"You mean like a Guided Source?" Pinkie asked Twilight in confusion. The two of them were standing between a couple of shops. It was a quiet place to talk, Pinkie knew, due in part to being working hours, but primarily because the whole section of the street was low on business.
Corn Street, the pride and joy of Partyville...at least a decade ago it was. Nowadays, Corn Street was just a rundown location. Where the major shops that still stood the test of time had been receiving a number of customers matched only by their number of eviction notices. For that reason, Pinkie knew it was a good place to talk. Maybe some of the inner districts would have had crime take over abandoned areas, but in Partyville, little happened pony side. In many regards it was the perfect place to lean against the side of a store and chat about important and often secret information.
Twilight simply nodded in turn, "Exactly."
The eyebrow over Pinkie's right eye raised another inch higher. "Okay, but why?"
"You know I can't explain why out loud," Twilight said, her face becoming stoic and slightly distant.
Pinkie responded with a curious smile. "Sure, but what are you looking for exactly?" When Twilight raised an eyebrow of her own, Pinkie continued, "there's so much Source material on being Bound. There's location, duration, personification of the ghost or non-ghost. There's-"
"Wait," Twilight interrupted, "Non-ghost?"
Pinkie chuckled good-naturedly at Twilight's question, "Well yeah. It always involves a ghost, but being Bound doesn't just apply to the dead. It can affect the living, but in different ways."
Twilight considered that for a moment as she inspected a garbage can beside her. After she decided it wasn't worth her time, she turned back to Pinkie, her expression softening slightly. "For instance..?"
Smiling, Pinkie's eyes moved to the tops of her sockets as she continued to explain. "Well for instance, each spirit is most powerful at different parts of the day, regardless of location. If one were to Sprout its power onto someone they'd be Bound to whatever the ghost chooses at that time. It works for places, concepts, even hours of the day."
Twilight closed her eyes and smiled, happily listening to the earth pony talk, "There's the Pinkie I know." Though this went unnoticed.
"A ghost can only ever Sprout once though, so they never do it unless they have a good reason." Pinkie paused for a moment in thought as a realization came to her. She looked at Twilight, who had opened her eyes in the moment of pause and saw the expression on Pinkie's face. In that moment she knew exactly what her crush was going to say. Before Twilight could stop her though, Pinkie started voicing her realization. "Hey, I bet the reason you can't leave somewhere without helping a gho-"
"WE'RE DONE TALKING ABOUT THIS!" Twilight suddenly shouted, much to Pinkie's amusement. She knew from her letters that the unicorn was touchy about the topic, and with many of her secrets, she forced everyone around her not to talk about them. It wasn't a healthy behaviour, but it was Twilight, and Pinkie enjoyed their friendship. "Let's go and find a Guided Source book."
---
It'd been about an hour since Twilight and Pinkie ended up back at the bookstore.
The same brown stallion, Page Views as Pinkie identified him, had greeted them as they walked in. Twilight still wasn't having any of it and immediately acted as if he didn't exist. Pinkie smiled and waved, but didn't make to start conversation with him. Whether or not he wanted to start a conversation though didn't matter in the end, because after he waved them in it was clear they weren’t interested, so he turned back to his novel and began to ignore them.
Twilight immediately started searching the shelves for anything and everything related to being Bound. After realizing that it also had a sexual connotation she scoffed in disgust and instead asked Pinkie for more specific information. The two focused their search to the more paranormal section of the conspicuously large store.
They entered two separate aisles and searched silently for quite some time until Twilight rolled her eyes and left her aisle, frustrated and defeated at her lack of results. "Well I can't find anything," she said as she entered Pinkie's aisle and found her not on the floor where she expected, "Pinkie...why are you inside the bookshelf?" But instead the earth pony had shoved herself onto the middle shelf between several books, her ear pointed directly at a large blue, unmarked tome.
Pinkie's blue eyes were forgotten in the top corner of her sockets as she focused on the book beside her. "Believe it or not, Guided Sources have a spiritual nature to them." She answered, much to the doubt filled eyeroll of her unicorn friend. "I'm listening to see if they have anything to say."
Twilight shook her head slightly and levitated a large grey book to herself, "...right..." she thought, happy to have both Pinkie's help, and just her around. But Twilight was also still sorting how she felt about her pen pal crush.
Drawing her focus away from the book, Pinkie turned to look at Twilight, an inquisitive smile on her face. "By the way, I've been meaning to ask," she said, folding her legs underneath herself and she laid down in the shelf. "Where's that friend of yours from last night?"
Initially confused by the question, Twilight realized who Pinkie was talking about, "Oh, Spike? He...had to go, suddenly."
---
Yesterday, the sun was setting in the sky and Twilight, in her infinite wisdom, had assessed that staying indoors was the best bet. So she allowed Pinkie to bring her into the bookstore party. After all, she may have been weird, but she was smart, and knew the ways of the locals. Her assistant Spike was busy blurting out her secret love for Pinkie to everyone in the area, so Twilight had to silence him with her quick wit.
She did wonder where he was heading off to though, and because Spike highly respected her intelligence, had sated her curiosity. Just before ditching on the party, he told her that he was planning to go explore. Shocked and concerned, as she was capable of a wide array of emotions, she offered that if Spike ever found himself in trouble he should defend himself for safety purposes.
Of course she chose to spend time with Spike because he too had some semblance of intellect, and assured her that he'd be well protected. They had a moment of camaraderie before he ruined it with another one of his comments about Pinkie and Twilight ending up together. She had no choice but to shoo him away before anyone else found out her secret.
---
When Twilight didn't elaborate further, Pinkie raised an eyebrow. Not wanting to appear abnormal, Twilight decided silence probably wasn't the best bet. "We'll probably see him later today."
Accepting this, Pinkie shrugged and returned to listening, "Sounds good."
Suddenly it was silent again. Twilight rolled her eyes at the book in front of her before she closed it and placed on the floor beside her. Levitating the next book off the shelf, she read the title, flipped through the index, and repeated the process, getting more and more disgruntled as she went.
After the pile of books beside her grew to about cutie mark height, she sighed in annoyance. Turning back to the bookshelf itself, she read the titles on the book's spines. "Tea Time With The Blob, Inter-City Communications, Serious Talk...none of this is useful." She thought as she skimmed further titles, getting fed up with how useless what she was finding was turning out to be.
"Pinkie, do you have anything yet?" Twilight asked with a huff as she turned to the pink pony, "Most of these books are pretty useless."
Pinkie carefully pulled herself out of the shelf and stood up, shaking her head. "No, the Source Information is a bit preoccupied," Pinkie looked to the stack of books beside Twilight with a raised eyebrow, when Twilight shook her head, Pinkie nodded, understanding. "It's worried about something."
Twilight narrowed her eyes in doubt, "What could it possibly be worried about, it's INFORMATION!" She raised her voice.
Pinkie either didn't notice Twilight's skepticism or didn't react to it, and she merely took on a thoughtful expression. "I'm not sure," she started, "It feels like something foreboding, something you and I should be worried about. Maybe something is conspiring against us?"
Holding in a groan caused by the absurdity Pinkie had just uttered, Twilight actually considered the second half of the thought. "Well considering my history, that could basically be anything." Twilight stated without a hint of joke in her tone.
After yet another moment of silence, Pinkie nodded and looked at the top shelf above Twilight, "You mind if I look over there? I think they've got something."
Twilight rolled her eyes as she stepped back, looking progressively more done with the entire situation. "Sure Pinkie, show me what the books think they've found." Stepping aside, Pinkie filled the space and brought her pink mop of hair up with her in her quest to see the top shelf.
"Well let's see here..." She paused as she tilted her head slightly, "Give me a second while I look through these titles."
Twilight was far from amused, she felt the the idea that information itself could want or think about anything was stupid. Sure she wasn't exactly the expert in researching the paranormal, but she'd never seen or heard of anything like a book deciding it wanted to help you. Or know anything besides what's on its damn pages. Books were pieces of paper with words on them, they don’t think.
She briefly considered that maybe she was a bad Hunter for not knowing whatever the crap a Source Guide was, but quickly threw the thoughts out with any other doubt in her head. Pinkie was clearly well versed, and if she said the stupid books are worried about some kind of threat, then fine, they were worried about some threat. It was still stupid.
Moving down the aisle a bit, Twilight looked over a couple books that, based on their titles, might actually be useful. "...Right, well while you do that, I'll be looking over here."
"I bet Spike doesn't have to deal with stupid crap like this."
---
Among the streets of downtown Partyville, the day had fully begun. Ponies were walking up and down the sidewalks, smiling and happily greeting each other as they passed. One such pegasus pony waved as she passed a postal worker.
"Hello Sunny, how are you doing today?" The worker asked in passing. The Yellow pegasus nodded back, her long pink mane flopping over one of her eyes again, but she didn’t speak to the stallion. Sunny moved the hair out of her sight. Her eyes, while friendly, moved slowly across her vision, carefully. As if, instead of looking around, she was studying those around her.
She looked at a group of three ponies chatting outside a cafe chatting and for an almost imperceptible moment, her smile faltered slightly, giving way to a look of unfiltered disgust before returning to a friendly smile. "Another wasted morning," She thought as she glanced up at the large clock displayed above the shop across the street, "Surrounded by these stupid, mouth-breathing piles of equine garbage."
Sunny turned to see a pony looking up at the sky as she continued walking down the sidewalk, "Oh look, the sun!" She thought in an attempt to mock the mare she spotted, "Yeah, stare deeply at it you sniveling donkey mound, lick a spinning rotor while you're at it." She nearly scoffed as she continued on towards her destination.
As she approached the town plaza, Sunny stopped, spotting something that surprised her, raising an eyebrow for a moment, "Is that a dragon?"
---
Spike entered a more open space in Partyville carrying a filled backpack, it looked like carts could pass through, but that wasn't really the point of the place. There was a large fountain in the centre of several small mobile shop carts and stalls. Looking like a good old marketplace of yonder year.
He didn't care about that though. What he was interested in was an empty stall that looked like it hadn't been used in the last three months. "Vacant stall, eh?" He smirked, "This looks like the perfect place for a good old-fashioned scam routine."
Looking over the stall Spike placed his bag on the ground in front of him and searched through it. "The people here sure are stupid and trusting, wonder what sort of cons I can pull."
---
Sunny watched the dragon a small banner out of his bag and start setting up at one of the stalls. "Just fifteen minutes collecting some of his life force could sustain us for years." A voice spoke in her head. Her smile deepened slightly in return.
Before she moved towards the dragon, Sunny considered her actions for a moment. "Dragons are intelligent creatures, this'll require work. Which routine to go with though?"
"Run with Sweet and Solid Under Shade, and Run Around the Ramble." With a nod, Sunny spread her wings, adopted a very worried expression on her face, and flew with purpose towards Spike.
In less than a moment, she scooped him up in her front hooves and pulled him up into the air. "Oh, you poor, poor thing!" She doted with a voice filled with maternal worry. "Look at you, all alone out here, let's see if we can find your mommy, okay."
Spike, with no prior warning and no idea who this mare was, or where she came from, was filled with complete surprise. "Whoa! And I'm up here now." Sunny looked around frantically before she spotted something and flew towards it.
That something happened to be an alleyway away from the onlooking crowd. "Wow, I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd be so heavy, let me set you down."
With a moment to collect his thoughts, Spike immediately recognized the threat and began to reach behind his back. "Good, she dropped me, now to pull out my knife an-"
"And..." But Spike had no hope of escape. "FREEZE."