//------------------------------// // Kickstart My Heart (And Brain) // Story: Cause, Effect, and Consequences // by Coltsguy //------------------------------// Well, telling a story takes time. Obviously, the longer the tale, the more time it takes. Did I just blow your minds? Well, unless you’re five then the answer is no. Since it took me a while to talk, there were several things that we got around to doing. The first thing I did was get the towel from the pony who returned and wiped off that aloe crap. It worked well enough, but my clothes were still soaked in it and wouldn’t come out. After that, they gave me a little tub of the stuff and we got out of their hair, or however you want that expression to go with pony memes. The problem with leaving then was that it was still plenty sunny outside. Thankfully, Rarity yanked a parasol from some distance away. Seriously, I never saw where she got that from but it just came into view all of the sudden and at a high speed right up until it got close to her. She then let me borrow it for the time being. I’ll admit that I looked pretty silly with a white and purple parasol, but I did not want to get burned again. We then started walking. I’m not exactly sure where we were going since it seem like we were walking for quite a bit without arriving anywhere. Still, the entire time that all of that was happening I kept up my story time with them. “And that’s when I turned visible and we both yelled ‘Surprise!’” “That was the best surprise ever! You should have seen your faces!” Pinkie exclaimed. “That’s exactly what you said last time too,” I replied. “I know! I couldn’t help it! The look on their faces was one of the best I’ve ever seen!” Her statement left me a little confused. “Wait. What do you mean you know?” She quickly got in front of me and stood on her hind legs while placing her front hooves on my chest. I was surprised not only by that but also by the fact that she didn’t get up into my face as well. “I did it! I remember what happened! I remember you!” “Diszawhat now?” “Wait, you remember?” asked Twilight. “How did you remember?” “It was when he was talking about the two of us planning a brand new surprise for the party. It felt like I could imagine it and then it was like fwoosh! I just did!” I was so happy that I teared up and completely missed the next few things that were said. I don’t think I actually cried, but I wouldn’t have cared even if I had. I didn’t want any of them to forget me and I felt that this was an important step towards making that happen. Acting on my newfound joy, I reached down slightly and scooped up Pinkie into a hug. Or at least I tried to. I found out very quickly that while they are still the same weight from last time, I am nowhere near as strong. I was just lucky that she still had a good balance going or we would have both fallen over. Instead, I just settled for getting on one knee and getting that hug from there instead. “I’m so glad you remember who I am.” “But how?” Twilight asked. “It doesn’t make any sense! How can you just spontaneously remember something like that?” “Isn’t that just how amnesia works?” I asked her while wiping my eyes. “Yes, but this isn’t amnesia. This is an active force that’s blocking our memories. Something like that shouldn’t be affected by just talking about your experiences from before.” “Isn’t that basically what you did to get rid of Discord’s influence on you?” “No, I used magic to restore everypony.” “Not them. You. When you were affected by Discord’s power, Celestia sent you back all the friendship reports that you had sent her in order to help restore you.” “I… suppose that’s true,” she said reluctantly. “Terrific. However, Pinkie is the only one whose memory has returned. There’s still the rest of you that haven’t gotten over it yet.” “I agree,” said Twilight. “I think what we need to do next is figure out just exactly how Pinkie’s memory was returned to her and see if we can replicate it with the rest of us.” “While that does sound absolutely riveting,” Rarity said, “I do need to get back to work if I want to finish up his wardrobe by tomorrow. There’s also a few things I need to touch up for my delivery to Manehatten tomorrow. I’m afraid they both require my attention right now. I bid you all farewell.” After some pleasant goodbyes, we continued onwards towards whatever destination we were headed. “Well,” I continued from where we left off, “maybe what I was doing was working? I mean I got a lot more descriptive with the party part. Maybe if I got descriptive enough with a part that you were involved in then that might work.” “I’m not so sure,” Twilight said lacking confidence, “but it’s the only theory we have right now anyway. It isn’t like it would hurt to try I suppose.” “Oh! I have the perfect one in mind. How about the time where you explained magic to me in detail?” “That would be something I told you,” she replied. “I doubt it would work unless it was something that you told me like you did with Pinkie.” “Hmm, that’s a good point,” I said while rubbing my chin. “Besides, I doubt I could do that lecture justice anyway. I guess it wasn’t the perfect one after all. Well, the next thing I could try would be the magic blast incident.” “Was that event the one that you said spooked the town?” asked Twilight. “Yes, it was.” “That might work, I guess. Go ahead and try it.” “Well, let’s see. It started when I was complaining about having a headache. You told me that it might be from magic buildup so you teleported us out to some area outside of Ponyville to work on that. Let’s see… You told me to concentrate my power into my horn and corrected you because I used my hand instead. After that, I concentrated my power and waited until it was ready and then shot it at some boulder. The blast hit it and caused it to crack a little bit.” “That doesn’t really sound like something that would cause panic,” Twilight said bluntly. “Well, after I did that you said something about it taking less time than it did with unicorns and I then said that I wanted to try again. When I did, I dropped into a stance and gathered my energy again. However, this time I gathered a lot more energy so I could imitate a blast I had seen someone else use. As soon as I was ready, I fired that beam towards the boulder. Unfortunately, it plowed straight through the boulder, went along for about half a mile, and then detonated in a brilliant flash which caused the ground to shake up and had enough air pressure to knock you down. There was quite a bit of dust and dirt in the air from that and the both of us were covered in it. Then, I remember you saying-” “Are you CRAZY!?!” yelled Twilight. “Ha! Yeah that’s exactly what you yelled at me,” I said with a bit of a grin. “What were you thinking when you let loose a blast of that size? That could have destroyed a lot of property and injured a great many ponies!” “Like I said then, that’s why I-” “That’s why you wanted to go somewhere where no ponies would get hurt!” She exclaimed; finishing my sentence. “Seth, it worked! I remember! And do you have any idea how many ponies I had to talk to in order to get them to calm down?” she asked while getting a bit upset. I honestly didn’t care what she had to say. Well, within reason of course. Still, I wasn’t thinking about that as I took that moment to carelessly glomp onto her. Pinkie joined in as well. “I know this is nice, but this isn’t the time for it,” said Twilight. Upon hearing that, the two of us relented and moved away from her. She looked a bit miffed, but I think it was just a front. “Anyway, this is a good step in the right direction,” she continued. “A strong memory of the past seems to be able to break whatever spell is blocking our memories.” “I just hope that it sticks. Remember that Celestia said that even though she could get your memories back, it was only a temporary measure. I think you even said this yourself.” “That isn’t quite what I said, but that’s still what I believe anyway. We need to make a plan on how to tackle this. Getting something written down for us to work on will help with any contingencies such as the chance that our memory will be blocked again by tomorrow. I want to make sure that we can keep our memories intact as well as work on getting everypony else’s memory back to normal.” “Well, I’m not too sure how we would be able to get all of the memories back for everyone. I don’t think that I made a good, personal connection with anyone but you guys and maybe Case Cracker. Heck, I’m not really a hundred percent sure I can remember a good enough situation with Rarity or Applejack to make this theory work with them.” “What about when you were rescuing them from the place that they were sent to? They didn’t really mention it much, but everypony said that you helped rescue them from some situation that they were caught up in. Even Pinkie here didn’t tell us much about where she was.” I took a look at Pinkie who seemed to wither at the thought of where she had been. Well, that was pretty much to be expected. Nightmare Moon was in charge. Pony happiness was exceedingly in short supply. She was put in prison for goodness sake! “Look Twilight, Pinkie and I know about that world quite well and it’s not something that I think either of us remember too fondly.” I put my hand on top of Pinkie’s head to hopefully reassure her. “I’m pretty sure that you were the luckiest out of all six of you. You got sent to my idol’s house for crying out loud! In fact, other than going to the Cell Games I’m not even sure you were in any real danger at any point. I had to fight ghosts, evil monkeys, cultists, a dictator, some kind of know-it-all in a top hat, and a slew of henchmen and scientists. I’m not saying you had it easy, but… well yes actually. You pretty much had it easy compared to the others.” I felt like I just started saying whatever I could without thinking about it. In retrospect, I know it was a terrible idea. I really wanted to say some other things, but Pinkie swatting my hand away stopped me from doing so. “You shouldn’t be so hard on Twilight. She wasn’t the one who sent us to those places. Discord did that. You shouldn’t be making her feel bad for something she didn’t have any say in!” “You’re right Pinkie. You’re right,” I said and looked back at Twilight. “I’m sorry I said that. I guess I was just venting for no reason. I don’t even know why.” “It’s fine. I didn’t take Pinkie’s feelings into consideration in the first place which is probably where that came from. I suppose nothing that bad really did happen to me. I knew that. I just wanted them to open up about what happened with them while they were there. I can respect her decision not to tell me if that’s what she wants,” she said while giving a warm smile towards Pinkie. “Thanks Twilight. That means a lot.” Of course, right then my body decided to absolutely ruin the moment with a large growl from my stomach. HO-LY CRAP was it loud. I’m pretty sure that every pony in Ponyville heard that noise. Heck, I was pretty sure I saw some shutters rattle in conjunction with it. And the stares. I was so engrossed with telling about my escapades that I had actually managed to tune out the ponies around me. With my little bodily noise, however, I became keenly aware of the ponies staring at me once again. Not fun. At all. “Sounds like somebody’s a bit hungry,” Pinkie said in much more of an upbeat manner than I was expecting. “Yeah, I guess,” I said rather quietly. “I still haven’t eaten yet today.” “Well that’s great! This means that you can get to try out all the sugar free foods that I baked today and I can serve the ones that you like at your party!” “Well about that. Do you have any idea what you’re going to call that party? Before you got your memory back it was a ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party. Now that we know it’s not my first time in Ponyville are you going to change the name?” “Of course I am! It’s going to be a ‘Welcome Back to Ponyville’ party duh!” “But as of right now the only two ponies who it’s a welcome back party are you two. I mean, won’t the other ponies think that it’s strange?” “It’s Pinkie Pie throwing the party,” Twilight said matter-of-factly. “They aren’t going to question it.” I’m honestly not sure if I walked into that one or not. “Well, I guess that’s true. Ugh, I’m too hungry to think about this. You know, I kinda feel like having-” “Pie perhaps?” Pinkie asked; interrupting me. I was about to say no, and that’s when I felt it. That familiar feeling when a song is about to be sung. I wanted to fight it, but I ended up failing. “How’d you know?” I asked involuntarily. “It’s my job to know! And ‘cause I like pie too!” I knew what was coming right then. The only solace I had was that it would be over quickly. I took the lead. "When I say I want you say pie! I want-" "Pie!" "I want-" "Pie!" "When I say yummy, you say pie! Yummy!" "Pie!" "Yummy!" "Pie!" “Apple!” “Rhubarb!” “Bistro!” “Pear!” “Any kind! We don’t care!” “Any kind! We don’t care!” “I love pie!” “Yeah! I love pie!” “Oh we lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-love pie!” “Oh we lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-love pie!” And just like that, it was over. The Pie Song. I had heard that barely a month ago and now I was singing it with a talking pony named Pinkie Pie. Hell, there was a rerun of the exact episode last week! The irony was palpable to me. “You must really like pie,” Twilight said with a smirk. “Oh quiet you,” I said playfully.