Twilight didn’t say anything, didn’t move, but her eyes flicked from side to side as she tried to process as much of what was happening as possible. She hadn’t had any warning before the breaking crystal had pulled her here.
The guard in the doorway, a unicorn, ran in, and a batpony followed after him, and they levelled their spears at Twilight. Twilight tackled Pinkie and threw a purple, thrumming shield around them that glowed like an electric soap bubble. The spears bounced off it with the sound of butter knives bouncing off a bug-zapper.
Rarity coughed into a hoof. “I'm sorry, you must forgive me, but when is any of this going to start making sense?” Then Rarity seemed to notice the way Pinkie was looking at Twilight, and how Twilight looked like she was trying not to curl up into a ball and hide. There was a spark of recognition in her eyes, and she laughed. “Oh, heavens, you were trying to impress her, were you?”
“I just wanted to see how it'd look!” Twilight shouted back in confident defiance, staring directly down at the floor between her hooves.
Rarity hummed thoughtfully. “And tell me, before you were so rudely interrupted, how do you think that experiment of yours went? Actually, don't answer that, I'd rather hear what Pinkie Pie thinks.”
Pinkie stared out of the shield at the guards, and at Rarity, and she realized Twilight wasn't saying anything. They were all waiting for her answer. “It looks like she put a lot of effort into it, and I appreciate she'd try something like that for me.” She answered as honestly as possible, feeling really weird about it. The shield shimmered and glowed brighter.
Rarity was staring at the two of them, and she was still giggling, and it was warm and almost friendly, the proper mean-girl laugh.“Oh, she certainly tried very hard, that much is obvious. Twilight, you look like you just got done smoking clove cigarettes beneath the high school bleachers.”
Twilight focused on her shield and snarled. “I'm sorry, I'll stay out of your wardrobe from now on.”
Rarity rolled her eyes, and sighed. “If you took that from my wardrobe, I should be able to write it off as a charitable donation. Speaking of charity cases, was that just another transparent attempt to save face in front of your little crush?”
Twilight flinched, the shield flickered. “Shut up!”
“What do you like about her? How helpful she is? How willing, how impressionable, how manipulatable? Her naivety? She's cute, I'll give her that, but she's hardly intellectually stimulating, is she?” Rarity laughed again, “Let me guess; She doesn't add much to the conversation, but she's such a wonderful listener, and she makes you feel interesting. Stop me if I'm wrong?”
“She is interesting!” Pinkie tried to stand up for Twilight but, apparently that didn't help. In fact it seemed to make Twilight feel worse. The shield caught a spear jab and snapped inward like a deflated balloon catching a blunt pencil, but it didn't break.
"I don't know what's more pathetic. That you're so desperately trying to take advantage of her, or that you can't. Twilight, you're a brilliant mare, a wonderful conversationalist, and anyone would count themselves extraordinarily blessed to have you. But I suppose it's true what they say: opposites do attract."
Pinkie boiled at that. “I'm not stupid! I just want to see the goodness in ponies, and I'm sorry I saw something in you that obviously wasn't there! But I still managed to trick you just now!”
Rarity was taken aback at that. “My, my, into crushing the crystal, yes? You certainly did. You know, I take it back. Nobody would be better for her Twilight, and I mean that sincerely. She'd be happier with nobody, than with you. She pities you, did you realize? That's the whole reason she stays with you.”
“I--”, Twilight opened her mouth, but closed it again just as quick. After a second of biting her cheek, “oh, that hit a nerve.”
Pinkie Pie was too stunned to say anything this time. What could she say to that? That wasn't rhetorical, her brain was thrumming with so many ideas, and none of them were good enough. Rarity was too good at being awful.
“Face it, my dear Twilight,” Rarity tossed her hair back as she leaned up against the bubble, raising an unimpressed eyebrow, “you might be the smartest pony in any room you're in, but you're not half as clever. Would you like to try me, again?”
“Actually, you know that old saying, 'sticks and stones may break my bones'--” Twilight was the kind of calm she got when she had come out the other side of angry. Her eyes were still a little bit bloodshot; There was no way she’d gotten over her withdrawals yet.
“'But words will never hurt me', really, are we getting that juvenile? Do you have so little to say in the defense of this tawdry infatuation of yours?” Rarity obviously thought Twilight was just trying to force herself to be regular calm, not being scary calm.
Twilight's horn glowed and chunks of stone ripped up through the carpet and out of the walls, fist-sized shards filling the air around the bubble. The guards stopped stabbing at it, and twisted so as much armor as possible was between them and Twilight. Rarity was wearing no such armor. “I was just thinking now would be a good time to switch to sticks and stones.”
“Oh.” Rarity said.
“You forgot I could do that? You always were clever, Rarity, but you're not very smart.”
The guards dove between the stones Twilight sent flying and the screaming Rarity as she tried to run past them, run for the door. Twilight grabbed the unicorn guard with her magic and flung him off the balcony like a rag dool. The batpony guard stared at her, levelling his spear. Twilight sighed.
“Look, your friend is going to be very upset with you if you don't go and catch him right now.”
And with that the batpony followed the unicorn, tearing out over the balcony as Rarity ran out the door howling in pain and rage, covered in deep black bruises. According to how Applejack had laid it out for her, it seemed like it was more accurate to say Rarity had been very unwise. But Pinkie wasn't going to correct either of them right now.
“Twilight! Teleport us back.”
Twilight dropped the bubble with a big gasp, like she had been holding her breath the whole time. Maybe she sort of had? Magic was weird. “Pinkie, that crystal was a one-way ticket. We've got to go back the long way.”
“That was a terrible design idea!” Pinkie shouted, waving her arms frantically, “Think how many ways I could have needed you, that would have gotten you completely stuck with me when you showed up!”
Twilight looked around the room, and out over the balcony. “Like, in Nightmare Moon's palace, surrounded by her guards, who aren't as pacifistic as I am?”
“Yeah! Exactly! Wait, pacifistic? You weren't actually trying to break Rarity's bones just now?”
Twilight hesitated. “Well, I wasn't not trying to break them?”
“Twilight!”
“She was really mean, okay?” Twilight was that special kind of defensive where she couldn't decide between being embarrassed or justified, “And I'm pretty sure she's a bad guy, isn't she?”
“Oh, yeah, she was doing the full evil villain thing before you showed up. Practically grew a moustache just to twirl it.” Pinkie paused, “Okay, she probably deserved to have some rocks thrown at her.”
“Good to know,” Twilight agreed, surveying the room. “Why's there a bottle of sherry here? You don't drink, and this doesn't look like it'd be Rarity's room.”
“So a ton of things just happened right now that are probably important and I'll fill you in right away, after we run somewhere?” Pinkie suggested, eyeing between the door and balcony, “That batpony is totally going to grab a bunch of his friends isn't he? Or Rarity will. Or just anypony who heard anything going on.”
Twilight's eyes went wide, and she turned to the wall behind them that she'd already taken parts out of, quietly pulled a pony-sized hole out of it. She ran through, dragging Pinkie behind her, into the next empty guest room, coming out just behind a bedroom. She did the same thing on the other side of the next room, and continued to drag Pinkie through, filling up the holes behind her as they ran until you couldn't tell they'd ever been knocked down at all. Only then did Twilight make her run to a front door.
The curtains to the balcony of this room were still drawn, so you couldn't see in from outside. Twilight slid a makeup mirror under the door and her horn lit up. The mirror's casing glowed, and she slid it back, looking at it and showing it to Pinkie.
Twilight had 'frozen' the reflection of the mirror in place. Two guards stood on either side of the broken door to the room they'd just snuck out of, waiting to ambush them.
“What do we do?” Pinkie whispered. Twilight stared at the reflection.
“I don't want to fight the guards. They only need to get lucky once to kill us.”
“Maybe they won't kill us?” Pinkie suggested, “Maybe if we give up, they'll just take us prisoner? That sounded like what Rarity wanted, anyway.”
Twilight nodded. “Okay, are you ready to give up?”
Pinkie shook her head hard enough to send her frizzy hair flying in all directions. Twilight nodded again.
“Neither am I. But that means we definitely don't want to hurt these guys, just to keep our options open.” Twilight looked up and down and at the curtains blocking the balcony, mapping everything out in her head. “I grew up here, so unless Nightmare Moon changed things a lot, I should have a pretty good idea for the layout. But we can't count on that.”
Twilight pulled out her tube of dark red lipstick, and before Pinkie could tell her that she looked fine – really, really fine actually – she was drawing a complicated series of interlocking circles and triangles and letters in an alphabet Pinkie didn't recognize. Some of them looked mathematical.
“Twilight?”
“I need to think, let me think.” Twilight scrawled and smudged and rubbed out and redrew all sorts of things, “Think, think, how do I do this again?”
There was a warcry about two doors down as the guards gave up their ambush and charged, trying to figure out where they went. There were shouts of confusion, demands for them to come out and surrender. Twilight seemed more annoyed by the noise than anything else.
“Twilight, they're gunna start searching rooms any second, what do we do?”
“Done!” Twilight stepped back and stared at her masterpiece, whatever it meant. Her horn glowed so bright it went white and seared the back of Pinkie's retinas, then spots appeared all across her vision, and then everything was white, and there was a noise in her ears like something steaming coming off a barbecue, and then everything was normal again.
Twilight had already grabbed some toilet paper and wet it in the bathroom, and was removing all trace of the lipstick on the wall.
“Twilight,” Pinkie said, “what did you just do?”
Twilight smiled, and she looked so confident, and her smile made Pinkie feel safe. “I cast a Background Pony spell on both of us. I haven't had much opportunity to practice it since I learned it, since it works better the more ponies there are around. It's way more subtle, and way easier, than an invisibility spell.”
“So we're sort of invisible?”
“Sort of. Ponies can still see us, but they won't really look at us, and they're filled with an overwhelming sense of apathy about us. We fade into the background. But it only works if you don't do anything interesting. Walk, don't run. Don't pull faces. Don't get overconfident.”
Pinkie balked. “Wait, you mean... our lives depend on me being boring? Twilight, I don't know if this is a good idea.”
Twilight grabbed Pinkie's shoulders with her fishnet-covered forelegs and looked her in the eye wearing more makeup now than Pinkie had seen her use in the past two years combined, and said; “Pinkie, you're capable of far more than you know. And even though I've never seen it, I think just this once you can manage to not be the most interesting person in the room.”
Pinkie smiled, but she was trying not to cry. “You know, we're usually in a room together.”
“I'm not interesting, you just make me feel like I am.”
Pinkie hugged her tight. “I don't pity you.”
Twilight kissed Pinkie on the cheek. “You know, normally that would have hurt a lot more than it did. But I think you were right to suggest this look for me... it's doing wonders for my self-esteem. It's like wearing armor against insecurity.”
There was the implication there that if they managed to get out of this, Twilight was going to look like this more often. She'd always been confident in specifics, but just as equally anxious and nervous in front of others.
Now, even after all Rarity had just said, she hadn't hesitated for a second to kiss Pinkie on the cheek just because it's what felt like the right thing to do. There wasn't the tensing up of her overthinking it, she just... did it.
Surrender was absolutely not an option.
“I'll follow your lead. You know this place way better than I do.”
Twilight thought for a bit, then went to the room's small kitchen and grabbed some plates, filled some glasses with water, and set up the sitting area with the armchairs just as they'd been when she'd first walked in on Fancy Pants.
Then Twilight sat down in one of the chairs, and gestured for Pinkie to sit beside her. With a glass raised to her lips and a vacant smile, Twilight asked; “We're waiting for the guards to search this room. Let me do the talking when they do. You have until then to fill me in on everything that happened with Rarity. Just keep your voice low.”
Pinkie explained everything she could. As she got to the part about the Crystal Heart the door to the next room was kicked open, and they could hear the guards tearing it apart through the wall. Twilight gestured for Pinkie to keep talking, but now every other sentence, she'd let out a hollow laugh and say something like, “Oh, really?” or “Is that what they said?”. Background noise.
Pinkie finished catching Twilight up before the guards had gotten to their room, so Twilight had just started explaining the concept of currency arbitrage, and talking about the history of bank notes to fill in for small talk. Pinkie was actually more disappointed than nervous when the guards kicked the door in, because they'd just gotten to a really good bit.
“Good heavens!” Twilight pressed a hoof to her mouth in surprise.
The guard looked apologetic as his partner started searching the room. “We're sorry, ma'ams, but do you mind if we search your room real quick?”
“Whatever for?”
The guards were ripping open wardrobes, and lifting the bed to look under it. Pinkie didn't blink when one of them ran is spear through the mattress. “Two fugitives just escaped custody. Threw a guard over the balcony like a crumpled up paper ball and vanished. They were last seen on this floor.”
“On this floor? We better go somewhere safer.” Twilight said, getting out of her chair and leading Pinkie after her, “Thank you, and good luck on your search.”
“These two are dangerous. Keep your eyes open, they could be hiding anywhere.”
Twilight nodded, and started walking calmly out of the room. Pinkie followed. “Let's get out of here.”
They just walked out the open door while the guards searched the room behind them, walked out into the corridor and around the corner. Twilight led them into a dark alcove in the shadow of some vast statuary in the main hallway they'd walked to.
Twilight took a deep, calm breath, and took a moment to brush her hair back. “It worked perfectly. You did perfectly, Pinkie Pie. How are you holding up?”
“That was really scary. Did we really have to wait for them to come to us, like that?”
“We didn't, but that was our safest option, and the easiest way to get me caught up on what I missed. Now we can just walk out of here talking about fractional reserve banking, if you want?”
“I thought we were still talking about banknotes?” She was really looking forward to where that one was going.
“Right! We were. Fractional reserve banking is what happened when the different banks realized they could lend out more bit-backed promissary notes, the bank notes, then they actually had bits. So long as nopony all rushed to get their money back at once, and when that happens it’s called a 'bank run'. After a bank run, everyone who didn't cash their banknote before the bank runs out of 'real' money loses that money, because they only had the promise for money from the bank.”
“The money exists only as long as ponies promise it exists? But they promise more than they have? Why? Shouldn't that be illegal? And why not just keep your money in bits, so you can't lose it?”
“Well, for one thing, can you imagine trying to pay for a house with bits? When ponies usually get angry that banking is just 'moving numbers around', this is sort of the reason why. The truth is, though, that it's a very important invention in expanding the money supply without causing inflation. The more money in an economy, and the faster it moves about, the faster the economy can expand. Because it allows more ponies to make investments, which help them make more money.”
“Does that mean if Applejack got a bank loan to buy more land for her farm, the bank promises they have that much money, and give that promise to the pony Applejack buys the land from. Then Applejack makes more money from having the extra farm land, and she pays the bank back more, with interest. But that's okay, because she’s also making more money. So... nopony had the money at the start, but they did at the end and Applejack can earn more, so it was a good thing for everyone?”
“That's right!” Twilight grinned, “Fractional reserve banking means that, as long as ponies trust the banks to keep their promises, everyone can get the loans they need. Which is good for everyone, not just the banks being greedy. Alright, all the guards have gone past, follow me again.”
Pinkie followed, astonished. She hadn't noticed any guards at all. “There were guards?”
“I counted four, which is I think all that were headed this way to begin with.”
“How did they not notice us?” Pinkie was panicked. She'd been so loud, she'd gotten excited about figuring out the Applejack example. But Twilight didn't seem worried at all.
“We weren't talking about anything interesting, that's all.” Twilight reassured her, leading them down a big staircase into a public art gallery. Big oil paintings and old, old tapestries lined the walls, and the room was filled with bright white gas lights, making the air warm and cozy. A few ponies wandered about without looking at them at all, and nobody ever looked twice. “Crowds should help. The spell's much harder to notice around other ponies.”
“Not interesting? I didn't know about any of that, though, and I use money all the time. How is that not interesting?”
Twilight laughed, and they passed an oil painting of a sheep crying over a lamb in the snow, surrounded by hungry crows. It was the size of a barn door turned on its side but had the tiniest attention to details, and it was hauntingly beautiful. Twilight noticed Pinkie had stopped to look at it, and stopped so she could admire it too. “Most ponies find that sort of stuff really boring, Pinkie. It's one of the things I appreciate most about you, I get to talk about things like that with you.”
“Well, I really appreciate talking to you too, because you talk to me about all sorts of things like that.” Thinking about it, Fluttershy talked to her like she was a kid, Applejack like she was an idiot, and Rainbow like she couldn't take things seriously, and Rarity was all of the above. But Twilight talked to her like she was just as smart as she was, and expected her to keep up. She was never disappointed when Pinkie didn't already know something, and it made her happy to explain rather than annoyed. “I'm just sorry I can't really do the same with you.”
“What Rarity said is really getting to you, too? I guess you're not wearing the magic self-esteem boots,” Twilight started walking again and Pinkie followed, her eyes lingering one last time on the shiny crows at the painting's edge. “There's plenty of subjects where you know more than me, though.”
“Are you saying there's stuff you don't know about?” Pinkie asked, and she tried to make it sound as accusatory as possible, like this was a deep and personal betrayal. But honestly, she was curious.
“It's a flaw I'm working on,” Twilight admitted, playing into it, looking as ashamed as possible. “But social skills? Cooking? You know a lot more than I do about poetry and music, too. Parties and ponies, and apparently figuring out I look really good in black leather.”
She did. She really, really, really did. Pinkie took a moment of pride in her intuition before realizing she was staring again. She'd seen her naked every day for two years now, why was it so hard to get over her wearing a corset and fishnets and a micro-skirt? That was still objectively more clothing.
If they got out of this alive, Pinkie was going to have to get herself a pair of stripey socks in revenge. And have some very pointed words with a certain bird.
“Pinkie?”
“Hrrm?”
“You weren't saying anything. Don't tell me you were just thinking about how good I look in black leather?” She laughed, because she thought she'd made a joke.
Pinkie went way pinker than she ever thought possible. “I wasn't just thinking that.”
Twilight stopped mid-step, mid-chuckle. “Wait, you were?”
“I was thinking about plucking Owlowiscious's feathers, too, actually,” Pinkie said, “And teach him the importance of keeping certain private things to himself.”
“I was going to tie bells to his legs after he dropped that book on you, since he likes being able to sneak around so much.” Twilight's tone was wistful, like she was recalling a fond memory. Or fantasizing.
“We're going to have to dye him bright green at some point,” Pinkie thought, “Then when we tie the bells around his legs, he’ll be like a Hearthswarming elf.”
“Pinkie that’s diabolical. We’ll buy the supplies on the way back. We can’t hurt him though, he was too helpful with the mascara.”
“He talked you into doing this for me, so I guess we should also get him some really nice bird seed. Maybe some trail mix. Do owls like chocolate?”
“White chocolate would probably be the best option.” Twilight hummed in thought, “He’s a good friend.”
“He’s an excellent friend,” Pinkie agreed, “but he still deserves to suffer.”
“But only a fair, reasonable amount of suffering!”
“Ah, Twi? I don’t think we’re being boring enough.”
Ponies were starting to look at them. One mare with glasses squinted at them, took her glasses off to clean them, but seemed to have forgotten about them before she put them back on.
Twilight nudged Pinkie and smiled, then winced, then sighed and smiled again, which meant she’d played a whole conversation out in her head and it went badly. “This is going to sound really bad, given the context, but I’d love to hear you talk about poetry?”
“Really? I mean, it’s like ponies talking about their dreams, right? Nobody finds it interesting.”
“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s kind of why it’d be a good conversation right now,” Twilight made a point of looking around the room at the crowd they were walking through, “but I’d really like to hear it.”
Pinkie thought about it. “Well, it’s kind of a big topic actually. And you know a lot about books, so I’m guessing you’re caught up on stuff like meter, metaphor, all that?”
“As far as poetry is being good at writing, then yes, I’m caught up on that. I can make it read well, but it always feels hollow to me. I’m not sure how to make it say something more?”
“It really depends on what you want to do. Poetry is kind of a two way process, because it’s about reflecting ponies thoughts back at them. You write how ponies think, but you also make them think how you write. Songs are a really good example, because they’re designed to make you think in time to the music, and then the music makes you feel a certain way, so it gives you an emotion to go with the idea.”
“Right, so what happens when you sing about something sad, but with a happy, catchy music?”
“A bunch of really clever ponies already do stuff like that all the time, I’ll play you something by They Might Be Mountain Goats when we get back. But the point is, you gotta think how you think, and how you can mess with that. Rythm’s such a big one, because you can make something profound just by throwing off the timing.”
“Throwing it off?” Twilight was probably confused because here Pinkie had told her to make something nice and orderly and then to break it on purpose. It went against the core of her very being. “Why would you throw it off?”
“Well, let me think of an example,” she hummed as she flicked the words around in her head, made little phrases and wiggled them up a bit until they fit neatly together. It was a bit like designing the puzzle and solving it at the same time.
“Poetry’s pretty easy
Make the words pretty
tell something sincerely
Anyone can teach that”
to someone who has something sincere to say.”
“Wow, okay.” Twilight murmurred, her thinking and concentrating voice on as she led them through, out of the art gallery and down another corridor, this one was busier and with a high ceiling. It looked like important conference rooms were through the few doors. “What was that, what did you do there?”
“Well, it rhymed until it didn’t, with a pretty consistent timing for something I just made up. It’s not the best, but you never know until you say it out loud,” Pinkie admitted, wiggling the words around a bit more in her head, “but because it didn’t end on a rhyme, it set you up for the pause, and then after the pause the meaning flips. So you let the first idea settle on its own, and be its own thing, and then pow! the whole thing gets flipped at once. There’s a lot of feeling just in the pause, and breaking the flow.”
Boring ponies in boring suits passed by them, the kind of ponies that feel no shame in wearing a lanyard over a tailored jacket. Somehow they were still more interesting than Pinkie and Twilight were being.
“There are other kinds of structures. Haiku’s a really famous one, because it’s so easy. I think they’re a bit lazy, but they’re really, really good for doing jokes that aren’t worth a whole limerick. Like; “Why don't owls have eyes, placed in the backs of their heads? Their ears are enough.”
Twilight snorted. “So, that kind of poem is only about the structure of the syllables?”
“Positively, absolutely. I like the ones you can figure out songs to, the most. They don’t have to be long or anything, they just have to be ones you can sort of dance to in your head. Like, okay, take one of my absolute, absolute, all-time hooves down favourites;
My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night
But oh my friends, and ah my foes, it casts a lovely light.”
Twilight laughed, then sighed. “It’s been a very long night, hasn’t it? I’ve burned a lot of candles before morning’s come.”
“Yeah, I thought you in particular would...” Pinkie bit her tongue, “‘like’ is the wrong word here. Appreciate? Appreciate it. But your poems don’t need to rhyme, or have structure. Just as long as you explain something really complicated in the fewest words possible, and make it sound how people think.”
They turned a right, and guards ran past them, muscling their way through the crowd, without looking at either of them twice. One even jostled Twilight as he ran towards the art gallery without looking back. “So try to think about my thinking without overthinking it?”
“Ridiculous! Preposterous!” Pinkie laughed, “Exactly correct.”
Twilight’s face was her usual concentration seriousness until it cracked with a laugh, but she didn’t say anything. Pinkie poked her. “No, no it’s too silly.”
“That just makes me wanna hear it more!”
So Twilight said,“Life gave me lemons, I made pink lemonade.”
Pinkie grinned, ear-to-ear and a flash of white teeth. “That was fantastic!”
“It’s a bit simple...”
“Yeah, but that’s what makes it so good. Do another one like that!”
Twilight looked around the castle they were in. Another turn, and the crowds were thinning out again. Now most of the ponies in this corridor weren’t even going anywhere, they were just sort of waiting around, and it was only four ponies wide. This time the concentration face was broken by a flinch, like she’d bit into an apple and it turned out to be a lemon.
Pinkie poked her again. “Poems that hurt are still good poems. It’s all about explaining how you feel when you couldn’t otherwise.”
“I hate to say I told you so, but I could never tell you, ‘No.’”
Pinkie hissed air through her teeth and winced. “I deserved that.”
“No, you deserved for me to be wrong,” Twilight said, “I blame Rarity, not you.”
“Well, do you have any poems in mind about her?”
Twilight smirked, she got this one immediately.
“A crossword puzzle, double cross, going down
Six letter word for the biggest bitch in Equestria
Final hint; Ends in ‘why’”
Pinkie snorted. “That was a really nerdy kind of anger you had going there. Extremely ‘you’.”
“So I’m nerdy and angry, am I?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
Twilight held her nose high in the air, giving Pinkie an imperious, sidelong glance without turning her head. “I’ll allow it.”
Pinkie snorted again. “Those were all really great!”
Twilight gave a more polite smile, which conveyed a complicated emotion. The kind where she was both grateful for the praise, but mentally bracing herself to get completely blown out of the water. “I haven’t heard you do one. A proper one, I mean, that you’ve put real thought into.”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes, Pinkie Pie,” This smile was far more genuine, probably because she realized if Pinkie blew her out of the water she’d get to reassure her about being nervous, and that made Twilight feel better because her selflessness outweighed her insecurities a million to one. “I am sure I want to hear it.”
“Well, there’s one I thought about a lot over the last few months, when everypony stopped visiting? It’s supposed to be something you sing to happy music.”
“Do you know Nobody? They’re my best friend,
Nobody gives me all the time they can spend
They’re there with me when I wake up in bed.
“Have a great day Pinkie!” Nobody said.
Nobody follows me out into town,
I don’t feel lonely – Nobody’s around!
Once it gets late, we start making a cake;
"Tastes great!" says Nobody, helping me bake.
Nobody helps me when I do chores.
Nobody helps me when I’m feeling bored
Nobody needs to – but they’re slightly strange,
‘Cause they stayed the same while everyone changed.
Nobody helps me take care of Twilight;
Nobody’s there to make sure she’s alright.
Nobody’s there when I need them all night.
Nobody’s there, and I think that’s just right.”
Pinkie sang it to a tune she’d hammered out dozens of times in her head. She was pretty proud of it, actually.
Twilight went absolutely quiet, and her face didn’t move as they kept walking. Pinkie didn’t want to interrupt her; this is just what happened when she was thinking so hard she forgot that the world existed outside her head. Like when you read a good book for so long you forget that you don’t live in its world.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Pinkie.”
“What?” Pinkie was surprised, Twilight must have thought something but Pinkie didn’t know what that train of thought was that ended up with that sentence, “It’s about how I don’t feel alone when I’m by myself. And, yeah, I get a little frustrated about that sometimes, but mostly it’s about feeling independent.”
“I don’t think I understand. I thought it was about being lonely?”
“It’s more about... okay, so before Nightmare Moon happened, I was Ponyville’s premiere pink party pony. Everypony knows me, and I know everypony, and I do my best to make everyone smile, and it’s the best thing in the world. I didn’t think I could live without that? But when I had to, I realized I did it because I liked doing that, not because I needed to. So instead of being about loneliness, I personified the concept of being alone and befriended it!”
“You befriended the concept of being alone?” Twilight said.
“Yeah! That’s poetry.”
“Well,” Twilight said, giving Pinkie a reassuring smile even though she didn’t know what she was being reassured about, “I’m glad for you,” she lied. Or she wasn’t telling the whole truth. It was weird. Pinkie was just about to say something when Twilight pushed open the double doors ahead of them.
Pinkie stared through them. “You totally just forgot where we were supposed to be going, so you just took us to the library didn’t you?”
The library glowed with pale purple flames which streamed a sapphire light, the same light as Twilight’s magic candles back at the castle. Without any regular candles -- a fire hazard, obviously -- to make up for it, it was really obvious what Twilight had said about the lack of flickering being a thing you don’t notice you notice. It was way too still and even. Everything looked crushed flat by the blue light.
“I guess they really didn’t change much after all...” Twilight chuckled awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head and smiling way too wide with too many teeth, her everything’s-fine smile. “Exit’s this way.” She said as she led them towards the stacks.
“When you stop thinking where you’re going, do you just assume you were going to the library?”
Twilight’s voice went up an octave, “Usually the only time I’m not going to a library is when I’m just leaving one.”
“I guess that’s true. Were you really thinking that hard?”
Twilight relaxed a little, looking around at all the books. Her happy place. “I was, actually. You know--”
There was a huge explosion, a big blast of purple light, lightning crackling through black smoke outside. The library shook, and someone putting a book back from the top of a ladder lost their balance. Everypony else was too busy running and screaming to notice her fall. Pinkie ran through the library and dove to catch the falling unicorn, but she wasn’t going to be fast enough.
Twilight caught her with her magic, just as Pinkie managed to make the slide underneath her. Twilight finally caught up as she let the falling unicorn down the rest of the way, but it was clear from their faces that Pinkie’s thought definitely counted, as the rest of the library ran.
The unicorn, cream coat with a tangled red mane and a pair of glasses half the size of her face, stared up at them both. “Twilight? Is that really you?”
Twilight sighed. “Darn it, Moondancer. Alright, so there goes the Background Pony spell. That was nice while it lasted.”
Pinkie, still lying on the floor in a catcher’s pose, whipped her head back to Twilight at that. “Wait, does it not work until we’re out of sight again, or is it just broken to everyone now?”
Moondancer grabbed them both and dragged them deeper into the stacks, away from the crowds, hissing at them in as close to a whisper as she could get while this worked up, “You’re supposed to be in hiding! What are you doing here?”
“We were just leaving, or trying to. And the background pony spell is completely broken, and I need to break line of sight with anyone I’m not including in the spell for it to work again.”
Moondancer pulled them deeper into the stacks. She panicked in the same way Twilight did. “Why didn’t you just use an invisibility spell? And I thought black turtlenecks were more traditional. Or a latex catsuit?”
“Because I wanted to be able to hold a conversation! And the outfit’s a long story, but if we’re getting anyone into a catsuit here it’s Pinkie Pie.”
“Are you volunteering me for sexy outfits now?!”
Twilight gave her a sidelong look, “Pinkie, I’m not going to say you owe me big time for all of this--” Pinkie realized Moondancer wasn’t just getting them out of the crowd, she was running them towards the direction of the explosion, at the back of the library, “-- because this is something I would implicitly do for you, as my best friend, and I would never ask you to do anything like that if you didn’t want to, but darn it, can I at least get permission to gossip about it to Owlowiscious after we’re done making him a Hearthswarming elf?”
Pinkie tried to keep her voice to a stage whisper, “Okay, that’s fair.”
“Best friend?” Moondancer seemed unimpressed. “It has been a long two years.”
“Sorry I couldn’t make your party, Moondancer,” Twilight said, “but Nightmare Moon came up.”
“No, no, perfectly understandable,” Moondancer didn’t seem all that annoyed actually, just focused, “you haven’t been able to contact anyone since, not even your brother. I know, I know.”
Then they were running up the staircases in the back of the library, and Moondancer pulled them through a staff door. Pinkie could see now she had been carrying a book behind them the whole time--
Twilight noticed something else, though, “Wait, how do you know about my brother?”
Moondancer laughed like she realized she couldn’t find her glasses because they were already on her head, “Oh! Uh, welcome back to the Resistance, I guess.” She showed Twilight the book; It was about the Crystal Heart. “They’re going to be--”
Whatever it was that they were going to be, Pinkie didn’t hear it, because they’d just come out into the museum part of the library, where the explosion had came from.
A pink alicorn and a tall unicorn in white plate mail led a squad of Solar Guard, Celestia’s old personal pegasus soldiers, in a fight against the batponies. Two Shadowbolts lay crumpled up in odd angles, smashed against the castle wall outside. This must have been where the handoff was going to be at the castle, what Rarity said.
“Shiny? Cadance?”