To Her Surprise

by Askesalsa

The Mentor

The following day on Pie Fields was like no day before. The smiles Pinkie Pie met at the breakfast table were wide as the horizon, accompanied by hearty greetings and cheerful laughter. What they ate was the same, and so was what they prepared for, but they ate in a currently unseen mood. Pinkie was ecstatic. She could hardly sit still in her chair, waving her arms around as she told her family of her experiences with Surprise, and they listened closely, joining together in laughter when told of the white pegasus’ antics, and joining together in jealous gasps when told of the party and the trip to the sky. Blinkamina and Inkamina would bounce around with Pinkie, but their little filly legs could never keep up with their big sister’s energy. When they finally lost all their energy, they would extend their hooves, craving for the sunrise dance to continue, and Pinkie and Clyde would pick them up and swing them about, all the while being watched and cheered for by a wet-eyed Sue Pie. The frozen morning was gone.

Though the sky was still dark and dull, though the earth was still dead and sad, and though the air was still dry and uncomfortable, there was no bad blood in the fields. Work was still hard, but they could cast around jokes and catch them with snorts and giggles, ignoring the painful sweat on their foreheads. Pinkie bounced around between the rocks, shaking the ache off of her back, never to let it settle in her spine. She hummed the cheery tone that Surprise had sung the day prior, and her sisters did their best to keep up with her energy.

But even with all the good feelings they shared, Pinkie would still not join the rest of the Pies for lunch. However, unlike before, this was not due to her wanting to escape her family. She simply had somewhere else to be, and her family had no intention of holding her back.

Sugarcube Corner sounded busy from the outside. As Pinkie reached its doorstep, she stopped up for a second and let her head fall back so she could take a good look at the swaying sign above the door. Her sunny smile broad and bright, she watched the piece of wood jive in the wind for several seconds, ending the long stare with a random giggle when she finally decided to open the door.

“Surprise!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, calling out the nature of her visit and her target’s name at the same time. Only when she had already closed the door did the lazy bell ring.

It hardly took a second before the kitchen sounded with the clanging of trays and glasses. Cup Cake’s voice called for her to wait, but the white lightning had no time to stop, darting out of the kitchen and straight for the pink filly. As always, Surprise’s intention was that of a predator, tackling her target and holding her in a helpless lock of the hooves. But this time, Pinkie was too fast for her.

“Surprise!” the filly shouted once again, her voice even happier as she countered the white mare midair. They fell to the floor, clutching tightly to each other as they rolled all the way back to the glass counter. It was pure luck that kept the glass from shattering when the back of the pegasus’ head banged into it. As the ending position of the roll, the pink filly sat up on the pegasus’ tummy, and the pegasus was leaning against the counter, rubbing the back of her head, both of them laughing to their hearts’ content.

“Welcome back, Pinkie,” Surprise said enthusiastically. She put her hoof on the filly’s back, rubbing it warm with fast paced movements. The ticklish sensation had Pinkie spasm like mad, running stretches in the air at the white mare’s sides. With all the good feelings, it took some time before Surprise noticed the completely new hairstyle of the young filly, the one that matched her own in every way but the color. “Wow, now that’s new.”

“You like it? You like it?” Pinkie Pie said excitedly, putting both hooves on top of her scalp. “I wanted it to be just like yours.”

Surprise’s cheeks reddened on a grinning face, showing a very distinct new color of the snow white face. Then a sudden flash of curiosity hit her, changing her expression in a split-second. Pinkie Pie tilted her head to the side, matching the white mare’s expression. A white hoof extended from her, touching and poking at the filly’s mane, and she tried to follow the movements from the top corners of her eyes.

“What’re you doing?” asked Pinkie Pie, rather amused by this strange behavior.

Surprise put her down, got up in the air and restarted her strange poking at the pink mane, now with two hooves. “Wow, it really is like mine.”

“Of course it is,” Pinkie said with a grimace that signified the obviousness of the pegasus’ statement. “Can’t you tell just by looking?”

“No, I mean it’s exactly like mine.” Reaching her hooves further to the side than a pony should be able to, Surprise stretched to a cupboard from which she extracted a pair of scissors. She then reached for the tip of her own mane with one hoof, readying the, for a pony impossible to use, scissors with the other while Pinkie Pie gasped when she realized what the curly haired mare would do. She moved to stop her, but it was too late; the white mare cut off a large lump of her own hair, only to smile at the shocked filly and with a cheerful voice say, “Here, take a look.”

Blinking rapidly, Pinkie looked at the yellow mane with astonishment. It was exactly as it was before, no sign of any hair having been cut off. A rather big lump had come off too, lying just beside the two, so the area from which it was cut should have been very noticeable. Yet there was no change whatsoever. Even though this was regarding Surprise, this still seemed too strange for Pinkie Pie to grasp immediately.

“How did you do that?” she asked curiously, pointing a hoof at the mane.

“I have no idea,” was Surprise’s answer as she stroked her mane from front to back. “It just does that. But what’s really weird is that your mane is exactly the same.”

This made Pinkie rather curious. She looked up from the top corners of their sockets and was just able to see the tip of her new hairdo. Clamping her hooves around the tip, she stretched it out as far as she could, and wordlessly asked the white mare to do the same with her mane. Surprise quickly got the hint, and in the blink of an eye she cut off a large lump of pink, giving it to Pinkie for her to inspect. It was definitely cut off. Moving her eyes back to the top of her head, she took another look at the tip of her mane. It was still there. Her mane had been cut off, yet it had not been cut off after all.

“How did I do that?” she reverted the question from Surprise to herself, completely stunned by the unnatural ability of her own mane.

“I have no idea,” Surprise answered again, carefree and clueless as always. “But isn’t it neat? We’re like sisters now.”

Pinkie Pie found herself rather confused with the moment. With a hoof she bopped the tip of her illogical mane back and forth. There was no questioning that it had acted just as regular hair did when her mother set it for her. She was even able to keep it straight while preparing for the party. Now, though it felt like regular hair, it was somehow unbendable, and for some reason she imagined the effects of a balloon being integrated in it.

“I just don’t get it,” she said with a sort of fascination in her voice. Her smile revealed that although she was more puzzled than ever, a sheer happiness filled her mind as she thought of how much like Surprise’s mane it was.

“Well, thinking about it will only give you a headache,” Surprise sniggered from the side. She leaned forward, bringing her eyes on level with Pinkie. “What I wanna know is why you suddenly changed your mane like that.”

The filly dropped every thought she had of her irregular mane, instead focusing with a sunny grin on the thing she finally had a chance to tell. Her body unwillingly began bouncing on the belly of the white mare, but she did not care to stop it. She simply let her voice ring high and happy as she bounced up and down, making a springy noise on the hard floor, “I got my cutie mark!”

“No way!” shouted Surprise, even more excited than the filly that earned it. She swiftly flew over to Pinkie’s side, her head nodding in tact with the bouncing as she studied the cutie mark with stars in her eyes. “Oh my Gosh, this is so awesome!”

“Isn’t it!?” Pinkie stopped her bouncing and leaned back on her hind legs, trying to reach the white mare that hovered above her. “I got it just this morning! I was throwing a party for my family when all of a sudden this tickly-wickly feeling started on my flank, but I didn’t know what it was until I was done dancing and-,”

She was interrupted when Surprise picked her off the ground. Holding her up in stretched hooves, the white mare looked straight into Pinkie’s eyes with pride streaming from her own purple wrapped pupils. Her voice hit an even higher note than usual. “We gotta show this to Cuppy! I bet she’ll be thrilled.”

“But I haven’t finished my story,” Pinkie said as she was shifted to the white mare’s chest.

“Oh, don’t worry, no way I’m gonna miss that,” Surprise replied as she darted over the counter and into the kitchen of Sugarcube Corner. “But such a story calls for lots and lots of snacks, don’t you think?”

This was a sort of logic Pinkie Pie could hardly argue against. Putting on a big smile, she nodded her head and said, “Sounds yummy.”

They blasted into the kitchen, and the sweet smell of cinnamon hit them hard when combined with the pressure of Surprise’s speed. Cup Cake was just about to pull out a batch of muffins from the oven, but the loud demeanor of Surprise’s and Pinkie Pie’s entrance made her lose her grip on her baked goods. With a loud gasp, her mouth opened and the muffins dropped to the floor, and the treats were launched in all directions from the impact on the tray when it hit the ground. It was pure luck that kept all of them from breaking into several parts. This luck, however, did not hold back the stern look in the light cerulean mare’s eyes that awoke when she got over the initial shock.

“Guess what, Cuppy,” Surprise said from the air with the filly hanging like a piñata under her foreleg. Though the baker’s eyes looked ready for the kill at that moment, Surprise did not falter from her regular irregular cheerfulness, and she kept talking as if she was completely oblivious regarding consequences of her surprising nature, “Pinkie Pie got her cutie mark!”

Suddenly, the two ponies were in the clear. This piece of information immediately removed Cup’s frown, switching it with an overly excited glow from her smile. Her rosy eyes shifted from pegasus to earth filly. With her hooves she pushed her own cheeks together and upwards, forcibly narrowing her eyes and forwarding her lips in a silly grimace with pure excitement. Meanwhile, Pinkie waved her hoof happily from the white pegasus’ side. It was impossible for her to compete with the excitement of these two mares of the bakery.

“Oh, Goodness,” Cup Cake exclaimed excitedly. “Congratulations Pinkie! That’s fantastic news.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Surprise answered in Pinkie’s place as she put the filly down. She rotated through the air and over to her light cerulean friend. “That’s totally what I thought when she told me! I was like ‘no way’ and then I was like ‘oh my Gosh, this is so awesome’ and I just thought we had to come tell you!”

Cup Cake ignored the crazy behavior of her white friend for the moment, instead focusing on her own excitement for the young filly. “I am so happy for you, dear. Now, how about I put out some cookies and you’ll tell us all about what happened.”

“Totally what I had in mind!” Surprise said, looking swiftly from one pony to the other, though the baker was still ignoring her as she trotted to one of the kitchen’s cupboards.

Pinkie sat laughing at the table. She had no idea how she would join the festivities of these two overly excited ponies. They were doing all the hard work of happiness for her. Therefore, she decided to watch for the moment, enjoying the show of the hyper-active white lightning and her motherly twisty-topped friend. She rocked the chair for a moment as she got comfortable on it, and smiled happily at the two of them, though they hardly noticed her, even if all the fuzz was about her.

A bowl of cookies were placed in the middle of the table with a bang so hard the cookies flew into the air and landed back in the bowl. Surprise circled the table a few times, seemingly for no reason, before gracefully landing flank first in the seat of the chair at Pinkie’s right. Cup Cake had on the other hoof calmed down a bit at this moment, though she still carried a toothy smirk of excitement as she sat down on the opposite side of Pinkie, elbows on the table and folding her hooves like a bridge she could rest her chin on.

“Now, tell us, Pinkie,” Cup Cake commanded sweetly.

“Yeah, don’t miss out anything,” Surprise cheerfully elaborated, quickly adding her needless, yet hilarious, quick speech. “Although, don’t tell us something that has nothing to do with it, unless you want to of course, and don’t tell us something you don’t want to, even if it has something to do with it, but tell us as much as you want as possible. Anyways, begin at the beginning and when you reach the end: Stop.”

Pinkie took a moment to laugh heartily at the white mare’s antics. She then took another to clear her throat. A third moment went with her eyeing the cookies before her, but she did not take one before a light cerulean hoof pushed it closer to her. Looking up, the pink filly saw a friendly smile on the baker’s face, and without hesitation she grabbed one of the chocolate chipped treats and stuffed it greedily in her mouth. With the mouth still half full she began her story, spitting out cookie crumbs at the start of it, “Well, I was working in the fields just like always, when…”

---

Pinkie was getting more and more visual by the minute, powered by her own enjoyment with telling her story. She waved her hooves frantically around, bounced back and forth on the wobbly chair with only a miracle keeping it from ever tipping over. Occasionally she jumped onto the floor, recreating the exact movements she did at that particularly point in the story. Surprise and Cup were eager listeners. While Cup Cake sniggered at the filly’s silliness every now and then, Surprise could hardly maintain her grip on the chair she sat on. She had to pin herself down with her hooves so as not to suddenly join the filly in the merriness.

When she neared the end of the story, Pinkie jumped back on her chair. She slowed down the tempo, feeling more and more emotional as she told the part about her mother. Visualizing that scene, the pink filly thought about how much she had missed from her family that she suddenly found because of a party. Her life had completely changed, and for the better at that. When she concluded, she looked up at the two ponies at the table, though her gaze mostly wandered to the area of the white mare. The every reason she was as she had become.

“Dear me,” Cup Cake said with a gentle tone, yet she seemed slightly concerned with her hoof at her mouth. “I never realized you had such problems with your parents. I just thought you were being a little rebellious.”

“She told me the day before yesterday and I told Firefly when she asked about her, but I never thought of telling you. Should I have done that? Sorry I didn’t do that, Cuppy.” Surprise answered nonchalantly as soon as Pinkie opened her mouth, and the filly giggled at it.

The baker did not seem as pleased with the interruption as the filly though, shooting her white friend a killer’s gaze. Surprise noticed, and she squeaked from an awkward grin in response. Making the motion of a zipper at her mouth, the pegasus told the baker that she could go on, and Cup did just so, “But I’m glad it all worked out for you in the end.”

“Thanks a bunch, Miss Cake,” replied Pinkie merrily. She reached out for the bowl before her only to realize that there were no cookies left.

“But that weird rainbow explosion was certainly something, wasn’t it?” continued Cup Cake. “They say it was visible from all across Equestria.” She stopped and took a good look at Pinkie’s mane, the sight of which gave her a silly smirk. “And to think it was violent enough to change your mane like that. Though I must say, it really suits you, dear.”

“Thanks again,” Pinkie said, beaming with pride over her new hairdo.

Surprise jumped off her chair, rocking the table and everything on it when she flew into the air. She splendidly slithered around like a serpent of the ether, and flew back down to the filly, taking another look at the cutie mark. “And I can’t believe how amazing your cutie mark is.” She put a hoof to her chin and looked to the ceiling. “But I can’t shake off that feeling that I’ve seen it before.”

“Well, duh,” Pinkie Pie said with an amused expression, stretching the sarcastic tone. “That’s because it’s like yours.”

The white mare raised her hind leg and looked over her shoulder as much as possible. A light came over her, and she rolled her eyes while giggling at her own silliness. “Oh yeah, so it is.”

“I can’t believe you don’t even remember your own cutie mark,” Pinkie teased through a burst of laughter.

“Hey, don’t blame me,” Surprise joined in on the laughing. “I’m probably the one who gets to see it the least. It’s on my butt after all, and I don’t have eyes there.” She gasped loudly and jumped into the air. “But wouldn’t it be amazing if I had? Then I could see everything behind me, although I probably wouldn’t want a nose back there.”

“I think we’re getting off topic,” Cup Cake said from across the table. She was doing her best to keep from bursting into laughter, her grin trembling at her cheeks. She got off her flank, picked up the empty bowl of cookies with her teeth and spat a bit as she spoke with her mouth full, “Anyways, I really should get back to the shop. Who knows what’s been going on in there while we were talking? I’ll leave you two alone.”

“Would you like any help, Miss Cake?” Pinkie asked politely, her hooves clamped together at the table and a halo appearing above her head.

But the baker refused. “No, dearie, it’s fine, but thank you for asking. Just promise me you won’t wreak too much havoc, ok?”

“We will” Surprise replied with a comical salute. When Cup left the room, the white pegasus turned around and smiled at the filly at the table. “So what’d you wanna do?”

Pinkie was glad that Cup Cake had turned down her offer, and even though she liked the light cerulean pony a lot, she was glad she left. This way she was able to be alone with Surprise. This way she could focus all of her attention to the pony she admired. She stared silently for a while at the white mare before her, long enough for Surprise to get a little confused. She even looked behind her back to see what it was the filly’s eyes had locked upon.

When an awkward amount of time had passed, Surprise let a single syllable of a laugh out, and her smile turned towards one side of her face, forcing one of her eyes to narrow as she said, “What’s up, Pinkie?”

Pinkie did not falter from her stargazing. But she did realize that she had been silent for longer than she had meant to. It was not as if she was silent just to be silent though. She was just building up her voice to let her words out probably. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Surprise asked puzzledly. “Did I do something good?”

Seconds did not pass before the white pegasus was tackled out of the air by a filly-sized pink blur. The small pink hooves locked tightly around the white waist, crossing each other on the back. She pushed her head deep into the white coat, smiling as wide as she had learned these past few days. They hammered onto the floor with quite a bit of force, but no sound of pain was uttered from either of them, though the hug had definitely surprised Surprise a little more than she was used to. Yet Pinkie did not ease her grip. She happily tightened with all her strength, hanging on as if her life depended on it.

“For everything,” Pinkie said lowly from the belly she clutched to. “It’s all thanks to you.”

“What that you got your cutie mark?” asked a confused mare.

Pinkie retracted from the comfort of Surprise’s belly, positioning herself on her flank between two white legs. She looked up with sparkly eyes and an admiring smile, her gaze catching the ponderous signals of the white mare’s blinking eyelids. “No, everything,” she continued with a sweet note, trembling with sheer bliss. “I was so alone before. I never even knew how lucky I was to have my family. All I could see was those hoof-darn clouds, and they made my family seem much grayer than they actually were. But because of you, I could throw a huge party for them and find out how much I love them.”

“But I thought that rainbow explosion made you throw that party,” Surprise said from a smiling face, though she had one puzzled eyebrow raised still.

“That was just a trigger,” Pinkie replied, shaking her head. “If you hadn’t told me those things in the sky, I wouldn’t even have thought about how I could make everypony else smile. I probably wouldn’t even have smiled myself.”

“I think you’re exaggerating a bit there, Pinkie,” Surprise laughed. Pinkie took a careful step forwards to convince the white mare otherwise, but as soon as she stretched her head and opened her mouth to speak, a white hoof lightly touched her forehead. It stroked along her mane, pushing the curly pink hair along before it stopped at the back of her head. Surprise’s smile had a sudden calm aura surrounding it. She seemed genuinely pleased as she looked the filly deep in the eyes and said, “But thanks.”

Pinkie returned the smile immediately. Stepping back, she let her emotional tension escape with a quick breath. Surprise was able to get up now, and she cast a long shadow over the pink filly as she slowly did so. When on all four hooves, Pinkie looked up at her once more, noticing how her white coat seemed to shine with the light from the sun in the window. A thought ran through her pink head, and she vaguely put her curiosity into words, tilting her head as she did, “I just don’t understand how you knew?”

Surprise gave her another curious look. “What you mean?”

“Well,” Pinkie began, wetting her lips in thought before going on. “It’s like you’ve known exactly what to do ever since you met me. You knew how to make me smile, you knew what I was thinking, you even knew how to make my family smile even though you’ve never met them. How’d you do that?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Surprise said carefree and happy. She dropped her flank to the floor, getting comfortable with a loud ‘thump’ on the hard wood. “I told you that there’s nowhere the sun can’t shine, right? Well, even though that may seem obvious to some ponies, you really have to have lived in the shadows before you can realize that.”

This answer was hardly anything but confusing to Pinkie, so she pressed on with a puzzled, “Huh?”

“Remember that story I told you the other day that I’d tell you another day?” Surprise said with a glimmer in her eyes. “Well, this is another day isn’t it? And wouldn’t it be great with two cutie mark stories in one day, huh?”

Pinkie shone with excitement. Without a word or a moment of hesitation, she rushed for a pillow on the chair. The afterimage she left behind was still visible when she came back. She planted her flank and got comfortable, straightened her back and locked her face in an overly excited grin. Somehow, she had even acquired a bag of popcorn between her hooves, though she was far too busy being excited to give this any further thought.

“I think I was a little older than you, Pinkie,” Surprise started, looking to the ceiling as she searched her mind for the memories of her foalhood. “My dad was a thunder researcher in Cloudsdale. In fact, he was probably the most thunderrific thunder researcher ever. But because of his work, we were forced to live outside the city. Our house was made of the same kind of clouds that hang above your home, and just like with you, we had to keep them around all the time. Well, I said I didn’t live in the sun, but I did. What I meant was that I never really got to smile.” Her face had gotten somewhat serious now, though her smile was still present. “I didn’t have any friends. Everypony was afraid of my home because of all the thunder and lightning that my dad studied there, so they would never visit me. Some of them even bullied me for living there. It was horrible. I was so lonely. I had my dad, but we didn’t really get along that well.”

“Why not?” Pinkie asked, too absorbed in the story to notice how she was interrupting.

“Because,” Surprise went on with a low voice. “I’m kind of ashamed of it, but I was afraid of him as well. He never smiled, he was always buried in his research and he always had this stern look in his eyes, like he was made of stone or something. But then one day when I was out flying, something happened. My dad set off one of the nearby thunderclouds, but he accidentally gave it too much of a push and made it shoot out a little lightning. It almost hit me, and it was the biggest shock I ever had. But you know what I did?”

Pinkie shook her head. “What’d you do?”

“I laughed,” she laughed. “Isn’t it strange? I was laughing even though it scared me like that. The way it surprised me somehow made my heart race super-fast. I even wondered if it was able to do the same with my dad. So what I did was: I took one of the clouds, waited ‘til it got dark, and when my dad went to bed I snuck it in and gave it one big buck above him to make it crack. It was so funny! He literally fell out of his bed, and I couldn’t stop laughing about how funny it looked. But what was really great was that he actually started laughing with me. He was actually laughing at the prank I pulled on him. It was the first time I had ever seen my dad laugh, and it was the first time we had ever had so much fun together. That’s when I got my cutie mark. I found out my special talent was to surprise ponies and make them laugh. And I also learned something really important that day.”

“What was that?” Pinkie asked, hooves crossed and leaning forward with a dumbfounded expression.

Surprise widened her smile and leaned down. She was only inches away from Pinkie. Their eyes were on level, and close enough for them to be able to see their own reflection in the deep blackness of each other’s pupils. The voice she spoke with was firm and gentle, determined to get the message across to the pink filly before her, “I learned that everypony, no matter how dull and grim they may seem, likes to laugh. And that’s where ponies like us come in.”

Pinkie retracted her head a little, raising a brow in confusion. “Like us?”

“If you’re used to laughing you kind of take it for granted, don’t you think?” Surprise asked with a wink. She stood back up and looked out the window, the light of the sun reflected in the fur on her face. But even though she should be blinded by such light, the white mare did not look away, her gaze wandering the distance of the horizon. “Ponies like us know what it’s like not to live in the sun. We know how lonely it can be, so when we finally laugh, we laugh harder than anypony else. And more than that: We want everypony to laugh with us. Every time we see somepony frown we’re reminded of the loneliness, and we want to make them smile and feel the same happiness we felt the first time around.”

Pinkie Pie was left speechless on the floor. Everything about Surprise’s personality suddenly made sense to her. It made sense why she was always so hyper and happy, how she always knew what was on Pinkie’s mind and why she had taken such interest in her. They were practically the same. But the difference was that Surprise had fully matured. Though she cast aside all laws of physics, she kept focus on what she felt was truly important. She had a mission in life, a purpose defined by her own desire and former pain. With wide eyes, Pinkie sat watching in silent lucidity. There was no doubt in the filly’s mind: This pony was her idol. What she wanted to become.

“Well, that was boring,” Surprise said all of a sudden, changing the atmosphere completely. Her face lit up using the energy that had been bottled up during the short time her story took to tell. She bounced over to Pinkie’s side, lifted a hoof as if to signal that she wanted to race the filly to nowhere in particular. “I hate getting so serious. It’s not at all what I’m about.”

“You’re not very good at staying serious either,” Pinkie laughed as she positioned herself in response to the white mare’s body signal.

“I don’t practice it a lot,” Surprise replied with a snigger. “Let’s go play somewhere, huh?”

Pinkie did not care that Surprise threw away the serious moment like that at all. It was the lenient nature of the pegasus that was the most attractive thing about her, and having fun and laughing was what her words were all about anyways. The filly beamed with excitement, balking happily with a mix of a neigh and a giggle emitting from her. “Yay,” she eagerly replied to her idol. When her front hooves landed on the floor, she gasped out an idea she just had for their playtime. “Oh! Oh! Can I see you do some more tricks?”

“Tricks?” replied Surprise, retracting her neck and raising an eyebrow. “Well, sure, I guess. But I’ve already shown you some of my best moves. If it’s tricks you want, you should see Firefly. She’s amazing when it comes to tricks.”

“But I wanna see you,” Pinkie said. She put on her best pout and puppy eyes in an attempt to make her fillyish charm do the convincing. “Can’t you do something?”

Surprise scratched her neck for a second, looking at the filly with disbelief. But it did not take long before the puppy eyes had their effect, and Surprise changed her expression to one of ponder. She looked up through the top corners of her eyes, forwarding her lower lip while rubbing her chin with a hoof. After a while she put the smile back on, and Pinkie leaned forward in anticipation with the results. “Well, I guess I could show you how to make lightning.”

“Lightning?” Pinkie gasped, rather surprised by this turn of event.

Surprise nodded. “Yeah, I told you, didn’t I?” She forwarded her chest, taking a proud stance. “I’m one of the best thunder pegasi. I did learn something from my dad, after all.”

This was all the convincement Pinkie needed. Her bounce of excitement began, making little squeaks with every hop. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I wanna see that!”

“Well, in that case,” Surprise said. She flew to the kitchen’s backdoor and beckoned the filly. “Come on. Let’s go make some thunder.”

Rushing out the backdoor, Surprise left only a blur of her shape and a trail of white smoke behind her. Pinkie immediately followed her, coughing a little from inhaling a bit of the smoke as she trotted along. When she came out the door, what she saw was less than impressive. There were a few trees, a couple of benches and a gravel path with a swing. Compared to the rest of Sugarcube Corner, this place seemed rather dull.

Pinkie took a look around, but Surprise was nowhere to be found. She narrowed her eyes, searching the bushes and shadows, but nothing reflected the light of the sun in a way that Surprise’s coat would. It was only after a few seconds that Pinkie realized that it was silly to look for the white mare at ground level. She would be in the sky if she wanted to make lightning. Looking up, Pinkie immediately caught sight of her white idol, who levitated just beside a little white cloud, almost camouflaged because of their matching colors. She was analyzing the white fluff, tilting her head from side to side as she looked over every inch of it.

“You wanna make lightning with that?” Pinkie asked from below. She was a little confused as to why Surprise would even consider that cloud. Thunderclouds were supposed to be dark and gray, yet this one was a cloud of blue skies and summer days.

But Surprise simply replied with a nod and a smirk. She stuck the tongue out the side of her mouth, putting on a focused expression as she stretched one hoof backwards. It looked like she wanted to punch the cloud. Closing one eye, she took aim, found the right spot, and punched the little cloud mercilessly. While Pinkie stared from beneath in confusion, the white pegasus stirred her hoof around inside it, seeming completely focused on the task before her. After a while she pulled out, flew a few feet back and crossed her hooves, looking satisfied with whatever she had done.

“What’d you do?” Pinkie asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief.

But Surprise simply waved a hoof at her. “Just wait.”

That she did. The filly sat down and waited. She never took her eyes off the cloud, not even for a second. With curiosity and wonder she waited for something to happen, but she was unsure what exactly to wait for. Then something changed in the white fluff on the sky: A loud noise of thunder made it vibrate. It began twisting and churning in the air, reshaping itself in its place. With a dropped jaw, Pinkie watched unblinkingly as the cloud slowly changed its color into a more dull and gray one. When it finally stopped moving, it had become completely dark, finally resembling a cloud of thunder.

“Yes,” Surprise said, making a motion of success with her hoof. She flew over to it and landed with all four legs on top of it. She looked down on the filly with a proud smile and a sense of accomplishment in her eyes. “So, what’d you think?”

Pinkie was left stunned below. Her pupils were vibrating in astonishment, and she had to fight to keep her tongue inside her wide open mouth. After a while, she finally snapped back to reality and asked, “How did you do that?”

“I told you I was a good thunder pegasus, didn’t I?” Surprise began with a giggle. “Well, it wasn’t easy. All clouds are pretty much the same, but if you put pressure on them in the right places they start to do this funny wibble-wobble thing and change into a different type of cloud. It’s normally something we do with machines, but if you’re good at it you can actually change them yourself. Neat, huh?”

Pinkie was even more stunned now than she was before. She got the entire explanation and pretty much the basics of what Surprise had done to the cloud. What was really weird was that Surprise actually explained what she did. No shrugging off the unnatural. No denying the facts of pegasi magic. Her lack of explaining apparently only reached as far as her own supernatural abilities. “Yeah, it’s amazing,” Pinkie said lowly, nodding as she did. She got up on her hooves and took a few steps forward while her smile widened, bringing herself back to the situation at hoof. “So, can you make lightning with that?”

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” replied Surprise, “Just step back and watch the goodies.”

Pinkie did as told and took a few steps back. They were talking lightning here, so being careful was probably the best idea. As soon as she was within a safe distance, Surprise waved at her to signal that she could take place. The white mare looked around, checking for other ponies and things she could damage before she set off into the air with a wing-paddled jump. She then crashed down onto the cloud, making the loudest thunder noise Pinkie had ever heard, followed by a long streak of flashy static electricity. The flash lit up the underside of the pegasus, giving her an almost god-like appearance. This was what it meant to be a thunder pegasus.

She continued to bounce for a minute or two, creating noise and lightshows with every hop. Pinkie sat with the widest of smiles below, leaning forward so as to properly enjoy what she saw. It was awe-inspiring and amazing. These wild forces of nature that had been tamed by a single pony, flashing before the filly like the lights at Surprise’s party. That was what it reminded Pinkie of: In both noise and light and the dancing on the cloud it was a party.

Surprise finally dropped from the cloud and landed just before Pinkie, whose eyes were still reflecting the blinding flashes she had been presented to. She struck a finishing pose, crossing both fore- and hind legs as she asked the filly, “So, what do you think?”

“That was amazing!” Pinkie loudly exclaimed, even though she did her best to keep her voice down. Her eyes moved back and forth between the cloud in the sky and the white mare before her. Her admiration level had just gone up a notch. She got up on her hooves and began skipping around the pegasus, recreating the flashes and explosions with her excited recap of Surprise’s show. “It was like: ‘Boom! Bang! Ka-pow!’ I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“Wow,” Surprise laughed. “Somepony likes thundershows, huh?”

“Are you kidding? I loved it!” Pinkie replied reaching her hooves to the sky as far as possible. She even managed to stand on a single leg, though she quickly lost her balance and tripped over. Landing on her back, she heard Surprise laugh even harder. She stayed that way on the ground for a moment, smiling admiringly at the cloud above her. That dark, noisy cloud that made the rainbow explosion seem almost silent. That dangerous cloud that hang freely in the sky. Her smile steadied upon her face with every breath she took as she thought of the nature of the cloud. In the end, she calmed down and sat up, asking Surprise, “But isn’t it dangerous?”

“What, making thunder?” Surprise asked, pointing at the dark fluff in the sky.

“Yeah,” Pinkie said, “I mean, it’s gotta be dangerous working with lightning, right?”

“Well, yeah, I guess it’s kinda dangerous,” Surprise said as if she had never thought about that possibility. She was scratching her mane for a moment before looking back at Pinkie with a confident wink. “But really, you just gotta be careful. If you worry about the danger too much, you’ll miss out on the fun. It’s scary, but I’ve learned to laugh at scary things.”

Pinkie smiled toothily and nodded. “My granny used to say that to me when I was little and she was alive: ‘Giggle at the ghosties’, she said.”

“You must’ve had a super granny, then,” said Surprise as she flew over to Pinkie. The filly could feel the flap of her wings when she landed before her, and she smiled to see the warm look she got from the pony, whose mane looked like a halo in the sun. “So, what you wanna do next?”

Pinkie blinked blankly a few times. “I don’t know. Is there something else you can show me?”

“Well, I could show you things,” Surprise answered. “But isn’t it boring to just watch me all the time? Isn’t there something you wanna play or something?”

The white mare let her body fall on the ground swiftly enough to make a muffled sound as her tummy came in contact with the earth. She stared with anticipation at the pink filly, her eyes not moving any more than the occasional dryness-preventing blinking. But Pinkie was unsure how to respond. Though she searched her mind, she really could not find anything that she wanted to do. It struck her that she in fact did not know much of what there was to be done. Every game she had played on the farm in the past had been pretty much solo. She had no idea how to play. In the end, all she could do was shrug her shoulders and shake her head in response.

“Ok, then I’ll decide,” Surprise said. She looked up in thought, rolling her tongue in an open mouth. This seemed unnecessary to the thought process, but had a fun effect, which properly was her intention all along. Still, she did not have to think for long before the candle of clarity appeared above her head. “How about we play hopscotch?”

“Hopscotch?” Pinkie asked, tilting her head to the side.

The pegasus jumped to the air with a surprised gasp. “You’ve never played hopscotch!?”

The filly did not answer with words, but instead a quick shake of the head, and a smile that knew where this conversation was going.

“Well, we gotta fix that,” Surprise declared with an almost devious grin. “What else don’t you know? Pin the tail on the pony? Hide n’ seek? Catch? Bungee Jumping?”

“Bungee jumping?” Pinkie asked, finding the sound of that activity particularly fun and intriguing.

But Surprise laughed and smacked her own forehead with a hoof. “Maybe you’re a little young for that one yet.”

With that said, she grabbed the filly by the hoof, and with one strong pull dragged her along into the air. They blasted off, away from Sugarcube Corner and towards what to Pinkie was unknown. But she did not care. She let herself pull through the lung-filling blue and to wherever Surprise was taking her. Knowing the white mare, it had to be good.

“Let’s start with ‘hide n’ seek’,” the pegasus shouted to the filly in her hoof. “But I gotta tell you one thing, filly.”

Pinkie looked curiously at the pegasus’ face, though she could only see the side with her cheek. The way her mouth corner was present on it, however, made it obvious that she was grinning from ear to ear.

“I got a lot of things to teach you.” She moved her smiling face to the side, showing Pinkie one eye and half of her toothy grin. “So you’d better come around as often as possible so we can play, ok?”

Pinkie could not help but feel her stomach tickle from these words. Beaming with utter happiness, she nodded a single time and exclaimed in contest with the pressure of the air: “I will!”

Comments

[videogamehunter]

This story makes feel so warm inside. I'm actually really liking this story.

[Csquared08]

So why is there a Sad tag...?