosa, blew through the train station.  Applejack was sitting on the platform, looking at the floorboards.  “Girls,” she said finally, “why don’t y’all go on back to the farm?  I’ll catch up later.  Tell Granny I said you could have some pie and ice cream.”  The girls galloped off.

“Um,” was all the disguised Celestia could manage.

Applejack made no reply.  She leaned over till her forehead was resting against a nearby post.  “Dear Princess Celestia,” she said out loud in a monotone.  “Today I learned that I am the worst role model for a little filly in the history of Equestria.  Sincerely, Applejack.”

Celestia started to say something two or three times.  “I’m sure you can fix all this, miss,” she finally managed.

“Maker knows how,” Applejack muttered.

Celestia refrained from saying anything more.  She turned and trotted off into town.

Celestia made her way through town, heading for the library.  It wasn’t a few blocks into her walk that she realized she felt lower than a snake’s belly.  She was already down because of what had brought her to Ponyville, but seeing her other little ponies going through this just made it even worse.  Poor Applejack.  Poor Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo.  Broken trust was a hard thing to mend, and those fillies had their faith in grownups – their teacher, their parents – as pillars of justice pretty thoroughly broken.

She made a mental note to herself to review the bullying policies in the public schools when she got back to the palace.  Why hadn’t the local schoolteacher kept Applejack informed of the bullying problem Applebloom was facing?  And who was putting this “fighting back makes you a bully” nonsense in their heads?  Thank the Maker that tommyrot wasn’t going around when she and Luna were fillies; they’d all be kowtowing to Discord to this day if it had.  How had this problem gotten so out of hoof?

A pony bumped into her with a muttered apology.  She stopped in the middle of the street, feeling like a fool.  Here she was, wondering how the problem had gotten so bad, when her very ability to walk down the main street of Ponyville in anonymity relied on the very principle that caused it: the willingness of ponies to ignore a problem and hope it would go away.

Applejack had probably seen plenty of signs that Applebloom was being bullied – but she had a farm to run, so she had convinced herself they weren’t that important, just ‘one of those things foals go through.’  Their teacher had probably seen it too, but she had classes to teach, and so she’d convinced herself that posting a few rules on the blackboard about name-calling or fighting fixed it, or that it was too much trouble to tell the victim and the bully apart in a fight and that punishing everyone – or ignoring it entirely – was much easier.

The other adults had ignored it because it wasn’t their foal, after all, and surely the parents already knew.  Everypony had ignored the problem, until it blew up in their faces.

Just like she had ignored the growing stress her faithful student had been under.  That she had put her faithful student under, with all her secrets, and her ‘tests’, and her enigmatic games.

Celestia raised her head and set her mouth in a firm line.  This was no time for maudlin navel-gazing.  She had hurt Twilight.  Things between them were broken.  It was up to her to fix it, and that was what she was going to do.  She was going to go see Twilight right now...

She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a store window.  Perhaps she’d shave off the mustache, first.

{1} As distinguished from horseshoes.  Horseshoes are affixed by nailing them on, which some ponies find to be rather unpleasant and primitive... not to mention inconvenient if one wished to kick off one’s work boots and don some fuzzy slippers at the end of the day.

{2} Which says more about the Royal Sisters than you might imagine.

{3} In fact, they had to be careful to not be too enthusiastic with the accoutrements, lest they go from merely unobserved to completely invisible.  The bowler derby and tie combo was enough for polite, if discreet, interaction with “the unusually tall fellow”, while a complete polka-dotted clown suit had nearly gotten one of them run over by a carriage.