An excellent source of:
Early Morning Blues (and Purples) + Still It Sits There, Never Stirring + A Showdown in Secret + Sooner or Later, Gonna Cut You Down + Flawed Design + Quiet Healing + Less Quiet Healing + No Healing of Any Sort + Sweet Confusion + The Floor, the Flounder, and the Fugitive From Law + Prickly Days and Brave Faces + The Tub of Despair Comes with Bath Salts and a Timer + An Assessment of the Day's Failures + The Rejection of the Sunset and a Promise of Things to Come

Rainbow Dash rolled over in bed, and pulled the covers up against the morning light. She was exhausted: the secret friendship cult meeting had run late, and she never had gotten anywhere trying to nap, for all that she'd sent several anonymous complaints to the weather factory about the quality of the clouds.

Well, okay, she'd actually sonic rainboomed past the factory a couple times. Admittedly not a complaint... and perhaps less anonymous than might be desired, but it probably made a mess for Perma Frost.

She grunted as the room grew brighter. One problem with living in a house made of clouds, they weren't much good at keeping out sunlight. That was why she always slept with... that girly blindfold thing Fluttershy gave her...

Suddenly the missing blindfold made a horrible kind of sense. The sound that came from Rainbow's mouth resembled the word, “Gggggnnneeeeegh.”

The covers were yanked from the bed, tumbling Rainbow out of her warm tangle and into the cold, damp reality of Monday.

And with wakefulness, came memory: the argument last night about how to enact Operation PFF; her, finally ending the argument with a brilliant and fair way to settle things; and then drawing the short straw.

“Twilight?” said Rainbow Dash, opening her eyes to find the unicorn glowing in front of her. The house was pitch dark otherwise. “What are you... how are you?”

“Cloudwalk spell,” said Twilight, a huge smile on her face. “And don't you remember? We're supposed to hang out this morning!”

Rainbow climbed sleepily to her hooves, turned, and punched a hoof through the wall. The new window showed nothing but stars, with maybe the barest hint of gray in the east.

Rainbow Dash tried to pour every ounce of feeling she had for the words “4am” into one withering look. Sadly, the glare was lost—blocked by a red balloon that came floating rudely up through the floor without so much as knocking. It did pop immediately afterward, which made Rainbow feel slightly better, until she saw the note that had been attached to it.

Twilight's headed your way. Er, you probably already know that. Sorry, I tried to get her to wait until, you know, morning, but she teleported away on me. Don't let her see this, okay?

Even the part of Rainbow's mind that was desperately trying to crawl back to bed, and didn't much care if her body came with it, could see the wisdom in not letting Twilight know they were talking about her like a burden to be passed around. As she stared groggily at the last line of the message, she knew what she had to do.

“Not really.” She gave a couple more chews for good measure. Yeah, she definitely wasn't swallowing this. Pawing a hole in the floor, Rainbow stuck her head out into the dark, opened her mouth, and let the paper become somepony else's problem.

With half a cup of coffee in her, Rainbow Dash was nearly convinced that she was, in fact, alive. Which meant that the purple unicorn sitting across from her was probably real, and not a spirit or a figment of her imagination. Which meant she'd have to run out of breath eventually.

“—So even though coffee became associated with the educated upper class, when it was first introduced in Equestria, the aristocracy hated it because it was an import from the Griffoman empire. Sandy Trails—the travel writer—even called it, 'As black as soote, and tasting not much unlike it.'”

Rainbow could feel the silent e on the end of “soote,” sitting there, leering at her.

“How about breakfast?” she offered, in a desperate bid to change the topic. She wasn't hungry in the least herself, seeing as she wouldn't usually be up for another three hours.

“Oh, no thanks. I'll just have some more of this 'Drink of Nightmare Moon,' as it was once called,” said Twilight, lifting her cup.

It took every bit of willpower Rainbow had to not start pounding her head against the table. Come to think of it, that might knock her out. Which was almost like sleep.

“So,” said Twilght, returning her empty mug to the table. “This is my big chance to learn about what you do every day. I've always wanted to know how weather control worked. What time do you usually start?”

“So then, don't some ponies end up walking around without the weather being whatever it's supposed to be?”

“I guess.” Rainbow Dash decided not to add that anypony up that early deserved whatever they got. Considering how things were going, she didn't want to set the precedent.

“Oh. Well, hey, today we can watch the sun rise too! And if you start early, then you'll have the whole day free.”

Rainbow grunted. The whole point of learning to clear the skies in 10 seconds was that you stopped having to wake up early to get the job done—

She shook herself. When you started growling in your own thoughts it was time to take a step back.

Rainbow Dash yawned for about the seventeeth time that morning, shooting Twilight a meaningful look. Twilight kept right on beaming at her. She sighed.

Well, weather control was a pretty solitary job. It might be nice to have some company for a change.

Applejack glanced up from her work as a blue and purple streak shot past overhead. It looped around the barn, shot up into the house through her bedroom window, tore out the front door—now trailing a checkered tablecloth—and plowed into the ground in front of her, coughing up a very dizzy Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight simply lay where she fell, dazed, but Rainbow was back on her feet almost immediately, crash and recovery reduced to one smooth motion by years of nearly braining herself against every hard surface in town.

“Heheh, sorry abound the landing there Twilight,” she said, then, whipping around to face Applejack, “AJ you've got to take her I'm gonna go crazy.”

Applejack blinked, then glanced skywards. “I reckon I got at least an hour before it's supposed to be my turn.”

“Well it's not mine, and I'm the one who's had to put up with her since 4am. Which, by the way, is a real time,”said Rainbow Dash, her tone making it quite clear that this state of affairs was a crime against nature.

Applejack shot a look at the still-collapsed Twilight, then pulled Rainbow Dash a little father away. “You wanna say that bit about 'putting up with her' a little louder?”

Applejack cocked an eyebrow. “You don't know the names of clouds? You work with clouds every day.”

“What's to know? There's the puffy ones, the wispy ones, the big thick ones...” said Rainbow Dash. Applejack snorted. “Well, do you know the scientific names for all the kinds of apples? Because you're about to find out.”

“Oh come on Applejack! I've done more than my share. Anyway what've you got going on that Twilight can't hang around for?”

Rainbow Dash took a couple of steps back as Applejack's eyes twitched. “With magic!”

“T'aint natural, using fancy unicorn magic on perfectly good apples! Apples and magic don't mix.”

“Girls, girls!” Rainbow Dash and Applejack turned as Twilight approached, shaking herself. “This fighting over me has got to stop. I'm flattered, but, well, Rainbow, we are late for Applejack's turn.”

Applejack shot Rainbow a glare which read you told her it was already my turn? Rainbow Dash smiled innocently.

“Oh, too bad—well, I guess all good things must come to an e—ahahah!” Rainbow cut herself off. She shot a glance at Twilight to see if the ill-advised cliché had had any effect on her—but she seemed not to have noticed. “Well uh, have fun guys,” she said, giving Applejack a thud on the shoulder.

Applejack returned the gesture—plus interest. “You couldn't just have asked her to stop talking about clouds?” she whispered.

“--It's actually a very simple spell, and it would make different sections of the orchard come ripe at different times. That way it'd be easier to manage with just you and Big Mac.”

She means well, Applejack thought. The phrase had become an internal mantra over the past hour, repeated as loud and as frequently as necessary to drown out whatever blasphemous suggestion had just passed Twilight's lips.

Applejack sighed. That tone of thought would brook no argument. She could be more than a mite stubborn, and there was just no arguing with herself when she got like this.

“You do have to be a little careful when you cross from one area to another—if you're carrying apples they might suddenly age or de-age. And there's always rumors about ponies who step across zones and come out two weeks later, but I've never read a report of it actually happening. Besides, you always get rumors when you make a spell that plays around with—Applejack? Are you okay?”

“It's just, you've been grinding your teeth for a while now. Is the cart too heavy? Because I can—”

“No!” The stunned look on Twilight's face suggested that might have been a little too forceful. “Er, no thanks Twilight. Why don't you just go on telling me all about your idea to farm apples by using reality warping magic.”

“Oh, well that's the interesting part! The spell doesn't actually warp reality so much as—”

For the love of all things holy please don't let this be a dream. A second's thought, and Applejack appended, Actually, I don't care if it is, just don't go waking me up.

Applejack glanced back over her shoulder and saw a tiny, sepia-colored figure, dwarfed by a ten-gallon hat large enough to live up to its name. A golden star blazed from just above the hat's mighty brim.

Applejack adjusted her stetson, struck by a sudden feeling of inadequacy. “Looks like.”

Applejack blinked. There was a faint rustle, and when she turned back, Twilight's tail was sticking out of a quivering hedge.

“Uh, Twilight? There something you wanna tell me about why you're hiding from the law?”

After some faint and vaguely painful-sounding shuffling, Twilight's face took the place of her tail, poking out between the branches.

“Well, you remember yesterday when I panicked and ran all over town looking for everypony to spend time with them before our time together ran out because we only have so long before our lives are all going to take us in different directions forever and we never see each other again?”

“I... remember you leaving the farm. And coming back in the middle of the night.”

Twilight shifted uncomfortably. Given the hedge it looked especially uncomfortable. In fact, Applejack seemed to recall that hedge having thorns.

“I may have... in my haste to protect our friendship... taken a run at the mayor and almost stabbed her with my horn.” Applejack didn't even have time to pull out a stern gaze before Twilight broke, adding desperately, “It was an accident! I wasn't looking where I was going.”

“Um. I might have done that. However, it is equally possible that I ran away in an extremely suspicious fashion.”

Applejack opened her mouth to say something and realized almost immediately that that was as far as her plan went. The supply line of useful words from brain to tongue had been cut, and she was left there, exposed, like Ponaparte in the Unicornian Winter.

“'s a hedge,” Applejack replied without thinking. Turning, she came face to felt with Sheriff B. T. Book, lawman and owner of the only hat in Ponyville that could actually shade other ponies from a comfortable speaking distance. Up close he cut an impressive figure, being about the same size as Big Macintosh; it would have been more impressive had his hat not cut a larger one. Fortunately he was used to the pause as ponies tried to take him in, which gave Applejack a couple of seconds to collect her thoughts. They amounted to: “And, uh, come again?”

“Well, you were staring awful hard at that bush there with your mouth hanging open, so I was thinking maybe you were trying to find the right comeback, like maybe it was giving you lip. Branch, I mean,” offered the sheriff. “For the record, I find 'brush off,' usually does the trick.”

Sheriff Book gazed back at her with a look of the utmost severity. “Ma'am. I would never joke about the Tauntberry bushes of the Jerkwood forest. Never.” He averted his head, wrestling with some painful memory. It was nearly Applejack's painful memory as well, but she saw the signs and ducked before the great brim came swinging around.

“Anyway, I'm here on account of Twilight Sparkle. Got some witnesses said they saw her flying this way with Rainbow Dash earlier on.”

“Can't see her. I mean haven't! Aint'! Seen her,” said Applejack, fighting very, very hard to not look at the bushes.

“Funny, because I've also got witnesses that Rainbow Dash came back alone not long after.”

“Well, shoot, Sheriff, 'this way' is a pretty big place.” Applejack's eyes were practically watering with the effort of not glancing over her shoulder.

“Fair enough. Though I'm surprised you don't ask why I'm looking for her. Seems natural for a friend to be concerned.”

“A-huh...” said Applejack. “Well, this is Twilight we're talking about—I'm sure you're just looking for her help on something, or maybe she double-parked her balloon someplace, you know Twilight when she's in a hurry, she just doesn't... anyway, it's not like she would have tried to assassinate anypony!”

She cast the sheriff a hopeful look, which he returned blankly. Not a trace of suspicion. She had him. Score one for the element of honesty!

“It may interest you to know that in ten years in law enforcement, you are the single worst liar I have ever met. Let's see that bush.”

Applejack gulped, and stepped aside. Against a hat that size, there was nothing she could do. Twilight was on her own.

Moving with the utmost caution, the Sheriff approached the hedge, bending his head up at an extreme angle to avoid disturbing the bushes with his hat. Then he sprang. There was a faint bamf, a burst of pink, and a cracking noise—and when the light faded and Book had worked his hat free of what remained of the hedge, there was nothing there but snapped branches.

“Horsefeathers!” he swore, in the exact manner that some ponies say “Oh boy, oh boy!” Without missing a beat he whirled and set off at a quick trot in the direction of Ponyville.

Applejack let out the breath she'd been holding in a huge sigh, which, in retrospect, was not the most nonchalant reaction in the world.

Sheriff Book stopped dead. “Miss Applejack. You understand that your friend is wanted for the attempted murder of our beloved Mayor Mare, don't you? And the longer it takes me to find her, the more time I have to spend chasing her all over town, the angrier I'll be when I finally bring those charges to bear.”

B. T. Book said nothing, but as she watched him go, Applejack swore she saw him run an foreleg across his face several times, as though trying to wipe away a smirk.

Rarity started up from her sewing. She was closed, right? She'd put the sign out saying the store was closed. And it wasn't as though there were frothing demand for her dresses in Ponyville. What on Equestria could drive somepony to ignore the unambiguous message that the store was not open for business? To risk the ire of Rarity, Ponyville's resident expert at ire?

Rarity bit her lip, needle still shooting back and forth through the bolt of cloth laid out before her. Fashion emergencies were so rare these days. Well, unless you counted Applejack. And now one came up when she was in crunch time on an enormous order! That was simply rude.

Oh, but—she had so few opportunities to practice battlefield design. Time to be creative was a wonderful luxury, but there was something about the pressure...

And besides which, if somepony came to her in dire straits, how could the element of generosity turn them away? This went beyond mere work. It was a sacred duty!

“Up in my room, darling!” she called, masking disappointment. “You're here early, aren't you?”

Hoofsteps clicked up the stairs and into the room. “Yeah, I was with Applejack, but I had to leave or I probably would have been arrested for trying to kill the mayor.”

Under normal circumstances, Rarity would have been bothered by at least three things in that sentence, to say nothing of the prickly state of Twilight's mane. But she had seven dresses to finish in as many hours, and, frankly—just this once—listening to Twilight was not a high priority.

“That's lovely, dear. Make yourself at home. I'm afraid I'm not going to be very good company, but I've just been up to my horn in work for this latest order—”

Rarity was nothing if not a lady. The lessons of Madame Valentine's School of Ettiquette were as much a part of her as a smoker's lighter or an alcoholic's flask. So, with her higher functions otherwise occupied, she reached for a bottle of politeness and popped a few without even looking at the dosing instructions.

“Twilight, dear, your company and conversation is already more than I could ask for.”

Rarity's ears perked up at her own voice. She felt a sharp tug and looked down to see that she'd stabbed the needle clear through her hoof, and was now stitched to the dress.

Nevermind! her mind shouted over the twinge of pain. She only had a few seconds to fix this! There was a polite way to say “On second thought, just sit down and shut up,” wasn't there?

“That's great, Rarity! I've actually been thinking about things I wanted to ask you—I was too excited to get very much sleep last night—and I was wondering, why a carousel? You don't really have a carnival motif or anything. It doesn't seem very... you.”

Rarity's eyes shifted from the hoof she had shoved in Twilight's face to the little red string dangling from it. With a shriek she whirled around to face her workbench. The hem of the dress was torn out. Twenty minutes' work, destroyed by a single gesture.

“No no no!” Rarity cried, too late. She tried furiously to force the thread back along its destroyed pathway, shoving with both hooves.

Unfortunately in the process she forgot all about the needle. And while the vigorous effort at re-threading did nothing at all for the dress, slamming her hooves on the table in frustration did ram the needle fully into the ball of nerve endings it had grazed on its way in.

“Ow ow ow!” Rarity leapt back. This was all it took to rip the thread the rest of the way out, violently freeing the large sapphire on the dress's neckline and sending it into the air.

But once again it was too little, too late, and behind her she heard a faint clik.

Not a clak. A clak would have been okay. It had cliked. Rarity swallowed against the lump building in her throat before turning around.

“No! Oh no no no no!” Rarity wailed. “This is absolutely—do you know how long it took to find a gem just that size, without any fracture lines? The trip to the hunting grounds alone is three hours there and back!” The dressmaker had started racing about the room, throwing belongings into a saddlebag, but now she pulled up short. “And then there's all that digging! Oh, I'll never get them all done in time—I... I'll miss the last shipment!”

Twilight, meanwhile, had been studying the crystal and its several chips. “Rarity?”

“And the fee for that much luggage! Plus of course I'll need my own outfits, and I suppose I shall have to stay overnight, that's another three cases of—well I'll just have to do it! I've never missed a deadline, and I'm not about to start—”

“Twilight?” Rarity stopped. “What did you—?” She gasped. “Twilight! It's—it's—”

The gem was completely restored, hovering in the air in front of her, a beaming Twilight standing behind.

“Twilight, you are an absolute life saver!” Rarity exclaimed, yanking her friend into a tight embrace.

Twilight ducked her head, blushing. “Really, it was nothing. Just a simple 'come-together' spell. I'm just glad I could help.”

“You've done more than that, darling—you've just saved me—well, I suppose I should get back to it.” With an air of triumph, Rarity took the floating sapphire from Twilight and returned it to its rightful place in the center of the dress's bejeweled neckline. It gleamed in the light, the whole dress sparkling.

Then the gemstone twitched, and the other sapphires affixed along the neck leapt from their places and latched onto it, fusing seamlessly together.

“It was just a simple spell!” Twilight gasped, as the dress convulsed, the gems all trying to wad together in the center. Fabric tore. “Which I—may—have—mixed up the delimiters... for...”

“I'm trying!” Twilight's horn lit up, focusing pinkish rays of light on the twitching mass of fabric and gemstones. All she had to do was integrate the proper end on the spell, and—

Twilight winced as something crashed against her horn, sending a sharp vibration into her skull. Her focus snapped, and the magic glow went out as an emerald flew at the dress-slash-geode.

The next instant the room was a vortex of flying gemstones. The two unicorns tumbled to the floor, taking cover as precious stones whipped by overhead, shredding garments, curtains, and anything else foolish enough to extend more than a foot above the floor.

Rarity didn't raise her head until the wind had died down. In fact she kept her head down for an extra couple of seconds just to be safe. And to prolong the hope that maybe, just maybe, she might look up and see everything just as she left it.

Rarity started up just in time to see four multi-jointed, crystaline legs disappear through a ten-foot hole in the wall. The room itself looked like it had been through a very stylish war—shreds of fabric lying everywhere, punctuated here and there by overturned tools or ruined decorations.

“That's never happened before!” Twilight said hastily. There were screams from outside.

Twilight looked from her friend's enraged expression to the trail of destruction that ran across the boutique's roof and down into Ponyville.

“Uh, so I'll send Spike along later after I recover the gems shall I? Yeah, that sounds—”

Fluttershy tapped a quill miserably against her clipboard, before finally doodling a couple of squiggly lines. Earthworms, she decided, her mood lifting at once. After a moment's consideration she also gave them a beach ball, so it was clear they were having a good time.

Normally a wellspring of patience, it wasn't often that Fluttershy had to tune out and collect herself like this; but these were desperate times, and there were certain trials that even a lifetime of being pushed around didn't prepare you to endure.

“Now Matilda,” she said, addressing the grizzly bear on the left side of what could generously still be called a couch. “Name-calling isn't going to get us anywhere. It's good that you can freely express how your husband makes you feel, but we have to remember—”

“Barry! You really shouldn't interrupt. I mean, unless it's important, of course—”

Matilda snarled at her husband, then, turning up her nose with an air of indifference, set about adjusting the ribbon on her head.

“Oh dear... um, let's just all calm down. We're here to help each other, and help you two get back to living together as a happy couple. I know when you're upset it can seem like everypony is going out of their way to be cruel, but believe me, nopony is out to get you.”

The two grizzlies appeared to consider this, and as they did the anger left their faces, and they shifted slightly, so they were no longer turned away from each other. Fluttershy heaved an inward sigh of relief. Progress!
Then the window on the far wall exploded, and a smoking projectile came shooting into the center of the room and smashed into Fluttershy's (formerly unscathed) table.

Twilight Sparkle lay in a dark, splintery haze, head spinning wildly off-kilter. Thoughts, half-formed and in no mood to be told to sit down and finish thinking themselves, drifted through her mind. And if there was one thing she couldn't stand it was a messy thoughtspace. This called for a checklist.

Start with the essentials: Head—responsible for creating the checklist, so check. Legs—she counted one, two, three, four wobbly bits that vaguely responded to her efforts to move. Check. Back—well, something was behind those cracking noises. Check. Stomach? Somehow caught up to her. Check, and that meant she'd probably stopped hurtling through the air.

Twilight opened her eyes (check) on a set of massive, drooling jaws, lined with teeth that, in a pinch, could serve as golf tees. Or rend to pieces whatever they were pinching.

Twilight shrugged as best she could with forelegs made of tapioca, and sat up. The jaws moved obediently aside, as though not certain how to respond to a creature that willingly approached them.

A quick self-exam told Twilight that her ironskin spell was holding up. There were some bent splinters stuck to her fur, but no cuts or bruises to speak of—though she was likely to be very sore tomorrow. And attract magnets for a few days after that. She'd have to remember to warn Spike not to let her near the fridge.

But there were more pressing concerns, like the two grizzly bears trying very hard to press her back down onto the floor, and not having much luck with it. Twilight decided that one could wait until she figured out where she was. From the looks of things, her attempt at steering had paid off, and she was in Fluttershy's cottage sometime after a minor hurricane had passed through (or another visit from the Cutie Mark Crusaders Home Decorating Agency).

“Fluttershy?” Twilight called. The two bears gave up trying to push her down and resorted to angry glares instead. Suddenly everything clicked. “Oh, were you having a session? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.”

“Hmmm...” With a gentle, telekinetic tug, Twilight tore her friend free from the ceiling, where she had left a clean, Fluttershy-shaped indent, and restored her to the ground. “I'm sure that'll buff right out.”

“Oh, um... I'm sorry about the table too. I could fix it for you! But I already cast that spell once today and... well I just got back from destroying a giant crystalline spider. I... may have overdone it a little.”

There was only silence, as Fluttershy stared deeply into the wood grain. Matilda removed her ribbon and clutched it to her chest.

“Let me make it up to you!” said Twilight. “I'm sure I can help out with your session, let me see—you must be Matilda, right? And you're Barry?” she added, pointing to where Barry had been cowering in horror since the mention of the word “spider.”

Matilda threw her paws up in the universal gesture for “Oh, look, here he is: Mr. Man. Mr. Tough guy. Afraid of a little spider.”

“It's no trouble,” said Twilight, beaming. Finally a friend who was willing to accept her help! “I always carry my pocket-sized copy of The Mind: Explained. In case I need to save the day with a lecture on psychology.” Twilight unzipped a saddlebag and withdrew a book that was no more than two inches across, and about a foot and a half thick.

At once both bears began jabbering at each other with extremely emphatic, and—from the looks of the pottery on the tables behind them—expensive gestures.

“I see,” said Twilight, quill scribbling furiously across a small notepad. “And so—and then—with the salmon—” She broke off and turned to Fluttershy. “This might go faster if I could see your notes. Are these...”

“Oh, no, that wouldn't—” Fluttershy began, but Twilight was already flipping through the clipboard at great speed.

“Fluttershy, there's nothing here but doodles. And empty Tic-Tac-Toe grids, like both sides surrendered without playing.”

“Well, what if somepony found them? That would be a horrible invasion of privacy! Besides, I'm sure if I forget anything about the case Barry or Matilda will remind me.”

Twilight cast a glance at Barry and Matilda, who were presently limbering up their jaws for what she could only hope was going to be a roaring contest.

“Barry! Wait, no, you're—Matilda! Stop that right—now I mean Barry! I think. Ugh, could you go back to wearing the ribbon?!” Twilight demanded, holding up the shredded remains of the the accessory. The bears—rolling on the floor in a confusion of snarls and claws—paid her no mind.

Twilight twisted to see Fluttershy, a steaming tray laid across her back. “Um, I can fix this!”

“There's tea!” Twilight tried. The bears continued their duel. “No luck—good idea, though, Fluttershy. Uh...” pages flew as Twilight stared down at her book. “There's nothing in this stupid chapter on couples therapy about if they start trying to bite each other! Maybe it's a bear thing.”

Her saddlebag flew open and 1001 Things You Wanted to Know About Bears (But Didn't Know Enough Bearmese to Ask) flew out. “Ahah! Bears often wrestle harmlessly to establish dominance! See, Fluttershy—it's perfectly harmless.”

The grizzlies rolled past Fluttershy and into the kitchen with a distinct crash.

And all the while Fluttershy stood, unmoving, mouth agape, staring at her living room.

“Eeeeeee!” Fluttershy yelped, ducking out of the way rather late, and throwing the delicate china tea set on her back against the wall.

“I'm sure this really isn't as bad as it seems,” said Twilight, as she helped Fluttershy out of the cabinet. The yellow pegasus was trembling, and Twilight lay a comforting hoof on her shoulder. Fluttershy twitched.

“You... you!” She stammered, almost as loud as an ordinary speaking voice. “I've been trying to save this marriage for weeks and you—”

Suddenly Twilight got the impression that Fluttershy might not be shaking with fear for once. “Um...” The Mind: Explained flew up on and open. “Well... oh, see, sometimes it's helpful for couples to have a fight and just get everything out of their system.”

“And on a related note, Fluttershy, I think it's good that you feel comfortable expressing your anger with me for coming and completely—Fluttershy? Flutter—”

Twilight Sparkle stood at the door to Sugarcube Corner. She had no memory of how she had gotten there—no memory of anything, in fact, after seeing Fluttershy's eyes narrow, and then grow very, very wide.

Well, nothing for it but to keep forging ahead. If Fluttershy was—understandably—a little upset with her then she'd go bother somepony else, like Pinkie Pie, but—oh—just leave and let me try to fix this!

That was strange. Twilight gave herself a little shake and raised a hoof to knock.

The door tore open before she even touched it. “Twilight! Oh, thank goodness!” gasped Pinkie Pie. “I need your help!”

Twilight was fairly certain she was grinning like an idiot, but she tried her best to keep her voice even as she said, “Oh? That sounds serious. What's wrong?”

“It's Pumpkin Cake!” said Pinkie. “She's having one of those crazy magic sugar cookies!”

For a second Pinkie regarded Twilight with a puzzled look. Abruptly, her shoulder twitched, her left eye winked three times in quick succession, and her hair stood up on end.

“Incoming!” she shrieked, dragging Twilight to the ground, a split second before an impact rocked the house.

As the dust cleared, Twilight finally got a look at the enormous disk wedged in the doorway, which had so nearly—not decapitated, decapitated was a strong word—but clotheslined the both of them in approximately the neck region. She blinked again. “Th—that's... a... Pinkie, I think I owe you an apology.”

“Oh so that's what surge means. Yep she's definitely having those too,” said Pinkie Pie. The door to the nursery swung open on a scene that would have done Discord proud. Animate toys floated in midair, circling like vultures; the floorboards had been repainted to look storm-tossed sea, except for in a few places, where they had become a storm-tossed sea; and hovering over it all, throwing off lightning bolts, was the crib.

“This is—” Twilight was cut off as a wave rolled over her and carried on down the hall. “Bad,” she finished, spitting out a rather shocked flounder.

“You're telling me,” said Pinkie Pie. She paused to bash a swarm of Linkin' Logs with a wok she'd picked up downstairs. The notched bits of wood fell to the floor and cartwheeled away. A scant few seconds later they were sullenly restacking themselves into a tower. “Do you have any idea what ponies will say about a bakery that smells like fish?”

“Horrible things! Like 'that bakery smells like fish!' No offense,” Pinkie added to the flounder, who was, frankly, more concerned about his present inability to breathe than Pinkie's remark. She gave him a shove back into the water.

Twilight scanned the room for a few seconds, then nodded. “Well, this all seems simple enough. Here, let me just...” Her horn glowed bright pink for a brief instant before two hooves clamped down on either side of her face, jerking her head around into sigh of two large, anxious blue eyes.

With a sigh, Twilight pried herself free from Pinkie. “I said I was going to put Pumpkin in an anti-magic bubble and counterspell everything.”

Twilight rolled her eyes, set about the mental equivalent of rolling up her sleeves, and got down to work. Banish all distractions. Just pretend Pinkie isn't using a wok to shield you from a Linkin' Log siege tower. Think of the room as it should be, and then—

A cone of bright pink shot from Twilight's horn, sending waves of normality over the entire room, restoring the flying toys to lifeless fabric, looping around the crib and gently pulling it down to the floor. At last the waves of magic converged on the tiny floating unicorn in the crib and solidified into a neat pink bubble.

For a moment Pumpkin Cake stared, puzzled, through her rose-colored prison. Lightning flickered from her horn, struck the confines of the sphere, and dissipated.

It was at this point that Pound Cake, who had somehow slept through the entire previous ordeal, stirred, and—on seeing his sister in a glowing pink bubble, floating several inches off the crib's mattress—turned on the universe with the pouty look of one who arrives at a party just after all the cool kids have passed out. Sure, the tavern downtown is still open, and the second-tier guests are mostly sober enough to walk, but the magic has gone right out of the evening.

Twilight took a few steps into the room to survey her handiwork, and pitched forward as one hoof dropped into freezing water. She yanked her leg free an instant later. There was a disquieting snap somewhere under the waves.

A cone-shaped nose shot up through the floorboard-shaped pool. A great, gray and white body twisted and contorted to allow it through—bringing rows of snapping razor-teeth far too close to Twilight's face.

“Oh. Right. Ironskin spell,” said Twilight. She laughed a little three-syllable laugh that suggested there had been nothing funny about the shark's tonsils.

Twilight blinked. “Um, well, it's a little trickier than I thought. Obviously Pumpkin's done something to the laws of physics, what with a shark squeezing through a gap three inches across.”

“Pumpkin broke the law?!” Pinkie gasped. “But Twilight—they wouldn't send a little foal to jail, would they?”

Twilight almost laughed at the worry in her friend's voice. “No, Pinkie, it's not that sort of—”

“She won't last two seconds in jail! She'll have to go on the lamb! Oh gosh, I hope Lisa won't mind, her back's not what it used to be y'know,” Pinkie darted around the room, snatching together diapers, toys, unopened food containers, and tossing them quickly on top of handkerchief she'd produced from somewhere.

“Pinkie—Pinkie stop!” said Twilight. “It's fine. It's perfectly normal for unicorn foals. She probably just mussed up a few rules of quantum mechanics—and I can fix that. Nopony will even miss them.”

“Oh,” said Pinkie, who had tied the handkerchief into a bindle and was attempting to pass the end of it through Twilight's bubble. Relief crossed her face, but kept right on going when she took a closer look at Pumpkin.

“Hmm?” Twilight was lost in concentration, magic runes blazing to life in the air around her, then marching off in neat columns. Quantum mechanics were always a little tricky—you had to fix them without ever knowing for sure what was wrong, for one. Fortunately there were some all purpose spells—

“Twilight—PUMPKIN!” The runes burst in shards of light as Pinkie grabbed Twilight about the shoulders and jerked her in the direction of the crib. “Why is she turning blue?!”

“Pinkie—if—I—do—that—” Twilight tried to explain, the words coming in gasps as Pinkie shook her back and forth.

Sadly, Twilight's protests were rendered moot by the fact that it is nearly impossible to keep up a spell when a friend is trying to turn one's brain into scrambled eggs.

And so as Pinkie began rambling off statistics about oxygen deprivation and brain damage, and nearly inflicted the latter on Twilight, the bubble around Pumpkin burst. Lightning flashed across the room, and a second later, Twilight was no longer being shaken by a manic pony, but instead bobbing on momentum in front of a concerned-looking cactus.

Twilight shook her head to clear it, and immediately hated herself for doing so. “What happen—Pinkie?” she gasped, seeing the cactus, and her pinkest friend nowhere to be found.

“Um... don't worry Pinkie Pie! I've seen this before—actually I did the same thing to my Dad once—it's a really easy spell to reverse. I just have to—”

It was the second spell she'd ever goofed up. Obviously Princess Celestia had taught her the counterspell. She had been there, for Pete’s sake!

And yet, in her great mental index of spells, there was nothing under the word “decatify.” Nor even the incorrect, but easily mistaken, “Un-cactus.”

“Well this is embarrassing. I'll have to get some books from the library before I can fix this, Pinkie. And, well, I should really see about that floor first in case any creatures from between dimensions start poking around. I don't think even you could make friends with them...”

Twilight couldn't shake the feeling that the cactus was glaring at her. For one, its needles seemed to be straining in her direction.

A stuffed moth tried to cram itself between her teeth, before giving up and heading for the crib. In the corner she could hear the clak-clak of a rallying detachment of Linkin' Logs.

“Okay Pinkie, I think I've got this... Insert tab a into slot b...” Twilight's mental image of the flow of magic shifted slightly, bringing together two disparate energies she'd formed. She folded the little globule of energy marked “tab A” over, and gave a quick tug to show that the whole thing held together. She then tossed aside the four leftover bits of energy she'd somehow acquired through the process.

“Aaaand, there!” Twilight let go of the magic, and it shot like an arrow for the cactus in the center of the room.
“Ohmygoshwhat'sthattasteohIcantastethingsagainthatwasterriblejustterribleIcouldn'ttalkorbreatheormoveoreatordrinkandletmetellyouphotsynthesistastesworsethanrainbowsbelievemeandthatwholestoringwaterthing?StalejusttotallystaleandohmygoshIwantedtosaysomanytimeswhenyouweremakingthosefunnyfacesthatyoulookedjustlike—YOOOOUUUU!”

Twilight hadn't seen Pinkie's eyes burst into flames like that since the Dodge Junction incident.

“Um... sorry it took so long Pinkie, but I really had to make sure that the dimensions didn't... cross... or... anything...” she said, backing out of the room as Pinkie steadily advanced on her. “On the bright side, I fixed the floor! Just don't fire lasers at any gold foil for a week or so and it should be fine.” The nice thing about localized problems with physics was that if you didn't observe them directly, they tended to even themselves out. “And um, Pound and Pumpkin fell asleep when you were—”

The front door, which Twilight had just backed through, slammed in her face. Inside, hooves stomped back upstairs.

She managed to get about a block away from Sugarcube Corner before ducking into a little out of the way alley and collapsing in a heap.

This was awful. She hadn't left a single friend happier than when she'd arrived. She'd been trying her best but she'd just... made everything worse, somehow. She'd barely even managed to keep positive through it all.

Twilight sniffled, sharply aware that for all she might have a little privacy, she was by no means out of earshot of anypony passing along the street.

“Come on, Twilight, keep it together,” she said as softly as she could, digging her hooves into her eyes and rubbing at the dull ache around them. She was just tired, was all.

Things had been a disaster so far, sure, but The Plan had allowances for this sort of thing built in. Just stick to The Plan.

“Bwah?” Twilight sat bolt upright in the tub, spilling water over the sides. “Spike! I'm in the bath!”

“Well you'd been in here for a really long time and there was water coming under the door,” Spike said, pointing at the inch of water the bathroom was currently under. “And you fell asleep in the tub! You're always telling me how dangerous that is and I'm cold-blooded!”

Twilight looked down at the floor like a puppy with its nose forced to a carpet stain. “Sorry Spike.” A burst of light from her horn and the floor dried out. “I guess I was more tired than I thought.”

“Did everything go okay today? You came in all sooty and covered with splinters and... metal shavings, and then just ran up here.”

Twilight started up, only to find herself already half out of the water, and a tiny note dangling from her horn by a string:

You were totally falling asleep again! I set your alarm clocks to go off at 3-minute intervals for the next hour. Please don't drown.

Twilight sighed, lowering herself back into the tub. She never should have told him about the emergency alarm clock stash.

The bare lightbulb in the Cakes' basement swayed back and forth miserably. It was casting long, shifting shadows all right, but its heart was simply not in it.

So too, were the members of The Society for Protecting Twilight's Sanity, whose black cloaks had been left at home (with the exception of Rainbow Dash; but even she had taken hers off when she saw nopony else was wearing one). Beleaguered and not really in the mood for secret meetings, since it wasn't even dinnertime yet, they tapped their hooves and shifted in the grimy light, waiting for the meeting to begin.

They did not have to wait long. “What the hay did you all do?!” Spike yelled before even reaching the table. “Twilight comes home, a complete mess, immediately locks herself in the bathroom, and then lies to me about having a good time—”

“She was lying about having a good time!” gasped Rarity. “I have had to appeal to Hoity Toity for... an extension! To say nothing of the damage that... thing she created caused to my house. I can barely work in my own room for all the debris!”

“And she just left me there while she 'took care of the laws of physics!' For like, forever! Well it may have been twenty four minutes and three point five-four-oh-six seconds, but it might as well be forever because it's super no fun at all being a cactus! Do you know what cactuses do for fun? They sit around being pointy! At least trees have arbor day to look forward to!”

“Girls!” Spike snapped. “Can we not argue about who had a worse time trying to cheer Twilight up from her terrible depression?”

“Oh no... we were so caught up in our own problems, we completely forgot that this was about making Twilight feel loved...” said Fluttershy.

“Hi Pinkie Pie!” said the floating, disembodied head of Twilight Sparkle, appearing in the center of the room.

A collective gasp filled the air. Twilight looked down, puzzled, at the space where her body usually was.

“Oh, this. Sorry, new spell for talking over distances. Seems to be working pretty well. And—hey, what are you all doing over at Pinkie's anyway?”

Looks were exchanged. Six voices rose in a collective “Uh...” and then Pinkie Pie said, “Planning your surprise birthday party,” at the same instant Rarity threw out, “Modeling my new outfits,” and Rainbow Dash tried, “Re-forming the Ponyville baseball league!”

“Well, those are all good ideas?” Twilight offered in the awkward pause that followed. “Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for before.”

“Oh, darling, you have nothing to apologize for!” said Rarity, as, across the room, Rainbow Dash was hurriedly shoved under the table.

“Anyway, I just wanted to invite you all to come watch the sunset with me. I thought, maybe we could all hang out. I'm bringing snacks!”

More glances. Weary, strained glances. The kind of glances that would really like to go home, and stop glancing for a little while, preferably with the aide of a warm glass of milk and a pillow.

Twilight Sparkle led her five best friends and number one assistant up the shadowed side of a hill just outside Ponyville, twitching, on occasion, as she stopped herself from double checking that they were still following her. Of course they were following her. They were there at her invitation. Stop worrying so much.

As she crested the hill, the sun came blazing into view as only a giant, flaming ball of gas can.

“This seems like a good spot,” she said, discreetly using her magic to smooth over the grass she'd trampled while location scouting.

There was a pause, during which time Spike shot a glare at the others behind her back.

Twilight floated the picnic basket down from her back and spread a blanket across the grass, inviting the others to plop down—which they did gratefully, nursing a series of minor, mostly stress-inflicted injuries (including, in Pinkie Pie's case, a couple of spines that still hadn't quite got the memo to turn back).

“So, everypony—now that we're here, I give you... the sunset!” Twilight made a grand gesture towards the sinking sun, before bursting into giggles.

A polite chuckle passed through the assembled ponies like a donation tin. In the distance, the sun kissed the top of the Everfree Forest.

“Oh, well, I hope you're all hungry. I made all your favorites!” said Twilight, levitating a sandwich to each of her friends, and a brilliant amethyst to Spike, whose tongue hang out of his mouth at the sight of it.

“Oh, I was saving it for a special occasion, but I thought, what's more special than just a normal day with all of us together?”

“Meeting the Wonderbolts? No, wait, meeting the Wonderbolts and hearing that they think you're cool! Or, no, winning first prize in—actually, are you sure you know what special means Twilight? I can think of a whole lot of—”

It had taken some maneuvering but Applejack and Rarity had managed to each get a hoof on Rainbow's snout and force it shut. They beamed helpfully at Twilight.

As the sun dipped lower, the sky turned gold and purple and pink, and the mist that rose up about the forest shone with amber light.

For a moment, all was quiet. And Twilight thought to herself, This is perfect. This right here. Just sitting here like this.

“Psst. Hey, Fluttershy?” whispered Pinkie Pie. “Twilight put tomatoes on my sandwich, do you want them?”

“Hey, is Fluttershy eating ponies' tomatoes? Great! Give me that daffodil would you?”

“Shoot, Fluttershy, you like tomatoes? I thought it was just Twilight. Swap for pickles okay?”

Spike continued to aim shushing gestures at the group, until they finally settled down to eat four tomato-free sandwiches and one bun with tomatoes on it. Fortunately Twilight seemed to still be enraptured by the sunset and hadn't noticed any of it, taking the occasional nibble on her own sandwich.

Even the flies weren't that bad, Twilight thought, as a small, sharp pain stung her flank, tail swishing to drive off the offender. They were really nothing at all, compared to the knowledge that her best friends in the whole world were sitting right behind her, seeing this same sunset, thinking the same slow, peaceful—

“Welp, I'm bored.” Rainbow Dash swooped up next to Twilight, settling on the grass beside her. “Hey Twi, wanna play a game or something?”

Before she could finish Rainbow Dash darted off. From somewhere behind her Twilight heard, “Tag, you're It!”

“Rainbow, we're not playing a—hey, get back here and watch the sunset like Twi said!”

“Only if you catch me!” Twilight twisted around just in time to see Rainbow stick her tongue out at Applejack and take off running, the farm pony chasing after her.

“Oh, that Rainbow Dash, she is just so—!” Rarity gave a rather unladylike snarl before joining in.

Pinkie Pie was nowhere to be found, apparently having taken off as soon as the first tag had been called. Which left only Fluttershy, glancing uneasily between Twilight and the chase going on behind her.

“Um... Um... I should make sure that everypony... doesn't... um... fly after eating!” Fluttershy said, running off after the others.

A rainbow-colored streak looped around from the next hill over and settled next to Twilight. “That's an old pony's tale!” Rainbow Dash called. “Come on, Twilight, join in.”

“No, Rainbow, wait—” But Rainbow Dash was already racing away, Applejack hot on her heels.

“What? I didn't think we were actually playing! Applejack! Applejack come back here! Oh, it is on!”

“Girls, don't you think we should go back to watching the sunset?” Twilight offered, as her friends ran back past her in the opposite direction, showing no sign of slowing down.

Pinkie Pie cartwheeled out of nowhere, landing practically on top of Rarity. “Tag!” she cried.

“Seriously everypony,” said Twilight. “You're missing some great sunset over here.”

“GIRLS!” she shouted. The others froze where they were. “We are supposed to be watching the sunset!”

“This was supposed to be a... a moment! For all of us! As friends! And it was going perfectly, but you all just had to ruin it by goofing off!”

“No buts, Fluttershy! Now we are going to sit here and watch the rest of the sunset and not mess it up!”

No. No, that wasn't... it had only been a couple of seconds, surely... It couldn't have...

“Um... we're real sorry, Twilight,” said Applejack. “We didn't mean to.”

Twilight stared blankly at the horizon. It was gone. The sun was gone. She'd missed it.

No. She wouldn't give up. She couldn't give up! Not after coming so close! So what if the sun had gone down? She and her friends were going to sit and enjoy the sunset and it was going to be magical and a treasured memory that they could cling to in years to come when they were apart—proof that they had been the best friends in all of Equestria.

“I can still fix this...” she said, her voice completely level, though fraying at the edges.

And she could. It was totally possible. If Princess Celestia could do it, then by pony, so could she!

Twilight tried to spit out the dirt in her mouth, but when she opened her lips there was only more dirt. It was dark, and cold, and for a horrifying second she wondered if the princess had felt what she had just tried to do—but she wouldn't—surely—even if she was angry...

Something grabbed her hindquarters, and tugged, and with a pop and shower of soil Twilight was back on the hillside.

“So hard you buried yourself! It was epic!” added Rainbow. The others glared. “Well, it was.”

“The sun. You know,” Twilight made a big circular gesture with her forehooves, and added a sort of exploding sound effect which somehow felt right. “Big, burny... glowy... thing. It was really heavy—”

Twilight shook herself. “Thanks, Spike, I think I needed...” she trailed off, seeing the concerned, nearly horrified looks on her friends' faces. “Did I get a little crazy just there?”

Twilight took a deep breath. “Now that you mention it, that does sound a little bit...”

She was cut off as Fluttershy darted forward and wrapped her in a tight embrace, muzzle pressed to her mane. This lasted just long enough for Fluttershy to be sure there was no sign of concussion, at which point she flashed the others a reassuring smile, and they raced forward to join the hug.

“I'm sorry everypony,” said Twilight. “I just really... really wanted things to be perfect. I'll make it up to you somehow. I promise.”

“Oh, sorry, what I am I thinking?” said Twilight. “You guys probably already had stuff planned for us to do tomorrow.” A series of befuddled looks passed between the other five ponies. “That would have been a little ambitious anyway, to finish everything by tomorrow—but don't worry, everypony, I'll make it up to you soon. Come on, Spike!” she said, pulling away.

Given the slightly murderous edge to the looks he was getting from the others, Spike hurried to follow.

“Um, Twilight, a moment?” said Rarity. “Make it up to us... how, exactly?”

Twilight Sparkle grinned in the fading light. “Sorry, girls, can't tell you. It's a surprise.”

In Search of Lost Friends (Who Aren't Actually Lost)

by Fedora Mask

Chapter 2: She's Exactly That Into You