//------------------------------//
// Silly nonsense on the train! 
// Story: In which Masterweaver just makes stuff up 
// by Masterweaver 
//------------------------------//

	"I spy, with my huge set of eyes, something that begins with a V."

Twilight gave Pinkie a disbelieving look. "We're on the way to prevent a griffon warlord from seizing an artifact of questionable origin and power, and you're playing I Spy?"

"It's going to take a while for the train to get to Manehatten," Pinkie replied simply. "Do you really want me to get bored? Things happen when I'm bored. Terrible dreadful things that not even I can bear to remember." She gave the unicorn a bright and cheery smile. "So, V v V v V!"

"Um..." Twilight looked around. "...Okay, Pinkie, I give up."

"VULTURE!"

The unicorn followed Pinkie's pointing hoof with her eyes. "What are you talking abWHYISTHEREAVULTUREONTHEBACKOFMYSEAT?!"

"Skkkrch," the vulture replied.

Rarity turned to look at the bird, musing as she ran her eyes over it. "Well, for a vulture it's certainly very clean, I'll admit. It's probably a lost pet, belonging to some eccentric--"

"Murglepan!" A green pony swept through the train car, skidding to a stop in front of Twilight. "There you are. I was worried you'd, like, flown out of the train or something. You're going to harsh my aura something fierce one day, you know?" She adjusted the bandana on her head, holding out a hoof. "Come on, girl. Come on."

"...Murglepan?" Twilight couldn't help but ask.

"Mmmhmm. First day he hatched, I asked him what his name was." The mare moved aside some of her dreadlocks to nuzzle the large bird perching on her foreleg. "And he told me. We've been harmonized ever since." With a contented smile, she walked back through the door she had come through.

Rarity nodded to herself, pulling a magazine from her satchel. "Hmm, according to this there's a new wave on plaited skirts--"

"She had a vulture," Twilight mumbled. "She had a vulture. She had a vulture."

The other unicorn glanced at her. "...Pinkie, you're the nearest expert on mental breakdowns. Could you maybe get Twilight to get past the vulture?"

"Righteo. Treatment varies from pony to pony, but I think I've got this." Pinkie inhaled deeply, screwed up her eyes, leaned close to Twilight and--"ThereIsNoLogicalBasisForMagicInThisWorldSoIt'sAllFantasy!"

Instantly Twilight's expression morphed from shocked terror to affronted anger. "Pinkie, how could you say that?!"

"Passing air from my lungs through my throat where it's vibrated by my vocal cords and finally out the shaped passage created by my tongue and teeth and lips, that's how!"

"Well... well yes, but--"

"It's really basic pony anatomy, Twilight!" Pinkie ruffled Twilight's mane. "You're so silly sometimes."

The violet pony pushed her hoof off and glowered at her, using her magic to brush her mane back into its usual precisely groomed shape.  "Pinkie, do you know how frustrating it is when you say things like that? You're obviously intelligent, but you're just so--so--random!"

Pinkie Pie tut-tutted in a mildly disapproving manner. "Twilight Sparkle, while you may like the high society of scholarly research and professors debating the semantics of a publication two decades old, some of us prefer to work in the field with volatile elements that can lead to fascinating new discoveries on a nearly daily basis."

"...Are..." Twilight stared at her. "Are you saying you deliberately choose to be random?!"

"Nope! But yes. Well, kinda." Pinkie waggled a hoof. "It's partially choice, but mostly a result of my brain being wired weird. After I got my cutie mark I kinda figured 'I'm crazy, why not cultivate it?' and yeah, that's pretty much my modus operandi."

"I--I... I can see how that could work, I guess," Twilight reluctantly admitted. "It's just a bit strange for me to contemplate."

"Is it as strange as what's going to come through that door in ten seconds?"

"Actually, I'm not sure strangeness is a quantity so much as a descriptive quality which--"

The door to the cart opened, and in danced a gray mare with a purple treble clef. Her eyes were totally shut as she shuffled through on her rear legs, forehooves leaping across her whole body in rhythm with the swing of her tail and the beat of her head. The white unicorn behind her bopped her own head along as she pushed the record-spinning device she was operating along, shifting a beat whenever the gray pony got too close to one of the chairs. Her horn lit up, and the gray pony twirled through the door on the other end of the aisle.

Of the four ponyvillians, only Twilight stared as the pair disappeared into the next cart.

"....WHAT IN THE HAY WAS THAT?!"

Rarity glanced up from her magazine, giving Twilight an appraising look. "You've never been on a train to Manehattan, have you darling?"

"W-Well no, but--That was, that was a top level cellist whipping around like some rave-theater fanatic!"

Applejack laughed, finally reminding everypony she was still there. "Heh, Ah remember mah first trip to Manehattan. There was this right impressive barbershop quartet, but midway through their song they broke out into heavy metal. And then the transvestites joined in--" She sighed fondly, leaning back into her seat. "Trust me, Twi, this ain't nothing."

"Really?! Because I had a vulture on my seat and there was an impromptu one-mare rave passing through, I don't see how this could possibly get any weirder!"

The cart door opened again and Twilight spun, her eyes shooting wide at who stepped in. "Finally! I thought I'd never find the right car--"

"DISCORD! How did you escape your statue?!"

Discord gave the four ponies glaring at him a confused look. "Escape my--? Oh! Oh, yes, I'm still trapped in stone in this time period aren't I?" He bowed to Twilight. "No need to fret, miss Sparkle, I haven't escaped yet. And I don't intend to--my wives would kill me if I interfered with causality."

"Wives?" Pinkie rose an eyebrow. "You're married?!"

"Five and a half wives, three and a half husbands, and the two who I just call spouses because the Equestrian language doesn't have the proper pronouns to accurately describe their gender." Discord stroked his beard. "At least, those are the ones still alive in the temporal frame I consider the present--"

"A half-wife and half-husband?" Rarity asked. "How, exactly does that work?"

"Oh, that one likes to switch."

"Reeeeeally?" Applejack seemed oddly interested. "How, exactly, does that work out?"

"Well you see--" Discord glanced at a wristwatch. "Oh! Look at that, I'm almost out of time. Twilight, I was supposed to deliver a message. In twenty chapters you should trust the black."

"...What?!"

"No clue what it means, but what the wife wants the wife gets." The spirit of chaos tipped a fruit-covered hat at the ponies. "Well, I best be off. Good luck to the lot of you!" And with a snap of his fingers he vanished.

After a moment, Rarity returned to reading her magazine. "Not the strangest thing I've seen on this train."