> Straight Answers
>  by Rebonack
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Wherein Rainbow Dash Makes a Pinkie Promise
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Pinkie?  How did you you get in here?” Rainbow asked incredulously.

Rainbow Dash loved her friends.  She loved them dearly, though she wasn't always very upfront about it.  That wasn't her style.  Getting all emotional was Rarity's thing.  Dash played it cool.  She loved her friends, even when they acted a little weird.  Or a lot weird, like Pinkie.

Pinkie did that a lot.  All the time, really.  That was Pinkie's thing.  Making other ponies smile and being, well, Pinkie.  But Pinkie was being extra-Pinkie the last few days and it was starting to unsettle Dash.  Though, she wouldn't ever admit that.

The morning had started out normally enough.  Rumor had it around Ponyville that Dash was lazy due to her frequent day time naps.  But what did those ponies know about being the head of the weather team?  Her day typically started before Celestia's sun was even in the sky.  Breakfast, warm ups, morning exercises, all of those came before she even began her official weather work.

Her routine had gone more or less as usual.  Dash was getting ready to brush her teeth when she caught a pink blur of motion out of the corner of her eye.  Slowly, she lifted her head only to meet a pair of wide, blue eyes and an absurd grin peering back at her through the mirror.

She didn't scream, though.

That totally wasn't a scream.  That was an ancient pegasus war-cry.  

They're totally different things.

While Dash was sure that fearsome shout might have terrified a hardened griffin warrior, it didn't do a thing to prevent Pinkie from shoving a cupcake into her open mouth.  Dash had sputtered on the cupcake and settled on swallowing the thing right after she managed to get her heart out of her throat.  That certainly beat choking to death on a pastry.  Definitely not a cool way to die.

Rainbow Dash was pretty sure Pinkie had somehow climbed out of her mirror, but by the time she had turned her attention back to her friend Pinkie was standing there on the floor bouncing cheerfully on her hooves as if nothing odd had happened.

Pinkie always acted like that after she did something impossible.

Which had lead to Rainbow's earlier question.

“Oh, I just though it would be fun to bring the fastest flier in all of Equestria a breakfast cupcake today!” the party pony replied brightly.

Rainbow wiped the frosting away from her mouth with a hoof.  Getting a cupcake shoved down her throat was rarely fun.  Though, at least the party pony had the courtesy to wait for Rainbow to wake up this time before assaulting her with sweets.  Pinkie Pie was being weird.  That was pretty normal for Rainbow's hyper-active friend.  But this morning was a little extra-weird.

Like that mirror thing.  Rainbow hadn't ever seen the mirror trick herself before, but Twilight had told her about it.  A few years back when Fluttershy was going through that modeling thing Twilight had blurted out Spike's obvious crush on Rarity.  As soon as she had spoken Pinkie popped up inside a mirror and chastised her for it.  Twilight had been scared out of her wits, but she tried to just pass it off as Pinkie being Pinkie.

“Pinkie, that didn't answer my question.  I parked my house a mile and a half in the sky last night,” Rainbow replied.  “You shouldn't even be able to stand on the clouds in here, let alone come crawling out of my mirror.  Seriously Pinkie, how did you get up here?”

Pinkie pawed at the floor with a hoof.  The very floor her hooves should be sinking into, sending the earth pony tumbling end over end through the empty sky and toward the uncaring ground below.  Dash was briefly afraid that the mere act of acknowledging that Pinkie was being impossible again would break the spell.  That had actually happened one time when Twilight pointed out the balloons Pinkie had tied to her tail couldn't possibly hold her aloft.  As soon as Pinkie admitted it wouldn't work she fell flat on her face and scrunched up like an accordion.  Rainbow wasn't sure how Pinkie pulled that off without breaking every bone in her body, but she was going to get to the bottom of it.

When Pinkie failed to plummet to her death, Dash let out a small breath she didn't realize she was holding.  At least she wouldn't have to go diving after one of her friends in the pre-dawn hour.  Not that she would mind.  Saving her friends from certain death was pretty cool.

“Well, I really wanted to give you a cupcake, Dashie!  And so I did!” Pinkie giggled.  She still had a tray of cupcakes balanced on her back, no doubt for the rest of the girls.

“Nuh uh.  Not this time,” Dash insisted.  “You sneeze confetti.  You have that party cannon around all the time even though it must weigh as much as three ponies put together.  I've seen you swallow cakes bigger than you whole and they're just gone,” Dash recounted.  “You hover into the lake like it's nothing.  And I can't out-pace you no matter how hard I try or how fast I fly!”

That last one was eating at Dash the most.  Just a few days earlier she had jokingly challenged Pinkie to a race out to Sweet Apple Acres.  Dash hadn't really taken it that seriously since she was flying and Pinkie was on hoof, but to her surprise she found her spunky friend already at the farm helping AJ collect rotten apples by the time she arrived.  Rainbow chalked it up to Pinkie's weirdness at first, but as the day went on the party pony's persistently impossible shenanigans just got more and more overt.  When Pinkie started singing a song about rotten apples Rainbow swore that her peppy pink friend was in at least four places at once.

The sight had sent Applebloom galloping back into the farmhouse shrieking about the Mirror Pool and Pinkie clones.

When the chores were done Rainbow had challenged Pinkie to another race.  A serious one.  It was from Sweet Apple Acres back to Sugarcube Corner.  And that time Rainbow didn't hold anything back.  Full-on Rainboom speeds.  She broke the sound-barrier like Scootaloo breaks Rainbow's ear-drums every time she tries to sing.  And yet, when she touched down, there was Pinkie. The party pony was inside with a tray of apple muffins she had 'just baked' using the apples AJ had given them for helping out at the farm.  Which was impossible unless Pinkie was traveling through time like Daring Doo in Daring Doo and the Temporal Prison.

When asked, Pinkie provided a non-answer like always.  Rainbow had tried to talk to Twilight about it, but Twilight had sworn off attempting to figure out Pinkie ever since the Banana Bread Incident.  

Nopony wanted a repeat of the Banana Bread Incident.

But what Rainbow wanted?  Rainbow wanted to know how Pinkie was able to beat her in a race even at her best.  There was no way Pinkie could possibly out-run her.  So there had to be something else going on.  And that would just be one more cool thing to know about one of her best friends, right?  If they were ever in a relay race together they could totally smoke anypony else!

“Did you like the cupcake, Dashie?” Pinkie asked, her face all smiles as usual.

In spite of herself Dash laughed.  “Yeah, Pinkie, I liked the cupcake.  Are you bouncing around town force-feeding them to everypony again?”

“Nope!  Just a special one for you today!” Pinkie replied.

“Well, what are the other cupcakes for?” Dash asked while confusion crept into her tone.

Pinkie quirked her head to the side.  “What other cupcakes?”

Dash peered behind Pinkie again and discovered the tray to be empty.  But... hadn't it been full the last time she looked?  “The other cupcakes.  The ones you had with you?  I thought they were for everypony else.”

Pinkie grinned a huge grin.  “Oooh, that's a good idea!  I'll have to have remembered that when I stopped by!”

Rainbow Dash blinked.  Then opened her mouth to ask a question.  Then she closed her mouth again.  She could feel her brain flailing furiously to keep above the rolling waves of crazy.  She wasn't sure if she would make it.

“Pinkie...  You still haven't answered me.  Come on, I'm not dumb,” Rainbow protested.  “How did you get up to my house?  How do you do all this crazy stuff?  I think it's cool, don't get me wrong.  It's cool that you can climb out of mirrors and show up ahead of me no matter where I hide.  It's cool that you can walk around in my house without spells and stuff.  It's cool that you can build a flying machine in, like, ten seconds flat.  But I really want to know how you run faster than I fly.  Is it like... teleporting or something?”

Rainbow Dash's eyes suddenly went wide.  “Wait!  I've got it!  Are you a secret alicorn, Pinkie?” the pegasus cast a sly grin at her friend.  “Hiding your wings and horn or something?  That's pretty slick.  Come on, Pinkie.  You can tell me.”

The party pony jittered back and forth on her hooves for a moment, obviously thinking about how to reply.  Finally she settled on, “Sometimes I just need to do something silly to get the job done!”

Deflected again.

“Every time I ask, you always give some half-answer that doesn't tell me anything.  I'm asking as your friend, Pinkie.  Tell me the truth,” Rainbow pleaded.  It was so uncool to beg.  But at the same time this had been bugging Rainbow forever.  Her best friend and pranking buddy had an awesome secret and she wanted to know what it was.

“You want the truth?” Pinkie asked.  She sounded almost... defeated?  Resigned or something?  Dash wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

“I think I deserve the truth,” Dash said.  She tried her hardest to seem as resolute as possible.

“I'm not sure if you can handle the truth, Dashie,” Pinkie continued.  She was smiling, but it was a small, sad sort of smile.  A distinctly un-Pinkie-like smile.  It made Dash shiver, though she wasn't sure why.  And suddenly she wasn't sure if this was such a good idea.  “Isn't it better if it's just a silly thing that silly old Pinkie Pie does?  I think that'll make everypony else happier.  Sometimes the truth hurts, Dashie.  Sometimes it's better not to know.”

“Pinkie...” Dash grumbled while more than a little irritation crept into her tone.  Her doubt had evaporated the moment she started to feel like Pinkie was patronizing her.  “Look, you're my friend, Pinkie.  We've been through all sorts of crazy stuff together.  We've saved the day plenty of times and we've seen all sorts of crazy things.  Have you forgotten who I am?”

The pegasus puffed her chest out with pride.  “I'm the Element of Loyalty!  There's nothing you could tell me about yourself that would make me turn my back on you, Pinkie, nothing.  We're friends forever.  I promise.  Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

As Dash carried out the well known motions of Pinkie's weird oath she couldn't help but notice that her friend's look of sadness deepened all the more.  Hopefully, Pinkie wasn't going to suddenly go flat-maned and start talking to rocks again.

Pinkie gave a long sign.  “Okay Dashie.  If you really really really want to know.”


~~~~~


Spike was sound asleep, utterly comatose in his bed while Twilight poured over astrological charts and the newest issue of Scientific Mareica.  There had been an amazing series of super-nova over the past few days so bright that the stars were actually visible during the day!  The article that had caught Twilight's interest included some highly specific divination spells designed to be used in conjunction with a telescope to measure the thaumic radiation being released from the far distant, dead stars.

A single super-nova was a tremendously rare event, but four of them so close together?  And within the same constellation, no less?  The astrological community was in a complete tizzy over the omen, each fighting to get their own personal interpretation of the auspicious event held in the highest regard.  Twilight had a few of her own ideas, but astrology was probably the sketchiest of the sciences so she didn't consider them as anything more than a few vague guesses.  She had tried hunting down any relevant passages in Prophecies and Predictions but she couldn't find any references to four stars suddenly appearing during the day.

It was nice to finally focus on something meaningful rather than that nonsense Celestia had been keeping her 'busy' with for the last few weeks in Canterlot.  She hadn't ever been able to get a straight answer out of her mentor regarding the purpose of the strange incantations and she was pretty sure the whole thing had been some kind of elaborate practical joke.

“Maybe I should talk to Rainbow Dash and Pinkie about getting the Princess back,” Twilight mused aloud.  “They're a lot better at these 'prank wars' than I am.  And since when has a collaboration between friends ever been a bad idea?  I might even be able to write a friendship report about it!”

Twilight laughed to herself and levitated over a new inkwell.  “But how would somepony even begin to prank the Princess?”

With a giggle the young alicorn dipped her quill into the ink well and was surprised to hear a loud, “Oowy!” from inside.

Twilight yelped in surprise and hurled the inkwell across the room.  The little bottle bounced twice and started rolling, leaving a wobbling trail of black behind it.  Then it shook, wiggled, and hopped upright as a single massive eye popped out of the too-small mouth of the bottle.  A grotesquely enormous eye that began roving about the room until it settled on the shocked alicorn princess.

“Oh!  There you are Twilight!” came a chipper voice from the tiny container.  The voice was shortly followed by another eye, followed by a pony-shaped mass of ink hopping free.  Pinkie abruptly slipped out of the ink, her pink coat immaculately clean, and allowed the whole mess of black fluid to go cascading back into the inkwell.

Somehow.

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief when she registered Pinkie's face and voice.  Calm down, Twilight.  It's not an evil ink monster.  It's just Pinkie being Pinkie.  She took another deep breath and extended one foreleg as she exhaled just to make sure she was settled.

“Hello Pinkie.  What brings you by this morning?” Twilight asked, putting on her best friendly smile whilst stomping her hooves all over the blatant disregard for the laws of physics.  Pinkie had been acting... extra Pinkie-like lately.  Nothing she did was really different than usual, it was just more common and overt.

“Oh, not much!  I just wanted to wish you a super happy good morning post welcome back to Ponyville from Canterlot greeting!” Pinkie laughed whilst balancing a cupcake on her nose.  “And I wanted to give you a complimentary cupcake, too!”

Twilight scrunched her nose as Pinkie tossed the pastry toward her.  Catching it in her field was simple enough.  “Don't you mean complementary?”

“Nope!  Bye Twilight!  See you later!” Pinkie sing-songed as she bounced off through the door.  

The alicorn princess looked down at the cupcake and discovered 'You're a smart pony!' written in frosting on the top.  Twilight rolled her eyes and gave a good-natured laugh.  A thought suddenly occurred to her, “Hey Pinkie, wait!”

“Yeah, Twilight?” Pinkie asked from behind the alicorn princess.

Honestly by now Pinkie doing the 'suddenly being somewhere else as soon as nopony is watching her' thing didn't even surprise Twilight anymore.  It was almost as though Pinkie operated under some absurd form of Quantum Thaumatics.  So long as she was unobserved her position and velocity where undefined and she could theoretically be anywhere.  Of course, those laws only applied to mathematical points but since when did Pinkie care about how things were supposed to work?  Twilight turned around to address her grinning friend.

“Why don't you get some cupcakes for everypony else since you're already up?  I'm sure the girls would all enjoy them,” Twilight reasoned.

Pinkie gave an exaggerated gasp.  “That is the best idea!  Thanks Twilight!  I'll make sure to have done that right already!”

“...what?”

Pinkie didn't answer Twilight's question, she was already busy zooming off out the door.

Twilight shrugged enjoyed her cupcake.  It was a really great cupcake, her favorite flavor.  However, she didn't enjoy the interruption that came a few minutes later.

It was a surprise when Rainbow Dash burst through the front door of Books and Branches library.  Twilight was even more surprised by the fact that the normally unflappable pegasus was damp with sweat and shivering uncontrollably.  However, what positively shocked Twilight were Rainbow's eyes.  Eyes constricted to pinpricks, jittery and jerking and darting toward every shadowed corner as though expecting some lurking horror to be hiding in the darkness.  The eyes of a pony who had been terrified out of her mind.  Twilight had seen Rainbow Dash afraid before, but her friend had always hidden it well.  In her years around Rainbow, Twilight had never seen her this obviously frightened.

It was so uncharacteristic that Twilight briefly wondered if Fluttershy had somehow gotten stuffed inside Pinkie's Rainbow Dash suit.  Twilight had no idea why Pinkie kept a collection of suits that looked exactly like other ponies around Ponyville, but she had stopped trying to figure out the pink terror ever since the Banana Bread Incident.

Nopony wanted a repeat of the Banana Bread Incident.

“Rainbow, what happened?” Twilight asked as she took a few tentative steps closer to her friend.  Rainbow flinched at the sound of her voice and Twilight was certain for a few seconds that the pegasus was going to bolt.  “You look awful.”

“Twilight, we need to talk,” Dash said.  She cast another furtive glance about the room and dropped her tone to just above a whisper.  “We need to talk about Pinkie.”
> Wherein Spike Makes an Omelet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Have you ever wondered why little foals rebel when their eyes grow heavy and they feel sleep tugging at the edges of their mind?  Have you ever wondered why they fight so hard to remain awake when their treacherous body begs for rest?  Have you ever wondered why they rise crying even when all is well?  Have you ever wondered why the peaceful darkness of the night is filled with the worries of the young?

Perhaps they still know what everypony else has forgotten.  What everypony else has grown too old to see in that time between dreaming and awake.  It takes a certain wonder and innocence to plumb the space between moments.  A certain wonder that is all too often scabbed over by the wounds of age and experience.

What is it that little foals meet in that twilight instant between the domains of sun and moon, between wakefulness and dreaming, between life and death?

Have you ever wondered?


~~~~~


Spike awoke with a groan, just like he had for the past few days.  Every single morning he had woken up feeling groggier than he had going to sleep.  It was like those times where you try to take a nap in the middle of the day and your head feels all fuzzy for a while afterward.  Maybe he was just eating too much ice cream before bed.

The young dragon sat there in his basket for a time, simply allowing himself to come to terms with his conscious state.  He could hear voices downstairs.  Sounded like Twilight and Rainbow.  That was kind of weird.  The only time Rainbow Dash ever stopped by this early was when she was picking up a new book.  He was pretty sure there weren't any Daring Doo novels in the pipes at the moment.

With a huff he tossed his blanket aside and climbed out of his basket.  Twilight would probably want some breakfast if she had been up early studying.  That mare could hardly remember to make herself a meal once she gets her mind set on whatever academic inquiry had most recently caught her attention.  If Spike weren't around to keep Twilight's hooves on the floor there's no telling what would happen.  He was pretty sure that Twilight would at least be able to avoid starving herself to death.

Pretty sure.

Spike strolled down to the ground floor whilst yawning and scratching his scales.  He spied both mares sitting huddled close and speaking in hushed tones.  Not nearly as loud as they had been a few minutes ago.  They both looked so intense and intent that Spike decided it would be a better idea to let them chat and do his work unnoticed.

You know.  More or less like normal.

“Do your job well and nopony will know that you did anything,” Spike muttered as he headed into the kitchen and set about making breakfast.  It would be omelets today.  Twilight liked them well enough but Rainbow Dash loved them.  Especially with crunchy, marinated, smoked tofu bits.  The trick was to slice it just thin enough to get the perfect medium between crisp and chewy.

Spike lit the stove and got and to work.  Eggs, cracked and whipped.  Check.  Grate the cheese, check.  Dice the veggies, check.  Get the tofu strips sizzling, check.  All the while he hummed a little ad-libbed song about cooking for his friends.  It wasn't Pinkie Pie level by any means, but signing while cooking always helped him to focus on the task at claw.

Well... except when he was trying to make a jewel cake.  He had to really keep his head in the game for those, otherwise he would end up with a normal cake and an empty cup that had once held gemstones.  Curse his draconic hunger for precious stones!  Spike quickly resolved to enlist Twilight's help next time he tried to make one.  He would fix up the cake and let his big sis add the gemstones to avoid the temptation of snacking while he worked.

Thankfully this particular omelet recipe didn't call for any gem stones.  Not that pony recipes ever would.

With his culinary masterpiece completed Spike strutted back out into the library with two plates in his claws!

“Morning Twilight!  I fixed some breakfast for you and...” the young dragon began, only to trail off when he realized that the prismatic-maned pegasus was conspicuously absent.  “...Dash.  Huh.  I guess she left?”

Ah well.  That just meant he wouldn't have to fix a third plate for himself.

Twilight gave her head a little shake and pulled her attention away from whatever subject she had been rolling around in her brain.  She hadn't even noticed Spike until he spoke up.  “Oh, good morning Spike.  Yeah, Rainbow was just talking to me about Pinkie.  She's...” Twilight gave her wings a small fluff.  “She's concerned.”

Spike frowned as he set the plates out.  “Pinkie isn't talking to the cabbages again, is she?”  Last time somepony was concerned about Pinkie the peppy pink party pony had somehow gotten it into her head that cabbages were something she could make friends with.  When the cabbages 'refused' to show up at any of her parties she had gotten pretty glum.  The whole ordeal had ended in so much sauerkraut that the scent of pickled cabbage now sent most ponies fleeing for cover.

Twilight began carefully dividing her omelet up into neat portions of equal volume and popping them into her mouth one at a time.  Spike loved his big sister, regardless of the lack of blood kinship.  He even loved her weird foibles.  She just needed to have someone around who could steer her away from the crazies when she started getting too focused.  

“No, it isn't anything like that,” Twilight admitted as she continued eating her mathematically perfect bites.  “Rainbow managed to get a straight answer out of Pinkie regarding her... usual magic.”

Spike nearly choked on his omelet.

“Wow, seriously?” he asked.

Pinkie was notorious for deflecting the question or giving half-answers every time anypony brought up the subject of her 'magic'.  And that isn't even counting the times where she would just act like she didn't hear or pretended she didn't understand.  Pinkie regularly pulled off the impossible and most ponies were so used to it by now that they just wrote it off as Pinkie being Pinkie.  But that didn't stop the underlying curiosity.  Everypony had their own pet theories about Pinkie Pie, Spike included.

“So is it true?  Is she really a ghost?” Spike asked eagerly.

That was his personal favorite.  Pinkie Pie was the hungry ghost of somepony who died during the Long Night a thousand years ago freed by the magic of Dash's sonic rainboom.  It explained how she popped up out of nowhere!  And how she could eat so much!  And why she was hungry all the time!  Because the ghost of someone who died of starvation would always be hungry, right?

Twilight's snort gave Spike his answer.  “Oh come on, Twilight.  It's a good theory!  And it's the only one that explains how she shows up inside mirrors.  Showing up inside mirrors is definitely a ghost thing.”

The purple princess suppressed an involuntary shudder at the mention of Pinkie's 'mirror trick'.  “Spike, ghosts aren't real.  They're just made-up stories and superstition.  There's no way Pinkie could be a ghost.”

Spike rolled his eyes at his sister's stock excuse.  “Fine fine, ghosts aren't real.  Whatever you say, Twilight.  So what is it then?  What lets Pinkie be all Pinkie?”

“I don't know,” Twilight admitted.  “Rainbow wouldn't tell me.  Pinkie made her promise not to share what she was told with anypony.”

Spike tossed his claws up in the air in exasperation.  “If you didn't know then why were you stringing me along!  Geeze, Twilight.  Well, then what was Dash talking to you about?”

“Just her concern,” Twilight sighed.  “It must have been something really shocking to get Rainbow so worked up.  However!  What she did talk to me about gave me a few ideas.  Lines of research that I wouldn't have considered before in my quest to understand Pinkie!  Spike, we're going to be starting a new study project.”

“Oh no,” Spike replied.  He practically tripped out of his chair as he hopped back and began waving his claws in a 'slow down' gesture.  “Oh no no no.  No research on Pinkie.  You swore off researching Pinkie after what happened last time.”  Spike glanced back and forth furtively and spoke again in hushed tones.  “The Banana Bread Incident...?”

Twilight's left ear twitched.  Several times.  “That won't happen again.  Besides, we put all the fires out before anything important burned down.”

“Yeah, but I was the one who had to clean up the feathers,” Spike countered.

“Come on, Spike.  This'll be fun!  We'll be looking into some really esoteric material to unravel one of the greatest mysteries of our time,” Twilight insisted.

“Can't we research something a bit less hazardous?” Spike complained.  “Like what about those super nova you were looking at the other day?  I'm sure there must be some kind of dooms day prophecy about them.  That's way safer than trying to figure Pinkie out.”

“Ugh.  Come on Spike, this is no big deal.  I've got some real leads this time around,” Twilight replied, trying her hardest to avoid being brought down by her assistant’s negativity.

“Wait, I thought you said Dash didn't tell you anything?” Spike asked.  Hopefully Twilight wasn't holding out on details.  How was he supposed to make informed assistant suggestions if he was missing half the information?

“Well, she didn't,” Twilight quickly raised a hoof to block Spike's objection.  “But the simple fact that she was concerned and frightened tells me that it must have been something really unusual.  Now, my running hypothesis was that Pinkie was somehow using unicorn magic as an earth pony.  Obviously unicorn magic being utilized in such a way would lean toward more unusual manifestations of magical power.  This model doesn't explain all that data, but it's one of the better ones.  However!  If Pinkie had just told Rainbow that she was using unicorn magic I doubt Rainbow would have been so upset.  As such we can safely conclude that something more exotic is going on.”

By now Twilight was pacing.  It was a thing she tended to do when she really got to lecturing.  Spike dutifully sat and listened since interrupting his big sis would just lead to even more tangential topics of elucidation.

“I'm not totally ready to abandon the unicorn magic hypothesis, but that one is on the back burner right now.  Which means that I'm free to explore models that might have seemed outlandish previously,” Twilight concluded.

“Well, Pinkie is pretty outlandish,” Spike agreed.  Then a wide grin spread across his face when he realized something.  “Hey!  If you're going to start looking into the cool explanations you should start with the ghost theory!”

“Spike.  No.  Ghosts aren't real.  And there is no 'ghost theory',” Twilight sighed.  “There isn't even a ghost hypothesis.  At best we're talking about ghost conjecture.  I need something more solid than that.”

“Ghosts usually aren't very solid, Twilight,” Spike pointed out.  Twilight glared at him and he raised his claws in defeat.  “Fine fine.  But I still think it's a good idea.  We should check it out eventually.”

Twilight rolled her eyes.  “I'm sure we'll find a satisfactory explanation before we're left with your 'ghost theory', Spike.”


~~~~~


“I can't believe we haven't found a satisfactory explanation yet,” Twilight groaned.  She looked at the book Spike had brought her, Ghosts, Ghouls, Goblins, and Other Ghastly Apparitions by Spooky Sounds.  “Ugh.  Fine.  We'll see if the ghost idea has any merit.”

“Woohoo!” Spike cheered and gave a little claw-pump.

“Don't go celebrating just yet,” Twilight cautioned as she began leafing through the book's pages.  “If anything this'll probably be just as inconclusive as the hypothesis that she's a mirror spirit from the Everfree.  Now, what kind of ghost did you think she was?”

“A famine spirit,” Spike replied.  He was bouncing on his toes just waiting for an answer.  Finally Twilight was taking one of his ideas seriously!  “They're the only ghosts that eat stuff.”

“Mm...” Twilight grunted as she reached the relevant entry and began reading.  Problems began surfacing almost right away.  “Spike... it says here that famine spirits eat other ponies.  Pinkie doesn't eat ponies.  The only thing that needs to be afraid of her is the town's strategic sugar reserve.”

“She doesn't eat ponies that we know of,” Spike corrected.

Twilight glared at him.  “No.  Pinkie does not eat ponies.  End of discussion.”

“Well...” Spike wasn't ready to give up just yet.  “Maybe she's just different?  You know, a friendly ghost.  She just eats sweets and stuff instead of the things a scary ghost would eat.  See?  Problem solved.”

“I doesn't solve all of them,” Twilight pointed out.  “This book states in no uncertain terms that ghosts can't cross a line of salt.  They can't even touch salt.  Pinkie works with salt all the time when she's baking.”

“Maybe that's just superstition?” Spike ventured.

“Spike!  This is all just superstition!  This whole book has no basis in fact what so ever.  Ghosts aren't real, therefore Pinkie can't possibly be a ghost,” Twilight said, firm resolution in her tone.  

Spike hung his head and gave a defeated sigh.  “Yeah, yeah.  Whatever you say, Twilight,” Spike groused.

Twilight felt a weight in her gut.  Seeing Spike like that made her feel like she bucked a puppy.  “Don't feel bad, Spike,” she said whilst puling her number one assistant over for a hug.  “I think your ghost idea is probably more consistent with the data we have on Pinkie than my unicorn magic hypothesis is.  But both of them are probably wrong.  That's just how science is.  You keep making new models that fit the data a little bit better until you get one that sticks.  And you never know when a new observation might upend it!  You can keep believing your model if you want, just don't go spreading it around town too much.  Some of the more sensitive ponies might be upset by the idea.  I can't imagine how Fluttershy would feel.”

Spike replied by muttering something Twilight couldn't quite make out.  “What was that?” she asked.

“I said it wasn't my idea in the first place,” Spike replied uncertainly.  “It was Fluttershy's.  She told me that she thought Pinkie might be a ghost and I figured, 'hey, makes sense.'”

Twilight stared at Spike with an utterly dumbfounded look.  “Do you think that Fluttershy might be able to provide some more insight on this model?”

“Uh...  I guess?” Spike ventured.

“I'm going to go talk to her,” Twilight said and began heading for the door.  She paused but a moment to admonish her number one assistant.  “Don't forget to do your chores while I'm gone.”

“Yes, mom,” Spike replied sarcastically.

Big sister.  Not mom.  Twilight loved Spike like a sibling.  And like any sibling they had their disagreements, usually over his chores.  Being put in charge of the baby dragon had really helped Twilight to develop her own sense of maturity.  Nothing like having to watch over the well being of another to teach responsibility.

“And no getting into the ice cream.  I mean it.”


~~~~~


Spike progressed through his chores quickly.  He got a lot of practice getting them done, after all.  Though whilst re-shelving the books scattered around the library Spike had decided to leave a few of them out for perusal.  Particularly the ones on ghosts.  They had quite a few, really.  And while most of them mentioned the salt thing, there were a few that insisted salt was only for keeping out evil spirits and didn't have any impact on benevolent ones.  He would have to bring that up to Twilight when she got back.  It was an important bit of clarification after all!  Because if Pinkie were a nice ghost then that  would explain why she didn't eat ponies AND why she wasn't bothered by salt.

Score another point for Spike!

Once the library proper was all cleaned, Spike headed up to the second floor to begin the maintenance on the domestic part of their home.  While busy dusting the shelves in Twilight's room he couldn't help but notice the steam rolling out from under the bathroom door.

“Huh.  That's weird,” the young dragon muttered as he walked in.  “I don't think that was on when I woke up.  Maybe I just missed it?”

The bathroom itself was filled to the brim with steam to the point that the wooden walls gave it the feel of a sauna.  Not that there was anything wrong with saunas.  Relaxing right now would be nice.  But their bathroom really wasn't made to handle this sort of thing and Spike needed to get the walls and ceiling dry to make sure mildew didn't take root.  Nopony wanted a bathroom that smelled like mildew, after all.

Spike shut off the water and turned to grab a towel from the little shelf near the sink.

That's when he saw it.

He knew it wasn't there when he walked in.  It couldn't have been.  He would have been staring straight at it.  And yet there it was, written plain as Celestia's day in the condensation on the mirror's surface.

Start giggling.

Despite himself Spike followed the instructions and gave a nervous titter, his eyes flitting around the room.  Suddenly the warmth of the steam wasn't relaxing at all, it was positively stifling.  A repressive mugginess that did little to assuage the pins and needles sensation that was playing over Spike's scales.  There was a pressure to it, a horrible sourceless heaviness to the air that pressed in all around Spike.  Heat shouldn't bother him.  He had bathed in molten rock before.  And yet this heat carried with it a terrifying, cloying presence.

“H-hello?  Is s-somepony there?”
> Wherein Sweetie Belle Makes a Mess
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The mind of a child is a wonderful thing.  The world around them is learned through imagination and play.  Their world is shaped by their games, their visions shaped by their simple faith.  Their trust in the adults which loom large in their lives is near absolute.  If mother says that the kind reindeer Nicholas brings good little fillies and colts gifts on Hearth Warming, then it is so.  If father says to be good lest the ugly old goat Krampus come to spirit them away, they obey with fear and trembling.  And so if they met a wondrous pony whose games delve deep into the fantastical how different would she be from the Nicholases and the Krampuses?  From the Hog Fathers and the Tooth Faeries?

A marvelous, mysterious pony with smiles and songs to spare.


~~~~~


“Quick Sweetie!  Grab that cactus and get in the wagon!  There's no time to explain!” Scootaloo called to her friend whilst waving a hoof frantically at the potted cactus that had hitherto been minding its own business on the Belle Family's front porch.  Now minding its business no more, it was simply another vital cog in an intricately crafted plan.

Sweetie Belle was confused, understandably.  She and her friends had done some pretty silly things over the past few years trying in vain to earn their cutie marks, but she wasn't sure how a cactus would figure into things.  Despite her befuddlement she had faith in her friends and hummed some wordless tune in scarcely contained excitement as she dragged the prickly plant into the Cutie Mark Crusaders' crusadin' vehicle of choice.  Surely this would be their finest hour.  Surely this would be the day the fillies find their highest calling, their one true destiny.  Surely they would, at last, stand victorious with cutie marks proudly emblazoned upon their flanks.

“Cutie Mark Crusader Potted Prickly Plant Porters!  Yay!” two exuberant fillies cried.

“Wait, what?” Sweetie wondered aloud as the wagon lurched off down the packed dirt pathway toward the heart of town.


~~~~~


It should come as a surprise to none that this plan ended in only tears and failure.

“Maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all,” Sweetie Belle sighed.  She had spent the last five minutes trying her hardest to remove the menagerie of thorns, spines, and other sundry pointy plant parts from her poofy mane and tail.  It was a sad, futile battle.  One that surely wouldn't see its conclusion until later that night under the ministrations of her older sister.  No doubt Rarity would be displeased about another otherwise fruitful evening being consumed by the daunting task of grooming away Sweetie's Crusading filth.

Applebloom for her part seemed in high spirits despite the disastrous outcome of their latest escapade as well as the state of her favorite ribbon.  “Well I think it was plenty fun even if we didn't get our cutie marks!  Might have been a little too... ummm...  Specialized?  Yeah.  Too specialized, anyway.”

“Nothing's too specialized!” Scootaloo insisted.  The tiny orange pegasus turned her head and spit out a mouthful of thorns recently extracted from her equally tiny wings.  “Mister Davenport has a quill and a sofa for his cutie mark!  How does somepony even get a cutie mark like that?”

It was agreed upon that Davenport would have to be questioned regarding his cutie mark story in the near future.  The Cutie Mark Crusaders had already complied an account from nearly every pony in Ponyville!  Sadly they hadn't gotten the Cutie Mark Chroniclers cutie mark they had been hoping for.  Alas, the cosmos can be cruel like that.

“Well...  What's next on the list, Sweetie Belle?” Applebloom asked curiously.

“Oooh!  This one sounds fun!  Cutie Mark Crusaders Dendrochronologists!” Sweetie replied, an excited squeak causing her voice to crack.

Her friends stared at her blankly.

“Yay?” Sweetie tentatively added.

“Have ya been readin' Twilight's books again?” Applebloom asked as she bucked the last of the cactus remains off their wagon.  The poor prickly plants deserved a better end than that.

“Scootaloo told me to come up with some Crusading ideas!” Sweetie objected.

“I told you to come up with some good ideas, Sweetie.  Not a bunch of egg-head stuff!  How am I supposed to impress Rainbow Dash with a dendrowhatever it is cutie mark?” Scootaloo inquired whilst securing her helmet once again.

“Dendrochronology,” Sweetie began reciting.  She hopped into the righted wagon along with Applebloom.  Scootaloo, of course, had taken up her position on the scooter tethered to the wagon's bit and was already revving up her wings.  “Is using trees to figure out how old something is!  Twilight said it's a fascinating subject!”

“Twilight says everything is a fascinating subject,” Scootaloo groaned.  “Fine.  Let's give it a shot.  Maybe it would look like a tree and an hourglass?  I guess that would be kind of neat...”

The orange pegasus revved her wings and the trio of friends went zooming off down the road once more.    Sweetie gave a serene little smile as she watched the shops and homes of Ponyville racing past.  At least looking at trees would be peaceful.


~~~~~


“I've never seen a tree explode like that before...” Applebloom muttered, her mane slicked back with pitch and peppered with pine needles.

Truth be told, they were all covered in tree sap and pine needles.  It was, sadly, the most common outcome of their Crusades.  The uneventful Statistical Analysis cutie mark attempt had proven that with ninety seven point three eight five percent certainty.

Twilight had suggested that line of crusading, of course.

“That was scary...” Sweetie mumbled into her hooves.  The pitch and pine needles had joined forces with the thorns in her mane to produce a matted, sticky series of snarls that would give pause to even the most battle-hardened of hair stylists.  Rarity probably wouldn't be pleased.

“That was actually pretty awesome!” Scootaloo laughed.  “Way cooler than I thought dendrowhatever would be!  And I wasn't scared!  Not even a little bit!”  Her shaking wings suggested otherwise, but those were just minor details.  “Too bad we didn't get an exploding tree cutie mark.  Why do you think it did that, anyway?”

“Who knows?  How does Sweetie manage make black goop instead of toast?” Applebloom replied as she pried her bow off a stray chunk of wood.

“Hey!” Sweetie protested.  “I worked really hard on that toast!  It even tasted kind of like toast!”

The silence of her friends spoke volumes.

“Okay, it tasted like burned oatmeal that wanted to dream of being toast.  But trying still counts,” Sweetie insisted.

Scootaloo opened her mouth, no doubt to say something snarky, when a new voice drew the attention of the Crusaders.  “I heard an explosion!”  A familiar purple princess cantered around the corner, a look of concern on her face.  Though-  “Is everypony al-oh.  It's you three.”  As soon as she spotted the Crusaders the concern dissolved away into a sort of exasperated resignation.  Twilight gave the exploded pine tree a skeptical look.  “What happened here?”

“Dendrochronology,” Sweetie said.

“Dendrochronology,” Twilight deadpanned in reply.

“Dendrochronology,” Sweetie confirmed.

Twilight managed a small smirk.  “You girls know you're just supposed to take a coring of the tree, right?  Not blow the whole thing up.  Might want to keep that in mind next time.”

“I don't think we're havin' a next time on this one,” Applebloom huffed.  “What are you doin', Twilight?  Can we can help?”

That is the single most horrifying question anypony in Ponyville can be asked.

Twilight gave a nervous chuckle.  “Oh, well, I was just going over to talk with Fluttershy about Pinkie.  Some new data on her unusual abilities has come to my attention and I wanted to look into it.”

Now it's Sweetie's turn to stare in horror.  Her friends react in much the same way.  “Um...  Twilight?  I thought you weren't going to study Pinkie anymore?  What if you-know-what happens again?” came Sweetie's gentle reminder.

Nopony wanted a repeat of the Banana Bread Incident.

“Hey!  Why don't we research Pinkie's weird magic, too?” Applebloom suddenly blurted out.  “We might be able to get magical investigator cutie marks!”

At that Twilight laughed.  “Where would you girls even start?  Do you have a hypothesis regarding Pinkie nature?”

“Well...” Applebloom hemmed.

“Uuhh...” Scootaloo hawed.

“She's a cartoon!” Sweetie exclaimed.

That earned the little unicorn some interesting looks.  “Like the ones they show at the theater?  They do all sorts of silly, impossible things like Pinkie does.  Maybe Pinkie is a cartoon, too?” Sweetie reasoned.

“That's absurd, Sweetie.  If Pinkie were a cartoon then that would imply that we're all cartoons as well.  Our whole world would be one big illusion,” Twilight laughed.  And then suddenly looked very thoughtful.  “Though... don't some of the qilin hold to a philosophy of an illusionary universe?  Hmm... I should look into that, too...”

Twilight began muttering to herself and she set off toward Fluttershy's cottage again.  Applebloom yelled an uncertain, “Bye Twilight?” after her.

“Let's give it a shot,” Scootaloo suddenly spoke up.  “The figuring out Pinkie thing.  If she's a cartoon that means everypony else would be a cartoon, too.  What sort of cutie mark would we get for figuring out the secrets of the universe?”

“Ultimate ontological enlightenment cutie marks?” Sweetie offered.

“Well, I reckon that's better than Cutie Mark Crusaders grout repair,” Applebloom muttered.  They had really been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while now.

“But how are we going to test reality to see if it's a cartoon or not?” Scootaloo asked.  “That sounds like some really tough egg-head stuff to me.”

“Oh!  I know!” Sweetie squealed.  “To the Apple Barn!”


~~~~~


In retrospect this plan probably wasn't thought through quite as much as common sense would demand.  Was that one of their failings, Sweetie wondered.  Maybe their inability to acquire cutie marks was fed by their lack of patience?  They would leap hooves first into one misadventure after another, each causing them plenty of trouble rather than providing any insight into their destiny.

Rarity kept telling her to settle down and find something that feels meaningful to her, but try as she might Sweetie and her friends kept coming up empty.  It was almost as if somepony were having fun watching them mess everything up over and over and over again.  Maybe they're just trying to hard?

Sweetie gave a little huff and let her mind wander over the past few minutes.  She and her friends had argued over how best to test their theory.  Eventually they settled with dropping an anvil on Scootaloo.  Dropping anvils on the funny talking animals always made everypony laugh at the theater since the cartoons would just scrunch up like an accordion and then spring back.  Sweetie was pretty sure she had seen Pinkie do something like that at least once.

The Crusaders ran into trouble when they realized that they couldn't actually get the anvil very far off the ground.  Shoving it around didn't work so well.  And roping it over the rafters didn't work either.  Eventually Scootaloo suggested using their catapult to launch it!  Hefting the anvil into the catapult wouldn't have been nearly as hard as hoisting the anvil all the way to the ceiling.

They had to test the catapult first, of course.  Jumping into the bucket really hadn't been the best idea, Sweetie thought.  She had been thinking about a lot of things since the catapult launched her skyward.  It was funny.  Sweetie was sure that she should be feeling frightened right now, but she wasn't.  Despite Ponyville zooming along below her she felt a sense of peace.  That everything would be okay.  Without hesitation she waved a hoof at a pony strolling through the market.

“Hi Rarity!  Bye Rarity!”

“Hello Sweetie,” Rarity did a double-take at the flying filly and totally forgot about the bolt of fabric she had been inspecting.  “Sweetie Belle!”

It was shortly there after that Sweetie's flight came to an abrupt end.  She never would find out who had left that huge vat of maple syrup in the middle of the market, but the goopy fluid broke her fall marvelously.  She struggled to the surface, heaved herself over the lip of the tub, and landed on the dusty Ponyville streets with a sticky splat.  Sweetie's graceless dismount jostled a nearby stand selling glitter, causing a large jar of sparkles to topple over.

The shiny powder sprinkled over Sweetie like a baptism of stupidity.

“I think I'm going to be in trouble,” the little unicorn filly muttered.

“Sweetie Belle!”

And lo, she was in trouble.


~~~~~


“Honestly, I can't imagine what you were thinking, Sweetie Belle,” Rarity huffed.  She had escorted her sister back to the boutique and was engaged in an epic battle against the sticky, dried on grime that the young unicorn had been doused in.  Syrup and tree sap and pine needles and glitter.  Ghastly, simply ghastly!

“We were testing our catapult to make sure it still worked,” Sweetie explained moments before getting dunked under the sudsy surface of the bath water again.

“You were testing the...  Of course it was the catapult.  I must speak to Applejack about keeping a closer eye on her building materials.  You girls get yourself into enough trouble without building brutish siege engines,” Rarity said.  Goodness knows she loved her sister, but Sweetie and her friends were just so... so gauche.  Sweetie took after their father in that regard.  Maybe, Rarity thought, she should be a bit more insistent that Sweetie develop her lovely singing voice further.  Now that was a respectable hobby for a lovely young mare.  “I'm afraid to ask, Sweetie Belle, but why were you and your friends testing the catapult?”

“Well... we needed to get the anvil high enough to drop it on Scootaloo to see whether or not the whole world's a cartoon!” Sweetie declared.

“A cartoon?  Why on Earth would you suspect such a silly thing?” Rarity asked incredulously.

“Twilight is researching Pinkie Pie again and she asked us what we thought and I thought Pinkie might be a cartoon because she does lots of cartoon things!  Twilight said that was preposterous because it would mean everypony is a cartoon and we don't know it and so we're going to test that to see if it's true so we can get our ultimate ontological enlightenment cutie marks!” Sweetie explained.  The (mostly) clean filly clambered out of the tub and began toweling herself off.

Rarity was still caught at 'Twilight is researching Pinkie Pie again'.  “Doesn't she remember what happened...”  Rarity gave her head a dainty shake.  Of course Twilight remembered what happened last time.  How could anypony forget such a horrid disaster?  Why, the rainbow stains alone took weeks to wash out and the scent of banana bread still made Rarity queasy.  “Something new must have come up, I imagine...”

“Rarity, can I go now?  We still need to drop an anvil on Scootaloo,” Sweetie pleaded.

“Yes yes, of course, dear,” Rarity assented.  “Just be sure to tell Applejack about your plans.  Experimental safety and so forth.”

There was no way Applejack would ever allow them to do such a thing.  And Applejack saying no would allow Rarity to remain the good sister!

Rarity gave a prim nod.  “And I shall be having a little chat with Twilight about this Pinkie Pie business.”

“Oooh, I'm a business now?  Entrepreneurial or corporate?”

Pinkie Pie's head was sticking out of Rarity's saddlebags.  Somehow.  It spoke volumes that Rarity was neither surprised nor particularly worried.  Though there was some degree of fear that Pinkie might get mud on the fabric she had purchased at the market.  Or cupcake frosting.  Or confetti.  Or something else equally inexplicable.

“It's you!” Sweetie squealed with delight.

“It's me!” Pinkie agreed with equal glee.

“Are you really a cartoon?” Sweetie asked curiously.

Pinkie looked thoughtful at that question.  “Well, I do try to keep an animated attitude!”

“That's wonderful, darling,” Rarity sighed.  “Would you mind being animated outside of my saddle bags?”

“Oki doki loki!” Pinkie said as she hopped out of the bags.

Rarity couldn't help but notice that the bags felt heavier after Pinkie's departure.  Against her better judgment Rarity looked inside.  Aside from the things that were supposed to be in her saddlebags there were also several pairs of white gloves adorned with three black stripes on the back.  Gloves with fingers, mind.  The sort of gloves one might expect a griffin to wear along with a dashing tuxedo.  The style was all the rage in Germaney.  Though that didn't explain why Pinkie had them, nor why she left them amongst Rarity's things.

“Pinkie, are these yours?” Rarity asked.  She levitated out a few of the gloves.

“Yep!  A super-duper good friend of mine had a bunch of extras and decided to give me some!  And since I only need two I decided to give you the rest!  He's always going through old ones since tunneling all the way to Albuquerque takes a lot of work!” Pinkie didn't-explain.

Rarity knit her brow at that.  Tunneling?  Was Pinkie friends with a Diamond Dog?  After Rarity's previous encounter with the ruffians at Rambling Rock Ridge, Twilight had explained that some Diamond Dogs were quite civilized.  Leave it to Pinkie to find and befriend them.

“Well, thank you Pinkie.  I'm sure I can make a handsome ensemble for little Spiky Wikey with these.  Though, I must say I'm curious.  What good would gloves like these be to you, Pinkie?  You don't have any claws.” Rarity said.  Shortly there after she regretted bringing up the subject.

“Oh!  I wear them just fine, watch!”  And with that Pinkie shoved a glove over her hoof, puffed up her cheeks like a garishly colored blowfish, and exhaled sharply into her other hoof.  The glove over her hoof inflated and the fingers began twitching.  Pinkie grinned at Rarity wiggled her digits.

Rarity looked on with equal parts shock and horror as Pinkie stuck another glove over her other hoof and repeated the process.  “I really must speak with Twilight about this...” she muttered.

“Hey Pinkie, want to help us do some experiments to find out whether or not the world is a cartoon?” Sweetie asked.  She was either oblivious to Pinkie's unnatural behavior or she simply didn't care.

“Ooh, that sounds fun.  I'll supply the silly props!" Pinkie declared.  As she and Sweetie trotted out through the door the pink pony did an abrupt little twirl, faced an unoccupied wall of the boutique, and addressed apparently nopony.  “T-th-the th-that's all folks!”
> Wherein Fluttershy Makes a Salad
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Impossible.

It's a strange word, impossible.  A word implying that which can not and must not be.  A word that rigidly defines the edges of reality.  A word that so colors our perception of the world around us.  And yet, it takes but one strange happening to turn impossible upon its head.  Because after all, if it happens it isn't impossible, now is it?

If it happens it isn't impossible any longer.  Instead it is strange, weird, whimsical, peculiar.  An anomaly that often defies both description and explanation.  But still it is.


~~~~~


“Now, come on Angel, time to eat your breakfast,” Fluttershy said.  She gently nudged the little bowl of mixed greens toward her oldest bunny friend.  Angel could get very picky at times.  He was just such a strong willed little bunny and Fluttershy loved him all the more for it.  She had once tried to be just as assertive as Angel Bunny was, but it came off as rather mean.  She even made some of her friends cry!  It really was terrible.  Angel's brand of assertiveness just wasn't for her.  “Please?  Just one little bite?”

The white rabbit crossed his arms impetuously and gave his head a shake.  He wasn't going to stand for it.  But at least he hadn't upended the bowl on Fluttershy's head yet.

That was something he did every now and again.

Often breakfast came to Angel last.  If Fluttershy attended to him first it would take far too much time and her other animal friends would start to get a little cranky.  And Fluttershy never did know what the little rabbit would want.  His desires changed from day to day and they were always so... complicated.

Today he wanted a salad with tangerine slices and raspberry vinaigrette.  All Fluttershy had were naval oranges and those weren't doing the trick.  The little rabbit held up a placard with a picture of his desired salad on it and gave his head another obstinate shake.

Angel Bunny really wasn't much like Fluttershy's other animal friends.  All the other animals were always happy to listen to Fluttershy's kind, polite requests.  They were pleased to be around her and pleased to obey her.  After all, they knew that she had their best interests at heart.  The animals would talk to her, too.  And she could talk to them in kind.  It wasn't quite like talking with ponies.  More like... it was more like she knew their hearts.  Their intent.  It was as easy to read as the weather to any other pegasus.

But Angel Bunny...  He had to communicate with gestures and props and pictures.  Fluttershy occasionally thought that she understood him, but just as often she was wrong.  Angel was a mystery to her.  A wonderful, fluffy white mystery that she loved unconditionally.

The rabbit gave the salad Fluttershy had worked so hard on a vicious kick, sending it tumbling through the air.  As it so often did, the bowl ended its flight upside down atop Fluttershy's head.  She couldn't help but give a small sigh.  Yes, she loved Angel unconditionally.  Even when he was misbehaving.

“Oh Angel, what am I do to with you?” Fluttershy asked.

The rabbit pointed at his placard again.

Fluttershy really wasn't sure where Angel got the cards from.  With another sigh she began gathering up the spilled salad.  If nothing else she could eat it herself, though not before getting something for Angel.  It just wasn't right to have her breakfast before her animal friends all had full tummies.

There came a knock at the door.

That was a surprise.  Fluttershy wasn't expecting any guests today, after all.  A few years ago she probably would have gotten all flustered and surprised and dropped the salad again.  It would have been a little embarrassing and resulted in her feeling self-conscious about answering the door.  But now?  Now her friends had lent her a bit of their strength.  She might still be jumpier than the average pony, but her friends had really helped to coax her out of her shell.

For that, Fluttershy was grateful.

She carefully set the salad atop the coffee table and trotted over to the door.  “Hello?  Who's there?”

“It's me Fluttershy.  Can we talk?” came a familiar voice from the other side.

Fluttershy smiled and opened the door.  “Oh, hello Twilight.  I wasn't expecting any company this morning.  Would you like something to-”

“No, that's fine.  I had breakfast with Spike already,” Twilight replied tersely.  

Fluttershy recognized that tone.  It was the sort of way Twilight talked when she had something on her mind.  Twilight often had things on her mind, things Fluttershy really had no context for.  Things about magic and astronomy and history.  When Fluttershy thought it was usually quiet reflection.  She imagined Twilight's mind was a much busier place.

“Like I said, I was hoping I could talk to you,” Twilight voice dropped to a hush and she glanced about the room.  “It's about Pinkie Pie.”

Out of the corner of her eye Fluttershy noticed Angel Bunny perk up.

“Oh dear...  Is Pinkie Pie alright?  She isn't... she's not feeling sad again, is she?” Fluttershy asked.  The thought of Pinkie being sad gave her inklings of sorrow and nervousness alike.  Sorrow because Fluttershy hated seeing anyone hurting, physically or emotionally.  And nervousness because Pinkie got... strange... when she was sad.  Or stranger, at least.

“No, it isn't anything like that.  I'm doing some research into how Pinkie Pie is all Pinkie Pie,” Twilight clarified.

Fluttershy gave a small murmuring meep.  Visions of fleeing animals and fire and banana custard swam before her eyes.

“Fluttershy, I promise there won't be a repeat of the Banana Bread Incident.  That isn't going to happen again,” Twilight reassured her.  That made Fluttershy feel a little bit better.  “Besides, I don't have any experimentation planned.  Just research this time.”

“That's... nice...” Fluttershy replied uncertainly.  She trusted her friends.  She trusted Twilight.  But sometimes Twilight got a little bit too intense...

“Now, I've been investigating some more exotic explanations for Pinkie's abilities and Spike mentioned the idea of Pinkie being a ghost.  This isn't the first time he's brought up the concept,” Twilight recounted.  “And he said that he got the idea from you, Fluttershy.  I was hoping you could tell me a bit more about it?  Why do you think Pinkie might be a ghost?”

Fluttershy averted her gaze to the floor and began playing with her mane.

Twilight frowned.  “If you don't want to talk about it that's okay, Fluttershy.”

“N-no.  It's fine,” Fluttershy muttered.  “It was just a few days after you moved to Ponyville that I told Spike that.  I really didn't know Pinkie Pie very well yet.  Before we met you I... umm... I kind of...”

Fluttershy's tone dropped to a inaudible murmur.  She felt so embarrassed even saying it out loud.

“What was that?” Twilight asked.  “I couldn't quite hear you.”

“...I didn't like Pinkie Pie...” Fluttershy admitted after coaxing some courage.  “She was always so fast and loud, she used to scare me, Twilight.  When I first met her she did impossible things and startled me a lot.  Then she avoided me.  After she appeared in my mirror I was sure she was a ghost.”

Twilight shuddered at the mention of the 'mirror trick'.  Fluttershy joined her.

“But now that I know her better we're very good friends.  How could such a nice pony be a ghost?” Fluttershy reasoned.

Twilight seemed to consider that reply for a time.  “Guess that's a dead-end then.  Do you have any other ideas, Fluttershy?  About Pinkie, I mean.  What do you think she is?”

Fluttershy replied without hesitation, a small smile creeping onto her face.  “Pinkie is a true, true friend.”

At that Twilight laughed.  “You've got me there.”

“Why do you want to know, Twilight?  Did something happen?”

“Well, Rainbow Dash stopped by to talk to me today,” Twilight recounted.  “She was pale and shaking with fear.  I hadn't ever seen Rainbow so afraid before.  She told me that Pinkie had told her how she did all her weird impossible things.  She wouldn't tell me what Pinkie had told her, not specifically.  But she was obviously concerned.”

There came a creak from the door as it was pushed open and Fluttershy spied Angel Bunny's cottony little tail for but a moment before the rabbit was gone.  Huh.  Maybe he had to go to the bathroom really fast?  Fluttershy gave a little shrug and turned her attention back to Twilight.

“Oh dear...  Is Rainbow Dash alright?”

“She's pretty badly shaken up, but I think she'll be fine,” Twilight assured her.

“That's... good...  I can't imagine Pinkie saying anything that would upset Rainbow Dash like that...” Fluttershy said.  Old visions of ghosts and monsters dominated her mind for but a moment before she dismissed them.

“Exactly.  That's why I'm trying to figure this out,” Twilight explained.  “If there's something potentially dangerous going on then I need to inform Princess Celestia.”

“But... but Pinkie's our friend.  She wouldn't ever do anything dangerous, would she?” Fluttershy objected.

“Probably not intentionally.  But still...  Come on Fluttershy, any ideas that you have would be helpful.”

Fluttershy gave a little sigh.  There was one thing that came to mind.  Her experience over the past few months had really crystallized it in her mind.  Though... she hadn't ever brought it up to anypony.  She didn't want to hurt Pinkie's feelings, after all.

“Umm... well... I was just thinking...” Fluttershy began.

“Yes?” Twilight asked eagerly.

“What if... what if Pinkie is the same thing as Discord?”  As soon as she uttered that aloud Fluttershy clamped her hooves over her mouth as if simply speaking those words might get her into trouble.

“A draconequus?” Twilight mused aloud.  “That would explain a few things.  Altering their appearance certainly isn't beyond a draconequus' abilities.  And they do use a lot of magic that would be flagrantly impossible for anypony else.  And Pinkie can be pretty chaotic.  Not Discord chaotic but...”

Twilight gave her head a small shake.  “Discord makes chaos to amuse himself.  Discord is the only thing Discord cares about.  Pinkie stirs things up too, but she does everything for everypony else.  If anything, they're opposites.”

“Oh, but Discord is getting better, Twilight,” Fluttershy assured her friend.  “He really is.  He's learning that there are ways to have fun without making somepony else sad or upset.  Maybe Pinkie just learned that lesson already?”

“Hmmm...  And Discord did say that Laughter was his favorite Element,” Twilight muttered.  “Ugh!  That's another line of inquiry.  Now I'll have to hunt for any historical records about draconequus.  I think there were a few reported sightings during the classical period noted in Pony the Younger's writings, but the veracity of his works are questionable at best.  I might have to request access to the Dream Valley Scrolls or maybe Wind Whistler's Codex.”

“I hope this won't be too much trouble for you...” Fluttershy muttered apologetically.  She really did hate being a bother to her friends.

Twilight smiled reassuringly.  “It's no trouble at all, Fluttershy.  You've just given me a new idea that I probably wouldn't have considered otherwise.  Pinkie's... unusual, sure.  But a draconequus?  It really isn't any more outlandish than she is.  And I am doing my best to explore some more exotic explanations.”

“Umm... Twilight?  If you want to know so badly why don't you just ask Pinkie?” Fluttershy suggested.  That seemed like an easy, simple solution to her.  If Pinkie wanted to let her friends know then she would tell.  If she didn't then she wouldn't.  And all this prying did seem a little bit, well... a little bit rude.  Fluttershy didn't like the idea of talking behind her friend's back.  And Pinkie really was a true, true friend.  “If she told Rainbow Dash why wouldn't she tell you?”

There was a short intake of breath as Twilight readied a rebuttal, but no such rebuttal ever came.  The pretty purple pony princess blinked, face-hoofed, and laughed.  Fluttershy slowly tilted her head to the side, mildly confused over what Twilight could possibly find so funny.

“I've been so caught up in trying to reason my way through our little 'Pinkie Mystery' that I didn't stop to consider the easy solution!  Even if Pinkie won't give me any hints there's no harm in asking,” Twilight punctuated her reasoning with a little stomp.  “Where better to learn than straight from the horse's mouth, right?  Maybe there's even a good reason why I shouldn't be investigating this subject that Pinkie could share with me.  I'm sure I would be able to set aside unfinished research for a friend.”

Twilight's left ear twitched a few times.

Fluttershy suspected that Twilight probably couldn't set aside unfinished research for a friend.  Though, she would certainly try.  Twilight was a good friend like that.

“This has been an enlightening little chat, Fluttershy.  You've given me quite a bit to think about!  Assuming Pinkie decides to be cooperative I'll have this figured out in no time!” Twilight said as she trotted out the door.

Fluttershy waved to her departed friend and gave a little sigh.  Twilight was making a mountain out of a mole hill, she thought.  And she knew mole hills quite well.  After all, how else would she be able to deliver the worms to Mister Mole?  But then again... the last time she and the girls had dismissed Twilight's worries things had gotten just a little bit... not nice...

As silly as it might seem Fluttershy still felt bad about that.  And that was in spite of Twilight already forgiving her!  Little anxieties tended to linger in Fluttershy's mind for quite some time.  She really did wish that she could just leave the past in the past instead of letting it weigh her down.

A gurgle from her stomach reminded Fluttershy that she still hadn't fixed her breakfast.  She had been so busy with her animal and pony friends that she had quite forgotten!  But that was okay.  This wasn't the first time she had a late breakfast.  With a song in her heart and a spring in her step Fluttershy banished the troubling thoughts and began preparing a salad all her own.

“Hiya, Flutters!”

She was rather surprised to find Pinkie Pie inside her ice box.

“Oh, umm... hello there Pinkie Pie,” she said.  An ice box was a dangerous place for a pony to hide.  Pinkie could have gotten stuck or ran out of air or frozen!  And those were all terrible things.  But, Fluttershy thought, those weren't things that would happen to Pinkie.  Pinkie always seemed so aloof to common dangers.  That's why Fluttershy used to think she was a ghost (among other reasons).

Fluttershy smiled somewhat awkwardly while Pinkie hovered out of the ice box, the pink pony's hooves crusted in mud.  There wasn't any mud in the ice box, thankfully.  Fluttershy's gaze performed a migration between Pinkie and the floor below her several times, absently wondering when her friend was going to touch down.

“How are you staying up in the air like that?” Fluttershy asked.  She knew she probably wouldn't get a real answer to the question, but she was curious.  Especially after her little chat with Twilight.  Usually hovering in the air was pegasus magic, but that didn't seem to bother Pinkie at all.

“Weeell that's a funny story!  See, the Cutie Mark Crusaders thought that the whole world was a cartoon for some silly reason and so I decided to help them with experiments to find out if that was true!  It mostly involved eating pies really fast and running in place and walking off high things without looking down and dropping an anvil on my head and -” Pinkie began rambling.

Fluttershy nodded and smiled even though it was hard for her to follow Pinkie's train of thought.  It was okay if she didn't understand everything since Pinkie loved talking; paying her friend the simple kindness of lending an ear to listen was something Fluttershy enjoyed.

“-and then we painted tunnels on Applejack's barn and tried running through them but Applejack wasn't very happy about that since she likes her barn being red so I peeled all the paint off and tossed it on the ground so then there was a tunnel on the ground instead and I think one of the pigs fell in but that was okay since he fell back out again and knocked my over and I tripped in the mud and got all muddy and decided to come and see you but I didn't want to get your floor dirty!” Pinkie concluded.

Fluttershy blinked.  “So... you aren't landing because you don't want to get my floor muddy?”

“Yep!” Pinkie confirmed.

“Oh, well... thank you.  That's very thoughtful, Pinkie,” Fluttershy said.  She was pretty sure Pinkie hadn't actually answered her question, but that was okay.  Pinkie did that when she didn't want to talk about something.  In a sudden surge of assertiveness Fluttershy decided to indulge her curiosity a  bit.  “Pinkie?  Are you a draconequus like Discord?”

“Not every balloon is a balloon animal,” Pinkie replied.

“So... you are a draconequus, then?  Just not like Discord?” Fluttershy prompted.  It would be so nice if she could answer Twilight's question for her.  Twilight would be so happy and proud that her friend figured it out all on her own.

“If it floats like a balloon and bounces like a balloon and goes phbbbbbbtt! when the air comes out like a balloon, then it must be a balloon,” Pinkie said resolutely.

“I knew it!” Fluttershy squeaked with glee, then flushed at how loud she was.  “I should tell the girls.  I'm sure they would want to know, especially Twilight.  If, umm... if that's okay with you.”

Pinkie wrinkled her nose.  “Tell them what?”

“That you're secretly a draconequus?”

Pinkie held her hind hooves with her forehooves (which were inside white gloves with... fingers?) and begin to turn slow somersaults in the air, grinning all the while.  “Huh?  I thought we were talking about balloons.”

“Pinkie, don't you think you would feel better if you got it off your chest?” Fluttershy said with a kind smile.  Pinkie was avoiding the question again, but Fluttershy was sure she could coax an answer out of her with a little quiet patience.  “You don't need to keep secrets from your friends.”

“Hmm... maybe you're right, Flutters,” Pinkie said with a nod.  Then she stuck one of her gloved hooves far deeper into the fur on her chest than strictly possible.  Fluttershy was briefly worried that Pinkie was hurting herself, but when she pulled a certain tiny alligator out of her fluff Fluttershy heaved a sigh of relief.

The reptile blinked his large, purple eyes absently.

“Boy oh boy were you right, Flutters!  Gummy was getting hot in there, I feel better already!” the pink pony giggled.

“Pinkie... that doesn't make any sense,” Fluttershy said, smiling in spite of Pinkie's continued antics.  Or perhaps because of them.

“Make sense?  Silly filly!  What fun is there in making sense?” Pinkie retorted.

That phrase...  Fluttershy recognized it from somewhere, but she couldn't put a hoof on it...

“Hey!  I've got a great idea!  Why don't I show you all the fun I had with the Crusaders?”

“Twilight really did want to talk to you, Pinkie,” Fluttershy said.  She wasn't going to let herself get swept away in Pinkie's enthusiasm.  It was still really distracting, though.

“Aaww...  There's no fun in just giving Twilight the answers.  But I guess I probably should talk with her before she fills the reservoir with banana custard again,” Pinkie reasoned.  “Anywho!  You can stay here and watch the show from Sweet Apple Acres.”

“Umm... how will I do that, Pinkie?” Fluttershy asked.  Had Pinkie recorded a film reel?  She wouldn't be surprised if Pinkie had a motion picture camera hidden in her mane somewhere along with everything else.  “Did you make a movie?”

“Phbbbbbt!  Nothing like that.  I'll just have a flash-back.  It'll be a snap!” Pinkie giggled.

Before Fluttershy could object Pinkie snapped her fingers and the world turned white.
> Wherein Berry Punch Makes a Smoothie
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free.

That freedom, however, comes at a cost.  A cost higher than the lofty and perilous jagged crags of the bleakest mountains.  A cost deeper than the crushing blackness of the lowest unsearchable abyss.  A cost that wounds more surely than any blade.

If everything you believed was a beautiful, comforting lie, would you want to know?

Would you stand in the burning light of the Truth and yet not be blinded by it?

Or would you flee into the dark, familiar embrace of ignorance?

Or perhaps descent into blissful madness would rescue you from the profound cosmic dread?

Pray upon the mercy of whatever gods you serve that the Truth never finds you.


~~~~~


Word spread fast in Ponyville.  Hearsay and gossip were a sort of currency in such small towns, words passing from ear to ear as bits changed hooves around the market.  It wasn't long at all before uneasy whispers were traded between citizens.  They had heard the barest inklings at first, an off the hoof remark from Rarity to Dewdrops.  That remark was spread and built upon as oft gossip does.  What began as a wholly innocent comment had quickly mutated into something altogether different as the malefic meme crept through Ponyville with all the virulence of the feather flu.

Rainbow Dash had learned something from Pinkie and was acting strange.  Rainbow Dash was stepping down as weather captain and moving back to Cloudsdale.  Rainbow Dash had locked herself in her home and wouldn't come out.  Rainbow Dash was trotting around the train station yelling at the support posts.  Twilight was studying Pinkie Pie again.  Twilight had discovered what Pinkie Pie was.  Twilight had summoned a monster from Tartaurus to help her restrain Pinkie.  Twilight had gone mad when she dug too deep into things that nopony ought to know.  Pinkie had evaporated like dew on a warm day as soon as Twilight learned the truth.  Pinkie had devoured Twilight as soon as she learned the truth.  Twilight was already conjuring up hundreds of gallons of banana custard for what was to come.

More than a few ponies swore they could smell sauerkraut on the air.

Some ponies were quite worried and opted to be open about their fear.  Others nervously dismissed the whole thing as nonsense.  And still others went about their days doing what they could to ignore the nonsense.  There was always nonsense of some kind going on in Ponyville ever since she moved in.  Not that anypony would be open about it, of course.  But trouble had a way of following Princess Twilight.

One thing was certain, though.  

A storm was coming.


~~~~~


Berry Punch jittered behind the counter of her punch bar, the various rumors whispering over and over in her head.  She had spear-headed the plea for Ponyville's eccentric librarian to drop the subject of Pinkie Pie altogether during the last disaster.  

After all, nopony wanted a repeat of the Banana Bread Incident.

While for most it was simply a heartfelt desire to prevent their town from being burned to the ground, Berry held a much deeper fear.  A fear that clutched her heart with cold, clammy talons and made her seriously consider breaking out the wine despite the early morning.

She was afraid that the Truth would find them and all of Ponyville would be subjected to its burning light.  Would they be blinded with madness, reduced to gibbering shells of the ponies they once were?  Would they shriek and laugh and cry as they gazed into that pink abyss?  Would that endless, howling gulf swallow up their whole town and leave not a trace upon the face of the world to mark its passing?  Berry really didn't want to find the answer to that question.

Berry shivered, poured herself a small glass of heavily fortified pinot noir, and knocked it back.  Despite its sweetness, the drink burned all the way down.  So sweet that it burned.  Burned the mind and the body alike.  Berry's gaze was soon lost to the middle distance while her thoughts were displaced through time and space.

It was years ago when she had met Pinkie Pie, if that was even her name.  The moment she laid eyes on her Berry knew something was wrong.  Something was horribly and fundamentally wrong.  When Pinkie held still it wasn't as noticeable, but when she moved...  When she moved she moved in all the wrong ways.  It was subtle, so subtle that anypony who wasn't paying any attention would miss it.  A twitch that shouldn't be.  A twist that wasn't possible.  A stretching like taffy that should rightfully break the bones of any natural pony.  That little pink filly's colors were too bright.  Her voice too clear.  Her edges too sharp.  It was as though she was sucking all the vibrancy out of the world around her until it was a drab morass of hazy shapes.

Nopony else at school seemed to notice.  Everypony else could only see her disarming smile.  They could only see what they wanted to see.  They could only believe what they had to believe to protect themselves.  How Berry longed that her own perception had been that dull.

Despite the creeping, slinking, slithering terror that hung thick about Pinkie like a musty grave shroud, Berry had tried to be friends with her.  Berry was just that kind of filly.  She tried to be friends with everypony.  Even ponies that were different.  Especially ponies that were different.  And Pinkie was very... different.

When she was actually speaking to Pinkie the lurking dread dissolved away.  The silly pink pony's laughter banished fear and doubt.  For a time Berry thought that maybe, just maybe, she had been wrong about Pinkie.  Maybe she was just being overly sensitive.  Maybe there was nothing wrong with Pinkie at all.  Maybe she was making a big fuss over nothing.

Then Pinkie began to regularly partake in the impossible.

Appearing where she shouldn't be.  Moving in ways that couldn't be.  Knowing what nopony should know.  And all the while she laughed and smiled, ponies giggling along with her.  'Oh, that Pinkie', they said.  'She's such a silly pony.'

Blinded.

They were all blinded.

For a time Berry had just avoided Pinkie.  It wasn't as though she was causing any harm, right?  But it wasn't too long before Berry realized that nothing could be further from the truth.  Before long she began to notice changes in her friends.  When Pinkie was around they were all bright and smiles and cheer.  But when she was gone they gradually slipped into a despondent, ill tempered funk.  As if all the brightness had been stolen from their lives and the only brightness they could express was toward and through the exuberant antics of Pinkie.

The realization had hit Berry in a singular, horrifying instant of epiphany.

Pinkie was devouring their joy.

So she confronted the self-proclaimed 'Party Pony' about what was happening.  Pinkie dodged any direct questions like she always did when her oddness was brought up, but Berry was insistent.  Something was wrong and she was going to see it stopped.  She wasn't going to give up.  She wasn't going to give in.  She wasn't going to be shaken.  She wasn't going to be broken.

Pinkie had asked her if she really wanted the Truth.

Berry had said yes.

Pinkie locked her gaze with Berry's own.

Eyes are a window into the soul, the old saying goes.  And Berry had been granted the briefest of glimpses of what lay behind Pinkie's eyes.

She had fallen catatonic for the next week and a half.

And now?  Now all these years later she still saw it when she dreamed.  Not when she passed out though, no.  That sleep was blissfully dreamless.

When the bell above the door jingled Berry was pulled gasping back to the present.  With shaky hooves she poured herself another glass of wine, her tremors causing her to spill much of it over the counter.  “Welcome to the Very Berry Bar, what can I get you today?” Berry recited robotically and then downed her wine.

“Hello Berry.  I'm not sure yet, but running all over town trying to find Pinkie has really left me parched!” Twilight Sparkle said.  She sniffed a few times and raised an eyebrow.  “Is that... wine?  It isn't even noon yet.”

Berry briefly considered pouring another glass just to make a point.  Unfortunately she already had before she could finish considering.  Not one to waste perfectly good, already poured wine she guzzled that glass, too.

“Yes.”

Twilight furrowed her brow.  Berry could tell that the alicorn was debating whether or not she should say anything further on the subject of early drinking, but thankfully she left the topic alone.  “Well, how about a cherry strawberry apple smoothie?”

Berry was already working on the drink, doing her best to glaze over Twilight's rambling about her newest research project.  Berry already knew what it was.  What else could it be?  She set the smoothie down in front of Twilight and then grasped the rambling alicorn's cheeks between her hooves.

Grabbing a princess by the face was probably illegal.

Berry really didn't care.

“Drop it,” Berry said.

Twilight's eyes flitted back and forth.  She looked surprised.  Nervous.  A little frightened.

Good.

“Drop what...?” Twilight asked uncertainly.

“Pinkie.  Drop the entire subject in a deep, dark hole somewhere where it will never see the light of Celestia's sun.  Bury it and never think about it again,” Berry said.  “No good will come of learning about her.  There are things ponies aren't meant to know.”

Twilight used her wings to shove Berry's hooves away and leveled a rather cross glare at the earth pony.  “It's just knowledge.  Knowledge isn't dangerous.  Besides, Pinkie is my friend.  There's nothing wrong with knowing more about your friends.  Pinkie's one of the nicest ponies in Ponyville and you're making it sound like she's some... some kind of monster!”

Heh.

A monster.

If only.

“A monster is just a spooky story with imagined sharp teeth and claws to scare foals into behaving,” Berry snorted.  “Pinkie is something altogether different.  She's no pony.  She's only pony-shaped so long as the stars restrain her.”

Twilight's look of vague offense suddenly bloomed into curiosity.  “Oh!  This must be another hypothesis about Pinkie's nature that I haven't heard yet!”  The pretty purple pony princess clopped her hooves together eagerly.  “Can you give me some more details?  What are you basing your hypothesis on?  Are you familiar with the ghost, cartoon, mirror spirit, or draconequus hypotheses?  How would you contrast them with your own?”

Berry leaned away from the eccentric mare who was suddenly invading her personal space.  Though to be fair she had grabbed her face just a few moments prior.  Turnabout is fair play and all that.

“You just don't know when to leave well enough alone, do you princess?” Berry said.  The words were sour in her mouth.  Or maybe that was the acidic burp had just suffered through...

“Please, just Twilight is fine,” she insisted.

Berry gave a long sigh and eyed her bottle again.  She longed for some more.  She longed for the chance to just erase this whole morning.  With any luck she would wake up when the mess was over.  But no, no she couldn't do that.  She needed to be coherent for what she was about to say.

Or mostly coherent, at least.

“Ponies see what they want to see or expect to see in Pinkie,” Berry said, doing her best to sound as convincing and sane as possible.  Sane was hard, considering the subject matter.  “All those other things you mentioned?  Ghosts and spirits and what not?  Ponies believe what they believe to make sense of things.  But all they ever see is a shadow of a shadow.  There's far more to our world than anypony understands and it would be in the interest of everypony if it stays that way.”

Berry closed her eyes.  She willed with all her might to still her shaking hooves.

They wouldn't obey.

“I gazed into that bottomless pink abyss and it gazed back into me.  I saw the Truth of things, Twilight Sparkle.  I saw what lurks just beyond the edges of perception and scrabbles at the threshold of the world.  I saw our place in the vast unfeeling emptiness of the cosmos and I comprehended.  How I wish I hadn't,” Berry said.  Her shaking grew markedly worse as her fevered dream-visions began rousing in the dark corners of her mind.  She crossed one hoof over the other to hold them still.

It didn't help.

“Do you really want to know the doom that waits for us, Twilight Sparkle?  Do you really want to trot where nopony ought to go?” Berry asked.

Twilight gave a hesitant nod.

“Then follow me.  Maybe a glimpse of the shadow that casts the shadow will convince you to give up this fool's quest before it breaks you,” Berry said as she pushed aside a rug behind the counter and lifted a concealed cellar entrance.

Twilight flattened her ears and followed Berry down into the darkness.


~~~~~


Twilight had an itch in her ear and no amount of flipping would dislodge it.  She considered briefly raising a hoof to scratch herself but the stairs leading into Berry's cellar were narrow and steep.  Almost as if they had been cut out for a creature that didn't walk as a pony might.  She quickly pushed those thoughts out of her mind.  Visions of spooky inequine monsters were the last thing Twilight needed in her head right now.  After all, this was research.  She needed to remain as neutral and rational as possible.

It was cold, Twilight noticed.

Far colder than it had any right being.  They were in the early days of autumn, but there was still plenty of warm weather left.  Nightmare Night was still more than a month away, after all.  And yet she could see her breath.  Why was it so cold in Berry Punch's basement?

“So, uh, what's this basement for, anyway?” Twilight asked nervously.  The foreboding chill was starting to get to her and she desperately needed to hear sound aside from hooves on cold stone.  “A wine cellar or something?”

“Or something, yes,” Berry replied absently.  The earth pony stopped at a fairly intricate looking door at the bottom of the stairs.  It was carved from a shiny stone of some kind that Twilight couldn't quite identify.  The surface was adorned with images of ponies and griffins and... other things...  Things that made Twilight feel uneasy trying to imagine how they might look in the flesh.  Berry glanced back at Twilight.  “Last chance.  Are you sure you want to trot down this path?”

Twilight hesitated.  Was she?

She wanted to know what was going on with her friend Pinkie and what had so shaken Rainbow Dash.  As a princess she was responsible for other ponies.  And besides, they were her friends!  If something dangerous was going on she should know about it.  But the more she thought about it the more it seemed clear that Berry Punch had a similar experience to Rainbow's.  

Maybe identical.

And...

And Twilight just wanted to know.

“I think so?” Twilight replied.  She tried to mend the broken silence with a lame smile.  “Is this the part where you tell me not to be afraid?”

Berry gave a mirthless laugh.  “Of course not.  That would be terrible advice.”

The earth pony stuck her hoof into a depression in the door and began to slowly turn it this way and that, mechanical clicks sounding from within as tumblers fell into place.  The tense nervousness in Twilight's gut gradually coiled tighter as the minutes ticked away until at last it was too much for her.

“Okay, you win,” Twilight gasped.  “You've made it painfully clear that whatever this,” she waved a hoof at the strange door.  “Is could be troubling to somepony who isn't prepared.  I'll just send a letter to the princess instead.  I'm sure she'll be able to explain.”

Berry heaved a sigh of relief, the tension lifting from the claustrophobic chamber in an instant.  She pulled her hoof out of the door and it locked back into place.  “Better to just forget it all, but that's an improvement.  Thank you.”

The two mares walked back up to the bar in silence.

Pinkie Pie was waiting for them.

“Hiya Twilight!  Fluttershy said you really wanted to talk to me.”

There was a moment.

The briefest of inklings of something else.  Something all twisted in on itself hidden behind Pinkie's adorable bubblegum-colored outline.  Something moving.  Something alive.  Something that didn't belong in the lighted hours of the sane waking world. 

Something wrong.

Twilight's vision began to tunnel in on Pinkie, the party pony growing brighter and sharper while all else faded into a muddled, indistinct haze.

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and when she opened them the strange duality of her friend was gone.

She took a step back without thinking about it.

“Oh, ah, hi Pinkie.  And yes.  I did want to talk to you,” Twilight said, trying her hardest to to sound calm and collected.  She could feel loose strands of her mane springing free.  Twilight fumbled for her smoothie on the counter, the sweet treat still untouched.  That would help her to seem casual, right?  “Rainbow was really out of sorts this morning after talking to you.  I was hoping maybe you could shed some light on, well, on why she was feeling that way?”

Pinkie smiled a cheerful smile.

A smile far deeper than any smile ought to be.

Twilight felt herself drowning in it.

“Sure Twilight!  Anything for a friend."
> Wherein Pinkie Pie Makes Narration
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Woosh!  Fade to white!  

Fluttershy was really super-duper confused because she didn't know what a flashback was or why Pinkie had hands all of a sudden but if she had thought about it she would have known that a draconequus and a funny animal are both supposed to have hands!  Like, duh!  Everypony knows that!  Fluttershy isn't a dumb pony though, not even a little bit!  She's a really great friend, she just doesn't always think things through all the way.  Kind of like that one time Fluttershy asked Pinkie to help her bake a carrot cake for Angel Bunny but it was supposed to be a surprise but Fluttershy didn't really stop and think that surprising Angel Bunny is really super-duper hard, especially for somepony like Pinkie Pie!  So then Pinkie had to have already had backed the cake which made everything really tricky especially that one part where she had to run away from the hounds of tindalos since they were trying to steal all the cream cheese frosting.  

They really must like cream cheese frosting.

Wait...

This was supposed to start with something spooky and foreboding, wasn't it?

Whoops!  Hehesnort!  That ice cream truck already left, didn't it?  Hmm...  Fluttershy really isn't very spooky.  The hounds are, kind of, right?  That's something a pony would be scared of, but they don't really bother ponies so much unless they travel through time.  Has Twilight ever met one before?  She's a pony and she traveled through time.  But that was a closed time loop that didn't create any paradoxes.  Hehe!  That's a really funny sounding word!  Paradoxes parakeets pair-ah-socks!

“P-pinkie?  W-what's going on?” Fluttershy said.  She was really spooked out because she was floating around in the infinite, eternal blankness.  It's kind of silly to be spooked out at the infinite, eternal blankness 'cuz it isn't all that spooky.  Just really boring.  Booooooring!  Nothing to do at all unless somepony makes something to do but everything somepony can make to do is just a thing that they thought of!  How is anypony supposed to be surprised if they know how all the stories end?

They don't, that's how.  No surprises ever ever ever forever!  And that's just terrible!

But that's still better than taking Fluttershy to the infinite, eternal chaos.  It's a lot less boring, but she might have gotten turned into a tree or something.  She said that she wouldn't mind being a tree once, but it isn't nearly as much fun as she thought.

“P-pinkie?  H-hello?  Anypony?” Fluttershy murmured.

Oops!  Can't forget about Fluttershy!  That would be really bad!  Pinkie Pie would have felt just terrible if she had forgotten about her friend.

“Don't worry Fluttershy!  I'm right here!” Pinkie Pie said from right here.  Where else would she say something from?  Somewhere else?  That would be silly.  Pinkie Pie might be a silly pony, but she wasn't that silly.  “You were going to watch the flashback from Sweet Apple Acres, remember?  It was really fun!  I think you'll like it.”

“Oh... umm... I guess that sounds nice,” Fluttershy admitted.  She tried to scuff her hoof against the infinite, eternal blankness, but there wasn't anything to scuff against.  Nothing but white white white everywhere like a page with no writing or a canvas with no paint!  “Pinkie...  I don't like this place...  Can we go home?”

“Aaww...  But this is the best place for flashbacks, Flutters!  How will everyone know what I did at Sweet Apple Acres if there's no flashback?” Pinkie argued.  But it wasn't the mean sort of arguing.  Is was the begging sort of arguing.  The sort of arguing Pinkie used when she really really want to do something super fun or super great or super tasty or super duper stupendously wonderful but her friends weren't so sure about it since they just didn't get it sometimes.

There were lots of things that Pinkie's friends didn't get, but she still loved them anyway.

“Well...  I guess that would be okay... maybe for just a little while,” Fluttershy relented.

“Hooray!  Alright.  It all started when I went to Sweet Apple Acres to play with the Cutie Mark Crusaders...”

“...Pinkie?  Is something supposed to be happening?” Fluttershy asked uncertainly.

“Huh...  That should have worked.  I'll try harder this time!” Pinkie said.  She cleared her throat and tried the flashback prompt again.  “It all started when I went to Sweet Apple Acres to play with the Cutie Mark Crusaders...”


~~~~~


It was a beautiful day at Sweet Apple Acres!  All sunny and warm with juuuuust the right amount of nip in the air to remind everypony that autumn was there to stay.  Or at least it was there to stay for about three months or so, then everypony would be getting ready for winter.  Round and round the seasons went like a weasel chasing his tail!  Or maybe a snipe.  Do snipe chase their tails?  Fluttershy would probably know.  Hey Fluttershy, do snipe chase their tails?

What...?  I don't... what's going on?  I... I can't see me.  Did I d-d-die?  Am I a ghost?

Of course not, silly filly!  We're just narrating.

N-narrating?  Like in a play?

Sure!  Like that.  Just make sure you don't narrate in the first-pony voice.  This isn't a detective story after all.  Anywho!  Snipes!  Do they chase their tails?

I don't think so?

Great!  I'll have to come up with a different analogy then.  Now where was I...  Oh yeah!

A beautiful day at Sweet Apple Acres!  Applejack and Big Mac had been harvesting the last of the late crop which was a super-duper important job since the late crop was the one they used to make all the tasty cider!  Cider season would be coming really really soon and they didn't want to miss it since everypony just loved their cider so much since it was the bestest of best things and they got most of their money for the winter from it!  And if they didn't make enough money they might lose the apple farm and that would be really sad even though it really doesn't make all that much sense because the land was a royal grant to the Apple Family and it wasn't like the a bank owned the mortgage or anything silly like that but the looming threat of losing the apple farm made for great dramatic tension! 

Pinkie?

Yeah, Flutters?

Is this the flashback you were talking about?

Yupper duppers!  It sure is!  Do you like it?

Umm... I guess?  It's very strange...

Everything looks really strange if you look at it close enough!  You should try Twilight's microscope some time!  It's fun!  Anywho...

Pinkie Pie had just returned from town with Sweetie Belle and they were going to test out the theory that the whole world was a cartoon!  Pinkie had already decided that she wouldn't tell them whether or not that was the right answer since that would ruin their whole scientific method thingy.  After all, nopony liked having their surprises ruined since ruining surprises is really super duper rude.

While Pinkie Pie got all distracted looking at the Crusader’s catapult and painted it plaid and stuff the three cute little fillies huddled up and made their plans!

“How come Pinkie is walkin' on her hind legs?  It looks strange,” Applebloom said.  She was right, too!  Ponies walking around on their hind legs and wearing gloves look really odd but that's what funny animals are supposed to do so that's what Pinkie was doing!

“I don't know,” Sweetie replied.  “She's been doing that ever since we left.  It makes her look a lot like the cartoons though, doesn't it?”

That was the whole idea, after all!

“Yeah, but we already know that Pinkie's a cartoon, right?” Scootaloo pointed out.  “We need a way to prove everypony else is, too.”

“What about that one time an anvil and a piano got dropped on Twilight?” Sweetie suggested.  “She was just fine a few hours later.  We can still try that with the anvil on us!  It'll be easy with Pinkie's help.”

“Yeah, but Twilight was a baby alicorn or somethin' back then,” Applebloom objected.  “I reckon alicorns must be made of sterner stuff than normal folks are.  What if we just get squashed?”

O-oh dear!  Twilight had an anvil fall on her?  Was she alright?

Huh?  Oh yeah!  Twilight was just fine.

Umm... was...  Was she fine because she was a baby alicorn?  Or because we're cartoons like the Crusaders think?  Or maybe something else...?

Yep!

Pinkie, that didn't answer my-

On with the show!

“Maybe we can try the anvil thing later, Sweetie,” Applebloom said while she paced around the barn.  “We can start with somethin' that don't get us hurt.  What about runnin'?  Cartoons do silly stuff with their legs when they try runnin'.”

“Hey, that's right!” Scootaloo said.  “How are we supposed to do that, though?  Just start running?  Every time I've ever run it's just been normal.”

“Oh!  Oh!  I know!  Pick me!” Pinkie pleaded.  She hopped up and down a bit and waved one of her front hooves above her head since that's what a pony is supposed to do to get picked for things.  Especially important things like playing buck-ball or capture the flag or incredibly dangerous world-saving quests into the burning bowels of Tartaurus or seven legged races!

The Crusaders looked at Pinkie in that way everypony looks at Pinkie when she knows something they don't but they don't know that they don't know.  It's one of those 'oh, look at that silly pony being silly again!' sorts of looks.  Pinkie was really used to it by now since she got it all the time.  Sometimes she even got it when she was just being silly rather than trying to share esoteric lost knowledge not meant for the mortal pony mind to grasp!

“Pinkie?” Sweetie called.

“Woohoo!  It's easy!  Just like this!” Pinkie laughed.  Then she jumped in the air and spun her legs like pinwheels on a really super duper extra windy day and went ZOOM! and left a cloud of dust behind!

“Woah!  She went so fast I didn't even see her!  That was awesome!” Scootaloo said.

“I never knew Pinkie could run so quick.  Why don't she ever race with sis or Rainbow Dash?” Applebloom wondered.

“Or race in the Running of the Leaves!” Sweetie squeaked.

“Or bounce up and down a whole lot!” Pinkie added while she bounced up and down.  A whole lot.  The dust had settled and Pinkie hadn't actually gone anywhere.  Or maybe she went so fast that she got back before anypony noticed?  Who knows with that crazy pony Pinkie Pie!

The three fillies all gave a yelp of surprise since they thought Pinkie had ran off!  But they should have known better since that cloud of dust was a perfect opportunity for comedic misdirection.  How could these fillies ever have expected to discover whether or not reality was a cartoon if they didn't even understand the basic rules that a cartoon operated by?

And some ponies said Pinkie was silly!

Pinkie?  Umm... not to be rude but I really do have lots of things I need to do.  It's been nice watching your story but I really think I should go.

Aaww...  Are you sure, Flutters?

Yes Pinkie, I'm sure.

Fiiiiine.  I'll just go through the rest of the story really really fast!

And so that's what Pinkie did.  But really fast flashbacks are kind of confusing.  Even more confusing than normal flashbacks because everything is all blended and mashed and happening all at once kind of a like what happens when you throw a whole dinner into a food processor and turn it into a dinner smoothy!  Sometimes dinner smoothies worked out really great, but most of the time they made everypony feel kind of queasy afterward.


~~~~~


Fluttershy was feeling that second category.

The floor of her cottage kept lurching sideways under her hooves every time she tried to stand up and it really wasn't making her stomach fair any better.  Why oh why did Pinkie have to take her on that silly flashback?  Fluttershy spared a glance at her clocked and was both relieved and surprised to discover that only a few paltry minutes had past.  That was strange, Fluttershy thought it had been much longer.

A delicate squeak drew Fluttershy's attention to a doormouse at her hooves.  In spite of her wooziness and nausea she smiled.  “Oh, of course, little friend.  I'm just fine.  Pinkie was a little enthusiastic, that's all.  But what should I do now?  I still have so many chores to do, but my pony friends-”

Weasel hugs where her answer.

“You really think so?  Well, alright.  If you insist.  I'm sure everything will be just fine when Twilight talks with Pinkie,” she took a deep breath and steeled her resolve.  “But it's still nice of me to be their as a friend in case I'm needed.”

All the critters chattered their support and Fluttershy smiled.

Her friends were so wonderful.  She didn't know what she would do without them.

As soon as she stepped outside Angel Bunny hopped onto her back and began pounding one of his big, adorable bunny feet to get her attention.  Fluttershy flashed him a pleasant smile as she clopped over the little bridge that spanned the stream near her cottage.

“Hello Angel.  Where have you been?”

The bunny immediately gestured frantically toward Ponyville.

“Oh...  Do I need to go somewhere quickly?  Is this about Pinkie?”

A nod was all Fluttershy needed in reply.

“Alright.  But where are we going?”

Angel held up two paws full of ripe black berries, the last of the season.

“You want...  Some lunch?” Fluttershy guessed.  Oh how ,she wished she could understand Angel like her other animal friends.

Angel shook his head.  He pointed at the berries again and then clobbered Fluttershy in the spine.  Not hard enough to hurt by any means, but it certainly surprised her!

“Ow!  Angel!  What has gotten into you?” Fluttershy asked indignantly.

Without hesitation Angel pointed at the berries and thwacked Fluttershy again.

“Angel!  Why are you punching me?”

At that the bunny began nodding whilst hopping up and down.

“Punching?” Fluttershy repeated.  The bunny nodded harder.  “Berries and punching...  Berry Punch?”  By now Angel was ecstatic!  “You want a smoothie from Berry Punch's shop?”

Angel face-pawed, forgetting all about the berries he was carrying.  His fuzzy little head ended up smeared in blackberry jam.  Fluttershy just smiled sweetly at him.

“Don't worry Angel Bunny.  You'll have your smoothie in no time and then we'll go find Twilight.”


~~~~~


Fluttershy didn't find Twilight, at least not right away.  No, she got distracted on the edge of Ponyville by somepony altogether different.  Somepony much more colorful.  Colorful and... despondent?  Goodness!  In all her years of friendship Fluttershy hadn't ever seen Rainbow Dash looking so glum!  She looked just terrible!  And seeing her friend like that broke Fluttershy's heart.

“Rainbow?  Are you... umm...  Are you alright?” Fluttershy asked cautiously.

Fluttershy's oldest and closest friend was laying sprawled out in the grass staring listlessly off into the skies above.  Normally Rainbow would go flying when something was on her mind.  She always said that it cleared her head.  But now...  At the sound of Flutters' voice she responded with...  

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

“Rainbow?” Fluttershy tried again.  Her shadow briefly fell over her friend  Fluttershy peered at the other pegasus, then up at the sky just in case there was something up there Rainbow Dash was watching.

Again, nothing.

“Rainbow Dash, please talk to me.  I mean... if that isn't too much trouble...” she quickly amended.

“I think I should have listened to Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash said.  Her voice was devoid of all of its usual spunk and bluster.  She sounded... broken.  And tired.  “She told me I wouldn't want to know.  And I should have listened.  If I could forget, I would.”

“Dashie...”

“I promised her, Fluttershy.  I promised on my Loyalty that I would still be her friend no matter what she told me.  And I meant it, too.  I meant it.”  Fluttershy thought she could see tears at the edges of Dash's eyes.  “What am I going to do, Fluttershy?”

“But...  But she's still Pinkie,” Fluttershy reasoned.  “She's still our friend.  You just know a secret about her, now.  That's all, right?”

Rainbow Dash averted her gaze.

“...right?”

Will Dashie be able to confess her true feelings about Pinkie?  Will Twilight learn the truth and lose her mind?

“Wait.  That sounds like Pinkie.  Oh... oh hay...  Pinkie!  I didn't break the promise!  I didn't!  You're still my friend, you are!  Really!  Honest!”

Did Dashie keep her promise or is she a no good, dirty Pinkie-Promise breaker?  Is Pinkie actually a self-aware story element?  Is she nothing more than a persistent source of silly meta-humor?  Or does her nature hide a deeper, darker secret?

“What's meta-humor?”

“Sshh, I don't know.  Be quiet, I want to hear what she says.”

Will the true, sinister malevolence from beyond the stars be discovered?  Will Fluttershy ever realize Angel's part to play in the ever spiraling mystery?  Or will she remain oblivious to the end?  Do either of those things have anything to do with anything, or are they just clever misdirection?

“...Angel Bunny...?  Is there something you want to tell me?”

Find out this and more in the exciting conclusion of Straight Answers!
> Wherein Twilight Sparkle Makes a Conclusion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The purpose of science is to come to a better understanding of the cosmos through approximations of reality.  Observe a phenomena, compile data, create a working model, and then make predictions.  If those predictions prove accurate?  Good.  If not?  Modify the model.  If a new model arises that predicts more accurately and elegantly?  Replace the old model.

Science is logical, rational, and above all else predictable.

Science was the foundation of Twilight Sparkle's picture of reality.  The rock upon which she stood when the tides of uncertainty and unknown rose around her.

This wasn't the first time she had dove headlong into the mysteries surrounding Pinkie.  No, far from it.  And the more she learned the more she was certain that there was just some small missing bit of the puzzle that eluded her.  Some cog in the model of Pinkie's seeming impossibility that, if fit into the proper place, would set the whole humming harmoniously in a way that Twilight could grasp.

Then she sat down with Pinkie there in the middle of Berry's bar and began talking candidly in hushed tones.

And now?  Twilight found herself treading water in a fathomless ocean of unknown, trying desperately to gulp precious lungfuls of rational thought, and fighting against an unseen current threatening to pull her down.  She wasn't sure how long she would last.

To say that she was overwhelmed would be a monumental understatement.

“Wow Pinkie...  That's...” Twilight shook her head as though the motion might dislodge the stray motes of madness chewing at the corners of her mind.  “I don't know what to say.”

Pinkie smiled one of her signature Pinkie smiles, but there was some inkling of sorrow in those bright blue eyes.  The usual innocence and naivety was replaced with profound understanding of just how grave the situation truly was.  Likely more grave than Twilight even began to comprehend.

After all, Twilight had requested their chat stick only to the barest of basics.

“You don't need to say anything, Twilight,” Pinkie replied with her Pinkie-and-yet-not-very-Pinkie smile.  “This is why I don't like bringing it up to ponies.  I like just being silly old Pinkie Pie.  That's easy.  When I'm more than just silly old Pinkie Pie everypony gets really quiet and uncomfortable.”

Pinkie rubbed her hooves together awkwardly.  Twilight offered her best encouraging smile.

“Ever since those stars burned I've been feeling kind of glum and I thought maybe being silly would cheer me up!  But instead it just made everypony else get all itchy in the brain.  I guess a little bit of brain itches are easy for ponies to ignore, but too many and ponies get worried,” Pinkie sighed.  “I should have known better.  Now I think Dashie might be afraid of me.  I don't like it when ponies are afraid...”

Twilight reached out a hoof to place it over Pinkie's own.  “Come on Pinkie, I'm sure that Rainbow will get over it.  This is...  This is just a lot to take in all at once.  Just because you're a-”

“Eldritch abomination!” Berry Punch yelled from behind the counter.

Twilight shot the earth pony a disapproving look.

“Things like her don't belong in the Waking World.  As long as she's here, she's eroding reality,” Berry insisted.  “She should be sent back beyond the veil where she belongs.  And the alicorn of magic should be plenty strong enough to send her away.”

Pinkie averted her eyes and began playing with her hooves again.

Twilight ground her teeth.  “Listen, Berry.  I really don't care what you think about Pinkie.  She's my friend.  And a friend to nearly every pony in Ponyville.  Notwithstanding the fact that she's one of the Elements of Harmony!  Somehow I have trouble believing that one of the most powerful magical forces of good in the whole world would pick something inherently evil to bind to.  Harmony, Berry.  Don't you get it?  If Pinkie's heart didn't reflect an aspect of Harmony there's no way she could have ever used the Element of Laughter!”

Berry Punch stared at Twilight in silence for but a moment before turning her attention to the shot glass in front of her.

“Don't worry about her, Pinkie,” Twilight insisted.  “Just because you're a-”

“Ghost!” Spike hollered as he crashed through the front door of the bar.  “I saw a ghost at the library!  I think it was-”  The young dragon froze as soon as he spotted a certain pink pony.  “P-P-Pinkie Pie!”

His stuttering squeal of fight uttered, Spike dove under a nearby table for cover.

Rarity trotted in shortly there after.  “Twilight, dear, I found little Spikey Wikey cowering in a corner of the library and I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on this whole situation.”  She spared a glance at the once-again cowering dragon.  “Spike, huddling up in fright is not at all becoming for a gentlestallion such as yourself.  Do try to be more dignified.  And I doubt Pinkie intends to do any further haunting?”

Rarity flashed Pinkie an appraising look.  Pinkie smiled awkwardly.

“Hey Spike?  Why are hiding under that table?” Pinkie asked curiously.

“You're a ghost!  What if you do scary ghost stuff at me?” Spike retorted.

“How would a table stop something like that?” Pinkie continued.

Spike opened his mouth only to quickly close it again.  “Huh.  I guess that doesn't make very much sense, does it?  You're not going to scare me though, are you?”

“Being scared is only fun if you're scared sometimes in a fun way!  Being afraid all the time isn't any fun at all,” Pinkie said.  The smile she smiled that time was a little more up to par with her usual offerings of good cheer.

“Right, right... friendly ghost,” Spike muttered.  “Oh!  I almost forgot!  According to the books only evil ghosts are repelled by salt!  So if Pinkie is a friendly famine spirit that explains why she can bake!  Score another point for Spike's theory.”

Twilight was about to reply with her usual incredulity regarding the 'ghost conjecture' but Pinkie butted in.  “Silly! That isn't the reason why I can bake!  I can bake because I get lots of practice.”

This was quickly becoming a circus.  But then most everything that involved Pinkie tended to become a circus.  Twilight gave her eyes a good-natured roll.  “Based on what Pinkie told me I'll admit that it's possible she's a ghost, but I really doubt that's the case.  Ghosts still aren't real, Spike.”

“They aren't?” Pinkie asked curiously, giving her eyes a quick flutter.

“No Pinkie, they aren't.”

“Aaww...  I guess I'll have to pick something else to be for Nightmare Night, then,” she groused.

Twilight laughed.  “Pinkie, I'm sure nopony would mind if you go as whatever you like.  After all, you-”

“Are a cartoon!” Sweetie squeaked as she came galloping in through the bar's door.  She stopped suddenly only a few paces in, much to the surprise of her two friends.  In the blink of an eye everypony present was treated to the sight of a three pony pileup in the middle of the floor.

“Sweetie!  You weren't supposed to stop when you made the big announcement!” Scootaloo grumbled as she tried (and failed) to disentangle herself from Sweetie's poofy tail.

“Yeah, we rehearsed it and everythin'!” Applebloom added.  “Now our whole musical number is ruined!”

“Would anypony mind explainin' to me what's goin' on here?” Applejack huffed as she trotted inside behind the trio of presently discombobulated fillies.  “These three have been nothin' but a bushel of trouble all day.  Even bigger bushel of trouble than usual.”

“Sorry, Applejack.  I think that's mostly my fault,” Twilight admitted.  “The girls caught wind that I was researching Pinkie again and somehow got it into their heads that the whole world is a cartoon.”

“It's the most logical explanation!” Sweetie insisted.

“Well shoot, sugar cube.  That's what all this fuss is over?  Anypony who ain't touched in the head can tell Pinkie ain't a normal earth pony.  But Pinkie is as Pinkie does.  There ain't no reason to get all consternated over it,” Applejack laughed.

“I'm pretty sure 'consternated' isn't a word, Applejack,” Twilight felt compelled to point out.  “And I think you're right.  Pinkie hasn't given me all the details, but-”

“Wait wait wait, are you tellin' me that Pinkie actually gave you a straight up, honest answer when you asked about her tomfoolery?” AJ asked curiously.

“Well, yes.  Not enough to give me a complete picture though.  That was at my own insistence,” Twilight explained.  “But still enough to allow me to infer-”

“Hooee!” Applejack whinnied.  “I never did think I'd see the day where Pinkie would give a straight answer about that nonsense.  I know I asked more than once, but Pinkie made it pretty clear she didn't feel like talkin' about it none.  And I know better than to go stickin' my nose into other pony's business.”  She glanced at Pinkie and offered a grin.  “Is this all out in the open, Pinkie?  You mind Twilight gabbin' to the other girls about it?”

“Yep to the first one, nope to the second!  I told her it's okay.  If Dashie knows I guess it's okay if everypony else finds out, too,” Pinkie said, doing her best to maintain positive appearances.  “Twilight thinks it'll just take everypony a little while to get use to it, then everything will be back to normal!  Except  for the confusion part, that won't be back to normal since everypony will know why I do silly things all the time even when the silly things aren't something that a pony should be able to do like hanging off skyhooks or appearing inside shrubs or breaking causality by knowing about things before they happen or jumping out of mailboxes or stretching out to give everypony a group hug!”

Pinkie reached out with her front hooves and yanked everypony over to herself for an impossible embrace, Berry Punch included.  There was much laughter as a result, though Berry seemed somewhat uncomfortable.  Considering her personal stance on Pinkie's nature that probably wasn't much of a surprise.

“Well I wouldn't mind hearin' about this myself,” Applejack said.  “What did Pinkie tell you, Twilight?”

“I've been trying to say.  But every time I'm about to explain that Pinkie's a-”

“Draconequus!” Fluttershy exclaimed in her loudest and most attention grabbing of voices.  Or at least the loudest voice she could muster when she wasn't angry.  Which is to say, not very loud at all.  “Pinkie told me!  Or at least... I think she told me.  Don't hate her just because she's a chaos spirit!  Pinkie is a nice chaos spirit!  And I'm sure Discord can be just as nice as her some day and... umm... now everypony is looking at me...”  The pegasus' impassioned speech quickly lost momentum and ended with a mumbled muddle.

Twilight face-hoofed.  Sometimes she wondered if there was some cosmic force of comedy that made sport of rendering their lives needlessly difficult.  It would certainly explain quite a bit.  Once this mess was over she would have to chat with Pinkie about that subject.  Hopefully she would still feel like being forthcoming about the mysteries of the cosmos.

“Is that the last interruption?  Anypony?” Twilight huffed.  “Anypony at all?

Applebloom raised a hoof.

“Yes?” Twilight deadpanned.

“What I don't get is how Pinkie can be a draconequus if she's a cartoon,” the little earth filly said.

“She's not a cartoon, that's ridiculous,” Spike pointed out.  “Obviously she's a ghost.”

“She's a monster from beyond the spheres of space and time and she'll doom us all!” Berry shouted whilst flailing her hooves above her head.

“Umm...  I thought she was a draconequus... but maybe I was wrong?” Fluttershy offered.

Twilight pressed her hooves down over her ears as her friends began to argue amongst themselves over which answer was the right answer.  Everypony thought they had the best evidence and nopony was willing to back down from their position.  Voices got louder and arguments more embroiled by the moment!

Pinkie sat off to the side munching on hooffuls of popcorn from a bucket.  Rainbow Dash saddled up along side her.  For a time the pegasus simply sat in silence while their friends debated the true nature of the mare sitting a few feet away from them.

“Hey, Pinkie?”

“Yeah, Dashie?” Pinkie replied.

“This is kind of silly.”

“Yeah, it is,” Pinkie agreed.  She peered down into her popcorn bucket with a disappointed frown.  “I mean, who fixes popcorn without any butter or salt?  That's just bland and boring!”

“I mean the arguing, Pinkie.  Do... do you want me to just tell them?”

“Nah.  I should do that.  Or let Twilight say what she wants to say first.  She's starting to do that thing where one of her ears starts getting floppy and one of her eyes gets twitchy,” Pinkie observed.  “I think she'll feel better if she gets to explain something to somepony.”

“I'm still your friend, Pinkie.”

“I know, Dashie.”

“It's just... heh... they don't really train anypony how to handle a surprise like this at flight school.”

“Hehe.  I know, Dashie.”

“I've still got your back, Pinks.  And I'm still up for pranking and all the rest of that stuff, okay?”

“Okay, Dashie.”

Twilight was more or less oblivious to the nearby heartwarming moment.  Her ear was flopping and her eye was twitching as her aggravation continued to build.  This was absolutely absurd!  This was no way to carry on a debate!  Not that there was any point in having a debate since the answer to their point of debate could be supplied with both ease and simplicity.  There was only one thing to do.  “Quiet!”

All at once the heated jabbering ceased, save for one rather distinctive voice.

“And then I said 'Oatmeal, are you crazy?'” Pinkie proclaimed rather loudly.  She glanced about at the silent room and grinned a very Pinkie grin.

“If everypony is done I thought I would explain what Pinkie has explained to me,” Twilight said.  She glanced around the room again just to make sure that everypony was finally finished with their interruptions.  All eyes were on her with the exception of Berry Punch, who was watching Pinkie with all the intensity of a griffin.  Twilight was pleased to find that the interruptions and arguments were finally over.  “Wonderful.  Now then, I should start by saying that Pinkie-”

“Oh sweet!  Pinkie's in here!  Are we having a party?” Flitter asked as she nosed through the front door.  The lavender pegasus smiled brightly for but a moment before her cheer was crushed by Twilight's withering glare.  “Oh, um...  Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes! Yes you are!” Twilight hollered, flailing her hooves in the air.  “Ugh!  Enough!  We're moving this to the library.  Come on, everypony.”

Flitter watched as the Elements, Spike, and the three most chaotic fillies in town filed out of the building.  Her heart sunk a little.  For a moment she was really looking forward to a Pinkie Party.  Ah well, always another right around the corner, right?  “Huh.  What was that all about?”

“You don't want to know,” Berry muttered as she poured herself another drink.


~~~~~


The atmosphere of the library was positively electrified.  Aside from the upturned colander Spike had been wearing on his head like a helmet to ward off Pinkie's supposed haunting the ground floor was in pretty reasonable condition.  Most of the usual research clutter had already been re-shelved, leaving the usually obscured table free of tomes.  Twilight and her friends were seated around it, most of them waiting with baited breath.

“Okay!  This is it!  No more distractions.  No more arguing.” Twilight waved a hoof at her friends.  “Nopony else barging in since I've magically sealed all the doors.” Twilight gestured at the nearby front door bathed in a soft purple glow.  “Just a simple explanation of what Pinkie has told me.  And there won't be anymore interruptions.  Right?”

Silence.

Applebloom coughed into her hoof.

“Good.  Pinkie only explained the basics to me.  If she feels like sharing anything beyond that it's up to her.  She was kind enough to finally give us some straight answers about her unusual abilities.  She's placed a lot of trust in us to continue treating her as a friend just like we always have, no matter what.  Can I count on everypony to do that?”

Twilight's friends nodded.

Pinkie busied herself making silly faces at Angel Bunny.

“Pinkie's not a normal pony,” Twilight began.  Right away she waved a hoof to ward off comments.  “I know you all know that already.  That's obvious to anypony that knows her.  She explained to me that what she does is not a result of pony magic.  That was my original hypothesis, actually.  That she was somehow expressing magic passively like any earth pony does, only she used pegasus and unicorn magic as well.  The specifics of her unusual abilities are... well...  I don't completely get it myself yet.  Maybe you could fill in some blanks, Pinkie?”

“Sure Twilight!” Pinkie said as she disengaged from a staring contest with the white rabbit and faced her friends.  “It all started long ago on the far distant planet Krypton!  My scientist father had learned that the planet was about to explode, and so he sent me away on a rocket that landed in the fields of two humble rock farmers!  They raised me as their own daughter despite my incredible powers!  And now I fight for truth, justice, and the Mareican way!”

Silence.

Scootaloo raised a hoof.

“Yeah, Scootaloo?”

“Pinkie, that's the back-story for Super Mare,” the little pegasus pointed out.

“It is?”

Scootaloo nodded.

“Well, raspberry fluff!  I really liked that one,” Pinkie huffed.  Then a wild grin broke out across her face.  “Oh well!  Story time for real this time!  No joking!  No misdirection!  Just straight answers!”

And then Pinkie told them all the truth.