This New End begins just after Fluttershy asks, "What do we do, then?"
“There's just nothing we can do!” Rarity said. “If she keeps working on this, she'll disprove everything. Who knows what could happen?”
“She'll get brain-slapped by the universe, then meet a giant starry version of herself and a cavehuman named Thak?”
All eyes turned to Pinkie. “Sugarplum, what the hay was that?” Applejack asked.
“Pinkie, you are so random!” Rainbow Dash added.
“No, I'm totally serious!” Pinkie replied. “If we let her keep disproving stuff, those things will happen! Oh, or something else might happen, but I'm totally not allowed to say without Celestia's permission.”
“Does anypony know what she's talking about?” Fluttershy asked.
“Not a bit, but I think I have an idea.” Rarity looked at Pinkie with a gleam in her eye. “Tell me, darling. How much do you know about advanced mathematical theory?”
“Not a bit!” Pinkie told her.
“Then I think I have our solution.”
“Wait! Are we still going to burn Twilight's notes?” Pinkie asked.
“Why would we even... never mind.” Rarity shrugged it off. “If you really want to, sure. But first, we've got to cover phase 1.”
***
Twilight awoke with a light spring in her step. Last night, she had the most wonderful dreams! If her theories were correct, she'd been on her way to finally making sense of the madness that was the structure of this universe. All of that, however, was tossed to the side when she saw Pinkie sitting at her table, doodling away with what looked like a dark green crayon. “Pinkie? What are you doing in my house?” Twilight asked.
“I wanted to check out a book about tarts, when suddenly I saw all of your theories and stuff, and it looked like so much fun, so I decided to make my own!” Pinkie explained.
Twilight came over for a closer look. Sure enough, the crayon drawings were actually complicated theorems. Although... that one up in the corner used puffy clouds and smiley faces instead of variables. And this one was apparently taking the square root of string cheese. But it was the thought that counted. “Those are some great theories, Pinkie. Maybe I can put them up on the refrigerator when you're done, okay?” Twilight told her.
“What do you think of them? Aren't they great? And they prove without a doubt that magic is totally possible.”
The cheery morning ground to a halt. “What did you just say?” Twilight asked.
“See? Right here. I proved that magic is possible.” Pinkie pointed to a particularly squiggly theorem towards the middle. Twilight pored over it. It was ridiculous. Nonsensical. There were equations on top of equations, and variables with so many subscripts and superscripts that they were branching off into equations all their own. But somehow, it all came together into one little statement: “Magic=Yes.”
“No...How can that be?” Twilight could feel a strange warmth filling up her head. She shook her head to make it go away. “That's great and all, Pinkie, but why don't you leave the math to the experts?” Twilight told her. “It's obvious you don't know what you're doing.”
“Nuh-uh, I'm totally a real scientician!” Pinkie replied. “And I'll prove it to you, too!”
“I'm not in the mood for your ridiculous proofs, Pinkie,” Twilight said. “I'm trying to disprove all of the silly notions modern ponies believe.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Well, as I was sleeping last night, I came up with a very fascinating theory about pony hair color,” Twilight said. As she talked, she prepared her breakfast for the morning. “Our manes and coats are all sorts of strange colors, right? But how can that be? Keratin can only manifest certain colors, so they should only be those colors, like black, brown, and white. Our coats and manes are--”
“Pfft, that's no biggie. I proved that, like, right at the start,” Pinkie piped up. “That wasn't even hard.”
The glass Twilight had been holding shattered in her hoof. “I'm afraid you're mistaken, Pinkie. My proof is absolutely unarguable,” she said through gritted teeth.
“So is mine!” Pinkie said. She tore off a corner of her paper, crumpled it up into a ball, and threw it at Twilight. “See? Read it!”
Twilight read through it. “...Pinkie, your proof is just, 'Color is awesome. π times chroma = eleventy-twelve. Pony hair on body, pony hair in paintbrush. Pink is the best color, 9 squiggle 55, therefore--' PAINT?! Are you serious? That's your explanation?”
“It's unarguable!” Pinkie stated. “Oh, and it's 'curly curl,' not 'squiggle.' A real scientician would know that.”
“It's scientist, not scientician!” Twilight yelled. “Or mathematician, or statistician. And squiggle isn't a real thing!” Before Pinkie could interrupt, Twilight added, “And neither is curly curl!”
“My process is quite beside the point. My proof clearly demonstrates that our mane and coat colors are possible thanks to our bodies producing paint.” Pinkie nodded her head once, then returned to more writing.
Twilight could feel a migraine coming on. Pinkie was usually never this difficult. “Even accepting that paint was the answer, how would the body produce the paint? That doesn't make sense.”
“Huh. You're right. Let me recheck my theorems,” Pinkie said.
“Don't worry, you won't find anything. Like I said, it doesn't make any sense. Clearly, the only logical answer is that--”
“Found it! The answer is gumdrops.”
“...Gumdrops.”
“Yup! Gumdrops. I know this might be going too fast for a novice like you, but if you read this section really carefully, you'll see--”
“Gumdrops makes even less sense than paint!” Twilight shouted. The sheer force of her vocal outburst sent Pinkie, her proofs, and several heavy objects flying through the air, where they slammed into the back wall. Twilight remained by the refrigerator, her nostrils flared and her eyes aflame.
“Twilight! Your horn; it's glowing!” Pinkie said.
She looked up. There was, in fact, a purplish-pink aura around her horn. She took a few deep breaths and stopped casting magic. “Don't be silly, Pinkie. That would be impossible. I'm sure it was just some sort of... shared delusion. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some work to do.” With breakfast basically an impossibility at this point, she returned to her desk and went back to her work. She contented herself with the fact that Pinkie could stick to her own devices.
...An idea that would have worked had Pinkie stuck to the same principle. “Whatcha doin'?” she asked, now tucked underneath the table and twisted at an unnatural angle to look at the work.
“Well, I was working on a theory on the equine skull protruding a horn before you interrupted. I'm analyzing the frontward bone development and deciding if--”
“Done!” Beneath where Twilight had been working, Pinkie had doodled her crazy symbols and numbers all over Twilight's precious thoughts, leaving only “Head=Pointy, but Unis Only!” where Twilight had intended some sort of actual conclusion. “See? That wasn't so hard, was it?” Pinkie asked.
“Pinkie...”
“I know, I know. Pointy and Only are pretty slanty for rhymes, but it'll work for a preliminary theorem. And yes, the part where I apply the Rostnakolian Sunlight Principle to the Thunderwide Scenario is shaky at best, but if you assume the White Cupcake Axiom, then it should work out for the time being.”
“Pinkie! Your logic is so flawed, it's not even wrong.”
“That's good, right?” Pinkie asked.
“No, it's an expression, it means--”
“If I'm not even wrong, then I must be right, right?”
“That's not how it works!”
“But if horns exist, and my theory explains it, then it must be right, right?”
“That's not even close to real science!”
“Just admit that you're jealous of how smart I am.”
“You're not smart, Pinkie! You're the opposite of smart! I can't believe I'm even having this conversation with you! You've never done any real research in your life unless it was for a pastry recipe! You couldn't prove your way out of a wet paper bag!”
“...That's not true,” Pinkie said. Was she...?
Twilight cringed. “No, Pinkie, please don't cry, I didn't mean that...”
“I have so done real research in my life! I helped my dad prove that rubies and sapphires grow differently in different soil conditions! I helped my sister develop a formula for categorizing the sucromorphosis of deep-tier minerals! I won my fifth grade science fair for a theory on magnets!”
“...You know, I probably should have put together that Pinkamena's Law was yours,” Twilight noted. “But that doesn't change the fact that these theories don't make any sense, Pinkie.”
“You just don't understand them!” Pinkie said. “If you'd just give them a chance...” She put forth her best puppy-dog eyes. They were like a black hole; Twilight was powerless to resist.
“All right. I'll give you a chance. What do you want to prove?”
“No no no. If you really trust me, you have to try it for yourself.”
Twilight groaned. “All right. I'll give it a shot. What are we proving?”
Pinkie leaned in close. “Listen real closely. There are certain ponies in Equestria that can lift objects from a distance, or change their properties, or do all sorts of things, without any physical contact. How is that possible?”
“It's not. It's impossible,” Twilight said. “That's magic. I disproved it.”
“Yes, but you disproved it with your normal logic. You need to use my logic!” Pinkie reminded her.
“Well, but can't I just disprove it with your logic?” Twilight asked.
“Maybe... maybe not,” Pinkie replied. “You'll have to do it first.”
Twilight sighed. “Okay, Pinkie. We'll do this your way. 'Ponies can lift stuff. This implies the presence of some sort of force--'”
“No, no, no. You're doing it all wrong. That's your logic. You need to use my logic.”
“So, what, 'Ponies can lift stuff. Ice cream?'”
“Hmm...no, ice cream doesn't make sense,” Pinkie said. “Now, frozen yogurt, maybe. Oh, or sour cream. Did you mean sour cream, Twilight?”
“Fine, sour cream.” Twilight was beyond arguing with Pinkie. “'Ponies can lift stuff. Sour cream. 9 to the 12th power, then unicorn and unicycle.'”
“No, no, if you want to go from 9 to the 12th power to unicorn and unicycle, you need to have a not-Y first.”
“Ugh! 'Ponies can lift stuff. Sour cream. 9 to the 12th power, not-Y, unicorn and unicycle.'”
“Go on...”
“'Money is power, 7 sub φ minus i, therefore not magic.' There, happy?” Twilight said, triumphant.
“...No, I'm sorry, that doesn't follow.”
“Come on!”
“If you've got a 7 sub φ minus i, you've got to use the Nightwing Ideology to begin the Wide Lens Continuum. Then you can--”
“All right, all right, fine. '7 sub φ minus i, yellow to green, shift the blackbody diagram, I like cake...' Hey, this is kind of fun! 'I like cake, then please and thank you, raise da roof, flame and light--'”
“Ooh, that's very innovative! I wouldn't have thought of that.”
“'Flame and light, A squared plus B squared, natural log x-5, therefore...' therefore...”
“Come on, Twilight, you can do it!”
“'Therefore... clouds?'”
“No.”
“'Music?'”
“No.”
“'Boat nectar?'”
“No.”
“Frozen yogurt?”
“No.”
“Telekinesis?”
“Almost!”
“Magic!” Twilight jumped up and cheered. “I got through an entire proof!” She jumped up into the air and did a mid-air somersault.
“And look what you proved!” Pinkie told her. “You proved that magic is possible!”
“And if magic is possible, then all of those other things are possible too! I need to get started.” She lifted a group of pens with her magic and showed it to Pinkie.
Within a few moments, Rarity appeared on the scene. “Pinkie, my magic's back! Does that mean it worked?”
“Absotively posilutely!” Pinkie gestured towards the busy princess. “See for yourself.”
Twilight had a huge group of pens scrawling various goofy theories. One seemed to imply that salsa had something to do with dragons, and another stated under no uncertain terms that clouds and cotton candy were sub-atomically similar. “Hello, Rarity!” Twilight said. “Good to see you here. I'm just fixing up my old theorems. I can't believe how obviously wrong they were!”
“That's great, dear.” Rarity pulled Pinkie off to the side where Twilight couldn't hear. “So that was phase 1 and 2. Convince Twilight that Pinkie logic works, then use it to prove magic works.”
“Went off without a hitch!” Pinkie said.
“That leaves phase 3. Wean her off of Pinkie logic. All you have to do is make Pinkie logic more and more logical until she's back to regular old logic again.”
Pinkie paused for a moment. She blinked a few times. “What are you talking about?”
“Getting rid of Pinkie logic. That was the whole plan. I mean, darling,” --Rarity forced herself to laugh-- “Pinkie logic is totally illogical. We don't want her using that for the rest of her life.”
“I don't understand. Pinkie logic is totally normal. Why wouldn't Twilight use it?”
“...Do you remember your proof for Pinkamena's Law, dear?”
“Of course! 'Magnets produce a magnetic field, symbolized with the letter B. The surface integral of this field is known as the magnetic flux.'”
“Phew, and here I was afraid you'd gone native. Well, not to worry--”
“'Magnetic flux is most common around rocks that like to play card games. e to the negative puffy cloud, crazy clowns, strawberry is not a gem, therefore magnetite is magnetic!' See? Perfectly logical.”
Rarity looked at the two of them in shock. “By Celestia...it's spreading too.”