Chapter 4
The next morning Pinkie awoke to a bright and sunny day; it was filled with the multitudinal chirps of the birds and noises of the ponies and maybe perhaps the smell of strawberries and ice cream too, but she could only guess.
Jumping straight out of bed, meaning that she just missed hitting the ceiling, Pinkie hopped into the bathroom to clean herself up. Because of her sleeping self’s tossing and turning habits during the night, her awake self had to make sure that her out-in-the-open-talking-to-everypony-in-town self looked alright. This morning was pleasantly different from the others. Pinkie’s mane still had its poof; it was probably helping her out for what she was doing today. How considerate, She thought. She thanked her mane gratefully and proceeded into the shower.
Pinkie’s morning shower sequence was all important to any beginning of the day, maybe even the middle or the after part of it too (if the occasion called for it), and today it was even more all important than usual.
The song was probably one of the procedure’s most crucial bits, because the tune of it carried Pinkie along at just the right pace, so that she spent just enough time in the shower to get clean, but not long enough that her hooves became prunie. It had taken her a bit of time to figure out how long was long enough and not too long to sing the song for, so she wouldn’t have to deal with prunie hooves, but it was altogether worth it.
She stepped out of the shower and dried herself off. ”Yeppers, not prunie.” Pinkie mused, lifting a forehoof to check. And this was perfect; Pinkie was going to hang out with Twilight.
She had planned the whole day out for them last night too, and nothing was going to get in the way of messing it all up, not even prunie hooves.
The pink pony zoomed down the steps and into the kitchen to prepare a quick breakfast. Some oats with fruit would do nicely, Pinkie reasoned and she began to gather what she needed. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and peaches were carefully mixed into the oats and shortly after, they were mixed into Pinkie’s digestive system.
“Yummmm,” Pinkie said upon finishing another breakfast time masterpiece (self-proclaimed, of course).
Mr. and Mrs. Cake were making their way down just at that moment and heard the drawn out moan of satisfaction. They knew that sound all too well by now and neither pony could help smile at the pink mare for not swaying from tradition this morning.
“Good morning, Pinkie.” They both sang in unison, both with smiles on their faces and each with a baby Cake in their hoof.
“Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Cake!” Pinkie replied, equally cheerily.
“Guhhh.” Mouthed Pound Cake.
“Mmm-mor…nhh,” Said Pumpkin.
“And good morning to you two too, guys.” Pinkie giggled at the almost tongue twister, jumping over to them after having put her dishes in the sink. “Well, I should be off now. Gotta lot of fun things to do today and I can’t be late for them…even if I’m the only one who knows about those plans, somepony could still miss them without knowing they’ve missed them. Oh, that would be horrible. Then they wouldn’t know that they’d missed out on all the fun I had planned for and would be sad for no reason because they didn’t take part in whatever I had planned for today!” Pinkie gasped. “Oh my, I’ve gotta get over to Twilight’s house before I ruin somepony’s day. Bye Mr. and Mrs. Cake and Pound and Pumpkin!”
Before the two older ponies could respond, she was gone. Mr. Cake turned to his wife and sighed. “The pony is like a wind-up toy, as soon as day breaks she’s off nonstop until night.”
“Yes, but she’s our wind-up toy dear.” Mrs. Cake replied, shuffling into the kitchen with Pound on her shoulder.
*****
Twilight awoke in the morning to a dragon, stubbornly trying to fall back asleep. Apparently he had woken up several hours earlier than he wanted and wasn’t having any luck getting back to his pleasant dream.
Twilight giggled and pulled the covers up so she could get up. “Oh, Spike. I think that means that you’re awake for good, until bedtime again.”
Spike glared at the unicorn. “Well I wouldn’t be having this problem if somepony hadn’t been in the basement making all that racket last night. You woke me up.”
The lavender pony blushed and hung her head. “Oh yeah, sorry about that. I’m just really excited to be spending time with Pinkie and I can get some more research done about her sense at the same time.”
Ignoring the indignant eye roll of the little dragon, Twilight hurried off to the bathroom to have a shower and brush her mane. Her hair, as usual, was quite the mess of bed-head. Twilight sighed while wearing a soft knowing smile and hopped into the shower and began to wash up.
Now Twilight had a precise way of taking a shower. Everything was in order from when she washed her mane and tail to her coat. No wasting time with bathing in the warm waters until after she had finished cleaning herself. Once Twilight was all clean, she took five minutes to take in the heat and pleasant water that streamed against her. Quite a calculated way of doing things and just enough time spent inside that when she hopped back out, Twilight’s hooves wouldn’t be soaked and shriveled.
Taking the towel from its designated spot, just outside the shower, Twilight wrapped it around herself and stepped out of the shower. She turned the shower head off and proceeded to dry off.
“Perfect. Now my day with Pinkie will be terrific.” Twilight mused to herself as she noticed her mane in the mirror. Soaked, and not much better than it was before. She placed the towel on her head and rubbed her head with it until her hair was dry. Then Twilight levitated her brush over to her and brushed it straight. Satisfied with her mane once she finished, the unicorn neatly tucked her brush and towel back into their places and stepped out of the bathroom.
At that very moment there came a knock on the door. A song-like tune that Twilight thought she heard include a tuba and a trumpet. Shrugging it off easily as another one of Pinkie’s many odd talents, Twilight teleported to the door and pulled it open.
“Hiya Twilight. You ready to have some fun today?” Pinkie asked, hopping a few hooves in the air happily. Twilight took this time to see if Pinkie had hidden either a tuba or trumpet (or both) about her, there wasn’t.
“Hi Pinkie and sure, but I was just wondering,” Twilight began, but she hesitated for a minute. Then she continued, “I was wondering if we could do something that I came up with last night.” The smile she wore twinged with nervousness seeing the little pony stop her bouncing; Twilight hoped she would accept, or at least not be angry with her.
Pinkie’s expression softened after a few seconds, and she said, “Oh, sure, that’s fine. I had planned out our day, but we can always do that some other time. Plenty of days to go anyway, and I can’t say what we do all the time.” She resumed her sporadic bouncing. “So what did you have in mind?”
Here goes, Twilight thought. There was no holding back now, not with Pinkie looking at her like that. So Twilight took a deep breath, then let it out. Harder than I thought it would be. Okay. “I thought we’d go and do a little research on our friends in Ponyville…”
Pinkie’s face went blank. “…without them knowing it…”
Pinkie blinked, but she said nothing.
“…Er…”
“So…” Pinkie started suddenly, “you mean…like what you did with me before?”
Twilight looked a little guilty. She felt quite nervous now, like any second, whether she answered or not, Pinkie would start yelling at her. She nodded without a word.
The earth pony was silent again.
The unicorn continued to be silent.
Together, they were twice as silent, but then Pinkie got bored of being silent and suspenseful and said, “Okie dokey lokie!”
Twilight blinked, and blinked again. “What?” She said.
“Okay, it sounds fine with me.” Pinkie repeated with a grin.
“You really don’t mind?”
“Nope. I’ll get to see what you did before. Maybe I can help you with some of it too.”
Twilight gulped, and immediately afterward wished she hadn’t, because she thought that anxious gulp was loud enough for Pinkie to hear it; and if Pinkie heard it then she would suspect something about what she had planned for today, and that wasn’t very good. But given that nothing happened directly after the occurrence to which Twilight was most opposed to allowing Pinkie to hear, she dismissed it as another overreaction on her part.
She’d been having a lot of those lately, Twilight thought and made a mental note to stop or at least, if possible, lower the quantity at which she made those types of reactions.
“Okay, great. Well, I thought we would begin at Sweet Apple Acres with Applejack.” Twilight stated as she stepped back into the treehouse, motioning for Pinkie to follow. “I just need to get my saddlebags and all of the equipment ready.”
“Ooh ooh! I can help. Here let me grab this…this…what is this?” Pinkie held up a rectangular object with little pebbles attached to it by wooden cylinders.
“It’s called an abacus, a tool used for calculations. I used it many times to record how many times a certain type of your Pinkie-sense occured.” And even now I’m going to use it for that purpose. “But this time I’m using it to record curious data in the way that our friends react to certain stimuli.”
“Oooh, I bet you could make a fun game out of this thing.” Pinkie exclaimed, flicking the pebbles from one side to the other.
Twilight rolled her eyes and groaned an almost inaudible groan. To be honest, she didn’t give a right hoof if that groan happened to be audible or not, or if it wasn’t a groan at all, but turned out to be part of a strange alien language. She just needed to hear her inner frustration at the moment and (possibly) for others to experience it as well. She sighed. And this is the pony I have feelings for? It was going to be a long day, she thought.