Overkill

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The smoke cleared. Several tons of metal grille shifted upwards as the shutters were winched. There was a drawn-out groan of rusting iron against titanium alloy, and a howl of enraged wind blasted through the corridor, driving the grey plumes into the depths.

A strip light blinked and creaked before fully igniting. Round walls of compressed earth were given a sickly pink sheen. Chicken wire, reflecting the light coming from above, held back the sides of the tunnel (if a cylindrical tube could be said to have sides).

Hoofbeats patted the soil flat underfoot.

Two tired eyes surveyed the place where the light never penetrated. Yet, for them, they could see a streaming hailstorm of charged precipitation shoot through the ceiling, across the tube, and out through the floor like an extremely cheap weather effect in a video game. One of them lowered his goggles.

“I do declare,” he said in a pompous drawl, “those lighting effects are so amateurish, it pains my finely-tuned sensibilities.”

“This will be worth your valuable time,” said his companion.

Over an endless field of clouds, under the blaze of an alicorn-powered sun ascending the sky, nothing happened. Nothing that wasn’t subtle. Gentle currents twisted the small particles here and there, and baby eddies were born aloft in the high winds.

Wings scythed through the atmosphere. Three streaks of feathers lined up, one above the other, keeping their course for another mile. With each second, they were building up speed, and soon their wings were glowing red with the rising friction.

Three helmets blinked. Across the LED visors, the Heads-Up Display blinked and numbers flashed across the screen. One figure in the bottom-left seemed to be a countdown, but was going in reverse and had the letters KM/H next to it. As it passed double figures and began winding up the list of triple figures, the three pilots concentrated on the second figure to the right of it.

Unlike the former, this was a countdown.

Another bar light blinked on, charting the progress of the two ponies below while they descended the tunnel. Up ahead, the wall stopped. Gates of steel barred the way, but to the left a black box indicated where the lock was. One of the ponies shifted his forelock out of the way and creased his brow. A green glow enveloped his horn. In response, the black box’s LED glowed red. Intricate levers clacked as the tumblers were withdrawn. The gate swung towards them under its own weight.

They stepped into the timber box, and turned around to survey the way they had just come. Sentinels rose from the floor to act as a second gate. The planks under their feet shuddered and the platform dropped a few inches. With a whirring of gears, the elevator descended, so slowly that the two occupants had time to see the gates of steel swing back into place with a clang.

Feathers were beginning to blacken and flutter off their supports one at a time, flapping madly in the slipstreams like cinders from a bonfire. The air force’s trajectory, so far as steady as parallel lines, jerked downwards briefly, but continued as if aiming for the sun. A second jerk closer to the clouds brought them in range of the cumulus mountains, which were beginning to grey. Ripples spread across the surface of the clouds in their wake, and cloudslides began at the feet of nearby hillocks.

All three visors darkened, and not a moment too soon. They were at a dangerous angle relative to the sunlight. Whiteouts were a major cause of premature crashes, and in serious cases had crippled a healthy flyer for life. Pegasi never went above the condensation zone these days without the blackout visors.

The countdown dropped by one scale of magnitude. In the middle-right of the HUD, a pinprick of amber began to wink.

The elevator screeched to a halt, and the sentinels retreated into the planks. Both ponies stepped out into a hemispherical chamber, the ceiling a smooth continuum of golden film with barely a line of tile edges visible. Alarms began to sound off around the chamber, echoing twice with each blurt of the horn.

Like a pair of jaws, two blocks of crystallised glass rammed through floor and ceiling and closed before the two ponies, shielding them from the majority of the chamber. Beyond ten inches of distortion – the effect resembling that of immense ice cubes – they could see individual ponies running away from something in the middle of the room and retreating to the corners for the sliding doors, which clamped shut simultaneously once everyone had evacuated.

The two of them peered at the object in the centre of the room.

“You will be amazed,” said the unicorn.

“That remains to be seen,” drawled the Earth pony.

Beeping filled the pegasi’s ears. They could not hear it over the turbulence, but the red flashes of the HUD were enough.

Gritting their teeth, as one the trio readjusted their flight paths and punched holes through the clouds. It took some time for them to force their way through the grey fog, but soon vague outlines started to emerge. The ground came into view: a patchwork of limes and unhealthy dark greens, with not a town or dwelling in sight from horizon to horizon.

Except for the outhouse, alone and rotting in the middle of an overrun plain.

Two dive bombers lined up behind the third, clutching a side each, careful not to obstruct the wings roasting either side of the withers. For the third, both hooves that were thrust out before it began to strain. The visor cracked in one corner. Lips were pulled back over teeth crushing themselves into the gums, and even with protection the eyes were watering furiously. Her mane was beginning to catch fire – already, her tail was smoking with the effort.

The air screeched in pain. A white cone began to shine before the outstretched hooves.

“Any second now,” said the unicorn. His companion checked his watch.

The white cone flexed and flattened itself against the two bodies, which clung tighter to the third and began stretching and reddening. All the helmets were beginning to run wild with cracks. Sparks leapt from every hair follicle exposed.

The lonely outhouse simply sat and waited.

It had barely counted its third second when three bodies blasted the air aside, smashed into the roof, and blew half the atmosphere to the other side of the world. All light flashed over the surrounding plains until everything was pure white. When it died away, a rainbow mushroom cloud rose from the hill and a ring of multicoloured plasma sliced through the air, expanding outwards and towards the horizons.

They heard the boom below ground, with a double echo around the chamber. The gold glowed until the roof seemed to be forged from the sun itself. The Earth pony lowered his sunglasses.

“Is this–” he began.

An arc of rainbow light cut through the ceiling and slammed into the thing at the centre of the room. Through the goggles, both ponies could see the fiery rain scatter in its wake. Then the glass turned completely blank.

There were several seconds of silence. The Earth pony gave his ruffled hair a cursory pat and smoothed it down, glancing with wide eyes from his partner to the whiteness.

Eventually, the white died. The room returned to normal. Through their goggles, they could see the precipitation resuming its path as before. Both crystallised glass blast doors retracted, while elsewhere a drone sounded. Red, green, yellow, orange, and purple wisps of smoke slid across the floor before shrinking away. Air crackled around them.

The unicorn nodded to the middle of the room. Hesitantly, the Earth pony took a few steps inside the chamber, though he looked relieved when his companion followed not long after. They kept their eyes fixed on the mannequin in the centre of the room as they approached.

On a flat circle of plastic, with a pole protruding from its belly and connecting it to the floor, a pony-shaped mannequin froze in the act of galloping away, though fortunately for the Earth pony’s feelings its face was completely featureless. A dress was draped over its outline, a froufrou with more frills, more lace, and more gems and pearls on it than would be enough to scream wealth and prosperity. Whoever wore it would have looked like the ponified version of a Tudor monarch.

The dress, formerly pure white, was now radiant with all the colours of the rainbow, which shifted along its aura as though the dress was cloaked in northern lights. Around it on the floor were the splashes of multicoloured liquids, similarly glowing.

“Nuclear fabrics,” said the unicorn, patting the mannequin on the rump proudly. “Silk specially irradiated by sonic rain-bomb radioactive fallout. The most expensive dye alternative on the market, or at least it will be.”

The Earth pony gibbered. He had taken off his glasses and his goggles, trying to believe what his disbelieving eyes were seeing.

“It took a team of crack unicorn physicists to calculate the trajectory for that sucker, not to mention how to correctly position the mannequin and prevent the heat flash from burning it to a crisp. You think this is impressive? Just wait until you get up top and see what the pegasus division left.”

All the colours of the spectrum reflected in the Earth pony’s eyes. His lips began to quiver.

“Uh… you OK, sir?” said the unicorn, lowering his hoof from the mannequin.

Hoity Toity’s lips burst into a ravenous grin.

“It’s… it’s… magnificent!”

After several minutes, prevailing south-easterlies blew the cloud into submission. It drifted across the fields like a collapsing tower clinging to the sky. Behind it, a splattered crater lay cooling where the hill used to stand, the earth having popped into an inverse pattern and rippled out. Frozen crests of soil spread around it, giving the impression of a petrified dirty sea overgrown with plant life. Every tree within a one-mile radius was now horizontal, bowled over by the blast front and resembling an impressed audience. Every other cloud was gone, leaving the sky more barren than an ice cap.

A rainbow arced from the pit of the crater and soared up and over. It hadn’t quite met the horizon yet – a distant dot was leading the way, leaving the rainbow behind it as a contrail. The arc of light stood as a monument to its proud achievement. Finally, the speck disappeared in the glare of the sun.

Bonbon's Wager

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“I actually wanted to show you something up at Sweet Apple Acres,” said Lyra, while they both were walking along. Bonbon nodded, while her eyes frantically darted between the horizon and the sun, triangulating the angles, and therefore the time. It couldn’t be that late, could it?

“Iz Applejack havink a bet viz her bruder again?” she said, when she felt she could concentrate fully on her speech once more.

“Not exactly. Why are you speaking in that funny accent now?” said Bonbon’s friend.

“I told you this before,” she replied. “Weren’t you listening?”

“I don’t remember it.”

Bonbon sighed. “It’s for a comedy routine at Sugar Cube Corner. Pinkie's tutorials, because she needs them like Fluttershy needs a spine. I’ve got to get into character, and a little practice each day stops you going astray – I mean, shtops you goink ash-tray. You shee?” Just to be on the safe side, she threw in a rough “eins, zwei, drei” under her breath.

“But this one sounds funny,” said the mare, chuckling. “It sounds like your voicebox is sore.”

“Zat's the idea. To be frank, it shounds like my voicebox ish lozing a bar fight viz my nose und mein lungs, but if I vant dat role, zen I can talk like ziz ‘til I get ze paycheck, OK?”

The turnout along the south field fence was impressive – most of the town had turned up to watch. Lyra and Bonbon squeezed through the crowd and placed their hooves on the white fence.

“Listen,” said Bonbon. “Iz ziz going… iz ziz goink… oh, forget it, is this going to take long?”

“Oh, no, it won’t take long. Watch.”

Bonbon followed her friend’s pointed hoof, but she was distinctly unimpressed. There were two rows of apple trees, like you would expect to find on any respectable orchard. There were two rows of buckets, one beneath each tree, like you would expect to find during any respectable applebuck season. There were two Apple ponies pawing the ground at one end of the rows, like you would expect to find if you shouted out the names “Granny Smith” and “Big Macintosh” and waited for them to come see what you wanted.

The crash helmets were kind of new, though. And so were the goggles. And the two cannons.

Bonbon wasn’t usually one for seeing ponies inflict grievous bodily harm upon each other – it made her feel guilty watching them – but ponies inflicting the same upon their own hides was a little more justifiable, and in any case too hilarious to pass up.

“Ah challenge you, Big Macintosh,” cried Granny Smith, adjusting her helmet and preparing to climb into the barrel, “to knock through as many trunks as you can.”

“So who do you think I should bet on?” Lyra whispered into Bonbon’s ear.

“Eh?”

“The bet. We’re all having bets. Should I bet on Granny Smith, or Big Macintosh?”

“Alright,” said Granny Smith in her wizened voice. “We’re getting’ in! Then we’ll see who has the hard head! Last chance to back out now! Do yer accept mah challenge?”

Big Macintosh’s response was to let go of his goggles, letting them snap over his eyes. “Eeyup.”

As the two Apple ponies climbed into their respective barrels, Bonbon turned to face Lyra. “You brought me out here to help you with a bet?”

“Well, it is a close one. Carrot Top’s got odds of 3 to 1 in favour of Granny Smith, but Berry Punch says Big Macintosh will win easily.”

“Just–” Bonbon waved a hoof irritably. “Just pick one. Er, Big Macintosh. Pick him. Pick him.”

“Granny Smith it is, then.” Lyra turned round to face another pony, and dropped three bits into Berry Punch’s hoof. “Good turn out, isn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for all the punch in Ponyville,” said Berry.

Bonbon gaped. "What? Who did you just bet on?"
` “Are you going to place a bet too, Bonbon?” said Berry.

“What? No. Can’t. Don’t have any money on me.”

“Oh, too bad. So far, it’s been an even split of fifty-fifty. I was hoping you could tip the balance.”

“I could sabotage one of the cannons, if you want.” Bonbon fumed. “That would tip the balance pretty darn dramatically, I should think.”

A fanfare sprang up, hushing the last of the crowd’s chatter. Somewhere off to the right, Spike the dragon began drumming, an important component in building up suspense – and particularly impressive, as he was using two drumsticks on a couple of pony heads. Their vibrating owners looked less than amused.

"Granny Smith?" said Bonbon to Lyra. "Granny Smith?"

The cannons were ready – only the two helmets and the goggles could be seen poking out of the barrels. Behind them, Pinkie Pie and Applejack seized a fuse each and took three steps back, ready to pull at any moment.

On the side, Spike was approaching the climax of his solo when the two ponies decided to lodge a formal complaint, the essence of which involved bucking him off their backs and delivering a joint-kick that sent him flying into a bell. It dinged.

Both fuses were pulled, and a double blast sent the Apple ponies flying out of a vast plume of smoke.

Everypony's head traced the trajectory, which was accompanied by a series of crunching noises. The noises, and the pony heads, stopped within seconds.

The row of trees now had perfect circles bored cleanly through each one. Apples were raining down from those branches that were still shaking, and soon every bucket was full to the brim. A lot of mental arithmetic followed as the ponies fell into concentrated silence.

“Big Macintosh, twelve. Granny Smith, seventeen.”

“YES!” shrieked Lyra, turning around to face Berry. Berry groaned and handed over the bits, which Lyra quickly counted out. “Nine bits! Woohoo!”

The crowd began cheering. After they pulled the stunned Big Macintosh and Granny Smith out of the last trees, the two ponies moved aside. Granny Smith stumbled and muttered something incoherent, but she looked dizzily pleased at herself. She turned to Big Macintosh. They shook hooves, before beaming at the applause.

Bonbon pursed her lips as Lyra jumped up and down, cheering.

"That wasn't a fair contest," she said stubbornly. "Didn't anypony notice her helmet fell off?"

The Campaign for Extra Trixie

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What Is The Campaign for Extra Trixie?

See the great and noble land of Equestria. Citizens walk the streets of the fresh, clean pony towns, completely free from any worry of crime or ravenous creatures. The three races have united long ago in the name of harmony, and all is ruled by the all-powerful, all-benevolent Princess Celestia. A beautiful picture, one of equine completeness and fairy tale purity.

But all these smiles are fakes; for there is one crippling flaw behind the appealing veneer of joy, and that is…

They are not celebrating the Grrrreat and Powerful Trrrrixie!

For far too long, mundane cookie-cutter canter-arounds have wearily trod, trod, trod upon millions and millions of boring, dusty paths. They are very pretty for the scenery and make a fine colourful audience, of course, yet not one unicorn among them is a patch on the most spectacular and arresting pony to have ever existed! Still, instead of worshipping her and building temples filled with suggestive statues of her, they merely shuffle about dead to the wonders of the Great and Powerful Trixie. This Campaign for Extra Trixie intends to correct that oversight.

Who is the Great and Powerful Trixie, we hear you ask? Silly filly – if you have to ask, then there’s no hope for you.

The Campaign also wishes to decree each province in Equestria a Non-Twilight Zone. Some of our more enthusiastic members have dubbed this the Sundown Shutdown, but her Greatness and Powerfulshipness wishes to make it clear that she distances herself from any such bowdlerising, and considers the rhyme schemes so far beneath her notice that her restraining order against them reaches its boundary at the antipodes.

Can You Describe The Campaign In Detail?

The Campaign for Extra Trixie demands that every episode of My little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is rewritten and reshot with Trixie as the main lead. There will be no supporting characters, and no Elements of Harmony – Trixie will not be needing them.

How Do I Recognize The G&P Trixie?

As far as visuals go, you should expect a light blue unicorn with slightly curled ends to her mane and tail and a cape with plenty of stars on it. The brooch is of an octagonal turquoise, claimed from the eye of the giant Gemstone Spider Crab of Seashell Seller Shore during her epic battle against the Hydra.

Incidentally, there has been a lot of confusion over this vis-à-vis her account of the Ursa Major confrontation, as some adherents claim that the Hydra mentioned is actually the constellation Hydra – the largest known – and not the four-headed monstrosity more usually found at Froggy Bottom Swamp. The mainstream opinion – arrived at through much rational debate and a strong desire to avoid irrational debate, or at least a desire not to get any chairs broken and upset the caretaker – is that she fought both of them, as well as a flesh-eating sea pony, a swordfish fleet, thirty poisoned mackerel, and a small furry lobster that kept nipping her ankles at the ice cream stall.

Visuals, however, are largely redundant, as you will recognise her immediately from her distinctive call, which is said by audiologists to be the loudest sound in the animal kingdom. It has been said that the call of the rare G&P Trixie can, in a low wind, be heard from a distance of over five miles, though unreliable accounts put the distance at eighteen lightyears – give or take a parsec. For this reason, many Trikkies have hypothesised that Trixie’s call is actually part of an Equestria-wide communication network between the entire population of G&P Trixies, much like whale songs are said to travel through the ocean to the other side of the world and reach other communicating whales in other oceans and back. For this reason, a few of the more committed adherents have speculated that there may be more G&P Trixies out there, waiting to be discovered.

She traditionally travels in a small gypsy caravan, though this hasn’t been sighted for a while. The G&P Trixie assures us that this is because the original was destroyed in a gross act of vandalism inflicted upon her by The Hated One, though in her graciousness (and for insurance reasons) she has declined from pressing charges.

What’s A Trikkie?

A Trikkie is any pony who admires the G&P Trixie. It is hypothesised by many doctors of philosophy that the entire world consists of Trikkies, though it often appears by normal means not to be so, and that any non-Trikkie pony is having an existential crisis, or at least will get a financial crisis if they get found out by the New Happy Sect of Trikkies.

Am I A Trikkie?

Not yet.

Why Not?

You have to sign the form first. And pay a small fee. There also used to be a painful and embarrassing entrance ritual you had to perform before joining, but our lawyers say we can’t do that anymore. Besides, we still can’t get all the skid marks off the carpet.

OK. So This Trixie Is A Magician. So What? Most Unicorns Are.

Her resume onstage includes rope-charming, rainbow twisting, lightning summons, instant dyeing, and what we have affectionately dubbed the cloud of vanishing charms. Plus, Trixie has fireworks. You can’t top fireworks. Her offstage achievements are currently being compiled and rewritten for an upcoming epic pony movie trilogy, but it’s currently in the development underworld of Tartarus because, so far, we’re still trying to raise the thirty billion bits for Trixie’s platinum-engraved director’s chair.

To put it in her own words: "The Great and Powerful Trixie performs feats beyond imagination."

Considering Some Of Her Customers, She Could Tie Shoelaces And That Would Tax Most Of Their Creative Mental Faculties To The Limit.

Hey, Trixie would make putting shoes on awesome.

One Last Thing: Who Is The Hated One?

Nopony.

Oh, Really? Pull The Other Three.

No, really, she’s nopony. It was Trixie who passed for the exam to Celestia’s School for Exceptionally Gifted Unicorns, who found the Elements of Harmony and vanquished Nightmare Moon, who went to the Gala and defeated the Ursa Min – I mean, the Ursa Major (and no, it wasn’t invited to the Gala, too, we’ve heard that one).

It was Trixie who banished the red and the purple dragons from Equestria, who rid Ponyville of those para-thingies (delayed by a book signing, of course), who performed the sonic rain-boom (both of them), and who won the Ponyville talent show in all three categories. Trixie, who became the well-known fashion model Fluttershy, who restored peace between the Appleloosans and some cow-headed guys, who defeated Discord, broke the want-it-need-it enchantment cast by the Hated One, brought Luna to good graces, cured Cutie Pox, saved the world from a threat that wasn’t shown onscreen, and secretly acted as all four Mysterious Mare-Do-Wells.

Anypony who says Twilight was involved is merely indulging a spelling mistake.

PinkieStation3

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"All right, Pinkie," said Rainbow Dash wearily. "I'm here. What did you want to show me?"

Pinkie Pie - party master, chief prankster, and stand-up comedian of the month (babysitting a specialty) - rose on her hind legs in a way that was distinctly un-pony-like. The two blue eyes moved aside to give Rainbow a better view.

"Ta da!"

There was a long pause. Pinkie's bedroom suddenly did a good impression of a ghost town. A tumbleweed popped into existence, crossed the floorboards, and then vanished again in a puff of purple light. A distant cry of "YEES!" could be heard from outside, somewhere near the library.

"It's just a box," Rainbow said.

"It's more than that!" Pinkie said. "It's a revolution in fun-making technology, courtesy of Pinkie Enterprises! Come oooooon... d'you notice anything about it?" The pink mare's mouth widened, making an already wide smile... well, wider.

Rainbow examined the thing with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips.

"It's pink."

"And?" The corners of her smile nearly met on the other side.

Rainbow gave it another quick inspection. "It's got a pipe sticking out of the back."

"Aaand?"

"There are four slits on the side?"

"Aaaaaaaaaaand?" Rainbow swore Pinkie's smile ventured beyond the borders of the face.

"You've stuck a blocky photo of your mug on the top?"

"No, silly! Look inside. I even left the flap open so that you'd get the hint. Go on, look inside."

It didn't look promising, Rainbow had to admit. Pinkie was blinking a little too frequently for her liking. She decided to humour her all the same. What was the worst that could happen?

Just as she reached forwards, however, Rainbow stopped. She glared at Pinkie.

"Hold on a sec. You're not setting me up for a prank, are you?"

"Who, me? Oh no, noooo. I just want to show you how the PinkieStation3 works."

"The what now?"

"The PinkieStation3. I call it a station because it's like a train station - all sorts of things come and go, and used rightly it can take you to faraway places that are really fun to visit. It's got Pinkie at the front because it's pink, like me."

"So what's the three for? Were there two others you haven't shown me yet?"

"No, I just like the number three."

"Huh." Rainbow turned her attention back to the box and pushed the lid aside.

"It's really funny actually. The number just popped into my head for no reason. I don't have a problem with that, but I've been noticing that number cropping up a lot lately. Did you know there are three kinds of pony in the world?"

"You don't say?" Rainbow rolled her eyes.

"Or that there are three Cutie Mark Crusaders? There's also only three syllables in my name, and in your name, and in Rarity's and Applejack's and Fluttershy's names too. Oh, oh, and in Cheerilee's and in Mr Cake's and in C.D.D.'s and in Pumpkin Cake's and in Sweetie Belle's and in Scootaloo's and in -"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," said Rainbow. "You're obsessed with the number three."

"And if you count how many elements of harmony there are, you get six, which is like three but twice as much. And there were three Shadowbolts and three balloons on my flank and three heads on a cerberus and three episodes when Rarity sings a song and this morning, I had three helpings of plumble berry pudding."

"Pinkie!"

Pinkie blinked and was suddenly standing on Rainbow's head. Either the overgrown foal was as light as a feather, or her psychedelically maned companion had a neck like a drawbridge.

"Will you quit your yakking for one second?" said Rainbow. She did a double take. "What was that last one you said?"

"About the plumble berry pudding?"

"No, not that one! The one before that."

"About Rarity singing in three episodes?"

"What are you talking about, three episodes? What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know. Three episodes in her life. Like that one time we got her to make dresses for us, and that other time she went to Canterlot to meet all the fancy pants ponies, and the one time she had to make dresses for us."

"You said that one twice."

"Well, she sang it twice."

"Pinkie?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't ever take math. Twilight would have a fit."

"A fit what?"

Rainbow Dash stood back. "OK, it looks nice... well, pink anyway... but how does this thing work?"

At the other end of the pipe, Pinkie held up what looked like an upside-down draining pot with lights blinking on it. "I borrowed this from Twilight's basement. You just put it on and it'll take you to another place."

As meaningfully as she could, Rainbow Dash stretched her wings. "Pinkie, if this is some kind of teleportation device, I've got two things to say. One, don't bother. I can just about handle Twilight's version, after she puts my mane out and removes the burn marks at the other end. Nopony's going to try a version that was made by - no offence - a candy maker. Two, why would I need it? I already have two teleportation devices, one on each wither." This speech she finished with a smug smile.

"Aw," said Pinkie, pouting. "Pwetty pwease?"

"Nuh uh."

She pouted harder. "Pweeeease?"

"Wasting your time," said Rainbow. "I'm immune to sappiness."

Pinkie coughed something that sounded like "last roundup". Rainbow glared at her. The self-proclaimed enemy of sappiness hadn't understood the words, but the tone spoke all by itself.

Idly, the mare with the puffy mane examined a hoof. "So you won't try it, huh?"

"Eeyup. Now where's the window? If you'll excuse me, I was in the middle of a dodgeball game with Fluttershy. Good gosh, that pegasus sure can move when she wants." Rainbow pushed the latch, and the window's hinges creaked. A glorious breeze blew in and whispered sweet temptations to her mane and ears. Her wings stiffened.

"Not even for a fun, exciting, and really wild adventure?"

"Who needs adventure when you've got Ponyville at your doorstep? I'm happy here."

"Not even to meet... Daring Do?"

Rainbow went from 0 to lightspeed in a picosecond. Even more impressively, she went back to 0 in roughly the same time and was standing millimetres away from Pinkie. "Daring Do? Really? She's real?"

Pinkie gave her a sly look. From behind the pink box, she pulled out a copy of Daring Do and the Grim Flutter Pony Tales.

"Not quite. But if I do this..." Like it was a parcel through a letterbox, she slipped the book into one of the slits on the box and idly examined her hoof once done. "Then she is real! If you put on the helm-"

"I'm there!"

Before Pinkie could blink, the helmet was rammed over Rainbow's head and the weather pony sat, trying to hold in an excited smile that would've put Pinkie's best party grin to shame. "Let's do this!"

"Great!" Pinkie reached inside and began fiddling with stuff. If Rainbow hadn't been squealing into her own hooves, she might have been more worried about the constant cranking and hammering noises.

"Thisisgonnabesoawesome! WhatshouldIdo? I'lltellyouwhatI'lldo! I'llgointhecavefirst! I'llbeherapprenticeintraining! She'llbelikementorandmaster, andI'mgonnalearnfromherallhercooltrickswiththewhipandtheweightsandhowtododgewithoutusingmywings! It'sgonnagosoawesomeIcouldjustEXPLODE!"

"Oh yeah," said Pinkie, "and I'm setting you up for Pinkie Physics."

Something skidded to a halt in Rainbow's brain. "Huh?"

"Normal physics was too boring, so I just made up my own to make it more fun. The engine liked my version better."

The skidding turned into a crash. Rainbow's grin had suddenly abandoned her eyes. "Aheheheh, so it'll be like -"

"Yep."

"With all the..."

"Uh huh."

"And even if I try to..."

"Oh, don't worry, you can still do that."

"Pinkie?"

"Yep?"

"I'm a pegasus."

"Oh, but if I let you fly that high, you could just skip the levels, and you'd miss all the fun stuff."

"But what if I -"

"Oh, don't you worry about those." Pinkie chuckled, and actually snorted once or twice. "I wouldn't do anything like that. You'll get a fair chance, being a newcomer and all."

Rainbow breathed in, closed her eyes, and sighed with relief.

"It wouldn't feel like Daring Do without the deathtraps, though, so instead of taking them out, I gave you multiple lives instead."

Eyelids snapped open. "Multiple... li...?"

"In case you die. Trust me, there are loads and loads and LOADS of ways to do that, and that's just the beginner's tutorial level on easy mode. Don't worry, though. Daring Do will be completely un-die-able, because the story says so."

Rainbow's face clearly showed that she felt Pinkie had gotten her priorities skewed. Slowly and carefully, she reached for the helmet.

"Uh, I think I hear Tank barking, so it must be his feeding time. Can't stay, Pinkie, sorry, but I'll make it up to you..."

Something zipped behind her and the belts tightened around Rainbow's head. However hard she pushed, the helmet wouldn't come off. Her efforts only became more frantic as Pinkie approached the PinkieStation3.

"Rainbow Dash! You Pinkie Promised you'd help me! And you represent the Element of Loyalty!"

Rainbow grinned feebly. "I'm not sure I like insane Pinkie. Can I have normal Pinkie back, now?"

"There is only one Pinkie. Ah," said Pinkie, running a hoof along the back, "here's the 'on' switch."

"I'll babysit the twins! I'll do some part-time work in the bakery! I'll even dress up in a frou-frou outfit, put flowers in my hair, soak my mane in water, and propose to Twilight in front of the whole town while singing 'Smile, Smile, Smile' in my best Fluttershy voice! Anything!"

Pinkie gave her a sympathetic look. "Don't worry," she said. "It'll be fun. I'll bring you back in time for some treats and a comedy stand-up routine. You wait until you see my 'Gottle of Geer' routine with Spike! Have fun!"

"Pinkie! Don't -!"

Something clicked.

Rainbow stiffened. Her pupils vanished, her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, and static filled her vision. There was a brief look of panic before a dumbfounded expression stuck on her face and her jaw was locked in a permanent gape.

From the box, Pinkie noticed the lights on the helmet flash on and off. There was an aerial on top.

She walked over and stared at Rainbow Dash. There was no reaction. She waved a hoof in front of her friend's face. No reaction. Finally, she reached forwards and tapped each of Rainbow's large, blank eyes. It sounded suspiciously like tapping a glass window.

Pinkie fiddled with the aerial on top of the helmet until she heard a charging up sound. When she looked back, the static on Rainbow's eyes vanished. A scene was emerging. Pinkie logos came and went with impressive and suspenseful special effects, including fireworks, party streamers, and bright laser shows.

There was the sound of popcorn being crunched.

"This is gonna be good," she said, as the first level came into view.

That One Summer Sun Celebration

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Ponyville Town Hall was currently gushing with water.

It was a considerable improvement on earlier. Earlier, it had been set on fire.

The interior of the building had been done up rather nicely for the Summer Sun Celebration, with banners and flower baskets hanging from its balconies and rafters, the circular walls streaked with swallowtail and pennant banners, and the stage covered over with curtains for the surprise. There had also been tables placed around, arranged near the circumference like those last few spectators at a party who refuse to dance on the floor with everypony else. Sun symbols could be seen here and there. It was somewhat appropriate that they now had huge scorch marks on them.

Through the mess of floating tables a unicorn swam, cheeks puffed up with a breath held back. She rolled her eyes and headed for the surface.

Outside, two ponies had climbed into the neighbouring fountain and were watching the water currents rush past them. They went to one side of the fountain’s pool so that the statue in the middle did not obscure their view.

It was occurring to the two ponies that jumping into a fountain to avoid getting wet wasn’t a stellar example of logical thinking at work.

The first earth pony wrung the few remaining drops out of her mane – a tricky operation with only hooves and pasterns – and tried to revive the curls.

“Well, that’s certainly a night to remember,” Bonbon said, shaking her head so hard that her hair flapped back into shape. “Is the pink strip still in?”

“Er,” said Berry Punch, peering at the locks that had just been thrust in front of her face. “Yes. It’s still there.”

“Good. You know how long it takes to dye it correctly? It'd take less time to make liquorice bootlaces.”

“You dye your hair?”

“Well, yes. You don’t think I’m a natural purple and pink, do you?”

“Oh? I never would have guessed. It doesn’t exactly stand out.”

They both stared at the Town Hall. Waterfalls were now gushing out of the topmost windows, and one or two pegasi were washed out onto the street. On the ground around them, ponies of all colours were fleeing with sodden manes, leaving a lot of wet prints in the grass.

“So,” said Bonbon, “what have you got to say for yourself? First night of catering, berry punch included and all that?”

Beside her, the lumpy-haired companion rubbed a fetlock against her other leg’s cannon, the equine equivalent of scratching one’s forearm guiltily.

“Do you think I overdid it with the punch?” Berry said to her hooves.

“Well, now, that depends entirely on what the words ‘overdid it’ signify,” said Bonbon. “If, by ‘overdid it’, you mean leave the berry juice out overnight to ferment it and, I quote, ‘bring out its flavour to make it more interesting to drink’, then given the considerable evidence currently pouring out of the upper storey windows, and the unplanned moat extension now surrounding the Town Hall, then I have to say the sensible answer would be: yes, you overdid it.”

They watched with silent awe as the Town Hall roof began to bulge. Wooden beams and oak rafters groaned with the water pressure building up behind them. Both of the spectators took a step back. A spout of water burst from the spire, creating a local downpour.

“If, however, by ‘overdid it’ you mean get up to the most impressive antics and punch-induced mayhem afterwards, most of which seem to include trying to cook the buffet tables twice because the food was going cold, then, as surprising as it is for me to admit so – given that you have the track record of a fire-fighter working down arson’s street around bonfire night when it comes to eventful nights out – then the only honest answer would be: no, you did not.”

Berry Punch whimpered. She’d been a bad girl again, she knew it.

“Who was it who, you know…” Berry gestured to the lake around them, “…anyway?”

“I think it was Sea Swirl.”

“What did she do? Did she turn on all the faucets?”

“No.”

“Oh, good. That would have been impressive: there aren’t any faucets in there.”

“No,” said Bonbon, like a mare who’d just been ambushed by her memory, “it was Seafoam. Definitely Seafoam. They do kind of look alike,” she added in her defence.

“Ah, I see,” said Berry. “I always wondered what her cutie mark was for.”

Bonbon slid back into staring at the Town Hall again. “Hm? Oh, yeah, her cutie mark. You never guessed?”

“Well, in the middle of town, so far away from any sea, and with nothing bigger than the town brook if you want a swim? Hard to see how your special talent could have anything to do with dolphins.”

“Ah, you need to think more symbolically,” said Bonbon. “See, the dolphins represent water generally. The gambolling represents… represents…” She struggled; Berry Punch had a rather suggestive mind. “…represents playfulness.”

“Well, why not have a few drops on her flank, like Raindrops does? Or bubbles? Derpy’s got bubbles for her cutie mark.”

“I guess you just have to see her unicorn talents in action. Don’t ask me,” said Bonbon irritably. “I don’t make up the rules for cutie mark magic, do I?”

“I like your accent, by the way.”

“Don’t push it.”

The water seemed to be easing off by now – the downpour had stopped, and the bulge in the roof was beginning to go down. All the windows were still gushing, though. Over the town rooftops, they could see winged ponies converging onto the dome. Golden armour gleamed on their chests and helmets, and as they came closer the two spectators could make out the silhouettes’ distinctly thickset builds.

“That’ll be the Royal Guard,” said Berry. Bonbon hummed in reply.

White pegasi touched down around them and waded towards the veranda. Some had been carrying unicorns underneath, clamping their columnar legs around them and letting them drop a few feet before touching down themselves. The dark unicorns – as heavily armoured as their airborne comrades were – rushed forwards immediately and began calling for buckets.

Over the furore, Berry heard Bonbon sigh under her breath. She found this more interesting than the rush of the few ponies still around to help.

“Something on your mind, Bonbon?” she said, not unkindly.

Neither of them spoke for a while. This was partly because the first wooden buckets had been gathered – scavenged from the florists’ and with the flowers thrown out – and partly because several nights out and a lot of parties had sharpened Berry’s social senses, which were now telling her not to push the issue too far if Bonbon didn’t feel like it.

“Lyra’s going back to Canterlot this year,” Bonbon said.

“Oh?” said Berry, while in her head the juicy-o-meter that had nothing to do with fruit beverages began to ping. “I didn’t think you two knew each other particularly well.”

“We went to the park together.” Bonbon sat down. The sad splash that soaked her flank didn’t seem to faze her. Berry sat down likewise: she couldn’t have been fazed if she’d had to roll around in the mud for this.

“At least she won’t be alone,” Berry said. “Sparkler’s going too. I heard that Rarity might join them, but I don't think she can afford the fare yet, and as the saying goes: two’s a company, three’s a crowd. Besides, the chariot only accepts two.”

“Yeah,” said Bonbon, still not looking up.

“Good friends, are you?” Berry would have made a good investigative journalist, if a rather unsubtle one.

“She made such lovely music. It was amazing what she could do with the lyre.” Bonbon took a deep breath.

From a distance, they could see the guards accepting buckets from the residents – the pegasi using their wings, the unicorns using telekinetic magic – and they were beginning to form single file.

“I guess it’s for the best,” Bonbon said. “If Celestia says they have to go, then… they have to go.”

The bucket chain wasn’t nearly long enough. Guards were shouting for the residents to join in, but there was still a way to go before they reached the brook, and the residents didn’t have years of military training behind them. What they did have were years of milling about parties flitting between conversation groups, and it showed. A few chastisements and one or two barked orders quickly got them moving, however.

“Why did Celestia say that they had to go?” Berry asked on an impulse.

“Sorry?”

“I said why’d they have to go? They’ve already been there once. They came from there. It’s not like they have to re-sit their Canterlot school exams, now, is it?”

“Didn’t they tell you?” Bonbon blinked at her in surprise. When Berry shook her head, Bonbon added, “Well, didn’t you ask them?”

Berry shrugged. “Didn’t think there was anything to ask until you mentioned the Princess.”

“I only found out because Lyra told me in the park. There’s this unicorn up there. They’re keeping an eye on her well-being.”

“Why?” said Berry.

“She’s very important. The Princess wants a few unicorns from Ponyville to meet her, get to know her, and generally sororise with her.”

“What’s sororise mean?”

“It’s like fraternise, but more feminine.” Bonbon waved a hoof dismissively.

“Ah.”

The bucket chain was finally ready. Empty buckets were passed along the right of every pony, towards the front-most Royal Guard, whose horn was glowing. A bucket glowed with the same yellow aura before it dunked itself into the artificial lake, scooped up some water, and passed itself back along the left side of the line. The water was carried, hoof-to-hoof (occasionally hoof-to-magic-aura-to-hoof), and then emptied into the brook before being passed forwards again. It was hard to count, but there seemed to be about eight buckets active along the one line. More ponies were rushing with extra buckets to form a second chain.

“Do you think we should go and help?” said Berry.

“Only if you can walk in a straight line again.”

“This unicorn you mentioned,” said Berry, nudging her friend in the ribs. “She must be very important. I’m not one to go against any attempt to make more friends, just so you know, but I’m still wondering what the big deal is. What’s so special about her?”

Bonbon closed her eyes and gathered her thoughts for the final deliverance.

“Her Highness says the very fate of Equestria rests in her hooves. At least, that's what Lyra told me.”

She stood up and splashed her way to the edge of the fountain, hopped over the stone bordering it, and flinched when the resulting eruption of spray hit her mane again. Berry watched her carry on with a sulky pout on her cream-furred face.

“What’s her name?” Berry said, thrashing the water aside on her way to help. Bonbon waited for her to catch up.

“Ah, I don’t remember. Night Light, or something.”

Orange clouds glowed over the horizon. Sunlight peered over the distant hills like the eye of a golden coin that had caught a bright light. A winged silhouette glided silently towards them from the east.

Both ponies jumped out of the lake, and stopped to shake themselves down. Berry watched the approaching unicorn overhead.

“To think,” she said in awe, “how privileged our town is. Most towns only see the Princess once every few years, and here we’re going to see her twice in a row. We’ll be doing this exact same thing again next year!”

Bonbon screwed up her lips and looked over the flooded Hall, the bucket chain, and the rush of ponies around them.

“Not quite,” she said. “Next year, we’ll get someone else to do the catering.”

Star Swirl's Inspiration

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Clover the Clever was surprised to find the castle maid standing outside Star Swirl’s office. Usually, the maid would have done her rounds by now.

“It’s an open-door policy if you want to go in,” she said.

The maid turned to her with frightened eyes. “It’s not that. I already went in there. It’s just he asked me to step outside, and, uh…”

From behind the oaken door, they heard Star Swirl humming to himself and the patter of hooves across flagstones. Despite the humming, however, he seemed to be a hair’s breadth away from shouting. Something crashed inside the study.

“Is he working on another new spell in there?” asked Clover with a sinking heart.

“I don’t know,” said the maid helplessly. “Begging your pardon, Miss, but to be frank, I thought you’d know about it, Miss.”

“Hello?” said Clover to the door. There was no answer. "Odd..."

Clover concentrated, and with a flash of light, the door lay open before her.

A cloud of dust blew over their faces and stung their eyes and throats until they coughed and wept. When the dust settled, Clover peered into the room and darted back as Star Swirl swept by with the duster.

“Now look, I nearly had it!” he bellowed angrily. “I’m sure I would’ve gotten the hang of it if you hadn’t opened that door!”

Star Swirl danced from shelves to desk to floor to windowsill, lashing each one with the duster as though it had done him a personal wrong. As he did so, clouds of grey rose up in protest and settled with unerring precision on every other thing in the room, waiting for him to start again.

“Confound it! I get the principle well enough: cleaning is essentially to move the dust from one place to another. It just won’t move the way I want it to!”

The maid stared helplessly at Clover, who recognized the signs. Interrupting Star Swirl was a shot above spilling onion gravy over the Princess’s gowns on the pyramid of sackable offences, and would probably get a servant executed to boot. Clover coughed as loudly as she dared, which was about three decibels.

“Master,” said Clover, bowing low, “I think it would be best not to delay your spell-casting any longer on this one.”

“I assure you, Clover, that this will not prove to be much of a distraction at all.”

“Master, please look at the hourglass on your desk.”

He did so. He turned back to her and his lip curled.

“Ah. Yes,” he said slowly. “The, uh… timer for this task has indeed overrun. Er, well done for pointing that out, my dear student. Yes, I believe I have indeed met my quota for this particular experiment. Maid, as you were.”

The duster floated across the room and rammed itself into the surprised maid’s mouth. She bowed to him briskly and hurried about the desk and shelves.

Star Swirl ignored her and settled onto the desk with his hooves in his face. As the maid swept by, however, he glanced up to watch her work with narrowed eyes and muttered something under his breath.

Nopony spoke for a long while. Star Swirl had his back to Clover, who was trying her best not to make a move. Long hours indoors seemed to have focused his hearing to supernatural levels. A mere breath would have him rounding on her with eyes popping.

“There you are,” said the maid, trying not to quiver in case weakness provoked him. “Clean as a whistle.”

Star Swirl pinned her with a glare, his teeth crushing each other, and began to shake. The door slammed on her way out.

Clover sighed to herself. How many days was he like this now? Once, he would have cheerfully chatted with the servants, evidently hungry for any unlikely source of inspiration. As tactfully as she could, Clover approached the hunched figure and carefully avoided stepping on the hem of his robe. He didn’t like having the bells jangled by accident.

“With all due respect, master,” she said, “I cannot fathom why you seem so interested in…”

“In what, exactly?”

Clover swallowed the obvious response. In replacing every member of staff who happens to walk by your door.

“In experimenting with non-magical activities. It’s not like you at all.”

She was surprised to see his bushy eyebrows rise overhead. Star Swirl swept the desk clear of scrolls with his leg and looked up at her expectantly.

“Clover, my dear, I am not experimenting with earth pony skills,” he said cheerfully. “I’m improving them, and with that most subtle of all powers: magic! When the future comes, it will ride on a wave of new unicorn dreams and ambitions, led by the brightest and the best ponydom has to offer, and backed up by the unlimited reach of this wondrous organ!” He gestured to his horn. “Meaning no disrespect to the other tribes, but given our natural powers, we will inevitably render their special skills useless in the not-too-distant future. Have I not proven, over and over, that magic can do anything you wish, given time and hard work?”

He swung back to his desk, and began looking for his quill. Clover wasn’t sure whether pointing out that it was on the floor would do the slightest bit of good.

“But master,” she said, “the unicorn tribe has tried to replace the other tribes for millennia. Golden Bag proved in his Conjecture that sovereignty over the powers of the three tribes is exclusively theirs. Even winged unicorns and alicorns cannot match the earth and pegasus ponies in their respective –”

“Golden Bag is a hack,” said Star Swirl to the desk, “in both senses of the word.”

Clover gasped. “You don’t really mean that, master? You were his student.”

She was met by a chortle at the dim-wittedness of apprentices everywhere, and frowned only when she was sure he wasn’t looking at her. Is this even the same stallion I met twelve years ago?

“Master, I must speak my mind,” she said.

“Speak away, young foal.”

Clover blushed. I forgot you used to call me that, when I was starting out. “Marilyn is extremely capable at her job because –”

Star Swirl met her eye. “Marilyn?”

“The maid, master. She’s good at dusting because it’s in her special talent. I don’t know how cutie mark laws work, to be honest, but I do know that they have something to do with the fundamental nature of the pony in question. It’s not a question of magical application, master. It’s a question of minds, and beliefs, and fears, and hopes, and loves, and dreams. No amount of magic can do more than tap at the surface of that.”

Star Swirl regarded her with a strange expression. His mouth seemed to be clamped firmly shut beneath the beard, but his ears were twitching randomly, and his cheeks and eyes seemed to be wrestling with something below the surface.

“There are spells to control love and dreams,” he said slowly. “Those limits can be transcended, but with the right spells, of course.”

“That’s forbidden magic, master!”

“So you don’t deny it, then!” Star Swirl nearly knocked the desk over in his haste to point a hoof at her. “There is a way!”

“No, master. It’s superficial. The real nature of the pony remains untouched underneath.”

“Now you’re just making excuses.”

“I mean it, master.” Despite her trembling knees, Clover insisted on standing as tall as she could and didn’t look away. “You can make them behave as if they loved something, and you can make them have dreams, but you can’t change their real loves or their deepest dreams. What makes a pony special can’t be touched at all by magic.”

Star Swirl stared at her for a long time. His eyes were yellowed and pulsed with veins.

Eventually, he looked away and scanned the shelves for books. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I will prove you wrong, young foal. Heh,” he said in a mirthless voice, “I must say, this has been an unusually insightful discussion from you, hasn’t it? But I claim it again: I will prove you wrong!”

She didn’t like the way his eyes flashed when he looked at her.

For a brief moment, Clover felt herself on the cusp of something much more unpleasant than she was used to. It was as if a stranger had just appeared in Star Swirl’s place – no, as if someone she knew and didn’t like was there in his stead. He’d given her a look she didn’t like at all, with all the warmth of an iceberg closing in.

“Master?” she said.

“I’ve just had an idea.” Star Swirl turned to his shelves and began summoning books left and right. “Don’t you worry, my dear student. I think I can resolve this issue with ease later today. I will send the mareservant of the castle for you when I’m ready.”

“What about the spell you were trying –”

“I SAID I’LL SEND FOR YOU!”

She barely had time to register the glow of magic around her body before she hit the balustrade outside and the door slammed shut behind her.

Clover picked herself up and stared back at the oaken door, listening to the shuffling of hooves as Star Swirl readied his desk for studies.

Princess Platinum was right, she thought. He’s losing himself. If he’s trying to replace all the other tribes with unicorn magic, then who knows what other ideas he might develop? Who knows what he’ll experiment with next? I have to watch my master more closely.

She glared and punched her own forehead. Don’t you dare think that way, Clover! Whatever else he’s done, he’s still the brilliant mind you know and love. He's just... distracted. Ambitious. He'll snap out of it, I think.

She trotted down the corridor. There must be a way to help him. I wiped the last part of his Serpent Summons Spell, and he didn’t notice. If I recruit Marilyn in on this, then perhaps she can smuggle out his books for me to peruse. I only need to make sure he won’t do anything dangerous…

A distant door slammed.

Several hours passed.

From the doorway, a gruff, lowly voice said, “I think I have it. 'From one to another, another to one, a mark of one’s destiny'… Hmm... Yes... Now, what rhymes with ‘one’?”

Heliocentric

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The little filly Twilight put her eye to the telescope's lens, and waited for the sun to go down. The mattress on which she stood had a deep impression where she'd bounced up and down on it, and sometimes she had to nudge one of the tripod's legs whenever it slid down towards her own. By her side, a book was laid out, and she looked at it every few seconds to check the circular diagram. She should have closed the curtains and gone to sleep long ago, but she knew her parents never enforced the bedtime rule.

All the same, her tiny heart beat faster when she heard the hoofsteps coming up the spiral staircase. But she couldn't put the telescope away whatever happened. There were so many stars up there, and she thought she could see patterns among them, and colours, and there were so many questions, their answers as dark and mysterious as the space between the lights.

For a moment, the young unicorn resisted the lens long enough to check the sun's progress, and was rewarded with a spectrum of colours from bright yellow to the darkness of the oncoming dusk.

Twilight returned to the lens. She focused on the evening star and tried to ignore the creak of hinges behind her. Not now, she thought, not now! I'm so close!

Her mother chuckled quietly. "Tut, tut, little Twi. You know what time it is."

"I'm a 'stronomer," said Twilight. She didn't look around because only amateur astronomers got distracted, and she was never going to be amateur. "I have to work at night, 'cause the stars are shy."

"The stars are shy, are they?"

"Yep. They don't come out when it's day because the sun's so big and scary-looking."

Her mother nodded knowingly, and walked over to the bedside to look at the book. "It is big, isn't it? But it's a good sun. It gives us warmth and light so that we don't have to shiver or stumble in the dark. And the Princess makes sure we get enough sunlight and enough night time to feel comfortable."

Twilight's horn glowed. At her age, the power surges should have long since settled down and become more manageable, but Twilight still retained the power to move several axles and dials at once. The little filly giggled at her own achievement and looked away from the lens for a moment.

"Mommy, could the Princess make the world go around the sun, and not the other way around?" she said.

She knew at once that it was a bit of a no-go area. Her mother's lips pursed in a way that reminded the filly of the time she'd knocked the cookie jar onto the floor. And most of the kitchen's food out of the cupboard. Power surges did interesting things.

"That's a strange question," said her mother slowly.

"Could she?" said Twilight.

"Well, I guess she could, but why would she want to?"

A pair of stubby hooves reached out for the tome, closing it, and Twilight held it out for her mother to see the cover. It said: Celestial Speculations on the Sphere of Stellar Speculations.

Twilight took a deep breath. "Because the natural ph'losopher pegasus Sky Scraper in the year 18 Before C'lestia did some mathematrical calc'lations and he used a stick planted on the planet's equator and a second stick planted nearer the north pole, and he compared the length of their shadows at midday and he used... um... trig-on-o-me-tree to calc'late the distance of the sun, and he said that at that distance, in order what for the sun to be the size it is, it would have to be really, really, really, really big and hot and heavy. So, if the planet is really tiny and warm and light, then it would be really, really easy to make the planet spin round so that it looks like the sun is going round."

Twilight noticed her mother was blinking. Uh oh, she thought. I think I used too many big words again. But the book used the big words. Why can't I?

"Uh..." said her mother, "very... interesting, Twi. But then, what about the moon?"

"That's what I'm going to find out tonight," said Twilight. "I think the moon reflects the light off the sun, so if my calc'lations are correct, the moon will have a big round shadow on it when it comes out tonight because the sun is shining and the planet is in the way."

To her surprise, her mother's face lit up and she burst out laughing. A tear appeared in the corner of her mother's eye and had to be wiped away on the back of her hoof.

"Oh, sweetie, bless you! Sometimes you say the funniest things. There's never been a shadow on the moon!"

Twilight looked worried for a moment. "There hasn't?"

"No!" Her mother managed to banish the amusement from her voice, though her lips were straining with suppressed laughter. "Everypony knows the sun goes around the world. Her Majesty herself says so! You do love to go off on your own little world when you read so much, sweetie."

"Oh," said Twi. Her mother's horn glowed and the telescope, the tome, and the curtains moved of their own accord. Twilight felt herself rise from the bed while the mattress was smoothed down. Her mother put the things back in the closet and tucked her into bed, bringing the quilt up to her small pasterns as the young unicorn stared in complete surprise at the ceiling.

"Now get some sleep. Daddy's going to take you to the library again tomorrow, so you'll need to be fresh and alert in the morning." A quick kiss on the forehead, and Twilight's mother ambled back to the door. It closed quietly.

After the distant thumping of hooves died away, the bedroom was silent for a long time.

Twilight turned to the doll next to her. "Smartypants, do you think I was a silly?"

No answer. Twilight pushed the quilt off and waddled over to the curtains, throwing them back. The skies had now lost all but the darkest colours, and the stars stared down at her in their thousands like quiet auditors.

She crouched down and peeked under the bed, where there was a black mass of square objects filling up every available cubic centimetre.

"Do you think I should have told her about all the Relativ'ty books?" she said.

Daring Done and Dusted

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The young Daring Do was on her lunch break. She was still feeling the thrill from her first few weeks on the job in Canterlot, and her first expedition had been a resounding success. Now that she had a chance to get away from the hurly burly of the office life - she was still reeling from the birthday song they'd all sung for one of the lucky mares on her floor - she'd decided to step out and take a look around town for somewhere nice to eat.

Doughnut Joe's caught her eye. The establishment blended in with the rest of the opalescent street, but to walk inside it was like walking into a cushion of chatter, with laughter and pleasant voices all talking about how their days had been. Nopony was wearing fancy dress or trying to look standoffish. Well, one or two were, but they were the exceptions; most of the patrons were free of clothing, and the few who weren't were wearing all sorts of strange and exotic fashions. It looked like a favourite hangout for international types; the occasional griffon, donkey, zebra, and minotaur dotted the groups. A mare with a pith helmet and a green shirt wouldn't draw so much as a raised eyebrow here.

After squeezing her way through the throngs, she ordered a platter of custard doughnuts at the bar and squeezed her way back for somewhere to settle. Luckily, she soon found a lone table tucked away in the corner and sat down at once with her back to the wall so that she could look out over the socializing customers if she wanted. To her surprise, the plump stallion behind the bar came to her table with speed and set down the platter as though on a time limit.

"Enjoy your meal, Miss Do!" he said, barely containing a grin before tipping his hat and rushing back. She didn't even have time to thank him.

They're big on their service here, she thought. She only later remembered that she had never once mentioned her name, but at the time she simply didn't notice this detail.

Daring plucked a doughnut from the platter and opened her journal, spreading it out onto the table before her. While she chewed, letting the rich custard spread over her tongue and the doughnut leap and pat from cheek to cheek, her eyes absorbed the wall of writing before her. It was as if Professor Heritage were speaking through it to her, telling her about the intrigues and plots of the ancient pony tribes before classical times, and how evidence from the site in the Badlands had shown where the oldest unicorn city of history had been carefully built from sandstone and marble.

Her wings soon drooped. Her initial anxiety over visiting a new place gently calmed down. With the soothing background warmth of dozens of conversations around her, this was like being back in the familiar common room of the museum. Relaxing by the fireplace, with her peers quietly reading in their armchairs, and the museum's common room windows tightly shut...

Some time passed before she noticed she was being watched. A shadow fell over her journal, and she glanced up to see three mares looking either very pleased or very frightened to be this close to her. They giggled nervously.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

After a lot of nudging and more nervous giggles, one mare stepped forwards. "Sorry. Excuse me, but... Are you... Daring Do?"

Daring blinked in surprise. "Yep, that's me."

The mare - and her companions - held out a hardback each. "It's so awesome to actually meet you! I really like your book. All that cool stuff you did was incredible! C-Could I have your autograph?"

It took a while for Daring's memory to catch up, and she caught sight of the titles. Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone, every one of them.

Oh yes, she thought. That book. She hesitated for a moment, slightly put out by the interruption, but it seemed rude to just turn them away and carry on reading. Why not humour them?

She took out a pen from her pocket, with that bizarre ability to 'grip' things with her hoof that everypony could do and that nopony seemed able to explain without invoking magic. "Uh, sure. Why not?"

All three opened their books to the front page. She simply signed her name on each one; a short message would send them away faster, and anyway they seemed pleased just to have the chance to meet her. Once done, they all said - again - how much they loved the book and thought she was awesome, and then left.

Daring let the scene sink in for a moment. She hadn't actually written the novel. If anything, she'd been surprised at the idea. when it was presented to her, shortly after she returned from the Amaponian. But it seemed like something pretty fun on the side, and why not if it gave ponies pleasure?

She went back to her journal. Professor Heritage had just gotten to a good bit about fragments of pottery and metal scraps where the earth pony craftsmares had once set up shop, and was drawing a parallel between the switch from unicorn craftsmareship to earth pony work and the political emancipation of the earth pony underclass by the heads of both tribes. Daring found herself wondering at which stage the Amaponian tribes had been when this historic moment happened. She was disturbed, however, by the rise in the number of whispers she kept hearing around her. It was as if the fire in the fireplace had diminished.

Another shadow fell across the table. She looked up to see some more ponies crowding around her, and two griffons and a minotaur were among them.

"Miss Do, could we have your autograph, please?" said the minotaur. Everypony held out a book each.

As quickly as she could, Daring agreed and signed each one, again with just her name. They thanked her and, like the previous group, told her how much they loved the book and thought she was awesome, and then left.

She went back to her journal, and was irritated to find that she'd lost her place. Quickly, she skimmed over each paragraph's first sentence before she found the one she'd left off.

"It's really her, guys," murmured a voice not too far away.

"Daring Do?" said a mare going back to her table.

"It's Daring Do!" said a filly, pointing directly at her.

"Is it really?"

"You're sure?"

She wasn't even pretending to read by now. In fact, she was glancing from speaker to speaker as more patrons in the shop became aware that she was sitting there. Another group came up to her and asked for an autograph. Daring blushed and meekly got out the pen, but no sooner had the group moved on that another group came up and asked for the same. Yet a third group met up behind them while she signed away, and meanwhile more and more gazes were zeroing in on her.

Suddenly, the atmosphere was changing around her. Daring Do began to blush as more ponies crowded around her. She didn't have the heart to say no, and could only sweat as the press of bodies kept coming and more and more ponies asked for autographs. She couldn't possibly sign them all. Her lunch break would be over soon, and she hadn't even reached halfway through Heritage's article. She could've completed it before lunch break ended, and had hoped to do so.

When she felt the queue now forming before her was getting too long, she thought, I wish they weren't all looking at me. There's so many of them! I'll sign just one more, and then I'll say no.

After signing three more books, she took a deep breath. "I'm sorry everypony, but no more autographs today."

"Aw, come on," said the stallion over the groans of the crowd. "That's not fair. I only just got here."

"Um... er..." Daring said.

"Can't we just have one autograph? Even initials will do!" said somepony else further back.

"It's only a little thing. Oh, please?" This one had to be shouted over the rising din of complaints.

"Why not? You happily did it for those other guys back there."

"Yeah. Why do we have to be left out?"

Daring tugged at her shirt collar. So many voices... she thought. Glares and pleading looks surrounded her. She suddenly felt very alone, pressed up with her back against the wall and only a thin wooden table between her and the mob. "I'm sorry," she managed to say, "but..."

"But you're Daring Do! I can't pass up this opportunity! My sister would kill me!"

"You'd be doing us an honour!" said a griffon aggressively.

"And a favour!"

Just say no... Just say no... Her traitorous tongue refused to do it. Daring tried to fight off her own growing headache and gritted her teeth.

"OK, then, OK..." she found herself saying, and slumped in her seat. The crowd quickly settled down, but not before a cheer passed like a Mexican wave from front to back.

Daring glanced sadly at her journal. She almost felt like Professor Heritage was in the room with her, shocked that all his and his colleagues' hard work had been abandoned just when it was getting to the good part. The doughnuts lay uneaten on the platter beside it. One or two cheeky patrons even took a doughnut each off the pile once she'd signed their copies.

Daring spent so long trying to get rid of them quickly that she was shocked to find lunch time had finished. Despite the cries of the crowd, she pushed aside her unfinished doughnut, slipped the unread journal back under her hat, shot up from her seat with wings flapping, apologized to all assembled, and rushed out the door.

As she left the eager cries far behind, she decided to wear different clothes the next time she went in there. Doughnut Joe's had been nice at first. She just had to do something about those crowds...

The Trojan Horse

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It was, very simply, a wooden horse.

Not that anypony looking out beyond the white wall would have noticed. Even under the moonlight, the plains beyond the city watchtowers were black. There was only the suggestion of an outline that would, if it had not been the size of a castle and as blocky as a stack of timber, have passed for a pony.

Nothing could be heard except for the revelry of the distant pegasus camp, but the unicorns had gotten used to it now, and simply passed it off as ambience. There were no noises on the southwesterly wind, but in any case the ears of the citizens were still ringing with the blasts of magic and the crashes of lightning from the last few weeks.

Behind the walls were empty streets and silent houses. It was as if the country's stone and thatched roof villages had been picked up and crammed into whatever space the fortress had left, and the citizens were simply too scared to so much as sneeze. Some of the roofs had long since caved in, like decayed teeth finally collapsing under all that plaque.

Amid all this was a conical tower. As it stood on a hill, the slopes of which were black with scorched grass, it strongly resembled a unicorn's horn, with the giant pushing its head through the otherwise flat plain. Tiny lights flickered at windows. The whole edifice had a coiled shape rather like a seashell. Occasionally, the tip flashed like a lighthouse as whoever was on duty broadcast a message down to the watchtowers.

The unicorns on watchtower duty were slow in responding. There had been no interesting fights with the pegasi since the stalemate had begun.

They'd seen the horse. Both guards stared down from their watchtowers at the thing, but the horse did not move.

After six hours of musical statues, albeit without the music, it occurred to them that somepony should go and have a look at it. They lowered the portcullis and switched on their horn lights before descending the steps. There were perks to being magic-crafters, and unicorns had advantages in the dark.

Both lights approached the wooden horse. It didn't snap to life or suddenly explode, which disappointed them slightly. They'd seen the slaves of the enemy pegasi wheel it along and then leave it for them to stare at, and they privately felt it was bad form for an enemy to leave things that didn't try to kill you. It was like having a tennis opponent who wouldn't serve.

A third light came out to join them, accompanied by the outlines of two earth ponies in chains. Not that there were many unicorns awake in the city, but if there had been, their ears might have detected, under the oppressive silence, three voices speaking to each other. There were lots of pauses. None of the voices seemed sure of themselves, even when they shouted at the earth ponies to run back for them.

An hour passed. The pegasus camp exploded with laughter once or twice as the grape juice continued to flow and the knock-knock jokes suddenly became inexplicably funny, if rather unflattering to the earth pony servants helping the grape juice along.

Lights came out to join the three outside the unicorn fortress, accompanied by some more earth ponies in chains. And then the earth ponies were sent back, and the next group of rattling chains came down and were sent back, and a complicated game of back-and-forth played out. This was because the guards, aristocrats, and military officers of the city were trying to work out the appropriate way to react to an enemy erecting wooden statues at them.

Somepony seemed to reach a decision. All the earth ponies were shouted back into the fortress. As one, the lights encircled the horse and flickered out.

Then, as one, aura after aura lit up around the wooden horse and its body glowed with a spectrum of magical colours. The entire monstrosity rose slightly off the grass. Groans and pants accompanied it like a procession that had been cobbled together at the last minute, and the lot cruised through the open gates. The two guards clambered up the stone steps. Later, the portcullis slammed shut.

The plains became awfully quiet. A thud shook the ground, as several tons of timber hit the dirt. Silence, as it does, settled down again.

The pegasus camp suddenly burst out in applause, completely oblivious to what was going on, but fully aware that somepony had just broken the "drop the earth pony from the greatest height and maybe catch it before it hits the ground" record. Nopony noticed that the slaves had suddenly disappeared.

From the edges of the fortress can the sounds of rattling chains. A few whispered voices and careful hoofsteps could be made out, but in the darkness it was impossible to see, and it faded away. Silence, once again, settled on the unicorn fortress.

Eventually, somepony discovered the "on" switch.

When the sun finally rose on the plains that spanned from horizon to horizon, its beams revealed no city, no walls, no hill, and no camp. Instead, there was only a smoking crater, surrounded by stretches of ash and charred turf. The screams, the creaking of giant cogs, and the explosions from the night before had long since faded beyond the range of pony hearing, and the air stank of sulphur. If anypony had been left, and if they'd looked carefully at the horizon, beyond the shimmering mirage, they'd have just made out the silhouettes of fleeing and flying figures.

Nopony remembered the giant hoofprints. They were hard to make out among the rubble, but they were there if you knew what to look for. Not even the earth ponies, when they came late afternoon to peer over the remains, could spot them. They hadn't been sent to spot the hoofprints. Their only job was to see the rubble, spot the unicorns and pegasi fleeing over the horizon, nod their heads, and leave.

History tends to focus on what the other two tribes did after that. Nopony seems to know what happened to the wooden horse. It wasn't mentioned for centuries except in one rather obscure academic paper, which was subsequently lost and forgotten about. Several centuries passed, which were interesting enough to pass the time but overall had a lot in common with a carousel.

It's often said that history is written by the winners. But there's no rule against losers occasionally holding the pen.

Time Out Daring

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With outstretched wings, the pegasus landed on the moist grass and tried to ignore the tingle when the mud oozed over her hooves. Under her rainproof coat, she shivered. The mare's body had taken worse punishment than oozing mud before, but while she had the butterflies fluttering in her stomach, even the merest chill felt like a stab with an icicle.

A thick mist surrounded her. In the distance, she could just make out the shadows of cottages and knew she was on the border of the town. One cottage stood a little apart from the others; a traditional wattle-and-daub affair with flower baskets either side of the front door. Glancing around nervously, the hooded figure braced herself against a wet gale, feeling the cool slap of the coat against her hocks, and trudged over the turf.

Both wings folded up along her body. She wanted to tuck them under her coat, but the rainproof had the tightest of holes - just enough to let the wings poke through when being worn - and so she had to hope that the tan colour of her feathers wouldn't give her away. She drew the hood tighter over her head, trying not to draw attention to the dark strands that spiked from her fringe.

All around her, the downpour strained and drummed against the soil, churning the grass and the mud to a thick mulch as though the weather bore a grudge against hard earth. Wind shears sliced left and right, pulling at the pegasus' coat one way, tugging its folds elsewhere when she moved on. Her hood flapped and billowed in the face of an eddy, and under the skirmishes of raindrops and rushing fog, dew flecked the mare's muzzle and chin, giving her cheeks and the bridge of her nose a glittery, freckled look.

The mare's hood blew off her head suddenly. Daring Do's look of panic flashed like lightning across her face. She pulled the hood over her head quickly, and began shooting worried looks around the fog. She was sure she could hear voices.

Eventually, she stepped onto the welcome mat, smothering the flowery letters stitched on the top. Even now, Daring Do found herself scraping her back hoof against the scraggly mat. She wished she could give up the habit, but tell-tale fidgeting stuck with a pony for life, like having bad breath or weak knees. To her embarrassment, she hesitated for a moment before raising a hoof and knocking on the timber door.

It was hard to tell over the patter and clatter of the tapping rain, but she thought she heard a muffled voice from inside the cottage. Daring willed her back leg to behave, and it stopped pawing the rugged fabric, though she still felt the urge. It was annoying. She couldn't concentrate on what she was going to do. What would she say? It was easier just to say something simple, but she was the older sister. She was supposed to take charge, she knew it.

She had the most exciting job in the world. There must be reams of anecdotes she could call up at a moment's notice. Yet her mind, like the fog surrounding it, stayed stubbornly dull. Hoofsteps were coming. Somepony would be at the door soon. Daring willed herself to relax as she heard the latch clunk.

Under an untidy fringe of blond hairs, one eye peered out from behind the front door. At least, it appeared to be looking for her; it was pointing slightly away from Daring Do and seemed fascinated by something over her left shoulder. The other eye peeped out, this time really pointing at her.

The door flung open and a grey mare stood in the doorway, mouth wide with surprise and joy. A warm orange light behind her cast her smile in shade.

"Big sis!" she exclaimed. "You came home!"

Daring Do threw back her hood and shook her slightly-sodden mane out, giving her sister her trademark grin and a lot of awkwardly spiked hair. "Hey, Ditzy! You'll never guess how much I've been looking forward to this visit."

"I got your letter." Ditzy Do held up an envelope in her hoof, clenched between her pastern and frog. "I never thought you'd make time. You always used to write about how you were so busy."

"Well, after all I'd done for the curator at the museum," said Daring, "I was overdue some time off anyway." She smiled, showing more warmth than her usual grin could achieve. "It's good to see you again, little sis."

A shriek of laughter jumped out from behind her. Daring's ears stiffened with a sudden rictus of fright and she hastily shoved the hood over her head just as a patter of hooves approached through the fog. Somepony was galloping past the cottage - no, two ponies were galloping past; she could make out two rhythms of hoofsteps - and when Daring peeked back, she saw two mares rushing by without any protection against the elements. Splashes of water flared as they rushed over a puddle, and then they continued their race into the fog and faded out of sight.

Daring's heart was still beating frantically against her chest as Ditzy ushered her indoors. She hung her head, dripping all over the exposed floorboards. This wasn't how an elder sister was supposed to behave, and she knew it.

Ditzy shut the rain out, and the clank of the lock was a guillotine on Daring's link to the outside world. She raised her head again and threw back the hood. Ditzy ambled past her, trying to make her own googly eyes focus on her sister.

"Are you all right, big sis?"

"I'm fine, it's just..." Daring said. By hoof, she eased her wings through the holes and let the coat flop to the floor. Before she could pick it up, Ditzy immediately beat her to it and hung the coat onto the hat stand. Daring took a steadying breath. "I like my quiet time with my family. And I mean just with my family."

Ditzy looked at her sister with some concern. "Were you avoiding those mares back there?"

"No. I mean, kinda. Well, it's a little hard to explain." She thought she heard a creak upstairs. A cold sweat broke out all over her body. "There isn't anypony else in the house, is there?" she asked sharply.

"No, there isn't. It's just us two in here tonight." As Ditzy spoke, Daring could hear the confusion hovering over each word. "Why? You're not in trouble are you?"

"Of course not!" After a while, her rather cynical memory caught up with her. "Well, no more than usual, as my kind of work goes. But it's nothing like that, I promise you."

Warmth began to seep into her moist fur. Despite the puddle that was forming underneath her, Daring still felt soaked to the bone, but now her skin felt the pressure easing off like droplets running down a windowpane. Ditzy's wings flapped a small breeze over her as the younger mare hovered nearby.

Ditzy smiled. "Your work is going very well, isn't it?"

"My work?" Daring gave a weak chuckle, hoping to reassure her sister. "Um. Oh, yeah. It's going very... very well, thanks. Just came back from the South Amaponian, in fact. I had to deliver the latest artefact to the museum in Canterlot. And you'll never guess what we found: the lost codex of the Ahuizotlian tribes! For the first time in pony history, we have an accurate account of what happened during the early years of its civilization. I came back to Canterlot with it to help decipher the Aztecoglyphs -"

"The South Amaponian? That's swell! I bet you've got lots of stuff to tell me! You've got the best job in the world, sis."

Daring's enthusiasm vanished. "Yeah. It's... good."

Ditzy landed beside her now-blow-dried elder sister. In the confines of the hall, stuck between the stairs and the wall, Daring could easily smell the concern radiating from her flanks. It was a smell she'd been starved of for months, though the much stronger stench of fear was more familiar to her. It's amazing what a pony could pick up through their nose.

"What's wrong?" said Ditzy.

"I couldn't do my studies," said Daring, and she looked squarely at her sister's face.

Daring's eyes were slightly bloodshot, and she knew from Ditzy's expression that the bags underneath them must be obvious, but the flicker of discomfort she saw still bothered her. I really do look that bad, don't I?

"It's been going on for a while. I didn't realize things would be so stressful. All the attention, all those eyes fixed on me, crowd after crowd every time I step outside the museum. Every time I come back to Canterlot, I get hounded for autographs. I can't even go to Doughnut Joe's any more without somepony I've never met trying to get chummy with me. And you know I don't like that sort of attention."

She tried her best to smile, but she knew the tired eyes would ruin the effect. Ditzy put a hoof to her mouth.

"But I thought you wanted to be famous?" she asked.

Daring had heard this once too often, and to hear it from her sister... She groaned into her hoof. "Oh, Ditzy, not you too."

"What? What's wrong?"

"Ditzy, don't you know me better than that?" she pleaded. "You're my sister, for heaven's sake. All I really need right now is a bit of time where I'm not the famous adventurer everypony knows. Just a few hours with you would do me a world of good."

Ditzy gestured towards the kitchen. "Do you want to talk? I'll make some tea."

Daring winced as her sister bumped into the frame around the door. Carefully, as though nervous the woodwork would leap out at her, Ditzy walked around the frame and slipped into the kitchen. Same old Ditzy, she thought, but it was a comforting thought. Maybe, even after all this time, little sis was still there, and hadn't stopped being the filly she'd known. She needed old Ditzy.

With a sigh, she ambled for the warmth of the kitchen. "A drink would be great."

Spa Crazy

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“Dear!” said Cinnamon disapprovingly. The ladder shook a little as she adjusted it, and she wished her husband wouldn't move so much. “Don’t you think you’re overdoing things a little?”

Ester, Proprietor of the Crystal Pony Spa, lowered the handkerchief to give his wife a look of pity mingled with irritation. “You can’t overdo a good polish. Not when you’re going to be hosting the Equestria Games!”

He jumped down and hurried over to the counter, shouting as he went; “Myrrh, don’t forget Miss Amethyst in the mud bath. Careful with the perm, Granita; you don’t want to ruin your hard work! Good job with that massage, Lustre! You got the sheen just right, as always.” He barely noticed their shrugs and stares as he rushed past them to the counter.

Cinnamon hurried after him. "Yes," she said, "but I think there's such a thing as moderation, and this isn't..."

“After all, Cinnamon,” he said, turning around to face her, “we are the few – we lucky few, we sauna sisters – who have defied the odds after a thousand years lagging behind. What does that say about us, then?”

“It says a lot, dear," said Cinnamon warily. "But inspection’s been and gone. The games won’t be for months.”

“And we shall not be found a-slacking, my dear! Oh, those six mares did a good job, I imagine. Used some mysterious Equestrian charm on her, I imagine. They did it, though, and in my spa shop too! What does that tell you?”

Cinnamon looked around the spa, taking in the hectic pace of the crystal pony workforce. “I still don’t understand why we couldn’t do it ourselves. Defying the odds of a millennium is all very well, but you’d think we could defy it a little more without needing to be ‘saved’ by outsiders again?”

Ester’s face contorted for a long moment before he tipped his forelock to her. “Well, it’s only fair, isn’t it? Don’t want to be left out of the running by too wide a margin, or it’d be ridiculous. Our Princess kind of commissioned them to do the job. That’s good judgement. And she's our Princess, so in a way it's our judgement, too. Clever of us! And our polishing helped, right?” He flapped the cloth enthusiastically.

"Yes, that's what I wanted to talk to you about," said Cinnamon uneasily. "It's been selling like hotcakes, but recently I've had my suspicions. So I examined the stuff out the back, sent some off to the Spa Standards Union for examination -"

"The what?"

Cinnamon bit her lip. "The Spa Standards Union. And I just heard back from them today."

"Thank you, come again!" Ester shouted to a pony leaving through the double doors. "What luck! Today's the one hundredth anniversary of our Spa! Glowing report, I imagine?"

"Uh, no. In their letter, they said -"

A dull stallion strode into the spa and made a beeline for the desk. Ester took one look at his face and felt the smile begin to shuffle on his own.

“Hello sir,” he said carefully. “How can I help… at… all?”

Thunk! Ester nearly ducked below the counter until he saw the label on the bottle.

“Your crystal skin oil,” said the dull stallion.

“So it is,” said Ester, chuckling weakly.

Cinnamon was suddenly not there, but Ester was sure he had heard the words "oh boy" a second ago.

“Three weeks ago, I bought this from you for a do-it-yourself home-made mud bath, complete with the ‘special ingredient’ that, and I quote, ‘will really bring out the shine on your skin’.”

“Yes?” Ester looked from the bottle to the other and back again. “I’m sorry. Is there something wrong? It looks like you haven’t even tried it yet.”

The stallion leaned across the counter and almost head-butted him. “I have! It’s left me with a skin condition! My physician had to spend three hours diagnosing it. You know what dermacrystallitis is?”

Ester shook his head.

“Neither do I, but apparently I have it. And it happened right after I started using this.” He tipped the bottle over.

Ester swelled up in rage, as many animals do when cornered. “Excuse me, excuse me! And what makes you so certain that the mud bath oil was the problem?”

The door swung open, and a herd of dull-coloured, red-eyed, and teeth-baring ponies marched in, all brandishing the same bottles, and all of them homing in on the counter like a swarm of bees.

“Mr Ester! Your crystal skin oil abolished when it should have polished my shine!”

“The mud baths here are contaminated!”

Ester looked around nervously. The occupants of the bath in the corner were staring in horror at the mob. Some of them leaped out almost immediately.

He struggled to get the words out. “Con - Contaminated?”

“It’s not just the skin oil, either!” said a normal-looking crystal pony. “Your perfume smells foul! And it does stuff to your head! My uncle got a big whiff of it and then bought the crystal empire palace from a con artist! He’s an actuary, for goodness’ sake!”

“My wife used the stuff and tried to hit on my boss at a cocktail party!”

“My friend used the stuff and hugged her friend for ruining her headdress. A family heirloom!”

“There’s something funny in that stuff you used, and we want to know what it is!”

“We have a right to know what we’re buying!”

“Excuse me,” said Ester, and fled.

Ester slammed the door behind him, and hurried down the steps into the cellar while Cinnamon began boarding up the door. Hooves battered it from the other side.

“What’s gotten into them?” He almost choked on the hooves stuffed between his teeth. “I don’t know what's going on! The special ingredient shouldn’t be doing this! Why is it doing this to me?” He hurried down to the stock and checked the labels on the barrels before hurrying back up. “It’s the right stuff. The stuff we’ve been using since we set up hundreds of years ago! It’s the finest traditional –”

He gasped suddenly.

The fear pierced each other’s eyes silently.

“Hundreds of years of tradition, yes,” said Cinnamon White, and gulped.

“But one thousand years out of date,” said Ester. “Who knows how many practices might have changed since then?”

“Or been improved upon?”

“I’m remembering now…” said Ester.

There was a pause.

“We did change the stock a thousand years ago, right?” he said.

“I don’t know,” wailed Cinnamon. “We were so busy, what with being enslaved and having our minds wiped and the depression.”

“Oh, now you’re making jokes. How can you joke at a time like this?”

A vat bubbled behind them. Cinnamon winced. "That's what the investigation found. In that letter. I don’t think we ever had time to change the stock.”

“So this stuff,” he said carefully, “is ripe?”

“And as strong as a diamond battering ram.”

Ester fell onto his haunches. “Why didn’t we know about this sooner? We’ve been burning the stuff for incense and spraying the perfume and lotion all over the shop since the Princess’ accession.”

“When we had the games looming over us, waiting for us to trip up?”

Ester turned white. “Oh no…”

“What? What?”

Ester didn’t reply for a moment. “Those mares who came into the capital.”

“Yes?”

“They were in here, weren’t they?”

“Um, yes?”

“While we were burning this stuff and putting it in the perfumes and the mud bath and the oils?”

They heard shouting and banging overhead. A light clicked on in their heads. “You think they might have been affected?"

Ester paced up and down. The fumes in the room were getting to him. "How much can you remember about them?”

“Well, I remember listening to that tourist pony talk about them. You know, when she had the massage and it turned out the inspector was next to her? She said they seemed awfully cheery and confident, right up until they found out who she was.”

“Oh.”

“Ah, here’s a good one: you know when the inspector came, and they had to figure out who she was? You know how they did it? The messenger suggested –”

“That was while she was in here, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Drat!” Ester screamed at the sound of breaking glass from upstairs.

“Get this: she suggested looking for a suitcase with flowers on it. That’s it!”

“Don’t you dare start laughing! We could have lost the games because of that!”

“I think we nearly did.”

Ester turned white. “What do you mean?”

“After the tourist had a laugh over her story, they came in and made a scene, and one of them pretty much fell a-crowing about how she’d personally never had the chance to host the games – it was really sad stuff –”

Ester turned whiter. “Maudlin behaviour...”

“Yep.”

“Drat, drat, drat.”

“Then the inspector let them have the games anyway.”

“What, after all that?”

“Uh, yeah…” She had a hunted look now. “Yeah. I thought it was oddly generous of her, given how she’d been moaning at first about being splashed in the street and whatnot.”

“So… thanks to that stuff, we got the games?”

“Yeah. Yeah I guess so.”

“You think we could use that somehow? It’d sound pretty good to that mob upstairs, wouldn’t it?”

Someone screamed obscenities, and there was the sound of gallons of water sloshing over the floor. Something metal snapped. “Mm, I don’t think they care very much about the games at the moment.”

“Ah.”

Ester sighed. “OK, we might be able to manage some damage control here. You go up and give the ponies the refunds. It’s only fair.”

“Plus the Princess’ husband will be on us like a ton of bricks if he finds out.”

“Don’t you make this any worse than it is! We’ll order new stock. Free oils for every customer affected when we get the next batch in. Anything so long as they don’t cause a stink about this.”

“Or a perfume, so to speak.” Cinnamon peered over his shoulder. “So what do we do with the stuff?”

“Pour it down the drain. It has to go. And I might as well get started, so off you go.”

Cinnamon hurried up the stairs. Ester turned around and began heaving the barrel over his shoulder. As he did so, he peered mournfully at the label.

“Crystal grape juice,” he muttered. “And cinnamon ethanol. Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into…”

Why Sisters Can't Have Nice Things

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"Flitter? FLITTER!"

The pegasus dropped her comic at once and slipped off the bed in shock. From somewhere below, through the cloud-tiled floor of the Cloudsdale apartment, a voice deeper than hers called out again.

"Flitter, where are you? Come here a minute!"

Flitter felt the dread creeping upon her. She was found out, and she knew it. Cloudchaser's voice didn't just have an edge; it had an Edge.

Flitter righted herself and adjusted the bow on her lank hair. The incriminating comic lay scattered on the floor beside her, its loose and ageing pages showing off miniature pictures of Daring Do and a sabre-toothed cat. Gently, she picked it up between her teeth and lifted up a corner of the blanket around her bed. It was a lousy hiding place, but then Flitter did live in a bed chamber with little furniture, and in any case she'd think of somewhere else to hide it later.

She dropped the blanket and peered over the corner of the bed. Everything in the room was blue. Light blue, dark blue, aquamarine, cerulean, or blue so pale it was near-white: the quilt and the pillow, floor, chest of drawers, and the archway with its shimmering veil were all of the same hue. Even Flitter's own fur seemed to be blending in with the quilt as she placed her hooves over the folds.

One of her ears strained to hear. Downstairs, Cloudchaser was knocking over ornaments and making them rattle against each other. Sometimes, an exasperated "tsk" or a groan would signal that whatever Cloudchaser was looking for, it was still eluding her. It even suggested that the lost thing was doing it deliberately to wind her up. Another crash was followed by something heavy-sounding falling over, probably a cupboard.

She's definitely in a bad mood, Flitter thought nervously. For a few reckless moments, Flitter hovered between speaking and keeping quiet. Maybe, if she pretended she wasn't here, Cloudchaser would assume she'd flown out. Flitter peered around at the flapping curtains either side of the porthole. Nopony would know if she slipped out, would they?

Today was not her lucky day. Cloudchaser shouted her name again, and Flitter folded her wings. She steeled herself. It was not going to help to look defiant or annoyed, so she quickly practised her remorseful face against the bedside mirror. A little simpering, she said critically, but it'll have to do. There was barely a rustle as she pushed the veil aside.

When the cloud platform drifted up the chute of its own accord, she hopped from the bed chamber's archway onto it, and of its own accord the platform drifted down. She loved these things. They went up and down continuously, and if you could get several in a row, you could practice hopping from one to the other at the right time, wings folded. It wasn't practice for anything, as she'd patiently explained to her sister. Just practice generally. The cloud went past another veiled archway, and she jumped off before the cloud sunk down to another level.

Cloudchaser was at the far end of the room. She had her back to Flitter and was now lifting plants out of their plant pots to peer inside. Nearly every cupboard and drawer in the circular room was open, and various objects were strewn all over the floor.

"No wonder you lose stuff," said Flitter. "This place is a dump. Anything could be lost under all this mess."

"Ah, there you are, sis. Took your time." Cloudchaser turned around to face her. She had the expression most ponies reserved for news of international crises. "You haven't seen a yellow lightning ball around, have you?"

"Lightning ball?" Flitter cocked her head. Just like we rehearsed, ponies.

"Yeah. It's the size of a bowling ball" - Cloudchaser drew a circle in midair with her hooves, as though Flitter didn't know what size a bowling ball was - "and it glows like its on fire, but you don't burn if you touch it. I seriously need it right now."

"Uh oh," Flitter whispered. Aloud she said, "Is it... important?"

"Important? It was a Class II Solar Yellowsphere! You don't get those just anywhere, you know! Look! This is what I'm talking about." She bit a magazine from the rubble and threw it over to her sister, who stepped back to let it hit the ground. The page showed what looked like lightning that had been curled into a sphere. Arcs and tendrils rose off of it.

While Cloudchaser turned back to uprooting the plant, Flitter fought to hide any twinge on her own face that would betray her. Keep that poker face, she thought.

A small, placating smile rose on her lips. "Well, uh..." she said, pausing only to swallow, "it's not like you need it right now, is it?"

Cloudchaser looked at her as though her sister's head had spun on its neck. "Flitter, get your hooves back on the clouds! Rainbow Dash is waiting outside with hers, and she's challenged me right now to a duel! I can't go back out there and say 'Oops, sorry, I don't seem to have it on me right now, but I have it, I promise', now can I?"

"A duel?"

"Yeah! Don't tell me you've never heard of Lightning Balls? I have to show you sometime."

"Is it like conkers?" said Flitter, who spent more time on the ground than her sister.

"Yeah, except the conkers are specially condensed spheres of electrostatic cloud matter that explode when you hit them."

As if on cue, a monstrous arc of light sliced through the window and scorched a black mark on the ceiling. Flitter nearly jumped back onto the cloud platform in shock.

Cloudchaser surveyed her charred ceiling with disinterest. Then she hurried over to a window and peered out. Curious, Flitter went to look too.

On the clouds outside, two pegasi were facing each other, both with small glowing orbs of their own. A bystander blew a whistle. At once, both pegasi spun round and bucked their spheres. The light exploded. When the flash vanished, one of the orbs scattered and blew into tiny arcs of lightning, which themselves flashed out of existence. The loser stared at the remains in disbelief.

The winner looked up at the window. "Hey, Cloudchaser! Got your Solar Yellowsphere yet?"

"Be right with you, Rainbow Dash!" Cloudchaser shouted back. She was rather good at feigning nonchalance even when shouting. "You just keep that Red Supergiant ticking over."

When both sisters turned back into the room, however, Cloudchaser groaned. "She is not going to let me forget this if I don't find that thing. It was bad enough when she took out my Protostar 360, but at least I was just starting out. And now everypony's talking about it. They'll know about this before sunset."

A twinge of guilt fluttered in Flitter's belly. She looked around her sister's room. "But what are you going to do if you can't find it?" she asked. "Hypothetically."

She's giving me a funny look! She knows what I did! Flitter strained to keep her face as blank as possible. This was no time to break cover.

Cloudchaser gave a helpless shrug with her wings, and merely growled in exasperation. "Guess I'll just have to face the music. If the stupid thing doesn't turn up."

"Maybe I can help you find it?" She glanced around what was left of the room. "In case you overlooked it?"

"Overlooked it? It's a shining, humming orb of electricity nearly as big as my head. Tell me how I could overlook that."

She's on to me!

"Well, suppose hypothetically," said Flitter in a rush, "you just didn't notice it, and we couldn't find it because it wasn't in here, and it was somewhere else. And supposing somepony else found it, and took it back to the weather factory, only they didn't know what it was because it looked so weird, and maybe they didn't realize it was a lightning ball, and just thought it was some part of a lightning cloud that somepony left lying around, and suppose that pony gave it back, and then came home, and only later wondered why her sister was still looking for it, and supposing she went out of the way while her sister looked for it, and then when her sister asked her where it was and told her what it was, and she realized her mistake... supposing that was true, hypothetically?"

Uh oh, she thought, blushing and smiling weakly. Cloudchaser was staring at her. I don't think that accidental confession worked. At least I was honest, though. Right?

Cloudchaser sighed into her hoof. "Tell me you didn't -"

"I did," Flitter said helplessly. "But I thought I was helping! Honest! You know Mister Tuba gets upset if he finds weather stuff missing."

"Oh, Flitter, what am I going to do with you?" Cloudchaser knocked a white helmet off one of the piles of junk.

"I don't know. Take me to the Weather Committee this morning?"

"You don't need me to take you. You're old enough to go yourself."

"But I prefer going with you. Anyway, I'm younger than you."

"By about four minutes. That hardly counts."

"Doesn't it?" Flitter raised an eyebrow. "But whenever we argue about something, you always say -"

"That's different. Four extra minutes of experience counts for a lot when you're the older sister." Cloudchaser ambled over to the archway. "Come on, before Mister Tuba -"

There was a brief burst of static, and somewhere in a distance, a gruff voice spoke through a megaphone.

"The weekly Weather Committee will be meeting up within five minutes to discuss the important issues of the day. We expect all weather ponies to be present for the meeting, and DON'T BE LATE LIKE LAST TIME, YER HEAR ME!? ANY PEGASUS WHO TURNS UP ONE SECOND AFTER THE START WILL BE COURT MARTIALLED AND UP AGAINST THE WALL BEFORE BREAKFAST COOLS! Remember, every employee helps. Chow for now."

A click cut off the megaphone. Both sisters turned for the archway.

"Looks like Mister Tuba's in a good mood," said Flitter cheerfully.

"That pony's got delusions of grandeur," said Cloudchaser. "He thinks he's still in the Royal Guard."

"Well, he has been in the war. He's just brought up like that. Anyway, I think he deserves a little slack if he's just been promoted." The cloud platform rose up. Both of them hopped onto it and waited for it to rise up to the top before jumping off and through the veil.

"He hasn't been in a war. That was a food fight between the Royal Guard and the Griffonstone Regiment."

"He's still got the black eye from the satsuma," Flitter said in a hushed voice.

"Yeah. Not a grenade, Flitter. A satsuma."

"It wasn't so funny when he took the pin out."

Flitter scowled and wandered over to the bookshelf. She pretended not to see Cloudchaser roll her eyes, and she flexed the comic's pages with her dexterous wings.

"You're not seriously reading that Do-Gooder stuff again?" said Cloudchaser. She smoothed back her spiked fringe to stop the locks poking into her pupils. "You know it's just a cheap Daring Do spin-off?"

"So what if I am? And it is not 'just' a spin-off!" Flitter pushed the second veil aside to let her sister through first. Cloudchaser barely broke stride, as though she knew it was going to happen on time. Flitter growled at this; even if it was a cloth they could have just barged through anyway, some gratitude wouldn't go amiss.

"By definition, a spin-off is 'just' a spin-off. It can't be as good as the original. That's like saying a chunk of lightning cloud strikes as well as the whole one. Trust me, you won't get anything worthwhile out of those."

"Oh, that shows how much you know. You don't read them; you don't have a clue what you're talking about."

Flitter breathed a sigh of relief. The distractions had worked. Cloudchaser wasn't mad at her!

"And you still owe me a lightning ball." Cloudchaser shook her head as they descended to the lower foyer. "Heaven knows what you were thinking when you took my Solar Yellowsphere to the factory."

"Oh, fine then!"

Flitter threw down the comic, spun around, and launched herself through the veil, catching Cloudchaser by surprise. The muttering vanished, followed by some crashing and thudding below. After a minute, wing beats came back and Flitter flapped through the veil, dangling a bag of bits from her teeth. She dumped it at Cloudchaser's hooves.

"That should get you a new one." She glared out from under her lank forelock. "Satisfied?"

"No! Rainbow's still outside! What good does it do me to get a new ball after work when I need it tout de suite?"

Flitter threw her hooves up to the ceiling. "GAH! There's just no pleasing you, is there? OK, fine."

"Flitter, where're you going?"

The wings shot back through the two veils and punched through the rising cloud platform, which burst into wisps and faded away. More muttering muffled by the layers of clouds, more crashing and thudding below, and more wing beats passed before Flitter burst into the cloudy room.

Cloudchaser yelled in shock and covered her eyes against the blast of darkness sucking at her retinas. Something like a one-ton dumbbell crashed into the ground, making her jump like a penny on a see-saw.

"Fine!" said Flitter as she strolled past. "Here's my Hypermassive Galactic Centre Black Hole. Go knock Rainbow's tiny red dot into oblivion already! I wanna get to work, and I'm not going until you do! Satisfied now?"

Cloudchaser didn't move until Flitter turned around from the entrance and yelled at her. She almost jumped out of her own skin.

"But... But..." Cloudchaser gestured to the mass of black at her hooves. "Where the hay did you even get this? There are only three in the whole of Equestria!"

Flitter's face turned to stone, and she replied; "I won it in one of those 'worthless' spin-off comics. They had a short story competition last month, and that was the top prize. Now, can we go?"

The Pinkie Brief

View Online

Canterlot never did any of its architecture by halves. Its towers resembled porcelain that had been decked out with party streamers and confetti, arranged like a huddle of contestant cakes trying not to fall onto each other, prepared to get married to a rather swanky groom of a city, and then, as an afterthought, polished and dusted.

This corridor alone was merely a walkway to get from the main hall landing to a handful of doors, and yet every spring of the pony’s legs echoed from dozens of feet around until an army of bounces followed her lead. Stained glass shone down on her pink fur, casting on it depictions of sombre ponies dressed like a concentrated menagerie of tropical birds. Columns stood watch and cast shadows as best they could on the waving poofy mane, which occasionally brushed the brackets of bouquets wafting their floral scents over her. The red carpet was so rich and laced with gold accents that it made her pinkness look like a country hobo begging for colour tones.

Pinkie Pie stopped, just in the right position to face a wall of a door. A plaque on it read: Guild of Party Poppers. She checked her paper, nodded to herself with a giggle, and beat a rat-a-tat-tat on what looked and felt like ivory.

A gap opened with as much dignity as it could muster. Two half-closed eyes peered out of the shadow. “Yus?”

“Yes!” Pinkie jumped at her own call.

A drawn-out general blink followed her echoes, and then a drawn-out colonel blink followed the silence. “Pardon?”

“I say yes! I wanna join your guild!” said Pinkie with a smile. “Pinkie Pie’s the name, and partying’s my game. Happy ‘Yay-A-New-Member-Is-Joining-Day’ Cake free of charge! My card.”

Two half-closed eyes blinked with as much gravitas as could make mere gravity look indecent. It peered at the pop-up card warmly congratulating it on becoming a new friend. It peered at the smile shining in its face. Finally, and with much aplomb, it peered at the outside of the door.

The hidden pony swore and rubbed at the lettering.

“Darn vandals been at our sign again. Next door down,” it muttered. The ivory slammed and nearly took the frame off.

The door now said: Guild of Party Poopers.

Pinkie sighed and pushed the card under the door. There was no helping some ponies, but then again every little helped. The words “Cognitive Dissonance” had never crossed her path, and if they had, she’d have said it was a good name for a band. She had a second card anyway, just in case.

After several minutes of empty corridor had failed to crush her spirit, she rubbed at a dead ringer for the second door before knocking. To her surprise, someone knocked back.

“Come in,” she said.

The door opened and a chuckle with a pony attached frogmarched herself out of the light beyond the frame.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said in-between stifled and not-so-stifled giggles. “I had all sorts of things trotting up” – she broke off into a fit of hysterics and then slapped her own face – “trotting up at the last moment. I hope I find you well, Miss, er…”

“Call me Pinkie Pie!” The second card was offered without delay.

“Why? Is that your name?”

“I’m rather attached to it, yes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. My mother had a name attached to her once. Followed her everywhere she went, and she couldn’t get rid of the thing. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes there is! Just say my name when you speak to me, and when you’re done, it’ll be gone!”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive!”

“OK. Ahem. Pinkie Pie.”

They both stood staring at each other, mouths slightly open and ears cocked as the echo faded away. From beyond the doorway, someone coughed.

“My word,” said the mare. “It is gone. I can’t hear it anymore.”

“Told you, didn’t I?”

“It’s a miracle! You must be extraordinary.”

“Ooh, can that be my new name?”

“Certainly, Miss Extraordinary. But where are my manners? Come in, come in. Warm yourself by the drinks fridge. Come in.”

Pinkie entered the light and was heralded by a cellist’s strings. Streamers criss-crossed the roof and wrapped themselves around banners, a city of cakes stood on the port side of the long tables opposite, and ponies, balloons, sparklers, punch bowls, puppet shows, arcade games, and an inflatable swimming pool danced and clambered or were carried over each other. Whatever Canterlot there was to the hall was buried: on the chandeliers overhead, a pony in a rainbow patchwork suit was trying to play golf with a water pistol and a bean bag. A few intrepid explorers were climbing the columns with bed quilts as ropes, and a pegasus with a paint brush was putting exquisitely curled moustaches on the less-than-approving stained glass figures.

On the stage to the far end, the lone cellist was playing without sheet music. Her face was that of a pony barely convincing herself that the pay-check was worth a few hours of nightmares, and in the meantime wondering how much sanity she had left.

“What’s everyone celebrating?” said Pinkie as she glanced around. “Is it someone’s birthday? A graduation? Did someone win the Canterlot Old Biddies’ Prize Draw?”

“This way please, Miss Extraordinary. We have the most amazing opportunity ahead of us.” The mare gave her a raised eyebrow and a half-expectant gape. “What do you mean what’s everyone celebrating?”

“The occasion!” Pinkie hopped after her, vaulting over any ponies in her way. “What’s everyone celebrating? What’s the occasion?”

The mare continued to stare at her as though she had asked what the point of breathing was. “Where are you from, did you say?”

“I didn’t, but if you’re asking now – sorry” – she grinned apologetically at a stallion whose drink she’d knocked and spilled onto the red carpet – “then I’m from Ponyville with a P.”

“Well, it’s just as well you came to us. They clearly have some very funny ideas about parties in Ponyville with a P. You need to distinguish yourself from the party poopers if you want to stay in this guild.”

Pinkie, who had fetched a second glass of punch from the nearest table, zipped over to the archway where the mare was heading. The mare stood outside it and turned to look over the chaos. After a while, Pinkie figured she was supposed to do the same.

“I drew on the Party Poopers’ entrance so everyone’d think they were us,” said the mare with a suppressed chuckle. “It always annoys them.”

“Oh, I just came from there,” said Pinkie. “They didn’t seem very happy.”

“Then all is right in the world. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Right Hoof.”

“Hello, Right Hoof!”

“Hello, yes, and I am Left Hoof.”

The impromptu golfer sent the bean bag soaring in a graceless arc, which ended on the back of the moustache-painter’s head and splashed into the punch bowl. Several cheers greeted this, and a few ponies held the bowl aloft like a trophy to pass around and kiss. It was around this point that the last few words oozed into Pinkie’s consciousness.

“I thought your name was Right Hoof?” she asked.

“That’s right. My name is Right Hoof, and I am Left Hoof. In a moment, I’m about to introduce you to Front Hoof, and this stallion coming to greet us is Back Hoof.”

“And who’s this other stallion?” said Pinkie.

“That’s Clarence. Come on, then. Just step through this archway.”

They entered an adjoining hall, which didn’t echo so much as the previous hall had done and there was just the one pony in the centre with a table. Pinkie and the mare homed in on her, and the flanking stallions passed them and took seats either side of the elderly mare, who was peering over her pinprick spectacles at a paper. At least, it was presumably paper; Pinkie rarely came across a kaleidoscope made solid.

“Hello, Front Hoof!” said Pinkie. “Watcha reading?”

“Ah!” Front Hoof snapped out of her trance and straightened her glasses again to peer at the newcomer. “They come in pink flavour now.”

“Do they?” said Pinkie politely.

The old mare straightened her glasses; somehow, they had flicked themselves askew, though the mare hadn’t moved an inch. Back Hoof and Clarence reached under the table and placed two maracas and a box of paints either side of the kaleidoscope paper. Pinkie peered closer. The writing on the sheet would need a magnifying glass to read, or at least an ant and an interpreter.

“Miss Pinkie Pie,” said the trembling Front Hoof. “I am honoured, but why are you here?”

“One of the hard ones first, I see,” said Pinkie gleefully. “Give me two hours with a philosophy book.”

“I mean, why are you at the guild? Only members can take part in guild business, you know. We have certain rules. I think we have rules, anyway.” She turned to Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof. “We do have the rules, don’t we?”

“Just beneath you,” said Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof.

“Ah. So the rules are beneath me, are they? Well, that would explain a lot.” Front Hoof peered at the desk in front of her. “Oh yes, what a coincidence. I was just talking about them.”

“Party rules?” said Pinkie. “No sweat! Why, I practically wrote the rules on partying.”

“Did you?” Front Hoof peered at the desk again. “Well, I don’t see how these can be your rules. I don’t see your name on them anywhere.”

“What? That can’t be right! Let me take a look at that.”

Pinkie reached into her own mane and clicked the Biro that came out. She accepted the paper from the old mare and hummed to herself, half-chewing the end of the pen.

“Uh huh… Uh huh… Well, this is the spot where it should be…” She scribbled something at the bottom. “Aha! There it is. See for yourself.”

She handed it back, and Front Hoof laid it out below her. All four guild ponies leaned forwards to read it.

“Egad!” Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof, stabbed the paper with her hoof. “She’s right. Look, there it is! As clear as day!”

All four gasped with alarm. Pinkie shoved the Biro back into her locks and grinned at them.

“My goodness, so it is,” said Front Hoof. “Er, I beg your pardon, Miss Pinkie Pie. I don’t know how I missed that before. Um.”

“Ah, don’t make a huffin’ out of nothin’. Now you can tell me,” said Pinkie, “what I’m doing here. Besides standing and talking, of course.”

Front Hoof straightened her glasses again and tapped the table. “Very well. We sent you a letter, didn’t we?”

The letter in question bounced on the table and smothered the rules. “Here it is!”

“Would you read it out for me, please?” said Front Hoof. “I’m afraid my ears aren’t what they used to be.”

Pinkie nodded graciously and spread out the letter. She cleared her throat. The ponies cocked their ears and rubbed their hooves together; they could tell this was going to be good.

“Ahem,” Pinkie said, and she exercised her jaw muscles. “Doh ray mi, doh ray mi, she sells sea shells on the sea shore… OK. Let’s see. It says, ‘To whom it may concern, i.e. you. Please come to the Guild of Party Poppers and claim your prize. This is an urgent message concerning the future of partydom. Please dress accordingly.’ There’s also some stuff about a treasure island, but I want to read that bit while wearing a pirate costume. I think it could work. Can I go get one?”

“Silence, please,” said Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof. She stood before Pinkie and lowered the letter with a hoof. “You have been chosen from hundreds of ponies, each of them the cream of the crop from the best of the best of the top of their class, for a very important mission.”

“Do I get to dress up as a pirate?”

“Only as a last resort.”

“There’s a resort?”

Front Hoof took a steadying breath, pausing only to adjust her glasses again. She glanced left. She glanced right. She glanced back at Pinkie, cupped her mouth in a secretive manner, and whispered: “Have you ever heard of the Lost Gold Trifle?”

A hush descended upon the room. For a moment, it seemed that the party next hall had suddenly ceased to be. Darkness hung heavy where the stained glass rays failed to dispel it. Four ponies were as still as award-winning musical statues. Eyes narrowed to slits all around her. Pinkie tilted her head.

“No,” she said. “What singles did they release?”

“They didn’t release any singles!” shouted Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof.

“Well, no wonder I’ve never heard of them. What kind of band are these guys?”

“It’s not a band,” Front Hoof said. “It’s… well, I’ll let the archivist explain.”

She signalled to Clarence, who nodded with all the solemnity of a priest watching over a dying child, and he stepped forth into the light of the windows, overlooked by the great saints of yonder.

“Ooooooh,” he moaned in awe. “Ooooooh.”

He stopped to peer at a card under his hoof, nodded, and continued. All the ponies around him held their breaths.

“Oooooooh. The Lost Gold Trifle is a lost treasure. A golden treasure. A lost golden treasure from an age whence not a single soul knows not wot of. Ooooooh.”

Back Hoof belched.

“Sorry,” he added to Clarence’s death glare. “I had burritos for lunch.”

“We’ll talk later. Now… Ooooooh. Forged in the fires at the birth of the land of friendship and maaaaaaaaaagic. Melted from the purest of metals by the most skilled metallurgists of the aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-age. Cast in the shape of that most holy of holiest puddings, the humble and most fruity triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiifle. Ooooooh.”

Pinkie raised her hoof. When Clarence ignored her, she jumped up and down on the spot.

“It was her most noble Chancellor,” he crooned, “the great Chancellor Puddingheeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaad, who, when she was about to die, told her friend and confidante, the most beloved and holy saint of sweets, the great Smart Cooooooookie, to take all of her love of the party, and her soul, and her fire, and to put it in the ultimate tribuuuuuuuuuuuute. This, then, is the tale of the Lost Gold Trifle of Chancellor Puddingheeeeeeeaaaaaaaad, object of myth and reverence among the Sacred Devotees of the Shindig yes what is it?”

“I played Puddinghead in a play once,” Pinkie said happily.

“Yes, very good, now –”

“It was on Hearth’s Warming Eve,” she added helpfully.

“As I was SAYIN’; Ooooooh. The Lost Gold Trifle of Chancellor Pudding –”

“I don’t remember any pirates in it, though.”

“Oh, for Pete’s SAKE!” yelled Clarence, and he stormed out.

Front Hoof shook her head sadly at a distant slam. “Highly strung, that one. Now, I hope you see the severity of our predicament, Miss Pinkie Pie?”

Pinkie shrugged. Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof, stood in Clarence’s place.

“That Lost Gold Trifle,” she said, “represents the very raison d’etre of the Guild of Party Poppers. It is a priceless historical artefact. To have it in our collection would be the crowning glory of our organization.”

“You mean it’ll make you happy if you can get it?” said Pinkie frowning. She was wondering what this had to do with raisins, d’etre or not.

“Happy?” said Front Hoof. “It would make us proud, confident, contented, and self-righteous. I suppose you could add happy to that list. Now, will you do it?”

The benevolent smile of a stained glass Smart Cookie peered into the archway, from which came the squeak of balloon abuse. Someone cheered. The cellist strained to be heard over the riot of stamping hooves. Pinkie saw Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof, swap a nervous glance with Back Hoof’s for his worried grimace.

Pinkie took a deep breath. Every pony leaned forwards.

“I’ll do it,” she said. “Pinkie Promise.”

Cheers met these words. Left Hoof, name being Right Hoof, patted her on the back and gave her a party hat. Back Hoof extracted a fizzy pop bottle and uncorked it, spewing the foam all over them. Glasses were shared out, and a beatbox materialized from nowhere and stirred them into a conga line, from which Front Hoof excused herself on account of her rheumatism.

After downing some fizzy gulps and gambolling around the hall through sheer excitement, Pinkie turned to the other ponies and said: “So what is it I’m doing, exactly?”

The Campaign for Extra Trixie, and other unlikely experiments

by Impossible Numbers

Overkill

Bonbon's Wager

The Campaign for Extra Trixie

PinkieStation3

That One Summer Sun Celebration

Star Swirl's Inspiration

Heliocentric

Daring Done and Dusted

The Trojan Horse

Time Out Daring

Spa Crazy

Why Sisters Can't Have Nice Things

The Pinkie Brief