"Alright ladies, I've got one sparkling strawberry water with a slice of lemon."
"That's mine."
Pinkie slid the drink across the table to her thirsty patron. "A Chai tea with milk on the side." A yellow hoof was raised and Pinkie delivered dutifully. "One double chocolate mocha with extra whip."
"Right here!" A pony that looked an awful lot like Pinkie's dentist raised her hoof and waved. The hoof dropped to catch the sliding drink before it met the table edge. Not that it would have. Pinkie knew exactly how far to push it.
"One Twilight Special with an extra shot of espresso." She didn't even wait for an answer as she passed Twilight her favorite poison. "And lastly, a bl— a blu— a blaagh—" Pinkie nearly gagged as she forced out those most heinous and blasphemous words. “A black coffee. No cream. No sugar.”
"Here," said the mare that looked like she'd decided to go as Twilight for Nightmare Night then got depressed and gave up on her costume halfway through.
Pinkie passed the cup of dark roasted evil to the half-hearted lookalike who received it with a small nod. She sipped at the sugarless void for a moment before declaring it, "Acceptable."
Not exactly high praise, but Pinkie was more than used to dealing with ponies who couldn't quite muster up much positivity before their morning fix. Not so often did she meet them in the early afternoon, but it was probably morning somewhere. Besides, the delighted noises of the rest of the table were more than enough to outweigh one grump's grouchiness.
"Thanks, Pinkie," Twilight said.
"No prob! That's what I'm here for! You want anything from the kitchen? I've got a fresh batch of cupcakes coming out soon that’ll make your manes spin!" She leaned in and stage-whispered, "It's a new recipe, so I need taste-testers.”
Twilight gave her a smile; Pinkie's favorite currency. "I think we'd be up for that. All in favor?"
Three 'ayes' and one indifferent shrug later, the vote was decided.
"Okie Dokie! Just yell if you want something in the meantime." Not that they really needed to. It was far from rush hour at Sugar Cube Corner, so aside from a few foals running in and out as they debated whether to spend their allowances on sweets or something from the joke shop across the road, Twilight's group practically had the whole place to themselves. She could hear them just fine without shouting.
Which meant it was remarkably easy to overhear things.
Now, Pinkie Pie was not a gossip, but that didn't mean she wasn't a superb listener. It was a vital skill in her role as Ponyville's premier party pony! How would she know how to organize a party perfectly catered to a pony’s tastes if she didn't know their likes and dislikes? How would she know who to invite if she didn't keep a record of their friends and crushes? Information was one of the most important party supplies.
Suffice to say, even as she walked back behind the counter and into the kitchens, she could still hear their conversation perfectly clearly.
Most of it was pretty boring. Lots of complicated magical jargon that was all geek to her. Stuff about arrays and runestrings and crystals and yadda yadda yadda, magic, magic, magic. She liked magic as much as the next earth pony, but the nitty-gritty details of it just put her right to sleep. The conversation got a little more interesting as they started talking schedules and Pinkie quickly realized that this was not just a get-together with old friends.
Twilight was putting together a team.
Looking back, she realized it was probably an inevitability. While she was more than happy to go with the flow of life and embrace the fun benefits of all these new perks (as she'd taken to calling them), Twilight was different. She wanted, she needed to know the whys and hows behind things or it drove her crazy.
She'd had a front-row seat when Twilight had forced herself to give up on investigating her Pinkie Sense and seen the titanic mental effort it'd taken her. Yet even now, months later, Twilight’s eye still ticced when Pinkie got one of her twitchy premonitions (though she'd tried to stop announcing it as much when Twilight was around).
And now they were back in that same situation again. A mystery that was driving Twilight around the bend, and Pinkie realized with a small pang of regret that she'd hardly done anything to help her friend out.
Oh for sure she'd tried to help with the research a few times. Throwing stuff into the Fun Cube to see what it would create made for a great afternoon. But it was writing down every little thing that was dull, dull, dull, dull, dull. And doing the same test but slightly different over and over took the fun right out of it. She’d caved to doodling within ten minutes.
But even if research wasn't for her, she could have helped in other ways. Plan study-break parties to help Twilight de-stress and take a break. Be a sounding board for ideas (even if she didn't understand much of it). Maybe even try to bring in an expert of her own, much like Twilight had resorted to.
That final thought lingered in her mind for a minute as she realized that it was absolutely something she could still do. It wasn’t like they were keeping what happened to them a secret or anything. If Twilight could publish a paper on what she’d learned and bring in some friends for their specialized expertise, why couldn't Pinkie? The second part, at least. She knew lots of ponies who could maybe help!
"Conceptual alchemy?! You've got to be joking!"
A shout from the dining area snapped Pinkie out of her revelation just in time for the oven's bell to ring. Perfect timing! The cupcakes were done! It was like the universe itself wanted her to celebrate her brilliant idea.
She grabbed her oven mitts and carefully pulled from the oven a tray of two dozen piping hot cupcakes. They looked a little funny, but she supposed that was par for the course for a brand new recipe. After all, no other chef had ever tried tossing a dozen of Fluttershy's magic baked goods into the Horadric Cube over and over until they turned into a single super-cake, then used the deconstruct feature to turn that back into raw ingredients!
Probably not what the ancient magic artifact was designed for, but if it wasn't meant to be, surely somepony would have stopped her!
But as far as abominations of magic went, they smelled delicious!
As she set them on the counter, she felt a tingle in her hooves. Not the left-twitch-right-tingle of her Pinkie Sense warning her about bad news in the mail, but the much softer and warmer tingle of somepony among her friends getting a new perk. As if reading her thoughts, she heard Twilight call out from the other room, “Oh! It’s happening right now! A new one! Quick, someone cast a diagnosis spell before it ends!”
Unlike the last few times when the sensation had risen up only to fade away, this time the feeling continued to grow and grow. Like a static charge in her blood. Like a thin fabric brushed against her fur. It filled then sum of her being and then—
—her mind e x p a n d e d.
Numbers, formulae, atoms, vectors, systems. It was all connected. The beating of her heart and the blood pumping through her veins was a cycle, one made of dozens of smaller cycles as the cells in her body swapped out oxygen for carbon dioxide, burned glucose, and distributed vital salts. The air she breathed had a weight, a composition, a pressure that exerted force on the rest of the room. The heat bursting from the oven created a pressure wave of expanded gases that, if left alone, would stabilize into a faint breeze as the air cycled.
Everything was systems. Everything was numbers. And it all made sense.
“Oh well,” she heard Twilight as if from a distance. “Looks like someone else got that one.”
Pinkie launched herself over the table, shifting her center of gravity just so such that she flew through the service window. She landed hooves first and let the friction burn off her speed until she came to a rest at the edge of the only occupied table.
“Heeeeeeey Twilight! Guess who has four hooves and just got way more doctorates than that!” She lifted herself up by her tail and pointed with all four hooves at herself with a wide smile that threatened to split her face in two, even as she acknowledged the anatomical impossibility of it. “This filly right here!”