Panacea

by AugieDog

Diagnosis - I

Friendship Court kept regular hours: that was at the very top of Twilight's list. Every weekday morning from nine till eleven, then from two to four in the afternoon, and during the evening from seven till nine, she sat on her throne in her new castle and made herself available to help solve any and all friendship-related problems her fellow Equestrians might bring to her.

Appropriately enough, her friends pitched in as well, but since Twilight understood that they had their own lives, their own interests, and their own jobs, all she really asked of them was one two-hour session a week. That meant that most of the time, it was just her nodding to Spike and him announcing, "Friendship Court is now in session!" to an empty chamber before he settled into his assistant-throne beside her and selected one of the comics books he kept stacked there.

She usually took advantage of the quiet to catch up on her reading, too, but cases did come through now and again. Then she would use all the lessons she'd learned since arriving in Ponyville, bring in a friend to consult if one of them happened to be there or available, ask questions and talk to the parties involved in the dispute, and together, they would all find a way back to the harmony that was the birthright of every pony everywhere.

Still, this past week had been a slow one. Which was good, she kept telling herself. If no ponies were having friendship problems, then the world was working the way it should. So when the crystalline grandfather clock in the foyer chimed eleven on Thursday morning, Twilight looked up from volume thirty-seven of the Magical Compendium and reached over to nudge Spike, his wide eyes glued to whatever adventure the Power Ponies were galloping through. "I'm going to get some lunch," she told him.

Not looking up from the comic, he waved a claw. "Have fun."

"Fun?" A familiar voice burst through the room. "Did somepony say, 'fun'?"

Twilight almost didn't flinch anymore when Pinkie did this sort of thing. "Hi, Pinkie," she said, turning to see her friend bouncing on the cushion of the balloon-decorated throne directly across from hers. "If you're here for the morning session, it's pretty much done."

"That's OK." Pinkie kept bouncing, but her mane didn't seem quite as springy as usual, her words coming out with a plaintive tone Twilight very rarely heard from her. "I had some stuff I needed to think about this morning, but I didn't have anypony to help me think about it."

For half a second, Twilight wasn't sure how to respond to the idea of Pinkie thinking, but she pulled herself together quickly. "If there's anything I can do, Pinkie, all you have to do is ask."

"I knew it!" Pinkie leaped from her throne, confetti somehow scattering through the air around her. "'Cause you're the stuff I needed to think about, and the first and only thought I could squeeze outta my brain was, 'Hey! I should go ask Twilight if she thinks I should show her what I'm pretty sure I need to show her even if I'm pretty sure neither one of us is gonna like it very much when I show it to her!'"

It took Twilight another half-second to untangle Pinkie's sentence, but when she did, she couldn't keep her ears from folding. "You...you have something to show me that you don't think I'll like?"

"Wow!" A smile blossomed across Pinkie's face like a field of daisies at dawn. "That's just what I was gonna say! Gummy was right: I shoulda come to see you about this, like, eight or ten moons ago!"

"Oh, Pinkie!" Twilight pumped her wings and soared over the central dais to her friend's side. "I'm so sorry! I had no idea you'd been having any problems! And something that's been going on for so long?"

"Actually..." Pinkie's mane positively wilted, cascading around her shoulders like pink, over-cooked spaghetti. "It's been going on a lot longer than that." Her eyes shimmered, but then she was leaping forward, wrapping her front hooves around Twilight's neck, and pressing her suddenly damp face into Twilight's chest. "I'm so glad you got to be a princess! 'Cause now you're not just smart, but you're also maybe strong enough to—" Her voice cut off like somepony had flicked a switch, and she jumped back, all Pinkie Pie again. "So c'mon! I absolutely need to show you!"

"Whoa," Spike muttered behind her, and Twilight glanced over her shoulder to see him staring at them from his throne, the comic book drooping in his claws.

Twilight forced her ears up and gave him a smile that she hoped didn't look as phony as it felt. "Spike? You're in charge till I get back."

He blinked, sprang to his feet, and snapped out a salute. "You got it, Twilight!"

With a nod, she turned to Pinkie, but Pinkie was already bounding toward the throne room door. "I know you can help me, Twilight! I know it!"

Picking up her pace, she caught up with Pinkie just outside the castle's front door, the autumn morning air practically crackling as she breathed it in. It made her think of the Running of the Leaves two months ago and the way her new alicorn body had let her canter to an easy third-place finish just behind an out-of-breath Rainbow Dash and Applejack. So many changes she'd seen this past year...

At least Pinkie was back to being her regular self, hopping and skipping more than walking or trotting and calling out to everypony they passed: "Lily! Great to see your mom looking so much better when I stopped by yesterday! Hi, Matilda! Give Cranky a 'whootle-whootle-whoot' for me! Hey, Chickpea! You know if you oil those roller skate wheels, they'll go a whole lot faster? 'Cause they will!"

With smiles and waves, Twilight returned all the 'good morning's that came her way, but as much as she would've loved to pretend that she and Pinkie were just strolling through town toward Sugarcube Corner, she couldn't keep her stomach from tightening when she remembered the anguish she'd seen on Pinkie's face and the pain she'd heard in her voice. She refused to speculate about what might be wrong, though, and tightening her jaw, she vowed silently to do whatever she could to fix it.

At least the bakery didn't look different, but then Twilight couldn't imagine a situation where the big, cupcake-shaped building would ever appear ominous. The bell above the front door tinkled when Pinkie shouldered her way through, and behind the counter, Mr. Cake gave a grin and a wink. "Well, now, Pinkie! If I'd known you were going to bring the princess by, I would've cleaned the place up some!"

Immaculate wasn't a strong enough word for the interior of Sugarcube Corner, but Twilight knew this was Mr. Cake's way of joking around. Like the way he called her 'Princess' even after all the times she'd told him to call her 'Twilight.' Forcing a stern look onto her face, she summoned a quill and scroll from thin air. "Is this something I need to bring to the attention of the health inspector, Mr. Cake?"

He held up a hoof. "I swear to you, Princess: those lumps of green goo under the counter haven't moved since yesterday."

Twilight giggled, but the way Pinkie was just standing beside her and blinking made the giggle evaporate. "Well," Twilight finished, "keep an eye on them. Pinkie and I are just going to—" She touched Pinkie's shoulder as gently as she could. "Pinkie? Where are we going again?"

Pinkie started back almost as if Twilight had slapped her awake. "Upstairs!" she more yelped than said, then with some more blinking, she shook her head. "Upstairs," she repeated less explosively. "It...it shouldn't take too long."

Following her to the stairway, Twilight found the hair at the base of her mane rising with each step. Because Pinkie wasn't hopping anymore: in fact, her hoofs seemed to be dragging more and more the closer they got to the top. The trip down the little hallway to the door of Pinkie's room got slower and slower, Pinkie's head drooping lower and lower, until Twilight finally bent down to the nearly stationary Pinkie and murmured, "Would it be easier if you just told me about whatever this is, Pinkie, instead of showing me?"

"No," Pinkie said so quietly, Twilight had to bend further to hear her. "We hafta do it this way. Even if...even if you're gonna hate me forever after."

"What?" Twilight had to struggle not to shout. "Pinkie, I would never—!"

"Don't." Her whole body flexing, Pinkie stood, flowed sideways, and pressed a hoof to Twilight's lips. "Wait till you see." She jumped to her door, pushed it open, and slid through.

It took Twilight some effort to keep her wings from springing open in alarm. Hurrying forward, she reached the doorway just in time to see Pinkie march right up to the far wall of her bedroom and reach her front hoofs out to an empty spot to the right of a rainbow poster hanging there. Something clicked, and Twilight couldn't stop her wings flaring when that part of the wall folded open like a door to reveal a darkened corridor on the other side.

Even though it was an exterior wall.

"Pinkie?" she asked, the air humming around her horn with a sort of magic she'd never felt before.

"We can't stop now." Pinkie's mane deflated, and her face when she looked back made Twilight think of a dinner plate shattered across a floor. "Once the door's open, we hafta go through, me and whoever's with me. Those're the rules." She was shaking, Twilight could see now. "I...I'm so, so sorry about this, Twilight."

Setting her jaw again, Twilight moved across the room to Pinkie's side. "Whatever this is, Pinkie, we'll face it together."

A tiny smile flashed over Pinkie's snout. "It's just a door, Twilight. You've prob'bly seen one before. And a hallway. And some stairs going down after that. And then—" All trace of her smile vanished, and she started into the corridor. "Well, you'll see."

Comments

[Lurks-no-More]

Well, this is a nicely ominous opening!

[Bad Horse]

EDIT: Dammit, I meant for this comment to go on chapter 2.

You've got a real problem with the end of chapter 2. A horror story stirs up powerful emotions because it whips us in 2 directions at once: There is some horrible thing that we don't want to look at, but there is no way out; we must go through it. I mean we, the readers. The characters have to be forced to confront something horrible. The readers have to be forced too, but in a different way.

In this case, we know something horrible will happen in chapter 3. What is our motivation for turning the virtual page? To find out how Twilight will solve the problem. Which I'm pretty sure she will. So here, at the end of chapter 2, we're told that we're going to be introduced to some good pony and watch them be tortured, and if we suffer through that long enough, as a reward we'll get to see Twilight come up with some clever magical loophole.

That's not enough of a reward for me. I don't want to look. I don't know this pony yet and don't want to. A basic rule of fiction is that you make the audience care about a character first, then you give that character a problem. Here, you've told us some pony is going to be tortured before even introducing us to that pony. Well, gee, now I don't want to turn the page and meet that pony. I'm onto you.

A typical horror story--and there are exceptions, like "The Cask of Amontillado"--piles on suspense and mystery and human caring and then forces us to go through the horror to resolve it. Here, everything is already resolved. This is what we know:

- Pinkie has a terrible secret
- But Pinkie has a good reason for it
- Pinkie tortures innocent ponies
- She does this to bring joy to the rest of Equestria
- Celestia & co. agree that they should do this
- Pinkie will pick another innocent pony
- Pinkie will torture it
- Twilight thinks she might be able to solve the problem
- The other princesses think Twilight might solve the problem

This was all told us in the least-suspenseful order possible, as if you were trying to be kind to your readers and not cause them any worry,, but then you run into the end of chapter 2, where you need to push us through the torture, and you've got very little left to push with. Any other order would create more suspense. Like:

- Pinkie has a terrible secret
- Pinkie tortures innocent ponies
- Pinkie picks another innocent pony
- Pinkie tortures it
- Celestia is in on it
- Pinkie does this to bring joy to the rest of Equestria
- The other princesses think Twilight CAN'T solve the problem
- Twilight thinks she might be able to solve the problem

[AugieDog]

5560376

It sounds like:

The biggest problem might be that I don't read horror stories and have never written one before. So yeah, I'll definitely cop to going about the whole thing way too gingerly, and I didn't even think about the structural elements you bring up here.

To me, this is a story about Twilight taking Celestia's place as "The Princess" of Equestria. So my concern was introducing the problem, showing how Celestia has dealt with it, then contrasting that with how Twilight deals with it. The last couple paragraphs of chapter V are where I was heading with the whole thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if I got my through-line tangled on the way there...

Mike

[Csquared08]

Well that's not ominous at all

[PresentPerfect]

I think this is off to a good start!

[AugieDog]

5797804

This has now:

Been de-oops-ified. Thanks!

Mike

[Khym Chanur]

A guess of what's going on, before I read the next chapter: Pinkie is going to reveal to Twilight that they're fictional.