Big Tavi Lil Tavi Cardboard Box

by All Art Is Quite Useless

I Swear Down You Lot Have Lost Your Mind

Author's Note:

At long last, an update. I've put something a bit different in this one, hope it is appreciated! Hope to get back on track with this story soon.

Vinyl and Twilight were currently eating their meal, a reasonably well cooked vegetable and cheese omelette on Twilight's part. Over lunch, Vinyl was silently preparing herself for her work with Twilight, knowing they would likely begin exploring every crevice and recess of her psyche eventually, even if it began with small steps. The idea of another going through her most private thoughts, learning of her views, and most importantly, the past that had allowed Vinyl to form them, was slightly terrifying.

Definitely not my past, I don't want to think about it. Maybe I should have gone to a friggin' shrink after all. At least a shrink wouldn't be in a position to share my business with the entirety of Ponyville. Vinyl's ears twitched and she stifled a growl with another forkful of omelette. I sound like a cynic, but it could happen. Twilight most likely values confidentiality, but what if she finds something I say difficult to deal with? What if it's outside her area of expertise? She would try to compensate somehow, and I'm sure she'd defer to reading first, but if that didn't work, what then?

Vinyl's face hardened as her brain made the next logical conclusion, unintentionally antagonising Twilight in her mind. She would go seek advice from her friends next, I'm sure. And yeah, she'd be good intentioned doing so, but then that's five more ponies that all know my business. All one of them has to do is blab, and that shit starts getting around town. That Rarity too... I swear, if Ponyville had a literal rumour mill she would be its owner. Also, if she writes to Celestia about me? Hmm, no, I shouldn't have to worry about that. Words shared between friends is one thing, but official documents? She wouldn't do that. It's a good thing too, Celestia's not an idiot, she'd realise pretty fast.

As Vinyl attempted to withdraw from her newfound malaise, she caught Twilight picking at the remnants of her omelette, stealing glances at her occasionally, with a sheepish look on her. Vinyl realised that she had hardly looked friendly throughout breakfast, and hoped she hadn't offended the princess, nor made her feel awkward. As she placed down the knife and fork she had been using next to her last slither of omelette, she cleared her throat, an indirect signal for Twilight to knock off her foalish behaviour. Thankfully, it seemed to work, as Twilight spoke, albeit quietly, and with an awkward smile on her face.

"So, I hope you enjoyed your food? Sorry it wasn't anything more interesting, I don't often cook complex food." She pensively tapped one hoof against the other as she spoke.

Vinyl smiled a pleasant smile. "It was lovely, princess, please don't worry on my behalf. As for complex food? Me either. Way I see it, we need the right level of sustenance to carry on with the day, and tasting nice is a bonus, but if you've got things to do which are pretty important and time demanding, you should be cooking quick and easy meals."

"That's what I think too." Twilight agreed. "I don't want to waste an hour prepping some fantastic meal, even if the turnout would be great, because whatever I can cook in five minutes is just fine! Plus, a couple of my friends are pretty great chefs, so good food isn't often in short supply around here."

Vinyl craned her head forward, appearing slightly excited by this news. "Oh really? Do tell, princess?"

"Well you probably already know this, but Applejack can make literally every apple related dish you can think of, perfectly, and gosh do they taste good. She can make apple fritters, strudel, pie, baked apples... she can make them caramelised, deep fat fried, you name it! It's all organic too, and they taste so good!" If Twilight had been paying much attention to Vinyl's face, she would have seen that the mare was practically salivating at the mention of all those apple products.

"She's pretty good with your usual, non-apple related dishes too, but that's definitely her specialty. Then there's Pinkie. Now, with Applejack it's in her blood, all of the apples are terrific chefs in their own right, but Pinkie's family are rock farmers. Never been able to get my head around where she gets her aptitude for baking, but that's probably on the bottom of my list of questions regarding Pinkie, if I'm honest. Regardless, she makes a killer batch of cupcakes, no doubt about that." Vinyl's ears perked up at the mention of Pinkie, and she smiled a little.

"Don't know about Applejack, but that Pinkie is an oddity. First time I met her in Sugarcube Corner, I couldn't tell if she was trying to make conversation, scare me off, up-sell me, welcome me, or flirt with me. Ended up having a card game with her. You know five card pickup?" Twilight nodded at her poker reference. "Never seen a mare with more luck. It was uncanny too! She had a straight flush and two four of a kinds in twenty minutes! I've never seen that before. Naturally, I started to wonder if I was being conned, so I decided to check by casting an auditing spell on the deck of cards. No abnormalities. However she was doing this, it must have been sheer luck. At least, that's what I thought until she played her next flush."

"Why? What was wrong with it? A flush is five cards of the same suit, right? Not that astounding if you ask me."

Vinyl grinned, the memory still evoking a confused laughter. "That's the thing, they were all aces!"

"Whoa, that is lucky, what were your wildcards?" Twilight appeared slightly more interested now, her statistical brain had been woken up.

"That's the thing!" Vinyl exclaimed. "We didn't have any! At the end of the hand I was boasting about having my groove back, I had a queens and jacks full house and I had just laid it down, and she was all like 'no one beats me that easy, Scratchie, join the club!', and she threw her hand down. Honestly, I shit you not, she lays down five aces, all clubs too. Naturally, I accused her of cheating, so she handed me the cards to look over. Somehow, the deck had quintupled in size but retained its original density. Therefore, there were five cards of each suit, and Pinkie pronounced her move legal. The bit I can't get my head around is, well, all of it. I counted the cards before we played and I can assure you there were fifty-two, we didn't even use jokers."

Twilight's lip curved upwards in a smile, and she let out a short breathy laugh. "Honestly, that's just Pinkie Pie. Trust me, when you've been around her for long enough, you start to question your own sanity, and even the reality of your own world." She leant forwards and began to speak in a hushed tone. "Get this: Apparently, she's able to sense when things are about to fall on people. She has an eidetic memory as far as I can tell, and I've seen her play ten instruments at once. That's not even the half of it either." Twilight looked left and right, confirming they were alone. "Here, I'll show you. Look at that mirror."

Vinyl followed her instruction despite her confusion, turning to face the oval mirror stood on the wall opposite the table. "What's this all about, anyways? I figured she was just a con artist." Vinyl was sceptical about this whole thing, but was a little excited to possibly see something new. She believed that wonder was one of the most important things a pony could have in life, even if it came from unorthodox places. Especially if it comes from strange places.

"Nonono, trust me, there's more to that mare. Just watch." After a couple of seconds, Twilight put on an unconvincing tone, signifying dilemma and distress. "Oh no!" She acted, terribly. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep my promise!" They waited, and nothing happened. The mirror didn't move, not one bit. Vinyl had expected something. She didn't know what she had expected exactly, whether it would be magical, astounding, or even remotely interesting, but she had expected something. She turned to Twilight, doing her best to mask her disappointment, slight as it was.

"Was that all that was meant to OHSHIT--"

Vinyl began batting herself in the face, knocking herself out of her chair and onto the floor in the process, where she lay sprawled and stunned. Twilight rushed out of her seat and ran towards her, alarmed. Then, a noise began emitting, seemingly from Vinyl. It sounded like static, and was more than a little disturbing. Twilight stopped in her tracks, appearing to be transfixed by the sound, afraid of what might happen next. Then, there was a hiss, and Vinyl stirred slightly.

A couple of booms, and then a voice, appearing to come out of a dynamic microphone. "Hello, is this thing on? Oh, hey, Scratchie! Nice eyelashes! Hold on, wait, is this the front camera? Let me fix that!" Suddenly, the right lens of Vinyl's shades flashed, and a small Pinkie Pie, surrounded by nothing but purple on either side, came into focus. Vinyl, needless to say, was very confused, and focused on slowing her heart, which felt as if it could begin to palpitate at any moment. "Hey, Vinyl, could you turn your head a little? I need to get my bearings. You know, I probably could have just visited through that mirror, but that would have been too obvious, so I thought I'd come say hi to you in plain sight! Well, purple sight, but still!"

As Vinyl sat up, rubbing her temple, sore from the fall, she replied in a shaky breath. "Pinkie? How? My glasses are meant to be impervious to magical interference, I ensured that myself. How are you in them? You scared the living hell out of me... Come to think of it, how the hell did you get here, or even know to come here? What's going on?" The shock in Vinyl's tone had given way to newfound dread, the shock had morphed into worry, this all seemed a little ominous, and more than a little strange.

Pinkie turned her head, which somehow enabled Vinyl to see her in her right eye once again, as she had just before the fall. She appeared to be wearing a dapper black and white suit with a bow-tie and holding a drop down mic, like a ring announcer might, although she was dressed more like a casino dealer. The pink, impossible pony smiled, a wide and toothy grin.

"Silly Scratchie, this isn't magic! I'm not a unicorn, so how could I make magic? I think you're getting me confused with Blinky Eye. Optometrist, unicorn, always staring! Although, I suppose that is his job, to make sure that you can stare too! Anyways, it doesn't take an eye doctor to see that I don't have a horn, of any kind!"

She started swiping at the empty space above her head to prove her point. "Actually, that's a lie! I have tons of horns! Drinking horns for punch, calling horns for battle, and a really, really big minotaur horn to keep them all in! No unicorn horn though, sorry! You know, someone once called me a kleptomaniac, and I took him, literally. Get it?" A burst of confetti punctuated her joke. Well, Vinyl hoped that it was a joke.

"Anyways, I'm getting off topic... We were talking about eye doctors! Ever had someone blow air into your eye, Scratchie? How about your ear? That really tickles, and not in a funny way or even in a 'I'm gonna pee myself' way, but in a 'oh my gosh that feels pretty unpleasant' way! Try it sometime!" Pinkie's bombastic energy hadn't diminished by a fraction in her time speaking, it was like she didn't need to breathe. Vinyl, through all her shock and confusion, thought she could make an excellent emcee.

Vinyl was really unsure what to say in response, none of this made any sense. She nodded, in the hopes that this would abate Pinkie, before realising that she wouldn't be able to see that, being on her head and all. So, in another attempt to deal with this weirdness, she decided to push forward with her presumed reason for Pinkie's visit, before she could derail the conversation further. Honestly, she was shaken, in a little pain, and more than a little annoyed by the pink pony populating her purple peripherals. Vinyl imagined Pinkie repeating that phrase without a pop shield and shuddered slightly. "Pinkie, did you maybe come here because of something Twilight said?" Yeah, I just disregarded everything you said prior to now, please don't pick up on it.

With that, Pinkie gasped, a sound that was extremely static and raspy in the microphone, but luckily, not as bad as the repeated use of 'p' sounds would have been. When she had sucked all of her breath back in, she replied, with a mixture of her common enthusiasm and a stern visage that seemed the antithesis of her usual excitement. How she could manage to combine those two things was beyond Vinyl's understanding, but she did, and turned to face Twilight, who she found in an instant, sat by Vinyl, chortling unashamedly. This fueled Pinkie's indignation further.

"Oh?! So you think breaking a promise is funny, Twilight? Maybe in your eyes everypony can just go around breaking promises but that just won't cut it here! Remember, I know everypony in Equestria, so it really wouldn't do to be a promise breaker now, would it? Because I would have to tell everypony to be wary of making a promise with you if you couldn't keep a pinkie promise! well... unless you made me pinkie promise not to tell anyone or do anything, then I wouldn't say anything, but I would still be pretty mad!"

Twilight halted her laughter as much as she could manage, and put a hoof up, trying to alleviate Pinkie's worries. "Nonono Pinkie, relax. I was just trying to show Vinyl here exactly why you shouldn't break a pinkie promise, I'm not actually planning on doing so. I mean really, do you really think that as the Princess of Friendship, I would--"

"And that's another thing! You're the Princess of friendship! If anyone should know better, it's you!" Vinyl wondered if Pinkie had selective hearing, or if she was purposely winding up Twilight for summoning her in the first place. She concluded that it didn't matter, it was pretty funny watching her be chastised.

"I mean really Twilight, do I need to remind you what friendship stands for again? I've already told you 143 times! It's like they never learn," Pinkie sighed.

Suddenly, Twilight appeared to be alarmed. "No! No no Pinkie, not this again, please! I already know what friendship stands for, I mean it! Listen--"

Twilight was cut off by a old school hip hop beat, one that was surprisingly to Vinyl's tastes, though she didn't recognise it. All of a sudden, Pinkie's microphone had found another use.

"Now I'm about to drop a term that you've never heard, with many connotations which can all be inferred, there's use in it for doctors lawyers and asocial nerds, it's really all quite simple so the lines can't be blurred, the first steps might be difficult but don't be deterred, if you don't get it the first couple times then go for the third, it's a neat-o little concept but it's really absurd, oh my lil' alicorn assistant won't you tell me the word?" Pinkie eyed Twilight expectantly.

"...Friendship." Twilight groaned.

"That's the one! You see friendship is a funny thing to wrap round your head, sometimes it seems much easier to be a recluse instead, the social demands can sometimes weigh you down like they're lead, but you'll never meet another pony hid away in your bed, so you've gotta listen very closely to what the Pinkmeister says, and your days of social luxury will be right ahead, you can tell me that it's daunting and it fills you with dread, but you'll be a-okay if you follow these simple steps."

By now, Twilight's groan had dissipated, she seemed to have resigned herself to her fate. Vinyl, however, was in awe.

"F stands for friendship, so easy to remember, you've gotta put your friends first and then they'll stay with you forever, but don't neglect yourself cause that's a pitiful endeavour, no one wants to be around the guy who can't hold his life together."

"R stands for reliable, that means try to be around, it's no good going AWOL when your friends are feeling down, you've gotta make sure you're there to help them 180 that frown, just follow this advice you'll be the greatest friend in town."

"I stands for inseparable, because that's what your friends are, doesn't matter if they're with you or if they're really far, if you miss 'em pick a happy thought you won't really be apart, that way you know your closest are always right there in your heart."

"E stands for equality, this one's quite important, if your friend does nice things for you then you'd better do that for them, your friends are worth as much as you never less or more than, if you ever think you're better I'd suggest you don't inform them.

"N stands for necessity, you're really gonna need 'em, don't forget your friends want you around them for a reason, if they need help with their goals then you'd best help them achieve 'em, cause friends will always treat you with the respect that they're receiving."

"D stands for dichotomy, diversity or difference, without individuality this song wouldn't have been written, you know your friends have other interests so be polite and listen, surprise them by showing interest go and use your intuition."

"S stands for strength, determination and resolve, you've gotta have the courage to help your friends get their issues solved, so use your problem solving skills and make sure that you're bold, if you follow my advice then you'll be besties till you're old."

"H stands for hospitality, and this one's quite a treat, at basic levels you might just be holding out your buddy's seat, but would you put them up if they were thrown out on the street, if you do you'll be the most welcoming pony they'll ever meet."

"The second I is ideal, and no it isn't perfect, but making friends with the ideal pony's really worth it, not everypony will be that way so you might spend some time searching, but make sure not to settle for a friendship that isn't working."

"The final letter is P, and that stands for promises, make sure to keep all of the secrets that you've been honoured with, if someone breaks your trust don't take the excuse they're offering, promise breakers are friends that you shouldn't really bother with."

"Now that concludes our educational session today, if you need a quick reminder you just gotta rewind and replay, use these guidelines to tackle anything that gets in your way, with some devotion it's pretty likely you'll be a princess someday."

And with that, Pinkie winked, and the mic reeled up, as the music faded away. Twilight was essentially holding her ears. Vinyl was astounded, and a little sad that it had ended. I need to get her in a collaboration at some point... Ten instruments, too! That's what Twilight told me, and if she can do that, well... I'm starting to think there's nothing Pinkie Pie can't do. Maybe she created the princesses.

As if in answer to her thought, Pinkie piped up. "See, Twilight, that's 144 times now!"

"And I still hate it. Honestly, Pinkie, I don't know why you insisted on singing it so many times around me! It's hardly a short song either!" Twilight was a few decibels off shouting, this had clearly got to her a bit.

"Wellllll, what do you think would have happened if I hadn't? You never would have learnt the ten steps of friendship, and how would you have become a princess? And if you hadn't become a princess, or even ascended to alicornhood, and where would we be now? Face it, Twilight! If it wasn't for my teensy weensy bit of very occasional singing, you wouldn't have those wings right now!"

"Can I use them to fly away from you?" Twilight murmured under her breath.

"Nope! Dashie tried that a few times, never worked for longer than I let her think it had. You're stuck with me, Twilight! Do you know why? Cause I'm your friend!"

Vinyl took a backseat, letting the princess and her friend bicker with moderate amusement. Jeez, if I had a bit for every time I heard the word friend today, I could probably buy this castle. Well, actually, no, I'd have about 30 bits. Not too shabby though.

When it became apparent that the pair's arguing wasn't going to resolve itself any time soon, Vinyl excused herself (after requesting Pinkie get in the mirror, words she thought she would never utter) and headed for the garden, promising to be back soon. Once there, she lit a long, thin cigarette, allowing the smoke to trail up in a soft, thick cloud. Is smoking on castle grounds forbidden? The princess conducts scientific experiments and creates spells here, surely a cigarette is fine. Plus, Pinkie does, well, whatever she does to travel here. I'm sure I'm fine.

As Vinyl smoked, watching the vapourous trails waft from the end of her lit cigarette, as well as her muzzle with each exhale, she considered Pinkie's song again. However, she didn't think primarily of the musical benefit. She didn't even think about the strange and ridiculous notion that that song had somehow assisted Princess Twilight in becoming the ruler she is now. In fact, Vinyl's main thought was centred on the lessons the silly song might actually teach. She decided to request a copy of the lyrics from Pinkie in future, for analysis. It was childish and asinine, she knew, referring to a song for a lesson in how to behave around others and herself, but she thought there really might be some use in it.

Did Pinkie sing that song again for Twilight's benefit, or mine?

Comments

[Brother_William]

Did you come up with those lyrics?

[EverfreePony]

Glad to see another chapter after a while
The beginning was a little slow and kind of uninteresting for me since I know next to nothing about poker, but the rest really looked up, especially the song. Rhymes seemed good as well as the advice. Aren't you Daniel Ingram disguised?
However, one more thing I'd point out was Pinkie's appearance in the room. The way she did it seemed more fitting for Discord to me - however, that may be just me, I'm not sure if I got what's going on correctly.

Also, a killer batch of cupcakes. Really?

[All Art Is Quite Useless]

8099133 Been a while, hasn't it? Will reply to your PM soon!

Yeah, it's a little bit of a niche subject, isn't it? I might go back and simplify it a little. Better fluidity for non-poker fans that way, eh?

Glad you enjoyed the song, I tried to make it something pretty authentic for Pinkie, and accessible for everyone! (Even if it is surrounded by a story with a couple more adult themes, but ah well.) It might seem that way, but nope, just myself! (Which I realise doesn't tell you a heap but what's the point in pennames if you go around telling everyone who you are?)

Oh, yeah, she was meant to appear in the mirror, but decided to pop up in Vinyl's shades instead. How? Pinkie's a law unto herself. Of course, she was accidentally facing Vinyl rather than Twilight when she arrived, but she fixed that. Maybe it would suit Discord a little better, but I'm sure the same physics apply to both Pinkie and Discord.

Oh, I couldn't help it. I'm in no way supporting Pinkie being any sort of murderer in my story though, so don't worry too much!

AAIQU

[All Art Is Quite Useless]

8099049 Of course! Hope you found them enjoyable, and thanks for checking out my story!

AAIQU