//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Much Ado about Friendship 
// Story: Friendship Day 
// by Crescent Pulsar 
//------------------------------//

On the eve of Equestria's Summer Sun Celebration, well into the latter half of the morning hours, a chariot hailing from Canterlot descended upon Ponyville from the sky. The pair of royal guard pegasi that were driving the chariot brought it to a clearance within a sparsely-occupied residential area, where they came to a stop and dutifully waited for their passengers to disembark.

"...And Princess Celestia said that it's even more essential for me to make friends!" A distraught Twilight Sparkle replied to Spike as she stepped down from the chariot, who immediately began to pace.

Spike followed after her a second later and tried to reason with her. "She didn't say that it had to be done while you're here."

"Even if I didn't have to worry about Nightmare Moon," Twilight Sparkle continued, too self-absorbed to notice Spike speaking to her, "or supervising the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration, is it even possible to make a friend in a day, let alone multiple!?"

Spike regarded her with a half-lidded stare. "Twilight..."

"And that's before taking into account how busy other ponies will be while the preparations are being made," Twilight Sparkle went on without pause, "and wanting to celebrate rather than making friends."

Spike raised an index finger, about to interject the fact that ponies were capable of celebrating and making friends at the same time, but paused when he noticed magic beginning to arc across Twilight Sparkle's horn. With a tinge of worry, he instead said, "Um... Twilight?"

"Ugh!" Twilight Sparkle cried out, as she threw her forehooves into the air in exasperation. "What do I do!?"

At that moment, the magic about her horn flashed as it surged outward, and the world became white to those in the immediate area. A few seconds later, as the after image of the flash was being rubbed or blinked away from many an eye, a disoriented Twilight Sparkle found herself on her back, her horn scorched and a trail of smoke wafting from its tip.

Worried that her magic had run amok and caused damage, injury or unwanted changes, she shook her head clear before rushing to her hooves and frantically looking about herself. Aside from some complaints or confusion being aired around her, stemming from the flash of light, nothing else stood out as a consequence of her magic. Which wasn't saying much, since she wasn't familiar with her environs or any of the ponies that she could see.

"Spike!" She called out, as she turned to the young dragon. "Can you tell if my magic's—" Upon seeing that he was among those rubbing their eyes, in the hope that it would clear up his vision sooner, her ears drooped. "Oh..."

Then she perked up, missing whatever Spike muttered to her in reply, when her attention homed in on a pink earth pony that was approaching them, who didn't appear to be visually-impaired. She hoped that the mare might also be a local, who would know the area and its denizens well enough to notice if anything was unusual. "Hi! Can you—"

The mare sprung into the air, gasped quite dramatically, then somehow managed to send her entire body sailing through the air, which Twilight Sparkle barely avoided by ducking her head.

"What was that?" Spike inquired, as he squinted his eyes and tried to see what was going on.

While gazing in the direction that the mare had galloped away to, and thinking about her prospects of meeting Princess Celestia's most important expectation, Twilight Sparkle glumly thought that the "what" in question symbolized a pink slip.





Despite her pessimistic view of the situation, Twilight Sparkle made an effort to make friends while she oversaw the preparations for the celebration. For a brief time, after meeting Applejack and her family, who were heading the banquet preparations, the future of her friend-making endeavor had looked promising: what with the mention of their like for making new friends. It had only been slightly marred by how she had felt pressured to eat more than she was comfortable with.

Unfortunately, things had gone downhill from there. Aside from being flown into by the pegasus handling the weather, Rainbow Dash, who had cleaned her up but made a mess of her hair after landing in a puddle of mud, said pegasus had flown off after she had manipulated her to disperse the clouds, thanks to being too shocked after seeing the job done in the ten seconds claimed. Then the unicorn in charge of the decorations, Rarity, had more or less abducted her and insisted on dressing her up after fixing her hair, which had been unpleasant enough for her to bolt when she had the chance. After that, she had gone to see the pegasus that would supply the music, Fluttershy, but she had been too shy to really engage in any conversation worth mentioning. That is, until she had noticed Spike: then she didn't have any attention to spare for her at all.

Finally, there was the welcoming party arranged by Pinkie Pie, the mare that had gasped and run away from her earlier in the day. Said party had been set up at the library, where she was supposed to stay for the duration of the celebration. The very library that she had hoped to find information about Nightmare Moon's return, to help convince Princess Celestia that it was going to happen. On that front, all she could say was that she hadn't spotted any books that had relevant titles on their spines, when she hadn't been too preoccupied or distracted to look, or found ones that she hadn't already read and knew the contents of. Her attempts at making friends had been mildly successful, but she knew that it had mostly been due to the efforts of the other ponies. She'd never actively tried to make friends before, or read any book on how to do it, so the entire experience had been awkward and nerve-racking.

When all was said and done, she left the party while it was still going strong, exhausted more mentally than physically, and collapsed upon her temporary bed. Before closing her eyes to rest, she gazed up at the night sky, through a bedside window, and hoped that she was actually wrong about Nightmare Moon's return, considering how unprepared she was for it.