“CHEESE!” Pinkie yelled, jumping towards the lanky yellow stallion.
“PINKIE!” Cheese yelled back. Before Rainbow’s eyes, the two of them leapt towards each other, flying through the air at strangely slow speed.
“CHEESE!”
“PINKIE!”
Rainbow Dash looked at her wrist expectantly, before realizing that she wasn’t wearing a watch and wondering why she expected to find one there in the first place.
“CHEESE!”
“PINKIE!”
“CH-”
The two of them slammed their heads against the ceiling and fell to the floor on their backs in a crumpled heap, laughing uproariously.
“...Ya done?” Rainbow Dash asked, raising an eyebrow.
Cheese stared at her as if in the middle of all that chaos, he hadn’t noticed her. And maybe that was true. He looked as if he’d ordered a hayburger and received a slightly burned lasagna instead.
“Oh,” Cheese stammered, “Rainbow Dash! I… I wasn’t expecting you, but…. okay!”
His eyes were narrowed.
And the first thing on Rainbow Dash’s mind was ‘I’ve made a huge mistake.’
It all seemed so obvious in hindsight. Clearly, Cheese had wanted it just to be the two of them, clearly they…
“Pinkie seemed kinda worried beforehand, so I decided I’d come with,” Rainbow Dash said, narrowing her eyes.
“I see…” Cheese said, narrowing his eyes as well. His voice grew deep and gravelly.
Rainbow tensed. Was she about to-
“...that you’re a great friend! Pinkie’s lucky to have you with her,” Cheese said, reaching out with one foreleg, and bumping it against Rainbow’s right foreleg.
Rainbow Dash felt herself swing towards the ground, drawing in a sharp breath. She wheezed slightly.
“Yeah… a great friend…” Rainbow asked, looking from side to side.
“I’m afraid there’s not gonna be much for you here,” Cheese said, rather sheepishly as he rubbed one hoof against his wild mane, so much like Pinkie’s. “It’s going to be mostly the two of us, planning the party together… we could try skiing if you want.”
“Uh... about that. I heard a lot of what the party’s about from Twilight,” Pinkie said, “But… I don’t actually know what you do.”
“I’ll explain on the way,” Cheese said, pointing down a set of stairs, towards a street lined with small stores and warehouses, all built of brightly-colored stone but woven through ever so slightly with tentacles and strange mushrooms.
Something squelched in the distance.
“Okay,” Rainbow Dash said, “What’s the deal with the tentacles? I feel like we’ve walked into a horror movie.”
Cheese paused, one foreleg halfway to a new step on the staircase.
“...Huh,” he said. “I guess that is a bit weird.”
“We have long since passed weird!” Rainbow Dash said, not quite yelling but close.
“Honestly? Not really sure,” Cheese said. “It’s just always sorta been here.”
“You live under a giant tentacle thing and you’re just gonna roll with it?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“You live in Ponyville,” Cheese said.
Pinkie opened her mouth as if to argue, narrowing her eyebr-
“No, no, he’s got a point,” Pinkie said. “Remember the time we got invaded by tentacles?”
Cheese suddenly blushed. “Uhhhh…“Sounds like you got up to a lot of adventures, huh…”
“No, that one was a couple months before we met you,” Pinkie chirped. “Almost a whole season.”
“You got invaded by tentacles that long befo-” Cheese started.
“They were vines, and they choked out the town, kind of like this one is,” Rainbow Dash said, narrowing her eyebrows and stepping between Pinkie and Cheese. “We had to give the elements to the Tree of Harmony to stop them.”
“Phew!” Cheese said, drawing one hoof across his brow. “You lead very exciting lives.”
With that, he resumed his descent.
“Business as usual!” Pinkie chirped. “Though I guess we’re semiretired now.”
“How’s that been?” Cheese asked.
“Oh, you know,” Pinkie said. “It’s been pretty great! Planning parties for Pound and Pumpkin’s cutecenearas, and working on Vinyl and Octavia’s new venue… It’s been pretty great for me in Ponyville so far!”
The two of them walked - well, two of them walked, one of them fluttered - down the set of stairs, heading down to the street which led into the beating heart of the town. They found themselves on a street that looked rather busy at this time - other passengers from the train were milling about, staring in confusion and awe at the tentacles that knit across the town, one of which was festooned with paper lanterns in all the colors of the rainbow. Many of them looked to be wearing ski clothes, some of them clad in what looked almost (but not quite) like Wonderbolt flightsuits.
Storefronts with warm, inviting orange light lit the street almost as bright as day. They displayed anything from clothes (some of which Pinkie recognized as Rarity designs) to chocolates to ice cream to pastries to climbing gear, beckoning recent arrivals to spend as many bits as they could afford.
This all looks so fun! Pinkie thought. I really want to-
Pinkie looked over at a window that displayed a wide variety of chocolates, some of which were in flavors utterly unfamiliar to her.
Her reflection stared back,
“Ask him about the festival!” The reflection told her. “He wants you here and you want to talk about it, so do it!”
“You’re right, spooky reflection that’s either in my imagination or a symptom of an undiagnosed brain tumor,” Pinkie said.
The reflection nodded approvingly. It - or she - reached down towards one chocolate, picking it up with one foreleg and tossing it into her mouth.
“Oh, great googly moogly, dark chocolate salted caramel…”
“Wait,” Rainbow Dash said, staring over at this spectacle. “What was tha-”
“So anyway, Cheese,” Pinkie said. “What do you do during the festival?”
As Pinkie asked that one question, Rainbow Dash fluttered along behind the two party ponies, ducking under one tentacle so intently that she was practically walking.
What is wrong with me, she thought.
“Well, it’s pretty simple,” Cheese said. “The Badalisc comes down from the Eponines, and it’s then ritualistically captured by a bunch of stock characters like the Town Drunk, the Young Lovers, the Old Grandmother, the Young Fool…”
As Rainbow Dash’s hooves touched ground, she looked up at the tentacle. Beneath it, in between the lights, she saw that what she had thought were roofs were smaller tentacles like on the underside of a starfish, lined with teeth.
From what Rainbow could see, it looked as if this one tentacle that arced over the street was lined with other tinier tentacles the size of a pony’s leg, which themselves were lined with what appeared to be teeth.
“Then, the Badalisc gives a speech about the secrets of everyone in town,” Cheese said. “Who likes doing what, who’s saying what behind each other’s back… It’s such a funny day. Then there’s a massive feast!”
“So,” Rainbow said, as it was only now sinking in, “everyone’s secrets get revealed?”
“Every single pony!” Cheese said cheerfully.
“Are we sure that’s a good idea?” Rainbow asked.
“It keeps the town honest,” Cheese said, shrugging. “Sometimes, we need to tear down the walls we’ve built.”
“Would it tell everyone a horrible secret someone really wanted to keep?” Pinkie asked.
“It doesn’t go out of its way to harm people,” Cheese said thoughtfully, one hoof under his chin as he trotted down the street, navigating around a crowd of ponies clad in the most fashionable of snowsuits - and one who had been blessed with a shaggy, wintry coat. “I mean, if someone… really, truly, was going to cause harm, it’d reveal it. But it’s harmless. Really!”
“I kinda wish Applejack was around for this now,” Rainbow said.
Pinkie felt a sudden stab of jealousy.
“You could just… ask her to come?” Pinkie asked, pronking up to Cheese, so close that their cutie marks were practically touching.
And now it was Dashie’s chance to quail a little.
“I couldn’t,” Dashie said. “She, she… has to be at the farm, and you know how much work it is…”
“Okey-dokey-loki!” Pinkie said, still bouncing along. “You can do that at your own pace, Dashie! So, where are we going, Cheese?”
“My family’s inn, the Mascar-pony!” Cheese said proudly. His brashness then dissipated a little. “They said you were always welcome, so… I decided to take them up on it.”
***
The trattoria was, as it turned out, the very same building that looked like a mansion precariously balanced atop a stack of stucco and wood. A single sign that was either old or just artfully weatherbeaten showed a cartoon of a pony that looked much like Cheese Sandwich jumping out of the center of a cake, proclaiming the establishment as “The Mascarpony Trattoria and Inn!!!!”
With four exclamation points.
As soon as Pinkie stepped in, a single thought raced through her head:
I need to eat everything.
There were so many dishes at each table. Things Pinkie had never seen. Had no name for. Hay and barley and daisy and fish, on plates piled high with pastas and sauces. Multiple ponies were eating a pizza almost as wide as the tables they sat upon. Desserts of so many kinds, filled with fruit and chocolate and caramel, sometimes all at once. And it’d all been set up so the kitchen was in plain view of the main dining area.
A gray stallion with a receding, thinning maneline waved to Pinkie. He sat next to a pony and griffon Pinkie had never seen.
“This all looks so delicious!” Pinkie gasped. “Oh, and hi, Sans! Hi, pony and griffon I’ve never met!”
“Oh, hey, that’s… Pinkie, you know Sans Smirk, but Rainbow doesn’t!” Cheese said, pointing enthusiastically to the table. “There’s my brother Tomato, but you can call him Tommy-”
Cheese walked towards the table, pointin with one foreleg to a red-brown stallion with a black mane styled into a pompadour and stroked through with yellow.
“-there’s Giovanni, he’s a griffon, he grew up here.”
Next to Tomato, or Tommy, was a griffon with a reddish tinge to his feathers and tail, something Pinkie had rarely (if ever) seen.
“Nice to see you again, Pinkie!” Sans waved to her, his voice only slightly raised.
“So, you’re the mare my brother’s been talking about!” Tomato Sandwich said, a little chuckle punctuating that sentence. “He just goes on and on about you!”
“Tell me about it,” Rainbow Dash muttered.
“And this is Rainbow Dash,” Cheese said. “She’s one of Pinkie’s best friends, she’s the element of loyalty… I actually met Pinkie because of her. I came to Ponyville to plan her party, and…”
Pinkie would normally have been rapt at attention. She so wanted to hear this story, but something was bothering her. Something about the cast of that pegasus pony’s jawline looked familiar… And that earth pony. The taller, curly-maned one wi-
Pinkie Pie squinted. “Have I met these ponies?”
“You’ve met me,” Sans Smirk pointed out.
“They all look…”
Curly manes and coats in all the shades of autumnal leaves met her gaze. They looked…
Wait a minute.
“AUDIBLE GASP-” Pinkie started.
“SURPRISE, PINKIE!” the entire dining room crowed, raising their hooves and other appendages, throwing back hoods, crowing in excitement. All of those ponies stared at her, smiling, and even though they’d been there the whole time it was as if the whole place exploded into color.
Suddenly, it was clear.
“A surprise party?! For me?!” Pinkie gasped. “Oh my goodness!”
She blushed profusely, scanning the room over the room.
“Ooh, you, with the bow - you could have hidden behind that piano, that would’ve been a great hiding spot. And you, that chandelier was an inspired choice, but-”
CRASH!
“MY SPLEEN!”
The chandelier fell to the floor, a dazed earth colt rolling off of it before they could get hurt.
“Yeah, there’s that. And you with the…”
Pinkie continued rattling off her advice.
“Wow,” Rainbow Dash said, walking up to the colt that’d been on the chandelier. “Nobody’s ever managed to get the drop on Pinkie like that! Not since that one time...”
“Yeah! You reeeeeeaaaally outdid yourselves,” Pinkie said.
At the same time:
“Wow, there’s… more of you than I expected,” Cheese said, looking around the room, surprisingly quiet. “I didn’t know so many of you would be here for this!”
“Well,” said one mare, looking much like cheese but smaller, fatter, and with a coat the color of mustard, “When Cheese told us all about you in his letter, we knew we had to roll out the red carpet.”
Pinkie’s tail twitched.
Ohhhhh….
“Cheese moves around a lot, and he doesn’t mention marefriends too often,” added a taller red stallion, this one with his same tall, lanky build… but an almost immaculately maintained pompadour of a mane. Just like Cheese’s brother.
“Daaaadd….” Cheese said, blushing.
Oh no, oh no, ohhhhh… Rainbow thought.
“So once he talked about you in such glowing terms, we figured we should give you the four-Cheese-blend welcome!” crowed an earth pony mare with a passing resemblance to Granny Smith.
“That... means a lot, Nonna!” Cheese said. Though that last word or syllable trailed off a bit, as if he’d realized he’d left the stove on and was only just realizing his house might have been on fire.
“I didn’t expect he’d have two marefriends, though,” one pony said looking over to Rainbow Dash. He looked like Cheese but slightly color-shifted, with the fur a pale yellow darker than fluttershy, with a mane that looked brown and white.
“Reggie, no, it’s not like-” Cheese started.
...buck.
Rainbow Dash stared in rapt horror.
“CONGRATULATIONS, LITTLE COUSIN!” bellowed a huge earth pony stallion. “TWO MARE!”
“Excuse me what the fresh-” Rainbow Dash started.
“No no no noooo, it’s not like that!” Pinkie cried frantically, waving her hooves like propellers. “I don’t even think Dashie l-”
She clamped both hooves over her mouth.
“He came back with two mares!” a pegasus called out. “This calls for a SONG!”
“Welcome welcome welcome
A fine welcome to you-”
“I swear I’ve heard this before,” Rainbow Dash said.
“I’m no expert, but it’s probably because you HAVE!” Pinkie yelled. “Cheese…”
And then to her surprise, she felt her energy draining out. “...Cheese, why are we using my Welcome Song?”
“Because… I thought you’d enjoy being reminded of…” Cheese started, his voice trailing off.
“Welcome welcome welcome
I say how do you do?”
Cheese’s family chorused.
“You couldn’t afford the rights, could you,” Pinkie sighed.
“Oh, no, no, not at all, we actually-” Cheese started.
Pinkie and Rainbow Dash stared at him.
“...Yes,” Cheese said sheepishly.
Welcome welcome welcome
I say hip hip hurray
Welcome welcome welcome
To Cavallocade toda-”
“STOP!” Rainbow Dash yelled.
The background music came to a screeching, grinding halt.
“He didn’t come with two marefriends! I’m not…” Rainbow stammered. “I just thought she might need another friend while she was somewhere different.”
“YEAH!” Pinkie said. “Besides, Dashie is already spoken for.”
“...she is?” asked a red stallion with a passing resemblance to Cheese.
“I am?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“You aren’t?” Pinkie asked.
Pinkie wondered just what the stare that Dashie was giving her meant.
“I thought you, and, uh… with the…” Pinkie said. Huh. I really thought it was obvious.
“Mom,” Cheese said, sidling up to the mare with the vague resemblance to him, “Can we… uh… talk in private? Please?”
“Whatever you say, son!” she said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to your marefriends-”
“Marefriend!” Rainbow blurted out. “Where is everyone getting the plural from?! We’ve only been here for two minutes!”
The five of them - Rainbow Dash, Pinkie, Cheese Sandwich, and his parents - filtered into a little room just behind the bar in the Mascarpony. It had the look of somewhere that had maybe been intended for habitation at some point (there was a sink sticking out of one wall for no discernible reason) and had gradually, slowly, become an office without anyone noticing.
A window shone down on Cheese’s father, who sat behind the desk.
Which was weird, because going by the layout of the building, there was nothing the window could be facing. And no possible source of light.
“So,” Cheese’s Father said. “What happened?”
“Well, if I had to make a guess,” Pinkie said, “The overly familiar manner by which I referred to Cheese in our letters gave the false impression we were a couple, and Cheese’s parents told everyone-”
“False,” Rainbow Dash said, making a “pffft” noise.
“-that we were a thing?”
“You really think they’d be that gossipy?” Cheese asked. “Mom, dad, I would n-”
“No, no, she was totally correct,” his father said.
“Creepily so, I might add,” his mother said.
A pause.
“You’re really not a couple, though?” his mother asked.
“No,” Pinkie said, looking to Cheese to refute h-
“Nah, we’re… she’s right,” Cheese said.
Rainbow Dash silently fumed in the background, forelegs crossed. Pinkie looked back to find that she agreed.
“Being among friends is what gives Pinkie her spark,” Cheese said, carefully not looking at her. “I couldn’t take her away from that.”
You could’ve heard a pin drop. Or, more likely, the sound of Pinkie’s heart shattering into-
“Did somebody just drop a glass?” Rainbow Dash asked, one hoof to her right ear. “Thought I heard something.”
-a hundred little pieces. And all she could think of as she stared at the wood-paneled floor was ‘and what if I do that too?’
“And Cheese gets his spark from wandering Equestria and sparking his creativity,” Pinkie said.
“Plus, meeting each other and getting letters is special because it only happens once in awhile,” Cheese said. “It… warms my heart every time! I just feel like… as we are, we’re better as friends.”
“...Yeah?” Pinkie asked.
“Yeah….” Cheese said.
“Yeah,” Pinkie said, looking away.
“Suuuure,” Rainbow Dash said, raising an eyebrow.
“I… see,” Cheese’s father said. “But… Pinkie. Remember what you said about telling everyone?”
“Oh no,” Cheese said, burying his face under one hoof.
“Oh… yes,” Cheese’s mother said.
“What do you mean… everyone?” Cheese asked.
“Alfredo Fettucine, Clear Skies, that one pony in the cartoonishly offensive buffalo garb, Blue Skies, Steel Stud, Rapid Shadow, Astral Thunder, Astral Chaser, Wild Specter, Astral Strikes, Joker’s Wild, Cloud Charge, Garino, and Garrett, and the Faceless Hooded Pony from Grove Park…”
“Oh sweet Celestia, you did tell everyone,” Cheese sighed. “Did you even tell Old Stallion Livio?!”
Cheese’s mother put a hoof on his back. “I’m sorry, Cheesy. He died five years ago.”
Cheese stared at her aghast. “Oh. Oh my Celestia. How did I not kn-”
“But he came back as a ghost!”
“...What?” Pinkie asked.
“And he found out anyway.”
“That’s even worse!” Cheese said.
“Yeah, he found out from his three-year old son,” Cheese’s mother said. “Who I told.”
“Oh COME ON!” Pinkie yelled.
“Wait,” Rainbow Dash asked, fluttering down towards Cheese to whisper into his ear, “How does that make any kind of sense?”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Cheese whispered back.
“Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense,” Pinkie said.
“Plus, the town council put up posters and fliers that said ‘planned by Pinkie Pie and Cheese,’” Cheese’s father said. “So for now… uh…”
“Oh,” Cheese said, looking away from Pinkie.
“Yeah,” Cheese’s father said. “As far as almost everyone knows, you’re already a couple. And you’ll be working together all this time, so…”
Pinkie’s cheeks burned with embarrassment.
He just wants to be friends, and he’s even right about why… but everyone’s going to rub it in. Unintentionally.
What the buck am I supposed to do about that?
It wasn’t worth explaining how it’d happened, and it was destined to be a blur of awkward stares, not-quite-glares, and something that patrolled the border between sadness and anger but never quite crossed that divide.
But then, almost before Pinkie knew it, she and Rainbow Dash were in a winding, zig-zagging hallway near the top of the inn, heading towards their room, escorted by a yellow and white pegasus mare with a cutie mark of a white circle with a slice cut out, not unlike a cheese wheel. She bore a passing resemblance to the earth pony Cheese had referred to as ‘Reggie’.
“Your room is… here,” she said, pointing to a door marked ‘1408.’
“That… seems a bit unlucky,” Rainbow Dash said. “Adds up to 13, we’re on the 13th-”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” the mare said. “You’re actually on the 14th floor! The 13th floor was walled off. For… reasons.”
“O… kay,” Rainbow Dash said, clearly trying not to think too hard about that one.
“Now, there’s some things you need to know about the room,” the mare said. “I’m ah… Brie Wheel, by the way.”
“It’s Gouda meet you!” Pinkie exclaimed, reaching out to her with one foreleg.
“Wow,” Brie Wheel said. “Never heard that one before.”
“Really?” Pinkie asked, a huge smile on her face.
“No, seriously! I actually haven’t! It’s kinda weird when I think about it,” Brie Wheel said.
She opened the door to their room.
It was… a hotel room. Decorated all in wood, some of which had the bark shaven off, giving it a rough-hewn look that might have given it the look of a place that’d been built yesterday, if not for the sense of antiquity visible in all its decor. It had the look of a lodge out in the middle of the woods for earth pony foresters, except for the fact that…
It was the strangest thing. There were none of the signs of wood that’d been nailed or joined together with pegs. Only expanses of curves, with no seams in the wood. It looked as if that bedframe had somehow grown into that shape. Same for… virtually everything in this room, save for the flooring.
And yet. There was a sense of antiquity to this room, as if Luna might have stayed here once upon a time before being banished to the moon. And despite that off-putting detail and sense of age, it did look cozy. The sheets looked soft, puffy, and velvety, like you’d enjoy their reassuring mass over your fur even if the time for such sheets had long passed. An armchair that looked to have been almost artfully broken in by years of loafing sat in one corner.
The whole room was decorated with photos depicting an expedition to a mountain that looked quite like the one that stood sentinel over Cavallocade and now served as the local ski area. Ponies in bundled cold-winter gear that gave them silhouettes not unlike yaks traversed its peaks, rappelling up cliffs with ropes… or in the case of several pegasi, just flying to the top.
But there was one thing that commanded Pinkie’s attention:
“Finally!” Pinkie said, looking towards the bathroom. “I.. really had a lot to drink.”
“Pinkie,” Brie Wheel said, “You’re going to need to be careful, there’s-”
Pinkie closed the door behind her.
“Pinkie, you need to-”
There was a sigh of relief.
“Pinkie, no, don’t… wait, WIT NO NO DON'T FLUSH TH-" Brie Wheel cried.
It was too late. Pinkie barreled out the door, screaming as something rumbled.
Something slick and wet and sudden pushed itself up from inside, with a noise like a wet growl or someone ripping paper. Pinkie Pie stared in rapt attention, realizing it was a tentacle, like one belonging to a kraken. She could see the suction cups contracting, in and out, dilating- dilating?
Those weren't suckers.
That was a tentacle, covered in eyes, poking its way out from their toilet. There was an awful silence for a few seconds before it receded back into the toilet.
"...We'll... be going to the bathroom... outside," Pinkie said, not quite having processed what she'd seen.
"But can't you-" Rainbow Dash started. "Wait. No, definitely. Yeah."
"I can respect that. Lawrence can be rather inconvenient sometimes," Brie Wheel said.
"His name is Lawrence?" Pinkie Pie asked.
"Well, their name. We sort of got the impression they don't like traditional gender binary," Brie Wheel said.
"Oh. Sorry, Lawrence!" Pinkie said, yelling into the toilet.
“They’ve been in our pipes and… we kind of forgot to tell him it was your room now,” Brie Wheel said. "Just don't flush anything you normally wouldn't, and you'll be fine.”
Once that initial shock had worn off:
“What the absolute BUCK, Pinkie?!” Rainbow Dash yelled.
“I know! There’s a tentacle monster in our bathroom! That’s really weird!” Pinkie said.
“What?! No!” Rainbow yelled. “I mean, that’s weird even by this town’s standards, but…”
She sighed.
. “Okay. Am I bucking crazy or…” Rainbow Dash started. does everyone see it? You are perfect for each other.”
“No, no,” Pinkie said, looking away from Dashie, “He was right, we’re too differen-”
“If I painted you yellow and you deepened your voice like we were trying to pull one over on Trixie again, everyone would think you were Cheese,” Rainbow said, completely deadpan.
what
Pinkie just stared at Rainbow Dash, jaw dropped, eyes wide. “Why would you or anypony else do that.”
“Because you’re not that different at all!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, throwing her hooves out, one of them smacking a wall. “You’re both party ponies, you both love going over the top, you love making others smile, you’re on the same wavelength all the time, and you’re just going to say no? And you were just thinking about how weird it would be if Cheese was making out with someone that looked like him, weren’t you?!”
“I what?!” Pinkie yelled. “No! No, I wasn’t!”
“But you can’t not think of making out with him now, can’t you?”
“I…” Pinkie stammered. “...Yes, of course I can, I…”
But she couldn’t.
“Oh, wow! You were hiding a cupcake there?!”
“I’d bet you twenty bits that you’ll end up with him by the end of the week,” Rainbow Dash said, “Except that’s probably extortion.”
“Why are you being so insistent about this?” Pinkie asked. “I mean… he loves traveling, I like it in ponyville, what if we’re better as friends? What if he...”
Pinkie gasped.
“What if I ask, he can’t look the same way, we grow apart, and then we meet at Party Pony Con and he’s dating a mare that looks exactly like me but differently colored and the whole time I’m just staring at her awkwardly and I can’t not think of it and then we grow apart because of how I’m looking at his marefriend?!”
Rainbow Dash just stared at her, mouth open, for a few seconds.
“Whoooooole lot to unpack there,” she said. “But… at least try to get together with him, and if it doesn’t work, then you’ll stay friends. Though that last part is…”
“Extremely likely?!” Pinkie asked.
“I was going to say ‘disturbing,’” Rainbow Dash said. “Especially the part where you mentioned someone who looks exactly like you but differently colored. I mean, how often does that happen?”
“It’s happened to Derpy about 15 times,” Pinkie said.
“Well, I’ve never seen somepony who looks exactly like you with a different color,” Rainbow Dash said. “Just…. Talk to him. See what happens. Maybe lean into what everyone thinks about you two being a couple and see how it feels. You’ve had other relationships before, you know what to do.”
“Right,” Pinkie said, nodding.
“Just remember, all too often, you’re the only one stopping yourself,” Rainbow Dash said. “It’s not like there’s some evil conspiracy expressingly trying to hurt you.”
MEANWHILE
“Fillies and gentlecolts,” a hooded mare said. “This shall be the first meeting of our CONSPIRACY EXPRESSLY TRYING TO HURT PINKIE PIE!”
Lightning struck outside.
“...Should we really be doing this outside, near a thunderstorm?” the maroon hooded mare asked.
“We all have our grievances against her,” the hooded mare said, “And during this week before the festival, we’ll bring true suffering to her.”
“Way ahead of you,” said the tall, lanky stallion. His horn glowed, enveloping his steamer trunk in green, dragging it up to him. The lid opened.
Something floated up and out from it. A long wooden stave with a metal tip. A telescope with-
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” exclaimed the hooded mare. “Not like that!”
“What?!” the thin stallion said, indignant. “You said bring true suffering to her. So I brought a gun!”
“We’re not trying to kill her, not yet!” the hooded mare said, petulant, “Just make her suffer. We want her to feel even a fraction of the injustice she’s caused us.”
The thin stallion let the rifle hang in midair. “She’ll suffer if she has to go through physical therapy and wonders if she’ll ever walk right again.”
“I. Said. No,” the hooded mare said. “Are you questioning my logic?”
“Often,” the thin stallion said. “But… we’re going to do something, right? We’re not going to sit around skulking like saturday morning cartoon villains in our fortress of doom?”
“I have no idea what most of those words mean,” said the mare with the hat.
“Nevermind,” the thin stallion said. “It’s not that important.”
“That’ll be too easy,” the hooded mare continued. “She’ll still have friends. She’ll still have things that make her happy. What we’ll do is take from her a fraction of what she took from all of us.”
“If you say so,” the thin stallion said. “But let me make one thing clear: I’m going to get pretty tired of all this hurrying up and waiting soon. And you’d better not be in the blast radius when I do.”