Anticipations
“Ya’ sure you don’t wanna’ at least take a coat?”
Apple Bloom sniffed at the placid breeze and felt it pass over her, cool and calm. She turned back to her big sister, reading the mild concern on her expression. “Naw.” She shook her head gently. “Y’know Pinkie will have the town all warmed up, and it’s nice out besides.”
Applejack nodded, giving a pleased grunt of assent.
Apple Bloom took a few steps off her family’s porch before she turned to look back and give a cheerful wave. “Alright, see y’all later!”
“Make sure you stick with Twilight, n’ be safe!” Applejack waved back from the porch, smiling. “Have a good time, tho’!”
With a last nod and an ‘Uh-huh!’ to her sister, Apple Bloom turned towards town. She briskly trotted off through the light snow, tasting the crisp winter air and keeping her ears pinned forwards. Even from as far as the farmstead, she could already make out the bustle and commotion of Ponyville and its residents. Excited chirps, murmurs and hoots carried over the gentle hills, along with the sound of shuffling boxes and carts. It wasn’t rare for Ponyville to bustle with activity, but this was far beyond the norm.
New Year’s Eve was no typical time though, not if Pinkie Pie had anything to say about it.
Cresting over a larger hill, Ponyville came into view, and Apple Bloom could already make out the temporary fixtures the local party pony had added onto it. The whole burg was decked out with billions of banners, balloons and all manner of brikabrak, drawing her eyes towards the center of town. Main Street was lined with bright marquees covered in a wide range of festive patterns and colors, with dozens and dozens of ponies already milling about under them. Many were setting up tables and kiosks in preparation for the evening’s festivities; yet more seemed to be just getting a head start on them. Pinkie herself was sure to be somewhere in the midst of the cacophony, making her final preparations.
At the end of the street, in the town square, an entire tower had been erected overnight. It was a weird, slim thing, rising far above the surrounding buildings. Apple Bloom could make out two clock faces on both sides of the tower she could see, protruding away from the body of the tower and seemingly larger than the thin tower ought to be able to support. Above the structure, suspended on a network of scaffolding and cables, hung a grand, gleaming mirror ball. Not even the smallest hint of the building had been there just yesterday. Apple Bloom had seen and participated in some impressively rapid acts of construction in her short life, but it was utterly beyond her how Pinkie had managed this trick.
And yet beyond Ponyville itself, the alterations of the party could still be seen. More decorations of all varieties and strange, bulky boxes with wires running from them lined the edge of town. Even the new crystalline castle just beyond town was adorned with more shiny bits and bobs than its material naturally possessed. Most curiously and baffling was an oddly textured wall built between town and the edge of the Everfree.
Actually, Apple Bloom considered, maybe it is a baffle? To block the noise of the celebration from disturbing the wild forest? Apple Bloom spied a distant brown and yellowish figure atop the wall, marching atop the length of it and fiddling at the construction. Perhaps Pinkie Pie wasn’t working all on her own this year?
Whatever the case, Apple Bloom couldn’t contain her grin. Revelling in the excitement, the filly let her trot speed up into a springing gallop, rushing towards the town and all the fun she knew awaited her tonight.
She’d learned to appreciate a Pinkie Pie party from a very young age, and there’s just no party more Pinkie Pie-proven than New Year’s. This’s the best night ever!
---
This is the night.
An orange hoof held the length of a bright red tie upon itself, and its owner gave it another tug. Scootaloo swung her front door open when something caught her eye.
Her scooter reclined in the corner of the room, waiting for her just where she left it. With a final shake of her head, Scootaloo turned from it and stepped past the door, closing it confidently behind her. Stepping onto the heavily-decorated streets of Ponyville and angling towards the edge of town, the little pegasus tasted the air. It was remarkably warm for the dead of winter. Part of that was thanks to a favorable forecast from the weather team in anticipation of the party, part of it was thanks to Pinkie’s own preparations. Every year, she would use her family’s connections with the rock farming business to secure mass quantities of some sort of stones that kept heat basically indefinitely, then line the town’s thoroughfares with them.
This year had been no different, of course.
The filly came to a stop, that passing thought setting off a domino chain in her mind.
She recollected the last year of her life. On the one hoof, this year had been full of all manner of tumult for good, bad and just strange. She had new friends, seen new sights, felt new experiences… Gained new hopes. She even had somepony she was proud to call a ‘big sister.’ But, looking back on herself, who and what she was, she had only one conclusion.
This year was no different.
The filly glanced across her street and over the buildings, to the strangely built, ostentatiously festive tower in town square. Its face read 5:32. Less than seven hours remained in the day.
Scootaloo inhaled deeply and turned to face her own reflection in a storefront window. Shaking off a forehoof, she rose it to her neck, needlessly adjusting her tie.
I’m going for it, she thought. And whatever happens...
This year would be different.
---
“Whatever happens,” Spike quietly said to his reflection, “I’m going for it.”
He brought a claw up to adjust the brooch on his tie again, but stopped himself, thinking better of it. He didn’t pay attention when his hands instead dropped down to tug at his cuffs for the seventeenth time since he had slipped on the jacket.
He whispered again, “I’m going to go for it. And then --”
“Gosh, Spike!”
The dragon snapped back to reality at the sound of the voice, reflex making him hastily spin to face its source. Twilight Sparkle stood just past the door of Spike’s recently randomly claimed chamber in the enormous castle they now called home. She looked on with surprise, an apologetic cast coming to her face. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -- You just look great!”
Spike laughed sheepishly. “It’s okay, Twilight.” He scratched at his head for a second before he glanced down at himself, clad in a full suit sans shoes for the lack of finding anything that could properly fit dragon feet. He frowned. “You sure? You don’t think it’s ‘too much’?”
Twilight smiled brightly, shaking her head. “Not at all! Very sharp, very dapper…” Twilight walked into the room, closing her eyes and raising up her head, some pride creeping into her expression. “Rarity would approve, absolutely.”
“Heh. I hope so…”
“No doubt!” Twilight’s smile dropped slightly, as she looked at her own reflection. “I don’t imagine she’d think the same of me. I feel a little underdressed.”
Spike glanced at her sideways, cocking an eyebrow. “Well, you're undressed.”
Twilight chuckled wearily, raising a forehoof to scratch at the back of her head. “W-well… I was planning on wearing that lovely dress that Rarity made for my birthday, but, er…” Twilight shrugged gently, gesturing at her height. “It was fitted so nicely that it’s a little small now… and, you know, it wasn’t cut for wings in the first place.”
Spike crossed his arms and shrugged with his shoulders, smirking. “Aw, nothing to worry about. I mean, c'mon, it’s a Pinkie party. Not exactly high-end fancy-pants stuff! Going casual is fine.”
Twilight crooked her gaze down at her assistant, smirking. She gently poked at his shoulder. “Because all this is ‘casual’, Spike?”
Spike snapped his eyes open and brought a claw to his mouth, coughing softly. “Well, y’know… it’s okay to dress up too, I think.” Spike faced towards his reflection again, but looked past it now, into an unseen distance. “If you wanna make it a special night…”
Twilight looked at the baby dragon perplexedly for a moment, before her expression flashed into realization. It lifted up into a soft, touched smile as she turned away. “The girls should be here soon. I’ll be out in the, uh, lobby waiting for them.”
“Ah, right,” Spike said, nodding. “I’ll be right there!” He gave Twilight a quick wave, before facing himself again, this time with his attention turned back to his appearance. He brought a claw up towards his tie.
“It’s fine!” he heard Twilight call at him from down the hall.
He startled, then laughed. “Yeah, yeah!”
Yeah… it’s fine.
---
A delicate, creamy hoof lightly pawed at a purplish mane, flouncing it up satisfactorily.
Yeah, it’s fine! Sweetie Belle smiled at herself. She hadn’t styled her own mane quite as flawlessly as her sister would have, but she was anything but unhappy with the results. It curled and twisted on itself in neat cylindrical spirals, bouncing with life as she moved and studied herself.
It wasn’t Rarity’s sort of perfectly arranged and thought-out style at all, really. It was patterned and structured, but with much more random choices throughout. It was naturalistic chaos.
It was Sweetie Belle’s own. It was her kind of perfection.
Or at least good enough.
With only a touch of hesitation, the filly’s horn gently glowed, letting her magic give her silky, seafoam dress one last tug. She turned to her desk, where a heart-shaped pendant embedded with a single pearl rested. She reached out to the necklace and held the piece of jewelry flat on the frog of her forehoof. She brought it to her throat and took its chain in her horn’s grasp, properly fastening it after a try or four.
She was mostly fairly confident as she let it drop along her neck, and certainly wasn’t very overly relieved when it remain suspended where it should. Exhaling, she glanced up at her wall clock. It read about five-forty by her best reading. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo should be swinging by to pick her up any instant now
Taking a step away from the vanity, she gave herself one last look, turning around as she did.
At last, her expression split into a broad grin as she nodded happily, giggling despite herself. From beyond her room, she heard a knock at the front door. With a gasp, she quickly reached for a tiny, long-strapped, powder blue purse she had set aside, looping it over her neck. She turned towards the exit to her room and launched herself through it in a single motion.
She heard her name called out from a distance. “Your friends are here!” her mother’s voice added.
“Coming!”
From down the hall, she heard her mother greeting her friends as she pranced closer. She took the corner hard, skidding on her hooves and into sight. “Sorry, I’m here! Hi, girls!”
Sweetie Belle saw her mother at the front door, and her two best friends in the world standing just beyond it. She smiled broadly at the sight of Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, noticing their pleasant expressions expand into shock -- and not failing to notice the sharp, simple collar-and-tie combo Scootaloo was sporting as well. Sweetie’s mother turned to face her, and her face went through a similar transformation.
The older unicorn gasped at her daughter. “Sweetie Belle!”
“Holy crow,” Apple Bloom said, staring wide-eyed. “D-did ah’ miss a memo or somethin’?”
Scootaloo simply said “Wow.”
“Huh?” Sweetie Belle’s eyes fluttered rapidly, her gaze shuffling between the three ponies before her. “What is it..?”
“Wuh--What do you mean what!?” Apple Bloom blinked hard as she stammered, her head tilting and mouth gaping. She thrust a foreleg at the gussied-up little unicorn. “It’s you!”
Sweetie’s mother choked out a strangely happy strangled noise as she neared her. The mare’s expression was jubilant, proud and misty-eyed, seemingly on the verge of tears. “Oh Sweetie, honey!” she squeaked out. “I knew you were getting ready but I-I didn’t think -- oh hon, you just look so beautiful.”
She observed her mother with mounting genuine concern -- Sweetie thought the word for her mother’s condition was something that sounded like ‘fuh-clemmed” -- but felt herself smile and blush regardless. “R-really? You think so?”
“Sweetie!” The filly squeaked as she felt herself get scooped up by her mother’s forelegs and into a constrictive hug. “You’re DARLING!”
Scootaloo simply said “Wow.”
Sweetie wheezed out an ‘oof.’ “T-thanks, mom,” she added, slipping her own foreleg through the loving vise of her mother’s limbs. “But we--”
“Ohh-h-h-hhhhh,” the mare rattled, setting her daughter down with one forehoof still resting on the filly’s shoulder, the other fanning her distressed face. “I-I’m sorry hon -- girls -- I’m just so farklemt.” Yeah, that’s the word Sweetie was thinking of.
She smiled up at her mother, sympathetic but trying to bodily pull away and towards the door. “It’s okay, mom! But we really ought to be go--”
With a loud SNIIIFF, Sweetie’s mother regained some of her composure. Nodding sharply, she smiled brightly down at her daughter, newfound excitement taking her. “Okay, just let me get my camera to take a few photos of you! Aaand your friends, of course!”
Sweetie Belle cringed.
Scootaloo simply said “Oh no,” quietly, as she was kicked back into the awful reality of possibly being locked into Sweetie’s-Mom’s-Family-Photo-Insanity for another hour or fifty.
“Urrrrh,” Apple Bloom added eloquently.
“M-mom, we don’t really--”
“Ohhhh no.” The older mare tilted her head back, her face turning serious. “No. My dear little angel makes herself so pretty and posh, and you expect me to not capture the moment? No.”
Sweetie frowned more deeply. “But Spike and Twilight are already waiting--”
“And they can wait just a minute more!” Sweetie watched her mother turn away, her horn glowing as she reached her magic out to open a cabinet door and retrieve a large, modern camera with an ostentatiously elongated lens. “They’re sweet, thoughtful kids. They’ll be grateful you’ll have something to always remember your night by!”
The unicorn filly’s cringe drooped into an angry grimace. “I’m not gonna’ have a night to remember if--”
“Princess Twilight,” Scootaloo said quickly, stepping forward. Sweetie’s mother turned to face her suddenly. “Ma’am. She agreed to keep an eye on us tonight, you know? She’s waiting for us right now.” She motioned behind herself, up to an enormous crystal tree that now marked the Ponyville skyline. “In her castle. We can’t really keep royalty waiting… right?”
The older unicorn looked down at Scootaloo for a moment, then away very sharply. “Uhh... W-well…” She swallowed hard, her expression having neatly encapsulated the dissonance that comes from calling an alicorn princess who fought a 60-foot tall demonic centaur to a standstill a ‘sweet kid’.
Sweetie Belle exhaled sharply, nodding gratefully at Scootaloo, who shot her an impatiently desperate look in return. “So we’ll be off then, mom!” She hurried past, pausing only to give her mother a quick peck on the cheek before bolting out the door. “Loveyou, seeyoulaterrr!”
Scootaloo was hot on her hooves, slowing briefly only to shove Apple Bloom into motion with a quiet but shouting chant of “go go go gogogo GO.”
“Bwuh? Sweetie Belle!” The older mare bounded past the door before sliding to a stop, watching the forms of the three fillies gallop into the evening and towards the looming castle. She sighed out heavily with a smile, then took a deep breath.
“LOVE YOU!” She waved wildly and added, “HAVE A GOOD NIIIIGHT!”
---
Sweetie Belle chuckled as she panted and wiped her forehead. “Crisis averted!” She turned and smiled up at Scootaloo. “Thanks to you!”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said, trotting up behind the pegasus. “That was pretty quick thinking!”
Scootaloo sat on the dry, warmed road and exhaled dramatically, bringing a hoof up to tug at her tie’s knot. “Yeah, well, desperation is the mother of ingenuity, right?” She cocked an eyebrow in consideration. “Eh, something like that. Close enough.”
Sweetie giggled, smirking. “Oh, my hero!” She crooked her foreleg under Scootaloo’s and cradled it, looking up with faux-adoration. “So clever, so dashing!”
Scootaloo blushed slightly and blinked down at her once before shoving the hoof away with Sweetie Belle herself. “Oh, whatever! I saved me and Apple Bloom from your crazy mom. You’re just an extra.”
The unicorn snickered. “Seriously though. I like it, it’s spiffy as heck, but what’s with the tie?”
“Pfffft, really?” The pegasus looked at Sweetie cockeyed, bringing up a hoof to motion at her. “You’re asking me that? What’s all this? I mean, no lie, you look great, but, what?”
“Ah’ still feel like ah’m missin’ something,” Apple Bloom said, coming between her friends, glancing between them both. “Or you all are. Ya’ know this ain’t some hoity-toity ballroom affair, right?”
Sweetie Belle smiled sharply, tossing her head back with a put-upon ‘hmph!’ “Just because it’s a Pinkie Pie party doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to dress up for it!” She quickly turned, letting her skirt flounce out in a spiral as she struck a pose. “You’re allowed to seize the day!” She paused. “… Or the night. Y’know.”
Apple Bloom gave the creamy white filly a tight-lipped half smile and a shake of the head. “Sure, fine, whatever. Jus’ wanted to make sure I wasn’t underdressed or somethin’!”
‘Heh’, Sweetie quickly snorted. “You’re more like undressed.”
“Hey!”
“Hey,” Scootaloo said, crooking up a forelimb to point at Sweetie Belle. “She’s not undressed. She’s got her bow, just like always! She’s -- she’s fine.”
“Thas’ right!” The earth pony turned to Scootaloo with a surprised grin. “Thank you, Scootaloo! And if ah’ might say so, you’re lookin’ fine too!” With a raised forehoof, she motioned to her own throat, mimicking the shape of a tie. “It looks good on ya!”
“Oh.” Scootaloo looked down at herself and then back up at the yellow filly for a moment before her neutral expression broke into a warm, rosy smile. “T-thanks.”
Sweetie Belle glanced upwards to the darkening sky, then back down to her friends. With a clack, she brought one of her forehooves down hard on the stone tile of the intertown road, snapping her friends’ attentions to her. “Okay, okay, we’re all cute and cool ‘n stuff,” she said. “But enough fooling around! Y’know, for now, like this.” She turned to look back and up at the crystal castle not-too-far from them as it gleamed in the light of evening.
Taking a cool breath, she smiled up at the structure. “Let’s seize this night.”
Apple Bloom rushed to her side, nodding vigorously. “Darn right! Let’s go already!”
Scootaloo gave an assenting nod as she took up the rear. “Let’s go.”
---
Spike slowly paced the width of castle’s entry hall. He was still anything but used to this place, but the unfamiliarity wasn’t the source of his unease tonight.
Coming to a stop, he reached up to his tie again, and felt the brooch that pinned it. His claws traced the facets of the flawless, rhombus-cut blue diamond that decorated its surface and brought out the memory of receiving it. Of the pony who gave it to him, and everything that she meant to him. As thoughts of Rarity criss-crossed his mind, he sighed out a weary smile.
“Whatever happens...”
The massive front gate rattled with a soft knock knock-knock.
~~~
grab the World
~~
“W h a t ?”
Spike slowly turned in janky half-motions, comprehending the meaning of the words before really understanding exactly what had been said. He felt like he was pivoting through molasses with a body of broken glass. He would have sworn that he didn’t inhabit that body at all at the moment. After an eternity, he was facing up at Sweetie Belle. Her expression was drawn with remorse and contrition, and quickly slid into heartbreak the more she looked at him. He didn’t really understand why.
He felt his teeth click as he spoke. “What did you say?”
Sweetie mouthed something silently, clearly pained. Spike could just about make out the shapes of Twilight, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo behind her, higher on the castle’s steps. He might have recognized sympathetic faces upon their forms, but he couldn’t be sure right now. He focused intensely and only on the young unicorn.
Sweetie Belle inhaled, trying to steady herself, and looked down at Spike with slightly more composed distraught. She opened her mouth again and managed to speak.
“Rarity’s in Canterlot tonight. She’s not going to be here.”
~
before it Passes By