//------------------------------// // The Better Party of Valor // Story: Partyquest // by R5h //------------------------------// “Remind me,” Twilight said, as the two of them crept up the staircase, with only the guttering light of a singular candle stub to lead their way. “What does the Princess of the Night have to do with parties?” “She used to wield the Element of Laughter,” Pinkie whispered back. “That's a pretty good reference!” She raised a fist and knocked three times on the door. It boomed like a funeral drum with each knock, one which seemed to chill Pinkie's mortal spirit. After several ponderous seconds, a voice replied to the knocks, booming in kind: “Enter.” Pinkie found herself inside the office. Luna sat behind a desk which was sleek and black, like a raven. “It's nice to see you, Twilight, Pinkie,” she said, in a voice as dark as night. “What brings you to my chambers?” Chains and torture devices adorned the walls of her study, next to diplomas and academic trophies. “Well, uh....” Pinkie twirled her hair in her fingers. “I'm sort of doing an extracurricular, Vice Principal Luna. Very extra. And I hear you might be able to help me with learning to party?” Luna laughed. “Pinkie, I wielded the Element of Laughter once, but that was thousands of years ago. Maybe if you wanted to talk about political parties, I might be of some use to you... but I don't think you're here to talk about parties at all.” She smiled, with something like mischief in the curve of her mouth. “Isn't there something you're not noticing?” “Pinkie?” Twilight said, sitting beside her. “What?” Pinkie said, continuing to twirl her hair in her fingers. “You shouldn't have fingers.” Pinkie blinked. “Oh.” “Trust Twilight to notice the details, no matter what universe she's from.” When Pinkie looked up, Vice Principal Luna had a crown, and a peytral, and also hooves and wings and a horn. Her hair flowed as if the air were water. “Is this really what you think my 'office' looks like?” she said, words that might have sounded accusatory if not for the mirth within them. "I'm a princess, not a dominatrix." “So, um....” Pinkie fidgeted some more: as long as she had fingers, she was going to use them. “Was that just part of the dream earlier, where you said you couldn't help me with parties?” “Did the other Pinkie tell you to see me?” Luna said. Before Pinkie could answer, Luna smiled and continued, “I'm in your head, so that was a rhetorical question. It seems like she cast a wider net than perhaps she ought to have... but I'm glad she thought of me. And I think there is something we should talk about.” “What is it?” Pinkie said. “That this isn't the first nightmare you've had since you arrived in Equestria.” Pinkie and Twilight both stared at her. After a moment, Twilight forced a laugh. “What? Pinkie hasn't been having nightmares—and, and this isn't even a nightmare!” “No, it's not.” Luna's expression was solemn. “Not yet.” A chain leaped out from the wall, like a striking snake, and coiled around Pinkie's arm. As she yanked at it, another three chains erupted from the walls and floor, wrapping around her other limbs. “Let me go!” she yelled at Luna's face. Luna shook her head. “I'm not doing this, Pinkie. Your mind is.” “Then stop it!” The chains spun Pinkie around, forcing her to look the door she'd come in—but it didn't look like an office door, or a door for this room at all. It looked like an old closet door, like someone might find at a rustic farmhouse. Pinkie tried to close her eyes, but her eyelids didn't do anything. The closet door still loomed. “No,” she said. “Stop this!” Twilight yelled behind her. “You're the Princess of Dreams—why can't you stop this?” “She needs to see it,” Luna said. “Pinkie, you need to accept what's behind that door!” “I know what's behind that door!” Pinkie floated steadily closer, and the door creaked. “Let me out!” “Face it! Or the nightmares will continue!” “I said—” Pinkie contorted her body, getting her jaw around her shoulder. “Let. Me. Out!” She bit down, hard. Pinkie's eyes burst open, and she felt the night air freezing the cold sweat that covered her. The sleeping bag was covering her. She was cocooned. Trapped. Helpless. “Pinkie!” Twilight yelped. She was bolt upright in her sleeping bag, as Pinkie kicked and struggled her way out of her own. “What's going on? I feel like we—we had the same dream just now! What was behind that closet door?” Pinkie stood and bolted to her bags. She grabbed a piece of paper out of one of them with her clumsy pony hooves—one with five names, three of them crossed out—then took a pencil in her mouth. “Pinkie,” Twilight said, more calmly, “what's going on?” “Good news!” Pinkie said, glancing up at her with the kind of grin a skull uses: not because it wants to, but because it has to. “We can cross Princess Luna off the list.” She slashed the pencil tip across Luna's name, with such force that the paper tore.