//------------------------------// // Old Habits // Story: A Beautiful Night // by MrNumbers //------------------------------// It was still warm and smokey in the library. The candles had only been blown out recently. The door handle hadn’t been touched either, judging by the coldness, and the fact there was no little zap of static from recent magic-on-metal. It was one of the reasons most unicorns didn’t use their horns for everything, as a courtesy. So, Twilight was still in here, hiding out in the dark. Applejack attributed her detective powers to having a little sister. Bit melodramatic, just for stealing some cookies. But it seemed like AJ had caught her thief. If she was wrong, then there’d be nobody to see it. If she was right, she’d look like a genius. “Mind lighting some candles for me, sugarcube?” Applejack called out, “Otherwise I’m just going to stumble around in here until I bang my shins on you, and my shins are probably harder than you are. Don’t want to go testing that.” Twilight didn’t say anything, and Applejack had a moment of doubt. AJ reached under her hat for a book of matches and lit one. It’d only last a few seconds, but it might be long enough to get her to a candle. There was a candelabra just by the doorway, happily enough. She could use that to light a few more and- Oop, nevermind, all the magic lights flickered on at once, and some real ones to round them out, lighting the entire library clearly. Twilight walked out in front of her in a big sulk. Yep, just like Apple Bloom alright. “Why do you have matches on you?” “Old habits. What are you doing, hiding here in the dark, that I gotta use them?” Girl was a mess. She’d obviously been crying and pulling at her mane. She’d run out of crying, but hadn’t seemed to figure out what to do after. She looked... waterlogged, would be the way to put it, like everything was just heavier than it was supposed to be, every movement took a bit more effort than it should. Twilight tried to wave her away.: “Go away, Applejack.” The wave was slow going up and fast coming back down. “Hey now,” Applejack acted as if Twilight seemed fine as she put the candelabra back into its... wall... socket... thing? “You spent so long trying to get me out here, you can’t just tell me to go away again. I remember a time you jumped off a cliff just ‘cause I said so.” Twilight scoffed. “I didn’t jump.” “Don’t think the ground can tell the difference.” Then Twilight surprised her. She threw her head back like she was going to scream in frustration, but it all caught into her throat and made a noise like a clogged sink instead. She wasn’t even trying to banter back, just seemed she was thinking real hard about finding a cliff to jump off properly, this time. “That bad, huh?” Applejack drawled. Must have been, if she wasn’t even up for snark. The purple lights flickered as Twilight fell back on her butt. “Yes. That bad.” Too tired to be angry, too sad to be snarky. All the fight was right out of her, which was most of what made her. “What did you want?” “Was just looking for you, actually. Didn’t know you were hiding.” “I wasn’t hiding.” Applejack cocked an eyebrow. Now the Big Sister voice came out. “Then what do you call sitting in the dark all by yourself?” “I wouldn’t call it hiding, I’d call it...” Twilight struggled. “Okay, I was hiding. I didn’t think anyone would find me in here.” “You didn’t think anybody would look for you in the library?” Applejack laughed, hoping it’d get at least a smile out of Twilight, but it just seemed to make her more of a sourpuss.. “I knew they’d look here first,” Twilight groused, “realize if there were no lights, then I couldn’t be reading. Then I thought, nopony could believe I’d be in the library not reading, and they’d tell everyone else I wasn’t in here.” “Huh.” AJ scratched her jaw in thought, “You know, that probably would have worked if Apple Bloom hadn’t tried to pull the same trick on me before. You put a lot more thought into it, though.” “Great. So you’ve been vaccinated against childish sulking, is what you’re saying.” That got another smile out of AJ. It was always funny how the smartest ponies could be the silliest. “Is that what you’re doing, is it?” “Actually, it’s very adult sulking. Thank you.” Applejack chuckled. “That’s why you were stealing cookies, huh? Adult sulking?” “You made cookies?” “Yeah, the cakey ones Pinkie likes. You didn’t take them?” “I would have, if I knew. But I didn’t, so I didn’t.” “Huh. Well, some disappeared out of the jar without anyone coming into the kitchen, so I didn’t have a long list of suspects.” Twilight smiled back. “Cadance.” There’s a thing you do when you smile when everything hurts, where your eyes wince a little and a tear leaks out the side. Applejack always thought it was because, when you were so full of emotion, you needed to push some of it out to make room. Applejack nodded. “Cadance is a cookie thief, then? I’ll have to keep a better eye on her.” “Just like when I was a kid. She and Shining used to lift me up to get the jar off the top shelf. Thinking back, I think they were just making me complicit so I wouldn’t tell on them...” “You’re dobbing her in now, though?” “Of course I am,” and Twilight laughed way too hard, ‘cause she was just so full up that everything had to overflow, “she didn’t share this time.” She seemed surprised at her own laughter, which just made her laugh harder. There were plenty of chairs and desks around here, but if Twilight had flopped on the floor, well, Applejack was going to flop down next to her. Twilight was staring at her hooves though. “I nearly did something really stupid.” Applejack sighed, quietly, in relief. Thank goodness Twilight was going to start, because she had no idea how to drag it out of her. “But you didn’t?” “I didn’t, because Pinkie–” Twilight cut herself off, and flinched like she’d gotten a static shock inside her skull. She finished, carefully, “... saw through me.” Applejack poked her in the side, gently. “It’s not that you nearly did something stupid then. It’s that Pinkie caught you doing something stupid?” Twilight didn’t immediately reply; instead she spent some time thinking about how to answer. Which was either a good sign or a really bad one. “It’s not okay if she ends up feeling like she’s the only reason I don’t do something stupid. She’s really good at it, is the problem. I just don’t want to lean on her too hard.” “But you overthink everything, and you’re probably going to keep worrying her, so you’re afraid you’re going to do that even if you don’t mean to?” “I want to give at least as much as I take.” Twilight winced. “I don’t know how to not be like this.” “Well, she seems to like you well enough after two years.” Applejack started with the spoonful of sugar before getting right into the medicine. “But, you’re right, shouldn’t rely on that.” Twilight winced again, so Applejack pushed on before she had any time to stew on it. “That doesn’t mean you have to figure it out on your own either, though.” Twilight looked at Applejack. “It doesn’t?” Not a question—a rebuttal. The snark was back, at least, some fight. “It doesn’t,” Applejack said. “You got other friends you can count on too, y’know? Even if Pinkie’s gotten to be the best at it. Me, your brother, the cookie thief, Spike, at the least.” “You know, Spike told me Pinkie’s ‘getting on his case’ about what he lets me get away with?” Twilight smiled, then frowned. “He tries his best, and he’ll always be my number one assistant, but she’s right. I raised him. There’s a lot of stuff that he’ll take for granted about me that probably isn’t healthy to assume is normal.” Same reason Applejack decided to quit smoking so suddenly. She didn’t want Applebloom thinking it was normal. Actually, there was a thought. “You got some note paper?” Applejack waved off Twilight’s surprised look. “Just, trust me on this.” Twilight pushed some over to her. Applejack ripped a neat square from it, and rolled it into a tight tube, about a pencil’s width. Doing that with hooves took a lot of practice. “Do me a favour and lick along that crease there so it stays rolled up, there’s the sport. A’ight. Now, we ain’t going to get you up on smoking, but we’re going to do what I did when I was quitting.” “What. What?” Applejack held the tube towards Twilight. “Press it to your lips, breathe in for a count of four. Hold it deep in your lungs, real deep, then breathe out smooth for four seconds. Like you’re trying to be careful not to cough on it. Then hold for another four so you can take a proper deep breath again.” Twilight stared at her like she’d gone mental. Applejack winked. “It’s just the breathing, more than anything else. Steadies everything, clears your head. Helps stop the thoughts from racing.” Twilight held the paper to her lips, thought about it a moment, then put it back down. “Applejack, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever been told to do.” “Sure is. You’re gunna hate practicing this.” “Practicing?” Twilight scoffed. “What’s there to practice about breathing into a tube? Watch.” Twilight held the tube against her lips. She breathed in. Then, she breathed out. Then she looked at Applejack. “See?” Applejack nodded. “Sure. The breathing’s the easy part. The hard part is when it gets boring, and it gets boring real fast.” Twilight stared, like she was trying to remember something she heard dumber than that, and coming up blank. “When’s the last time you let yourself be bored?” Twilight replied immediately, tube still dangling from her lips. “I don’t,” she said “My head starts racing, and everything gets big, and loud, and... I need to be doing something. Thinking about something.” “Thought so. Got that real bad when I was trying to quit.” Twilight stared at the cigare– rolled paper. “I don’t think this is the same as trying to quit smoking.” “Sure ain’t. It’s trying to quit stupid. Way harder.” Applejack shook her head. “Don’t envy you even a little.” Twilight laughed at that, actually laughed, and AJ beckoned her to try while she was caught off guard enough to stop resisting. Reckon it’d only take her one full cycle before she twigged out. In... Hold... Out... Hold... In... Twilight lurched forward, clutching her heart. Her eyes were wide and wild, like she’d felt something fuzzy crawling on the back of her neck. “Applejack!” “You got bored didn’t you?” Applejack answered mildly. “Yes!” “Well, I got some bad news here, sugarcube. All this does is let you hear the background noise of your own thoughts. Your brain’s like a cistern and it’s all full up,” Applejack tried to be reassuring as she wiped a tear off Twilight’s face. She flinched at the touch, but she didn’t look mad. Just wound up tighter than a mama rattlesnake. “See?” Twilight curled up. “I don’t think brains work like that.” “Well, if you knew how brains worked, you wouldn’t be needing my help figuring out how to breathe through a paper straw, now, would you?” Applejack pointed out. Twilight looked down at the ‘cigarette’ with the sort of respect that only comes with fear. “Alright,” she said. “So it’s a cistern then, and it’s full?” “That’s right. Now most folk, when that happens, they stop to take a break. But apparently, if you try that, you think the whole world’s going to blow up.” “Maybe not blow up...” “Right,” Applejack continued while Twilight tapped her hooves together all guilty-like, “so you ain’t taking breaks. You’re just trying to work harder so you don’t hear none of it. You’re overpressuring the system, so something’s gotta give.” “And, what,” Twilight was getting tense and frustrated again, instead of twitchy and anxious. It was progress towards something at least. “Breathing into the tube helps with that?” Applejack just ignored the frustration, stayed real cheerful and just leaned on Twilight shoulder-to-shoulder as they sat on the library floor together, “Yep. You put the whole system on shutdown and let it drain out. Problem is, you’re so far gone at this point that doing the right thing’s gonna crush you under pressure a little. You’re going to have to swallow back a lot of hurt to fix it.” Twilight stared at the straw again, suspiciously. Like it might bite her. Or, rather, that she knew this was going to suck, but she didn’t know it was going to work. “This is a really confusing metaphor. Don’t you want a cistern to be full?” “Work with me here, I ain’t a poet.” Twilight smiled at that, but it looked smitten rather than smirking. Musta been about Pinkie. “How about this,” Applejack tried one last push, “You do good, and I’ll get you one of the cookies Cadance didn’t steal.” Twilight nodded at the straw, and began to breathe again. In... Hold... Out... If she could manage this for fifteen minutes or so, maybe there was hope for the girl yet. Well now. Twilight might be learning how to get bored, but Applejack had mastered it already. She didn’t need the practice, so she started looking for anything interesting to do that wouldn’t distract Twilight’s straw-breathing. Applejack sat, quiet as a church mouse, and started flipping through one of the books Twilight had gotten out. A library catalogue. Or, at least, a catalogue of the catalogues. It listed where all the different subject catalogues were, which’d have all the individual books in that section. A book of book books. What’d they even have in this place? Cryptozoology, paleozoology. Reckon the cows and pigs were hard enough to manage as it was. Aetherbotanicals, magical mycology, herbology... fold the corners down on those pages and come back to them later, might be some kind of fourth dimensional apple. That’d make her popular in the markets. A section on contrabulous fabtraptions. She’d have to check that one out just to know what that even meant. Maybe find something illustrated. Differential topology? Applejack didn’t know what that was, but she didn’t trust the sound of it one bit. Local histories, family histories, financial histories, all of these had to be hundreds of years old. Guess that made it that much more historical. Tyromancy? Gotta ask what that one was. Haberdashery? It’d suit somebody, she guessed. Hrrm. Applejack looked up from her glossing. Twilight’s eyes were still closed, but now she wasn’t crumpling her whole face up. The muscles in her shoulders, too, look like they’d untensed for the first time in ages. Not bad work at all. She turned back to the book book book. “Huh.” Twilight opened her eyes, slowly, like she was waking up from a nap. “What?” Applejack remembered what it was like to have all the bad blood in your brain getting knocked loose for the first time. Tended to filter down like sediment in cider. “Sorry, just... they got a section here on political science.” Applejack worked her jaw lazily, chewing the word over, “I didn’t know that was a thing you could call a science? Always thought politics was just law with a lot more hoof shaking.” Twilight didn’t so much ignore that as not hear it. Whatever was happening in her head right that second was louder than anything Applejack was saying. Her eyes were darting left to right, reading something that was going on behind them. All of a sudden, Twilight stood up. The book was yanked out of Applejack’s grip. Twilight’s eyes shot around the page until she found what she was looking for, then she was off like a shot towards the shelves. “Applejack! You’re brilliant!” Twilight shouted, skipping through the library. “Shucks, maybe. What’d I do, though?” Then Twilight was back with a stack of books at a reading desk. “I’m going to need cookies and tea, Applejack.” Applejack blinked. “Uh. Alright. Can do. But, uh…” She looked at the new pile of books. Most of the titles ended with “... and the State”. “Did I just help you come to an epiphany, or was the breathing a little too much?” Twilight didn’t even look at her. She immediately pulled a book off the top of the stack and flicked through it. “Epiphany!” she said. “Well, what’s gone and filled your head now that you’ve made some room for it then?” Applejack huffed in relief. “Friendship may be magic,” Twilight started writing notes on a long strip of parchment as she kept paging through the book., “But politics is science. And I’m feeling a bit like a mad scientist.” The Everfree’s untamed thunder rattled the windows of the castle. “Alright then. Cookies and tea. I’ll trust you with this.” “You probably shouldn’t, but that’s how you know the idea might work.” Maybe helping Twilight get more of her brain back wasn’t the entirely good thing Applejack had thought it would be. The fake cigarette still dangled out the corner of her mouth. Celestia help the poor girl if she ever discovered nicotine. She seemed happy enough with the breathing, for now. ----- As quickly as they’d started out, the sheer length of the castle had slowed down Pinkie and Fluttershy’s attempt to get to Twilight and reassure her. The library was a long way from the front door. Pinkie had managed to catch up to Fluttershy in leaps and bounds. Fluttershy might have wings, but Pinkie knew the castle better, and didn’t have to take those little pauses to remember what was where like Fluttershy did. When they finally got to the library, Twilight was just sitting at a desk with her back to the door. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that none of the books on her desk were about magic, or even maths. Instead it was covered in books about the kind of very famous pony that most ponies would never hear about. Pinkie tried to sound the names out to herself to try to figure them out. “Hello, Twilight,” Fluttershy said as they walked up behind her. If she hadn’t heard Pinkie try to pronounce “юлианский”, she sure wasn’t going to hear Fluttershy’s quieter voice. “Girls,” Twilight greeted them, not turning to face them. She had heard them then? Fluttershy must have noticed her noticing, Pinkie hadn’t. “Pinkie?” Pinkie gave a weak smile back. “She just knows I’m worried about you,” she said, rubbing her elbow and trying hard not to make this look like an ambush. “I’m allowed to worry, right?” Twilight sighed, twisting in her chair to face them. “I’d rather you didn’t, but I’ve... given you plenty of reasons to.” She turned back to her book, but gestured for them to join her. “Sorry.” Pinkie stepped up beside her with a smile, Fluttershy following slowly behind, curious. Fluttershy’s eyes lingered on a pile of wadded paper and scattered books on the floor over to the side, before reading over Twilight’s shoulder. “What’s this?” “Trotsky.” Twilight groaned, “He’s brilliant, but unfortunately he would probably be the first pony to tell you so, and it shows in his work. I already got as far as I’m going to get with Faucet, though, once I learned ‘everything is prison’. I found Publius’ articles on federation ran on a bit too long, but Bristle Burr summed him up with some great bullet points.” Pinkie looked through the stack of books. “I’ve never seen you read books like these before.” “Exactly. This is what was missing.” Twilight looked at Pinkie and smiled - smiled! “The whole time, I was just thinking about Nightmare Moon. I kept believing that everything would just get better if I could beat her.” Twilight tapped the book for emphasis, though Pinkie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be emphasizing. “But I never stopped to think, why?” Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie shared a look, trying to work out if the other knew what she meant. They didn’t. Fluttershy asked, “What do you mean, why?” She poked one of the philosophy books like it might bite her. “She’s... scary. And powerful.” “Right.” Twilight nodded as if Fluttershy had said something very clever. “She’s powerful. You’d rather be with her than against her. If you aren’t, maybe the Shadowbolts will knock on your family’s door. But there isn’t a way to defeat her, either. Or, there is one, but Pinkie won’t let me do it.” “Not like that.” Pinkie said firmly. Fluttershy didn’t ask – either she didn’t want to, or she didn’t need to. “That’s the only way we could defeat her directly.” Twilight didn’t raise her voice, but she was firm on that. “So how do we beat her indirectly?” She jabbed the book she was reading. “We just need to be more powerful than her in a different way. Maybe we can offer something better than she is scary, so ponies would rather be with us than with her.” Fluttershy walked around the table so she could actually see Twilight’s face. “What do you think that could be?” Twilight looked surprised for a moment. Finally, she slumped. “I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten that far.” She admitted. “We need more allies. There’s never been a revolution in Equestria before. But we can’t just make everyone’s life worse and hope that works, like we kind of did for you and Rainbow and Applejack.” She jerked up, eyes wide. “Wait, unless-” “No,” Pinkie said. Twilight slumped back again. “Sorry.” “You were just following a thought to its conclusion.” Fluttershy reassured Twilight with a pat on the back. “Don’t be too harsh on yourself.” Twilight nodded, looking back at her book. “There’s an idea from history,” she said. “When the unicorns got too demanding with their taxes, before Celestia, the earth ponies found it was cheaper to bribe a few unicorns more to raise the sun, then to pay the taxes to all of them.” “They didn’t need all the unicorns?” Pinkie asked, since she hadn’t spoken in a while. “It only took about forty unicorns working together to raise the sun,” Twilight said. “And then the unicorns were too busy fighting over which forty got the bribes, instead of holding out for all of them to collect more from taxes. Which teaches us three things. First, a chain of command is only as strong as its weakest link... second, that enough ponies will act in their own self-interest rather than for the benefit of the whole group, if the group is motivated by personal enrichment…” Another look at the book, and then Twilight frowned. “Or fear, in our case.” Fluttershy kept trying to read over Twilight’s shoulder, reading what she kept pointing at. “And the third?” Pinkie stared at the magical candle on Twilight’s desk, thinking. “It teaches us that unicorns used to raise the sun without alicorns.” Twilight’s hoof was tapping the desk rapidly now. “I feel like that might be important, but I’m missing some pieces.” “There are a lot more than forty unicorns in Equestria.” Fluttershy said, “Does that help?” Twilight nodded, chewing the tip of a pencil. “Only if we could get all of them working together, somehow...” Fluttershy was seemed ready to talk her down, to guide her towards coming up with a more reasonable plan... but then stopped. “That sounds... possible,” she admitted, her tone cautious, “But it wouldn’t stop Nightmare Moon.” “But what could she do if we did that? Just, murder ponies until they all started agreeing with her?” Twilight asked it like it was a rhetorical question, but it didn’t seem sure that it was only rhetorical, “Right now everybody’s just following her because she’s scary. But what if we could give ponies back the sun?” Pinkie didn't reply. She was too busy working something all the way out in her head, but she didn’t want to say anything before she was sure it didn’t sound stupid. By her side, Fluttershy looked much more focused on the conversation than her, anyway – and besides, she'd said to let her do the talking this time. This probably wasn’t the conversation Fluttershy had been expecting, though. “What if Nightmare Moon does just start trying to murder everyone until they give up?” she asked. “On her own?” Twilight asked. “Without the Guard? Against every other pony in Equestria?” “Yes.” Twilight was about to dismiss that idea, but then she winced instead. “I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. Right now it’s just down to working out how to get every pony in Equestria working together in the first place. I need the sun to unite them... and with Nightmare Moon working to keep it down, we’d need everypony we could get.” “So you need everyone working together... to raise the sun... to get everyone working together?” From anyone else, it might have sounded mean. From Fluttershy it was Socratic. “It’s a bit like trying to open a crate with the crowbar inside, isn’t it?” Twilight smiled weakly, again. Usually when Twilight got stuck on a problem, she got frustrated or depressed. This was the first time in a long time that the stumbling blocks didn’t seem to be overwhelming her. It definitely made it easier for Pinkie to figure out her question, which didn’t sound as silly as when she first thought of it. “Twilight,” Pinkie asked, still looking at the purple-flamed candle on her desk. “With all the magic you have in the Crystal Heart... could you make a new sun?” Twilight and Fluttershy looked up from the book to notice Pinkie again, like they’d forgotten she was there, “A new sun?” Twilight repeated to herself, “Pinkie, what do you mean?” Pinkie pointed at the candle. “Like this, but bigger. The biggest you can. Use the Crystal Heart to make it feel real, then put it up in the sky?” Twilight and Fluttershy stared at her. Fluttershy looked back at Twilight. “Is that possible?” Twilight began tapping a pencil on the desk again, levitating a quill to sketch some outlines on a torn piece of notepaper. “I mean, in theory, making it work would just be an engineering problem.” She watched the even, flickerless flame of the candle for a moment. You’d just need enough power.” “We give them something to fight for.” Pinkie emphasized. Twilight looked hopeful, but hurting. Her optimism was shining through again, but it had to work its way through so much scar tissue now. It made Pinkie smile to see it there so clearly after everything, though. “Don’t make it about them getting something back, make it about them not losing it again!” Twilight chuckled. “Alright. Make a sun, and that’s the easy part. Then I just have to keep it up. It sounds like the best plan we’ve made in two years.” Pinkie wiggled her eyebrows. “I don’t know, Twilight, you haven’t had a problem keeping it up before.” Fluttershy grimaced. “Pinkie, you’re both girls. That doesn’t make any sense.” Pinkie ignored her. Twilight was blushing, and that was the important thing. “Alright.” Twilight said with the faintest tremor in her voice that let Pinkie know that she won. “Next part is just make sure everypony in Equestria is ready, when they see the sun.To make sure they’re on our side. That’s the hard part.” “Harder than making a new sun?” Fluttershy wondered aloud. “I guess Nightmare Moon is really scary though...” Twilight nodded mindlessly, invested in her outlines now. She stopped, an ear flicking up. “Why were you looking for me, anyway?” she asked, closing the book she’d been reading from with a hollow whumpf and putting it to one side. “Uh.” Fluttershy stumbled, like her hoof was caught in the cookie jar, “We were, uh, supposed to talk to you about anxiety.” Twilight smiled. “Applejack beat you to it. She’s very helpful.” “She is,” Pinkie agreed. “So’s Cadance, actually.” “She is,” Twilight agreed, “and a cookie thief.” “That too!” “I wanted to help,” Fluttershy mumbled. Twilight gave Fluttershy a determined nod. Her Leader voice was back, now. “It’s nice to know I have friends I can go to, instead of just hiding in the library with the lights off. And I should do that. I’ll go to you next time, alright?” Fluttershy’s nod back was just a shy bob. “I’d like that.” Pinkie saw her chance, snuck behind Twilight, and squeezed her hard enough she couldn’t wiggle out of it. “Also, you talk to me too!” she said. “I don’t–” Pinkie squeezed tighter, until Twilight’s ribs were so squished with affection that she couldn’t interrupt. “The problem was that you tried not to, doofus! I know you don’t want to rely on me too much, but I don’t want you to be scared of talking to me about things either.” Pinkie let up on the hug a bit, and Twilight wheezed like a chew toy. “... okay. That does scare me,” Twilight admitted, gingerly tapping her ribs and wincing, “but not as much as your grip strength, apparently.” “I had to carry our groceries all the way here every week! I got legs for days now.” Twilight winced again, not about her ribs this time.“Can we stop letting my personal crises get in the way of saving Equestria, now?” Fluttershy chuckled at that. The other two looked up at her, they’d forgotten she was there for a second. “Oh. Uh.” Fluttershy ducked behind her mane, looking down and away. “Sorry. I just thought it was funny that Twilight’s mental health was a matter of national security. Is all.” “Ha!” Pinkie declared, hooves shooting up, then back around Twilight. “See Twilight! Now that means we have to fix it, and you don’t get to complain about it not being important anymore, because Equestria depends on your happiness!” “Fluttershy,” Twilight said, “you’re allowed to stop helping now.” “Sorry.”