Twilight Sparkle awoke with her head resting on Pinkie Pie’s poofy tail.
“Ugh, what happened?” she groaned. “I had this terrible dream that we got locked inside the Royal Canterlot Bank’s safety-deposit box vault.” A quick look around her revealed to Twilight that her dream was, in fact, reality.
“Oh, sweet Celestia.” The sound of a page flipping garnered her attention. Pinkie had a small pair of reading glasses on, likely pulled from her stored items, and was nose-deep in the second of Starswirl’s Eight Lost Tomes.
“Pinkie?” Twilight said. Pinkie turned around,
“Oh, Twilight! You’re up! How’d you like my tail pillow?” She fluffed her tail with her hooves.
“Uh, great, I guess. How long was I out?” Twilight asked.
“About fifteen minutes,” Pinkie replied.
“And you’re already halfway through Starswirl’s Second Tome?”
“No, silly! I just started with the second one! You know the saying: first is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the hairy chest! Though I guess that would make the third pony normal since we all have hairy chests. Who would make a saying like that? Is there some place where there are ponies without hair on their chests? Or maybe there’s a place full of hairless apes!” Pinkie Pie continued to ramble on an increasingly nonsensical tangent. This was a cue for Twilight to temporarily tune her out and begin assessing her situation.
She looked all around her. Three of the four vertical walls were covered in hundreds of safety-deposit boxes of varying sizes. Behind those was several feet of magic-nullifying thaumaturgium, the metal named for its resistance to magic and magical properties. The fourth wall held the day gate and vault door. While the timed locking and unlocking spell ran through them on magic conductors, they were also protected by thick sheathes and layers of thaumaturgium. The vault’s ceiling was intricately painted and ornately decorated with hoof-crafted tiles and gold leaf around the edges. This façade only covered yet more impenetrable thaumaturgium. The marble tile floor was the same. Four lanterns with magic flames in them were on each corner of the vault, providing a fair amount of light despite the vault being windowless. With so much material between the two ponies and the outside, the vault was also soundproof. Not even Pinkie’s megaphone would make them audible, even if there were somepony still in the bank. Twilight sat down and sighed.
“I guess we are stuck in here all night,” she said. Pinkie, piqued by her friends sounds of dejection, finally ended her monologue.
“Oh, that’s all right, Twilight. That means we can spend a lot of time together! You know, between the six of us, you and I are the ones who are together the least.”
“Really?” Twilight asked, “How do you know that?”
“I have a chart.” Pinkie produced a scroll of parchment with detailed graphs and charts on how much time each of the Mane 6 spent together, in every possible group combination. The information had been gathered since the day after they defeated Nightmare Moon.
“Wow, I guess it’s true. But how do you get the data on the pairs or groups that don’t include you? You’re not there to record it.”
“I’ve got to extrapolate it from observations and primary sources. I’m around town a lot and I know everypony in Ponyville. That means I can pretty much keep track of you girls without much effort.” Pinkie crossed her hooves and nodded, pleased with herself.
“That would be really creepy if I didn’t know you’re only looking out for us,” Twilight chuckled. Pinkie’s face changed to a worried expression,
“I’m not being too nosy, am I?”
“Not at all, Pinkie,” Twilight put a reassuring hoof on her friend’s shoulder, “You’re a mystery to a lot of ponies. We’ve just come to accept that.”
“But what if I don’t want to be a mystery?” Pinkie snapped suddenly, taking Twilight aback. “It’s always ‘That’s just Pinkie Pie,’ or ‘You’re so random,’ or ‘I’ll never understand that mare!’ I know ponies aren’t trying to be mean, but it hurts that the way everypony knows me is that they don’t know me.”
“I… Pinkie, I… I don’t…” Twilight stammered. This outpouring of emotion was rather impromptu, and quite uncharacteristic of Pinkie. Or was it? Twilight realized that the pink earth pony was right. She called Pinkie one of her best friends. They’d been on life-changing, harrowing adventures together. They’ve lived in the same town for years now. Just about all Twilight knew about Pinkie, though, was that she was good at planning parties, could bake very well, was bubbly and hyperactive, and… that was it. Sure, there was a lot more Pinkie than just that, but Twilight had learned to dismiss anything unusual Pinkie said or did to Pinkie Pie, well, being Pinkie Pie. She had no idea what being Pinkie Pie meant, though.
Twilight thought about asking Pinkie to tell her all about herself. Pinkie would oblige, of course, probably in thousands more words than necessary, but Twilight knew that just hearing words wouldn’t let her get to know her best friend.
“I’m sorry, Twilight. That was uncalled for. Sometimes my feelings just pop out of me like a confetti cannon!” Pinkie tried to muster a laugh but it was rather pitiful. Then, she was surprised by the feeling of two hooves surrounding her.
“It’s okay, Pinkie. I promise that starting now I’ll be the first friend in Ponyville to get to know the real you. After all this time, I owe you that much.” Twilight tilted her head and smiled. Just as quickly as the sadness had appeared on Pinkie’s face, it flushed away and a huge, toothy grin replaced it.
“Woo hoo!” Pinkie cheered. She jumped all around, bouncing like a pinball off the walls, the floor, and somehow the ceiling, too. “I’ll tell you what, Twilight: I’ve made more friends than I can count in all my years—”
“You’re only twenty-one.”
“But I’ve never made a friend twice.” Pinkie hugged Twilight.
“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any games stored away in your safety-deposit box, do you? If we’re going to be trapped here until morning we may as well have some fun, right?” Twilight asked.
“You read my mind!” Pinkie zipped into her box and returned half a second later with a stack of board games. “Which one do you want? Word Tiles? Word Tiles Junior? Sweets Nation? Predicament? Adult Twister?” Pinkie waggled her eyebrows at the last one.
“Uh, what’s in ‘Adult Twister’?” Twilight asked cautiously. Pinkie gave a sly grin,
“I can’t tell you, this story’s rated Everyone!”
“Ugh, never mind. Let’s start a game of Word Tiles.” Twilight magicked the game’s box over to the table in the center of the vault, shifted the Tomes to make room, and set the game up in a matter of seconds.
Pinkie, with a particularly good opening set, began by spelling C-A-T-H-A-R-S-I-S, occupying a double-letter and triple-word score space.
“Wow. Good move,” Twilight said. She looked up at Pinkie, who was staring at her with expectant eyes. In a moment of nervousness, her own gaze flitted back to the board, where the word that was just spelled out clicked in her mind.
“Oh. OH. We’re doing this now, aren’t we?” Pinkie nodded so fast it looked like her mane might fly off.
“So I guess I should start by asking: why do you think we don’t hang out much?” Twilight posited as she built D-I-A-L-O-G-U-E off of Pinkie’s word.
“I’m not sure,” Pinkie tapped her chin, simultaneously in thought of Twilight’s question and what word to play next. “I mean, it’s not like I avoid spending time with you.”
“Same here,” Twilight agreed, “But your data doesn’t lie. We’re simply not alone together much.”
Pinkie played G-U-E-S-S.
“Do you think it’s because we don’t have much in common? I don’t think we’re that different.”
Twilight laid down U-N-S-U-R-E.
“Really? I don’t know the first thing about organizing a party. That’s why I brought you to get that thing for Moondancer together, remember?”
“Yeah, but you do know a thing about organizing other things. Between the two of us, we are a couple of pretty put-together ponies.” Pinkie produced F-R-I-E-N-D. Twilight gave the earth pony a quizzical look.
“No offense, but ‘step-by-step’ isn’t how I imagine your brain working,” Twilight said. Pinkie rolled her eyes,
“That’s what we’re trying to change here, remember? Believe it or not, I bet I have just as much of a scientific mind as you do, miss smarty pants.”
“Sorry. I guess I’m just having a bit of a hard time shifting my mind’s picture of you… This isn’t going very well, is it?” Twilight looked dejected.
“Well, think of it this way, Twilight: Remember how I answered your question about how I got the data for my friend chart?” Pinkie said. Twilight’s eyes grew wide with realization,
“You said it just like a seasoned scientist would!”
“Of course, silly! That’s because I am a seasoned scientist! And boy, am I spiiiiiiiiiicy!” Pinkie licked her hoof and placed it on her rump, where it inexplicably made a sizzling sound. “And did you notice how you didn’t think using those words or going through that work was weird for me? Those are the kinds of conversations I want with ponies—with you!”
“Pinkie… I can’t believe we had you pegged all wrong for so long. When we get back, I’ll be sure to tell the others—”
“No, Twilight. I want the other girls to find the real me the same way you did.”
“By getting locked in a bank vault with them?”
“By making an effort to read into me. Nice joke, though. Very Pinkie.”
“I learn quickly,” Twilight winked.
For the next couple hours, Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle chatted in-depth and powered through several games of Word Tiles, the majority of which Pinkie won. They talked about shindigs and science and mascarpone and magic. Twilight was exhilarated that she had another intellectual mind to pal around with, and Pinkie was relieved that someone finally understood the real her. Did this mean that Pinkie would no longer be an eclectic, hyperactive, and utterly unpredictable party pony? Absolutely not. That much is the essence of the Element of Laughter herself, but now at least one of her friends knew that there was so much more to her.