//------------------------------//
// Chapter Three 
// Story: A Different Kind of Magic 
// by Krizak 
//------------------------------//

*CLATTER*

Twilight grumbled as the hoofbrush once again fell to the floor; that was the third time the terrible tangles of her bedmane had won out against the brush. Lowering her hoof to the floor, she slipped the brush's strap over her hoof after a moment's struggle, and lifted it back up to once again struggle against the mess of hair.

How long had it been since she had used a hoofbrush like this? Not since she had developed enough magical strength to lift a brush with her horn, the horn that she was sorely missing this morning. It was amazing how a little thing like losing the ability to lift things with one's mind made as simple a task as getting ready to head out go from taking a few minutes to taking the better part of an hour.

Gritting her teeth in pain as she once again awkwardly assaulted the knots in her mane, Twilight forced her thoughts away from the minor annoyance that was her morning... and immediately regretted it as her mind focused on the mare that was the cause of her morning instead. It was unavoidable, really; the entire reason she was going out was to check on Pinkie, and she knew that her friend was aware of her feelings after the spell last night.

Maybe it was time Twilight examined those feelings herself.

She had been avoiding this on purpose — a difficult task for one so prone to analyzing and over-analyzing everything — but Twilight feared that the feelings she had for Pinkie would prove to be too fragile; they would wither in the face of logical scrutiny, and she'd be left with nothing. And the feelings were too... too good to give up like that. So Twilight had purposely set those feelings aside without studying them, instead secretly revelling in the hot flush of glee she had experienced lately whenever Pinkie was around without actually thinking about it. But if this was all going to come to a head, it was time to bite the arrowhead and get it over with.

When had she first realized what she felt for Pinkie? Well, that was an easy enough place to start: the mission to Canterlot to stop time. Not Twilight's most brilliant moment, to be certain, but Pinkie had supported her every step of the way, knowing full well that it was a completely insane plan. Honestly, that could have been counted as a point against Pinkie; Twilight had to grudgingly admit that she needed reining in sometimes, but Pinkie wasn't the type to stop chaotic behaviour, generally encouraging it instead. But Twilight couldn't help but think of how it had felt to have Pinkie's full and unyielding support, even in the face of (supposed) impending disaster.

Not to mention how the pink mare had looked in her tight catsuit. Twilight normally didn't give much weight to the more physical aspects of attraction, but... wow.

But it wasn't like Twilight had only just started having feelings for Pinkie that night in Canterlot. It was more like a sapling that she had planted long ago and not seen in a while; it had been shocking to see the tree it had grown into. Maybe it had been Pinkie's birthday — not this year's, but last year's, when she'd seen that her friend harboured the same sort of fears under the surface that she herself felt. Maybe it had been the day of Pinkie's doozy, when she had first learned that she didn't need to examine every little thing about her pink friend, but instead simply accept her. Celestia help her, it might have even been the very day that she'd come to Ponyville, when Pinkie had thrown her a party and then taught her to laugh at the darkness.

That was the simple truth of the matter: Twilight could not identify precisely when her feelings for Pinkie had transformed from simple friendship to something more. Another perplexing puzzle pertaining to the pink party pony.

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief, both from how her feelings for Pinkie were still intact even after examining them and from how she'd finally managed to work her way through the last big knot in her mane. Running the hoofbrush through her mane a bit more to straighten it out, the once and future unicorn turned her thoughts to what she had learned of Pinkie's feelings during last night's spell: very little.

The insecurities were easy enough to identify, but most of them focused on all of Pinkie's friends, not any one in particular. Pinkie's positive emotions, on the other hand, were intense, simultaneously blinding and deafening on a magical level. It was impossible to tell what exactly any of the feelings were, only that they were very powerful.

Slipping the hoofbrush off onto an endtable, Twilight sighed as she stared her reflection in the eye, finally ready to head out — and lacking an excuse to procrastinate further. "Oh, Celestia, what am I going to do?" she whispered out loud. "Is she going to bring it up? Should I bring it up first?" Seeing just how worried she looked in the mirror, Twilight lifted a hoof to touch her reflection. "I don't—"

Her hoof went right through the mirror as though it were a sheet of water.

"—wha—agh!" Twilight cried as both the shock and the sudden loss of balance caused her to tumble forward. She desperately tried to catch herself with her magic, but she had no magic to use, and her body vanished through the mirror, a faint shimmer in the surface the only trace of where she had disappeared to.




"Ah-bhahahaha!" The innocent laughter of a foal echoed out under the noontime sun as Pound Cake once again found his tail clamped between the teeth of his father. That was the point of the game, after all; the young pegasus would make a big show of flying away, only for Carrot Cake to reach up and grab his tail at the last possible moment. Pound expected to be caught by his dad so much that he would hover back down within reach if Carrot happened to be too slow to catch him the first time.

Carrot Cake, for his part, was simply glad that they had bought that book of tips for earthbound ponies on how to raise baby pegasi; this game had been one of the many bits of useful advice he and his wife used to deal with Pound.

"Get back down here, you little rascal!" the stallion admonished playfully, his voice muffled by the strands of Pound's short tail. Bending his neck around, he deposited his wayward son back into the baby harness he was wearing today. More foalish laughter brought Carrot's attention to his other child, Pumpkin Cake laughing at the goofy antics of her brother and father. Nuzzling both of his foals, Carrot turned back to watch where he was walking, sighing to the mare walking next to him. "Why couldn't they have been that happy and playful at the doctor's, hon?"

"Oh, I think it went better than last time, don't you?" Cup Cake replied, taking a step back at the insistent tug of Pumpkin's magic and giving the filly a nuzzle of her own. "At least somepony kept her horn off the poor doctor's stethoscope today, isn't that right, Pumpkin?" she asked, prompting another burst of laughter from the foal.

The family rounded the last corner before the one they had owned and operated for a decade now, and as the familiar gingerbread-house styling of Sugarcube Corner came into view, Carrot and Cup shared a sigh of relief that it was still there. The relief was a bit selfish on their part; Pinkie had been working for them for years now. She had both opened and closed the bakery by herself numerous times. She had run Sugarcube Corner all by herself while the Cakes went on vacation. She had foalsat their children! And yet the Cakes could not give up that feeling of relief whenever they saw that Pinkie had not burnt everything they had worked for to the ground. It was a steady source of comfort.

Far from any nightmare scenarios the Cakes still harboured in the back of their mind, Sugarcube Corner was bustling today, ponies gathered outside in what may have been a very crude line or a somewhat organized crowd. "Oh, dear, I didn't expect it to be so busy today," Mrs. Cake commented, her face now etched with a more real concern for her sole employee. "I hope Pinkie managed to find some help."

"Well, if she didn't, we're here now." Mr. Cake nodded his head in resolve as the family approached the crowding ponies. "Ahem... excuse me... pardon me..." It took a surprising amount of goading to get the crowd to move — they all seemed preoccupied with trying to get a glimpse inside — but eventually Cup and Carrot managed to get through their own front door.

That was also as far as they got, as the sight before them shocked them far too much to think of stepping out of their doorway.

Hovering above the crowd of ponies crammed into the bakery were a variety of pastries — muffins, strudels, eclairs, the works — each held up by a light blue glow. More shocking than the floating pastries was the one holding them up; standing behind the counter was a pink unicorn who seemed the splitting image of Pinkie. But Pinkie was an earth pony, certainly not a unicorn! Surely this was some relative of Pinkie's the Cakes had never met who had just happened to show up in town today...

"Alright, who's next? Ahh, Pipsqueak, my favouritist pony from Trottingham, what would you like from Sugarcube Corner today?" the pink unicorn asked in a voice that sounded an awful lot like Pinkie's.

"Gosh, Miss Pie, you have so many choices," the brown-mottled colt said in awe as he looked at all of the pastries floating around him, the baked goods moving closer to Pipsqueak as he spoke. "Hmm... oh, how about the blueberry scone?"

"A fine choice, my good Pipsqueak... if a tad predictable," the unicorn behind the counter responded, adopting her own fake version of the Trottingham accent as she had all the pastries save for the chosen scone vacate Pipsqueak's airspace. "You know the drill, you watched the others. Tell me, how do you want this scone?"

A blush was easily visible through the white patches of Pipsqueak's coat. "Well..." The young colt propped himself up on the counter, gesturing for the Pinkie lookalike to come closer. The rest of the crowd began to murmur as she bent her neck over the counter, and Pipsqueak whispered into her ear, causing her to chuckle.

"Oh, Pip, no need to be embarrassed by something like that!" The unicorn's face scrunched up a moment in concentration, and the scone hovering near Pipsqueak began to take another shape. The body of the scone took on a slimmer shape as a head, legs, and impressive wings began to protrude from it. In less time than it took for Pipsqueak to relay his request, the scone had been reshaped into a perfect pastry portrayal of the Princess of the Night.

Pipsqueak looked on in awe as the princess pastry floated down to his level, only to be nudged into action by Applejack, who had been standing near the counter the entire time. "Come on, now, she gave you what you wanted. Don't mean to rustle you along so quick, but we've got a bit of a crowd, y'see?"

The colt nodded, pulling out a shiny bit and laying in on the counter. Grabbing his shaped scone gingerly as to not ruin the artistry, Pipsqueak managed to get out a muffled "thank you" before heading for the exit.

As the unicorn behind the counter began to help the next customer, Applejack gave the crowd a quick perusal, noticing the Cakes standing at the entrance for the first time as she did. "Ahh, 'bout time they show up... Excuse me, coming through!" The farmpony knew how to get through a crowd, and she was soon standing at the Cakes' side. "Howdy, Mr. and Mrs. Cake! I, uh, I suppose yer looking for an explanation as to what's going on here..."

Neither of the Cakes dared take their eyes off the spectacle before them, but Carrot managed to ask, "Applejack, that wouldn't be Pinkie's nearly identical twin cousin who just so happens to be a unicorn, would it?" The tone in his voice pleaded for Applejack to confirm that was the case, no matter how improbable it was.

Unfortunately for Mr. Cake, Applejack had never been the type to lie, even when a lie was what other ponies wanted to hear. "Afraid not, sir; that's Pinkie herself behind the counter. Seems that Twilight Sparkle got in her head to cast a little spell last night, so fer today, Pinkie has Twilight's magic."

Applejack's explanation was enough to shake the shock out of Cup, who turned to shoot the younger mare an incredulous look. "Let me get this straight: the same control-freak unicorn who fusses over how much icing is on her cupcakes gave all of her magic to Pinkie Pie for an entire day?" The annoyance in the mare's voice drew worried looks from both Applejack and Carrot, the former having never heard Mrs. Cake use such a tone and the latter only all too familiar with it.

"Well, you know Twilight. She means well—" Applejack put extra emphasis on that part. "—but sometimes she gets some right silly ideas in her head and you just can't get 'em out." The farmmare stepped beside the older couple and turned so she could look at Pinkie as well, watching as the unicorn-for-a-day created a strangely thin ape-like shape out of a muffin and passed it off to a seafoam unicorn that seemed somewhat familiar. "We were just fortunate this happened on the day of yer apple delivery, or the whole town might've gone up in a panic."

"Is that what all this is about?" Carrot asked, gesturing at the floating pastries and their mistress.

"Yessir, this was all my plan!" Applejack couldn't help but adopt a smug grin. "I figured, the only way to prevent there from being a spectacle is if we created a spectacle of our own. So Pinkie and I came up with a couple ideas for how she could use her magic, word got around the town, and soon enough we had a bigger stampede on Sugarcube Corner than that time with the cows!"

If Cup hadn't been a happily married pony who had never had an interest in mares save for that one little fling back in college, she would have kissed Applejack. As it was, she settled for a gushing "oh, thank you, Applejack!"

"Yes, if it weren't for you, who knows what might have happened to Sugarcube Corner?" Mr. Cake added, even as he finally took a step forward, making his way through the crowd and towards Pinkie. "Still, if disaster hasn't struck yet, we'd better not push our luck... Hello, Pinkie Pie!" he exclaimed as he got close enough to not have to yell through the crowd.

"Oh, hi, Mr. Cake! Hi, Pound! Hi, Pumpkin!" Pinkie exclaimed as she saw Carrot approach, leaping over the counter to approach the Cake family. She quickly trotted up to Pumpkin and gave her a nuzzle, eliciting joyous cries of "Pinkie Pie!" from both the young filly and her brother. "How did things go at the doctor's? Are Pound and Pumpkin as fit as forty fiddles in the Philharmonic?"

"Yes, the foals are in perfect health, Pinkie," Mrs. Cake proclaimed as she walked up as well, Applejack right at her heel. "It's your... situation that has us a bit more concerned right now, dear."

"Hi, Mrs. Cake! Oh, you mean my horn? Don't worry, I've got a good handle on it!" As if to demonstrate, Pinkie concentrated briefly and brought her various floating pastries down to hover near her. "See? The levitation is pretty basic, and I managed to figure out how to shape the pastries as well, all by myself! I can't wait to get over to the library after my shift is over, though; there's so many spells I've seen Twilight use that I want to use as well!"

Carrot saw his opportunity and struck quickly. "Well, if you can't wait, how about right now?" As Pinkie gave him a puzzled look, he continued. "See, we're both impressed that you stuck by your responsibilities, even with this... development. And having unicorn magic is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an earth pony!" At least, he certainly hoped it was once-in-a-lifetime. "We don't want you to waste that opportunity cooped up in the bakery, so how about you take the rest of the day off, Pinkie?"

"Ohmygosh really!?" Pinkie exclaimed, joy filling her face, but that joy was quickly diminished as the crowd around them started voicing their displeasure; some of them had stood in line for a couple hours for their turn. "Oh, but I'd really hate to disappoint anypony. Perhaps—"

"Perhaps nothing, sugarcube!" Applejack interjected as she stepped forward. "Listen up, y'all! I know y'all wanted to have yer turn, and I know how long some of you waited, but don't you think that Pinkie deserves a bit of her own fun? Wouldn't all y'all take the opportunity if yer boss let you go early for the day?" Mumbles of grudging agreement were her only response from the crowd, and she nodded smugly. "That's what I thought." Turning to Pinkie, she made a dismissive gesture with her hoof. "Go on then, Pinkie, go have fun... and try not to cause too much chaos."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" The entire Cake family and Applejack suddenly found themselves encircled in a massive hug from Pinkie. "There's so many thing I want to try, I-I don't even know where to start!" She let them go and began to make her way to the stairs, still babbling to herself. "Well, I better get cleaned up first, get all this flour and sugar out of my mane, and then I need to stop by the library, but then, what to do after that? I could go find Dashie..."

As the pink mare's voice trailed off, Applejack turned to the Cakes. "Well, guess that means my job here is done. I'd better get back to the farm; I'm gonna be awfully behind on my chores, and Big Mac's likely worrying about me by now. See ya later, Mr. and Mrs. Cake... oh, and Pound and Pumpkin too."

As the twins voiced their own unintelligible goodbyes to Applejack, Cup nodded to the retreating farmmare. "Thank you again, Applejack!" She paused for a moment, surveying the crowd and coming up with a plan like only a successful entrepreneur could. "Alright, everypony, I don't want anypony leaving here completely disappointed. Pinkie may have left, but she baked up plenty of delicious pastries with her magic, and I suppose we could offer a small discount on larger orders. What do you say?"

A bevy of cheers and murmured agreement filled the bakery, and Carrot Cake looked on in admiration as the mare who had won his heart once again took a potentially bad situation and turned it around in her favour.




For Pinkie Pie, bathtime was always fun. Creating mountains of bubbles, goofing around with her vast collection of rubber duckies and other inflatable toys, playing with Gummy in the one environment where he actually moved with grace and speed... It was all good clean fun, and it more than made up for the one minor annoyance, that of actually cleaning herself. It wasn't easy dealing with her mane, or scrubbing her back, or untangling the curls in her tail. There was a reason why she let Rarity talk her into a spa date at least once a month. (Well, besides how happy it made Rarity every time Pinkie said yes to a little pampering.)

As a unicorn, however, Pinkie learned that cleaning herself could be in itself a fun time. Where magic was involved, there were no unreachable spots, no bad angles to apply pressure from. It ended up taking her half the amount of time to clean herself better than she ever had before, and she almost found herself disappointed when she was finished, it had been so enjoyable.

Drying herself off with one towel, she wrapped another around her mane — a normally complex task suddenly turned trivial — and headed over to the sink to brush her teeth again. Pinkie tended to brush her teeth three times a day, since she knew she ate more sweets than the average mare and she needed to maintain her big, bright, beautiful smile. She levitated both her toothbrush and toothpaste, applied an even layer of paste to the bristles, looked in the mirror...

...and immediately fell back on her rump in surprise as she saw Twilight looking back at her.

"Pinkie! I need your help! I'm trapped!" The Twilight in the mirror was clearly distressed, her mane sticking up in places as it did whenever the scholar got worried.

"Oh, Twilight, you found one of my shortcuts!" Pinkie raised an eyebrow at her friend's words, even as she set her toothbrush and toothpaste back down. "But what do you mean 'trapped'?"

"I've been in here for hours, Pinkie! I fell through my mirror, but when I tried to get back through, the mirror was as solid as a mirror should be!" Twilight's voice was steadily rising in both speed and pitch as she recounted her dilemma. "So I tried looking for another way out, and this place is so creepy, a backwards Ponyville with no ponies in it, and I found other mirrors and tried to go through them but I still couldn't, but I could see through them and I think I've seen some things I really shouldn't have and some things I really didn't want to and—"

"Twilight, calm down, please!" Pinkie exclaimed, rearing up and placing her hooves on either side of her sink so she could get closer to Twilight. "I think I know what the problem is, but we're not going to be able to do anything unless you stay calm."

She watched her friend close her eyes and take a few deep breaths. After a few moments, Twilight opened her eyes and gave Pinkie Pie a sad, hesitant smile, but there was nothing hesitant about the grin Pinkie gave her in return.

"Alright, Twilight, you have to trust me on this." Pinkie held up one of her hooves, reaching towards the mirror and her friend trapped within. "You need to take my hoof. You can't think about it, you can't let reasons why you can't cross your mind, you just have to do it."

"But Pinkie, I-I've tried so many times! It doesn't work!" To prove her point, Twilight brought her own hoof up to her side of the mirror and thunked it against the too-solid surface separating the two. "See? I—"

"Twilight, please!" Though she kept her smile, Pinkie's eyes intensified into a stare. It was nothing like her friend Fluttershy's, of course — that was far beyond Pinkie's capabilities, even on a normal day — but she didn't have to convince a dragon to stand down, or a cockatrice to unpetrify its victims, or even an unruly bunny to sit down and eat. All she needed to do was convince her friend to do something that Pinkie was absolutely certain she was capable of. "Remember your Pinkie Promise. You agreed that you wouldn't think everything over twice. Right now, that is very important. You have to trust me. You have to let go of that little voice in your head that wants to know everything and just take my hoof."

Twilight nodded wordlessly at Pinkie's lecture, unable to break eye contact with the baker's pseudo-Stare. Hesitantly, she lifted her hoof once again and approached the mirror, stopping less than an inch away. Worry crossed her face once more, but Pinkie narrowed her eyes at the sight and Twilight quickly shook her head violently, as though she were clearing her mind of all her doubts.

She pushed her hoof forward, piercing the barrier between worlds, and as soon as enough of Twilight's foreleg had emerged for Pinkie to grab, the pink pony wrapped her arm around it and pulled with all her strength. Twilight let out a shout of surprise as she was yanked through the mirror. As soon as she was through, however, the laws of physics tipped in her favour as her full weight came crashing down into Pinkie as the baker fell backwards. The two ponies tumbled across the bathroom floor, spinning head over hooves for a few revolutions before they ended up in a strangely familiar position: Twilight standing over Pinkie as the latter laid sprawled on her back.

Of course, the last time the two had been in this position, Pinkie hadn't been aware of Twilight's feelings for her. (She had also been wearing a chicken suit, which probably didn't factor into Twilight's feelings for her.)

The two stared into each other's eyes for what seemed like an eternity, the air thick with the tension of their shared knowledge, before Pinkie politely coughed. "Oh, hehe, sorry, Pinkie..." Twilight said quickly, her blush visible even through her dark coat as she scrambled off of Pinkie.

The unicorn-for-a-day quickly got to her feet and favoured Twilight with a smile. "That's alright, Twilight! I needed to make sure you got through as quick as you could, or you might have thought about what was happening and we probably don't want to think about what would have happened then." Despite her words, Pinkie couldn't help but think about it and paled a little at the thought. Judging from the look on Twilight's face, she hadn't been able to avoid the thought as well. "Well, the point is that... that... that didn't happen! You made it through in one perfectly purple piece!"

"It was... it was really hard to do that," Twilight admitted, rubbing the back of her head. "Do you have to do that for all of your... abilities? Just not think about them?"

"Oh, no, not all of them! If that was the case, I'd probably have gone crazy ages ago!" Pinkie gave a nervous laugh at the thought, even as the analytic part of her mind brought up its evidence that she'd already passed that point. That part of her brain was being really loud today for some reason. "No, I can think about some of my stuff, and the Pinkie Sense happens whether I think about it or not." Mentioning her clairvoyant ability brought something to Pinkie's attention, and she cocked her head to the side. "Twilight, is your scalp tingly?"

"Huh?" Twilight realized she was still rubbing at the back of her mane, and nodded. "Oh, yes, I thought it was an itch, but now that you mention it, it's probably more like a tingle. It's probably because I had a hard time washing—"

"Mrs. Cake!" Pinkie suddenly interrupted by yelling at the top of her lungs, forcing Twilight's ears to go flush with her head in pain. "The muffins are ready!"

"Thank you, dear!" came the faint reply from downstairs.

"Ow, Pinkie, what was that all about?" Twilight asked in irritation, rubbing gently at one of her ears.

"Tingling on your scalp is the Pinkie Sense for baking," Pinkie replied with a firm nod.

"Oh, I see." Twilight responded with one of her own nods, and the two mares lapsed into another uncomfortable silence. After a few awkward moments, the former unicorn tried to break the ice with, "Pinkie, about what you might have seen last night..."

Pinkie shook her head at her friend. "Twilight, I don't think this is the best time for that talk."

"But Pinkie, I can't think of anything but that!" Twilight moaned in frustration. "It's all I've been fretting about all morning — well, no, okay, I kind of worried a little about you destroying Ponyville — but it's been driving me nuts! Normally I'm pretty good at keeping my feelings bottled up but now you know and all I can think about is how you know and I don't know how you feel because your feelings are so bright and shiny and—"

A pink hoof in Twilight's mouth stopped her rambling as Pinkie offered her her most understanding smile. "This is why we can't talk about it right now, Twilight. We're not really ourselves at the moment. There's some Pinkie in you, and there's some Twilight in me, and this is a talk that perfectly-Pinkie Pinkie and totally-Twilight Twilight need to have. I promise you, whatever feelings I might have for you, they will be the same tomorrow, alright?"

She wondered if that last part was a lie — could she really guarantee her feelings wouldn't change when she wasn't sure what they were in the first place? — but it was what Twilight needed to hear, and so Pinkie could deal with the wrath of the imaginary Applejack in her mind for the moment. Removing her hoof from Twilight's mouth, Pinkie could see that she'd managed to calm down her friend once again.

"Okay, you're right. You're right, Pinkie." Twilight let out a sigh. "I don't know if I'll be able to stop worrying about it though; I promised you that I'd have fun and help others to do the same, but I'm not sure I can do that with this hanging over my head."

And it was then that Pinkie had a brilliant and devious plan, and a brilliant and devious smile crossed her face to match. "Do you know what you need, Twilight?" The scholar raised an eyebrow in question, unsure of what Pinkie was getting at. "A party."

"A party?" Twilight repeated, her eyebrow still raised. "I don't know how you hosting a party would do all that mu—" The purple mare's eyes suddenly widened in shock as Pinkie's idea took hold of her.

"Oh, Twilight, I didn't mean a party hosted by me," Pinkie explained in a quiet voice filled with barely contained laughter. "After all, I'm not the one with a cutie mark for hosting parties."

"Pinkie—" Twilight's face went through odd contortions as she struggled to contain her sudden urges. "—why am I suddenly filled with this... need to go get invitations made?"

"Well, my dear Twilight," Pinkie began, reaching for the appropriate lecturing headgear — and when nothing immediately came to hoof, she shrugged and continued, "as you are well-aware, a cutie mark is not only representative of a pony's special talent, but also an urge to do said special talent. The strength of this urge can vary from mark to mark, and while it can be overwhelming to a pony who isn't quite ready for her cutie mark — as we saw with dear sweet Apple Bloom — older ponies can learn to suppress this desire.

"When I first acquired my cutie mark, I found that my urge was very strong; it took only the mere mention of the word 'party' to send me into full event-planning mode. And though I do love throwing parties, even I could recognize that I needed to control my desire occasionally. It took me a good year to do so; I eventually travelled to the highest peaks of Neighpal to seek the counsel of the Grand Party Mistress herself—" Pinkie lowered her voice to a reverent tone. "—Surprise. She helped me harness my urges, so that I control the parties, and they do not control me."

Pinkie abandoned her lecture tone as she smiled her devious grin at Twilight once again. "Just like how I have your cutie mark but not your encyclopedic ensemble of esoteric spells, you have my cutie mark... but not my training."

Twilight's eyes blazed with anger... or possibly with the need to pick up party decorations. "Pinkie..." she whispered dangerously, her whole body trembling with her attempt to stay still, to not give in to the urge to party. Pinkie was surprised that her friend hadn't already given in already; before her training, she wouldn't have been able to hold herself for that long.

Still, it was inevitable; within a minute, Twilight finally gave in and ran towards the door leading out of the bathroom. "I'll get you for this, Pinkie!" she proclaimed in a huff as she made her exit.

"Decor and Dishes off of Main has a sale on right now!" Pinkie called out after Twilight, smirking to herself. After a few moments, she let out a sigh of relief. That had been mean, but she really hadn't seen any other way to get Twilight to have fun — or to get out of that tense situation. Maybe if she was a smartypants like Twilight was, she could have come up with a better plan, but they hadn't traded their brains.

Pinkie had just unwrapped her towel and levitated over her hairbrush when a thunk echoed through the bathroom. "Huh?!" She quickly looked around the room, her eyes missing the source of the sound at first before they finally spotted what seemed to be a piece of paper embedded into the wall like a ninja star. Curious, Pinkie hovered over the paper, noticing fancy purple trim and elegant writing that she recognized as the work of a scribe she used all the time for her invitations. "'You are invited to a celebration for Ponyville's premier party pony today at 5:00PM at the Books and Branches Library,'" she read out loud. "'Refreshments and entertainment will be provided; all you need to do is show up. Hope to see you there.'"

At the bottom of the invitation was a crudely-drawn arrow indicating for Pinkie to turn over the card. She did so and was confronted by some of the messiest mouthwriting she had ever seen; it was as though the author hadn't written anything for years - and reading the dots and dashes quickly made it apparent that this was just the case. "'This stupid urge didn't force a reason for the party, so I decided to choose you. Two can play at this game. See you there.'"

Pinkie Pie smiled at the invitation. "Touché, Twilight Sparkle. Touché."