The day was thursday. That meant that carrots were on sale today, and Lyra was in the mood for something involving carrots for dinner later in the evening. She moved through the market, weaving around other ponies and smiling or nodding at them as she passed, on the way to the carrot stand where Carrot Top would be.
Today was peaceful. But so was yesterday. No major event had afflicted the town in weeks. The usual perpetrators for such excitement had been decidedly not involved in anything that would cause commotion, and it had not gone unnoticed by the citizens of Ponyville, who were more than accustomed to the excitement that seemed to kick up since a certain librarian moved into town. There was an air of boredom to the town that one couldn't mistake for anything else.
As Lyra turned a corner, and her objective came into sight a few stands away, her eyebrows rose in surprise soon after as she felt a tap on her back.
"Tag." said a vaguely familiar voice behind her. Lyra turned to try and find the pony who said that, but saw nopony suspicious anywhere around her. Mentally shrugging, she continued on her way.
She stood in front of Carrot Top's stand, and smiled at her. "Hello, Carrot! Lovely day today."
Carrot Top looked up from counting profit behind the stand, and smiled back at Lyra. "Hi, Lyra. Yea, it is."
"I'll take four carrots, please." Lyra said before levitating six bits onto the counter in a neat stack.
"Certainly." Carrot Top presented four carrots to Lyra, and they were levitated into her saddlebags and secured. "Planning on making that carrot stew of yours tonight?"
"Yes, I am." She nodded.
"Then I'll be sure to warn Rose to wear earplugs tonight." Carrot winked.
A bashful smile appeared on Lyra's face. "Bon Bon's been getting quieter, I'm telling you."
"I'll believe it when I see Rose doesn't have bags under her eyes tomorrow." Carrot jested. They shared a laugh, and Lyra bid Carrot farewell. As she turned to go about her business, she halted briefly, as though struck by a realization. "What is it?" Carrot asked, leaning over the counter.
To her surprise, a bright turquoise hoof booped her on the nose, before retracting back with a mischievously grinning Lyra the only evidence that it actually happened. "Tag." Lyra chimed before trotting off toward home.
Carrot stood with a puzzled look. Tag? Was that some kind of inside joke, or was Lyra being serious? Either way, Carrot Top had been tagged, and despite mentally shrugging off the experience, the knowledge somehow remained in the back of her mind to pick at her. The next customer, Cheerilee, caught her attention with a polite 'Hello.'
As Cheerilee hoofed a pair of bits onto the counter, Carrot Top was compelled by some force to bring her own hoof to touch Cheerilee's. With a smile, and a carrot, she said, "Tag." With an about face of processing for a moment, Cheerilee lightly laughed.
"I'll be sure to pass it on." she said with a smile before departing.
Applejack greeted Cheerilee as she trotted up a little close with a spring in her step. "Well howdy, miss Cheerilee. What can I do ya for today-"
"Tag!"
Applejack felt a hoof on her shoulder. And then she watched Cheerilee continue to skip down the road. "...Tag?"
"TAG!?" Pinkie gushed, startling the hat off Applejack.
"Consarnit', Pinkie. What 'ave I told you about sneakin' up on me like that?" Applejack chided the enigma next to her, placing her hat back on her head.
Pinkie Pie, as usual, let the reprimand pass right into one ear and out the other. "I love playing tag! I'm great at it! Tag me, tag me!" She said, making unnecessary face-to-face contact. In an effort to maintain the sanctity of her personal space, Applejack complied by placing a hoof onto Pinkie's chest and pushing her away. A win-win solution.
"...No, silly, you gotta say 'Tag' when you tag somepony otherwise they won't know you're tagging them!"
"Tag."
With a squee of excitement, Pinkie blazed a trail down the street and out of site. Applejack sighed in relief for the peace in quiet. However, she got the feeling it wouldn't last much longer. When Pinkie gets excited like that, you can usually expect something not adhering to the laws of peace and quiet to happen.
Rainbow Dash sliced through the air above the outskirts of Ponyville for both practical and personal reasons. She was obliterating all the clouds left over from the rainy day a few days ago that decided to stick around, and she was getting in some wicked practice time.
She pulled up out of a nose dive and decided to do a barrel roll. At the crest of the barrel roll, when she was completely upside down, she was suddenly attacked by something pink that wrapped around her torso and restricted a lot of wing movement. "TAG!" Pinkie Pie shouted in the wind, laughing her head off.
"PINKIE PIE!" Rainbow Dash shouted in outrage as they spiraled out of control through the sky. Multiple alarms of danger were going off in Rainbow's head as they crashed into a well placed cottage.
Fluttershy's eyes finally stopped rolling around in her head, as ponies eyes have the habit of doing. Subsequently she realized she was on the top of a pony pile, dominant of Pinkie and then Rainbow Dash. Rainbow was being crushed on the bottom of the pile by the weight of a solid mass of candy and a tree. When Rainbow gained awareness of her surroundings, she found that her head was being used as a seat beneath Pinkie's rump.
Though candy and trees were heavy, Iron outweighed both of them. With a swift buck, Fluttershy and Pinkie found themselves in the air. Fluttershy quickly caught Pinkie Pie mid air, and delicately slowed her descent onto her face. There was a Rainbow Pie shaped hole in the side of Fluttershy's house now.
"Pinkie! What have I told you about fulfilling your role as an Anti-Aircraft Pony?" Rainbow shouted at the face-down Pinkie. Next to Rainbow, a knothole formed in the wooden floor and Pinkie's lips emerged from it.
"To not to?" They said.
"Yes. And why do you think I say that?"
"Because I keep making you crash into Fluttershy's property."
"Exactly. This is the third time this week it's happened. I imagine Fluttershy has better things to do than patch the 'us' shaped holes in her house."
"Well, actually, I really don't." Fluttershy tried to interject, scuffing her floor with a hoof.
"Yes you do, because you're now involved in a game of tag." Rainbow said, placing a hoof on Fluttershy's head upon speaking the word.
"Huh?" Fluttershy was shocked.
"Fluttershy's it! Run away!" Pinkie shouted, crawling into the knothole in Fluttershy's floor, then out of a tree outside her house. Then she began running for Ponyville to spread the word. Rainbow Dash chuckled at the helplessly lost look on Fluttershy's face, before flying out of the part of the hole in her house that was shaped to her.
As Fluttershy made her way through town, ponies gave her wide radius. Fluttershy wasn't a very clever pony, nor was she very fast. When she tried to trick Applejack into conversation, she would stay just out of Fluttershy's reach. She was apologetic, though. Eventually, she decided that her cunning was no match for the ponies of Ponyville, and that normal tactics wouldn't work, and decided to try to tag somepony that was too busy to notice she was there.
Thinking for a moment, she remembered Rarity was usually very focused in her work, and would be more than likely to find herself a worthy recipient of a Fluttershy Tag.
Fluttershy carefully crept up to the window of Rarity's shop. Rarity wasn't in the front room. Listening carefully, she could hear a sewing machine being operated upstairs. It was a perfect opportunity. Fluttershy carefully cracked the door open. Remembering the bell, she held it with a hoof so that it never chimed. Inside, she silently flew upstairs and alighted on the second floor.
The sewing machine was loud through the open door of Rarity's creativity room. Fluttershy peaked through the door. Rarity's back was to her, she was humming Winter Wrap-Up. The room was a mess as usual, like it was supposed to be. Various bits of cloth were scattered about, as well as spools of thread.
Fluttershy tip-hoofed in, right up behind Rarity. She gingerly reached a shaky hoof out and...
Pinkie Pie appeared in the reflection of the window in front of Rarity. "Rarity look out!" She shouted, the sound was muffled as though she were behind the window. Rarity about-faced and looked around. When she laid eyes on Fluttershy, she smiled.
"Oh! Hello, Flutter-"
A dainty yellow hoof that smelled of poesy's was pressed against her nose. "T-tag." Fluttershy meeped from behind her mane.
Rarity was puzzled for a moment, but then she realized what was happening. She glanced at the clock on the wall. She had been informed that Fluttershy was 'it' over a half our ago. "Fluttershy, darling, you mean you've been wandering around town as 'it' all this time?"
"Yea..." Fluttershy said, looking away ashamed. She brightened up. "But not anymore, now."
"I suppose I'll have to keep this thing going then." Rarity mused as she turned off the sewing machine. "I think I'll pay Twilight a visit."
Twilight was engaged in another book in her library. You know how intense that gets, and what it looks like in your head. Dig that image up from the bottom of your brain and drag it to the forefront to save me some time.
Rarity pranced in through the library door then. "Twilliiiight, darliiing." As she moved toward her bookworm friend, she found herself suddenly teleported in the other direction.
"Can't fool me, Rarity." Twilight said victoriously, not even batting an eye away from her book. "I cast a spell around me that turns the pony who's 'it' right in the other direction."
Rarity, immediately seeing the loop hole in Twilight's plan, began back peddling. Just as she expected, she was teleported in the right direction. Twilight gasped as Rarity lept through the air, her trajectory bearing down on Twilight. Twilight teleported herself to the side, letting Rarity crash into the pillows that Twilight had been resting on.
Upon hitting the pillows, she used her magic to grab all of them and form up a wall to conceal herself from Twilight. She through the pillows left, and dashed right. Twilight had instinctively tracked the pillows, and did not expect Rarity to not be behind them.
"Tag!" Rarity yelled.
"Argh!"
Dear Princess Celestia,
I have successfully created a two-way portal on the back of this Parchment.
Celestia's eyebrows raised, intrigued. She turned the scroll around with her magic, and found herself staring into Twilight's library, and into the face of Twilight herself.
"Most impressive, Twilight. How long did it take you to create this portal?"
"About twenty seconds." Twilight said, proudly holding a hoof to her chest.
"My word! It took Luna and I almost a decade to not accidentally open portals to other dimensions." Celestia recalled. She then became very worried. "You didn't open any trans dimensional portals, did you?"
"No, no. This is the first time I've performed the spell. I foresaw that, and decided to mediditate on it as a precaution." Twilight assured. Then she seemed to remember something. "Oh yes, I neglected to mention that all of Ponyville is playing a game of tag." Twilight said through the scroll.
Celestia looked skeptical, remembering the last time all of Ponyville was involved in something. "Why is this information relevant?"
"Because, I looked up this portal spell for one singular reason." Twilight quickly reached a hoof into the portal and tagged the royal nostril. "Tag, Princess." Twilight beamed mischievously. The scroll was suddenly incinerated by magical purple fire, and into non-existence.
Celestia was flabbergasted. The ancient, infectious game driven by an ancient spell was starting up again. Celestia felt the familiar feeling that drove her to tag somepony else. She regarded the guards in the royal throne room. She held the royal right forehoof up between each of them and one eye, and began counting each of them in a way that indicated that she was thinking 'Enie-meanie-miney-moe...'
The guards of the royal throne were only the most experienced in the entire military. They had been in Her Grace's presence for most of their lives, even more than their own families. By now they could more or less predict whenever Celestia was getting ready to start up more antics of hers, and now was one of those times.
"...And you are not it." Celestia's gaze fell upon the guard to the right of her throne. The poor stallion was sweating bullets already, and his armor clinked noisily as he shivered. He could feel her gaze burning into the back of his skull. She lowered her hoof to resume a regal stance. A smile formed. "We'll see about that."