6.8
6-8
“So, let me get this straight-“
“Well, when you say it like that, Twilight-“
“The reason that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon caused so much trouble for so long is because they both learned the wrong lessons from their fathers regarding a series of misadventures and misteachings that took place from the usual Ponyvile coincidences and the two stallion’s own inexperience in parenting.”
“That would be the general outline of it.”
“Where they ended up getting together in friendship because they misunderstood the intents of their fathers regarding a mistaken case involving colts.”
“Silver Smith was rather mortified that chasing that colt away over thinking he was doing naughty things with Spoon would lead her to thinking certain types of ponies were off-limits to soc-“
“Stop interrupting me.”
“Sorry.”
“So, having latched onto each other due to their poor life lessons imparted by the misunderstandings of what their fathers taught them, they proceed to become best friends and develop a poisonous classist/tribalist theory about how pony society works. THEN they turn it on every-pony else in town after deciding from their parent’s teachings that they’re near the top of their imagined society. They’ve gotten a crazy idea that there are ‘leader ponies’ who can be identified by cutie mark, and that there is a place in the world for every single pony that they’re not supposed to deviate from. And just to make it even more annoying, they think they’re Celestia’s own gift to society and they’re actually trying to be helpful in their bullying. They’re failing harder than Discord trying to live up Rarity’s standard of dress with his own home-spun clothes doing it, but they’re trying.”
“Correct.”
“And the reason that the foals are turning around and bullying Silver Spoon now is because they’re unleashing the past four or five years of misery that she and Diamond Tiara inflicted back upon her without thinking. This in part because Diamond actually partially succeeded in passing along her stupid philosophy, and it’s stuck in their heads. But mostly because Diamond is no longer around with her money and her daddy to shield Silver Spoon from their wrath.”
“An accurate summation. Could you please stop waving your hooves at me like that?”
Heh-hem! “And just to crown off this mountain of madness, you want to turn around and have Silver Spoon make friends with the three fillies she bullied the most in some vaguely-planned hair-brained scheme to stop the bullying and correct her philosophy. Oh, and those three fillies are all extremely inventive, smart, and have enough power in each of them to be the next Star—uh, the next me in their respective fields! They know where to hide the bodies!” That last part had been a bit on the hysterical side, but the whole thing was begging for trouble.
“It does sound unreasonable at the first repetition, but I have a plan!” Sunbeam counter-crowed to Twilight, slamming one hoof down onto the purple crystal of the alicorn’s desk and pointing her other up to pierce the heavens with her determination. Okay, she tried to, but couldn’t quite make it past the deceptively low roof of Twilight’s personal office hidden away in a cleft of the mighty Tree-Fortress of Friendship. Okay, every building had somewhat of a low roof for her, save for Canterlot, come to think of it.
Twilight arched her eyebrows mere seconds before scooting Sunbeam’s hoof from off of her desk, causing the old pegasus to yelp as she fell down without balance. “A plan.” Twilght’s hooves shook in the air over her desk, propped up at the elbows to rest just a few inches apart from each other in front of her face, getting shaken back and forth between her and Sunbeam. It came to mind to crawl up onto her desk entirely just so she could grab Sunbeam and shake her by the shoulders until she saw reason.
She wasn’t too fond of that plan, either. Not because Sunbeam was secretly her mentor in a not-at-all clever disguise and failing miserably to convince ponies that she wasn’t Celestia—okay, so she was succeeding with ponies who hadn’t met her before, but that didn’t exactly help in Ponyvile. No, it was more the towering stacks of medical journals, case files, articles on her own ascension, dictionaries and textbooks that had swallowed up the free space of her queen-sized desk all the way up to the low ceiling, leaving only the tiniest sliver of a gap for her to worm through in order to do the deed. With her luck, the whole edifice of systematic research would crash down onto her head at the slightest hint of vibration, leaving her with the usual results of the Crusader’s quests instead of a systematic research compilation on their medical status.
In a halfway serious bout of musing, she wondered if the popping sensations on her scalp were cowlicks popping from her mane, or brain cells exploding in miniature thermonuclear detonations of bad ideas and coincidences. Yeah, she was betting on the brain cells. “You know what, let me guess. You don’t actually have a plan, do you? Making it up as you go along?”
“Most of a plan.” Sunbeam corrected as she worriedly scooted backwards on the thick, velvet-swaddled cushion. “Part of a plan.” Scoot-scoot. “All the important bits of a plan.” Scoot-scoot. Twilight growled at her just before the lavender mare’s muzzle met hooves in a sinking moan of frustration. Maybe she should have let Twilight find out afterwards when the deed had been done and it all looked like a brilliant piece of work. “Well, all the outlines of the plan. I might need to color a little inside and outside the lines with some plan-crayons, but I know all the things I generally need to do to make this work.” Sunbeam babbled a little, glad that she could actually improvise to her heart’s content and just be—normal.
It felt good. Refreshing, even. A breath of air after a toothpaste-flavored neverending cake. Running the nation had been a good thing for her, up until the grittiness and gooey comprimises were made, and the good feelings of helping ponies had gone away. “I have a plan, Twilight. I was just letting you know before I found the others I needed to make it work. It’ll work. My plans will work.”
Twilight didn’t look up from her hooves as she let the second of the great many groans of frustration she needed to get out of her chest escape. “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Her hooves slowly rode upwards, ruffling her mane into great points just in front of her ears. Then they rubbed downwards, the frogs of her hooves slowly tugging her fur flat until they clopped together just under her chin.
“What?” Sunbeam tilted her head in confusion, one ear flopping flat while the other held high.
“It sounds like you’re going to Rainbow Dash the problem instead of properly planning it out.” Twilight complained as she moved her hooves back to the sides of her head and started rubbing again to squeeze out the pain. All she had to do was focus on her home coming back together, and the nice new reprints of her doctorate and many degrees hanging on the walls between the bookshelves of her reconstituted private library. Mmm, books solved everything, even friendships.
“What’s wrong with Rainbow Dashing?”
When had Cel—Sunbeam—gotten so impulsive? Oh, that’s right, according to Luna impulsiveness and being Pinkie in ancient form mixed with Fluttershy and a bit of her was Sunbeam’s natural state, and the face she had put on for forever had been a crazy lie. Was it so bad to let her be so unburdened and unstressed?
“Look, can we risk it?” Twilight finally asked her old mentor as she finally got her thoughts in order. “I don’t want to think about the three of them actually picking up Silver Spoon’s—aberration of a philosophy.”
“They went four years while putting up with it from the wrong end. They’ve got you, me, all of your friends, and plenty of others are positive role models and watch ponies all making up for one another’s failures. Wouldn’t it be better to show them that there is a bit of good even in the worst pony if it can just be brought out?” Sunbeam ruffled her feathers, slowly wreathing her wings around her body as she fidgeted in place with the need to move. “I don’t want to validate Silver Spoon’s ideas by just writing her off. We could teach them to follow in your hoof-steps and fix issues! Nothing could possibly go—hurp!” Sunbeam wanted very much to escape and scoot back from the clinging presence wrapped around her and the hoof jammed into her cheeks to silence her. Twilight had teleported right up to her face and smushed her muzzle by the cheeks while intensely glaring into her eyes nose-to-nose with the eyes of a mad-pony.
“Never, ever say that. You’ll summon—her!” Twilight furtively looked back and forth across the narrow office space, her gaze bouncing back and forth across every single nook and cranny as if expecting an ambush at any moment. If Sunbeam could look into her head for just a moment, or feel Twilight’s chest, she might notice the blind panic Twilight was in.
A panic born from experience, of observations gone terribly wrong. Her heart raced, trying to turn the alicorn princess’s coffee-stream—mixed with just a hint of blood, she was slacking off—into an adrenaline rapids. Rivers of thoughts flooded their banks as she frighteningly pondered how that one friend tended to take the laws of physics and magic into a dark alleyway to perform a Tirek on them. She didn’t even dare think the name, lest the menace appear.
But such contemplations could not enter into the mind of the innocent mare. Her squished muzzle squeezed most of the chance of seeing things that way out of her head. Sort of like a toothpaste tube.
A frumpy scowl squeezed in between the purple hooves as Sunbeam wondered what had gotten into her former student’s head. More importantly, a nicker of frustration on her part wasn’t supposed to sound like the quacking of an underwater duck farm. Wait, there was one being beyond the realms of Discord who might send her into such a tizzy. “Is ‘her’ Pinkie Pie?”
HISS!
Ah. So it was. Another one of Twilight’s phobias about the mare. It wasn’t like she could just pop out of the aether at random. “Fine, then. I won’t say her name, but this paranoia is most unbecoming of you.” And her face was starting to hurt with the way Twilight was compressing it into a slice of orange pie.
Could she actually pull her head out from between the semi-frozen hooves? Her hooves dug into the velvet cushion beneath her as she started scrabbling backwards, uselessly wriggling her head back. Instead of freeing herself, she felt more like she was about to scrape it off like the icing off a cake. The whole process made her head ache like trying to sneak an ice cream cake all at once whilst a thousand-‘noble’ court droned at her. “May I have my face back, Twilight? I can’t give it to you, and I would like it to not get stuck like this, please.”
Blink. Shock. Jolt! Jerk! “Oh no! Oh, oh, what have I-“ Boop. “Gah! Stop that! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-“ Boop. “Stoppit! P- ‘Her’ sense gets me worked up sometimes.” Twilight frowned a little as she scooted back from Sunbeam, mostly at the mare’s incredulous look. “Hey! It makes sense if you’ve tried to figure her out for four years and still get caught by surprise every time you turn around! The phobia, not her. She still makes no sense!” Twilight ranted.
Properly, of course. Making sure to mentally limit herself from pacing and flailing her limbs like a mad-pony. She had a completely legitimate reason to be frustrated and she wasn’t about to let her own gestures undermine her arguments. Her taped off box specifically marked off on the floor beside her desk awaited her, and she flumped down in it and started rubbing her head. It was a good spot, one for keeping herself contained so she could complain safely when she felt like the world was being more irrational than the square root of a negative number.
Ugh. Now she was going to have another headache on top of the one already induced by Sunbeam’s zany scheme to fix Silver Spoon. She was not going to dignify it by calling it a plan. “Sorry. Look, uh, I’ll make you a list later of all the phrases and actions you should avoid. Pinkie could be summoned by any of them, and that could be problematic if you’re working on something delicate. I really should send out a memo to every-pony in town, come to think of it.”
Sunbeam frowned. Then paused, thoughtfully twitching. Then smiled, sneakily and mischievously. How useful indeed. Why, Pinkie was just the one she needed to talk to anyway! Of course, Pinkie made much more sense than Twilight thought with the nice example of Scootaloo to work with. She sized up the room amidst Twilight’s irritated and agitated silence, quickly figuring out exactly where to stand for optimal effect. Calculating measurements of a pair of mostly loose-paper stacks were made by eye; a mental processing of Twilight’s irritated reaction times were made; a pondering of the optimal position was put together in short order.
Yes, a nice stretch and ‘walk’ around the room would make things just right.
“You know, Twilight, your reaction seems rather irrational.” Sunbeam coyly chided as she clambered up to all hooves and stretched languidly.
Watching Sunbeam slowly amble over to the dark oak display case containing the replicas of the Elements of Harmony, Twilight slowly laid her head down onto her forelegs to rest. “I know, I know.” Cadance’s breath exercise was put into full effect as Twilight shimmied down into her ranting cushion and spread her wings and legs wide. “She just gets to me every time I least expect it. It’s like her sense somehow knows exactly when I’ve let down my guards and become most psychologically vulnerable to her antics.”
“How odd.” No it wasn’t. Sunbeam knew that that wasn’t Pinkie, but Laughter channeling itself through her. No need to tell Twilight that yet; only when it was funny. She tapped the glass of the case gently, rubbing it as she looked them over and remembered times good and bad.
A war of wills raged within her as she wondered if it might not be slightly easier on Twilight to avoid summoning Pinkie. Then again, her former student was being entirely unreasonable and had failed to take into account new evidence. On the other-other hoof, it would be funnier than the time Luna drew a ‘boop button’ on her nose. She looked down, biting a lip to hide her smirk and hold back her snickers as she checked to make sure that she hadn’t grown a third foreleg by accident. Mishandling the elements was just embarrassing. “Well, certainly Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong with taunting her.”
Much like a mouse realizing the enormity of the cat standing above it, Twilight had barely enough time to squeak indignantly and cast a bubble shield over herself as Pinkie made her move. A fierce rattle of movement gave little warning before the desk file drawer next to Twilight sprung open to its fullest extent, locking out with a ding of a dinner bell. Pinkie sprung upwards from its depths with a mane full of caught files; one hoof slamming down onto the desktop with a resounding clop, the other pointing to the heavens as she shouted at the top of her lungs and shook it wildly. “Inconceivable!”
The bottle-bottom glasses distorting her vision was a nice touch. Added to the sheer absurdity of the situation.
Sunbeam didn’t miss a beat as Twilight was buried beneath the cascading stacks of peer-reviewed papers and loose-leaf case files from the formerly precarious stack transforming into a rather irresistible avalanche. Twilight’s bubble shield, cast at the last possible second, did a great deal to soothe her worries. Shields ran in Twilight’s family, and the purplish glow beneath the haphazard mountain of papers was a good sign when paired with the groan of annoyance.
Besides, Sunbeam had seen weirder things in her past. She’d done weirder things herself in the old days. First thing, though, was correcting the joke. “Pinkie, I believe that word doesn’t quite mean what you think it means.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No. Technically, you have conceived the idea of nothing possibly going wrong. However, as you should, you’ve realized that such a thing isn’t actually possible, so—“
“Ooooh! Good point! Well cue me again, Sunny!” Pinkie said whilst giggling as she slowly sank back down into the drawer with a lazy wriggle. All the files in her mane seemingly floated up as her head disappeared into the tight space, each finding a proper place and once more finding their order before the drawer shook again and slammed shut.
Sunbeam glanced around at the dark shelves lining most of the walls as she stretched out again and moved over for the second cuing. She should have looked back to the desk; she might have noticed the slight wriggle of the massive medical dictionary that had formed the foundation of the stack. Shifting back and forth ever so slightly, teetering where the two shakes of the desk has wriggled it out and close to tipping over the edge.
One deep breath, and then she intoned the phrase again. “Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong!” She made sure that the words were imbued with all of the snark, repression, and unfond memories of the past thousand years, and more than a bit of age-old irritation at a bit of ancient history. While words and song could have power, the age-old chanting pretentious chanting clap-trap nonsense that the priests and mage-councils had forced on her and her sister before Luna’s banishment came to mind as she snarked at them from across time and space through the power of the Pinkie.
“Impossible!” Cried Pinkie as she popped out of the other file drawer of the desk. Yelp went the Sunbeam as she started and realized that Pinkie had popped out from the wrong place as she whipped around. Rustle went the last of the papers atop the medical dictionary, falling off one by one as their foundation hopped up and bounced down just a little too far past the tipping point. The thump came last, dropping onto Twilight as the dictionary cracked her hasty shield and fell the last hoof-length onto her back.
Two sets of eyes widened in horror and looked around the corners of the desk at Twilight, seeing only the very tip of her horn and the ends of her legs sticking forth from beneath the scholarly scree slump. Pinkie winced as the hooves slowly shook and went limp, holding out a hoof hoping to help. “Oh gosh. Is she okay?”
Groan. “Just my pride.”
Sunbeam winced once again, cringing a little as a rattle of irritation shook the pile of papers. She inched over bit by bit, worming her way out of the line of sight of Twilight’s horn. That had gone a little too far. “Do you need help, Twilight?”
Ugh. “No.”
“Oh. Okay.” Yes, Twilight didn’t seem to be too happy with her. “Well, I’ll leave you to that. I need your help, Pinkie.” Sunbeam pointed her right hoof at the madmare, leaning off of the desk as she challenged her with a manic smirk.
“You do!?!” Pinkie’s eyes widened like a kitten finding its first mouse and she leaned around the other stack of hard-bound books. Her eyes were practically dancing with mischievous energy, magnified a hundredfold by the bottle-bottom play glasses. Her eyebrows furrowed as she realized that something about Sunbeam seemed to fall right up her alley. “Oooooh. You need my ‘special’ kind of help.”
“Eeyup.”
“Hehe.”
“Don’t tell Big Mac.” Sunbeam nodded in satisfaction as Pinkie zipped her lips. “Going to be using the Sparkle Conflict Theory to form a particularly unlikely friendship.”
Pinkie tilted her head. “Uh-huh. Wait! Got it! Mutual peril to foster friendships!”
“Peril most perilous.” Sunbeam sagely said, wrapping her barrel with a wing as she sat down.
“Oooh! I’m the peril! I always wanted to be the peril! What kind of peril do you need? Swashy-buckly, pretzel-ey, uh—“
“A most sweet and sugary waistline imperilment with which to tempt others and force them to defend one another.”
Scribble-scribble. One would not be wise to ask where the notebook had come from, in Pinkie’s opinion; a question left unanswered lest they go mad from the revelation. Okay, she had totally stolen one of Twilight’s spares, and would bring it back later. “Ooooh, the best kind! I can work with that. At The Corner, or-“
“In the corner. Doesn’t matter what exact method. Probably better to surprise me in order to make the reactions seem more genuine. Some kind of imperilment four foals can save me from.”
“Four? Wait! Silver Spoon.” Pinkie ducked her head low and glanced about the room after growling the bully’s name. Something about that filly just wasn’t right.
“It’s the only way to help her. And I can help her, even if I have to put my flank on the line! Whatever it takes!” She’d done it before: Luna, others. Just not quite so—expansively.
“Are you sure you’re not trying to cheat on your diet?” Pinkie poked her with the eraser of a pencil as she inquired.
“No, Pinkie. Only through connecting her with the Crusaders will help. I can’t make it without a neutral, uniting cause. I have a personal connection with her now, since her father took her out of school for the moment and hired me to help homeschool her for at least this week. I’m connecting with her, since I’m trying to be fair to her.”
“Oh. Well, okay-wait, next week? So, how can I know when?”
“When I come in with Silver Spoon while the Crusaders are there. Don’t worry, you’ll know exactly when to start.”
“Okie-dokie-Sunny!” Pinkie saluted her valiantly, sinking back down into the file drawer like the last moments of a ship. Her valiant salute was held as she disappeared into the folded waves with nary a ripple, leaving the room in silence.
Ah. There was that last clue to prove it. Ho-ho. If, indeed, the faint tremor Sunbeam had sensed was real. Poor Twilight had probably given up looking long before her ascension. So easily frustrated some days. Hah! Pinkie was hardly an enigma wrapped in a cruller, dunked in ice cream and buried in a cake! She just had all of her documentation upside down and backwards, at least when compared to unicorn magic.
“Yes. Do please explain. I’m dying to hear.”
“That last part was out loud, wasn’t it?” Not a question, just a painful rhetorical statement as Sunbeam winced.
“Just a lot.” Twilight sourly remarked as she slowly dug herself free of her paper grave. Her hind-legs kicked helplessly for a moment as she tried to wriggle out from under the medical dictionary, muttering and grumbling as another drift of papers slipped off to shower upon her head. A hoof went to her mane, shaking it until no semblance of order could be found as she rid herself of her most unfashionable accessories once more. “So what exactly were you trying to say?”
“She’s pulling a Scootaloo without any-pony—likely not even her—noticing or knowing, and probably learned most of her wilder tricks from you.” Sunbeam offered a hoof and let it hang in front of Twilight until the young alicorn took it and wriggled free of her entangling morass.
“So, how can you tell? I could never make heads or tails of it.”
“Just a few tell-tales around her. She’s probably got little bits of other tribe’s magicks, judging from the way pegasi magic trembled around her. Plus, you know, the obvious example of Scootaloo makes it rather obvious.” Sunbeam sheepishly smiled, earning a groan of disgust from her former protégé.
Twilight slid up and out with her grip on Sunbeam’s leg, sliding out on a rustle of paper until she collapsed on the slope of the great mess. Of course it had to be something simple like that, of course it had to have been something easy to test for if only she had known to test for it, of course it had to be the simple made fantastic instead of some eldritch abomination that her imagination had conjured up! Why didn’t she just put a sign on her sparkly butt saying ‘Smack here for free candy from the other end’? It’d be easier and simpler.
“Self-flagellation doesn’t help, Twilight.” Sunbeam verbally prodded, poking her with her hoof as Twilight’s fore-legs slipped from their death grip to limply flop to the crystal floors. “You were thinking aloud like me. It might be contagious. Are you really alright?”
Twilight sighed with more melodrama than Sweetie Belle and Rarity. Combined. “No, no I’m not. But I have friends. I’ll live. I think.” The addition of the last part rather reduced the reassurance factor of her preceding platitudes. Much like a sulfur hexafluoride-filled lead balloon. Twilight’s roll onto her back was perfectly timed. Just as she looked up, a last file chased after its brethren to flop down onto her face. How adorable. It was a little parasprite.
Ah, right. One last order of business. “You do realize my theorem isn’t peer reviewed yet, right?”
“Well, I’m sort of your peer, and I’m testing it!” Sunbeam helpfully chirped.
“I don’t think it works quite in the way you think it works…”
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*Le Gasp* Princess Celestia cheating on something?! MADNESS! Madness I say!!
It's nice to see another chapter, even if it didn't go as far or glorious as I may have wanted. Though we did get some great Pinkie Pie & Sunbutt Mischief going on!! <3
Celes- no, Sunbeam got a plan that involves Pinkie Pie? Nothing can go wrong there. Seems like a typical tuesday in Ponyville to me. But... 12%? That is... rather high, even for Luna's standards (whose plans are always around 5-8%, Celestia's have yet to be measured and are thought to be negative digits).
Also, Pinkie Pie.
I cannot fathom why Twilight doesn't just teleport Sunbeam away from her whenever she makes a smirk or mischevious smile. But then again, I'm not Princess of Friendship either.
I do feel like Sunbeam is transfering a lot of her stress onto Twilight though, or at least that Twilight seems to be stressing more. I get that she's trying to be less responsible, but does Sunbeam have to 'punish' her student to do it?
6414542 misery loves company, but madness creates it.
Celestia is just doing what all the great lords of the universe do. I mean if star lords and time lords can pull it of then why can't she?
*Hears explosion in the distance, also hearing pony in the distance complaining about his cabbages being destroyed.*
That, for example. How did a piece of TNT get under a cabbage cart, anyway?
hello Mr Montoya . Captain Roberts is looking for you
Don't worry guys, I have a plan! No no you do not princess sunbutt. This is turning out to be a family trait it seems between luna and celestia for really bad "plans" lol
Excellent
I was going to post the clip, but I decided it was too obvious.
6414620
MY CABBAGES!!!
(obligatory Video of Cabbage Vendor from Avatar: the Last Airbender here)
hurray for updates!!
6415225
>enigma wrapped in a crueler
Knowing Pinkie, wouldn't it be a cruller instead?
6415356 huh?
6415396 "Crueler" means "meaner," a greater amount of cruelty. "Cruller" is a fried pastry related to a donut.
6415494 But i didnt say anything about the spelling of any of the words. Least not that I remember doing
6415599 I think that may have been a mistake on WanderingPony's part. Accidentally sending the comment to you instead of leaving it open to the author.
6415704 ohhhh that explains a lot
are you sure this isn't the real Pinkie Pie?
derpicdn.net/img/2012/10/13/121020/large.png
always been a fan of the Eldritch abomination theory for Pinkie.
IA! IA! PINKIE FHTAGN!!
6415731
Indeed it was- Internet Explorer tends to do weird things. (At home, I prefer Firefox.)
6416000 Fun Fact About Internet Explorer, Microsoft itself admitted Internet Explorer sucks
6416021
Oh, believe me...
The only place I use that junk is where I'm required to.
6414770
12% of a plan is hardly even a concept, but at least it's better than 11%.
Captain Obvious to the rescue!
[youtube=eD-ZKyGfhsE]
6416191
Shouldn't that be:
And:
Sooo.... Let's engineer risk and peril in an attempt to force a friendship between foals who literally have no reason to do anything other than despise each other (three of whom you need to trust you, and who may react very poorly if they realize that they are being manipulated), oh and let's manipulate and out-right abuse Twilight's phobias in order to make a cheap joke while we're at it.
I'm beginning to strongly ... dislike ... Celestia in this story.
6416236
Ah, you mean this bit:
6416149 I have used Firefox for years. I cannot Imagine a place that would actually USE let alone REQUIRE you to use the POS known as Internet Explorer
Pinkiology is a perilous discipline. Twilight's lucky that this particular Pinkie has so simple an explanation. Sometimes, it's a lot less benign...
Still, going by the definitions you've established, wouldn't this make Pinkie an almost-alicorn?
6416425
*Rubs temples* You do realize the 'peril' in question is directed at her, and is giving the two sets a common cause to work with, and that the 'peril' is in fact Pinkie being Pinkie? Not quite as much of a peril as you would seem to think, except to someone's waistline.
You know, I keep using that 'peril' word. It might not mean quite what I think it means.
compromises
6416845
Be thankful. There are businesses that enforce specific browser use.
6417036 Hmmph. I'll give you the different intent behind the "peril", but the rest of my current issues with Celestia still stand.
Honestly, I'm waiting for all of these "plans" of Celestia's to blow up in her face.
6418612
You do realize this is the same Celestia who in the beginning decided to tell Twilight that nope! Certainly no Nightmare Moon coming to plunge the world into night eternal while using this EXACT style of plot to trick her into making friends. Technically, it should be the Celestia/Sparkle Theorem, but Twilight might have still been a little miffed about that and kept the credit to herself.
6418694 Granted. Cannon Celestia does like to pull "plans" out of her ass that have massive likelyhood of failure, and sometimes only succeed because the opposition is incapable or (for some unknown reason) unwilling to take the pragmatic approach. The handling of Nightmare Moon (and the fact that Celestia was not called out on it at all) has always been one of my personal gripes.
<sigh> In retrospect, your depiction of Celestia's methods does seem pretty accurate (i.e., let's throw a no-assed "plan" together that has no reasonable chance of success, and then assume that it will not only work anyway, but that all of the consequences that should come from it will somehow not happen).
So, I will agree that your Celestia's methods of "planning" and trying to "help" are accurate, it just aggravates me on a personal level. But I'm still not willing to budge on her abusing Twilight's phobias for a cheap joke (a very much laugh at situation rather than a laugh with). Her actions show nothing but contempt for Twilight's concerns and issues, and therefore show contempt for Twilight (her co-princess and supposed "faithful student") herself.
<second sigh> Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoy plenty of this story, it's just that I have trouble getting around how many of my buttons Celestia's reckless, thoughtless, behavior is pushing. I apologize if my comments came across as bashing on you, or on the story as a whole.
6418694 Technically speaking, Celestia didn't say that Nightmare Moon didn't exist. She just said that Twilight needed to "stop reading those dusty old books".
It was Twilight herself who interpreted that as "Nightmare Moon doesn't exist".
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More frequently, the business requires cross-browser compatibility, which necessitates at least testing with IE.
That said, IE has gotten better over the years. It's far from perfect, but it's much closer than it used to be.
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And now, it's been taken behind the head and shot.
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Resistance is furious with his honey for causing the scuttlebutt amongst the maids that he's part giraffe
FWIW, I've long thought that Pinkie has a special power-set that lets her alter reality. It's just a supercharged version of the same power that lets mechanically-inclined Earth Ponies create complex apparatus out of raw materials by force of will. Pinkie can do this but it is on a far greater scale - to the point where she can shape reality itself in line with her subconsciously-acknowledged needs. This lets her create portals and even subvert cause-and-effect in some ways.
Being a proto-Alicorn probably helps.
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In other words, she's magic, and she ain't got to explain *BUY MORE APPLES!*!
Wait...
*BUY MORE APPLES!*! ....
Fine, let's go with that.
Pinkie OP dice plz
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You don't get saving rolls with Pinkie. Unless you're a foal, then you can fight her with the power of sugar.
6530573 ...my god.
game over man! game over!
By the power invested in me, myself, and I (since this story hasn't been updated in about six months) I declare this story to be dead.
May if forever rest in peace.
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Especially sad considering that it stopped updating right after the author said they had a schedule that would allow 6-8k words every couple of weeks.
Alas, that's simply how it goes sometimes.
Just a shout out for this fantastic story!! Can't wait for more!!
When's the next update?
Will this ever get continued?
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gods I hope so!
I have the question of if this story is going to be finished or cancelled