//------------------------------// // The Horror // Story: Everybody Dupes // by Heavy Mole //------------------------------// The lamplights of Ponyville Square burned brown and cast an oily sheen on her cobbled streets, by whose illumination Roseluck observed herself in the cross-lattice of the Plumerium’s front window. Behind her in the store, the bulb over the cracked centerpiece still shone, blurring the visual in the glass. Everything in front of her existed in a multitude of fragmented likenesses, including her own face—she could see a single green eye looking back at her from under a mess of whiting hair, torn expertly by the marauder that had escaped with her store keys, and which faded partway into the view of an empty walkway. The night air seemed one-hundred miles away, separated from her by the weight of her thoughts. On the one hand, she made rapid calculations about where and how long she would sleep before the sun rose again, when she would be able to hire a service pony to change the lock on her front door. Besides this, however, she battled fears of a more encroaching sort. Whether it was her age that made her feel like she had become trapped in Ponyville—a fate she had long since been condemned to by Mrs. Gables—or her internment that made her feel differently aged, she could not, without pangs of apprehension, determine. In any case, gazing into the vacant plaza, she blamed everyone in town who she could think of, for allowing such cretins as the one which had ruined her store to roam the streets so lazily opposed; some, she even imagined, might have believed that it was a valuable lesson to her, as a check against her desire for success. To this extent she supposed that Princess Twilight was against her, too, making notes on her from the throne of Canterlot. In the reflection she looked as white as a dandelion—oh, the white! Why hadn’t she noticed it before, feathered into her old burgundy? She felt ready to be blown, scattered, and to wither at the stalk. “Hellooo…?” came a voice at the door. “W-we’re closed,” Rose answered, wiping away tears. “And unfortunately I don’t know when we’re going to be open again. For now you’ll just have to… find somewhere else to satisfy your floral needs!” “Aw… Really?” said the muffled voice—it was Pinkie Pie, Rose now recognized—“Well, it’s not really a floral need—maybe, ‘floral-adjacent’.” “Rose, dear—” came a different voice—“we don’t want you to feel like we’re putting pressure on you, or anything. But I truly believe that you’re one of the last ponies who can help us—and, well, you know what it’s like to need a little help, every once in a while, don’t you?—if you can find it in your heart.” “Yeah, open up, will ya?!” Although Roseluck was in need, foremost, of a decent locksmith, she was second-most—and presently just as desirous of—a thirsty ear; that is to say, a sympathizer (or two), who might appreciate the peculiar loneliness with which she was embattled. She therefore unlatched the door and gave entrance to her late-arrived guests. Whereupon, Pinkie Pie frolicked in, and took a place in the center of the store, tsking. “Get a look at this place,” she said, as Fluttershy moseyed in behind her. “What’s going on in here, Rosey Rose? Love the hair, by the way.” Rose grimaced at her remark. “I’m doing renovations. I decided I want to change things around. That’s all.” Pinkie Pie paused to take in the disheveled room. “I like it! The broken glass under the warm yellow light bulb says, ‘inviting, but not too inviting’.” “Accommodation is nice, I suppose, you don’t want customers thinking they… own the place,” added Fluttershy. “…Right?” “Right… What do you guys want?” asked Rose. “You said I could help you with something.” “Oh, yes! We’re looking to see if you have any adult coloring books,” said Pinkie. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to find them in this part of Equestria.” “Coloring books? What for?” “Hmm… Even heroes need to relax sometimes,” said Fluttershy. “And today, Pinkie and I have been heroes. I take it you heard the news that Mr. Cake went missing this morning, yes?” “Yes, I heard,” said Rose, with some eagerness for gossip, “but I’ve been cooped up in here. Were you involved? Is he okay?” Fluttershy cowed a little. “I’m afraid… We’ll need those books, before we can tell you.” “For heaven’s sake!” Pinke Pie threw an arm over the shopkeeper’s shoulder. “Come on, Rosey Rose. Don’t hold out on us. This is a flower shop. You’ve gotta have one somewhere.” “You two have a problem,” said Rose, pushing Pinkie off and making her way to the back. “Don’t tell anyone. Ponies like them for their bistros, so I keep a small supply. I myself have never indulged…” “Aha! I knew it,” cried Pinkie. She made a sly smile. “What a pal you are, Rosey Rose…” Roseluck shortly returned with two stacks of coloring books. With regard to these—‘What better way,’ the former mayor had said with stars shining in her eyes, upon being convicted on embezzlement charges some moons ago, ‘to while away the time, than to lay by the fire—just you and your favorite box of colored pencils… And the open road of your imagination…’ The depressive effect of coloring books on ponies had, of course, long been recognized prior to the scandal of Mayor Mare; but it was her example that set into place restrictions upon that practice, which were now reserved for medical recovery and as a treatment for delirium. “I have Visions of Lhasa Apso and Mandalas from Outer Space,” Rose announced, letting the pile thwap onto the front desk. “Take whatever you like. Now, tell me more about what happened at Sugar Cube Corner—I want all of the details.” Fluttershy snatched one of the books off the stack and flipped through its pages—her eyes went wide. “Oh, yes… This will do. You’re a life saver, Rose… dear…” Pinkie Pie had meanwhile begun preparations of her own. She had fetched a long-handled tobacco pipe from a bag she was carrying, and proceeded to rummage through it further as the piece she had found dangled from her mouth. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked. “I have a thing about scents,” Rose replied, uneasily. “’Pineapple Resort’,” said Pinkie, holding up the little yellow container she had been looking for. “Still worried about scents?” “Why dish soap?” asked Rose. “I have my own way of relaxing.” Pinkie lit a match and tossed it into the chamber of the pipe, where it gave off a warm, undulating glow. She closed her eyes and took a drag, then puffed out a large oleaginous bubble which hung in the air over their heads. “Care for a blow?” she asked. Rose shook her head ‘no’. “Let’s hear it then. Tell me what you’ve heard.” “Heard? I was there! Well… for most of it, anyway. “As you probably know, Mr. and Mrs. Cake have an anniversary coming up. Yippee! “…Only thing is, Mrs. Cake has been feeling a little down as of late. See, she’s always taken pride in her big, razzle berry mane. But she has been dying it for a few years now, and the effort is just becoming a reminder that she is not as young as she once was. So she’s letting it go gray.” Rose touched the top of her own head. She had hoped that the Cakes’ troubles would, for a moment, help her to forget her own, rather than rouse and agitate them; but being so disappointed, she yet remained silent, for fear of giving away the secret of what had transpired with her earlier that evening. “Normally,” Pinkie continued, “Mr. Cake would make a quality of life improvement to the bakery, since he and the missus are there so often. But lately, everyone has started to notice a drop in Mrs. Cake’s spirits. So this year, Carrot decided he was going to take up… painting! That’s right! He wanted to make a portrait of his wife in her colorful prime, as a way of showing how she will always look to him and to the long-standing clientele of Sugar Cube Corner. He signed up for classes at the Lofty Feather, and has been going there for weeks, undercover.” Despite being unwed, Roseluck was sensible to Carrot Cake’s impulse to consummate the image of his wife, in part by analog to the career she herself had enjoyed—one that had taken her from a stand in the little plaza outside into one of the old storefronts which comprised its bulwarks, the same towering facades she had known as a filly. Indeed, even as she stewed on other topics, she seized the idea, and began to consider whether she might get a painting done of the Plumerium; and if so, whether in oil or acrylic, and where it might be displayed to best taste in the store. Pinkie Pie proceeded, “Some might find it unlikely that a pony as busy as Mr. Cake could find any time for art lessons. He had a plan. Every other morning he’d sneak out and leave the keys of the store with a trusted subordinate, one of the older teens named Spit Shine. He’s great at keeping the store organized, and most important of all, super loyal to Mr. Cake—the perfect candidate to help him in his covert operation. Mr. Cake would then arrive back at the bakery in time to turn it over or Mrs. Cake in the afternoon. “Anyway, it was all going well until just this morning, when one of their regulars—a certain pony named Wall Fly, who is a stenographer at the town courthouse—arrived to pick up his usual order of apricot nectar puffs, when he found the place unstaffed and in a state of disorder. After poking around a moment he heard someone pound on a door, and discovered that the janitor’s closet had been barred by a mop. Poor Spit Shine came out, looking pale as a coconut macaroon.” “Though, to be fair,” said Fluttershy, “his natural color is coconut.” “He must have felt so judged. But I guess we all have our bad days,” Rose said thoughtfully. “So, how’d get in there?” “Everything in due time, Rosey Rose. Stay with me. Now, Spit Shine must have been acquainted with Wall Fly’s reputation for not quite keeping things to himself. It was the boy’s top priority to protect Mr. Cake’s anniversary secret—so he came up with something on the fly. Get it? …I’m sorry, this is no laughing matter.” “Perhaps… it is good to laugh at the circumstances we find ourselves in, sometimes,” observed Fluttershy. “Easy for you to say,” said Rose. Fluttershy looked up from the coloring book she was working on and smiled. “Oh, thank you!” “The Ponyville Mafia,” said Pinkie. Rose turned. “W-where?” “It’s not a thing, silly. It was Spite Shine’s explanation for why Mr. Cake was gone. The old guy had too much debt from checkers losses, and they took him away. Or at least, that was the story. But it wasn’t long before he regretted what he said. He begged Wall Fly not to get the police involved. He even tried to persuade him that he would go and pay the debts himself, and have Mr. Cake back in one piece—if only he were willing to wait. But no one—and especially not a pony like Wall Fly—could take that kind of offer seriously, in light of the danger that Mr. Cake appeared to be in. “And, soon enough, there was a search party going around town—one which included yours truly.” “And, er, yours truly,” said Fluttershy. “Wow. I didn’t know there was a search party,” said Rose. “Oh yes,” said Fluttershy, “the both of us, and the Cake family, and many others, fearing for the wellbeing of dear Carrot!” Rose wrinkled her nose. “Nobody knocked on my door.” “It only lasted seventeen minutes,” Pinkie said. “But what a seventeen minutes they were! Pumpkin—smashed. Pound—flattened. I’d never seen him so distraught. He just kept putting around like a ship pony stranded on the sand, throwing dirty looks at Spit Shine.” She broke off as though something sour had flown into her mouth. “Boy, I tell you… I just hate to see that kind of attitude, especially from someone close.” “What kind of attitude?” asked Rose. “Pound thought that Spit Shine was in cahoots with the Ponyville Mafia, that they had all worked together to abduct his father.” She shrugged. “I don’t blame him. It could have happened.” “Rosey Rose, you didn’t even know there was a Ponyville Mafia until a few minutes ago!” The storekeeper felt her anger rise at this accusation. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know that there were hordes of caterpillars living in the trees, either! And yet here we are, overrun.” “True,” said Fluttershy, nose-down in her patchwork of colors. “But even if those caterpillars are a big problem for you, it wouldn’t be fair to say that they are in partnership with the municipal board, and that the whole town is against you because of it.” Pinkie Pie nodded and took another drag from her soap pipe. Roseluck glared at her tranced interlocutors, having no argument to rebut them, but sensing a coldness pass through her. She began to suspect that these representatives of the Friendship Council knew more about her predicament than they were letting on; but she kept that thought—and whatever others—to herself. “Luckily,” Pinkie resumed after another short pause, “Mr. Cake is not what you would call a master of disguise, and there were many ponies who had recognized him painting at the Lofty Feather since he started going. If he seemed to be missing, they guessed that he might be there, and it wasn’t long before we caught him en flagrante, hunched over a canvas at the Feather, toiling at a likeness of his wife.” Fluttershy giggled. “Well… not quite a likeness.” “It was a spackled Chiffon Swirl, minus the swirl—completely bald! Apparently, it’s what the master had instructed him to do.” “The mane was supposed to go on, like… how did he put it?” said Fluttershy, trying to recollect. Color-catching clouds over a beach landscape… Very romantic.” “And containing a symbolic transience, don’t forget that,” said Pinkie. “Yes. And, the clouds always go on the canvas last.” Roseluck patted her hair again and was by now convinced that she was, at least in part, being given a parable; one that had been spun by the minds in the Friendship Council for her benefit. “Are they trying to tell me to retire?” she wondered. “Mr. Cake was surprised by our appearance, to say the least,” Pinkie went on. “And the art students and the master were surprised to be interrogated regarding their knowledge of a so-called ‘checkers mafia’. And Mrs. Cake was surprised, too, to learn that the whole fiasco had come about thanks entirely to her decision to let her hair color change. She was touched by the effort, and I think it tickled the pride she had lost, a bit, seeing her husband wrapped up in an art smock stained in her tones. She broke all the commotion in the room with a small town pony’s guffaw, and kissed him. Mission accomplished, Mr. Cake!” “It was so sweet,” Fluttershy said, getting watery-eyed. “It was like both of them had lost twenty years.” “And what was it that happened at Sugar Cube Corner, while ‘the boy’ was on shift?” Rose asked. “You left that part out.” Pinkie Pie tapped the handle of the soap bubble pipe against her pressed lips. “According to Spit Shine’s report, he had been sweeping around one of the display cases when something the size of a cat tripped him and got him trapped in the janitor’s closet. Only, it seemed to have been after something. From Spite Shine’s deposition the police worked backwards, beginning with the denouement in the art shop between Mr. and Mrs. Cake, then the sneaking out every other day, then the dulliversay doldrums. Their conclusion was that a goblin had attacked the bakery.” “A goblin?!” cried Rose. “Really, a goblin?” “That’s what they said. The Cakes were in a rut—” Pinkie sighed—“and, as we all know, a goblin is a type of creature that is drawn specifically to ponies who are only interested in their own problems. When Mr. Cake tried to change things up, it resisted him.” Rose had hoped for a more candid interview with her distinguished visitors, but was now beyond doubt that she had lied to no purpose in order to win that intimacy; indeed, she was the one who had been fooled by their simple ruses. For she believed they had known all along what had happened to her that night, and had come not to help, but to correct her disposition, which had prevented her from being as successful in expanding beyond Ponyville as they had been. She roared out at them with a barrage of spittle, “Puh-lease! I’ll tell you what I think, Pinkamena. I think the police’s conclusions are your conclusions, and you’ve twisted a story to try and impart to me on behalf of that awful Friendship Society!” Pinkie fell back. “W-what are you talking about, Rosey Rose?” “You know very well what I’m talking about! And I may as well be blunt with you that your ‘Friendship Council’ does little for friendship and everything to make it a nightmare to try and manage this town in a rational way. Water and sewage, I can wrap my head around. But what am I supposed to do about goblins or ice beavers in my plumbing or ‘pocket’ wendigos or… whatever!” She butted her head like an angry Billy goat against the flanks of her guests, corralling them toward the door. And though the visitors were two, and Rose only one, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were so unaccustomed to being handled roughly that they were put in a panic—Fluttershy rolled up one of the coloring books, and batted Rose on the head like a badly-behaved pup, while Pinkie clung fast to the rampaging mare’s side to escape pummels and make excuses. The struggle was voluble enough that, were they embroiled outside, it would have attracted a scene; but eventually Rose, catching her reflection once more, and being already tuckered from her fight with the creature-hairstyler, collapsed onto the ground, taking her brawling opponents down with her. The three of them laid on the floor, heaving, until Fluttershy managed to say, “Rose, dear! You know that we are good friends! Everything we told you today, is true! If you wanted us to leave, you could have just asked.” This reprimand, coming from a spirit as demure as that which Fluttershy possessed, qualified as severe chastisement. It became impressed on Rose that she had betrayed herself and put her own emotional instability on display, and she was on the verge of tears again, in a sudden sweep of contrition; when Pinkie Pie tapped her on the shoulder, bearing the soap pipe. “Here.” She held it out, handle pointed. The dark wood glinted under the naked bulb that dangled above the centerpiece, winking at Rose, and making a stronger case with her than it had earlier. She shook her head ‘no’—weakly—but at another prompting from Pinkie closed her eyes, and felt its tip press down on her bottom lip. She took it in her mouth and inhaled, sensing a sweet aroma tickle the back of her throat. Pinkie watched her carefully. “See? More relaxed, right?” Rose held the fume in her chest, letting it roil, and fighting the instinct to cough. Then there was a sudden, pleasant release in her sinuses—she exhaled with an mmm! and launched a warbling yellow soap bubble into flight with a burp. Pinkie chuckled at it, and Rose gave into a long and relieved belly breath. “I’m sorry, guys,” she said. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. I would have told you eventually, but sometimes when you’re hurt you just need to be in your own headspace for a while. It happened an hour or so ago. A little white thing, about the size of a buckball. I lost my head and started chasing it around. I know it’s my fault and if you’ve been taking notes, just know that. The goblin, everything. I know it’s my fault. Okay?” Pinkie Pie waved off the apology. “No need for all of that, Rosey Rose. The truth is that I admire your passion.” “You do?” “Oh, yes, certainly…” She began to speak softly. “Because, you know—as long as we’re being honest with each other—I don’t share the police’s opinion about what happened at Sugar Cube Corner today. No sir. Nor that of the Friendship Council, when it comes to most things.” “You don’t?” She shook her head. “Let me ask you something. Say you have a banana cream pie, and five friends to share it with. How would you divide it up?” “Into sixths,” said Rose. “So each member in a group of six is entitled to a sixth, there being six.” “Right.” Pinkie Pie watched her again. “Hooh, boy! I am sooo relaxed right now… I don’t know about you.” Rose shrugged. “A little more, thanks to you.” Pinkie laughed. “Aw, don’t mention it, Rosey Rose! But getting back on subject, this whole ‘Friendship Council’ thing… I’ve thought for a long time that their approach to all the things which happen here in Ponyville is a bit too… personal.” “What do you mean ‘personal’?” asked Rose. “Let’s just admit that we have ‘ice beavers’ for a sec,” Pinkie replied, tracing the air with the soap pipe. “Now, does that make me a bad pony? Does it make you a bad pony? Maybe that we’re neglecting somebody, somewhere?” “I don’t know,” said Rose. “That’s a good point. I guess that’s where my anger came from just now. Actually… We’re being honest, right?” She leaned in closer. “That little ‘thing’ stole my keys. I’m stuck here. And I don’t know what to make of that. I just see my reflection getting whiter, everywhere I look. Do you know what I’m trying to say?” “I sure do,” said Pinkie. “What you need is a scientific explanation for what just happened to you. Call it a ‘Pinkie Sense’. Now, what does science have to say?” She got up to her hooves and struck a pace, puffing away on the soap pipe so that the Plumerium started filling with bubbles. “Let’s step back and look at the contradiction, here. How does a place like Ponyville carry on in the evergreen spirit of Equestria, even though it seems to be constantly menaced by monsters, maladapts, and mis-equines?” “Hmm… I always thought there was something wrong with me for noticing it,” said Rose. Pinkie spun around. “Aha! Now there are two of us. Doesn’t it seem odd to you that a burgled bakery should turn out to be the key to marital happiness? Seems awfully fishy… But I have an idea what’s going on.” Rose stared at the bubbles as they hovered over and out of the dark rafters of her store. Those huge beams. You can’t see past them beyond the lights in this flattened room. The high-pitched, shadowy loft of this town—a dark ocean, reverse vertigo looking into it from the jetsam of this rented seabed. To think that it might float my ark. “Well, let’s hear it then,” she said. “I heard somewhere that there’s a legendary invention, designed and built not long after the founding of Ponyville, called the Interferometer. It’s a gigantic apparatus positioned in the four corners of Equestria, used to establish the unity of time that we are all familiar with here.” “Oh, yes… I remember you speaking about that,” said Fluttershy, joining the talk. “Can you explain how it works, for me as well as for Rose, one more time, dear friend?” “Certainly.” Pinkie indicated with a look for Fluttershy to turn over a sheet of mandalas from one of the coloring books she was working in and a few of her colored pencils; she flattened the page on the floor and began to draw. She made an equilateral cross with small pictures at each terminal, the one at the leftmost point with a sketch of the Plumerium. “There are four legs,” she explained, “pointing in all the cardinal directions. At the end of each leg is a piece of the apparatus, and here on the southern point, as you see, is a massive party cannon, the biggest one in the world, which emits a good vibration of a constant, measurable intensity. Following so far?” “Clear as a spring chicken,” said Fluttershy. “Neat. Now… I think what the architects were trying to do was to get a calculation for how the pace of life in Equestria changes as the planet turns—that is, as the seasons change. That’s why we have a leg that travels north-south, and one that goes east-west—you’d think there would be a difference in the relative speed of the good vibration, depending on its direction in relation to the position of Equestria throughout the year.” “You would move faster,” said Fluttershy, by way of simplification, “walking on a treadmill going in the same direction as you, than one moving perpendicular to you. Makes sense. And what you’re saying is that the treadmill is turning.” “Well, we’re turning on it,” Pinkie corrected her, “that is to say, on the luminiferous nostalgia that is the medium for good vibrations in Equestria. But how quickly? That’s what the builders wanted to know. If we could precisely measure the amount of ‘drag’ relative to this far-sickness upon which everything, in principle, moves, then we could make artificial improvements to our lives which would preserve a true rest, or what we on the rock farm refer to as ‘home’.” Fluttershy scratched her noggin. “That sounds wonderful. But… well… How do you measure how much a good vibration changes its speed, exactly? It must move very quickly.” “Hmm…” Pinkie Pie pondered the ceiling for inspiration. A soap bubble descended from the darkness and landed on her nose, spritzing her face. “Ah, that’s it! Think of the way a ray of light passes through a soap bubble. It has to go through multiple layers of soapy film. The original light beam is broken up at different points along that path—part on the outermost layer, another part on the next inner layer, and so on. The original beam and its new counterparts have different lengths, and certain colors get cancelled out when they intersect. That’s why you see yellow, and cyan, and pink, come out in the oil, instead of celestial white. “A good vibration works the same way. It passes from the party cannon through several points. It goes through a silvered cataract, represented by this bubble thingy,” she said, pointing to a round mark in the center of the diagram, “which half of it goes through and whose other half is reflected that way,” she said, pointing east. “Then the same beam is redirected again from this flugelhorn, and this adjustable trombone.” Fluttershy took up the sheet and examined it more closely. “How brilliant! And what design choices! It’s almost like the architects were good friends of yours, Pinkie.” “That trombone,” she resumed, raising her voice to match her pride, “can be used to modify how much out of chord the beam is with itself when it arrives in Ponyville, and therefore to detect the luminiferous nostalgia. It’s the reason we get the changing interference you see all year round, especially during holidays, special events, and weddings. That is—I dare say!—why we have them, to offset the Interferometer’s effects. And it’s the reason we have friendship councils and friendship academies—or the reason we ought to—just to provide oversight to this type of thing.” She glanced over at Rose. “Instead of making you feel guilty, that is.” On a different occasion, perhaps, Pinkie’s speech might have shot through out of her hoof like lightning, and electrified the heart of Roseluck to heightened degrees of action and epiphany; but in truth, she hadn’t understood a word of any of it, and so sat like a lump, though a grateful lump, absorbing her friends’ sympathy and encouragement. “Problem,” said Fluttershy. “What’s that?” “There is a giant machine making our dear friend Rose miserable. It seems not everyone comes out… ‘un-interfered-with’, as the architects planned.” “Yes indeed…” Pinkie fondled her jaw and held Roseluck in a sidelong gaze. “And yet… we don’t want to alter the physics of Equestria wily-nilly… Huh. Quite a conundrum…” “I wouldn’t want that. Not on my account,” said Roseluck. The three mares scratched about as soap bubbles stopped falling from the loft. They were lost in a dejected silence for several moments, until Fluttershy said, “Well, why don’t we just point the Interferometer on a different spot?” “Oh yeah…!” said Pinkie. “Why didn’t I think of that?” “Perfect.” “But wait—we’re going to need more than three ponies to move something that big.” Fluttershy nodded. “Twilight’s in town. Maybe we can ask her about it?” Pinkie sighed. She folded up the paper with the diagram she had made. “Eh. She never listens to what I have to say. You bring up sneezing powder at the Saddle Arabian embassy one time and she never takes you seriously again.” “Oh… What a direction that night took,” said Fluttershy. Rose, who had been following the ping-pong of their conversation, now felt an impulse to volunteer herself to their cause. “I could say something on your behalf. We do have two cases bearing on the facts, and I’d like to get to the bottom of them, myself. It’s the least I could to repay you for helping me—” Before she could finish, Pinkie took her by the elbow. “What a pal you are, Rosey Rose! Twilight is bound to give a fair hearing to one of her old neighbors…” And so, though she had resented the Princess a short while before as a spectral presence in her misfortunes, now, on the horizon of that same mare’s simpatico—and with certain chemical assistance—the shopkeeper’s relation to Her Majesty had completely flipped; it turned out that Twilight had all the appearance of a warm friend and was, moreover, an authority higher than that of the incomparably dour Mrs. Gables, who was the real source of her psychological bondage. Whatever Pinkie’s premonitions regarding physics might have been, she was therefore enlivened to assist them, and, given the volume of honest exchanges that night, had the full expectation that a new chapter in her life was soon to commence. “We would have to go soon, though,” Fluttershy said. “I think she is planning on leaving in the morning. Do you think it will be too risky to leave the store open, Rose?” “I’ll lock it, and figure it out in the morning. Grab me one of those coloring books, will you?”