“... and that’s the story of my whole, entire life. Well, up until today. Do you want to hear about today?” Spike said to Fluttershy, who was following close behind Twilight and Dusk. Twilight holding Spike atop her back and Dusk being closely stalked by Butterscotch.
“Oh, yes please,” Fluttershy responded.
Twilight immediately whirled around and said. “Oh, my. Will you look at that? We’re at the place where Spike, Dusk and I will be staying. How did we get here so fast?” pointing out that they had finally arrived at their next destination. The “Golden Oaks Library”, a hollowed out living tree, with a door, windows, and a balcony nicely designed into the tree. There were no lights on at the moment. “Well, it’s getting late. And Spike is getting tired and needs to get some rest.”
“No, I don’t.”
Twilight bucked Spike off of her, “Aw, wook at him. Poor wittle baby dwagon is so tired he can’t even keep his wittle balwance.”
“Poor thing, you simply must get to bed...” Fluttershy said, stepping closer to Spike.
“Yes, yes. And I’ll take him to bed now.” Twilight said as she stepped in between her and Spike.
“Well, see you later Twilight, Dusk,” Fluttershy said looking at the respective pony when she said their name then started walking away.
“Okbye.” Twilight said as she rushed inside.
“Byee~,” Dusk said, blushing with a dumbstruck look on his face.
Butterscotch stared at Dusk with narrowed eyes.
Dusk quickly realized that Butterscotch was still staring at him, “Seriously! Can I help you?!”
Butterscotch said nothing as he turned away to follow Fluttershy.
Dusk gave out an angry snort as he walked inside the hollow tree.
“Rude much?” Spike said as he stood in the darkness.
“I’m sorry Spike but Dusk and I have to convince the princess that Nightmare Moon is coming and there is not much time left.” Twilight said as she slowly walked in the direction of Spike's voice.
“Yeah, about that.” said Dusk as he too slowly tracked his way towards the sound of Spike’s voice. “I’m starting to think this is a waste of our time. What if it is just an old mare’s tale?”
“You seriously can’t be backing out on me now, Dusk?” said Twilight incredulously.
“Why not? We’re obviously not getting anywhere. Might as well not make a fool of yourself trying to prove something that isn’t real.”
“So, you bail when things get too tough and don’t go your way. Is that right?”
“No. I just know when to quit wasting time chasing after fairy tales.”
Just then the lights turned on in the library, revealing the library to be packed full of ponies, who all yelled in unison, “Surprise!” startling the unicorns and dragon.
Twilight groaned.
“Surprise!” said two identical pink ponies, one a mare and the other a stallion, to Twilight Spike and Dusk.
“Were you surprised?” asked the mare.
“Huh, huh, huh!?” said the stallion.
“Very...” said Twilight through gritted teeth. “Libraries are supposed to be quiet.”
“Pfft. That’s silly.” said the mare. “What kind of party would this be if it were quiet?”
“Boring~.” answered the stallion.
“Well,” Dusk said quickly, interrupting Twilight’s train of thought from saying anything rude. “What’s the occasion?”
“It’s your welcome to Ponyville party.” said the pink mare. “Y’see I saw you two when you first got into town remember?” she continued excitedly.
“And she has never seen you before and if she, nor I, have never seen you before that must mean you’re new!” the stallion said, equally excited.
“‘Cause we know everypony, and I mean everypony, in Ponyville!”
“And if you’re new that means you haven’t met anypony yet-”
“-And if you haven’t met anypony yet that means you don’t have any friends, and if you don’t have any friends you must be lonely and that made me sad.”
“Well, I appreciate the thought.” Dusk said with a genuine smile on his face, while Twilight snuck off to the punch bowl.
The pink mare followed Twilight as she continued to rant about what brought her to set up this party over to the punch bowl.
“...and so I invited everypony in Ponyville!” the pink mare said, ending her rant, as Twilight poured herself a cup of punch and drank a sip of it.
Twilight’s face turned red as tears and sweat rolled down her face and she jumped up, her mane turning to flames, a train whistle could be heard as steam shot out from her ears and she bolted out of the room.
Dusk was standing next to the pink stallion, who was snickering, trying to hold in his near uncontainable laughter.
“Did you do that?” Dusk asked the stallion, pointing a hoof towards the direction Twilight left in.
He held up a bottle labeled “Hot Sauce” in one hoof. “Yep.” he said, continuing to snicker.
“Nice.” Dusk said as he held up a hoof for a hoof-bump and the smiling pink stallion returned the favor. “So, what’s your name?”
The pink stallion put away the bottle of hot sauce and said, “I go by many names, ‘Cobra’, ‘Mr. Sultana Sultana’, but you can call me ‘Bubble Berry Pie’ or ‘Berry’.”
Dusk quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head a little bit. “Ok... ‘Berry’. Nice to meet you. I’m Dusk Shine and the mare you just pranked was my fanatical twin sister Twilight Sparkle.”
“No way! I have a twin sister too! What a coinkidink. And I know four other guys with twin sisters too. We’re all going to have our own pre-party by ourselves for the Summer Sun Celebration, you wanna join us?”
Dusk shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
Meanwhile, Twilight was laying in bed with her head under the pillow, trying to muffle out the noise of the party going on in the main room.
Suddenly, Spike bursts in, slightly dizzy and with a lampshade on his head. He lifted the lampshade out from obscuring his vision and said loudly and cheerfully, “Come on Twilight their playing ‘pin the tail on the pony’ you should come and join us!”
“No, I will not go play ‘pin the tail on the pony’! This party is a complete waste of time. I’m wasting my time right now trying block out the stupid noises of all these CRAZY ponies when I know that Nightmare Moon is coming and I am not doing a thing about it! And now my stupid twin brother has backed out on me, again, and now I have to do this all on my own!” and she stuffed her head back under her pillow.
Spike’s expression softened into a sad look as he said, “You should really loosen up and follow Dusk’s example Twilight. I heard that he’s going to a private party with some new friends right now. And I was half-expecting you to be making friends first. Besides, even if Nightmare Moon is real and DOES return, it won’t be the end of the world, right?” he said as let the lampshade drop back down over his vision and walked out of the room.
Twilight lifted her head, with the pillow laying on top of it, and repeated most of what Spike said to herself in a mocking tone, then looked out the window at the full moon, paying attention to the ‘mare’ you could see on the face of the moon.
“Maybe Spike’s right,” she said, taking the pillow off of her head. “Maybe it won’t be the end of the world.” and she laid down her head on top of the pillow, letting her ears soak in the sounds of the party going on in the next room.
Just then, stars around the moon glistened brightly and the ‘mare’ in the moon faded away.
Dusk and Bubble Berry walked down the moonlit road to Sugarcube Corner. Berry explained that he and his sister live there with two other ponies, Mr. and Mrs. Cake, who actually own the place, and they are able to pay rent by working for the Cakes.
Upon entering Sugarcube Corner, Dusk immediately recognized all the ponies there, they were the male half of all the other ponies he had met throughout the day: BJ, Rainbow Blitz, Elusive, and Butterscotch.
“‘Ey~! Berry! What took you so long, man? We were thinking of starting the party without you.” said Rainbow Blitz hovering above everyone’s heads, “Who’s this?” he pointed a hoof at Dusk.
“This is Dusk Shine.” Berry said, “He’s our new friend. He also has an older twin sister, which is why I invited him to our party.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you again, Mister Shine.” said Elusive as he came up to give Dusk a hoofshake, who, hesitantly, returned it. “Now we can get to know each other better without being distracted by your sister’s horrible taste in mane style.” he said taking his hoof from the shake and placing his other hoof on his chest, his face showing an obvious grimace.
“Really?” BJ said as he walked up right next to Elusive. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“N-Neither did I.” said Butterscotch said meekly, a little ways away from the rest of the group.
“Oh-ho no.” Dusk laughed as he said to BJ. “You should have seen Twilight’s hair after Rainbow Dash messed it up, it was hilarious!”
“Oh yeah!” Blitz said landing next to Dusk, giving him a rough pat on the back. “That was THE most hilarious thing I have seen today.” and Dusk gave him a hoof bump.
Berry then jumped in between Dusk and Blitz, arms around their necks, and said, “Well, you should have seen her face when she took a sip of punch that was spiked with hot sauce. THAT was the most hilarious thing I'VE seen today.” he released Blitz to point a hoof at himself.
Blitz looked at Berry through half opened eyes. “Were you the one who put the hot sauce in there?”
Berry blinked and his eyes shifted from side to side, “Yes.”
Blitz just rolled his eyes and walked away a short distance, “Of course.” he turned around to face the group, and sat down, looking unamused at Berry.
“So~,” Berry said, turning to Dusk. “Which was funnier? Rainbow Dash simply messing up her hair, or me masterfully spiking the punch bowl with hot sauce?”
Dusk was slowly starting to think about how to seriously answer but Blitz interrupted, “Don’t!” he yelled with his eyes shut as if he were in pain. “Don’t answer that. If you do, he’s likely to declare yet another prank war on my sister, that’ll be the third time this week, and it’s only Tuesday.”
“Sounds like just another one of his Tuesdays, to me.” BJ said flatly.
“Yes, quite.” Elusive responded in kind.
Berry scowled at BJ and Elusive briefly before perking up and bounced up and down a little bit. “Well, it seems that everypony knows each other already, so I guess I can skip the introductions. Now, let’s get this party started! BJ!” he pointed to BJ dramatically, “Did you bring the cider?”
BJ smirked. “Eeyup. The best cider available off-season, made by yours truly. My own personal recipe.”
Elusive used his magic to drag a keg of cider into the room and place it on a table, stuck a spigot into it, and poured everypony a cup.
Elusive the cup of cider in his magic. “How long did you manage to hide this from your family this time, BJ?”
“Five weeks.” he said proudly.
Elusive took a sip and raised an eyebrow, giving BJ a skeptical look.
“Ok fine. Two weeks.” BJ looked away, dejectedly.
Dusk was getting along with everypony nicely, but after a couple of drinks Dusk finally noticed that Butterscotch was staring daggers at him, he gave an irritated sigh and came up to Butterscotch.
“Dude, you’ve been staring at me like that every chance you got. What the hay?”
Butterscotch took a swig of his drink. “I don’t like ponies who stare at my sister the same way you did. They’ve always been bad news.”
“And I could say the same about you in my case.”
Butterscotch’s cheeks turned red and he started to butt heads, physically, with Dusk, looking down at him, “I wasn’t staring at your sister!”
Dusk then pushed back Butterscotch with his head, giving himself the higher ground, and said, “I was talking about you staring at me you dumb-plot!” he took a swig of his own drink, “Now that you mention it...” then he went back to butting heads, “Twilight was in my general direction from your perspective, so while I wasn’t lookin’ you were probably taking a good long look at her yourself now weren’t ch’ya!”
Butterscotch took back the high ground, “I already told you, I wasn’t staring at your sister!”
High ground: Dusk, “You denying it only confirms my suspicions!”
Their heads mashed together, faces flushed red, Butterscotch’s wings flared up, and Dusk emanating a purple misty aura, both out of a primal instinct to appear more threatening to the other, Elusive and Rainbow Blitz look on at the display, both looking slightly drowsy.
“Do you think we should stop them?” asked Elusive.
Blitz and Elusive looked at each other, “Nah~!” they said in unison and they chugged down their drinks.
There was a knock at the door.
“Oh, goodie the karaoke machine is here.” Berry said as he opened the door to let the delivery pony in, she had a gray coat and yellow mane, and her eyes were both looking in different directions.
Berry signed for the delivery of the rental karaoke machine and BJ brought it in and set it up.
“Hey, guys!” Berry said, getting everypony’s attention, including Dusk and Butterscotch, “We’ve got the karaoke machine ready, let’s do this thing.”
Reluctantly, Dusk and Butterscotch stopped their head-butting contest and walked over to participate in the karaoke.
“You know what, man?” said Dusk. “I’m sorry about that, let’s just have fun this is a party after all.”
“Yeah, you’re right, let’s put that aside and have fun.”
“Maybe we can become friends later.”
Butterscotch got into Dusk’s face again and said in a low voice, “We’ll never be friends.”
Later that hour Dusk and Butterscotch were jovially singing “Pirate’s Life for me” together, arms around each other’s shoulders.
That was the last thing Dusk remembered before waking up, dazed and groggy.