“I’m here, Pinkie!” A voice shouted from below Pinkie’s room, breaking her usually absent concentration.
“Oh, good! Glad you could make it, Twilight,” Pinkie said, clearly relieved. “My door’s unlocked, come upstairs.” The sound of hoofbeats grew slowly louder as Twilight ascended the stairs. She opened the door, slowly gasping at what she saw inside Pinkie’s room. Pinkie Pie, the number one party pony of Ponyville, had an unusually clean room, despite her messy habits and strange ability to produce confetti and glitter from out of nowhere. Today proved a rare exception to this rule.
“Pinkie… your room… What’s wrong with your room? It’s all covered in… what exactly are those things, Pinkie?” Twilight gestured to the various papers covered in messy haphazard markings, markings which Twilight could make neither heads nor tails of.
Pinkie’s face appeared upside down within inches of Twilight’s. “These are my party calendars, all of my party calendars. I have everything here. Not just birthdays, but everything. Every event I know anything about for the next... well, ever, and I add more stuff every day.”
“So… what exactly did you want me for?” Twilight asked quietly, still somewhat shocked from the unusual state of Pinkie’s room.
“Well…” Pinkie took a deep breath. “I know exactly seventy-four thousand eighty-eight ponies, but look at my birthday list!" She lifted a large roll of parchment and unrolled it in a circle around Twilight. “There are only seventy-four thousand eighty-seven dates listed on it, which means somepony I know isn’t getting a Pinkie Party for their birthday and I have no idea who it is! That means somepony is going to have a dull, boring, partyless birthday. They’re going to be so sad and it’s going to be all my fault!” Pinkie started panting while her eyes and ears drooped sadly.
“Relax, Pinkie,” Twilight said reassuringly. “I’m sure you just miscounted or something.” Twilight glanced over at Pinkie’s birthday list and winced at the writing. “I can’t say that would surprise me, you have really bad hoof writing. This looks like it was written by somepony who has never used a quill before.” As an effort to be kind to her friend, Twilight resisted the urge to start snickering at Pinkie’s situation, which, to Twilight, seemed like a simple case of disorganization and not an actual lost date.
Pinkie slumped down further and poked idly at the nearest sheet of paper. “I had to hold two cakes in each hoof while I made the list, so I had to hold the quill in my mouth. Let’s see you laugh when you’re the one who needs to write something down in a totally new way for the first time in your life and somepony makes fun of you.” Pinkie looked on the verge of tears. “And I didn’t miscount, I checked each paper one hundred times before I asked you to come here, and I managed to check a few more before you came, so there is definitely something missing. I just have my friends list on a different scroll from my birthday list, so it would take me forever to find out who I’m missing.”
Twilight put a hoof around her friend. “Alright, Pinkie,” she said calmly. “I think I have an answer for you. All I have to do is send a letter to the princess and ask her for a census of Equestria with everypony’s date of birth attached. We just compare it to your list of friends an—“
“That’s it, Twilight! That’s it!” Pinkie sprang up from the floor and skipped excitedly over to a particularly well kept sheet of paper resting above her bed. “The Princess!”
“What are you talking about, Pinkie Pie?”
Pinkie grabbed the sheet from the wall and bounced over to Twilight. The paper was titled “Best Friends” and had a list of about twelve names, Twilight’s included. “Look at this, Twilight: this list has all of my best friends and...” She flipped the paper over. “All of the Princesses that I know.” She gestured to three names that were on the back of the sheet. “But... if you look here...” She flipped the paper over again and gestured to a completely new list titled Birthdays. “See, your name is here and here’s Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, Spike, Princess Celestia, and Princess Cadence. Do you see what’s missing?”
Twilight shook her head trying to deal with witnessing Pinkie Pie showing her three pages from a single piece of paper. Whether from her own incredible perception or some strange Pinkie magic, Twilight suddenly realized there was indeed a vital piece of Pinkie’s list that was missing or never there in the first place. “Princess Luna?” She said curiously.
“Exactly!” Pinkie started to jump up and down. “Oh, this is gonna be sooo easy. All I gotta do is find Celestia and ask her when Luna’s Birthday is, then… Oh my gosh, then I get to throw her a really super cool awesome totally amazing stupendous Happy-Birthday-Princess-Luna-Surprise-Party! Oh, She’s gonna love it sooo much, there’s gonna be dancing and games and cake and streamers and balloons an—“ Twilight put her hoof over Pinkie’s mouth, reducing the rest of her speech to one long incomprehensible grunt. Once Pinkie was done, she jumped away from Twilight and began to excitedly pack a small bag with… miscellaneous Pinkie Pie items.
“Now where are you going in such a hurry?” asked Twilight.
“No time, Twilight!” Pinkie said with an enormous smile. “I can’t keep the readers waiting, I’ve gotta be in Canterlot by tomorrow.”
“Wait! Readers? What readers? You aren’t writing a book.” Twilight was thoroughly confused, though that was to be expected when dealing with Pinkie Pie.
“I’ll tell you later!” Pinkie’s voice trailed off as she ran in the direction of the train station.
Twilight blinked, still somewhat confused as to what Pinkie was up to. “Doesn’t she realize I could just send a letter to the princess and this would be sorted out in minutes?” Twilight facehoofed and shook her head.
“I do, Silly-Billy, but I betcha that it’s a super secret, or else I would already know,” a voice spoke from behind Twilight. Twilight turned around to see none other than Pinkie Pie, or at least her face in a mirror.
“How did you?... Oh, never mind, I don’t wanna know.” Twilight looked at Pinkie expectedly.
“So I think the only way for me to find out Luna’s super secret birthday is to go to Canterlot and find out in person. I just need one more thing...” Pinkie’s fore-hoof came out from the mirror and picked up a ticket lying on the small vanity the mirror was built into, eliciting a loud gasp from Twilight. "I gotta go now, bye.” Twilight blinked and Pinkie was gone.
“Okaaay,” Twilight said to herself slowly. “I’m going to go take a hot shower and see if I can’t wash the crazy from my head.”