“Pinkie Pie! Where are you?”
Rainbow Dash called for her friend, poking her head inside Sugarcube Corner to find her partner in crime. Well, not crime. Pranking.
“Hiya Dashie!” Pinkie got right up in Rainbow’s face out of nowhere. Rainbow blinked but wasn’t too terribly surprised. She had been friends with the hyperactive earth pony long enough to expect being greeted like this.
“Hey Pinkie. You’ll never guess what I found last night!” Dash knew that there was a chance she would guess, being the crazy pony she was, but that was the expression.
“Can I get a teensy-weensy-shmeensy little hint, pretty pleasey?”
“Okay, I found it at the Castle of the Two Sisters. That’s it. Now guess.”
Pinkie scratched her head, checking her stores of emergency random information for any ideas. “Is it… a spellbook?”
“No, but it is a book. Keep guessing.”
The party pony thought some more. “Is it… something about Celestia and Luna?”
“Yep! Keep guessing.”
Pinkie double checked her Emergency Mental Encyclopedia of Randomness, or EMER for short, hoping for more ideas, but she was stumped. Time to follow her hunches. “Is it… a pranking manual that Celestia wrote when she was younger?”
“You got it!” Rainbow didn’t bother to ask her how she knew. This was Pinkie Pie. One does not simply question Pinkie Pie. “So yeah… I was wondering-”
“-if I wanted to pull some pranks with you?” Pinkie finished Dash’s sentence for her. The pegasus was sure that the cotton-candy-colored pony in front of her could read minds.
“Well, yeah! So, you in, or what?”
“TOTALLY! THIS IS GONNA BE SO MUCH FUN!!!”
Rainbow winced slightly at the drastic increase in volume, but she had grown increasingly resistant to its effects over the years. She watched as Pinkie boing-ed around the room in excitement, before finally, she made her way back to the doorway, where Rainbow was still standing.
“Omigosh, I can’t wait! Lemme grab myself something to eat quickly for breakfast and give Gummy his gator food, and then we need to get to work!”
“On what?” A stallion’s voice spoke from above their heads, one that they both recognized. One that Rainbow Dash admired like crazy. The speaker, Flash Magnus, flew down to talk to the two girls. He landed with a slight clank of his armor, which he still wore on a daily basis. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was just flying around for fun and overheard you two talking about getting to work on something. What is it? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“Well, that depends. What’s your stance on jokes, pranks, hoaxes, and the like?” Dash replied. The Pillars had only recently returned from limbo, so she didn’t know them very well just yet. She knew that Flash shared her enthusiasm for whooping baddies’ butts as soon as equinely possible, but she didn’t know how he felt about pranking.
“Well, that also depends. If it’s relatively harmless and well thought-out, I find jokes and pranks to be fun. However, if there is a chance that the pony on the receiving end of such matters will feel hurt, I usually stay away. And given how danger-riddled Equestria was back in the day, I always put protection first, entertainment second.”
“So,” Pinkie said in response to Flash, “since Equestria’s not in any immediate danger, at least not that we know of and/or that concerns us specifically, how’d you like to do some pranking with the two of us? Apparently, Celestia wrote a book about it when she was a filly!”
Flash looked shocked for a second, then burst out laughing. “I’d heard some stories from Starswirl about his students, but I never knew Celestia wrote a book about it! That’s hilarious!” Rainbow and Pinkie started laughing too.
“Yeah, it says in the introduction that ‘all the pranks you will see in this book are approved to work on overpowered unicorn teachers.’” Dash said between giggles. This only made the other two ponies laugh harder. “Seriously, I’ve looked through all of these, and they’re pretty harmless and funny! This is the perfect opportunity!”
“It would seem so,” a fourth voice said from… somewhere. None of the three could tell where exactly it came from, but two of them could recognize it.
“You wanna join, Discord?” Pinkie inquired of the voice. “Also, how long have you been eavesdropping on us?”
“Long enough, Ms. Pie,” replied a nearby bush. The branches of the bush stretched upward into a very familiar shape, as all the bark and leaves fell off and one very mischievous draconequus stepped out. “I must say, with the whole trapping-me-in-stone thing, I would never have guessed the princesses even had a sense of humor, let alone the possibility of them being professional pranksters.”
“That’s because a few pranks here and there are harmless, whereas torturing ponies with endless chaos isn’t. I’ve been catching up rather well on what I’ve missed during my absence, as you might be able to tell.” Flash’s voice had lost its playful tone, and he regained his familiar battle stance.
“Calm down, Flashy. He’s reformed,” Pinkie cut in before anything bad could happen.
Flash raised an eyebrow at her. “Flashy?”
“I’ve come up with nicknames for all the Pillars! You’re Flashy, then there’s Rocky, Misty, Nambie, Brookie, Swirly, and Stygie!” Pinkie snickered to herself at her silly inventions, whilst mentally noting that the “b” in Nambie was silent so that her dearest bipedal fans wouldn’t be confused.
“...seriously?” The old Pillar of Bravery couldn’t think of anything else to say. He had slowly been growing accustomed to the more… playful aspects of Equestria, but he still had a while to go to be able to handle The Pink One, assuming that was even possible.
“No, duh! The point of nicknames is to be not serious! Anyway, we’ve been talking for a long time, and not super much about pranking. Let’s get going already!”
“Uh, Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash interjected, “didn’t you say that you still need to get breakfast for yourself and Gummy?”
“Oh yeah! Thanks for the reminder, Dashie! Meet you guys in a bit!” Pinkie dashed back inside, only to pop back out half a second later. “Um… where exactly are we meeting?”
“Why don’t we meet over at my place?” Discord piped up. “It’s very chaotic, to be sure, but the chaos can be quite inspiring.”
“I’ve already made plenty of plans,” Rainbow replied. “I don’t need any more inspiration. Why don’t we all just stick here at Sugarcube Corner?”
“All rightie!” Pinkie exclaimed. “All y’all can come on in! And did all the rest of you get breakfast already? You can’t prank ponies on an empty stomach!”
The remaining three of the prankster party nodded in response to Pinkie’s question and walked inside, Rainbow still carrying the book and grinning widely, Discord also grinning widely, and Flash warily watching the draconequus, still mistrustful of him despite Pinkie’s reassurance that he had reformed.
Once inside, Pinkie Pie grabbed a bag labeled “Gator-Tastic Food for Gummy”, and within 6.374901 seconds exactly, she had run upstairs, filled Gummy’s feeding bowl, run back downstairs, put the gator food back, grabbed herself a plate of cupcakes, and sat down at a small table where the rest of the crew was already seated. Once settled, Pinkie tossed one of the cupcakes into her mouth.
“Erm… Pinkie?” Rainbow inquired of her friend, looking concerned. “I know you like cupcakes and all, but isn’t having them for breakfast kinda unhealthy?”
“Don’t worry, Dashie!” Pinkie replied with her usual big smile. “These are our health food cupcakes! They aren’t quite as popular, or as tasty, but I’d rather eat a few not-100%-appetizing cupcakes then have my teeth rot and fall out and gain a million pounds and not be able to throw parties or bounce around like crazy or constantly keep saving Equestria!”
“Um… okay, I guess.” Rainbow still didn’t really like the idea of cupcakes alone as a breakfast, but “healthy” cupcakes were at least ever so slightly better. “So, while you eat your breakfast, why don’t we all just look over the ideas I’ve come up with so far?
Discord voiced his agreement, as best as he could as a creature fueled by disagreement. “Sounds okay to me too.”
“Uh… oh yeah, right.” Flash muttered.
The others looked at him quizzically, before Rainbow deduced the problem. “Oh, you’re not fully used to modern lingo yet, huh? To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure how ‘okay’ became synonymous with ‘all right’ myse-”
“Hey, isn’t honesty Applejack’s thing?” Discord interrupted. “And ‘synonymous?’ You really have spent too much time around Princess Bookhorse.”
“Guys, I’ve already finished my cupcakes! Can we just get to the discussion thingy already? I wanna prank some ponies!” Pinkie could barely contain her excitement or her impatience.
“Okay, okay, calm down,” Dash said, finally opening the book, with her writings sandwiched between the cover and the first page. “Here’s the plan.”
*****
Rarity raced down the stairs to her sewing room, excited by her new idea.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier! An outfit based on all of the Elements of Harmony! Oh, it’s sure to be fabulous! Brilliant! Exquisite! Stunning!”
As Rarity continued to list various adjectives, Pinkie snuck out from under a nearby table and over to a corner of the room, when a claw reached out of thin air, grabbed her hoof, and dragged her upwards for her to disappear into thin air. Or rather, the floating bubble of invisibility and inaudibility Discord was keeping up around the pranking party.
Merely moments after Pinkie was safely hidden with the rest, Rarity burst into the room, immediately going to levitate spools of thread, rolls of cloth, and sewing needles over to her nearest mannequin. The cloth was rolled out smoothly, and the thread wound up neat and tidy. As for the needles?
They were still sitting on the stool where Rarity had originally left them.
As soon as she realized this, she turned to face the stool directly and cast the spell again. Her pale blue magic aura appeared around the needles, but as Rarity lifted the aura into the air, the needles were left behind yet again.
Undeterred, Rarity attempted one last time to lift the needles with her magic. Pouring all the power she could into the spell, she pulled. Again, nothing happened. The needles still sat mockingly on the stool.
“What the- I just- I can’t- WHY CAN’T I DO THIS?” Rarity began to sob loudly and dramatically. “I always knew I wasn’t meant to be strong with magic, but I’m not a weakling! I even wrote a spell all by myself to find gems! How could I be so weak? What’s happened to my magic? Of all the worst things that could happen, this is The. Worst. Possible. THING!!”
Rarity galloped over to her fainting couch and flung herself onto it, sobbing all the while. She buried her face into the mound of pillows, giving the pranksters time to sneak out.
Once outside of Rarity’s range of hearing, Rainbow, Pinkie, and Discord completely lost it, rolling around the grass in laughter. Flash Magnus, however, didn’t seem as amused as the rest.
“Hey Flash, why aren’t you laughing? It was pretty funny!” Rainbow said as soon as she had recovered the ability to do so.
“It was, but don’t you think we really hurt her feelings?” Flash replied concern etched onto his face.
“Don’t worry about it, Flash,” Discord chimed in. “She’s always been ridiculously overdramatic.”
“Yeah, once she said that same worst possible thing monologue for having lost a ribbon that she found about five seconds later, so you really don’t need to worry,” Pinkie said. “I wasn’t there myself, but I heard the story from Twilight.”
“All right, then,” Flash said, a grin making its way onto his face.
“Yeah, don’t worry too much about their feelings,” Rainbow said. “No, wait, that came out all wrong! That was poor phrasing!”
“Sure,” Discord deadpanned.
“No, seriously! What I meant to say was, don’t worry too much about how the ponies react. They’re my besties and I know them super well, and I know what pranks will be funny and which ones will seriously scare them or hurt their feelings.” Rainbow clarified.
“Yeah. Tota-
“Discord, stop it,” Flash interrupted. “I trust Rainbow knows what she’s doing, all right?”
“Fine,” Discord muttered. “Why don’t we prepare for the next prank already?”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Flash said. Then, his eyes lit up as a stroke of inspiration hit him. “And who says it only has to be your besties?”
*****
Rockhoof carefully closed the door behind him as he entered one of Twilight’s many spare bedrooms in her castle, where he was staying for the time being. She had asked him to retrieve his shovel for some sort of magical inspection related to the harmonic forces in the Pillar’s various artifacts. Obviously, Starswirl’s journal would be difficult to examine, as the Pony of Shadows had blasted it apart after the seven of them had returned from limbo. However, Twilight, being the diligent scientist that she was, had gone back to Ponehenge and collected as many scraps as she could. Rockhoof was torn between admiration for her passion and exasperation at her obsession.
As he went to pick up his shovel, he soon found that he couldn’t. At all.
He tried with just one hoof, as was his usual take. Nothing happened. He tried using his mouth. Same result. He tried balancing on his hind legs and pulling on the shovel with both of his front hooves. No improvement.
Panicking at his artifact’s uncooperativeness, which he had wielded with incredible prowess for many a year before, Rockhoof went with his gut instinct.
He threw open the door and raced down the halls, screaming “HELP! MY SHOVEL HAS BETRAYED ME!”
His facial expressions had been funny enough. This last line of desperation sent the safely hidden pranking club into absolute hysterics.
“Why… in Equestria… would somepony… think… that an inanimate… object… could betray them?” Pinkie wheezed between her laughter.
“I have no clue, but it’s funny,” Flash said, barely audible for barely being able to inhale.
“Well, if we’re done here, why don’t we get his harmonic descendant as well?” Rainbow asked, having just recovered from her mirth.
“You mean Applejack?” Discord asked.
“Yes, Discord. And we’re going to need you specifically to mix the ingredients, as you’re the only one of us with levitation powers.” Rainbow replied.
“Oh, alright. Let’s just get out of here before anypony comes back.” Discord lifted the shield from them, dumped the solvent for Celestia’s magical, unbreakable glue onto Rockhoof’s shovel, then teleported the four of them back to Pinkie’s secret party planning cave, which was temporarily doubling as their prankster headquarters.
*****
“OH FER THE LOVE OF SOUR APPLE PIE!”
The four rascals rolled around in laughter in the safety bubble as Applejack rolled around scratching on the floor of her barn. The itching powder had proven extremely effective when spread all over the inside of her harness. The book’s instructions said that the effects would wear off in a half an hour, so they weren’t too worried. As Applejack kicked and flailed, trying to scratch her back on the straw scattered on the barn floor, the group escaped safely back to the outside of Sugarcube Corner, still laughing.
The bells of the clock tower chimed out 2 o’clock. Today was going splendidly, until-
“There you are, Flash. How are… what are you up to now, Flash? You’re making your ‘I’m in the middle of doing something really stupid and don’t want anypony to know’ face. Also, you’re with an extremely powerful chaos lord.”
Flash Magnus gulped nervously as he turned to face Starswirl. Uh oh.