//------------------------------//
// Chapter XIII 
// Story: Quantum Pink 
// by DigiDuncan 
//------------------------------//

	In one more final flash. Pinkie Pie arrived at her desired destination: Twilight's house. Twilight jumped at the sight of them, as she had previously been balled on the floor in terrible pain.
"What the hay happened to you?" asked Pinkie, shocked to see her friend's usual endurance crumbled.
Twilight stood upright and brushed herself off with a flinch. "Teleporting IV lines directly out of your veins is surprisingly painful," Twilight remarked with a false mask of neutrality. Spike and Pinkie Pie cringed at the thought.
"What matters right now is my continued exploration and analysis of the events currently unfolding, before they get to chaotic too control, if that is a possibility... and there's the root of our problem, isn't it?" Twilight paused for a moment. "We need to identify the type of situation we're dealing with before we can deal with it. My best guess currently is that it manifests as some sort of energy. This is easily demonstrated by the fact that Pinkie has the ability to move and manipulate matter. To do 'work', as it's referred to in physics, the formula requires energy, else it evaluates to zero. Whether that is kinetic energy, heat energy, mana energy, or something completely different, we need to identify it's type and source before we an make any further moves. Another advantage of this theory is that energy is, in practice, infinitely producible, so getting a sample from Pinkie would cough hopefully cough cause no harm or disrupt to her internal systems, or 'glitch power' as we've been calling it colloquially." Twilight gasped for air.
"But what would occur in a dimension where the speed of light was a negative value?" inquired Pinkie Pie, to Spike's disbelief.
"Well, the c value gets squared before it's evaluated. A negative times a negative is a positive, so you would still require positive amounts of energy." responded Twilight, unphased by the high-level question. Pinkie Pie thought for a moment.
"And in a dimension where c is equal to zero?"
"Oh Celestia I hadn't thought about that. If c was zero, light wouldn't move, as it would literally be a stationary object, and thus mass or energy couldn't traverse the spacial occupancy of the plane. It'd be a single frame of life, like a three-dimensional picture. You would phase in, but never out. You would die a statue in an infinite art piece."
"Oh. I'll avoid that..." Pinkie responded with a hint of worry.
"Don't be worried about that," Twilight remarked noticing her friend's tone. "The probability of that happening is literally infinity infinity to one." Twilight said with a tone of matter-of-faction. "Listen, I need to think this through. You relax and watch television down here, Spike and I are going to go have a chat. We all need to wind down after today. Spike will make something for dinner."
"Okay!" said Pinkie, reassured by her best gal-pal's facade of calmness. Twilight and Spike went up the stairs to Twilight's bedroom.
Twilight collapsed on the bed, spread-eagle with her left foreleg hanging of the edge.
"Oh sweet Luna this has been a long few days; not only that but I feel like we've made roughly zero progress!" she complained to Spike, the one living being who would listen to her continuing ons. A small pop was heard from downstairs. Before Twilight could even register the sensory input she received as noteworthy, Pinkie Pie shouted up to them.
"It's okay! My cutie mark is creating popcorn! Nothing to worry about!" Another few pops sounded from her flank, and the smell of artificial butter wafted up the stairs. Twilight sighed deeply.
"Spike, what time is it?" asked Twilight.
"Um..." Spike looked at his pocket watch. Where he kept said watch, Twilight had no idea. Maybe scales had pockets. She didn't particularly care at this point. "It's half-past thirty-one in the morning," said Spike, then realized what he said. "I think I've been around Pinkie a bit too much recently."