Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie, and Applejack all sat in their respective thrones, staring blankly at Fluttershy and the Mask.
“...It’s a little rude to stare,” Fluttershy said. “We haven’t figured out how to remove the Mask without making her go dormant, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, remember?”
“Oh, dear, we understand that,” Rarity said. “It’s just…”
“Why in Celestia’s name are you red?” Rainbow asked.
“Oh.” Fluttershy examined her recently-dyed coat. “I just decided I liked the color.” She pulled a dress out of her mane and slipped it on. “Do you think it works?”
Pinkie giggled. “That’s amazing Fluttershy! You’re really getting the hang of it!”
“Thank you!”
“Thank me!” the Mask interjected.
“Shush,” Fluttershy booped herself on the nose. “You agreed to give us some privacy?”
“Bu-”
“Hmmm?”
“Fine,” the Mask muttered, letting Fluttershy do what she wanted.
“Thank you.” She ruffled her feathers. “So… I think we all know what we’re here for today. Time to tell you exactly what they did with your bodies…”
~~~
“...And then the Mask and I were sent back alone while Discord took the slow boat home with his own magic. Starswirl will be finding rubber ducks in random creepy places for the next year for forgetting about bringing you back, Twilight.”
Her five friends stared at her with a glorious mixture of expressions. Applejack looked disgusted, Pinkie was holding back giggles, Rarity was confused, Rainbow couldn’t decide if she wanted to shout ‘so cool’ or ‘that’s messed up’, and Twilight…
“...I was in space and I didn’t even get to see it…” Twilight whined.
“At least you weren’t some perverse varmint,” Applejack shuddered. “He didn’t… do anything, did he?”
“Not as far as we know,” Fluttershy said.
“That’s… pleasant.”
“I don’t know if I should feel insulted that Bill just abandoned me for ‘better’ puppets…” Rarity mused.
“Chara had soooo many problems!” Pinkie giggled. “You got her sooooo mad! Hilarious!”
“Should I go, like, check to see if I still have a criminal empire or something?” Rainbow asked.
“Celestia took care of them,” Fluttershy said. “They… won’t be a problem anymore.”
“...Kay.”
“You and the Mask are so amazing!” Pinkie said. “We can have so much fun together! Ooooh! I can finally play hide and seek and not have to pretend I can’t find ponies!”
“You were just pretending!?” Rarity screeched.
“Uh…”
“I waited in that cupboard six hours, Pinkie!”
Pinkie smiled nervously. “Eheheh… sorry?”
“You can find anypony?” Rainbow huffed. “We’ll be testing this later.”
“Okay. But first? I think I need to go play a game with Discord.” Pinkie turned to Fluttershy. “You coming?”
Fluttershy nodded. “Yes. Both of us are. You girls don’t mind, right?”
The four of them shook their heads. With a hop, skip, and a jump. Pinkie and Fluttershy were gone.
Rarity let out a breath. “Well. I do hope she gets that Mask off her face, eventually.”
“Starswirl will figure something out,” Twilight assured her. “He always does.”
“Hmm…” Rarity sat back in her chair. “Well, did anypony have a good vacation? I was a rock the entire time.”
“Sat in a room,” Applejack said. “Got so bored Ah fell asleep.”
“I went on an amazing adventure with this guy called Batman!” Rainbow said, slamming her hooves on the table. “We fought crime, plotted Joker’s downfall, and kicked some serious flank! He was awesome.”
Twilight looked into the distance. “I tried to re-engineer a galaxy plagued by war…”
~~~
“...FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC?” the God-Emperor of Mankind said through his text-to-speech device.
“Yes!” Twilight said - having taken the form of her alicorn self since Tzeentch could appear as anything. “It works really well in my universe, you could stand to try it out.”
“THERE IS NOTHING BUT ENDLESS WAR, DEATH, AND FUCKING IDIOTS RUNNING AROUND HERE.”
“Friendship would go a long way toward fixing that! Fixing your magic field too, the entire thing’s terrible.”
“I WILL TAKE THIS UNDER ADVISEMENT.”
“Which is to say you’re sticking with your original plan and putting this at, oh, plan R or S or something.”
“PRECISELY.”
Twilight shrugged. “I tried! Guess I'll go back to giving all Tzeentch sorcerers dreams of peace...”
“THIS WILL CERTAINLY HAVE AMUSING SIDE EFFECTS.”
“No doubt.”
~~~
“No! Gumdrop ants! You march one by one!” Pinkie whined, yelling at her pink ants. “Not in a sine wave! Bad ants!”
In the distance, Discord and Fluttershy watched her, their own brown and yellow ants moving around the two of them in circles.
“...I really didn’t need to go hunting,” Discord mused. “I had all the friends I needed right here. Could have just been patient.”
Twilight smiled knowingly at him. “Discord, admitting he was wrong humbly? What is the world coming to?”
“Not chaos, both fortunately and otherwise.”
Fluttershy giggled, leaning in to him. “At least you got two new chaos friends.”
“...Two?”
Fluttershy smirked, pulling a fishing pole out of her mane without any prompting, grabbing hold of Pinkie’s tail. Pinkie yelled in surprise as she was yanked to Fluttershy and her poofy tail was given a little rabbit hood.
“Two,” Fluttershy giggled. “I just needed the right push, I guess.” She flew into the air and threw firecracker sparks around.
Pinkie gasped. “Oh, so all you have to do to understand chaos is to get your mind half taken over by a Mask? SWEET! I’m doubly chaotic now, right?”
The Mask popped out of Pinkie’s face, giggling. “WE ARE ALL THE SUGAR!”
“Yeah!”
Pinkie and Fluttershy each pulled a cymbal out of their manes and clashed them together in time. They quickly devolved into giggles and hugs.
Discord grinned. He supposed he had made plenty of chaotic friends.
~~~
Chara opened her eyes, expecting to see the darkness of her home universe greet her.
She did not see that. Instead, she saw a carnival where absolute emptiness should have been. A very Pink carnival spread all around her.
“No…” she said, standing up. “No…”
“Hi, welcome to Partyland!” Pinkie said, walking up to her. “We’re here to turn that frown upside-down!”
Chara drove her knife into Pinkie and completely obliterated her. There was no blood, there was no dust, just… a lot of candy. Like a pinata.
“...What?”
“Oh, well, Pinkie-one knew you had a lot of power in your home universe!” another Pinkie said.
“So she made us unkillable!” another Pinkie declared, whooping.
“We’re all pinatas and stuffed animals! Nothing fleshy here!”
“So we can give you a party from now until the end of your days!”
“Which won’t be for a long time since you don’t seem to age!”
“Might as well be a Pinkie Party for eternity!”
“No… no, I destroyed this world! I turned it to dust! I killed them all!”
The Pinkies grabbed her. “Yep! And this is your reward!”
“No! Stop! How is this possible? I couldn’t Save over there, you can’t pull stuff out of nowhere here! You couldn’t have made this! How!?”
The Pinkies giggled.
“Because it’s funny that we were able to, duh.”
“You should have tried making it funny to kill someone. That would have actually worked!”
“It would have had to be more funny than failing to kill at all opportunities…”
“Oooh, yeah, would have been a hard one. But it could be done!”
“You just didn’t try hard enough.”
Chara let out a shout of rage, Reloading reality to when she first woke up.
The Pinkies were already there.
“You might be able to reset us…”
“...But we’ll always remember!”
“ALWAYS.”