This chapter of Pinkie's book had made Twilight nervous. It's not that she couldn't sing, because she could. And it's not that she was nervous in front of crowds because she wasn't.
But the combination of the two... well that just made her twitchy all over.
Luckily, Pinkie was there to cheer her up. Or calm her down. Or move in some direction.
"What'll you sing, Twi?" Pinkie smiled, again bouncing up and down in her excitement, unable to handle the stress of standing still AND waiting for an answer simultaneously.
"It seems so … silly. What if people think the song is stupid?"
"Nonsense. everypony loves it. How can you hate something you love? It's not possible. It's like a dirty joke: you can get away with anything if they laugh. You can't complain about something you laughed about."
Lyra was there at the train station with some friend of hers from Canterlot… Octavia was her name? They were idly tuning their instruments waiting for some train to arrive, but, judging by the delays board, that would be a while. What they needed was something to pass the time.
Twilight started singing; quietly low at first, and then gradually louder as she found her confidence. Lyra, plonking away, was seemingly only half-listening, however her songless tune started to match cadence with Twilight's own song. Octavia's impromptu rehearsal did likewise, matching to Lyra's. Eventually, Twilight had some instrumentation to go with her vocals.
Twi wasn't surprised they knew the song; it was quite well-known, but she'd never been a part of it before. Some of the other ponies on the train platform got caught up in it, as well. Some of them tapped their feet. Some of them started quietly humming along. Some of them started mouthing the words. Some even started singing a few bars here and there, as though they couldn't get the melody out of their heads. The song kept picking up inertia, Lyra and Octavia playing the prerequisite melodies, as more and more started harmonizing along. Virtually everyone at the station was doing something now, and most of them were doing quite more than something.
Twilight grinned as she started walking forward and found the other ponies marching along with her alongside the tracks; Twilight's impromptu parade was picking up steam, and was on the move!
"We're doing great, Pinkie!" Twilight's grin kept getting wider, approaching Pinkie proportions.
"Me? I'm not in charge of this. You are!" Pinkie continued dancing into the sunset with the others, in time to the beat. Twilight stopped and looked back. Pinkie was right. Twilight was in charge of this. Twilight had been thinking of it as something that was overwhelming her. But this was all an ORGANIZED chaos. The best kind, in Twilight's opinion.
Twilight tested this theory, as every scientist must, via experimentation. She suddenly turned left at the next street corner.
The entire entourage turned left with her.
Twilight needed only to keep ahead and navigate the worst bits, lead them around any carts or storefronts, poke them a teeny bit. Twilight stood there, rooted in place, awestruck. The parade continued around her, streaming both sides along her right and left flanks like bread and butter. Nothing was stopping them. Nothing was halting them.
"Oh dear," Twilight mouthed. She knew how to start a song, but how to stop it?
Without a captain, they went straight and did as they pleased. No one was there to herd them a little here or there. But there was somepony who knew about herding.
"Applejack."
The pony in question paused mid-kick as Twilight ran full-tilt through the front of Sweet Apple Acres, breathlessly, barely coming to stop in front of a tree whose harvest had just been temporarily reprieved.
"I need to teach me everything you know about herding in the next two and three-quarters minutes"
"Well, howdy to you too! What exactly are you askin'?"
As the last word was spoken, the first filaments of the crowd crested over the hill, followed by more and more of the paradedom. Applejack's eyes ballooned wide, slowly, in amazement.
"I … see."
Both of them started running back towards the parade route, "Did Pinkie get this goin'?"
"Sort of... It's actually kind of my doing."
"YOUR doin'?"
"Well, Pinkie was showing me how to start a song, and I didn't... don't know how to stop them."
They'd both gotten in front of the hullabaloo. Twilight bit her upper lip with nervousness. Applejack stopped for just a second, with an "I'ahm thinkin' … ?"
Twilight spotted Pinkie in the crowd "Pinkie!" She shouted.
"Yes, Twi?" Pinkie bounded ahead, too fast to see, blurring instantly to their side.
"Can you help us corral this stampedin'?"
Pinkie shook her head. "Sorry. This one is Twilight's party. I'm just an observer."
Applejack's eyes got wide again "Well, fritters."
***
One of Dash's clouds had been shoved far away from the others. This was to be a resting cloud for the nap, after the others were gone. But far below, there were a lot more ponies than Dash usually saw in a random residential neighborhood. In fact, more than Dash had ever seen in a random residential neighborhood. Dash stopped in-place, the cloud she had been shoving continuing to drift forward with its own inertia as Dash dead-stopped midair. It seemed to be .. some kind of party? Curious, Dash plummeted down to investigate.
Applejack continued getting an explanation out of Twilight, "So all this ballyhoo is y'all's doin'?"
"I think we've over-pinked it," Twilight admitted. "Oh dear."
Pinkie tilted her head sideways. "Huh. This never happened to me before."
Twilight turned to face the other two, "How do we disempink the town?"
"I dunno, but I'm still grooving with the sound of it," Pinkie started nodding her head to the music again.
It then became obvious to Twilight that Pinkie was increasingly involved in the song as much as everyone else in Ponyville. "Great. Pinkie's become our Patient Zero."
"Whut?'
"Nevermind."
A cometary Rainbow trail ended in the sudden appearance of Dash. "So … what exactly is happening down here?"
Twilight sighed as she realized she'd need to explain everything a second time.
***
As the Big Brass Band rounded another corner, Twilight ran beside the still-grooving Pinkie.
"Pinkie! I can't stop this. You've got to do something!"
"But it's so amazing!" Pinkie was as enthralled by the others, showing no immunity to the effects of her own pinkishness.
"This isn't working" Dash said, flying a couple paces behind the two of them. "You're going to need to come up with your own answer."
Twilight stopped and let the crowd stream by her again, as Dash hovered in place.
"What I don't understand … , " Twilight started musing.
"What?"
"… Is why Pinkie is affected the same as everyone else." Twilight finished.
"Hmm."
They both stood there for a moment.
"I dunno," Dash admitted. "It's so catchy, though. I can barely keep from joining it, too. Someone as Pinkie as Pinkie is probably can't contain herself."
Applejack had finally caught up to them. "Nothin' doin'. They jes' won't herd. It was worth a shot, Twilight, but I think this is more of a packleader- or bandleader problem than a herdin' problem."
"Applejack, do you know why Pinkie can get caught up in her own party?" Twilight asked, she was absent-mindfully staring into space, turning it over in her mind. "Shouldn't she, at least, be able to …"
Suddenly... Twilight had a thought "Oh! For Celestia's sake! "
"What?" Dash asked.
Twilight started booking it full speed ahead. Starting but a second behind her, her friends followed.
As they caught up with the bedlam, Twilight raced ahead to the front where Pinkie was. She remembered how the crowd had made turns when she was in front of it, when she was in it, heading it; the same reason Pinkie was in it herself; and the same way Twilight could finally stop it:
She had to become a part of it.
Pacing herself next to Pinkie, she picked up the song mid-verse, about where it had left off. As she sang, Twilight lengthened the words, adding more and more of a flourish on the last few bars, finally trailing off at the end with a louder, higher, happy conclusion.
Finally, ending, the song … completed.
There was a pause, a quiet pause, an ever-lengthening pause, where everything stayed quiet a moment.
And then a raucous cheering broke out. Still smiling, everyone 'huzzah'-ed back into the village, started milling about, and complemented Twilight, Pinkie, and Lyra on the song. Many of the ponies in the core of the parade made their way back to the train station to keep waiting, others went back to their business, the big grins on every single one of their faces attesting to the fact they'd they'd been in an incredible thing … one of Pinkie's - one of Twilight's crowd songs.
Eventually, the four of them were the only ones there again.
"Mmm-mmm, I feel so good inside," Pinkie stood back, eyes closed, smiling as if she'd just eaten a particularly delicious food, "so this must be what everyone else feels when I do that! Mmm-mmm."
Twilight, Dash, and Applejack still had smiles from the radiative effect of the music, feeing the twinkles of the positive force, and good vibes surrounding them.
Finally, Twilight put in, "Well, that finally ended well. And I certainly know what to do for next time."
"And what not to do," Dash added.
"And what to do more often!" Pinkie brightly, cheerfully said, bouncing up and down at double the pace.
"Someone turned Pinkie up to eleven," Applejack noted.
"Pinkie's always at eleven," Dash said.
"Well, now she's turned up to twelve." Twilight grinned so very wide. "And you know what? I am, too."