Pinkie Pie let out a confetti-filled sigh of relief. Sweat flattened her mane against her back. Her party hat drooped like an overcooked carrot.
The party was finally starting to warm up again. It was touch and go for a while there, like spinning a bunch of plates on top of poles without letting any of them slow down or fall, only instead of crockery (that was a funny word, crockery, like crocodile, or crockpot) they were ponies, and instead of stopping them from falling she was breaking up arguments and stopping fights and solving friendship problems, and really it wasn’t that much like spinning plates anyway, it was a lot harder.
Pinkie Pie crawled under a lime-green canopy with All-Seeing Nightmare Eyes painted on it, picked up a pitcher of hard limeade punch with pickled carrots and pear slices in it, and settled into the grass under the table. Nopony else was grabbing a drink at this particular stand. She didn’t want anypony to think she was all partied out so early in the night, but the grass was cool, and soft, and tasty. She nibbled a little circle around herself and took several long, long gulps of limey-sweet punch.
At least this time she didn’t try to stop a race war from breaking out by singing. She’d learned her lesson then, no matter how cute and bouncy the outfit had been. (Rarity had insisted Big Mac wear it later for a Burlesque Show to benefit arts education in outlying Equestria. He’d stretched it out so much she could have used it for fishing later, except that she didn’t really like going fishing because it was more of a Pegasus thing, and some of the holes were big enough that the fish would just slip right through them.)
Before she knew it, Pinkie Pie found herself crunching up pear and carrots and sucking the ice cubes. The ground around her was bare. The night felt later and colder. She rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t have slept through the party, could she?
There was still lots of noise around her, laughing and shouting and small explosions. She still smelled lots of mixed drinks and fried food and smoke on the air. Either a very creative and fun-loving bunch of changelings had swept down, taken over Ponyville, and hurried to put up a pretense of normality so as to appear perfectly integrated to outside observers, or her party was still going along just fine. She’d just needed a little Pinkie-Pony power-nap.
She gave a gasp of fear and delight, poofed up her mane, and pretended she hadn’t been tired at all by bouncing around very fast. It was important to be happy and excited at a party. Everyone needed to know it was a good place to have fun, and you didn’t want to go to a party to feel sad, and seeing sad ponies was bound to make everypony sad, right? No problem at all, no siree, everything was Okey-Dokey Loki.
“Aah, a timber wolf!” She squealed. She bounced away, then scurried back. “Wait, you’re not really a timber wolf, are you? Of course not. I know you’re not a timber wolf but sometimes I like to play along and pretend to be scared because it’s fun to get scared sometimes. You know this isn’t a costume party, right? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with showing up in costume, some of my friends are wearing costumes, but you don’t have to come in costume like you do to a fancy masked ball where all the foods are really tiny things on sticks and there’s too much weird cheese and tiny green things and lots of slow slow dancing to slow slow music. How are you enjoying the party?”
“Um, good?” The figure said. He spoke like words cost diamonds, and moved like somepony who ate way too much paste after kissing a friendly bright-colored toad on the back and suddenly thought their skin was made of glass and their heart was about to turn into bees. Or maybe they were moving more like a cat burglar trying to steal a bunch of wind chimes and crystal bells in a house made of hay fries and rice paper.
“Are you new around here? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone like you around here, even though I can’t really see you but I can sort of make out your outline around the twigs and leaves, and you certainly seem bipedal, so maybe you’re a dragon or a minotaur? I only know one or two dragons, and you’re too tiny to be a big dragon and too short to be a sea serpent and too big to be Spike and anyway Spike wouldn’t be up this late but you’re too quiet for a minotaur, at least too quiet to be the only minotaur I know, although I would like to get to know more minotaurs because I love making new friends!” She gasped. There was something about that outline, something that reminded her of Saturday mornings, and toystore shelves, and busy conventions with really bad food. “You are new around here, aren’t you! That must mean you don’t have any friends here yet, or do you? Maybe you make friends really fast?”
The figure stared at her. The wind whistled. Not too far away, a gaggle of young gals got into a belching contest.
“I know Applejack,” the figure said. “Do you know anyone else who’s, um, new to town, and kind of strange? Maybe about my size and shape?”
“Well, there is my friend Reiko the h -mmph!” Pinkie Pie crammed a hoof into her mouth. She’d almost given away the identity of her human friend, before the big midnight reveal! That would ruin a surprise and possibly expose her to almost getting eaten alive, and that would really ruin her night and spoil a lot of appetites when there were so many delicious treats around. Also she really didn’t want her newest friend to die in horrible agony. It was so terrible when that happened. Agonizing death was one of the few things you couldn’t make fun, no matter how much you tried, so you just partied harder and harder and made as many new friends as you could and tried never to look back or think about the things that made you sad and never, ever, EVER break a Pinkie Promise. “Yeah, there’s a few strangers in town,” she said, deliberately avoiding eye contact and trying to sound cool.
“Look out!” somepony shouted.
The dry twigs were hit with a shower of sparks from a misfired firework. The stranger yelped and rolling on the ground, twigs cracking and falling away like icing on a badly-baked cookie. Pinkie Pie reached for something to douse the flames.
Smoke was followed by more fire, and the stranger started screaming. Pinkie Pie looked at the empty bottle of applejack in her hooves.
“Oops.” She hurried to grab the next non-alcoholic wet thing in reach. It turned out that seven-bean dip and savory mesquite mango-corn salsa had excellent fire-extinguishing capabilities.
The figure rose, smeared with condiments, the last of the protective camouflage gone. It was another human. At her party. Before the big reveal. Before she’d taken everyone out for rounds of competitive pie eating or armed her array of sticky toffee assault rifles.
The chill wind carried the scents of seasonings and sweat through the night air. A sea of horns rose up from the crowd.