Throughout Equestria, it was generally understood that while a cutie mark played a large role in a pony’s career (or destiny, if one would use such a term), that did not preclude them from having other skills. The solar guard, for instance, had a myriad of cutie marks from architecture to zamboni maintenance; a pony with a construction cutie mark was currently a movie star; and perhaps, Twilight thought, that meant a pony with a magical cutiemark could be Equestria’s Most Talented Whiner.
“But SPAAAAA-Haaaaarkle, The GRRRREAT and POWERFUL TRRRRIXIE is *already* Starlight Glimmer’s friend! She doesn’t need another!” Trixie whined, in a tone that nearly caused Twilight’s ears to detach from her skull and teleport away to safety.
“Now Trixie,” Twilight began as diplomatically as she could, “Starlight is a student of friendship, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with making as many friends as possible.” She continued, her pained smile transforming into a more genuine look of enthusiasm as she gathered steam. “You’re travelling most of the time, and it would be good for her to have someone in town she can be friends with, so she’s never more than a short walk away from friendship! Plus, just imagine, she has the chance to be the first one to make friends with an entirely new species!” Twilight was no longer talking to Trixie, and had almost forgotten she was in the same room as her head swam with dreams of receiving awards such as ‘Honorary Doctorate of Friendtology’ and ‘Best Princess That Teaches Other Ponies About the Magic of Friendship’.
“That’s the problem!” Trixie exclaimed, her grandmaster-level whinging dragging Twilight back to the present. “Why does she have to make friends with the monster? It has those beady little eyes and the wiggly bits all over! Why can’t Starlight at least make friends with something normal, like a pony! Or a manticore.”
“Trixie!” Twilight admonished, “Gregory isn’t a monster, he’s a hugh-mane.” The Princess corrected. “Since he appeared from *my* magic table, he’s *my* responsibility. I *will* teach him the magic of friendship!” Twilight gestured to herself with both a hoof and a wing, as if to emphasize the enormity of her responsibility. “Plus, this means I can publish as many papers as I want! The academy can’t stop me now that I’m a princess!” She cried with glee, as she devolved into a fit of manic giggling. Trixie, seeing that she was beaten in a competition of neuroses, made a tactical retreat before the princess decided to somehow rope her into her ‘research project’.
Finding her way back to Starlight’s room, Trixie entered to find Starlight looking over the letter that had caused Trixie’s outburst. “Ah, Starlight. Trixie sees you are still frozen in disbelief over this grand injustice.” Trixie cantered pompously into the room, flicking her mane back out of her eyes.
“No it’s just I -” Starlight paused, her eyes snapping up to Trixie from the letter held in her teal aura. “- hey, could you at least knock before you enter my room?” She chided, half jokingly.
“Oh Starlight,” Trixie patted her best friend on the head before continuing to Starlight’s bed and leaping upon it, luxuriating in the soft sheets of a royal guest suite. “As Trixie is your best friend, what’s yours is Trixie’s as well. And I’m not very well going to knock before entering my *own* room!” She scoffed, using her magic to fluff up a pillow before falling back onto it.
“Right, how silly of me to forget.” Starlight droned, her expression and tone aimed towards irritation, but in a losing battle to amusement. The longer she was friends with the prideful mare, the harder it was to get mad at her...eccentricities. Taking a breath, she continued “I was just trying to see if maybe there was some kind of, I don’t know, hidden message or test? Normally Twilight’s lessons are a lot more technical than just ‘make a friend.’ I can’t help but feel like I’m waiting for the other hoof to drop.” She flipped and spun the simple letter in her magic, hoping to glean some kind of hidden wisdom.
From her down-filled throne, Trixie chimed in “Well, read it to Trixie once more. Perhaps with her GREAT and POWERFUL brain, she will derive the letter’s secrets.” Rolling her eyes, Starlight cleared her throat and began.
Dear Starlight,
In my time as your teacher, I’ve come to realize that I too, still have a great deal to learn about friendship. At times I gave you too little guidance; simply giving you reference material and hoping you’d catch up to me was unfair - as much as it pains me to say so, you can’t learn friendship from a book! Other times I gave you too much - not trusting you and trying to make the decision *for* you to not be Trixie’s friend -” Trixie let loose a very audible ‘Hmph!’ at this “-showed a lack of trust that wasn’t what a true friend would have done. That’s why I want you to become friends with Gregory. You’ve learned so much about friendship in such a small time; it should be you who teaches our new guest to Equestria about the Magic of Friendship.™
Your friend and mentor,
Twilight Sparkle
P.S. NO MAGIC.
P.P.S. I MEAN IT.
Starlight lowered the letter back to her desk, her horn’s aura evaporating as she released her hold on the paper. “I mean, it *seems* pretty straightforward, but me? Friendship…” she twirled her forehoof in the air, looking for an appropriate term “...ambassador to a heretofore unseen species?”
“Pshaw, I say!” Trixie said, “As you have already proven yourself to have GRRREAT and POWERFUL taste in friends, any bizarre, hairless, wiggly-in-the-wrong-places creature would be blessed to even be considered your friend!” Starlight considered asking if there was a right place to be wiggly, but didn’t have the opportunity. “It’s all a moot point,” the blue pony continued, “as you already have all the friends you need!”
“I dunno,” Starlight countered, “He’s been here for almost a week and has spent almost all that time cooped up in one of the guest rooms. Maybe...maybe he *could* use a friend.
“Nonsense!” Trixie exclaimed, sitting up in bed. “If he needs a friend so badly, Princess Sparkle can sic her friendship cultists on him. Trixie already shares you with the rock pony, how many more friends could she possibly be expected to share you with?” Trixie adopted a great and powerful pout, using all the might of her adorability to aid her case.
“Trixie, if I’ve learned anything about friendship, it’s that making a new friend doesn’t lessen your existing friendships. If anything, it gives you the chance to build them.” Closing the distance to the bed, she placed a hoof comfortingly on one of Trixie’s. “You’re still just as much my best friend as before I met Maud, and that will still be no matter what happens on this assignment. I promise.”
Trixie sniffed, caught half between fishing for sympathy and genuine emotion. “V-very well, Trixie supposes you have her permission to be this hugh-mane’s...pity friend.” She fell back onto her pillow, a soft ‘pomf’ accompanying her landing. “So go! Go for the good of Equestria! Trixie will take care of...things here.”
Starlight smirked, turning towards the door. “Oh thank you for your Great and Powerful permission, wise one!” she giggled, as her azure friend was already halfway to dreamland, the inescapable comfort of the bed hurrying her to sleep. “I’ll try not to cause some sort of...interdimensional friendship incident, or something!” She laughed at the absurdity of such a notion, leaving her room and heading down the hall to her hopefully new friend’s room. Who knows, maybe this would be easy and she could knock it out by lunch?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Pink interloper.” A stern voice emanated from the darkness.
“Yes, Greggy-weggy?” A remarkably non-stern voice answered. Pinkie sat on a simple stool, her hind legs kicking idly as she balanced with her forehooves, her face lit by a single desk lamp. “Are we playing detective? Because this one time I was playing it with Spike, except I was the mean question asker, and he got sad, and I got sad, and I dunno if I want to play that game again.” She blurted, the cheeriness in her voice notably draining as the sentence progressed.
Greggy-weggy Gregory hesitated, turning off the spot-lamp and returning the room to being pleasantly lit by the afternoon sun through the large crystal windows. “N-no, no mean questions, I promise.” Without the dramatic lighting, Pinkie could clearly make out Greg's features: a sandy blonde mop of hair lightly obscuring his concerned face.
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie cheered, her idle leg kicking ramping up to cause the stool to wobble back and forth in a semi-controlled manner.
Gregory continued “My door is, and has been all day, locked, correct?”
“Yupperooni!” Pinkie replied, much more interested in how wide a wobble she could achieve than the line of questioning.
Unperturbed, the man attempted to make headway despite Pinkie’s antics. “And I distinctly recall seeing you out last night, after you stopped by to deliver a a cupcake for me. Thanks, by the way."
Pinkie pumped her forehoof in the air, causing her position on the stool to migrate from 'precarious' to 'physics-defying'. "Yeah huh! It was a 'Congratulations on being in town for a whole week without being dissected by Twilight-versary' cupcake! Since you're an alien, and she's the closest thing we have to a mad scientist, I thought that was gonna happen for sure!"
The wholeheartedly earnest expression on Pinkie's face gave Greg pause. "That uh...that was a possibility?"
Pinkie merely shrugged and continued to taunt gravity with her stool acrobatics. "I dunno, maybe? I like to have my cupcake bases covered."
Before Greg's mind could catch up to it's latest pink pony shaped speedbump, there was a firm knock on the door. "Gregory, are you in there?" A muffled Starlight could be heard through the heavy wooden door.
"Oooh! Another visitor!" Pinkie cheered, rocketing towards the door at the speed of a being entirely fueled by sugar. The stool, now entirely forgotten, finally fell to the ground with a sad thonk.
"Pinkie wai-" Greg cried out, but before he could finish, the door was flung open, revealing a shocked Starlight Glimmer paused mid-knock, her hoof now hanging in the air awkwardly. Baby-blue eyes met amethyst, and Starlight's brain attempted a manual restart.
"P-Puh-Pinkie!? What are you doing here!?" she demanded, her voice rising in pitch and intensity as the sentence progressed.
"I'm his friend, silly billy!" Pinkie countered, her eyes sparkling with joy. "Why else would we be here? We were just playing a fun game of detective, and I was all like 'I don't wanna play detective' and Greggy was all like 'okay we don't have to play detective' and I was like 'oooh, I wonder how far I can make my stool tip over' and Greggy was all like 'how did you get into my house' and then you knocked on the door and were all like 'Grr argh Pinkie why are you here' and then I talked to you!" She finished her rant, her forelegs posed menacingly as she pantomimed being a stern Starlight.
Starlight found herself at a loss. Pinkie Pie was already friends with Gregory! If Pinkie Pie was friends with him, then Starlight couldn't be the one to teach him about The Magic of Friendship!™ And if she couldn't teach him, then she'd fail her assignment from the Princess, and she'd get tossed out from her cushy guest room in the palace, and have to spend her days being Trixie's roommate in the cramped, one-room travelling wagon that smelled like unwashed capes and despair! However...if she could just convince Pinkie not to be the human's friend, then the situation could be salvaged! "Well, you uh, can't be his friend!" Starlight claimed, her voice laden with all the weight and authority she'd mustered as ex-mayor and leader of a community.
"Why not?" questioned Pinkie, her head tilting adorably to one side.
'DAMMIT!' Starlight cursed internally. She hadn't thought this far. Unable to give up, she did what all great ponies throughout history did: she winged it. "Uh, because he's different! And weird! And wiggly in all the wrong ways! He's an alien who's only been here for a week! He could eat foals and shoot lazer beams out of his eyes for all we know! Yup, it's probably bad for your health just to be in the same room as him. In fact, I heard - " Starlight's eyes had the sort of wide-eyed horror that only ponies who could see their doom barreling towards them could have. Unable to cease or even partially stem the increasingly offensive and frankly, xenophobic rant spewing like untreated sewage from her mouth, her upper brain could only look on in horror as her instincts were fully at the helm. "- and that's why nopony should absolutely, positively be his friend at all, ever." she finished, panting for breath after managing to offend the human's race, religion, parentage, and preferred style of interpretive dance in a single measure.
Pinkie blinked once, twice, and very slowly but firmly shut the door in Starlight's face.
Starlight plopped down on her rump, her dreams of having her assignment done before lunch evaporating away.
"Buck."