> Colgate Is Best Pony
>  by shortskirtsandexplosions
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> All Hail Colgate, Steward of Canterlot
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

        "'So, in conclusion, I propose that the magical leylines connected with equine essences can be juxtaposed with the interconnectivity of bosons and fermions, thereby creating cohesion that is responsible for theoretical supersymmetry within the standard quantum model of modern Equestrian physics.'"

        Minuette spoke out loud while her levitation spell dragged a quill pen across a final piece of parchment. The unicorn stood crookedly at her desk in the center of the library, her head teetering and her normally blue eyes bleary and bloodshot.

        "'Through further exploration of the leyline cross-strings interfused with the standard model, I hypothesize that future scientists may discover that magical momenta can have a legitimate and observable effect on cosmic inflation, and—if successfully empowered with enough energy—can even be used to contain pockets of dark matter, leading to a dynamically new and dramatically malleable universe.'"

        At last, her horn stopped glowing. Minuette yawned... then yawned again. With thin blinking eyes, she gripped the edge of the last sheet of paper with her teeth, turned it over, and slapped it onto a stack of sheets over seventy pages thick. Next, she tucked all of the papers nicely into an electric blue folder that matched her coat. Fastening the thing shut, she turned it over and smiled exhaustedly at the title on the front page of the binder: "'Innate Magical Cohesion: A Theory Postulating the Interconnectivity of Magic With Polydimensional States of Quantum Energy and Matter.'"

        "It's... it's finished..." Minuette ran a hoof through her frazzled blue and white mane, smiling more and more crookedly. "Bless you, Einstallion, it's finally... finally finished..." Fidgeting dizzily, her eyes fell to a stack of over forty different research books, all filled to the brim with neon colored sticky notes and bookmarks. "The last draft. Even the citations..." She clenched her eyes shut and teetered from the weight of a sleepy smile. "And I'm actually on time for once!"

        A loose giggle escaped her throat. Tossing her mane back, Minuette trotted forward, leaned her head over the podium, and sighed out her grinning muzzle. Her ears folded as she nuzzled the wooden desk, preparing at last to drift... drift away—

        "Wowsers, Colgate! That's one heck of a door stopper!"

        "Gaaah!" Minuette snapped awake, shaking her head. She frowned, rubbing her eyes before squinting across the room of the library.

        Three translucent baby dragons danced around each other, morphing into the single image of Spike in the center of her fuzzy vision. "Feels like you've been here forever. You finally finished?"

        "Mmmmff... yes..." Minuette rubbed her eyes again, mumbling, "And don't call me 'Colgate.'"

        "Oh." Spike bashfully wrung his tail in a pair of clawed hands. "I'm sorry. It's just that everypony in town says—"

        "Most ponies in town don't know me," Minuette grumbled, but shook it off with a sigh. "Not that I can blame them, though. I've been working on this paper for my university for so long that I must be a total stranger to everypony by now..."

        "I'll say!" Spike smirked. "You've been at it for at least three days!"

        Minuette's jaw dropped. "For three days...?!" She turned her head and squinted out the nearby window. The sunlight glinted off the dewy grass of Ponyville, making her groan harder. "Blessed Celestia... h-has it really been that long?"

        "That's just the last stretch, Colg—erm..." Spike fumbled.

        "'Minuette,'" the unicorn corrected again. "And I want to thank Her Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle, for allowing me to use her research tools for this endeavor." Minuette smiled wearily. "This paper here is my Grand Thesis. Once the Top Professors look this over, there's a chance I may finally be allowed onto the Board of Theoretical Quantum Physicists in Central Trottingham University."

        "Heh... something with that many words has gotta be pretty snazzy," Spike said, nodding. "I'll be sure to tell Twilight how thankful you are once she gets back."

        "She's... n-not here?"

        "Don't you remember? She and the rest of her best friends left for Canterlot five days ago. Urgent business."

        "Wow. No. I... I don't remember..." Minuette rubbed her aching head as she limped sleepily across the room towards her saddlebag. "I don't remember much of anything. Just... th-this paper..."

        "Did you sleep at all during the last three days of writing, Miss Minuette...?"

        "I... uhm..." Minuette slung her saddlebag on upside down, groaned, and rearranged it. "I faintly remember taking a cat nap... on... uhm... T-Tuesday afternoon?"

        "Yeesh..." Spike bit onto one claw before murmuring, "Miss? It's... like... Sunday."

        "Sunday..." Minuette murmured out loud as she shuffled back towards her thickly-bound paper. "That's before Tuesday, right?" She rubbed her chin. "Did I reverse time? If a string of magic momenta accelerated enough bosonic particles down a space of quantum flux..."

        Spike chuckled. "I think somepony really needs to crash." He winked. "Hard."

        "I can't," Minuette muttered. "Er, I mean, I totally can, but I have to drop this off at my professor's Ponyville office... and then..." She winced, pointing at the stack of research tomes. "These books. They all need to returned..."

        "Uhm, duh." Spike waddled into the room and started gathering them. "You checked them all out here, didn't you? I'll put them all back up for you."

        "Oh, Spike." Minuette grinned from where she teetered left and right. "You're too k-kind."

        "Just doing my job. Besides, it's my pleasure." He smirked at her. "I'll even take out all of the bookmarks n'stuff."

        "Good." Minuette reached over to pat him, tapping her hoof atop a green lampshade instead. She stumbled her way towards the library door and out into the blinding sunshine of Ponyville. "Everything is good. Good is everything. Turn this in... and then sleep. Sleep for time, for time is relative, like ice cream."

        "Good luck with the Trottingham Quantum Treehouse thing, Colgate—I mean... eh..." Spike rolled his reptilian eyes and continued shuffling the books in his small arms. "She got it."

        Outside, Minuette limped across town, her body hung in a perpetual slouch. There was a constant ringing in her ears, and she sensed several inky black shadows dancing in her peripheral vision. The rationalist in her head excused it all to the torturous wages of sleep deprivation, and she kept herself trotting in a straight line across town until she made her way to the front doorstep of the apartment that her local University contact rented out. Once there, she packaged the bound Thesis neatly in a brown paper bag and slid it through the wide slot at the base of the apartment's front door. Smiling at her glazed reflection in the plaque bearing the Professor's name, she briefly enjoyed a small fantasy where it was her title instead, followed by an engraved list of polynumerous scientific accolades.

        Turning around—nearly swiveling off the edge of her hooves—Minuette slouched towards the opposite edge of Ponyville. Twice, she almost stumbled into traffic, and it took the courteous gesture of a villager or two to keep her from being run over by a speeding horse-drawn wagon. She thanked them, though her tongue produced nothing better than a zombified slur. Every time Minuette blinked—and she blinked often—she envisioned a messy unmade bed with her name on it. This brought a smile to her face, even when she leaned against the crossing sign of a street corner, nuzzling the metal pole with her fuzzy cheek. Some kind mare nearby cleared her throat, waking Minuette so that she could trot across the street with a startled jerk.

        At last, Minuette could see the tell-tale red brick chimneys of her apartment building. The unicorn practically danced around the curve in the sidewalk, nearly collapsing on at least three occasions. She bumped into a mailmare on the way, which was how she knew that she had actually passed her doorstep. With a giggling breath, the delivery pegasus was kind enough to spin Minuette back around and urge her towards her own front stoop. Minuette waved blindly, zig-zagging her way towards the door. She fumbled through her satchel for a key, cussed under her breath, and finally just manipulated the tumblers of her lock with raw magic.

        The front door swung open, blasting her with blissfully cool air conditioning. Minuette lurched forward insantly, slamming the door behind her. The mare's hooves made stacatto clopping noises against the tile floor of the front room, although it blended with the bloodrushing pulse in her strained ears. Half-galloping, she stumbled up the stairs, stripping of her saddlebag in the process. With a wave of magic, the door to her bedroom burst open, and there it lay—heaven in the form of tangled satin sheets and pillows that were fluffier than all the clouds that hung over Ponyville. A lace duvet dangled in her bobbing eyesight like a velvet embrace, and Minuette threw her limp body towards it, flouncing one and a half times as her petite weight finally made contact with the luscious mattress.

        "Unnnnnnghhhhhmmmmmchuuuuuu..." Minuette cooed into the bedsheets as she nuzzled and nuzzled her tingling facial muscles against the plush-plush pillows. "Mmmmm... fuzzy... fuzzy wuzzy... hee hee hee..." With a drunken grin, she rolled and rolled until the satin sheets cocooned her like a pretty pony mummy, and she curled her legs to her chest as her body sank deep and deeper into the bedspread. "The cosmological constant is blankets..." She yawned. "...and nothing can reach the speed of light..." She yawned again. "...unless it wants to be snoring, everywhere, and at all times." She sighed the happiest sigh of her life as she drifted off into the delightfully black abyss of unconsciousness. "Good night... universe..."

        Minuette was going, going, gone...

        And that was precisely when the wall to her bedroom exploded.

        KaPow!

        If Minuette's windows and vanity mirror hadn't already shattered upon impact, she would have rendered them to dust from the shrill pitch of her startled scream. The mare rolled out of bed like a blue molecule launched from a supercollider. Sitting up, she blinked torturously into a cloud of settling sediment.

        "What in the actual anus?!" she sputtered. The dust cleared, and Minuette gasped at the frozen statue of a unicorn wobbling to a stop, embedded by its horn into the second floor of her home. "Gaaaaie!" Minuette's startled eyes reflected the petrified alabaster flesh of the unicorn, along with its curled mane and diamond cutie marks. "But... but... why?!"

        It was then that she became aware of further explosions echoing across the rooftops of Ponyville. Against her better judgment, she turned and squinted out the fresh hole made in the wall of her upstairs abode.

        Cottages were erupting in flames at random intervals. A pair of antlers dipped above and below the rooftops. Beams of magical energy shot in every direction. There was another explosion, and suddenly a lavender shape was being cannonballed directly at her.

        "Ackies!" Minuette ducked low, covering her head and shivering.

        Thud! "Ooof!" A vaguely familiar voice let loose a dainty cry. Collapsing onto the bedroom floor, Princess Twilight Sparkle sat dizzily. She shook the cobwebs loose from her head with a rattle of her tiara, then glanced at the frozen statue of the unicorn stuck upside down in the floor. "Oh no! Rarity!" Sniffling, the alicorn leaned over and nuzzled her frozen friend. "It's just as I feared!"

        Minuette blinked hard, squinting sleepily across the rubble-strewn bedroom. "Your Highness...?"

        "Colgate!" Twilight Sparkle gasped, jumping up to her hooves. "You're alive! I'm so sorry for what happened to your home! But this is an emergency!"

        "A... th-thousand pardons, Your Majesty..." Minuette slurred. She tried to get up, stumbled, and fell back to her numb flank. "Ooomf. My n-name isn't... isn't 'Colgate...'"

        "Discord has turned evil once again!" Twilight Sparkle spoke, frowning out the crumbling hole in the apartment. More and more flames erupted, reflecting off her quivering, worried eyes. "He's no longer a reformed dragonequus, but an evil dark lord bent on covering Equestria with eternal chaos!"

        "Wow, that... uhm..." Minuette yawned and rubbed her fuzzy face. "...s-sounds full of balls."

        "Since he began his march of destruction in Canterlot two days ago, my friends and I have been forced to salvage the Elements of Harmony from the Tree in the Everfree Forest! But he must have foreseen it!" Twilight Sparkle gnashed her teeth as she grinded her hooves against the floor of the apartment. "Now he's petrifying each of my friends one by one, nullifying the Elements of Harmony along with them! If we're to defeat his latest wave of evil, we either have to restore my friends, or substitute the Elements of Harmony in order to reverse his petrification spell and use it on him!"

        "That is...most highness, Your Unfortunate," Minuette mumbled as she crawled like a snail towards her dust-laden bedsheets. "Mmmmnngh... what I w-wouldn't give to stop the flame and noise. But mostly the noise—"

        Twilight Sparkle gasped through an adorkable smile. "That's it! Giving!" She turned and grinned wide at Minuette. "Colgate, you'd be a perfect replacement for Rarity!"

        Minuette froze in place, blinking. "Buh?"

        "You show great intellectual generosity with all of the genius theses you generate for the Equestrian scientific community! You would make a great substitute wielder for Rarity's element!"

        "Buh?"

        "Grkkk!" With a tense, flickering horn, Twilight wrenched the pendant off of Rarity's petrified neck and floated it over until it donned Minuette's teetering throat. "There! Colgate, for the fate of Equestria, you must assist me and my remaining friends in defeating Discord once and for all!"

        "..." Minuette blinked at her, then at the pendant around her neck, and then at the princess again. "Buh?"

        "Quick! There's no time! We must make haste! Away!" Twilight Sparkle swept Minuette up in a magical field and leapt the two of them out the massive hole in the apartment.

        "Gaaaaaah!" Minuette flailed, twirling upside down in a lavender magic field. She glanced with teary eyes at her apartment and stretched her trembling front hooves towards it as drew away at an alarming rate. "But... but... bedddddd!"

        Th-thap! Seconds later, the two mares landed in the center of downtown, surrounded by flames and tornadic clouds of smog.

        "Girls, never fear!" Twilight Sparkle shouted as she stood heroically in the shadow of the crumbling City Hall. Random villagers shrieked and galloped back and forth in the background. "I found a new Bearer of Generosity! Let us do battle with Discord!"

        "Mmmmfff..." Minuette veered to the side until her numb muzzle fell into the fluff of Twilight's mane. "Yesssshhh... let us do battle toads..."

        "Waaaaaaiiiieee!" Rainbow Dash was knocked back from a giant talon high above the rooftops. Her body slammed through a granite fountain. "Oooof!" She sat in the rubble, rubbing her head. "Nnnnngh... Seriously, Twilight?" She glared across the settling dust and ash. "Colgate?! That's your friggin' solution?"

        "My n-name is not 'Colgate...'" Minuette slurred from where she draped over Twilight's shoulder with fluttering eyes. "And... mnnzzzzzzz... your mane is full of fruit fruit."

        "Don't be rude, Rainbow Dash!" Twilight said through a frown as she adjusted her magical sparkly tiara. "Colgate's already sacrificed her home to ensure our victory! She's proven her generosity!"

        "Don't... c-care about my home..." Minuette drooled as she approached the virge of fainting. "Just want... my beddy blanket bye..." At the sound of a demonic roar, she looked up. "Oh hey, fangs."

        "Look out, Colgate!" Twilight shrieked as she threw the two of them out of the way of a blindingly bright petrification beam.

        The stream of energy flew past their bodies and straight into Rainbow Dash's sternum. "Oh, for the love of my blue taint—" Crkkkkk! Rainbow's pegasus figure froze in mid-scowl.

        Twilight Sparkle sat up, gasping... then gasped even more at the sight of Fluttershy's, Pinkie Pie's, and Applejack's frozen pale figures. "Oh no! Discord's gotten to the rest of my friends! That... th-that means the Elements are... are..."

        "Mmmmmm..." Minuette cooed against the Ponyville lawn, relishing in the tickling sensation of the grass blades against her blue cheek as she nuzzled the ground. "Dewy gooey in the droopy... hee heeeeeee..." Thud! A massive cloven hoof impacted the earth just a few feet in front of her. She stared up at the towering, serpentine figure of a mutilated chaos lord. "Chu...?"

        "Keep calm and annihilate on!" A demonic dragonequus with glowing red eyes bellowed into the remaining vestiges of Ponyville. "Friendship is a word, and I've come to write the Bible of Oblivion!" He raised a talon and a lion's paw over his antler'd crown, summoning some sort of sphere of destructive energy resonance.

        "Oh no!" Twilight Sparkle stumbled up to her hooves, hyperventilating. "Discord's summoning some sort of sphere of destructive energy resonance!" She clenched her eyes shut and fought tears. "Princess Celestia, give me strength! What do I do?"

        "Why not..." Minuette muttered through a quivering yawn. "Nyup nyup.... hmmmm... j-just punch Disco Dick in the chesticles?"

        "Yes!" Twilight gasped, smiling wide. "Of course! Discord has transformed into full chaos mode, depending on pure sorcery alone to accomplish his evil will! He's left all physicality and substance behind, meaning that he should be completely and utterly vulnerable to the pure application of brute force and—" The sphere of chaos energy struck the ground in front of Twilight, knocking the alicorn back—shrieking—so that she plummeted through a collapsing news stand.

        "Hmmmfff..." Minuette blearily stared through the settling debris. "That was fartfully bad."

        Grip! Minuette gasped, her lungs constricting as she was lifted off the ground in the vice-hold of an enlarged paw. Discord sneered into her face, opening his gaping maw to howl, "And what's this?! A fabulous substitute for an incompetent Element Bearer?! Please, don't make me laugh!"

        "Grnnghhh..." Minuette wheezed, rolled her bloodshot eyes back, and frowned. "Look, you can have all the Elements you want." Grunting, she unhooked the pendant of diamonds from her neck and tossed them straight at his face. "Just conjure me a chaos bed while you're at it!"

        Discord opened his mouth to respond, only to swallow the pendant in one fell gulp. His red eyes bulged, and he dropped Minuette to the floor below.

        "Ooof!" Minuette landed, rolling over onto her backside like a mint blue turtle.

        "Gaaaakkkt!" Discord's demon eyes teared as he gripped at his choking throat. "The... hckkk... Element!" He sputtered, "So generous! It burns! Hckkkkt! It burns with the power of fabulosity!"

        Twilight Sparkle crawled limply out of the collapsed newstand. "Colgate...?" she breathed through a quivering muzzle.

        Discord fell to his knees. Thud! He tossed his head up to the heavens as glowing cracks and fissures formed throughout his mutated flesh. "I understand now! Entropy is not all there is to the universe! As much as death takes away, lives gives back ten fold! Generosity is everything! And I... am... nothing!"

        That said, Discord exploded—or at least his exterior did. With a blinding flash of light, a smaller and far less threatening dragonequus collapsed in a pile of smoking fur and scales. He groaned, coughing up the Element of Loyalty so that it rattled to a stand still. All around him, with sporadic flashes of anti-chaos, the damage to Ponyville was magically reversed, so that the immaculate state of Ponyville was fully restored.

        "Unnngh..." Rainbow Dash sat up on the edge of the fountain, no longer paralyzed. She rubbed her head and squinted across the courtyard. "Why do I feel like something really stupid just happened, only to be countered by something twice as awesomely stupid?"

        "Pinkie Pie!" Applejack gasped, slapping her hat on and smiling. "Fluttershy! Twilight! Yer all okay!"

        "Discorrrrrrd?" Fluttershy trotted over towards the collapsed dragonequus while villagers snuck out of their hiding places to watch from afar. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

        "Mmmmfnnngh..." Discord sat up, rubbing his head. "Never eat a sandwich that's sat over three weeks in the back of the fridge." He winked. "It gave me the absolute worse case of discordant diarrhea." He rubbed his furry chin, staring at the many-many faces glaring at him. "Hmmm... I most certainly hope I didn't get so sick that I spontaneously heel-turned and covered the majority of the countryside in destruction and flame. That would have been most definitely unsexy."

        "Oh good!" Rarity trotted up to the scene, breathless. "So I didn't lose the pendant after all! That's quite the relief." She smiled at the closest pony to the fallen necklace. "Miss Colgate, darling, are you the one who retrieved it?"

        Minuette groaned. "For the last time, I'm not 'Colgate.' I am—"

        "A hero!" Twilight Sparkle squeaked, grinning from ear to ear. She dashed over and lifted Minuette up by her limp forelimb. "The Hero! The Hero of All Equestria!"

        "Yeah!" Applejack nodded, smiling. "Reckon she did step up to bat for us when we were all taken to the woodshed!"

        "You mean she stopped Discord's bad self when we were unable to fight any longer?" Fluttershy gasped while nuzzling the limp and dazed dragonequus. "Oh my. That really is heroic!"

        "Yes. What Shutterfly said."

        "Colgate!" Twilight Sparkle spun the unicorn around like a dangling marionette and grinned into her bleary face. "Do you have any idea what this means?"

        "Duahhhhhhh..." Minuette helplessly drooled.

        "Buck yeah, I know what it means!" Rainbow Dash flew laps around the pair and raised Minuette's other forelimb with a devilish smirk. "She's the flank kicker of the hour!"

        "More like the century!" Twilight Sparkle grinned. "Colgate, you single-hoofedly saved Equestria from eternal chaos! Everypony alive everywhere is in your debt!"

        "Yeah. Sure. That's nice." Minuette gulped, eyes rolling. "Bed, please? Pretty please? With dark matter on top?"

        "You know what this calls for?!" Pinkie Pie sing-songed.

        Minuette whimpered. "Oh, sweet merciful uterus, what...?"

        Pinkie reached in, spun Minuette a million times in a single blink, and jerked her to a stop. "A party!"

        Minuette found herself squinting at a fully arranged banquet inside City Hall, complete with a chocolate fountain, a ten-foot tall ice cream cake, bowls of punch, party balloons, and streamers. "Buzzawhutsavage?!" She gawked at the scene. "How in Stephen Hayking's name...?!"

        "Woooooohooo!" Pinkie Pie dove over the unicorn, somersaulted, and grabbed the first of several pink-wrapped packages. "Here! Open your presents!"

        Thud! "Aaugh!" Minuette stumbled back from the blow to the face. "Queef quarks! Could you please not—Gah!" She bumped into a jostling flank beside her.

        "Get your groove on, Colgate!" Rainbow Dash juked and jived, giving the mare a sideways wink from underneath her party hat. "It's a celebration, and you're in the spotlight, girl!"

        "But I don't want to spot in the light!" Minuette stumbled through a thick crowd, for suddenly the City Hall was filled to the brim with partying, mingling, punch-sipping ponies. "I just want all of the pillows and none of the suck suck! Where is... how...?!"

        "Oh, Colgate, don't be so modest," Twilight Sparkle said, waving a hoof as she levitated a tiny glass of punch to her lips for a dainty sip. "This is Pinkie's way of showing her gratitude. Actually, it's all of our way of showing gratitude."

        "Ya see?" Applejack slid in with a lampshade in place of her hat. "We're all tryin' to be like you!"

        "You're the hero of Ponyville, after all," Fluttershy said with a smile while a residually pissed-off bunny perched moodily on her shoulder. "Well... h-hero of all Equestria, for that matter."

        "Yes. That's nice." Minuette stumbled backwards. "Now, if you don't mind, I just finished writing a very, very complicated thesis and I really want to—"

        "Sample some of the Apple Family's homebaked goods?!" A pair of strong orange forelimbs slid a chair in underneath Minuette, forcing her to sit down with a gasp. "Why didn't ya say so?! Have yerself some apple fritter!"

        "No, wait. Please. I just want—Nommmf!" Minuette's eyes bulged as her muzzle was suddenly filled to the brim with pastry and apple pulp.

        "And some apple dumplings!"

        "Pleassghhh, I jusgghht—Grommffflle!"

        "And sweet baked golden delicious glazed pie!"

        "Unngh Celestiaghhh kiff megh naughhh—Rammflffgee!"

        Derpy Hooves trotted up with a bright grin. "Colgate! Savior of Ponyville! Can I get your autograph?"

        "Blaaaahhckkghhttt!" Minuette threw up all over the pegasus' face.

        Derpy smiled, her bright eyes bulging out opposite ends of the apple-flavored mush dribbling down her muzzle. "Thank you!" She trotted off gaily.

        "Unnnnghhhhh..." Minuette teetered in the chair, clutching her stomach as she spat up apple sauce. "This is not how I wanted to pass out..."

        An accordion blasted in the unicorn's ear, followed by the felicitous tones of the instrument's performer. "You're the reason we're all alive and squeeing today, Colgate!" Pinkie chirped, grinning so hard that her jaw nearly burst out of her cranium. "Live in the moment! You're best pony, after all!"

        "What'd you say, Pinkie?" Rarity remarked.

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Why, yes! I'm inclined to agree!" Rarity grinned wide and triumphantly shouted towards the ceiling. "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Please..." Minuette sputtered, falling out of her chair. "Ooof! My name isn't—"

        "Colgate is best pony!" The entire party cheered. "Colgate is best pony!" They all cheered again.

        "Unnngh..." Minuette stumbled forward, teetering towards the elusive red exit sign at the far end of the hall. "Would you stop having nonconsensual intercourse with my skull?" She rubbed her aching ears as she lurched in a serpentine fashion. "Somepony, anypony, I beg of you..." Her eyes rolled back as she snorted her way between a giggle and a cough. "Heeee... beg... bed... beg bugs... beg bug beg you for beddie bye..."

        Thud! She stumbled into a brown flank bearing an hourglass cutie mark identical to her own.

        A stallion with a dark brown mane glanced down. "I beg your pardon."

        "Oh, Dr. Hooves..." Minuette tried to curtsy; she looked like a legless dog that was humping the floor. "So sorry to bump into you."

        "Mmmf. Yes." The stallion shrugged his shoulders and glanced off with a jerking motion. "Something something pears and wiggly wobbly."

        "You don't say?" Minuette slurred. "You know, I-I'm not my normal self right now, but I have to confess that I have always held a deep-seeded admiration for the work you've done in the areas of theoretical subdimensional astrometrics."

        "Uh huh..."

        "Including your research on the elusive goddess particle, like the one they built the Large Haydron Collider to find..."

        "R-right..." Dr. Hooves glanced shiftily about.

        "And... and..." Minuette suddenly squinted at a throng of feathers coiled along the stallion's side. "Wait... you're a pegasus? But I thought you were an earth pony?"

        Dr. Hooves opened his mouth to speak, but paled noticeably. Snarling, he shouted high to the ceiling. "Our cover is blown! Now, brothers and sisters! Now!"

        "Phweeee?"

        Fl-Fl-Flash! With burning plumes of green flame, Dr. Hooves and over two dozen random ponies from the partying crowd disappeared, replaced instead by dark equine figures with black exoskeletons and drooling fangs.

        "Changelings!" Twilight gasped.

        "We're surrounded!" Fluttershy yelped, trembling.

        "I can take 'em!" Rainbow Dash flew towards the heart of the swarm, only to be instantly uppercutted through a stained glass window. "Fappo!" Smasssh!

        "Oh no! Rainbow Dash!" Rarity swooned dramatically, a dainty hoof resting over her forehead. "We're outnumbered! Whatever shall we do?!"

        "That's right, my little ponies."

        Everypony looked up to the second story balcony of the City Hall interior. With coalescing swirls of artistically smexy emerald gas, none other than Queen Chrysalis appeared. She smiled with glistening fangs as she drooled between the syllables of her gratuitous monologue.

        "We've waited far too long to strike at the heart of what makes you precious love horses so tranquil. Centuries of observation should have made the solution to worldwide dominance completely obvious! You are all party animals! Destroy the pony party at the heart, and then we can consume what remains of the equine spirit!"

        "She's... r-right..." Pinkie Pie gasped and wheezed, collapsing into a cold tangled pile of streamers and accordion parts. "Party... senses... dr-draining...!"

        Applejack clutched her own throat under the incessant glow of leering changelings. "I... m-may never... b-bake apple pies again..."

        "No more c-cocktail dresses!" Rarirty mewled as she rolled up into a little marshmallowy ball. "The h-horror!"

        "You w-won't get away with this, Queen Chrysalis!" Twilight Sparkle stammered, buckling weakly to her knees beside the punch table. "Though you might crush and consume our bodies, our pretty pony spirits will party on!"

        "Oh please. That's practically vomitous, even for a creature like me who lives off of sap." Chrysalis' ears twitched at the sound of a cooing voice. She turned around and glared at the center of the hall. "And what's your problem?"

        "Hmmmm..." Minuette smiled blissfully, wrapping herself up in table cloth and cuddling a stupidly large pinata to her fuzzy chest like it was a body pillow. "No problem... no problem at all..."

        "Bah! You would choose slumber at such a time as this?!" Chrysalis spread her gossamer wings and glided darkly down from the balcony. She landed in front of Minuette, joined by her insectoid underlings as she glared at the fetal positioned mare. "Do you not realize that we've come to leech the partying essence out of you and every other pony, rendering the whole lot of you to shriveled husks of your former selves?!"

        "Hrmmmmfff..." Minuette pouted and bucked a plate of cupcakes at the evil Queen with an errant kicking motion. "Go hush about your husks in Hushville! I'm trying to nuzzle cuddle fuzzle..."

        The changelings flinched to avoid the flying cupcakes. Lethargically, Chrysalis caught the silver platter in her levitation field. "I see. Well, prepare for sleep, my little pony! An eternal and agonizing dreamless sleep within the blood abyss of—!" The Queen froze, for suddenly she was spotting her reflection in the floating platter. Her eyes twitched as she gawked at her fanged teeth, perferated shell, and slimy mane. "I... I am exceedingly ugly." Her horse mandibles quivered. "Like the buttocks of a devil baboon hanging from a demon tree." Her ears drooped as a foalish squeak escaped her lips. "All these years of leeching love and joy from my fellow pony kind—has it turned me into this horrid wretch that I see before my eyes?"

        "Mmmmmm pantiesssss..." Minuette drooled into her pinata cuddle-buddy.

        "I... I've been going about this all wrong..." Chrysalis dropped the plate with a clatter. She trotted backwards, shivering, sniffling. "Brothers... sisters..." She gazed at her minions with a tearful smile. "We mustn't be robbing ponies of their joy. We must be spreading joy!" She stretched her wings out wide with an explosion of bright green glory. "Now and forever!"

        The air rang with the melody of magical bells. One by one, the changelings gladly mimicked the motions of their Queen, exploding with bursts of emerald light and smoke. When the haze cleared, glowing translucent petite alicorns stood amidst the blinking crowd, sharing an identical grin of bliss, one to another.

        "Queen Chrysalis...?" Twilight Sparkle stammered as she stood up on trembling hooves.

        "No. I refuse to be called by that wretched name any longer," spoke a gracious creature with flowing green locks and a silk-shiny shell. The once-brood-queen floated in a messianic pose, shining light on all of the cooing Ponyvilleans in attendance. "I shall now go by my old name—that of my birth, when I was far prettier and far mercifuler a creature than the shadow that stood in my place over the past five millennia. I am she who is called Queen Galaxia Lavendre Nebulosa du Faust! And the very purpose of my existence is to know love and spread love!"

        "Well, isn't that nice?" Fluttershy cooed.

        "Yeeeha!" Applejack waved her hat around. "Now we're talkin'!"

        "A most fortuitous turn of events!" Rarity sing-songed.

        Rainbow Dash crawled halfway through the shattered window with a crooked grin. "I'm bleeding internally!"

        "Come, my beloved brothers and sisters..." Queen Galaxia Lavendre Nebulosa du Faust beckoned the tiny alicorns that were once her changelings. She nuzzled one and tongue-kissed the other. "We head west! The friendship orgy begins in Appleloosa. They need it the most. Also, the buffalo make the best contraceptives."

        All in one accord, the joyous brood flew out the front doors of City Hall, streaking with bands of pastel rainbow light and gaseous glitter. The Ponyvilleans cheered them on with deaffening whoops, hollers, and whistles.

        "Mmmmfffnnngh..." Minuette clenched her eyes harder, planting a pair of hooves over her ears. "Shhhhh... not so loud against my cuddle bumps..." A lavender magic field lifted her by the tail. "Whoahhh!"

        "She's saved us yet again!" Twilight Sparkle proclaimed with a teary smile. "Embodying the spirit of love, truth, and sincere harmony, Colgate has exorcised Queen Chrysalis of her dark festering taint!"

        "Nnnngh... please, it's 'Taintuette.'" The unicorn blinked crookedly upside down. "I-I mean..."

        "Squeeeee!" Twilight flung Minuette hard against her, nuzzling her—lavender cheek to elecric blue cheek. "There is no doubt whatsoeverrrrrrrr! Colgate is best pony!"

        "I... am n-not..."

        "Weeeee!" Pinkie Pie slapped her arms around Minuette from behind. "Savior of parties now and forever!"

        "Darn tootin'!" Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity joined the group hug. "You done saved the day ten times over, sugarcube!"

        "Blbllgghhfsmmmrff!" Rainbow Dash smiled, blood trickling out her muzzle.

        "I bet even Princess Celestia would be proud of her!" Fluttershy said.

        Twilight gasped against Minuette's wriggling nose. "Yes! Of course! Princess Celestia! She must know about what's happened here in Ponyville immediately!"

        "Spread the news far and wide!" Rarity insisted. "Equestria's got a new fashion in town and is delightfully minty!"

        "Colgate is best pony!" Rarity cooed.

        "Can I just... please..." Minuette groaned, struggling to disentangle herself from the arms arms and more arms. "Enough of the hug hash browns and... and fuzz dust... guhhh—"

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Unnngh..." Minuette clutched her ears tightly. "Please. I need these for sound making. Lay off the shout shuffle."

        "Cheer up, Colgate," Twilight said, nuzzling her gently.

        "My name is not—" Minuette blinked, glancing at the mountainous scenery shifting past either side of her. "Wait. Where did... how...?!"

        "Teehee..." Twilight stifled a giggle from where she sat next to her in a twelve-stallion-drawn chariot. "Silly filly." She patted the unicorn's shoulder. "You kept nodding out of it. I've done all I could to keep you awake."

        "Uhm..." Minuette's frown was hard enough to cut glass. "Why?"

        "For the parade, of course!"

        "What... parade...?" A spray of confetti flew into the mare's face. "Bleachkk! Feh! Bleh! Princess Celestia on a b-bike!"

        "Nope, but close though!" Twilight grinned while her violet eyes reflected the building fronts of Canterlot. Families upon families of ponies stood on street corners, sidewalks, and balconies, all cheering, hollering, and tossing confetti at the elaborate procession. "I wrote a letter to the Princess all about the way you redeemed both Discord and Chrysalis! Not only did Celestia want to see you in person, but she agreed with me that we needed to throw a celebration at the Royal Palace in your honor!"

        "A celebration..." Minuette teetered forward on the edge of her seat. After Twilight shoved her back, she sputtered, "Is that the sort of thing that gets loud?"

        Pegasi flew by, blowing trumpets at the top of their lungs.

        "Unnnngh!" Minuette clutched her throbbing skull. "Ovarian cysts!"

        "Relish in the moment, Colgate!" Twilight smiled, wiping a tear from the corner of her eyes. "This is your day in the sun! And you've earned it! I'm so... so happy for you!"

        All around, the richly dressed residents of Canterlot cheered, their voices being carried aloft with the confetti and trumpeted fanfare.

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Colgate is best pony!"

        "Unnnnghhhuwaaaaaaaiieeeeee..." Minuette bent over like she was going to throw up, clutching her head in a vice-like grip. "Buck me softly with a chainsaw..."

        "Well, that sounds like it would make it hard for you to wear this medal!" exclaimed a graceful, matronly voice.

        "What m-medal?" Minuette glanced up, only to have a veritable noose thrown around her neck. "Gaaaaaah!" A golden star with the weight of an anvil caused her to pratfall onto the checkerboard tile of the palace.

        Celestia gasped lightly, covering her muzzle with a dainty, gold-plated hoof. "Oh dear. I thought she was prepared for that..."

        "Colgate!" Twilight Sparkle leaned in, whispering. "Don't doze off like that in front of the Princess! You'll look silly!"

        "Mmmmfffnnngh..." Minuette muttered against the edge of a royal burgundy carpet between her and Celestia. "But maybe I want to plush plush into princess pantaloons and schnazzzzzzzzz..." She turned her head aside and gently nuzzled the floor. "Mmmm... this tile is puff puff to my muff... heeeeeee..."

        "Please, pay her no mind, Princess..." Twilight smiled nervously as she yanked Minuette back up by her tail. The unicorn gasped, blearily spotting Celestia in front of them, along with solid lines of well-armored guards on either side. "She's been subjected to the horrors of two villains in one day," Twilight explained with a nervous titter. "You know how heroic-yet-frail-mortals are. I was once one of them."

        "And you have grown into something both exceptional and majestic, Twilight." Celestia smiled, and turned to gaze lovingly at Minuette. "And so will you too transform into a being of righteousness someday, Colgate, especially one befitting your selfless qualities."

        "Kitten mittens!" Minuette cooed out the edge of a sloppy smile. Her head bobbed multiple times from the weight of the bedazzled medal around her neck. "Stuff fluff with the cuddle cushions." She cleared her throat. "I-I mean... m-my name is not Colgate, your High High Majestic Plot Pillowness, Ma'am."

        Twilight giggled. "And she's so funny too!"

        "Of that, I have no doubt. It seems as though you've found yourself a new best friend, Twilight." Celestia smiled with misty eyes. "You have no idea how much joy it gives me to know that—even past your alicorn transformation—you have not abandoned your lessons on friendship."

        Twilight wrapped a hoof around Minuette's shoulder. "Absolutely not, Your Highness." She nuzzled the unicorn dearly. "Colgate has taught me that I still have a lot of room to grow."

        "Mmmmm... lavender lumps..."

        Celestia chuckled. Just then, her ears twitched to the sound of coldly clopping hooves. She and several guards faced the rear of the throne room. "Dearest sister! It is still broad daylight! What brings you out of bed this early!"

        "Mmmmnnfffffnnghuuuu..." Princess Luna teetered left and right, her blue eyes rolling and her stomach gurgling. "We doth not feel too good." She lurched forward, her muzzle stretching open three times wide. "BLAAARRGHGHGHGLLGLGHHLL!"

        A phantom shadow erupted from deep within her throat. Before everypony, it coalesced into a red and black demon of a horse, complete with a metallic headpiece, a curved horn, and flickering green and red eyes.

        "Crystalsssssss!"

        "Oh no!" Twilight Sparkle yelped. "It's the hellish shadow spirit of King Sombra!"

        "Sombra!" Celestia frowned, stomping her hoof against the tile as she stared down the nebulous spirit of malevolence. "So it was you who harbored yourself in my sister's inner essence, all this time polluting her spirit and tempting her with all measures of tantalizing darkness upon the vestiges of her prior brush with diabolical evil!"

        "Cryyyyyy—" Sombra leaned back, summoned a pulse of black mist, and fired it straight forward in an obsidian projection of unbridled wrath. "—stalssssssss!"

        "Unnnff!" Celestia took the blow to the chest, flying back so that her body smashed through a stained glass window.

        "Princess Celestia!" Twilight sobbed in horror.

        "Wruthless aggression!" Shouted the lead guard, and the entire royal legion leapt upon Sombra, attacking his serpentine spirit from all sides with clash of metal and blades.

        Wheezing, Luna looked up from the floor, raising a trembling hoof as she sobbed tears of moondust across the checkerboard floor. "Forsooth, it is true. Millennia ago, we were tempted by the evil spirit of Sombra, for his skills in the figurative principalities of romantic intercourse were far too full of mesmerizing power for us to forsake, and it didst inspire us to consume a piece of his spirit—a liberal swallowing, as t'were—so that he wouldst be kept close to our heart during the entirety of our banishment, where we consummated our love within the charred lunar craters that know nothing but vacuum save for the heat generated off of our ritualistic passion within the penumbra of grand existential darkness, until that one golden day when the stars wouldst aid in our escape, and we might dare to bringeth his presence nigh to reunite with the traces of his evil that had previously been banished. That, and he doth have a queer thing for crystals."

        "CRYSTALS!" Sombra shouted, headbutting the last of the guards to the floor. The Royal Palace interior was now nothing but twitching bodies and scattered bits of armor.

        "Oh Luna... Celestia..." Twilight Sparkle whimpered from where she cowered in the monster's shadow. "I've been such a horrible... horrible princess! All this time, I should have seen the evil dark taint of black onyx obsidian before me! But, alas, I allowed myself to be blinded by the broadside of bright alabaster white blankness that was my naivete!"

        "Crystals Crystals Crystalssssss..." Sombra leered over her, licking his lips in a ravenous manner.

        "Go ahead... do your worse..." Twilight hung her head, stifling a sob. "I beg of you, though, just don't hurt my friends..."

        "Cryyyyyyyyy—" Sombra reared his head back like a giant smoking cobra—but jerked to a stop before he could sink his horse fangs into Twilight's pliable flesh. With a twitching ear, he turned his muzzle and stared across the chamber.

        Minuette had limped over to one of the many velvet curtains hanging from the brick wall and was currently attempting to wrap her exhausted body with it. She had almost become comfortable when the stubborn fabric tugged at the end of its slack. Frustrated, Minuette jerked and pulled and yanked at the curtain.

        "Crystal Crystal?!" Sombra's eyes flickered as he swept himself across the Palace and lunged at the unicorn. "Cryssssssstals!"

        At last, Minuette gave the curtain one last tug. The entire velvet sheet came down, revealing a dusty stained glass window to the light for the first time in centuries. Sombra skidded to a stop, hovering in mid-air with a gasp. His wide eyes reflected off a grimy mosaic of colored glass shards, depicting a young colt prancing in the snow along with several crystal pony foals. His eyes teared, turning to steam from the sheer heat of his frothing evil inner essential spiritual soul self.

        "Crystal...?" He whimpered, his viper-like jaw quivering. "Crystal Crystal...?"

        "Yes, Sombra..." Celestia flew back in through the shattered window pane a few spaces away. "You were once one with the crystal, instead of being the devourer of crystal."

        Luna wheezed, sitting up with a tearful face. "Our most tender lover, forsake thy obsession with the crystal... and become one with the crystal once more, as thou art born to be!"

        Minuette stuck her weary head out from the collapsed pile of curtain velvet. "Okay, for once, I gotta call bull—"

        KER-FLAAAAASH! Sombra exploded with brilliant light. His voice projected beams of holy illumination in all direction. He was screaming. Or perhaps he was laughing. Or maybe it was harmony bullets. Whatever the case, when the energy outburst of sudden epiphany had run its course, a tiny colt with doey eyes and a jet black coat stood, shivering, with the massive sash of Sombra draped over his body like a thick duvet.

        "All of the bad stuff!" The colt mewled in a ridiculously adorable voice. "It is gone! Sombra is no more!" He spun about, grinning from ear to ear. "I am now Omb! The spiritual foalish essence of purity that existed within the frame of what I once was!" On stubby hooves, he waddled over and nuzzled Minuette's backside. "Heeeeee! And I have you to thank for this second chance at liiiiiife!"

        "Unnnngmmmmmffff!" Minuette slammed her skull repeatedly into the checkerboard floor. "Bed!" Thud! "Bed!" Thud! "Bedddd!" Thudddd!

        "You are most welcome to live your new life here, my little pony!" Celestia said with a tearful smile while the guards groggily stood back up, regaining their senses. "Our home is your home."

        "And we shalt take care of thee with utmost love and harmonic devotion!" Luna said, cradling him in her forelimbs.

        "Heeheehee!" Omb smiled with sparkly eyes at her. "Can I call you 'Mommy?'"

        "We hath certainly donned many names for thine amusement whilst on the moon, so we doth not see why not!"

        "Yaaaaaaay! New Moon Mom!" And Omb nuzzled Luna dearly while Celestia joined in, enfolding her sister and her new nephew in a feathery hug.

        Looking over Luna's crown, Celestia shed a tear as she spoke through a smiling, quivering muzzle. "I do not know how to repair you for interceding on my new family's behalf..."

        "Guahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—" Minuette drooled.

        "...but I do believe the absolute pinnacle of Royal Awards is in order!"

        Minuette grinned, teetering about with lopsided eyes. "M-Maybe I c-could borrow one of those nice, pink, fluffy, princessy canopy beds—?"

        "Oh, I know!" Twilight suddenly shot up in between Minuette and Celestia. "Stewardship!"

        "Yes!" Celestia gasped. "But of course! Stewardship!"

        "Stewardship," Luna said with a smiling nod.

        Omb waved his forelimbs. "Nipples!"

        And that was how, two hours and two hundred blinks later, Minuette found herself seated on a massive throne at the very end of the Palace's main hall. A golden sceptor with her own face rested in the crook of her hoof while a massive crown weighed on her already weightless skull. She had to bite her own tongue to keep from fainting. All the while...

        "All hail Colgate, Steward of Canterlot!" Hundreds of aristocratic ponies shouted from the thick crowd in front of her. "For she is best pony!"

        "Nnnngh... please..." Minuette, eyes bloodshot, teetered towards the open windows adjacent to her throne. "Only b-bullies and schoolfillies ever called me—"

        "All hail Colgate!" Thousands of ponies holding a candlelight vigil in the castle courtyard grinned under a setting sun, making the whole foundation of the Royal Palace shake and shudder. "Best pony and Steward of Canterlot!"

        "Unnnnnghhh..." Minuette gazed forward with thin eyes. She tried poking the scepter several times into her chest, but it wasn't sharp enough to impale her through the heart. So, with a delirious smile, she settled for collapsing off her throne, teetering forward... forward—

        "Whoopsies!" Twilight caught the unicorn in a magic field, smiling. "Careful! You don't want to collapse on your guests!"

        "Crap apple on my goose eggs?" Minuetted blinked, then jerked her twitching eyes forward at the first of several bodies trotting up. "How may I fallopian tube you?"

        "Colgate, best pony, Steward of Canterlot," the Mayor of Ponyville spoke while bowing low in reverance. "On behalf of all of Ponyville, I thank you for saving the community ten times over with your unparalleled wisdom and courage. We would not be alive and prancing right now if it weren't for your brave actions performed today."

        "Mmmmnngh..." Minuette teetered and slurred. "No mention of tit. All in grape funk. Four scrapes and seven uterines ago."

        The Mayor sniffed, wiping her cheek dry with a bittersweet smile. "You mean so much to m-me!" She stifled the urge to sob. "My grandfoals will be named after you! I shall make sure of it!"

        As she shuffled off, a fair-skinned earth pony with a silken brown mane trotted up in her place, curtseying. "Steward of Canterlot, my name is Caroline, formerly Caramel. And it's thanks to you and your brazen attitude that I was inspired to finally undergo my long awaited sex change."

        "Mmmmff... how gossling for yokel. Breast of Winslow and all that jazzercise..."

        Mr. and Mrs. Cake shuffled up, nuzzling each other as they smiled at the unicorn upon the throne. "We just spent ten hours consummating our love, just so we'd have an absolute guarantee of conceiving a child on the very day of your ascension, whom we will name after you in hopes of bringing honor to the future of Equestria for years to come."

        "Always practice savior thumbtacks," Minuette said with a dizzied nod. "A thousand blessings opossum halibut..."

        "The Great and Powerful Trixie was always afraid of wheels! But, thanks to your exceptional courage in the face of absolute terror, the Great and Powerful Trixie has suffered an epiphany! Tank treads! They shall move the Great and Powerful Trixie around from henceforth! To that end, the Great and Powerful Trixie thanks you, best pony, for the inspiration that saved her career!"

        "Lick before you leap year..." Minuette waved her hoof limply. "I give thee pass gas. Doctrine of Petrification and the Cove Nuts of Euthanasia... Hmmmm..." She teetered forward once more.

        "Whoops! Watch yourself, Colgate!" Twilight pleasantly hummed. "You don't want to crush the foals!"

        Minuette's bloodshot eyes darted about. "Croak the fleas? Huaaaaay?" She spotted three petite shadows kneeling in front of her.

        "On behalf of Ponyville, the Cutie Mark Crusaders present you these here flowers," Apple Bloom said.

        Sweetie Belle nudged a basket full of roses and tulips forward. "May they represent the bloom of life in town that you have made possible!"

        "On hundred percent guaranteed to be free of aphids!" Scootaloo added with a nervous smile. "I picked them clean myself!"

        "Hmmmf... and they smark grease, my little pom poms..." Minuette leaned left and right, yawned, then swayed backwards and forwards. "Foalship is massacre..."

        Scootaloo sighed, digging at the floor with a limp hoof as she murmured melancholically. "I only wish I could be as awesome as you or Rainbow Dash someday. Here you are saving the world and becoming Steward of Canterlot, and I can't even fly." She sniffed. "Of course, it's all because of a horrible muscular defect that I was foaled with, but still—it would be super nice to be able to spread my wings and take to the skies..."

        "Nyeuuuuuuuuuughhhuuuuu..." Minuette teetered over, slamming against the floor of the throneroom before Twilight could catch her this time. When she impacted, her horn fired a random burst of mana that sailed into Scootaloo's body and knocked the filly clear across the room.

        "Scootaloo!" Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom shouted in unison.

        "Ooof!" Scootaloo landed hard against a pillar, her feathers smoking. Groaning, she stood up—but gasped. With a wide-eyed expression, she looked back at her flank and saw her wings stretching twice as long as normal. "My wings! My wings! Omigosh Omigosh Omigosh!" She kicked off the ground and flew dazzling figure eights above the gawking pony crowd. "All along, they just needed a little zap! I can fly! Heeeee! I can fly I can fly I can fly!"

        "Wow, Scootaloo!" Apple Bloom gasped, grinning wide. "I'm so plum happy for you!"

        "This is great! This is beyond great!" Scootaloo hyperventilated as she twirled and spiraled in the air. "I feel like it was my purpose to do this! Like flight was my special talent all along! Almost as if... as if..."

        Fl-Flash! A cutie mark appeared suddenly on Scootaloo's flank, illustrating a cloud pierced with orange lightning bolts.

        "Oh wowwwww!" Scootaloo's eyes were wide as saucers. "My cutie mark! At last! And it makes so much sense! Flying is all I ever wanted to do!"

        "Just like I've always loved buckin' and pickin' apples!" Apple Bloom chanted. Flash! She glanced at her flank and gasped at the image of a barrel of apples that was suddenly there. "Yeeeeeeeeha! I knew it!"

        "And I always wanted to be a world renown surgeon!" Sweetie's voice cracked. Flash! The image of a brick appeared on her flank. "... ... ...Yaaaaaaaaaaay!"

        All three foals hugged each other in a bouncing little circle while an emotional crowd applauded from a distance. "We have our cutie marks! We have our cutie marks! We have our cutie marks!  Yaay!"

        "This is the happiest day of my life..." Scootaloo smiled painfully. "My only wish is that I still had parents to show my cutie mark off to..."

        "Unnngh..." A stallion and a mare with brown and orange coats randomly trotted forward from the crowd. They spread their wings and squinted at the pegasus foal. "Scootaloo? Is that you, darling?"

        Scootaloo spun around and all the air instantly escaped her lungs. "Mom?! D-Dad?!"

        "We were going out for a simple flight, when evil windigos zapped us out of midair," the mare said. "We were frozen in ice for years, but then an errant flash of energy from Ponyville shattered the glacier that we were stuck in!"

        "We thawed and came here as quick as we could!" The stallion smiled. "Scootaloo, we're so very, very proud of you, darling!"

        "Colgate, you did it!" Scootaloo tearfully squealed as she galloped into the loving couple's embrace. "You found my parents for me! Oh yes yes yes yes yes!" She nearly exploded with smiles and giggles.

        "We love you so much, Scootaloo," the mare said, nuzzling her closely. "But tell us, do you know anything about these ponies who thawed in the same glacier as us?"

        "Unnnngh..." A stallion with a broad-rimmed hat teetered beside a mare with an orange slice for a cutie mark. "What in tarnation is goin' on around here?! Are the dayum windigos responsible for this too?!"

        "Mamma?! Pappa?!" Apple Bloom gasped. Her eyes instantly filled with tears as she galloped forward. "You ain't dead! Oh, blessed Colgate almighty, it's a miracle! Yer alive! Yer alive! Yer alive!"

        While hugging her, the mare with the orange slice held up a sack of coins. "We were just coming back from visiting my sister in Manehattan with my share of Grandmother's inheritance. It's enough money to triple Sweet Apple Acres and start our very own cider factory business!"

        "Ohhhhhhh!" Apple Bloom squealed into the fuzz of her father's chest. "Applejack is gonna lay an egg when she finds out!"

        "Speaking of eggs..." A giant purple dragon stuck her smoking snout through a nearby window. "I'm pretty sure I left a green and purple polkadotted one around here someplace. I wouldn't have thought of stopping by to look if it weren't for all this blasted commotion..."

        Spike stepped out of the crowd, his emerald eyes glistening. "Mom...?"

        "Spike?" The dragon gasped, her scales drooping as smoldering tears trickled down her snout. "So the rumors were true." She smashed a hand through a nearby wall and beckoned for him. "Come to Mother, darling."

        "Mommmmmmmyyy!" Spike ran towards her, sobbing with joy before hugging her palm and nuzzling her scales with an adorable smile.

        Twilight clamped two hooves over her smiling muzzle. A few spaces away, a unicorn slid her shades off and cleared her throat.

        "Ahem... Tavi?" Vinyl Scratch held Octavia's hooves in her own. "I've been putting this off for waaaaaay too friggin' long. But Colgate's spirit of generosity and inspiration has made me realize that life is short and precious n'all that jazz." She knelt down on bent hoof and knee. Levitating a tiny box into her forelimbs, she opened it up to reveal a glittering hooflet with diamond studs. "Octavia Melody, will you marry me?"

        Octavia gasped, holding a hoof over her palpitating heart. "Oh, Vinyl! My darling, yes! A thousand times yes!" The two embraced, kissing deeply while ponies around them cooed and clapped.

        "If Colgate can bring this much happiness to the world..." Sunset Shimmer sniffled, wiping a tear from her muzzle. "Then what h-have I been doing with my life?! I don't want to be wicked anymore..."

        "Omigosh!" Lightning Dust spun to stare at her. "I know, r-right! Putting ponies in harm's way is so lame!"

        "Then it's settled!" Sunset sobbed with joy and held a hoof out. "From now on, we start the Colgate Club! A group for evil ponies who wish to permanently redeem themselves!"

        "Count me in, sister!" Lightning Dust gripped her hoof, smiling crookedly. "I just feel so... so... cleansed inside..."

        "Hey! I can see straight!" Derpy Hooves suddenly sing-songed with perfectly even amber eyes. "Who'd have thought that just staring fixedly at Colgate's scepter for a solid hour would have done the trick after all these years!" She glanced over her shoulder at a petite shape beside her. "Say, I know you! Aren't you Lyra Heartstrings? The pony who plays music all the time by the downtown street corner in Ponyville?"

        "You..." Lyra gasped through a quivering lip. A tear ran down her smiling face. "You r-r-remember m-me...?!"

        The throne room filled with cheering, laughing, felicitously sobbing ponies. Eventually, the euphoric crowd surged its way towards where the Steward sat, chanting in one massive accord: "Thank you, Colgate! Colgate is best pony! Thank you, Colgate! Colgate is best pony!"

        "Eeehjjjhh!" Minuette flinched and stumbled away from the limbs, hooves, and muzzles. "Get away! Don't crowd me! I just wanted to turn in a scientific thesis you... half-assed lobotomized horse humpers, you!"

        "Hold on to me, Colgate!" Twilight shouted as she summoned a lavender sphere of energy over the two of them. "I'll bring us somewhere safe!"

        Minuette saw a stampeding wall of smiling faces. Then—in a liquid flash—they all vanished, and the calm interior of a treehouse bedroom appeared in their place. She exhaled with a shuddering breath as Twilight's teleportation spell ran its course.

        "There. That should keep us safe while the crowd settles down," Twilight Sparkle said with a nervous titter.

        "Yes... s-safe..." Minuette stared drunkenly across the room. A tiny bed lay, covered in a fluffy blue duvet with adorkable star patterns. She shuffled like a blissful zombie towards it, drooling. "Safe... and t-tucked away... and w-warm..."

        "I... uhm..." Twilight fidgeted from one set of hooves to the other. "I brought us to my treehouse. To m-my bedroom." She cleared her throat. "I hope you don't mind, Steward."

        "Don't... mind... over... only... fr-from Mattel..." Minuette fell to her knees and resorted to shuffling across the wooden floor, squirming towards the bed like a crippled mare. "The power is yours. And knowing is half the bathysphere..."

        "As a matter of fact, I've often wondered if... if you've ever had more reasons for choosing to study in my library of all places." Twilight gulped, fanning herself suddenly. "There are so, so many places in Equestria to find research materials on quantum mechanics, and yet you chose my humble tree over the rest..."

        "So close..." Minuette whimpered, inching nearer and nearer to the dangling bedsheets.

        "I know! And so am I, Colgate!" Twilight stammered breathily, her wings sticking straight out. "Close to a confession.  But, I've always been afraid to say it... to share it... but now that we are b-both esteemed members of the Canterlot Court—I a princess and you a steward..."

        "Five m-minutes..." Minuette cooed. "That's all I ask—"

        "Oh, Colgate, I could give you so much more than five minutes!" Twilight—suddenly hovering in front of the unicorn—touched down and stared her in the face. "I'm an alicorn! I could give you five centuries! Five millennia! I could give you everything... absolutely everything..."

        "Hurrrrrrrrrrrr...?" Minuette numbly drooled.

        "I... I'm sorry! I just can't help myself, Colgate..." Twilight held a hoof over her beating heart. "The way you saved my friends... redeemed villainous spirits... brought harmony to all of Equestria! You are the epitome of intelligence, altruism, and selfless love! You stand for peace, tolerance, and friendship—everything I have always believed in! And I have to... I must... I just got to... Mmmmmmmm... guhh!" She suddenly lunged forward and kissed Minuette squarely on the lips.

        "Hrmmfmfflglghghhh!" Minuette's wide eyes crossed as her nostrils were filled with tiny hot lavender breaths.

        When the passionate muzzle-locking was done, Twilight cupped Minuette's cheeks in her hooves and panted. "Oh, Colgate! I can't hide it anymore! I love you! I've always loved you! The way you pursue your studies with utmost devotion! The way the sunlight hits your smile on a clear golden morning! The scent in your coat after a brisk afternoon rain!" She ran her hooves vigorously through the unicorn's hair. "And your mane! Goddess! Your mane! I once bought blue and white satin sheets just so I could feel like I was wrapped up in you each sweltering night! Oh, the evenings I spent by myself, crying myself to sleep, pretending instead that I was confessing all of my words of adoration to you... just like you are finally allowing me to do right now!" She sniffled, smiling through a curtain of happy tears. "You are my everything, Colgate! I would spin the stars for you and write your name across the glittering nebulae!"

        "That's berry nostril, Twist and Shout..." Minuette lisped, stretching a hoof over Twilight's shoulder, gesturing for the mattress. "Just... the bed... oh goddess please the bed..."

        "Yes... Oh yes... Yes, Colgate!" Twilight giggled and wept for joy and giggled again. With flapping wings, she lifted the two of them up and floated them towards the twin bed in question. "Let us venture there together!" Fwomp! She dropped the unicorn and descended upon her with tender-loving hooves. "Let us consummate our fateful union!"

        "Guhhhh-What?" Colgate's eyes rolled back as she nuzzled the pillow case upside down. "Ohhhhhhhhh fluff fluffffff..."

        "Please! D-don't be afraid! I am very, very gentle! I promise!  And b-b-besides!" Twilight shivered as she reached towards opposite headboards and pulled out book after book. "I-I-I've thoroughly read up on the topic of love making! I know all about the birds and the bees and the scissors and cunning linguistics!" Her body heaved under a curtain of nervous sweat as she hugged another thick tome to her chest. "I even b-bought an extra large thesaurus so that my exultant shouts of verbal pleasure won't be unnecessarily repetitive like the screaming mares in the literature that my B.B.B.F.F. thought he had kept hidden away in his closet!"

        "Big... Bed Best Fluff Forever...?" Minuette cooed, suckling the edge of the pillow like a calf to a teat. "Uhhhguuuu—"

        "Ohhhhh Colgate!" Twilight toppled over like a felled tree and clung to Minuette's body with the sincerity of a convulsing koala bear. "Darling, it's like I've always dreamed! Even better than all of those hot sweaty nights of submerging myself in toothpaste, screaming your name into a bath sponge so as not to wake up Spike!"

        "Mmmmmfnnnghhh..." Minuette gargled between lip-smothering french kisses. "Whateverrrrr... just loop the rabbit around the hole with coagulated panzer squirrels... mmmm-zzzzzzzzzzz-schnorrrrr—"

        "Yes, Colgate! Oh blessed blissful beloved!" Twilight's voice echoed through her parietal lobe.

        "Guhhh!" Minuette snapped awake, her body lying on its side while a lavender hoof spread her legs wide... wider. "Mmmf!" Her eyes rolled back as her lower abdomen shook and jostled. "Yeesh, Twilight. Princesses don't wax much, do they?"

        "That's it, Colgate, darling!" Sweating profusely, Twilight reached a hoof out from where she positioned her lower half perpendicular to Minuette's and flipped through the pages of a thick red anatomy book. "You naughty girl! Continue to grind the longitudinal folds of your vaginal entrance against my..." She flipped and flipped. "...perineum and outer genital tract! Just like that, my love! Oh yes! My... uhm..." Flip flip flip. "...oestrus cervix muscles are fully relaxed in anticipation of you... and hot!"

        "Mmmmnnghhhh..." Minuette simply buried her face in the flouncing bedsheets as her body jolted and jolted. "Could you at least use a saddle? Saddle up... to dreamland..." She smiled into the starry duvet. "Hmmmmmm... chutes and ladders into an ocean of creamy, lacy cosmos—"

        "Oh, Colgate!" Thwomp! "You are so divine!"

        "Gaaaie!" Minuette exhaled violently, waking up on her backside while Twilight straddled her lower body with flouncing pelvic gyrations. "Your H-Highness! I'm sure there's a trampoline outside—" Her blue eyes wandered down and she immediately jerked her gaze up to the ceiling. "Whoahhhh! Okaaaaaaaay..."

        "My beautiful, beautiful Steward of C-Canterlot!" Twilight huffed and puffed as she bounced up and down. "My... my... uhh..." Flip flip flip. "...elastic bipartite uterus quivers in ecstasy!"

        "Yeah, I-I can see that..." Minuette grimaced towards the walls. "Feel it too. Somepony shoulda brought a raincoat."

        "Please, darling, don't leave me with the highness and the dryness!" Twilight grabbed Minuette's hooves and flung them towards her abdomen. "I beg of you! Stroke my dually exposed mammary glands in alternating clockwise and counter clockwise motions depending on severity of arousal and temperature-induced erection of the vascular tissue!"

        "Yeah, sure, whatever you say—"

        "Quickly, Colgate!"

        "Uh... r-right..." Minuette fumbled her hooves forward and dragged them in zig-zaggy directions all across Twilight's fuzzy belly. "There you go, uhhh... hot hot stuff. Is this it? Is this doing it for you... n'stuff?"

        "Oh, my sweet darling unicorn! I am in absolute heavennnn!" Twilight leaned over and stroked Minuette's mane with a drooling smile.

        "Uh huh..." Minuette slurred, tilting her head forward until she burried it in the plush fuzz of Twilight's sweaty belly fur. "Uh huh uh huh uh huhhhhh-schnorrrrrrrrrrrrrr..."

        "Just let gravity do the work, Colgate! Yes! Oh Goddess, yes!"

        "Buh?" Minuette's eyes snapped open an untold space in miasmic time later. "Fuuuuuu..." Minuette winced as she dangled back and forth. "How in the heck did you get a swing set in here?"

        "It's okay! I'm a tough f-filly!" Twilight whimpered over the sound of a rattling collar around her neck. A duck flew by in the background while a goat bleated against the walls of the hollow tree somewhere. "And my estrous cycle is currently releasing enough gonadotropins into my system that my lumen is coated with ample amounts of lubricated endometrium! So don't feel as though you have to ease up on the liberal thrusting of the silicon prosthetic!"

        "Ah, well that's good to know—Wait..." Minuette jostled against a clinking array of chains and leather straps all around her. "What... 'silicon prosthetic—'?" Whap! A tiny black rod smacked her in the face. "Augh!" She snarled with one squinting eye. "Damn it, Princess! That's the wrong end of a rider's crop!"

        "Talk dirty to me, my naughty naughty Steward!"

        "Uhhhh..." Minuette yawned from where she swang and swang. "Talk... dirty...?"

        "Y-yes!" Sweating profusely, Twilight flipped through a heavy thesaurus. "Orate your sensual feelings in a manner most muddy and profane!"

        "I... uh... wowsers this bed sure is slimy..."

        "More! Filthier, my love!"

        "Uhhh... durrrr..." Minuette rattled against the ropes and chains. "Erhm... the... uh... Steady State Theory once maintained that the cosmos around Equestria existed in static motion with no beginning and no end..."

        "Oh, Colgate!" Flip flip flip. "You lovely female canine! I am... erupting with bacchanalian euphoria!"

        "And... and... uhm..." Minuette struggled to squeak her words out between all of the jostling and swaying. "Society ignorantly adopted the Ponylemaic system of geocentricity that erroneously maintained that the bodies of the solar system revolved around the earth while simultaneously twirling upon their own individual epicycles..."

        "Yes! You... you..." Flip flip. "...putrid hussy of amorous debauchery!"

        "And... and..." Minuette's teeth chattered as her eyes rolled back. "Pre-classical ponies hypothesized that nondescript aether acted as a fluidic medium through which cosmic bodies literally swam..."

        "Oh goddess!"

        "When outer space is actually a near perfect vacuum that is nonetheless filled with dark energy, cosmic light particles, and wandering neutrinos..."

        "More! Vigorously!" Flip flip flip. "Ungovernably!"

        "It's theoretically impossible to find a zero kinetic state in any sample taken of the cosmic void, on account of highly unpredictable variables of quantum harmonic oscillation and—"

        "Don't stop, Colgate! Oh darling, I am..." Flip flip. "About to arrive!"

        "A quark star is roughly three or four femtometers across—"

        "Oh Colgate! I am reaching my destination!"

        "Strangelet..."

        "It is materializing moistly inside of me!"

        "Rapid... erm... nucleic conversion of matter into strange matter?"

        "I am concluding, my love! Oh yes! Affirmative! Concurring!" Flip flip flip. "Emphatic assertion! Ohhhhhhhh books books books books books!" Twilight shoved her head muzzle-deep into the open thesaurus and moaned. "Mfrnnnnnnnnghwwwwwwd!"

        Minuette was vaguely aware of the windows rattling. After a convulsing eternity, the cacophonous headboard finally came to a tremorous stop, and suddenly the unicorn was drowning in a flood of kisses, all of them laced with Twilight's panting breath. Two blinks later, she was spooning with the quivering alicorn, feeling sweat-slick forelimbs and fetlocks cuddling her from every angle.

        "Colgate, my pretty pretty horse girl..." Twilight hummed, nuzzled her cheek, and giggled breathily. "It was better than I could ever have imagined." She kissed and kissed and licked and kissed Minuette's chin. "Mmmmm... We are destined to spread light and harmony across all of Equestria with our magical pony love..."

        "Yeah... sure thing..." Minuette yawned and used Twilight's mane as a pillow. "All in a duck's wank. Hrmmmmzzzzzzz..."

        "That's right, my precious." Twilight enfolded her wings around the two of them. "Sleep soundly. Let us mingle in the scent and juices of our angelic love-making..."

        "Hmmmm..." Minuette smiled for the first time in eternity. "Sleep... yes... yes, I think I can do that..." She cooed and drooled simultaneously against the lavender feathers cocooning her. "Been an honor to serve and protect your gushy gush... Schnorrrrrrrrrrr..."

        The darkness embraced Minuette with obsidian folds. There, she floated across the cosmos, surrounded by dim stars. A cool and quiet universe rocked Minuette through waves of nebulous dreams, all of them filled with the queer images of manic ponies and defeated supervillains and Twilight's gasping, thrusting face. Over the course of several subconscious millennia, everything faded away, dissolving into a gray soup that folded over Minuette's limp body like amniotic fluid, returning her to a warm and cushy void that throbbed with the undying beat of the galactic heart.

        And somewhere—someplace blissfully serene and soft beyond the lengths of perceivable oblivion—a dollop of light fell over Minuette's eyelids. They fluttered open to a soft and glittering world, hazy with the dewy kiss of infant morning.

        "Nnnngh... muuuuuu..." She sat up in a queen's sized bed covered with white satin sheets. Minuette rubbed her muzzle, twitched, and rubbed her muzzle again. "Nyup... nyup..." She blinked through thin eyes, studying the spacious interior of a luxury apartment stretched around her. "Huh... that's weird..." She gazed out the windows and saw tall, towering skyscrapers. "I... d-don't remember this place..."

        "You like it?!" Twilight beamed, trotting up with a wheeled tray full of buttered toast and hash browns. "It's the finest honeymoon suite in all of Equestria!"

        "Gaaah!" Minuette flinched away from her, covering her body with a silk blanket. "H-H-Honeymoon S-S-Suite?!"

        "Mmmmmhmmm!" Twilight levitated a pitcher of orange juice and poured a glass before the unicorn. "Ponies kept clamoring at my library door to have a word with your or win the opportunity to kiss your hoof! So I moved us somewhere safe and secret!" She turned towards the windows and breathed in deeply. "Mmmmmm... Manehattan is so beautiful this time of year."

        "Manehattan...?!" Minuette blanched. "How... how long was I out?"

        "Oh, not too long." Twilight hoofed her the glass of OJ. "Just a month or so."

        Clank! Minuette immediately dropped the glass to the floor. "A month?! I was asleep for over thirty days?!"

        "Well, you were so tired after we consummated..."

        "Guhhh..." Cross-eyed, Minuette clutched her skull with trembling hooves. "C-consummated?"

        "And you looked soooooo adorable while asleep!" Twilight giggled inwardly. "So I took it upon myself to cast a slumber spell on you." She reached out and caressed the mare's fuzzy blue chin. "It was worth it, just to see my pwecious wuvable Colgate get her bwooty west!"

        "This... this c-can't be happening..." Minuette wheezed and hyperventilated. "My home in Ponyville! My goldfish! The... th-the paper!" Her pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks. "If the Professors read my work and tried to write me back, I... I-I wouldn't have been there to... to..."

        "But that's not the only spell I worked hard on," Twilight said, avoiding Minuette's gaze as she fidgeted playfully with the plush carpet floor. "I... uh... I've been waiting to tell you this for a whole month, Colgate, my beloved sweet."

        "Tell me?" Minuette gulped dryly. "Tell me wh-what?"

        "Hmmmmm!" Twilight bit her bottom lip with a girlish squeak. She shuffled around the breakfast cart. In the full light, Minuette could evidently see the alicorn's bulging hips and engorged belly. "Behold, my precious Steward of Canterlot! The miracle product of our righteous pony love!"

        "Uhhhhhh..." Minuette sweated bullets, her eyebrow twitching. "Uhmmmm..."

        "Well, what do you think?!" Twilight curtsied, wobbled a bit, and stood up on buckling legs. "They're twins! I'm thinking we name one 'Col' and the other 'Gate', so that way they are both halves of the best pony wife an alicorn princess could ever ask for!"

        "It... that... but..."

        "What's that, Colgate, darling?" Twilight leaned forward with pursing lips. "I'm listening..."

        Minuette gulped, then gave a frazzled smile. "I'll be right back." That said, she turned, galloped at full force, and dove out the fortieth story window. CRASH! She fell out of view, leaving smashed glass shards and billowing curtains behind her.

        Twilight smiled. Blinked and smiled. "Oh please, honey, don't be shy!"

        Silence.

        "Colgate?"

        More silence.

        "...darling?"