//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Overnighting // Story: Fragile // by runujhkj //------------------------------// As the moon was pushed out of sight into the distance, a light breeze blew through the leaves in the trees. The formerly night sky brightened slowly, stars vanishing from view one by one, while the moon submerged fully beneath the horizon. The clouds sat in wait for a minute or two, and the sun began to poke its head over the edge. Light quickly began to fill the spaces darkness had just occupied, and, before long, the entire west side of Ponyville was bathing in the warm sunlight. The east side, where the library sat, continued to be blocked off from the sun by the rolling hills just outside of town. The tree wasn't aware of this; it reached just as tall as ever towards the sky, grabbing for the sun. Light was just beginning to creep through the spaces in between branches and the windows when the library’s resident bookkeeper/ woke up. Twilight Sparkle was nothing if not meticulous, and despite the miniscule amount of sleep she and her guest had gotten last night, it seemed Twilight’s internal alarm clock refused to let her sleep in for a day, even though her actual alarm clock hadn’t even gone off yet. It would go off soon, though, and stopping it was the main goal she set for herself when she stood shakily out of her bed, being careful not to wake the other two occupants of her bedroom. Spike was a heavy sleeper, but he’d been asleep since he passed out around 11 the previous night. Not to mention Twilight knew exactly how her bedroom’s other guest would respond to a rude awakening. Silently cursing her miserable sense of interior design, she walked all the way across the room to where she’d placed her alarm clock. She stood at her dresser, eyes forced shut with sleep, trying and failing to magically feel around, a cloud of purple flying over the dresser’s top from one direction to another. Her horn’s glow twitched in and out as she swooped around the table, unseeing face inches from the surface, brow furrowed, blood pressure slowly rising as it became more and more likely that the alarm clock would- BRRING BRRING BRRI- The alarm snapped Twilight out of her daze and opened her eyes wide, and, with pinpoint accuracy, she quickly switched off the noise. Still feeling the effects of the short adrenaline flow, her head whipped back around to stare unblinkingly at the lump in the covers next to where she’d gotten up. A slight movement. Quickened breathing. The lump rolled over, and a barely-interrupted snore signified the end of the concern. Twilight mentally congratulated herself for her excellent reflexes and sighed contentedly, bringing a loud groan from the lump. Mumbling to no one in particular, “Of course,” she abandoned her stealth attempt and trotted to the other side of the room, turned her attention to the brush on her nightstand, and began correcting the horrible mess that her mane had somehow entangled itself into during what little sleep she’d gotten. More groans from the lump followed. “Rrrruuuhhhhmmffrrrr,” the lump under Twilight’s covers mumbled out. Twilight continued arranging her hair. As her brush swung lazily through the area around her hair, she spent a second trying and failing to force her eyes completely open before focusing on her reflection in the mirror. “I’m sorry, it’s a little hard to understand you when you’re chewing on my covers like that.” One of Twilight’s hooves droopily pawed at the sleep that had crusted around her eyes. The adrenaline rush that came with the alarm clock's rude awakening had clearly left the building. To a continued chorus of groans from the bed lump, another hoof swiped at the dresser, bumping against the drawers, trying to open the top drawer and moving higher and higher in inverse proportion to Twilight’s patience. After a few choice made-up swear words, she eventually succeeded and retrieved her prize in the form of her unopened copy of Mane Taming for Dummies. The magical purple glow around the brush lowered it back to the table and dropped it. She turned her horn’s attention to the book, lifting it up and hurling it at the bed lump. Rarity’s birthday present to Twilight landed on the bed lump with an audible, hollow, and loud thunk. Something important and painful had been hit by that book. This friendly, playful toss was supposed to gently coax her friend out of bed. It instead caused the moving sack of covers to leap out of bed with a near-deafening screech. Out from under the bedsheet dashed a rainbow-colored streak, who flung herself toward the edge of the floor and lay at the head of the stairs clutching her leg and screaming. Twilight immediately saw past the ruse, rolled her eyes, and pushed aside Rainbow Dash, aiming for the stairs to the library’s second floor. Dash remained at the top of the stairs near Spike, who was now painfully awake and doing some complaining of his own, until it became clear Twilight hadn’t fallen for it. “Uh, Twilight? A little help here? I think you broke my... my, uh,” Dash’s efforts were met by a bemused glance from Twilight, and she continued, “my vertabra? Is that it?” Twilight shook her head, and stopped moving entirely so she watch Dash struggle through pony anatomy. “You... broke... my...” Dash furrowed her brow, lost in serious thought, “my scapula?” Twilight laughed. “Well, that one was at least actually a bone, but it’s in the complete opposite part of your body. The bone you’re looking for is the ‘patella.’” Dash puffed her chest out. “Yeah, that’s the one I meant. You broke my patel-” “Unfortunately, as a pony, you don’t actually have that bone. Neither of us do. If you were a monkey, you might. But you aren’t, so you don’t.” Dash waved her off. “Well, how do you know? Maybe- maybe I do have a petalla! Maybe I’m part monkey, how do you know I’m not?” Twilight snorted. “Okay, I’ll concede that to you; you actually might be part monkey.” Twilight turned back and continued, scaling the stairs to the ground floor, remembering at once all the cleaning she (or more likely Spike) would have to do. It seemed ever since she and Dash had started hanging out more, Spike got more and more tired every day, and the library got more and more messy and unkempt. Today was no exception. Everywhere she turned, she saw something she had to mentally add to Spike’s Official To-Do ListTM. Two floors back up, Dash could be heard congratulating herself on her awesome bed hair for a minute or two, before zipping down the stairs after Twilight. Dash’s philosophy had always been: “If I have to use more than my hoof to look awesome before I leave the house for the day, I failed at sleep last night.” And even though she and Twilight had only gotten somewhere around 2 hours of sleep last night, her classic “bed hair” looked better today than it ever had before. And even with this new tangled style, Dash’s hair colors refused to mix. Out of curiosity, she’d once taken a fine-tooth comb to her hair and intentionally tried to tangle her red hair and her yellow hair, just to see what’d happen. As if each color was horribly terrified of the others, each hair would instantly self-segregate as soon as the comb left her hair, into cleanly organized colors. She’d eventually given up when she realized it simply wasn’t possible to mix her hair’s colors. Twilight was standing by the door, still surveying the mess the two of them had left. “You know, Dashie, you’re helping Spike clean some of this up.” Slightly taken aback by the unexpected cutesy nickname, Dash pushed past her out the door, clearing her throat loudly to cover up the last half of Twilight’s sentence. “AHCCC-GGHH- AAAAM MMMAAACHHHH sorry I can’t hear you there you’re kind of talking a little quiet acchraagghaa rrhaahagggghahrrarhmmmmm.” Twilight sighed and made a mental note to trick Dash into helping Spike clean somehow, following her out into Ponyville’s streets. The two of them walked towards the center of town alongside each other, headed towards Sugarcube Corner. After a minute or two of sleep-deprived silence, Twilight yawned and realized neither of them had spoken. She turned to Dash and opened her mouth to speak, when Dash blurted out: “Why has no one ever made a movie out of a Daring Do book?” Expecting anything but that, Twilight slowed slightly to scratch her head, wondering how Dash didn’t know. “Well, they did. They made four of them. Well, three of them. We don’t really talk about the fourth one.” Dash whipped her head towards Twilight. “Then why haven’t I ever seen any of them?” Twilight shrugged. “Probably because there's only one movie theater anywhere in this whole town, and it only has one screen. Come to think of it, there isn’t one in Canterlot either. I’m actually not sure there’s more than a single movie theater in this entire kingdom, unless you count the projector in the library. Maybe Manehattan has one.” Dash held up a hoof and shook a head. “Wait, go back a second. Why did you say no one talks about the fourth movie?” Twilight sighed. “Probably because the first three were part of so many fillyhoods, that when another was made, it was destined to be hated by everyone either way. Why are you even bringing this up?” Dash rolled her eyes. “Well, since I finished the last Daring Do book last night, I’m kind of itching for more.” “You could always read the books again.” “I don’t get it, is that a joke?” “No, it’s just- that’s... Just go inside.” The two had reached Sugarcube Corner, and Twilight waved Dash to go in first. Inside, the Cakes were sprinting from room to room, gathering ingredients and yelling incoherently at each other. Twilight approached the counter and asked, to neither of them in particular, “What’s going on here? What’s the big rush?” The two of them kept running from place to place, while Mr. Cake answered, “We just got a huge order on the other side of Ponyville, and we can’t find Pinkie anywhere to help us! If you happen to see her, let her know we need her help back here, okay?!” Twilight looked at Dash, and back at the blurred moving mess that seemed to vaguely resemble Mrs. Cake. “Oh, we were hoping she was here. You don’t know where she could be?” The blur continued grabbing what looked to be bigger and bigger and sharper and sharper kitchen implements. “No, we have no idea where she is, but if you or Rainbow Dash find her, please tell her to come to Sugarcube Corner immediately! We need her help desperately!” The blurs collided with each other, sending kitchen tools and various ingredients flying against both walls. “Now if you don’t mind taking your girlfriend and leaving us to work?!” Twilight nodded sleepily and turned to leave. She pushed past the door and stared into space in one direction, and then another, wondering where Pinkie Pie would be. She twisted her head around to ask Dash where they’d start looking, but found no trace of her. Heading back into Sugarcube Corner, she found Dash glaring at one of the blurs. “Uh, Dash? You coming?” Dash didn’t look at Twilight, continuing to stare at the moving smudge that looked to be Mrs. Cake. “What do you mean, ‘girlfriend?’” Twilight shook her head and went to drag Rainbow out, back onto the street: “Come on, they’re busy, and she didn’t mean anything by it anyway. Let’s just go.” Reluctantly, Dash went to follow her friend outside. “Sure she didn’t mean anything by it. Sure.” Twilight replied, “Just forget about it. We need to find Pinkie Pie. How can you even have enough energy to be upset? You got even less sleep than I did!” Dash puffed out her chest. “Well, you might need twelve hours of sleep, but I can run on way less than that.” “But you spent fifteen minutes just groaning when you woke up!” “Hey, just because I don’t need that much sleep doesn’t mean I don’t want it.” Twilight gave another yawn. “Okay then, Rainb- no, Rest... bow... N-n... Restbow... Naps, where should we look for Pinkie then?” After a solid six seconds of cringing at Twilight's horrible "joke," Dash put a hoof to her chin, jumped into the air and began slowly flying upwards. Clearing the roofs of the nearby buildings, she scanned around Ponyville in a circle, looked back down towards Twilight, and shrugged. She returned to the ground. “I’unno, let’s check Fluttershy’s pla-”