Lazy Ponyville mornings were meant to be peaceful. With all the chores finished the night before, all the studying set aside to be finished in the evening, all the tasks and stresses waiting in the wings for their proper time, it should have been a calm, relaxed Twilight who joined Pinkie Pie in Sugar Cube Corner to spend some quality time together.
But Twilight was not relaxed. As she had walked into the bakery, she had seen Pinkie sitting alone in a corner, having breakfast: an apple, an orange peel bagel... and a cup of coffee. In fact, Twilight had walked in just as Pinkie was taking a long sip from her cup.
There wasn't much that could get Twilight more anxious than that.
She waved to catch Pinkie's attention and hurried over to the table. “Are you alright?” she asked.
“Course I am!” Pinkie replied. “Why wouldn't I be?”
Twilight tried to fake a shrug. “No reason.”
“Is it the bagel?” Pinkie held it up, sniffed it, turned it about in her hooves. “You're right. It's not my favorite. The Cakes made up a bunch of them this morning, so I thought I'd be polite and try it.”
“No, no, it's nothing,” Twilight said. She craned her head to see how much of the coffee had been consumed.
Pinkie followed Twilight's gaze, and she laughed. “Oh! You meant the coffee!”
Taking Pinkie's humor as a good sign, Twilight smiled and replied, “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Mrs. Cake brews it up for me. I have it every morning!” Pinkie swirled the cup and offered it to Twilight, saying, “Wanna try it?”
“Uhh... depends. Is it decaf?”
“No, silly! Light roast, plus milk and six sugar cubes! Now, isn't that an odd number?” Pinkie laughed at her little joke, but after a moment, she added, “...Why? Is that a problem?”
“I don't know, Pinkie,” Twilight said. “The last thing we need is for you to be even more hyper than you already are!”
Pinkie set the coffee down and looked away towards the counter. “Would you have taken my coffee from me, Twilight?” she asked.
Twilight stopped smiling. “Come again?”
“Would you have stolen my drink from me if you'd walked in half a second earlier?” Pinkie asked again.
The question carried a strange edge which Twilight had never heard from Pinkie before. “I... I mean, you have to understand--”
“Well, of course I understand,” said Pinkie. “You said it yourself. I'd be completely out of control if coffee increased how hyper I was. What I don't understand is how you could think that was in the realm of possibility.”
“It seemed perfectly logical at the time...” Twilight said. She was babbling, like she'd been caught cheating by a teacher (something she'd never done, by the way).
Pinkie took another sip, then set it to the side with the rest of her food. “It seemed more logical to you that coffee would turn me insane than the idea that my hyperness is all an act?”
“It... it what?”
“I would have thought you of all ponies would have noticed that by now,” Pinkie said. “Everything I do is an act. The parties, the cheerfulness, the bouncing, the singing... all of it carefully constructed to match how other ponies expect to see me.”
Twilight shook her head. “That doesn't make any sense. You're Pinkie Pie; partying is in your blood! It's who you are!”
Pinkie laughed at that. “Don't you remember my sister Maud? That's my blood. I can be just as much that as anything else.” She waved a hoof over her face, and her smile disappeared. “The science of rocks is actually quite fascinating when you begin to look at them at the atomic level. The best rocks grow in fields that are regularly rotated to maintain even crystal deposition,” she intoned. Word for word, it was an eerily perfect imitation of Maud.
Twilight, for her part, latched onto that. “So is that the real you, then? And the cheerful Pinkie is the mask?”
“Of course not.” She waved her hoof the other way, and her face glowed with a smile. “This is me, Twilight! Your old, lovable pal Pinkie!” She pointed away, and her smile changed. “Darling, you simply must try on this chiffon cloak. It's to die for!” She pointed another direction, and her smile turned to a sneer. “Yeah, nopony's faster than Pinkie Pie! I'm the fastest runner in Ponyville!” Finally, she pointed directly at Twilight. “I, Professor Pie, suggest that you read over the chapter on magical resonance patterns again; your technique is getting quite rusty.”
Twilight smacked Pinkie's hoof to the side. “Stop that!” she cried out. “What are you trying to prove?”
“Just that I could be anything I wanted to be.” She picked up her apple, spun it on the tip of her hoof, then took a bite out of it. “I choose to be who I am. If I choose to be hyper, that's part of the show. And if I choose to drink coffee, well, that's my prerogative.”
“Then...” Twilight struggled to make sense of all this. “Then who is the real Pinkie Pie?”
“Who's the real Twilight Sparkle? Who's the real Rainbow Dash? You are who you appear to be. You're just as much of a construction as I am.” She shrugged and downed another swallow of coffee.
Twilight sat down and looked Pinkie in the eye. “You're deeper than you let on,” she said.
“Aren't we all.”
They sat there in silence, Twilight waiting for Pinkie to speak again, and Pinkie as mysteriously quiet as ever. They were interrupted by Mrs. Cake coming down the stairs with a tray of cinnamon rolls balanced on her back. “Oh, good morning, Twilight!” she said. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Oh! Right! Yes, a blueberry strudel and a cup of tea, please.”
“Oh, dear, I think we're out of tea, actually,” said Mrs. Cake. “Do you mind coffee? There's still some left over from the brew I made for Pinkie.”
“That'd be fine.”
“Pinkie, could you get those for her? I've got my hooves full at the moment.”
“Yep-eroony!” Pinkie replied. She bounced out of her seat and zipped over to the back room. In less than a second, she was back with what Twilight had ordered. “Here ya go, Twi! Cup of joe and a strudel-y-doodle! They're fresh out of the oven, well, other than those cinnamon rolls, but you get my drift!”
Twilight just stared back at Pinkie. “...No, actually. I don't get your drift at all.”
“Well, I guess I am pretty random after all. I'll catch you later, okay, Twilight? I've got a bunch of work to do.”
“O-Okay...” Twilight lifted her coffee cup with her magic (her resonance patterns were off, now that she thought about it) and stared into the quiet blackness. She looked up to catch Pinkie before she ducked into the back again. “Hey, Pinkie?”
“Yeah?”
“I'm... sorry about what I said earlier.”
“Hey, that's no big deal!” said Pinkie. “It was just a joke. I knew you were just playing.”
Twilight replied, “Well, if you ever want to talk... like we did back there... I'm here, all right? You don't have to pretend all the time.”
Pinkie stopped for a moment. “How do you know that that wasn't the pretending?” she asked. Then she winked and skipped away.
It was official, Twilight thought. She'd finally discovered something more anxiety-inducing than Pinkie drinking coffee. No, it was a thousand times worse: Pinkie was self-aware.
...Maybe.