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At the Grand Galloping Gala

by RainbowDoubleDash

Chapter 1: 1. Look at Ponyville

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Look at Ponyville.

Start in its north and east. Look at its apartment buildings and its residential area. Most of them are less than twenty years old, the result of a steadily rising population. Ponyville is considered a hick town by many in Equestria, but it is growing, benefitting from the rail station that passes through it, and its proximity to Canterlot itself. It is still a rural, farming community through and through, but over the past twenty years its population has increased by a quarter.

But pay attention to the buildings. Note the state of them. The walls are strong, still, but there is not a single completely intact window to be found. The most robust and luckiest windows still feature a few cracks. Most feature holes. Some of them are gone altogether, shattered, or even actually missing, some enterprising pony having decided to take the time and effort to actually remove them.

Look inside any home. You’ll see beds, and sofas, and cushions for sitting on. They’re all in place, but some of them have clearly only been pushed out of the way, not in their normal positions – that is, when they’re there at all, and not missing due to being broken or unrecoverable, or just plain having gone missing. Note the prevalence of stains, stains everywhere, food stains and drink stains and stains of a variety that are thankfully unidentifiable at a glance.

Move to Ponyville’s east now. The wide-open plaza in this section of Ponyville should be bustling with ponies. This is the farmer’s market, where ponies set up stalls and kiosks and hawk their wares – mostly farmers, appropriately enough, but the other businesses of Ponyville also occasionally set up little side-shops here, as well as any travelling salesponies. On a day like today, the farmer’s market should be bustling and loud, full of ponies buying and ponies selling and ponies talking.

It is not full. Indeed, it’s near empty. If one didn’t know any better, one would think that some kind of massive depression had hit Ponyville’s economy. The few ponies in the market certainly seem depressed, even the big red stallion manning the apple stand. The buyers don’t have a lot of money with which to buy, and the sellers don’t have much stock to sell.

Now move to Ponyville’s south, then up to its west. The south and the west of Ponyville are dominated by ‘proper’ businesses – that is, stores, with windows and wares kept inside four sturdy walls. This being a small farming town, the owners of the businesses frequently live in apartments over their shops. Ponyville has a little bit of just about everything available to its citizens, or it normally would. Not right now. The windows of the businesses, the interiors of the stores, have fared little better than the homes in Ponyville’s north. Here, a clothier is frantically trying to scrub graffiti off of her storefront. There, a candymare is still sweeping trash and unsellable candy out of her back door. A jeweler is trying to calculate how much of her stock has been stolen or, more likely, simply been misplaced. A baker and his wife and their apprentice are looking mournfully at a virtual desert of wasted flour on their floor.

Now look at Ponyville’s center. The town hall is a wreck, surrounded by a veritable sea of papers that the few officials in town are desperately trying to gather up. The weather patrol station’s cloud silo is missing its top, and so sits empty. And the Night Court Representative’s home and office has had its entire front window smashed apart.

Now head from the town proper, and out to the farms. Crops have been worse than neglected – they have been abused. Trampled on. Pulled out. Their irrigation systems are exposed and need to be buried again, but not before they’re cleaned out. Carrots left out in the sun too long have shriveled and dried to the point of inedibility. The walls holding a pond in place have broken, flooding a grove in an inch of water that floats over three inches of mud, seriously endangering the apple trees there with rot.

Now look to the skies. Recall the cloud silo has broken open. The weather patrol has, apparently, been out of commission for some time, as the skies overhead are gray and disorganized, clouds clumping together and roiling around without any attempt to control them, because none on the weather patrol even know where to begin.

Ponyville looks like it’s been through a war. In fact, it has been through a party.

Not by choice – the Ponyvillians would never do this to themselves by choice. There was magic involved, a curse that forced them all to drink to the point of a loss of inhibition, but never allowing them to become drunk enough to collapse. It took three days to break the curse. Nopony is seriously hurt – a few bumps, a few scrapes, and a town-wide hangover, but nothing that won’t recover on its own. But the town?

Ruined. The sheer magnitude is shocking, almost incomprehensible. Worse is the knowledge that they themselves did it, even if not by their own choice. But worst of all is the burning question inside the minds of every mare and stallion in Ponyville:

How can we possibly fix all of this?

---

My little pony, My little pony
Ahh ahh ahh ahhh...
My little pony
Friendship never meant that much to me
My little pony
But you're all here and now I can see
Stormy weather; Lots to share
A musical bond; With love and care
Teaching laughter; It's an easy feat,
And magic makes it all complete!
You have my little ponies
How'd I ever make so many true friends?

---

Town meetings in Ponyville were open affairs where anypony was invited to observe or raise questions or talking points, if not necessarily vote on the affairs of the municipality. Nevertheless, normally few ponies did.

But today, five days after the curse had been broken, so many ponies had been showing up at the town hall that the meeting had been moved from there to the wide-open area of the farmer’s market. A collapsible stage had been pulled from storage, found to be intact, and so set up near the entrance to the market, with a long table set up upon the stage. The members of Ponyville’s town council sat along the table, facing the sea of ponies in a riot of coat and mane colors that each of them represented.

The town council consisted of nine ponies. At the center of the table was Ivory Scroll, of course, the elected mayor of Ponyville who had never expected to have to deal with any crisis worse than a late winter wrap-up, which was more a cause for embarrassment than concern. To her left was Applejack, the owner of Sweet Apple Acres, the representative of the Apple Trust, and the direct descendant of the first Apples, who founded Ponyville. To Ivory Scroll’s right was Filthy Rich, a normally jovial business magnate and the direct descendant of the Rich family, who were the second family of Ponyville and the ones who helped put it on the map by marketing the Apples’ zap apple jam. The Riches and the Apples were guaranteed a seat on the town council, while six of the remaining ponies, including Mayor Scroll, were elected. None of them had ever expected to deal with a serious crisis, either, and all of them seemed nervous.

But none of them seemed as positively distraught as a blue unicorn mare with purple eyes and a silver mane and tail that sat at the right end of the table, who alternated between looking guiltily at the rest of the council and with deep concern at the crowd of ponies in front of her. She kept her hat low over her head, and her cape wrapped tightly around her, as though trying to use them as shields.

Before the town had set up the stage and the table, Trixie Lulamoon, the Representative of the Night Court of Princess Luna, had delivered some bad news to the town council. She had only been the messenger and had hated the news herself – but she had nevertheless been the victim of a considerable amount of shouting and insults before the other eight members of the town council had settled down and remembered that Trixie had only delivered bad news, not been the source of it.

Soon, though, the news would be delivered to the entire town.

“I wonder if I’ll be lynched,” Trixie mumbled under her breath. She tried to remember the last time a pony had been lynched in Equestria, but drew a blank. Shaking her head a little, she refocused her attention on a standing pony at the front of the crowd, a cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane and tail: Rainbow Dash, the head of the weather patrol.

“…all of our cloud supply for the next two months,” Rainbow Dash was explaining. She was flanked by a number of other members of the weather patrol, who each had papers in hoof or at least nearby. “We’ve been working double shifts to try and recover the water vapor and we think we may have enough that we can supply a few small rain showers…but overall Ponyville should be prepared for a dry summer.”

“Why can’t you just create new clouds?” Filthy Rich asked. “I thought pegasi could just make weather.”

Another member of the weather patrol – Raindrops, Trixie’s close friend – stepped forward at that. “We can, but it isn’t easy,” she said. She sounded exhausted, and looked it too, the result of five straight days of desperately trying to round up all the escaped clouds and water vapor. “The weather factory in Cloudsdale is much more efficient and faster. There just aren’t enough patrol members. Try to imagine taking care of every single tree down in Sweet Apple Acres by yourself, then extend that over all of Ponyville.

“We might be able to do better if we can get volunteer help,” Rainbow Dash resumed, nodding in thanks to Raindrops, “but it’s also a problem that we just don’t have enough water vapor to go around, either. We’d need a lot of hot days in a row to build that up, ninety degrees or higher – ”

“We can’t do that,” another pony in the crowd interrupted, standing. She had a yellow coat and an orange mane and tail – Carrot Top, another of Trixie’s friends. She trotted up to the front. “I’m sorry, Miss Dash, but I don’t think my farm – I don’t think any farm in Ponyville right now, certainly none of the Farmer’s Union – can take that. Many of our farms had their irrigation systems ruined. I’ve already lost my entire crop for the month because of that. We need to save whatever water vapor we have right now until after we’ve all planted, then we’ll need to stretch whatever vapor we have until we can harvest. But we can’t have any hot days that’ll waste whatever water we do get into the ground.”

“Ah’m with Miss Carrot Top on that,” Applejack said, nodding to Rainbow Dash, and grimacing. Much of Sweet Apple Acres’ irrigation depended on the river and pond that they had on their land – the pond that had broken its banks and flooded an entire field. At least two apple trees had died so far from what amounted to drowning, and dozens more were looking like they weren’t going to make it, either.

“What is our food situation?” Ivory Scroll asked, looking out to the crowd of ponies. “Are all of you set? Who doesn’t think they’ll be able to make the month with what they have? Won’t be able to afford to buy more food due to the curse?” There was some uncomfortable mumbling and looking between each other. A few hooves rose into the air, but less than a dozen. Ivory Scroll frowned at that. “Come on now, ponies,” she said. “Now is not the time for pride. We need to have an accurate idea of what we need.” Gradually, more hooves rose into the air, then more, then more. When all was said and done, more than a quarter of the ponies gathered had raised their hooves in the air.

Ivory Scroll nodded grimly at that, then looked to Applejack. It was a known fact that Sweet Apple Acres was home to a vast store of specially preserved apples and a few other foodstuffs, in case of blight or famine, due to an almost paranoid belief on the Apple family’s part that either could strike at any time, even in Equestria. Apparently, the paranoia was now vindicated. Applejack, herself, was looking out over the ponies, brow furrowed and hooves tapping out a mnemonic rhythm as she did some calculations. After a moment, she nodded to the mayor. “Might be tight,” she said. “Some of our stores were broke open, 'cludin' our largest. Animals got ta' them an' the rest in there ain't fit for consumption. But Ah think we can make it if’n we use the apples we still got growin’. Ponies’ll be a mite peckish for awhile, but nopony will starve, Ah promise.”

Ivory Scroll offered a thin smile. “Thank-you, Applejack. You can say ‘I told you so’ if you like.”

“Don’t much feel like it, mayor,” Applejack responded. “Truth is, Ah’d just as soon’ve been wrong.” She looked to Carrot Top. “Sweet Apple Acres’ irrigation system’ll be fine once we get the water back in the pond. We’ll focus on feedin’ ponies now. The rest of y’all just start plantin’ and tillin’ and fixin’ what ya can. Ah bet that a month from now even Ah’ll be sick of apples an’ wantin’ somethin’ else.”

A wave of much-needed, light laughter spread through the crowd at that, as both Carrot Top and Rainbow Dash and her team sat back down. Ivory Scroll shuffled some papers in front of her, glancing at Trixie. Trixie grimaced at the resentment she saw as the earth pony mayor looked to Rainbow Dash. “We’ll make do with the water vapor we have,” she said. “We’ll try and requisition more from Cloudsdale. Hopefully they’ll send some.”

“What about the town’s emergency funds?” Rainbow Dash asked. Almost as one, everypony in the town council flinched, Trixie looking almost as though she had been bucked square in the jaw as she did.

“In just a moment, Miss Dash,” Ivory Scroll said, as her secretary came up on stage, looking nervously down at the sheets of paper she held in her mouth. “Because of the curse,” she pressed on, “many of you have been submitting requests to Ponyville for use of the emergency funds.”

“Of course we have!” Cheerilee called. The magenta earth pony was sitting near the front of the crowd, with her older sister Berry Punch, her younger sister Piña Colada, and the rest of her family. Berry Punch looked far from her normal jovial self – the curse in question had hit her at least as hard as the farmers, if not harder, as she’d owned the local bar – a bar that was now completely depleted over and above the damages caused by the cursed riot.

Ivory Scroll nodded at that, as her secretary passed her the sheets of paper. The pony had just finished adding up the total costs from all the submissions. “The total cost of the curse…acquiring clouds from Cloudsdale even at their emergency cost, repairs to municipal buildings, and dolling out requested funds to each of you…is eight hundred eighty-five thousand bits.”

The ponies of Ponyville recoiled at that, and low conversations began. Most of them had a sense as to where the conversation was about to turn. The emergency fund was set up to help conduct repairs to the exteriors of buildings or fix roads that were damaged from rogue Everfree storms, maybe help a few ponies through rough times caused by natural disasters – it had never been thought that it would need to essentially carry the entire town for several weeks. Cheerilee nevertheless stood up at that. “How much money is in the emergency fund?” she asked.

Ivory Scroll winced. “A little over fifty thousand,” she said.

There were actual shouts and cries at that, everypony standing up and first asking, then shouting, questions and concerns and demands. Trixie tried to burry herself under her hat, at least until she heard, over the din, her name being called.

“Representative Trixie,” Ivory Scroll repeated, the name eliciting silence from the crowd. Trixie glanced up. When the mayor had silence, she looked pointedly at Trixie, as did every other member of the town council, along with every other pony in Ponyville.

So this is what stage fright feels like, she mused. She found it to be a singularly unpleasent feeling.

“Representative Trixie,” Ivory Scroll said a third time. “This wasn’t an Everfree storm, the responsibility of our own weather team. This wasn’t a party that got out of control through fault of our own. This was an attack on Ponyville, by a minion of Corona. A magical curse compelled us to destroy our homes and our livelihoods. Under the circumstances I think it would be entirely fair of us to ask for official help from the Royal Emergency Management Ministry. I believe that it is the responsibility of Canterlot to aid Ponyville in our time of need.”

Trixie shuffled in place. “I agree,” she said, then repeated herself, louder, making sure everypony could hear her. “I completely agree! The REMM was founded for exactly this purpose! It should not be Ponyville that has to carry this burden!”

There were nods of agreement and calls of consent to that from the crowd. “Very well, then,” Ivory Scroll said. “As you know, we have already alerted the REMM to the situation through you.”

“I sent the request twice! Noted that it was an emergency and everything!”

“And?”

Trixie’s mouth clamped shut at that. Slowly, carefully, she withdrew a sheet of paper from a pocket in her cape, an official invoice from the REMM, and signed by its head – Night Light, of the House of Starlight, Viceroy of Latigo. She looked to the crowd, then back to the paper – then back to the crowd again, then back to the paper. “The REMM…” she read, “r…regrets to inform the town of Ponyville…that it will not be – ”

That was as far as she got before the crowd of ponies all began shouting at the top of their lungs in anger, shuffling about, throwing their hooves in the air, the wings of pegasi flared and the horns on the unicorns glowing dangerously.

Trixie couldn’t help it: she panicked. Her own horn glowed, she turned herself invisible, and she bolted from the stage.

---

Carrot Top wasn’t much surprised when she arrived home to find Trixie in her living room, sitting on the floor and running her hooves through her mane, normally expertly styled but now a mess of cowlicks and split hairs from the poor treatment that her hooves were giving it. In point of fact, the earth pony farmer had been expecting to find Trixie here – hence why Raindrops, Cheerilee, Lyra, and Ditzy, together with Carrot Top Trixie’s five closest friends, were with her as she closed the door behind her.

Trixie turned quickly when she heard the door close, standing and stumbling forwards. “It’s not my fault!” she cried out desperately to them. “It’s not – I’m just the messenger – this isn’t my fault!

Before she could get much further, Ditzy Doo was upon her, wrapping her hooves around the blue unicorn and holding her close. “Shh…it’s okay, we know…” the gray, wall-eyed pegasus assured her friend. “We know, everypony in town knows, too, they’re just angry right now. They’ll calm down…” Trixie’s own legs gave out at Ditzy’s embrace, and she just held her friend close, her eyes wide and staring off into nothingness.

There was a bang that Trixie’s nerves really didn’t need right now. Everypony jumped, and saw Raindrops was staring at the floor, where she’d just used a front hoof to punch a dent into the wood beneath her. Crying out, Raindrops slammed her hoof several more times into it. “Stupid…” she exclaimed as she hit it, “useless…government!” Her hoof broke through the floor, then, and into the basement below, and she nearly lost her balance before steadying herself with her wings and breathing heavily. She looked to Carrot Top, her face still a look of barely-contained anger. “I’m sorry,” she stated, for politeness’ sake if nothing else. She probably genuinely felt the regret, it was just overridden by the anger right now.

Carrot Top shook her head. “Next to everything else?” she asked. “It’s nothing…”

“Can they do this?” Cheerilee demanded, coming up to Trixie. “According to the Detrot Act, the REMM has to supply aid to any township in Equestria that’s been the subject of an attack by a hostile force!”

Trixie grimaced at that, taking out the letter from the REMM, glancing it over again before passing it around. “That’s the thing,” she said. “The REMM doesn’t believe that this was Zecora’s fault. That this was an attack by Corona. Seeing as Zecora escaped Ponyville doesn’t have any proof. Viceroy Night Light says that he thinks that Ponyville is just trying to abuse the REMM to help pay for the damages we caused – ”

“Wait,” Lyra said, holding up a hoof. “Viceroy Night Light? Night Light?

Trixie grimaced, nodding. “Y-yeah. Twilight Sparkle’s father. He's the head of the REMM.”

The other five mares looked uncomfortable for Trixie, while Trixie herself still looked as though she’d just come out the other side of a siege. Twilight Sparkle. Arguably Trixie’s biggest screw-up since coming to Ponyville, the lavender unicorn had come to Ponyville looking to learn at the hooves of the Element of Magic – and had found Trixie to be far from the sorceress supreme, amazing magic-user she had thought Trixie was supposed to be. They had argued, and Trixie had tricked Twilight into embarrassing herself in front of town, causing Twilight to go into the Everfree Forest and bring back an Ursa Minor which proceeded to wreck havoc in Ponyville until Twilight and Trixie, working together, had been able to banish it back to the Everfree. Afterwards, rather than facing responsibility for her actions, had fled from the town, leaving Trixie little choice but to report her as a criminal.

Weeks later, she had learned that Twilight Sparkle was the daughter of Night Light, Viceroy of Latigo and, quite possibly, the single most powerful member of the Night Court of Luna. His reach was vast and his resources were limitless. And, it seemed, he hated Trixie for what she’d done.

“You need to apologize,” Ditzy told Trixie, her eyes focusing on the blue unicorn. Normally her eyes wandered, but when she willed them into alignment, she had the most intense stare of any pony Trixie had ever met. “You need to apologize to him, Trixie.”

I’ve tried!” Trixie cried out, throwing her hooves in the air. “I tried when Princess Cadenza visited Equestria. I’ve sent three – three – letters to him, both in Latigo and his estate in Canterlot! They’ve all been returned unopened! You think I want an enemy in the Night Court that big?”

Trixie wanted to get into the Night Court, the governance of Equestria. She’d accepted that this was going to naturally involve making some enemies. In fact, she had several of those already, most notably Duke Greengrass, who’d seemed determined to get the Elements of Harmony under his hoof.

But a viceroy? Contraction for vice-royalty? In the hierarchy of nobles within Equestria, the three viceroys were second only to Princess Luna herself in terms of political power. Trixie, meanwhile, didn’t have any noble title, and indeed had only properly entered the Night Court six months ago simply as a Representative of the Night Court – a glorified messenger and go-between.

“Can we go over his head?” Raindrops asked. “Go directly to the Princess?”

“I’ve tried,” Trixie moaned, looking down. “I’ve tried, but with the Gala in three days she’s been kept busy with…with everything. My letter-sending spell only sends things to her desk, she probably hasn’t had time to be in her office for a week…”

“You need to fix that,” Carrot Top said. “This isn’t the first time we’ve had problems because you couldn’t get in contact with the Princess…”

“If I had a jangle for everypony who wanted a direct line to Luna herself wherever she is,” Trixie deadpanned, “I could hoof the bill for Ponyville myself.” Trixie sighed. “I was going to catch a train to Canterlot tomorrow, try and go and see her directly…but if I can’t then we might have to wait until after the Gala before she’s free again.”

“Why not at the gala?” Lyra asked.

“At the gala?” Trixie asked.

“Corner her in the gardens or something. You have your ticket still, right? Why can’t you just see Princess Luna then?”

Trixie shook her head. “Two reasons: one, everypony is going to want to see Luna at the gala, I probably won’t get a chance; and two – I wasn’t going to go.” She sat back on her haunches. “I’m not going to dress up and go to a party while everypony else in Ponyville has to deal with the mess…”

Raindrops grimaced. “Fair point,” she acceded, sighing, and looking around. Carrot Top’s home had fared better than her own, which had become infested with bugs during the three-day curse that had gotten into everything and everywhere. But the damage to Carrot Top’s livelihood was far worse, what with her irrigation system having somehow been filled with wine, and her harvest for the month lost. Even with earth pony magic making the carrots grow faster than they otherwise would, it would be a long time before she could recoup her losses without help from Canterlot – though she could, at least, take a measure of comfort in the fact that the same applied to everypony else in Ponyville.

But how could a viceroy - a noble of Luna's Night Court - let an entire town suffer, just to get back at one mare?

Next Chapter: 2. The Duke Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 46 Minutes
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