Misappropriated Fanfiction Theater: #2

There are certain classes of stories I have been impatiently waiting for somebody else to write, because I really want to read them, and because I know full well that I’m the wrong person to be writing them.

One of these classes is a body-swap between Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie. I feel this story is needed because of the unsatisfactory ending of the episode “Feeling Pinkie Keen”. I didn’t feel it necessary for the episode to end with Pinkie being completely explained (I’ve made this point in a previous post), but I was hoping that in reward for Twilight’s efforts that she might gain some kind of insight into Pinkie’s nature that no other pony had. (This is not slighting the episode, by the way. “Feeling Pinkie Keen” is an extraordinary example of taking a concept that could have easily been covered in less than ten minutes, and filling it out with padding that was even better than the plot.)

I have in fact found a few examples of this type of story. The best of them is currently still being written. It’s called “A Different Kind of Magic”, and it is being written by Krizak.

(Note: “A Different Type of Magic” is not strictly speaking a “body-switching” fanfic. The two ponies instead swap breeds and cutie marks, but retain their coloration so everypony else knows who is who.)

I have been following this story very closely since the moment it first came out. The first two chapters were posted in quick succession, but then a week followed before Chapter 3 went online.

That was a very long week for me. What I had read had clearly established that the writer had thought long and hard about this concept, and that he has an excellent grasp of the two characters. What I wasn’t sure of was whether he’d take the story where I wanted it to go.

That he would be exploring the psychological underpinnings of both the purple unicorn and the pink earth pony seemed obvious. I’m indifferent over the fact that there will be romance (although if it’s believable I’ll certainly be happy). What I was afraid he’d miss was an exploration of Pinkie’s powers.

So worried did I become, in fact, that I ended up writing my own version of Chapter 3 a couple of days before the real one showed up.

Krizak’s Chapter 3 wound up addressing Pinkie Pie’s strange abilities. And the author did this in a way that was a complete surprise to me, although in retrospect his explanation is now incredibly obvious, so incredibly obvious that I now have no choice but to incorporate this explanation into my head canon.

But that doesn’t mean that I still don’t like the version I came up with. And here it is:

---

After a long day at the bakery, Twilight was finally ready to begin her research. She knew exactly where she wanted to begin: teleportation.

The teleport spell was Twilight Sparkle’s specialty. In her humble opinion, she was currently the second-best practitioner of the spell in all of Equestria, behind only Princess Celestia. Even Luna was not as accomplished with this one spell as she was.

And yet Pinkie Pie was still better at teleporting than Twilight was.

She didn’t brag about this, of course. Pinkie was never one to brag. She simply used her ability. All the time. Not a day went by without Pinkie showing up out of nowhere, not just once, but a half-dozen times. If Twilight had attempted to teleport that often, she would be bed-ridden for a week. And Pinkie did it completely silently. By contrast, there was no mistaking one of Twilight’s entrances, for a full 3.7 seconds beforehand.

Twilight Sparkle was jealous.

It certainly didn’t help that Pinkie didn’t explain herself, how she managed to be the only earth pony in the history of Equestria who could teleport, or how she did it. Indeed, on those moments when Twilight had truly pressed her, she had actually become scared, which always forced Twilight to back off.

So apparently whatever Pinkie’s trick was, she could not, or would not, teach it.

But now Twilight had the opportunity to learn in the most-direct possible manner: by doing. All of Pinkie’s abilities were now her abilities, at least for the next few days. And there was no way the secret of Pinkie’s teleportation would escape her.

~~~

Twilight went up the stairs at Sugarcube Corner, entered Pinkie’s bedroom, and locked the door behind her. She looked around her at the organized chaos that was Pinkie Pie’s world and smiled with determination.

“Let’s do this!” she announced, to nopony in particular.

She closed her eyes, scrunched up her features and...

...nothing happened.

She looked around her in disappointment, before quickly recovering. “Well, that definitely proves that she doesn’t do it like a unicorn,” she said to herself. “Now then...I was channeling the magic into my horn, which I no longer have. Earth ponies are known for their affinity for the environment, which is expressed through their hooves. So maybe if I reverse the direction of the thaumatic flow...”

This attempt fared no better than the first one. But Twilight was undaunted.

She tried again, and again, and again. Occasionally she’d stop for a few minutes to think out loud. When that failed, she started looking around the room. She wasn’t about to read Pinkie’s diary, but short of that, she tried everything possible to get inside Pinkie’s mind, to try to figure out which errant thought was the trigger for teleportation.

Hours passed, and Twilight noticed that Celestia’s sun was setting outside the bedroom’s window. She also realized that she was hungry, so she went back downstairs. Perhaps one of those sweets that Pinkie seemed to inhale was the missing ingredient?

The Cakes were ready to close down the shop for the night, but were patiently waiting for their last customer to finish his slate Danish.

“Spike!” exclaimed Twilight as she picked up one of the day-old pastries about to be thrown out. “What are you doing here?”

“Pinkie sent me over to see if I could help you out. She called it ‘cracking the Pinkie code’.”

Twilight rolled her eyes as she took a bite of her pastry, a bear claw. “She would call it something like that. Well, considering my absolute lack of success so far, it surely couldn’t hurt.” She looked over nervously at the Cakes. She suspected that the two of them had to have built up nerves of steel after years of putting up with Pinkie Pie’s exploits all of these years. Assuming the once and future unicorn did suddenly master earth pony teleportation, she didn’t want to put a further strain on them. “You can go to bed, Mr. and Mrs. Cake. Spike and I will lock up the shop tonight.”

The two of them thanked her and left. The shop was locked up, and the store window was curtained, giving the two of them some privacy.

“Okay,” Spike said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

“Alright, pay attention,” Twilight said, and closed her eyes and concentrated. When she opened them, she was in exactly the same place she was before.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “I know exactly what’s your problem.”

“How do you even know what I was trying to do?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Your problem is your timing. It’s lousy.”

“My...timing?” Twilight asked in bewilderment, before she finally figured out what he was implying. “I wasn’t trying to tell a joke! I was trying to teleport!”

“Same problem,” pronounced the dragon with an air of inscrutable wisdom.

“What does timing have to do with teleportation?!”

“Oh, and Pinkie told me to remind you to stop thinking.”

This really drove Twilight up the wall. “How can I fix my timing if I’m not thinking?!” she exploded.

Spike raised his claws, clearly seeing that he would get nowhere with her in this mood. “Hey, you asked for my advice, and I gave it. I didn’t guarantee that it would be any good.”

Twilight unlocked the door and ushered Spike out. “It’s alright,” she apologized. “I’m just frustrated. Maybe I’ll come up with something new in the morning.”

“Sure!” agreed Spike. He didn’t believe her.

“Now be careful walking back to the library. Don’t get lost in the dark.”

“I can take care of myself, Twilight!” Spike protested.

“Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight.”

And she stood in the doorway for a few minutes, watching him walk out into the gathering gloom.

~~~

With the door secure, Twilight lowered the chandelier and blew out the candles, one by one, something that would have been much easier for her when she had her horn. She then walked over to the sconce next to the staircase and blew out the last candle in the room.

With the windows curtained, the room was plunged into pitch blackness. It was so dark that Twilight couldn’t see her forehoof in front of her face.

On a hunch, she closed her eyes and wished...

...and suddenly found herself on top of the stove.

“Woo-hoo!” she exclaimed.

In the next few moments she effortlessly poofed herself inside the cabinet, next to the sugar bin, on top of one of the chairs, and inside the chandelier. All of these done in complete blackness. The trouble came when she tried to walk of her own power.

“Aaiieee!”

Boom! Crash-bang-stumble-tumble-sprain!

“...ow.”

“Twilight!” came Mrs. Cake’s voice from the top of the stairs. “Are you alright?”

“Nothing bruised except my ego,” Twilight reported honestly.

“...alright,” Mrs. Cake replied. “Do take care of yourself. Pinkie’s awfully prone to accidents, after all.”

“I’ll be careful,” Twilight promised, and waited for the door of the bedroom to close.

There was no way Twilight was going to sleep tonight!

~~~

After writing a brief note telling the Cakes not to worry about her whereabouts, Twilight Sparkle carefully exited Sugarcube Corner and locked the door behind her.

Night had now descended upon Ponyville, but the town was still brightly lit by street lamps. Ponies strolled down the sidewalks two by two. It was a lovely summer evening.

Twilight tried to teleport to the other side of the street. Nothing happened. She even tried closing her eyes, reasoning that darkness of some form was necessary. This did not prove to be the case.

She ducked into an alleyway to be out of the hoof traffic, and sat down to think.

What am I missing? she asked herself. What does she do that I’m not?

She tried to remember what it looked like when Pinkie disappeared. That’s when she realized: she had never seen Pinkie disappear, or reappear. Ever. Out of hundreds, if not thousands, of suspected teleportations, Twilight suspected that none of them had ever been directly observed.

Was that it? Was Pinkie constrained by some kind of “observer effect”? Was it in fact something like bluffing in poker, something you could only get away with through deception? And if so, who or what was Pinkie deceiving? Celestia? The laws of physics?

Well, there was one way to try that theory out. Twilight walked deeper into the alleyway she had entered, around behind a dumpster, until she was invisible to the ponies on the streets.

Now, then...

“Why ponies are willing to throw away a perfectly good muffin is beyond me!” commented a voice floating above Twilight’s head, causing her to cry out in alarm.

She looked up quickly only to see Derpy Hooves, who had apparently discovered the box containing the day-old pastries.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Twilight, backing out of the alley.

“Would you like one?” Derpy asked, holding out a blueberry muffin. “There’s more than enough to share!”

At least, the unicorn hoped those were blueberries...

“No, thanks,” said Twilight, patting her full belly.

“Good luck finding your horn!” Derpy exclaimed as she left.

~~~

It turned out that for Twilight Sparkle, getting privacy on a summer evening was next to impossible. There were questions about the missing horn, and thanks for the last time she and her friends had saved the town (mixed with a slight hint that next time they shouldn’t let quite so much of it get destroyed first before saving the day), and she even had to settle a couple of bets over pointless trivia, a standard part of the job description of any librarian.

Finally, though, she found an alley devoid of ponies, and she tried out the technique she had mastered in the bakery.

To her intense disappointment, it still didn’t work.

This made absolutely no sense to Twilight. Repeat a process under the same circumstances and you will always get the same results. That was the way Twilight Sparkle’s universe worked. Here was the same process, in a near-identical circumstance, but nothing like the same result. She temporarily disregarded the fact that her circumstances (the dark) didn’t appear to match Pinkie Pie’s (wherever and whenever she felt like it). These two differing circumstances could be reconciled by seeing them as two sides of a single circumstance, the one cardinal rule of Pinkie-ness: Don’t let them see you get away with it. Well, here Twilight was, alone. Nopony to see her. No observers. Right now, there was absolutely nopony observing her. Nopony except...

~~~

You know, I haven’t said this nearly often enough, but Twilight Sparkle has about the most adorable eyes of any pony on the show, especially when she’s looking right at the camera.

~~~

For no discernible reason, Twilight appeared to suffer from a sudden fit, pointing her forehoof in a random direction and screaming for a moment before turning and fleeing at top speed. As she ran, she continually looked in terror over her shoulder. Whatever invisible thing she thought she saw continued to follow her. This bizarre one-sided chase ended when she collided with Rarity.

“Twilight Sparkle!” Rarity exclaimed as she picked herself up. “Just what is wrong with you?”

Twilight gestured behind her. “Rarity, can’t you see the...?” She sighed and dropped her forehoof. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. I never could, before.”

Rarity looked uncertainly over Twilight’s shoulder at the empty street behind her. “Twilight, dear, I think you’ve been taking this Pinkie impersonation exercise entirely too seriously. Perhaps you should quit for the night?”

Twilight frowned and looked once more over her shoulder, then shifted her gaze over to a new spot, one that was in line of sight with Rarity. Doing this apparently gave her an idea.

“Rarity!” she exclaimed, turning back around suddenly. “You never did get around to telling me everything you did during your visit to Canterlot before my birthday.”

Rarity blinked for a moment as she absorbed this sudden whiplash change of mood in her friend. “Yes, well, I suppose I could tell you. As you know, Princess Celestia graciously allowed me to have my own room in the castle...”

As Rarity continued her tale, Twilight’s eyes wandered back behind her. The gnat, or whatever it was that she was watching, glided smoothly around Twilight to approach Rarity and take in her fascinating tale. Despite the fact that it was one we were already aware of, the fashion pony had a definite flair for description that made the story one well worth hearing again.

“Am I interrupting something?” Rarity asked, as she tried to make sense of her friend’s bizarre behavior.

“No, I’m listening,” Twilight assured her, as she reached into her saddlebag with her mouth and pulled out a notepad and pencil. “Please continue.”

As Rarity resumed her tale, Twilight flipped the notepad open with her nose, revealing a list of Pinkie-related topics she planned to investigate if she ever happened to find herself in possession of her abilities. “Teleportation” was obviously #1 on the list. Twilight now penciled in a new #2 entry:

“THAT”

Yes that is exactly what she wrote, the word “that” in all capitals with quotation marks.

Only once she had done this did she finally devote her entire attention to listening to what was left of the story.

When Rarity reached the end of her tale, Twilight nodded to herself in satisfaction and put away the pad and pencil. “Thank you, Rarity,” she said. “You have been most helpful.”

“I, uh...have?” Rarity asked herself as Twilight turned and walked away. She made a mental note to prepare an intervention for the poor magician pony. Again.

~~~

After a few minutes of purposeful walking, Twilight arrived at a tiny shed located just outside of town. This shed, located on land owned by the Cakes, was exclusively used by Pinkie Pie to create her wondrous inventions. Even more miraculous was the fact that she could accomplish this despite the fact that the shed was so tiny that a pony could barely fit inside it. Perhaps it borrowed some design elements from Doctor Whooves’ own shed, called the Time Apparatus Repair, Dismantling and Integration Station.

Once Twilight had entered it, Pinkie’s shed began to emit the most amazing series of sounds imaginable: dozens of saws sawing, hammers hammering, drills drilling, punches punching, and cats caterwauling, all accompanied by the strains of Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” (the “B” theme, of course).

Within minutes, Twilight emerged from the shed, pulling a wagon far too large to have possibly fit inside it. She raced forward, stopped on a bit, and bucked a mysterious box off of the wagon. The box was inscribed “CONFUSE A THAT”. With the press of a button by Twilight, her invention unfolded itself into...

...well, I’m afraid I am at a complete loss to describe exactly what a “Confuse a That” is, precisely. In some ways it could be said to be a clock, although it certainly didn’t follow a steady rhythm. Yet the rise and fall in speed did appear to be following a definite pattern. There was a clockwork bird playing bongos, and a conga line of adorable baby pandas. And there was this one thing that looped around, and around, and around, and came out here. I’m not sure that last part is even possible in three-dimensional Euclidian space.

The most-distracting part of the whole thing was the series of “woo-hoo!” sounds, uttered in ever-diminishing volume. Although come to think of it, they did sound more than a little like Twilight Sparkle. Now where did she wander off to while I was trying to figure this thing out?

~~~

The next morning found Twilight Sparkle and her wagon on the top of Mount Soom. Don’t ask me how she managed to get up there, as the sides of the mountain past its flat top were nearly vertical.

She was taking in the spectacular view when Rainbow Dash found her.

“Oh hello, you two!” Twilight called out sweetly as Rainbow approached. It was just the sort of thing that Pinkie Pie would say, thought Rainbow. Come to think of it, Twilight’s mane looked more than a little like Pinkie’s right now.

As for the odd confusion of number, the pegasus quickly looked around her to confirm that in fact she and Twilight were the only two ponies for hundreds of ponylengths around, so she had no idea who else the purple pony was referring to.

“Random!” she exclaimed in response. “That reminds me: have you figured out Pinkie yet? You promised you’d tell me whatever you’d found.”

Twilight sighed, and her hair deflated somewhat in response. “I think so, Dashie...” She shook her head, and resumed with a more Twilight mode of speech. “I think so, Rainbow, but I am sadly prevented from telling you. I think if anypony said it out loud, that she’d never be able to do any of those things ever again. All I can tell you is one thing: timing is everything.”

“Seriously?” Rainbow asked incredulously.

Twilight nodded sadly, but then immediately brightened. “But I’ll race you back to Ponyville!”

Rainbow chuckled. “A new Pinkie-style trick, huh? Now this ought to be good!” She got down into a racing stance then looked up at Twilight, who remained sitting in the driver’s seat of the wagon. “You are coming down, right?”

Twilight shook her head, trying to stifle the giggles that were building up. “Nope! I’ve got an invisible team of ponies to pull me!”

Rainbow stood up out of her racing stance. “Invisible ponies?”

“Yup!” Twilight exclaimed, shaking the reigns wrapped around her hooves. “This one is Click, and that one is Clack. They’re the Tappet Brothers.”

Rainbow followed the reins with her eyes. They were a standard joke shop prop: the rope with steel wire inside to hold it up, attached to two harnesses with more wire. The whole effect was that of invisible ponies, of course, but Twilight was not holding them steady. If they had been attached to actual “invisible ponies”, then they would be hoisted into the air and then shoved into the ground every five seconds or so.

“Suuuuuure they are!” Rainbow said, shaking her head. This was certainly not worth a serious race start, so she just leaned forward a little. “On your mark,” she said steadily, “Get set. Go!”

She trotted forward a few steps, and then froze in her tracks, as she realized that the wagon was keeping up with her.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she shouted, scrambling up the wagon. She roughly pushed Twilight’s mane aside to make absolutely sure she wasn’t hiding a horn.

“What is it?” asked Twilight with a grin. “Did I make a false start?”

Rainbow hopped back down to the ground. “Let me get another look at those ponies of yours,” she said. She walked right through the space under the joke reins, and then reached up and bent the wire back and forth. There was no possible way that there were invisible ponies there. As she turned to walk away, she felt a sudden nip on her shoulder.

“Did Clack just bite me?” she asked in complete shock.

“Well, you do have to admit that was a teensy-bit rude, don’t you think?”

---

(I love writing clueless narrators. And yes, "reverse the direction of the thaumatic flow" was a deliberate Doctor Who reference. I expect that the other references will be obvious.)