Pinkie's Grand Quest

by Starshine Dart

And So, It Begins...

Pinkie's Grand Quest

Happily skipping through the streets of Ponyville was the town's premier party pony, Pinkie Pie, who was humming a cheerful tune. It was a bright sunny day, and many ponies were out doing various errands. Pinkie, however, was headed towards Ponyville's library to meet with Twilight.

However, Twilight was a bit preoccupied. She had the candles lit, curtains closed. This could only mean...

"No distractions." Twilight quietly said to herself. "Today is too important." She walked to the center of the library and finished, "Re-shelving day!" She used her magic to take all of the books out of their shelves, and began organizing. She levitated all the books into moving rows and she began, "Life in pre-historic Equestria goes in"-

"Hiya, Twilight!" Pinkie exclaimed as she jumped out of a pile of books. Twilight let out a yell of surprise, as the books came falling down from their neat rows. Pinkie's twitching tail let her avoid the falling books easily. Twilight, however, was not so lucky. She was quickly closed in by a barrage of books as they formed a pile on top of her. Pinkie let out a sigh of relief. "That was close!" Pinkie stopped to look for Twilight, but she couldn't find her. "Twilight? You still here?" Twilight came out from under the pile of books that had been holding her down.

"Pinkie..." She said as she took breaths in between. "How did you get under there?!" She exclaimed in disbelief.

"Oh! Twilight! There you are! I was wondering-" She stopped to take a quick look around. "Wow, Twilight! You've sure got a big mess in here!"

"But how did you... Never mind. I'm re-shelving in here, Pinkie, is there something you needed?" Twilight exasperatedly replied.

"Yeah! I'm looking for my cookbook! I can't seem to find it anywhere, Twilight!" She responded as she looked through the book piles.

"Wouldn't it be easier to let me re-shelve first?" She suggested, as she resumed organizing the books.

"Don't be silly, Twilight, it-" Pinkie stopped herself as she saw Twilight put a book back about desert ruins. She deeply gasped and blurted out, "That's where it is!"

Twilight looked back to Pinkie. "You remembered where you left your cookbook? Where is it?"

Pinkie nodded. "The ruins of the San Palomino Desert!" She exclaimed in realization.

Twilight stopped cold. She slowly turned to Pinkie, where she responded with a "...What? Pinkie, how is that even possible?!"

"Well, I was just there yesterday making cupcakes for all the gods there! They really liked my cupcakes, and they said that they had never had any, and I thought it was really sad if they had never had any cupcakes! Because like, how can you-" Twilight cut Pinkie off.

"I get it Pinkie," said Twilight as she cut Pinkie off. "But you're telling me that you went to the San Palomino Desert ruins..." Pinkie nodded. "And you were able to see the gods there..." She nodded again. "...And bake cupcakes for them." Another nod.

Before Twilight could add anything else, Pinkie added, "Ooh, you can come too Twilight! It gets reaaalllly lonely out there, and it's totally not fun being lonely! Or hot!"

"Pinkie... This isn't making any sense! But all right, I'll come with you, although I don't think you'll find what you're looking for out there." Twilight said smugly.

"Hey Twilight, I was just reading through..." Said Spike, as he came into the room. However, Pinkie interrupted him there.

"Ooooh! You should come with us too, Spike! Now it'll be three times the fun! Let's get going!" Pinkie ecstatically yelled out.

Spike gave her a blank look. "And we're going... where, exactly?"

Twilight opened her mouth to answer, but not before she was again cut off by the pink party pony. "We're going on an epic quest to look for my cookbook, in the San Palomino Desert!" She exclaimed. "But somepony," she explained as she gestured to Twilight. "Doesn't think that we'll find anything out there."

Spike let out a chuckle. "Twilight, haven't you learned yet? Pinkie ALWAYS gets it right, especially when you try to prove her wrong."

"But Spike, she's saying that she went there last time to bake cupcakes for ancient deities. Don't tell me you actually believe this!" Twilight responded in frustration.

"Knowing it's Pinkie, she's bound to be right." Spike replied, hoping to end the one-sided argument.

Pinkie was impatiently waiting for the debate to end. "Are we going to head out or what?"

Twilight and Spike quickly stopped their arguing. Spike walked towards Pinkie as he said, "Alright, I'm comi- WHOA!" as he slipped on one of the unorganized books.

Twilight chuckled. "Maybe I should get back to re-shelving the books first..." She quietly said as she started to put them all back. Once she was finished, she went back to her group. They had decided that Twilight would teleport them there, so Pinkie gave her all the necessary information of the ruin so that the teleportation spell would be more precise in its destination.

"Alright, everyone get together, I'm going to start up the spell." Twilight announced. A purple aura covered Twilight's horn as she started to draw large amounts of energy. After channeling for a few seconds, there was a brief flash. Once the light cleared, the trio was no longer there.

The San Palomino desert was a vast, dry area, with Celestia's sun shining down a scorching heat onto the sands. There were no plants to be seen, except a few cacti here and there. Suddenly, there was another flash as Spike, Pinkie, and Twilight appeared once more, in front of a ruined desert temple. While only Pinkie and Spike looked determined as ever to complete the grand quest, Twilight simply hoping to get it over with, and attempt to prove Pinkie wrong.

"So, narrator, are you going to stand here and describe us and the landscape more, or are we going to get on with our quest? Because that part's totally BO-RING!" Pinkie complained.

Spike and Twilight stood there, looking incredibly confused, until Twilight spoke up to break the spell. "Pinkie, who are you talking to?"

"I'd rather not question it, Twi." Spike told her, as Twilight grumbled. "Why don't we just head in the ruin and take a look?"

While Pinkie and Twilight went in, Spike stood outside and took a look around to see who Pinkie was talking to. "Spike?" Twilight called. The dragon shook his head and ran in after them.

The trio wandered into the ruined temple, all but one of them determined to go on the grand adventure. The first room was square-shaped and empty, and had cracked walls with strange markings on them. However, the temple didn't appear to go on.

"Now what do we do?" Asked Spike.

"Well," Twilight chimed in. "We could look for secret levers, or..." She slowly came to a stop as she looked towards Pinkie, who was kneeling at a wall. "Pinkie, what are you doing?" She asked for what seemed like the millionth time that day.

Pinkie looked like she was chanting something to a wall that seemed to have a bit of an indent. After she finished, the wall slowly moved aside, revealing a hallway.

Spike cheered for her, as Twilight simply stared at the open hallway with disbelief. "Pinkie... How?!"

The party pony stopped her trot to look back to Twilight. "Oh, Twilight, it was real easy! All I had to do was chant, 'Klatuu barda ni...'"

Twilight quickly shook her head and added, "Uh... Never mind." She followed after Pinkie and Spike, and quietly whispered to herself, "This is only getting more confusing the more I think about it..."

The hallway led to a long, narrow room, similar to the first. The two ponies (plus one dragon) arrived at the beginning of said room.

"Okay," Twilight commented. "Knowing this ancient civilization of ponies, there are probably traps placed here. I could try teleporting us over there, to not risk any danger-" She stopped and both she and Spike had terrified looks on their faces.

"Pinkie, what are you doing?!" Shouted Spike.

Pinkie was simply skipping down the hall. As she skipped, she unwittingly dodged the traps there, to which she was oblivious of. "La-la-la-la-laaaaaaa~" She sang as she skipped to dodge poison darts and sweeping blades. She reached the end of the hallway and was about to go into the next room but stopped as she noticed that Spike and Twilight were still at the other end, who were both astonished and terrified at what just happened. "What are you guys doing all the way over there? Are you guys coming, or what?"

Spike was about to take a tentative step, but Twilight quickly teleported him and herself over to Pinkie.

The librarian pony looked over to Pinkie. She opened her mouth to comment on how dangerous that situation was, but Spike shook his head and mouthed, "Don't try questioning it." Twilight sighed in defeat.

"Come on guys, let's get going!" exclaimed an impatient Pinkie Pie. She was then followed by an excited Spike and a defeated Twilight.

The final room was large and decorated with the best furniture of the civilization's time. It was also heavily decorated with large amounts of gold and precious stones, to which Spike was drooling at. At the end of the room looked to be some sort of shrine. The group walked in, and Spike immediately went to eat some of the gems decorating the room. However, he was held back by the purple aura surrounding him from Twilight's horn.

"Spike, how about we leave the temple intact for other ponies to research and study from?" She suggested. Spike then walked away from the gems he was planning to eat, grumbling.

The group looked around everywhere, yet Pinkie's cookbook was nowhere to be found in the room.

"See Pinkie, there could have been no way that it was ever in here!" Twilight smugly said, feeling like she had won.

However, Pinkie was far from defeated. She merely walked up to the shrine and began to chant an incantation. After a few minutes, the incantation was complete, and a loud rumble shook the ancient halls. Before Twilight could shout out her obligatory "Pinkie, what have you done", A large spectral, blue alicorn appeared before the group, wearing a golden set of armor. It then shouted out, "WHO DARES DISTURB MY- Oh, hello Pinkie Pie!" The alicorn suddenly changed to greet Pinkie.

"Hiya, Samrio! I hope you don't mind if I brought some friends here with me! This is Twilight and Spike. Twilight, Spike, this is Samrio, god of the earth." She replied to the immortal.

"Uh... hi... your... holiness?" Spike fearfully greeted the deity.

"No need to be so formal, Spike. You may simply call me Samrio. And you," He turned to Twilight. "Greetings, Twilight."

Twilight was in absolute shock. "Oh wow... And here I was thinking that Pinkie was saying a bunch of nonsense... It's an honor to meet you."

Pinkie turned to the immortal. "Samrio, last time I was here making treats for you and all of your friends, I think I lost my cookbook over here. Do you have it here? It's a very important cookbook, because I need it to make cupcakes, and if I can't make cupcakes for my friends, it makes them sad, and that makes me sad, and-"

Samrio raised a hoof to cut her off. "I understand Pinkie, there is no need for a further explanation. And about the cookbook..." In a split second, it appeared before Pinkie. "Is this what you were looking for?"

Pinkie gasped. "My cookbook! Thank you very, very, very, very-"

Samrio raised another hoof before she could go on. "Again, I understand, and you are quite welcome."

Twilight took a minute to absorb all of the events and sighed in defeat. "Pinkie, once again, I'm sorry that I'd doubted you before."

Pinkie chuckled. "That's all right Twilight."

Spike added, "Now are you going to just go with what she says, Twi?"

The librarian snickered. "Yes Spike, I will. Now come on everypony, let's go home."

"Wait!" Samrio shouted. The three turned to him. "You three aren't going anywhere..." Several other alicorns appeared beside him. "Without having a Pinkie Pie party with us first!"

Pinkie nodded. “Good thing I never leave home without my PARTY CANNON!” She smiled. “All right everypony, it's time for a PAR-TAY!” She loudly exclaimed.

The End

Comments

[Cascadejackal]

Way too short. That's my single complaint here.

[The ancient one]

I liked it, my only complaint is that there could have been some more detail, but other than that, no issues to be seen. At least from me.

[Alpha Scorpii]

My only criticism is that things happen a little too fast.

But aside from that, I liked it It was a nice little reading.

[Starshine Dart]

1679888>>1679910>>1680228 Thank you guys, I'll keep it in mind for my next fic.

[FoughtDragon01]

Howdy there! TWE's FoughtDragon01 here to lend a hand in helping you with this lil' story you've got here. For starters, I have to say, for your first attempt at fanfiction, this is pretty good compared to other first-timers I've seen. But of course, I'm not just here to offer congratulations; this story could use some improvements, and I'm here to offer some suggestions. M'kay? M'kay. Without further ado, let's dove into this.

First thing we're going to focus on is the mechanical stuff. You know, punctuation, grammar, the works. Trust me, this thing was definitely readable, save for a few awkward sentences (which we'll go over later), but everything else looked good for the most part. However, there still are a few recurring errors all throughout this thing that I feel is worth bringing up. The first thing I want to focus on is the tagging for your dialogue. Dialogue tagging refers to the 'he said, she said' stuff you put after character dialogue. The problem is that your capitalization is wrong.

Several times throughout your story, they look like this:

I can't seem to find it anywhere, Twilight!" She responded

When it should look like this:

I can't seem to find it anywhere, Twilight!" she responded

It's odd, because there are certain times when you have the correct capitalization, like right here:

"Come on guys, let's get going!" exclaimed an impatient Pinkie Pie.

But almost every time near the beginning, and even near the end, the capitalization was wrong. I don't know whether to chalk this up to innocent mistakes or if you really have trouble understanding how this works. If it's the former, I suggest rereading over your stories to ensure that you catch little mistakes like that, but if it's the latter, then I have some advice that I hope will be helpful.

Whenever you use 'he said, she said', or any kind of variation like 'he yelled' or 'she exclaimed', remember to keep it all lowercase. Try to see it as a part of the same sentence that the dialogue is in. You wouldn't randomly capitalize a letter in The middle of a sentence, would you? Exactly. Obviously, there are exceptions, such as using names:

"blah blah blah!" Spike yelled.

But there is also another one. If you don't use a dialogue tag and instead move on to a new sentence, then you would capitalize it like normally. In other words, it would look like this:

I can't seem to find it anywhere, Twilight!" She continued to desperately search through the piles of books.

Now, there's one other thing I want to focus on before we continue, and that's your dialogue's punctuation. This can be where it gets a little confusing, especially when you try to explain the regional variations, but I'm going to default to the standard U.S style. When you writing dialogue, and you plan to tag it with a 'he said, she said' or a variation, if the very last punctuation before the closing quotations is a period, you want to replace that period with a comma. In other words, instead of looking like this:

"No distractions." Twilight quietly said to herself.

It would look like this:

"No distractions," Twilight quietly said to herself.

However, if the final quotation of a sentence is a question mark or exclamation point, like the following sentences…

"I can't wait to get started!" she said.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked.

…then, as you can see, you'd leave them alone. It probably sounds confusing now, but trust me, once you get the hang of it, it'll be second nature. While errors like this don't ruin the story by any means, some people (me included) can find the absence of that sort of thing very annoying, sometimes annoying enough to just stop reading the story altogether. It sounds unfair, I know, but it's standard when it comes to writing stories, so I think it'd be something worth getting used to.

Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, we can get onto the story itself. I'll say this now, it has potential to be a great fic, but there are a few major things that need to be fixed if it's going to become that great fic. Now, you already heard this from everyone else already, but I still feel the need to say it in order to drive the point home: the pacing is a mess! Part of the problem comes from a glaring lack of description. All throughout the story, we as the reader are only told what happens as opposed. We're told this, we're told that, we're just told stuff. This makes the story grow pretty stale pretty quickly. In order for you, as the writer, to make a story engaging and keep in engaging, you need to show us what's happening. This goes back to the golden rule of writing: 'show, don't tell'.

You want to help us picture the scene in our minds. Take a second to slow your scenes down. Describe the scenery. Describe what the characters are doing. Take a moment and dive into their thoughts and tell us what they're thinking or feeling at the moment. Doing these things helps to increase your story's immersion and strengthens our connections with the characters. Be honest here, which one sounds more engaging?

She used her magic to take all of the books out of their shelves, and began organizing.

Focusing all of her magic into her horn, Twilight took every single book up in magical grip. As they circled around her, her eyes feverishly scanned each of their covers, quickly reading over their titles. One by one, Twilight placed each and every book back into their respective spots on the shelves, making sure that not a single one wasn't in alphabetical order. It had been weeks since she last organized her books, and the very thought of her precious books lying in messy, disorganized piles sent shivers down her spine. There was no need for anymore worry, though. Once she was done, her shelves would be nice and tidy once again. She just needed to finish without being interrupted.

Do you see the difference? One example simply told us that Twilight was organizing, while the other was able to get the same thing across in a much more descriptive way. The whole point is to paint a picture in your reader's mind, and just telling us what's happening would be no more engaging than hearing some guy blather on about the game he saw last night. This is something that you absolutely must keep in mind for every single story you write in the future, because if you don't follow this rule, all of them will sound same-y and boring, which you don't want at all. If this comes across as difficult for you, don't fret; it is pretty difficult for new writers to get down at first, but there are plenty of people around the site willing to lend a hand. All you have to do is ask.

As for the story's actual plot? I like the concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I've already touched on the pacing, so I won't retread old ground, but there are still plenty of things to talk about. Going back to the whole pacing thing, I feel like things progress far too quickly to the point where I'm questioning certain actions your characters did. Even if you followed the whole 'show, don't tell' thing down to a letter, certain things still don't make much sense plot-wise.

For starters, why in all of Equestria would Twilight only take herself, Pinkie, and her baby assistant halfway across the world to ancient ruins that could hold Celestia-knows-what? Doing something as reckless as that just doesn't seem like the thing the wary, study-driven unicorn would do. Knowing Twilight, she'd try to find whatever she could on those ruins as well as the gods Pinkie saw before even considering setting foot in their ancient ruins. Heck, if anything, Twilight would probably be a bit curious as to how there could be gods in Equestria. You'd think she'd have a few questions to ask Celestia in that regard, especially since these gods are alicorns.

Adding on to the whole 'Twilight teleports them there' thing, just how far away are these ruins? As far as I could tell, Twilight was only able to comfortably teleport a few meters ahead of her, maybe even a few hundred feet. But these ruins sound like their hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles away from where they live. So, Twilight would not only have difficulty mustering up the magic to do that, but she'd undoubtedly be completely exhausted afterwards.

Another character I wanted to focus on, of course, is Pinkie. While I can't give you flak for getting her character wrong–in fact, all of the characters seem spot-on, save for those odd decisions I mentioned–I can discuss how you handle her. You avoid answering a lot of interesting questions based solely on the fact that Pinkie is just 'being Pinkie', which I found amusing at first, but eventually got rather annoyed by it when you kept using it to explain all of her odd actions. How did Pinkie find those ruins in the first place? How did she make friends with ancient deities who, judging by Samrio's first appearance, are apparently hostile to intruders? Because Pinkie is just Pinkie? Hard to buy, if I'll be honest.

I guess you can chalk this up to suspension of disbelief, but when it comes to people like me, the kind who beat themselves over the head trying to stay true to canon in their stories, things like that really stick out, and can actually be a buzzkill. Now, I'm not saying this can't work, in fact, I wouldn't really care if you didn't change much at all, but these are the sort of things you need to consider if you want to write fanfiction. Staying true to canon things established in the show can really be what makes or breaks your story when it reaches public eyes. One thing I suggest doing is to stop and ask yourself–and I mean really ask yourself– 'Would this character do this?' I'm serious. Take into consideration everything that the characters do in the show. If they're personality and way of thinking don't match up with the things that you want them to do, you may want to either consider approaching the plot in a different way, or changing the plot altogether. Trust me, you don't want to screw up characters, especially ones as established as the Mane 6; it's just a death sentence in this fandom.

Well, I've been going on about this for a while, so I think I'll wrap things up here. All things considered, this was good. No more, no less. Everyone's start is a rough one, but trust me when I say that it could've been a lot rougher. With some practice, experience, and fine-tuning, I can see you becoming a great writer on this site; it all just comes down to you being the one to make that happen. Keep in mind all of the things I mentioned up to now, because I can promise you that they will help you in the long run. I hope you continue writing, and I hope you improve, because I see promise in you. I want to see what you can really do.

Goodbye, and best of luck to you.

~FoughtDragon01–TWE's 'Not-so-nice' Nice Guy

i.imgur.com/3lZia.png?1

[Blue Streak]

Well now, the long comment above me is long, boring and informative... sounds like my school actually.
Pinkie could have been more Pinkieish, but I won't hold you to that.
Good ending

[Starshine Dart]

1696659 Wow, all the things that I never seem to notice... Anyways, thanks a lot! I'll be sure to keep all of that in mind for my future fics. You've been a great help, thank you.

[Rain Dasher]

That was an amazing story, Pinkies randomness made me smile the whole time. If possible please right more fan fictions like this... possibly a sequel? lets hope for it.