Friendship is Revolution

by ultiville

Laughter in the Dark

Twilight leans against the Prancing Pony's doorjamb, watching the mostly-silent street in front of her. Rachel's still gone, and all but a few of her fellow officers are, as well, as are all of the protesters, hauled off to cool down in cells or dispersed. The street's still closed; it's covered with abandoned signs, scraps of torn clothing, a few loose bricks or stones, and some disturbing dark red stains. The strange shrine on the tree is mostly gone, the pendants and scraps of paper lying on the ground or blowing across the street.

The few remaining officers are cleaning up, throwing most of the refuse into various bags. Twilight isn't sure if they're keeping it or throwing it away, and approaches the nearest officer.

"Excuse me, are you keeping these slips of paper, or can I take them?"

The officer radios his commander to check, and Twilight waits a moment.

"You're welcome to them, m'am. No one asked to put them up, so taking them down wasn't a crime, they aren't evidence."

"Thanks." Twilight gathers them up in her magic and pulls them all to her, sticking them in her saddlebags. The officer next to her stops and stares.

"Wow," he says, "I heard what they said about you, but I just got here. I gotta say, I didn't really believe. Is it really magic?"

"That's what we call it, anyway. Want some help cleaning up? You keeping any of this?"

"Forensics already came through and took everything they wanted," he says, "this is all junk. I won't stop you from helping."

"Hold the bag open, then," he holds the black plastic mouth wide, and Twilight sweeps most of the trash into a tightening funnel, channeling it in.

"Uh, thanks," the officer shakes his head. "Why'd you make it all swirl like a tornado like that?"

"It's harder to move a lot of objects in different ways," Twilight perks up at the rare lecture opportunity, "so I try to move them the same way if I can. This way I just swirl everything along a couple of simple lines."

"Huh. I sorta figured you could just do whatever you want with it. Can humans learn that?"

"You'd need a horn like mine."

"Too bad, it'd come in handy."

"You've done some great things with technology," Twilight says. "Maybe now that you know it's possible, you'll be able to figure it out."

The officer nods. "Maybe we will. Thanks for the help, m'am, seems like we can reopen the street ahead of schedule."

"Of course."

He moves off, talking on the radio, and the other officers begin to remove the cordons on the street. Now that August is trailing off, the day is pleasantly cool, and Twilight stands for a moment in the empty street, gazing at the tree. A few pendants still hang from it, and a few broken chains, but some of the branches have been torn off, and all the slips of paper and small offerings are gone. She's confident she feels something about this, but she'd have trouble articulating what. Instead she just shakes her head a little, and keeps staring. A breeze twists the leaves and remaining pendants, and drifts through across her mane and coat, then a heavier wind sweeps along her back as Rainbow Dash comes to rest beside her. Mary drops off her back, carrying a large shoulder bag. The human's eyes are rimmed in red.

"Hey girls," Twilight says, "I thought you were going home to get changed, Mary."

"I was," she sighs, "then I saw the apartment..."

Twilight winces. "What happened?"

"I guess some of them got out, or word got round. They broke a bunch of windows and trashed my stuff."

"Yeah, and left some nasty graffiti," Dash scowled. "We called the police and they checked it out, but do you mind if Mary stays here for a bit?"

"Of course not," Twilight says, "it's getting cozy in there, but it's a small price to pay for a friend."

"Hey Twilight," Rosie calls from the door of the bar, "willing to set up a sign for me?"

"Sure," Twilight trots to the door, and they start setting up for the evening.

---

The sky is red with sunset by the time the street's fully open and bustling again, and they've opened up the whole front of the bar, leaving it open to the cool summer air and the broad sidewalk. They've put a triangle sign out in front: "Pony rights solidarity night - food and drink on the house, no haters allowed." All the passersby stop to read it. Many come in and sit down, and many of the others smile. Only a few look upset. Twilight just watches for a while and smiles, nursing her iced tea at a front table. Rarity, Dash, and Mary are all sitting with her, but they don't say much, content to enjoy the evening and sip their drinks.

As the street outside darkens, word of the event seems to spread. A steady trickle of people start appearing, and a few come and offer sympathy or support to the ponies, which they gratefully accept. Twilight catches a few scowling faces on the edges of the light, but a few of Rachel's off-duty coworkers are enjoying their drinks rather obtrusively near the entrance, and no one tries anything. Twilight feels herself relaxing a little, and soon she, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash are telling Mary about their adventures - she's never seen the show, so they're all new to her. As they do, the event around them gets livelier and livelier, and soon they're having to speak loudly over the sounds of music and mingling, and Twilight sits right on the edge of the bright bar and the dark street. Everyone laughs at the end of a story.

"Wait, so Pinkie can really just...sense things like that?" Mary asks, getting her chuckling under control.

"Yeah," Rainbow says, "and sometimes I swear she can just create party supplies. I don't know where she stores 'em otherwise."

"How does that work?"

"Best not to ask, dear," Rarity says, "we unicorns understand our own magic quite well, but there are still things in Equestria we don't understand. Like Pinkie."

"I'm surprised you're okay not knowing, Twilight. You don't seem the type."

Twilight snorts. "I spent a whole week trying to figure it out a few years ago. It did drive me crazy for a while. Finally I just had to accept it. Now I think I wasn't really being fair. Like Rarity said, unicorns were pretty arrogant for most of history, and we only really studied ourselves. Pegasus magic is pretty well documented too, though mostly by soldiers and weather-workers rather than academics. But nopony ever did serious studies on earth pony magic. Everyone's always sort of assumed it's just good for growing things, but unicorns and pegasi have magic that adapts to our cutie marks. I don't see why earth ponies shouldn't be the same. I think Pinkie's abilities just follow her talent."

"Parties?"

"Being funny," Twilight counters. "I've seen her do some incredible things, but they're never predictable, and often aren't repeatable or even voluntary. It mostly depends on what would be unexpected or amusing. Really, between that and the sonic rainboom that linked all our cutie marks, I think the Elements of Harmony, or maybe the Tree of Harmony, or just whatever forces they represent, picked us out long before Nightmare Moon came back."

"So Pinkie can do anything, but only if it's funny? And you think it might be because of the Element of Laughter? You really are a big deal, aren't you?"

"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash says proudly. "We're the best."

Rarity glares at her. "We were just fillies, dear. If it was about something in us, it wasn't really anything we picked."

"Or if it was, that's really creepy," Twilight says, "because it'd be choices we made later, and how would the Elements know? Everything we know says ponies can choose, even with our cutie marks, and that's really important. If the Elements could see what we were going to do, how could we have a choice?"

Everyone nods, and the table goes quiet for a minute.

"Wow, I've never seen pants so serious! But don't worry, I'm here now," Pinkie Pie says. Twilight's jaw drops and she turns to see the earth pony casually draped over the back of the table's one previously empty chair. "Auntie Pinkie's going to get this party started!"

Comments

[xDHannibalxD]

Pinkie, you are soooo random.

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Typical... Gotta love Pinkie

[zimmerwald1915]

"Pants so serious?" I've not come across this idiom before. Anyone mind explaining?

[Zerodius]

That ending... was random.

Wonder how Pinkie punched through given no mentions was made of a doll or a robot.

Noticed your chapters are overall pretty short. On another hand, you update regularly so it even out in a way ; your story doesn't stall like so many others do. Still wish for longer chapters at times but I guess it's a fair trade.

[ultiville]

4650602 Because I want to update almost every day (every day that I don't get sick or have a big event to run for work, that is), I have to limit myself to what I can reasonably write in an evening, yeah. I guess I could go through and consolidate chapters later, but meh. It's important to me that I update as often as possible.

(Also, not saying that this is what happened, but the humans got Twilight little stuffed versions of all her friends while she was sick - it was mentioned, though only in passing, during that bit.)

[ultiville]

4650289 It was meant to be a riff on "grumpy-pants" and other Pinkie-isms but I'm not super happy with it. If I come up with better I'll go back and change it. I find Pinkie's voice really hard (to be fair, so does the show ) so I'm hoping I'll get it to work.

[Akeion98]

Wow I must got expect the unexpected thing down pretty well thanks to pinkie.