//------------------------------// // PresentPerfect's Hot Blooded, Check It and See (Twinkletail's "Pinkie Figures It Out!") // Story: Never the Final Word (Vol. 2) // by FanOfMostEverything //------------------------------// The next day, Starlight hunted down Pinkie Pie, which wasn't particularly difficult when one knew she worked at Sugarcube Corner. "I don't get it," Starlight said as Pinkie seated her at a booth with a double-thick chocolate malt. "You would not believe the number of times I've heard that this week," Pinkie said, grinning as she slid into the seat opposite Starlight. "So I'm gonna have to ask you to be a lit-tle more specific!" After taking a long sip of her milkshake, Starlight said, "The whole thing about Twilight bursting into flames when she gets mad. It's... it's not that I don't believe you, it's just..." "Kind of hard to accept without actual visual proof?" Pinkie's smile never faltered as Starlight stared at her. "Y-yeah... Exactly that." "No problemo, Starlerino!" Pinkie leapt to her hooves, still on the booth bench. "You still know that time travel spell, right?" Starlight blanched slightly. "Uhh..." "Just set time coordinates to X2011 Y2 Z11 W115 V1904!" "Pinkie, how do you even know how to—" Pinkie jumped atop Starlight's head, tapping her hooves against her horn in precisely the right way to input time coordinates. "JUST DO IT!" "Aaaaaah!" Starlight yelled as the magic happened in her horn. In a flash, both were teleported to a high bluff overlooking some rocky cliffs and a putrid, squelching bog. A giant, four-headed lizard stomped off away from them, blowing a raspberry behind itself, while on a cliff ledge, four ponies and a dragon were having a conversation. Starlight couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but even from this distance, she recognized them immediately. "Wow," she breathed, "I sometimes forget Twilight didn't always have—" "Shh!" Pinkie shoved her hoof in Starlight's mouth from behind somehow. "Just watch!" Starlight was very aware in that moment of the extreme plushness of the flanks of the mare sitting atop her, and how they compared to those of certain other mares. Mares who would remain nameless. As she watched, the conversation reached a heated argument. Past-Pinkie had been shivering oddly. Those shivers became violent, and past-Twilight let out a bellow of rage that echoed across the canyon. Then she rose into the air and burst into fire. Starlight was entranced. The scene only lasted a few seconds before Twilight's mane and tail extinguished in a cloud of smoke, but it was all Starlight needed to flash back to an anxious evening in Canterlot Castle. A long day spent trying and failing to guide Princess Luna through the affairs of the day had led to her passing out on the balcony in the middle of a conversation with Princess Celestia. The day's stresses had manifested in her dreams, a returned Nightmare Moon battling for dominance against a great and terrible alicorn with flaming mane and tail. Just like Twilight's. With a shriek that thankfully went unnoticed by the ponies gathered below, Starlight pulled the magical cord that connected the spell back to their time. She and Pinkie zipped through the swirling colors of spacetime back to Sugarcube Corner, years thence. The milkshake hadn't even melted. "Whee!" cried Pinkie, bouncing off Starlight and back and forth past the table. "That was fun!" "Pinkie!" Starlight grabbed her (and the milkshake) in her magic and sprinted out the front door. "Come on, we don't have any time to waste!" "Whoa! Where are we going, Starlight?" "To Sweet Apple Acres! Applejack has loads of ponies' genealogy histories, right?" "Yeah, she does! Most of it's about the Apple Family, of course. What's the rush?" Two mares and a milkshake teleported across Ponyville in an instant. "By Trixie's sweet yet not-so-soft flanks, I hope I'm wrong, but let's just say Twilight might be a princess in more ways than one!"