A collection of Krizak's categorically concise contributions to the cosmos.
Since I've been spending time writing for Thirty Minute Ponies lately instead of working on my ongoing story, I figured it only fair that I share with everyone what I have been writing. This will be a short-story collection, mostly consisting of my writing for prompts, but if any random little story idea strikes me, I'll post it here as well. Stories will be marked with the tags appropriate to each individual story.
All I ever wanted was to be by your side. I’ve wanted that before I even met you. The day colour entered my world, I knew I wanted to be with the pony who brought it to me. And when I learned that the mare I had been crushing on was that very same pony, I knew you were my destiny.
You resisted me at first. You thought a fillyfriend would keep you grounded, keep you from your high-flying dreams, but I persisted. How could I not? How could anypony, within hoof’s reach of their goal, turn away and give up? I was an irresistible force, and you were the immovable object… except that one day, your heart did move, shifting to the side to make room for me.
I thought the first rainbow I ever saw would always be my happiest moment, that nothing would ever be able to top that feeling, and in the end, nothing could. Nothing except the pony who made it all possible, who makes all things possible.
But I wasn’t alone in your heart. You still had your dreams, and they didn’t include me. They couldn’t include me. I was as prepared as one could ever be for having their heart ripped out on the day your letter came, but the inevitable didn’t happen. You looked over the letter at me, your eyes filled with hesitation rather than elation, and I knew that I had ruined everything for you, that your loyalty was going to destroy your dream… so I made you accept. I made you Pinkie Promise to accept.
And I started working.
Day and night, working my hooves to the frog, asking Twilight for her science, Applejack for her know-how. The first one was thrown together as quick as can be, but it was destroyed as quick as can be with a simple gesture. The second one had to be better, faster, stronger. It had to be able to keep up with you and withstand you. It had to be able to keep me near you.
But the day you were to leave arrived, and the day it would be finished was yet to come. But it was close enough that a song of hope had built in my heart, and so I jumped in and took off, determined to join you on your way.
I don’t know what went wrong. I never will. Something broke, that I’m certain of, but the crash broke so… so much that it’s impossible to tell what broke first. All I remember was one moment, soaring through the sky, feeling maybe a fraction of what you feel every day and savouring it, and the next moment, tumbling end over end towards the ground, my contraption falling beside me.
I saw the ground approaching, and I thought of my parents. My sisters. The Cakes. Our friends. And you. Mostly you, Dashie. I thought about you all the time while I was alive, and now I was going to die thinking of you.
And then there was a streak of blue and I was suddenly tumbling in a whole new direction along the ground. When I finally stopped moving, I saw you, and I began to thank you, but… you weren’t listening. You weren’t moving. You were barely breathing.
That’s why you need to wake up, Dashie. I need to thank you. I need to ask your forgiveness.
They had made sure Rainbow Dash was accounted for; their fierce pegasus friend has a tendency to use the library as a landing pad for her latest death-defying stunt, whether she intended to or not, and they didn’t want to be interrupted by the inevitable decimation of the bookshelves below. This weekend, Dash was attending a weather ponies conference in Cloudsdale as the central weather factory outlined its climate plans for the upcoming blah blah blah, or at least, that was what Dash had said with a roll of her eyes.
They had made sure Pinkie Pie was accounted for; the problematic pink pony was practically impossible to predict at any given time, and she had the tendency to pop up out of nowhere… sometimes quite literally. But Pinkie took her responsibilities seriously these days, and with both the bakery and the Cake twins left in her care as Mr. and Mrs. Cake went on a second honeymoon to celebrate their tenth anniversary, Ponyville had been pretty quiet on the Pinkie front for the last week.
They had made sure both Spike and Fluttershy were accounted for, mostly by leaving one in the other’s care. Their most gentle friend had recently brought in a drake that had suffered a torn wing in the Everfree Forest, and they had presented it to Spike as a much safer opportunity to learn more about dragons; the drake was the primitive ancestor of dragons just as ponies had been preceded by horses (though drakes hadn’t gone extinct unlike the unfortunate pony forebears), and Spike had leapt at the chance to learn more. Fluttershy had been more than willing to take Spike in for the night and teach him about drakes, of course; given the chance, animals were one of the only things that really animated Fluttershy, and she could talk for hours about the offspring care of ducks or the foraging behaviours of fruit bats.
But they had made a mistake in simply assuming that Applejack wasn’t a factor. The farmpony was early to bed, early to rise, after all, and even if she deviated from her standard routine (an unlikely possibility, they had thought), was she really likely to come to the library? AJ liked a good book or two, sure, but only those truly devoted to the literary arts would arrive at the library so late in the evening, right?
And so it was that three ponies stared at each other in mutual shock that Friday evening, and while Twilight and Rarity both knew what was going through the other’s mind — What in Equestria is she doing here? What do we tell her? Is she going to tell everypony else? Do we finally have to come clean? — it was less clear to them just what Applejack was thinking.
And then the farmmare’s shocked expression turned into a rueful grin as she shook her head. “Darn it, Twi, Rarity, you just cost me twenty bits!”
The two unicorns looked at each other in confusion, taking the opportunity to shift into slightly less compromising positions. Rarity took the initiative in asking, “Whatever do you mean, darling?”
“Ah had mah money on you teachin’ Twi how to be more hoity-toity and ladylike. It was RD who bet on you two makin’ out behind our backs.”
“I’ve done all I can, but I just… I don’t…” Fluttershy couldn’t hold back her sobs any longer, and she turned away from the bloody mess before her, only to be caught in Rarity’s reassuring embrace.
“Hush, Fluttershy, you did all you could. More than I could.” Rarity felt her own tears begin to well as the yellow pegasus soaked her shoulder, the comforting hug giving her all too good a view of her friend’s terrible fate. “Oh, why have I dedicated myself to fashion? I could have been a doctor and studied healing magic. What good is a dress if I’m fitting it for a funeral!?”
“Hey! There’s no funeral yet!” Dash yelled indignantly at the unicorn, her anger overriding her need to cry, at least for the moment. “Twilight’s never given up on us, and we’re not giving up on Twilight!” Save for Twilight’s terrible trauma, the prismatic pegasus was the worst for wear among all the friends; she held one foreleg close to her chest, the broken limb incapable of taking any weight. She was covered in blood, but fortunately, most of it wasn’t hers.
She knew that she’d probably be wracked with guilt for killing the beast later. How much guilt… well, that depended entirely on Twilight.
“C’mon, AJ, grab that rope, strap her to my back!” Dash continued as she looked over at the farmmare, only to become further incensed when she shook her head sadly.
“Dash, it took us a week to get out here. Even at yer fastest, it would take you a day to get to civilization, and you wouldn’t be at yer fastest, not after the battle you just fought and Twilight on yer back.” Applejack had never uttered a truth that hurt her more than those words. “Twilight… doesn’t have that long.”
“But I have to try!” Dash screamed, her tears finally falling as she screamed into Applejack’s face. The earth pony simply bore the brunt of Dash’s anger; it was how Rainbow Dash needed to deal with it, and so AJ could be that rock that she needed.
After Dash had finished her scream, which had devolved into loud blubbering, Applejack pulled the pegasus into a firm hug. “If’n we have to lose Twilight… Ah don’t want to lose you as well.”
“I-I hate losing…” Rainbow Dash whispered into Applejack’s ear… but the thought reminded her of something. Something that might make it possible. Pushing away from Applejack’s embrace, Dash turned to the one pony who hadn’t said a word since Twilight had been felled. “Pinkie!”
The morose pink pony glanced up from where she cradled Twilight’s head, one blue eye staring out from underneath her straight pink mane. She still didn’t say anything, but she was paying attention.
“Pinkie, you’ve beaten me before, and I never understood how! It’s like you can pop up wherever you want, any time you want!” Rainbow Dash gestured to Twilight. “Use that! Get her to a hospital, and we’ll catch up!”
Pinkie maintained her stare for a moment before closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I can’t.”
“You can, Pinkie!” Rarity spoke up, letting go of Fluttershy and approaching Pinkie, her eyes filled with a glimmer of hope. “I’ve seen you appear in my shop even when all the doors were locked!”
“No, you see…” Pinkie’s tone betrayed no emotion; this wasn’t the accusatory pink mare who had confronted them at her own birthday party. This was something much worse. “I can only do that when it’s funny.”
“What in Tartarus do you mean ‘when it’s funny?’” Dash felt her anger building again. “This is no time for laughter!”
“Exactly.” Pinkie shook her head again and looked down at Twilight. “It’s the power of the Element of Laughter. If it’s funny, I can do it. Saving Twilight wouldn’t be funny… It would be heroic.” She suddenly gritted her teeth together hard enough to cause pain, barely feeling it over her anguish. “No Element of Heroism for Pinkie. I’m not a hero.”
“You… you have to try, Pinkie,” Fluttershy added as she came closer. “Please… you’re Twilight’s only hope…”
“Don’t you think I would have by now if I could?!” Pinkie suddenly snapped at her gentlest friend, causing the pegasus to take a step back. “I would give anything to save Twilight! ANYTHING! But I can’t! I…” She started sobbing finally. “I just can’t!”
Applejack took on a grim expression as she slowly approached. “Well, that’s it, then. We can’t save Twilight.” She shook her head as she came closer. “All we can do for her is end her suffering.”
“AJ, you can’t be suggesting—” “What are you saying—” “No… no, why would you—” Applejack silenced her other friends with a raised hoof, her gaze not deviating from the broken mare before her.
“She’s sufferin’. She’s in pain, and Ah’m gonna put an end to it, one way or another!” The farmmare reached Twilight’s barely breathing body and placed a single hoof on the unicorns’s neck. With the strength she’d built up from years of apple farming, she could easily break a pony’s neck with a single blow, and all her friends knew it. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Applejack pulled back her hoof…
…and the blow ended up being dealt to her, as Pinkie suddenly pushed her away with a cry of anger. “No! No, it’s not going to end this way! She’s going to live! Twilight’s going to live and she’ll hear about my feelings and nopony is going to take her away!”
As the pink mare struggled to lift Twilight onto her back, Applejack secretly breathed a sigh of relief; she had been quickly been approaching the point where her bluff would have been obvious. Grabbing her rope, she helped secure Twilight to Pinkie’s back, and then took a step back.
“Alright, alright…” Pinkie wiped her eyes with her hoof, trying to clear away all of her tears. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, she needed to find a laugh to create. “Back in Ponyville… have any of you had anypony there make you a Pinkie Promise?”
Her four friends blinked in confusion at her question, looking at each other with shrugs before Rarity exclaimed, “Oh!”
“Yes, Rarity, yes?” Pinkie’s voice was desperate.
“After the incident with the gold fabric, Sweetie Belle Pinkie Promised me that she would never take my supplies without asking again.”
Pinkie Pie glanced upwards for a moment, considering what Rarity had said. And then she saw her opportunity, and her laughter started to bubble forth, low at first by rising in pitch as her hair gradually recurled itself. The maniacal chuckles reached their crescendo…
…and then Pinkie was gone, and the injured Twilight with her.
Three of the ponies remaining breathed sighs of relief, even as Rarity posed the question that was foremost on her mind now: “Hmm, now do I scold Sweetie Belle for touching my materials… or praise her?”
“Oh, Fluttershy, how did you ever talk me into doing this!?”
“Well, you refused at first, but I went into detail about all the good work that could be done with the bits we’d bring in, and all the poor injured animals that could be rehabilitated, and then you were still hesitant, so I opened my eyes really wide and sort of whimpered a little, and that’s when you gave in.”
“…that was a rhetorical question, darling.”
“Oh. Sorry, Rarity.”
“Quite alright, dear, and it is good to know that you’ve learned to utilize that natural charm of yours. Not that it’ll do us much good in this situation.”
“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps we could talk it out with them—”
“I am fairly certain that violence will be necessary, Fluttershy.”
“Really? I don’t think violence is ever the answer… and I’m not very good at it…”
“Just remember what I told you, dear. Simply remember your advanced massage techniques and everything will turn out beautifully.”
“Speaking of beautiful, I really like how our costumes turned out, Rarity. I’ve never felt so… so fierce.”
“…fierce? Really?”
“Oh, yes! Why?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Well, I am glad you like your costume, Fluttershy. I think mine turned out exquisitely myself!”
“It’s certainly a different style for you, Rarity, but I like it. You look… dangerous.”
“Perfect. That’s precisely what I was going for.”
“Oh! Rarity, look, the red light! That means we’re going to be announced in a moment!”
“Alright, darling, this is the moment of truth! Once we go out those doors, we’re not going to come back until we have that prize money!”
“How far do you think we will get? I think the money for fourth place isn’t too bad…”
“Nonsense, Fluttershy! My— no, our destiny is to shine the brightest on any stage, even if that stage is surrounded by ropes!”
Just then, the loudspeakers in the ready area blared to life, letting the two mares hear what was being announced just outside the doors.
“Fillies and gentlecolts, the next match in the inaugaral Ponyville Charity Wrestling Tournament is sure to be a fierce one! These two mares face an uphill battle, but they’ve proven to Equestria that they are up to any challenge! Coming to the ring… Diamond Dale Rarity and Grand Papillon!”
The doors opened of their own accord, drawn open by unseen unicorn stagehands, and Rarity and Fluttershy exchanged a single nod before they stepped out to the cheering and stomping of the crowd. Rarity’s diamond-inspired costume sparkled under the bright lights of the arena, the pliable and comfortable costume still looking as sharp as the gem they emulated, the sleeves and leggings all expertly torn off to achieve the proper devil-may-care attitude. Beside her, Fluttershy’s getup invoked nothing less than the image of a giant and ornate butterfly, a smaller butterfly perched on her face as a mask.
The two mares made their way to the ring, Fluttershy simply flying over the top rope while Rarity lifted the bottom one with her magic and stepped inside. In the first row, they could see their friends hooting and hollering for them louder than anyone else, Pinkie topping them all with her hoof-made sign: “Rarity and Fluttershy, The Future Tag-Team Champions of Equestria!!!”
“And coming into the arena now, their opponents! One is the winner of Mr. Cloudsdale five years in a row and the first pegasus to win Mr. Equestria! One has been named Ponyville’s Most Hunkalicious Bachelor since he was eligible! Welcome to the ring… Big McLargehooves and Big Macintosh!”
The bulky white pegasus burst into the arena with a “YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” while his apple-farming partner followed slowly afterwards, looking up at the mares in the ring with a conflicted look on his face.
Rarity and Fluttershy looked at each other, swallowing hard. “Oh dear,” they whispered together.
The darkness once again engulfed them as Rarity panted hard, shaking her head and its overworked horn in frustration. “It’s no use, Fluttershy, I can’t budge this dumb rock! I simply don’t have the horn strength of our dear Twilight.”
“It’s okay, Rarity, you did your best,” Fluttershy said in a comforting voice, shifting her footing with her hind legs once again. The rock pinning her foreleg against the cave wall prevented her from shifting into a more comfortable stance, and her rear hooves were getting awfully tired. “We’ll just have to think of something else.”
“But what, darling? If I leave you alone here in the dark, those… creatures might find you, and your unique gifts won’t be of much use pinned to the wall in a pitch-black cave.” Overcome with worry, Rarity began trotting in place, trying to jog her mind into coming up with new solutions. “Let me think, let me think…”
Quiet overtook them for a second, and then Fluttershy spoke up, her voice even softer than unusual. “…I have an idea.”
”What, Fluttershy, what is it?” Rarity implored her friend, bringing her face as close to Fluttershy’s as she could sense in the darkness.
“You have to a…” The pegasus’ words trailed off into incoherent mumbling.
“What was that, dear? I didn’t quite catch that.”
Fluttershy took a deep breath. “You have to amputate my hoof.”
There was a muffled whumph of air as Rarity sat down hard, shocked by the insane plan of her closest friend. “What!? Fluttershy, surely there must be another way! We haven’t explored all of our options! We—”
“No, Rarity, we have,” Fluttershy interrupted with no force in her voice, Rarity easily yielding to the yellow pegasus’ quiet tones. “You could leave me here alone to try to get help—”
“I already told you, that is not an option!”
Fluttershy continued despite Rarity’s dramatic outburst, “you could stay with me until those creatures catch up with us, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to lose you, Rarity.” The older mare reached out with her snout, seeking out the coat of her friend and nuzzling her softly. “The only other option is to leave my hoof behind, and with the other two plans being so… terrible, how could I not choose this?”
Rarity remained silent for a moment, the firm and even tone of Fluttershy causing her to actually consider this stupid idea. “How… how could we even manage it? It’s not like I brought surgical tools with me.”
“You may not be able to lift the rock, Rarity, but everyday at the Boutique, you cut fabric, you cut gemstones.” Fluttershy smiled her most reassuring smile, hoping that even in the darkened cave, Rarity would feel it. “It’s just another cut; I know you’ll get it done right.”
She was going to do this, Rarity realized. She was going to sever the limb of her closest, kindest friend. And once she put it like that, she was ready. Reaching into her saddlebags with her magic, she pulled out a couple long pieces of fabric. With her horn glowing once again, she was able to see Fluttershy’s pinned arm, and she wrapped one of the scraps of fabric just above where the hoof was caught. She pulled it as tight as she could before tying it off, drawing a gasp of pain from Fluttershy and a pang of guilt from herself.
Levitating the other fabric piece over to Fluttershy’s mouth, Rarity folded it into several layers. “Bite down on this, Fluttershy. It—it might help.” The pegasus obediently took the cloth into her mouth, clamping down on it hard. Seeing her friend ready herself, Rarity turned her attention back to the trapped limb. “Okay, dear… I’m going to begin…”
It was more a question than a statement — or maybe a last attempt to get out of having to do this — but Fluttershy nodded her head once, and Rarity steeled herself for what she was about to do. Her horn flared brighter as she brought her array of shearing spells to the fore, ready to be applied for a task she never thought she’d use them for.
And as the magic touched Fluttershy’s forelimb, as blood began to flow and the dear sweet pegasus quickly transitioned from whimpers of pain to muffled screams, Rarity was in the back of her mind already thinking of the artificial hoof she would craft for her friend. It would be the finest limb ever crafted by ponykind, and Rarity could only hope that it would be a worthy apology for what she was doing now.
“Of course you will, darling. She made you a Pinkie Promise, am I right? She would never break a Pinkie Promise, not to you.”
“I know, but… these last few years, I’ve missed her so, so much. And I don’t want— You know that I love you and Flutters and AJ, but—”
“But not like her, and that’s alright, dear. We all have that special somepony closest to our hearts, and even with her… away, she still occupies that spot, and rightfully so.”
“…I guess I’m not going to be able to throw you a birthday party next month.”
“I’m certain that Midnight will more than live up to your expectations. Besides, if I suffered a surprise like you like to plan, I’d be liable to be following you in short order.”
“Hehe. Yeah, Snackie can totally handle it. Or maybe she can… ask Dawn to help out…”
“Darling, you should conserve your energy. You—”
“Rarity, when have I ever… conserved energy…?”
“Well, I suppose you do have a point.”
“Besides… it’s not like it’s all sad… I’m leaving you all here, my friends and my family… but I’ll get to see her again… and Dashie too… and…”
“It’s okay, darling, you—you can say it. In fact, this is terribly selfish of me, but… if you could give Sweetie a big hug, and—and tell her that I’ll see her soon… I’d…”
“I will, Rarity. I Pinkie Promise… but not too soon… Fluttershy still…”
“…Pinkie? Pinkie…?”
“…she’s here, Rarity. She’s… she’s so beautiful, like… like the day she told me… She’s… asking me if I’d like to dance…”
“Go on, then, dear. Sweep her off her feet.”
“Yeah… that seems like a good…”
“…”
“…”
“…goodbye, Pinkie…”
“Rarity, I—I heard crying. Is she— is Pinkie…?”
“Oh Fluttershy, she’s... she's dancing with Twilight now, my dear. She’s dancing once again…”
The day everything changed had started like any other day on Sweet Apple Acres for the past year or so: Applejack and Fluttershy had both awoken with the dawn, exchanging a few tender expressions of their love before they reluctantly separated to deal with their respective morning chores. After Fluttershy was done tending to the diets and other needs of her animal friends, she came back into the farmhouse to find her beloved’s famous apple flapjacks awaiting her and the other members of the extended family she was still getting used to having. Mealtimes were a lot more rowdy than Fluttershy had known when she lived alone; Applejack did her best to keep things calm enough for her wife, but the pegasus secretly found it wonderful, the Apple family expressing their love through good-natured ribbing. She’d never tell Applejack, though, as she loved that little thrill in her heart whenever AJ stood up for her.
After breakfast, Applejack got started with the day’s applebucking, Fluttershy hovering behind her under the pretense of helping out. It wasn’t as though the farmmare really needed help, but she appreciated the company; this was when some of their best conversations happened.
“…and that’s where she lost me. Pinkie’s always talked fast, but ever since she’s started dating Twilight, she’s starting using all these complex words that I’m not entirely sure what they mean,” Fluttershy related with a shake of her head before moving an apple basket to a better position. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if Pinkie knows what ‘piercing the dimensional veil to explore alternate timelines’ means herself.”
“Well, it’s good that those two found some common ground.” Applejack delivered another of her expert bucks to the tree, shaking the apples loose into the awaiting baskets. She wiped her brow with one foreleg as she glanced back at her wife. “I know I was a mite skeptical when those two got together, but darn it if they ain’t just made for each other. Oh, thanks, ‘Shy!”
Applejack gratefully accepted the juicebox that Fluttershy had just offered her, causing the pegasus to smile in delight before adding, “Oh, I told you they were perfect for each other! You need to start trusting in my romantic instincts a little more!”
“Sure, honey, and any day now, Dash will be declaring her undying affection fer Rarity!” Applejack shot back with a smirk.
“They’re in love, darn—” Fluttershy’s rebuttal was drowned out as a bizarre noise filled the air, like an explosion tearing apart hundreds of yards of fabric all at once. “What—what was that?”
Applejack had no response for her, her eyes widened in fright as she stared past Fluttershy, and Fluttershy realized with horror that she had her back to Ponyville. She turned in midair to see that the peaceful town had been consumed in a blinding, expanding sphere of white light, that even now was approaching them at speeds that made the thought of outrunning it seem silly.
Landing from where she had been hovering, Fluttershy couldn’t tear her eyes off the approaching wall of energy until Applejack walked up and embraced her, drawing the pegasus’ eyes to the apple-green irises of her wife. “I dunno what’s happened, but there ain’t much time! I love ya, ‘Shy! This last year has been the happiest in my life ‘cause of you, and if this is really the end, I can’t think of anypony I’d rather spend it with.”
“…I love you too, Applejack,” Fluttershy replied, tears filling her eyes before she closed them and leaned in to kiss the mare she loved. A few seconds later, the white energy caught up with the two ponies…
…and washed over them, filling Fluttershy with strange notions and the most bizarre sense of being grounded. There was no pain, however, and she still felt Applejack on her lips, so she chanced opening one eye. When she saw everything was alright, she broke the kiss and exclaimed, “Applejack, we’re not dead.”
“Huh. So we ain’t.” Applejack blinked a few times and then looked out to the horizon. “And Ponyville’s still there.” She turned back to her wife. “Well, that was a tad—’Shy! What happened to yer wings?”
“Huh?” Fluttershy craned her neck around to look at her back, and sure enough, the two feathery appendages she had lived with her entire life were gone. Stranger still, her cutie mark was different; no longer did a trio of butterflies adorn her flank, but a trio of flowers instead. “Um… I think…”
“Yeah, ‘Shy?” Applejack was desperate for an explanation.
“I… I don’t think I’m Fluttershy anymore. I think I’m… Posey.”
Twilight wondered how it had all come to this, stuck in Ponyville’s grimiest pub — at least, that’s what she was assuming, given her lack of experience with bars, but if they got filthier than this place, she didn’t want to know — with a drunken pink pony who barely made sense when she was sober. She reflected on this as she levitated her Pony Cola over for another sip, remembering how Pinkie had invited her completely out of the blue, how she had explained that she didn’t drink but the earth pony had insisted, how Pinkie had pleaded that she had something really really important to tell Twilight but she needed some liquid courage to get it out.
And Twilight recalled the reason she had agreed after that, the hope that fluttered in her heart that perhaps her unrequited crush wasn’t so unrequited after all.
But if they were ever going to get to drunken love confessions and possible makeouts afterwards, the unicorn needed to move her friend along before last call. “Pinkie, I’ve heard your cutie mark story before — though I have to say, you left out the pirates the last time you told it. What was it you want to talk about, again?”
“All in due time, Twily, all in due time!” Pinkie responded with a slur, her use of Twilight’s childhood nickname bringing a blush to the unicorn’s face. “It’sh all interconnected, you shee?! Like a conshir— conshpern— like a plot!” She slammed her mug on the counter, splashing her drink onto the counter and causing the bartender to roll her eyes in consternation. “I never knew joy like I did that day! The Shonic Rainboom opened my eyesh to what I could be, and my eyesh are opened even further now! I know what I want! I know who I want!”
“Really, now?” Twilight said in a nonchalant tone as she sipped her soda again, trying desperately to contain her heart’s delight. “Well, I’m all ears, Pinkie, if you want to… tell me anything.”
“I will! I’m gonna tellsh you! That’sh why I brought you here, even though I know you don’t like to drink, or when other poniesh get drunk, or anyshing like that!” Pinkie let go of her drink to lean over and awkwardly hug Twilight while remaining on her own stool. “For shomeone who didn’t know much about friendship, you shure know how to help!” She suddenly released her grip and sat up straight on her stool, only wobbling a little as she declared, “Twilight Shparkle, I’m in love—”
Twilight’s heart exploded in a burst of fireworks. Not even Celestia’s praise could give her this wonderful of a feeling!
“—with Rainbow Dash!”
Not fireworks. Dynamite, blowing open her chest and leaving her empty and hollow. From far within the depths of her sudden sorrow, Twilight heard herself repeat in a monotone voice, “Rainbow Dash.”
“Yep, crazshy, huh? I think I’ve been in love with ever shince I shaw her rainbow! And she’s sho cool and aweshome and beautiful and… and I just want to pounshe on her and kissh her! But no! No Pinkie! That’s not a good plan!” She leaned over to grip Twilight. “You’re shuper-duper shmart, and you’ve read all shorts of booksh, Twilight! That’sh why I told you! I need you to help me win Dashie’sh heart!”
So. Insult was added to injury. But despite the cold hollow that used to be her heart screaming to spite that which had spited it, Twilight rejected that notion. Pinkie was still her friend. Pinkie was still the mare she loved. And if Pinkie needed her help to win her own love, then Twilight would help, no matter how much it hurt her.
“Alright, Pinkie, I’m in. After all… you deserve your happiness.”
“Alright, let’s start with what we know.” Twilight levitated her piece of chalk over to the board she’d teleported here all the way from the library, at the great expense of her throbbing hangover-induced headache. “We all gathered here at Sugarcube Corner to celebrate Fluttershy earning her veterinarian degree, which by the way, congratulations again, Fluttershy.”
“Oh, um, thank you, again, I guess…” Fluttershy replied in an even quieter tone than usual, her head pounding at the slightest noise.
Twilight began writing down the sequence of events on the board. “About an hour in, Pinkie decided that the party deserved a little bit more than her usual affair, and she served the first round of drinks.”
“And that’s when the fireponies arrived!” Pinkie exclaimed, her usual joyous and bouncy self despite the amount of alcohol she had consumed last night.
“No, Pinkie!” Twilight turned from her board to glare at Pinkie. “We’re still in the middle of events we all remember, and nopony but you remembers any fireponies!”
“Darling, please, it’s much too early to be yelling at Pinkie.” Rarity looked up from nursing her glass of water. “But she’s right, Pinkie, there were no fireponies. Are you sure you weren’t confusing those dashing police officers for their compatriots in public service?”
“Whoa, now, hold on. The fuzz was here?” Rainbow Dash had barely been awake, but at the mention of the police, she was wide awake, glancing nervously from one side to another. “No, no, that’s can’t be right. There’s no way I could have forgotten if the police had shown up. Was that before or after Pinkie convinced us to play Seven Minutes of Heaven? Maybe it was when I was in the closet with AJ, so they didn’t see me.”
“Hold on, there, sugarcube,” AJ shook her head, both at Rainbow Dash’s ridiculous claim and the sheer inability of all her friends to handle their liquor (save for Pinkie). “Ah sure as shootin’ didn’t spend any time in any closet with you last night.”
“Yes, because Applejack would never be caught dead coming out of the closet,” Rarity grumbled low enough to sound like she hoped the farmmare wouldn’t hear, but loud enough that she caught every word.
Applejack didn’t rise to the bait, though, continuing from where she had been before Rarity had interrupted. “Save fer the drinkin’, it was a pretty standard Pinkie Pie party. The usual games, the usual treats. Only unusual bit was when Fluttershy said all those nasty things ‘bout us all, but Ah know that was just the drink talkin’, right, Fluttershy?”
“What!?” Fluttershy’s eyes opened wide as she stared at Applejack. “I did no such thing! I was too busy asking Mr. Platypus how he had gotten here all the way from the Down Under, and then finding him some food, and asking him what his home was like…”
“Aww, there was a platypus here?” Pinkie frowned for a second. “I wish I remembered that; platypi are so funny! Do you think the fireponies brought him?”
“Umm, Pinkie, the plural is ‘platypuses,’ not…”
“And if it’s not true, Applejack, then how come I can still taste apples on my lips?!”
“Gee, I dunno, maybe ‘cause of all the hard apple cider you had last night? What Ah want to know is, why are you so worried ‘bout the policeponies anyway?”
“Yes, darling, I’m rather curious as well, though if it puts your mind at ease, I don’t think they were actually policeponies, but rather some risque entertainment Pinkie hired…”
“Ooh, ooh, if that’s true, then I’ll have a receipt somewhere! That sort of thing is tax-deductible in my line of work, so I always keep the receipt!”
Twilight sighed as her friends once again transformed into a bickering squabbling mess. Turning to erase the board, she resolved to try once again in a few minutes. Maybe this time one of them would remember the mysterious masked mare who had shown up and stolen her heart…
“Finally… We’re alone…” Rarity whispered in her huskiest voice, batting her eyelashes at her beloved.
Sashaying up in her slinkiest robe, the unicorn tittered giddily as she set the scene. “Sweetie Belle is having another sleepover at Fluttershy’s with her friends… I’m all caught up on my orders… and I managed to sneak you in here without anypony noticing…” She let loose a sultry smirk. “I think I deserve a little… reward, for all my hard efforts, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Oh, darling, we can’t let anypony know about us!” Rarity’s tone betrayed both her fear of being caught and the thrill the possibility gave her. “They would never understand, how I can’t live without you, how I can’t possibly go a day without your sweet kiss!”
“No, they must never know, especially not my friends!” the fashionista declared, her hooves firmly planted in her resolution. “They would seek to separate us! They would say you’re no good for me… and they’d be right!”
“Oh, my precious love, I know what you do to me! But I can’t help myself!” Rarity cradled her beloved in her hooves, tears coming dangerously close to spilling from her eyes. “How can I resist your dark allure, your rich scent, the way you feel when you’re inside of me… Oh, I must have you right now! I must!”
“Mmm… mmm… darling, let me taste you…” Rarity’s tongue delicately poked out, tasting her love in an intimate fashion. “Oh, such a flavour… I’ve waited for this for so long…” Unable to resist any longer, Rarity took her heart’s desire into her mouth. “Mmm… mmmph… MMMMH…”
“Um, Rarity, what are you doing?”
Rarity’s eyes widened in shock at the sound of Pinkie Pie’s voice, her entire world falling apart around her as she realized that she had been caught in the act. A faint glimmer of hope remained in her heart, however; of all the ponies that could have caught her, Pinkie Pie was the one who would be the most likely to believe some highly unlikely story. The unicorn looked up from her illicit activity, meeting Pinkie’s curious gaze as she asked, with as much false innocence as she could muster, “Whatever does it look like I’m doing, Pinkie?”
Pinkie smiled brightly at the question. “Oh, you don’t even know? That’s okay, I don’t know what I’m doing all the time! But, oh, hey, I know! I can use that deductive reasoning that Twilight taught me to find out what you’re doing, and then I can tell you, and then you’ll know! Oooh, I’m brilliant!”
Rarity wasn’t entirely sure where Pinkie suddenly obtained a magnifying glass from, though her theory was that it was from somewhere in that unruly mane of hers; even after all the times the unicorn had worked on her friend’s mane, its secrets remained a mystery to her. Pinkie took a quick perusal around the room with the magnifying glass, only looking around for about ten seconds before she shouted, “Eureka! I’ve got it!”
“Yessss?” Rarity inquired, a nervous smile on her lips.
“Well, my dear Rarity, it was a tough case,” Pinkie began to explain, and Rarity couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “But the open box of chocolates on your bed and the smears of chocolate on your lips mean only one thing: you were eating chocolates!”
Well, that was obviously too much to hope for. “It’s—It’s true! I was eating chocolates!” Rarity confessed, bursting into tears. “Oh, please, Pinkie, p-p-please, don’t tell anypony else! This can be our little secret, right? Right!?”
Pinkie gave her friend a befuddled look. “Well, okay, Rarity, but I don’t get what the big deal is supposed to be. You were eating chocolates. I eat chocolates all the time!”
“Don’t you see, Pinkie? I’m supposed to be on—” Rarity leaned back, dramatically bringing a hoof to her forehead. “—a diet!”
She hadn’t expected her grand revelation to be met with giggles. “Oh, Rarity, you’re such a silly pony.” Pinkie lifted up one hoof and pressed it against her belly, making the round mass jiggle a little. “I’m certainly not the one who is gonna give you up because you can’t give up the sweets. Your secret’s safe with me!”
Rarity sighed, her worries fading away. “Oh, Pinkie, I should have know you would understand… Say,” she continued, her smile returning, “I suppose I wouldn’t be hurting my diet too much if I didn’t eat all of these chocolates. Care for a few?”
Applejack was being amazingly subtle about it; to the casual observer, the farmmare was just like she always was at parties, boisterous and easy-going, taking part in Dash’s latest challenge one second and having a quiet conversation with Fluttershy the next. But to Pinkie Pie’s trained eye, Applejack’s grin was a little too glassy, her laughter a touch too forced, like her fellow earth pony was holding onto it for dear life. No, Pinkie knew exactly what Applejack was: a party-goer who wasn’t having fun.
For other grumpy guests, the pink party pony might have staged an elaborate spectacle, a special game, or some other machination, but Applejack was one of her closest friends. For her, a simple, honest talk would do more than any ridiculous gesture, and so Pinkie approached AJ while the others were cooing over the amazing technicolour dreamcloth that Twilight had gotten for Rarity. “What’s got you feeling so down, Applejack?” she asked bluntly.
To her annoyance, Applejack’s somewhat sad smile grew wider - faker - at the question. “What? Ah ain’t feeling down, Pinkie. This is a great shindig, by the way, and Ah’m certain Rarity agrees.”
“No changing the subject, Applejack!” Pinkie replied forcefully, her eyes narrowing at her friend. “I know it’s a good party, one of my best, which makes it all the more suspicious that you aren’t having fun!”
It was Applejack’s turn to get indignant. “Ah’ve been having fun! Ah enjoyed the cake, Ah beat Dash at Pin the Tail on the Pony, Ah’ve been smiling and laughing! What more do you want, Pinkie!?”
“I want you to stop putting on this show and tell me what’s wrong with you!” At this point, the others had wandered over to see what the commotion was about, and a worried glance from Fluttershy told Pinkie that it was time to take it down a notch. In a more sympathetic tone, she continued, “Please, AJ. We’re your friends. We just want to help.”
“Ah… Ah…” Applejack glanced all around herself, looking for a way out, but her friends had surrounded her with a wall of kindness. Her green eyes finally fell on Rarity. “Ah don’t wanna ruin your special day, sugarcube.”
“Darling, if you’re not having fun at my party, then my day is already ruined,” Rarity replied with a gentle smile. “But if I can do something to help you…”
“Ah don’t think that’s possible, Rarity. Y’see…” Applejack swallowed hard, mustering the nerve to say it out loud, to make it real once again. “…Granny Smith didn’t wake up this morning…”
Silence filled the room, the news effectively killing the party — just what Applejack had feared. Nopony moved for a few seconds, and then, almost as one, the farmmare’s five friends moved to hug her, their own sniffles and sobs and condolences allowing Applejack to finally let lose the tears that only Pinkie had seen.
The brisk strokes of the chalk across the blackboard and the flapping wings carrying her aloft almost drowned out the excited murmurs of the classroom behind her, but she caught enough to know that they were intrigued. That was good. That was what made her a good teacher, getting the younger generation excited about what she had to offer. Today’s lesson was a hard one for some of those with more fanciful or romantic dreams about her profession, but with luck, she would only encourage the true believers to strive harder.
Finishing up the downstroke of the ‘T’, Professor Daring Do spat the chalk out into the eraser tray and landed, turning to face her class and putting her back to the word she’d just written on the board: “FACT.”
“Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth,” she began to lecture, a smirk appearing on her face as she continued. “You signed up for the wrong Do’s class if you’re looking for truth; Doctor Ditzy Doo’s philosophy course is just down the hall.”
The classroom let out a mostly unanimous chuckle at the professor’s joke. She gave them a moment to settle before continuing, “So if you thought signing up for this class was going to be your one-way ticket to an amazing world of lost seapony civilizations, ancient royal secrets, and digging up amazing arcane artifacts lost to the ages, you can just forget it! This isn’t a game; we aren’t searching for buried treasure like we’re bunch of pirates or playing hide-and-seek with forgotten pony tribes.”
Daring Do used her desk to prop herself up, emphasizing the next point with the aggressive posture. “Three-quarters of archaeology is spent in dusty old libraries, doing your research, reading up on old legends and histories and everything in between. You have to be able to separate the truth from the story-time fluff in mythology.” She took a breath to continue, but the loud ringing of the bell informed her that she had once again underestimated on time. “Darn it! Uh, next week, 'Earthology!' Start with the discovery of Puddinghead IV by Dusty Trails in 885, and read from there. Anypony needs to talk, I’ll be in my office for about an hour!”
The professor watched as her students filed out of the classroom, briefly glancing out the window at the beautiful sunny day in Canterlot that she hoped to be enjoying as soon as she got some more term papers graded. Turning back to her departing students, Daring Do raised an eyebrow at the one filly who was trying to squeeze past and get into the classroom. She definitely couldn’t be a student at the university; she looked like she had just recently got her cutie mark. The sky-blue filly had the most eye-catching mane she had ever seen, with seemingly every colour of the rainbow represented in different streaks; Daring Do almost felt like it was what her mane would look like if it wasn’t all shades of black and grey.
Finally managing to beat the crowd, the pegasus filly ran up to the professor’s desk. “Doc, Doc, you’ve gotta help me out!” she pleaded, breathing so heavily that Daring wondered just where she had flown here from.
Still, the professor felt she was owed a modicum of respect in her own classroom, and she said as much. “Young mare, I’m not going to respond to being called ‘Doc.’ It’s Doctor Daring Do or Professor Daring Do, though I have to say I prefer the latter.”
A look of defiance briefly flashed over the filly’s face, one that Daring Do had a feeling showed up whenever the prismatic young mare was told to do something. The defiance was quickly quashed, however, as the filly obviously had more important concerns that flaunting her independence. “Professor Daring Do, I need your help! Somepony is in trouble, and you’re the only one with the awesome skills and knowledge to help me out! But we have to go right away, I only have so much time left!”
The filly began to walk around the desk, but Daring Do held up a hoof. “Wait a minute, wait just one minute! What is this all about? Who are you?”
Speaking in rapid fire, the young mare explained, “Oh, I’m Rainbow Dash, and I came here just to recruit you to help me save myself ten years from when I’m from. But my time is almost up, and we need to be getting back!”
Daring Do was so lost and confused by this strange filly and what she was saying that she didn’t object when Dash walked up and curled her forehoof around her own. And Dash beginning to glow was not helping matters. She finally managed to ask, “Back? Back to where?” as the glow reached a blinding intensity.
“Back… to the future!” Dash replied, just before the two mares disappeared from Daring’s university classroom, an unusual twin trail of rainbow fire the only sign that either had been there at all.
In the dead of the night, the fourth was added to the pile.
It was interesting to see all four of them together. When they were seen side by side, it was easy to see how different each was, no matter how much the flashy cape and hat drew one’s attention to how they were similar instead. One was designed for a slim, petite figure, a tiny bookworm with not much meat on her bones, while another was let out at the waist for a larger, rounder pony, one who couldn’t keep her hooves off of the treats.
It just made her angrier that she hadn’t noticed this earlier.
If she moved fast enough, she could create her own flames, but that carried too much risk of being seen. Of being caught. She’d taken too many measures to gather these four outfits in secret to mess up now. Matches were difficult to use, but after her third attempt, she managed to light the tinder. Stepping back, she watched the flames spread quickly through the wood that she had gathered, the firelight reflecting off of magenta eyes as it licked at the purple costumes. When she had been saving children, old ponies, the weak and the helpless, she had experienced a thrill, one she had felt before when she had stood against Nightmare Moon, against Discord. A feeling she discovered all those years ago, in a race to defend her oldest friend.
But as she watched the four costumes catch fire, blackening and charring in the orange flames, she experienced an entirely different sort of excitement. Something seductive. Something forbidden. It was like she was watching a hero be destroyed before her very eyes.
Rainbow Dash wasn’t certain which feeling she liked more.
For a being of chaos. Twilight felt Discord was strangely predictable.
It was Canterlot Castle this time, rather than the hedge maze outside, but the scholarly unicorn once again found herself wandering through an ever-changing maze where the laws of physics didn’t count for much, separated from her friends. Twilight couldn’t help but feel that she was being shepherded to where the wily draconequus wanted her to go, however; every time she entered a new room, the door behind her would close, and another one would immediately open.
What was his game this time? How had he been freed from his stone prison in the first place? How were her friends faring? And what of the two princesses?
As much as the questions on her mind invited her to pause and answer them, Twilight realized that doing so would waste precious time, time that Discord could use for whatever scheme he had concocted. Knowing that the Spirit of Disharmony could easily remove the Elements of Harmony from their locked vault, the unicorn had decided that this time, finding her friends was the priority; Discord would likely try to corrupt them again, using their sudden separation to his advantage.
Twilight smirked at the thought; the bonds between her and her friends had strengthened over the few years since they had last faced Discord, and he would not find their friendships so easily severed. In certain cases - and thoughts of a certain pink baker warmed Twilight’s smile - those bonds had moved beyond simple friendship. Love had defeated the evil schemes of the changelings; how would a being of chaos manage against it?
Thinking of Pinkie seemed to summon her excited voice out of thin air, and Twilight thought for a moment that it was simply part of her imagination… but no, it was real. Pinkie was near! Twilight began to gallop through the twisted corridors of the castle, the faint murmurs resolving into actual words as every open door brought her closer.
“…I don’t know how we’re going to stop him this time. What does he want, Dashie?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. We’ve got his number, Pinkie; there’s no way he can stop us!”
Twilight grinned; Rainbow Dash was up ahead as well! The moment she caught up with them, half of the six would be united once again, and from there they could easily gather the rest, find the Princesses, and return Discord to his stone imprisonment! Hope soared in her heart.
“It’s different this time, Dashie. I-I don’t think he’s just out to cause chaos this time, no chocolate rain or ballet bison or anything kinda fun and goofy. He wants revenge, on us, for spoiling his fun last time!”
“Hey, Pinkie, calm down! He’s just scared of us, that’s all, and he should be! Don’t worry; long as I’m here, he won’t lay a mismatched claw on you!”
“Oh, Dashie, I’m so glad you’re here…”
It wasn’t like Pinkie to get like this. She usually laughed in the face of danger; indeed, she even had a song about doing just that. Maybe Discord had already gotten to her somehow? Twilight spurred herself on, determined to be there for her marefriend. At least Dash was already there to comfort her.
And then the final door closed behind Twilight, and one opened right in front of her to reveal just how Rainbow Dash was comforting Pinkie. Twilight skidded to a halt as she watched her girl, her heart’s delight, engulf the pegasus’ lips in an eager, wanting kiss, Dash seemingly not hesitating in returning the kiss just as passionately. The unicorn sat down hard from the sheer shock, unable to speak, unable to process just what she was seeing.
After what seemed to be hours of watching Pinkie and Dash exchange saliva, the two finally seemed to take notice of the friend they’d both just betrayed. Pinkie’s eyes widened as she took a step towards Twilight. “Twily, I-“
Twilight didn’t want to hear any sort of explanation, knowing that none would be good enough. She didn’t want to look at Pinkie right now. And under her emotional duress, her horn flared up and gave her what she wanted, slamming the door between her and Pinkie shut.
After a few moments, Twilight picked herself up off the ground, noticing for the first time the door that had opened when she’d slammed the other shut. So that was the key to the maze. She shook her head, focusing on the task at hand.
Pinkie could turn to Dash all she wanted. Twilight would find Discord and defeat him.
She didn’t need any help.
A moment after the door slammed shut, a flash of light filled the room Pinkie and Dash had been left in, and Discord chuckled as he appeared before the two mares. “Ahh, young love. How easily it leads one’s heart to chaos.” He looked down at the two ponies. “I really must thank your queen for this opportunity. This is so much more fun than last time! All these new feelings to corrupt.”
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash looked up at the draconequus, smirks forming on their faces as their eyes took on a sickening green glow.
A Therapeutic Tale for Those Traumatized Today - Romance, Comedy
It wasn’t exactly the sort of lesson that Twilight would be writing to the Princess about, but one of the first things she’d learned about being friends with Pinkie Pie was that sometimes, the only way to calm her down was to be forceful. With a patient sigh, the scholarly unicorn looked into the eyes of the pony who had just interrupted her evening’s studies with her mile-a-minute madness. “Okay, Pinkie, take a deep breath. Calm down, and tell me what has happened.”
Pinkie responded with a roll of her eyes, a muffled protest, and a gesture to the purple hoof still in her mouth.
“Oh, oops,” Twilight said with a embarrassed chuckle, removing her hoof from Pinkie’s jaw.
“This is no time to calm down, Twilight!” Pinkie exclaimed the moment she could speak again, grabbing Twilight’s shoulders in both hooves and shaking her friend violently. “Gummy’s gone and gotten himself missing! We need to organize a search party! Raise the alarm! No pony shall sleep until my precious little alligator is safe and warm under his heat lamp!”
“Come on, Pinkie, he couldn’t have gotten that far. He only moves at like a hoof a minute.” Twilight saw that her attempt at humour was lost on Pinkie’s dire expression, and she sighed. “Fine, I’ll help you look for him first. If we don’t find him as quickly as I think we will, I’ll call up the other girls, alright?”
“Thanks, Twilight, you’re the best!” Pinkie’s grip on Twilight’s shoulders turned into a hug, the pink mare’s immense relief turning into a bone-crushing embrace. Just as Twilight thought she might need to magic Pinkie off of her to breathe again, Pinkie let go of her and abruptly turned to the library door. “Let’s go find that alligator!”
Twilight just shook her head and chuckled, moving to follow after the bouncing pony, but a “who” caught her attention. She turned to see her number-two assistant hovering beside her. “Oh, hey, Owloysius. I was just about to head out to help Pinkie, but feel free-“
“Who.”
“You want to help find Gummy?”
“Who.”
“Well, thanks! Pinkie will really appreciate the help, and an aerial view is sure to make things a lot easier!”
“Who.”
“Argh, where could that silly alligator be?!”
Twilight was frustrated, to say the least. After a thorough search of Sugarcube Corner, the two friends had split up to circle the bakery in an ever expanding pattern, a plan that Twilight had been certain would soon turn up the reluctant reptile.
That had been an hour ago.
“How could he have gotten so far?” Twilight continued ranting, not worried about Pinkie hearing her; her friend’s pattern would have her halfway across Ponyville from her at this point. “This is ridiculous!”
“Who?”
“Gummy, that’s wh-oh.” Suppressing her embarrassment at falling into the common pattern some ponies experienced with Owloysius, Twilight acknowledged her pet as he descended to hover near her. “Owloysius, have you found any sign of Gummy yet?”
“Who,” the owl replied with an incline of his head, flying away from Twilight at a slow enough speed for his master to follow. Twilight quickly took pursuit, her eagerness for this whole affair to be over with spurring her on.
“Oh my gosh, Twilight, you found him, you found him!” Pinkie didn’t question that Gummy was suspended in a purple aura of magic; Twilight hadn’t felt like getting chomped, even by an alligator with no teeth. She released the levitation as soon as Pinkie had her hooves around Gummy, and watched as the pink pony smothered Gummy with equal parts kisses and admonishments.
After a few minutes of impromptu reunion, Pinkie placed Gummy down on the ground under the watchful eye of Owloysius, turning to face Twilight. “Oh, thank you, Twilight! Poor Gummy could have been lost forever if you hadn’t found him, and that’s a long time to be lost!”
Twilight rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. “Oh, it was what any friend would have done… Besides, it was Owloysius who found him, not me.”
“But you’re the one who dropped everything you had planned this evening to help me,” Pinkie replied in a quieter voice. “You deserve this thanks. Don’t turn it away.” And the way Pinkie said it made Twilight think that Pinkie just might have been talking about something something else… a feeling confirmed a moment later as the earth pony stepped forward to nuzzle her friend.
As Twilight closed her eyes and returned the nuzzle, she didn’t notice as Owloysius lowered his wing to receive a slap from Gummy’s tail, the owl nodding in seeming satisfaction. And in Gummy’s eyes, the tiniest shred of emotion was visible for just a second.
It isn’t the sort of bottle you’d usually find with me. A mug of hoofmade hard cider is usually my drink, not this hoity-toity wine from Canterlot’s cellars. But I made an exception, on account of how it was Rarity that bought it for me, her present congratulating me on being chosen as Equestria’s representative at the World Apple Conference, being held this year in far-off Neighpon.
She also said that it was to take the edge off should I get a mite scared on the flight. Girl always sees more than I’d like her to.
I’d tell anyone that the reason I don’t like flying is because an earth pony should keep her hooves on the ground, but the truth is, it just scares the manure outta me. That time when my friends and I all went to Cloudsdale for RD’s big rodeo, the only thing that got me to step out onto that cloud was my trust in Twi’s abilities, and even then I was taking nervous glances every couple of seconds. So the idea of flying on one of them new-fangled airships was positively frightening, and what happened didn’t do much to improve my view.
I wish I could say just what happened, but I was fast asleep at the time. All I remember is shouting, flames, a call to the lifeboats, and then us crashing into the water. The impact threw me away from the ship, and probably saved my life, since when it began to sink, it sucked all the other survivors down with it.
I wish I could’ve done something, saved somepony, but it took all my strength just to stop from being pulled under myself.
I swam for hours afterwards, till my muscles burned hotter than that time I tried to buck the entire of Sweet Apple Acres by my lonesome. I was a darn fool, though. If this island had just been a trick of the light, then I would have died out there.
Not that dying is entirely off the table, mind you.
This island’s small. I could probably buck a coconut from one of side to the other if I put my strength into it. Be a waste of food, though, cause coconuts and a few patches of dry grass here and there is all I got. What I wouldn’t do right now for some of the apples I had packed away in my bag. I hope the fish like them.
I drank through the bottle the second night… well, at least what I didn’t use to clean the nasty cut I got when the waves pushed me into a coral reef. Gonna chuck this out into the sea in the bottle, hope the current carries it back to land.
I’m not worried, mind you. Moment my friends hear about what happened, they’ll come galloping to my rescue, and I got myself food, water, and shelter enough to last a while. But it doesn’t hurt to hedge your bets, so if you found this bottle, I ask if you’d kindly head to Ponyville and visit Sweet Apple Acres, and if I’m not already there, tell my sister, my brother, and my granny that I love them all so very much, and I miss them dearly. Find my friends - you can start with Twilight Sparkle, at the library - and tell them that I love and miss them as well.
Oh, and give Rarity her bottle back. She’ll know what it means.
“…one… more… connection… There!” Pinkie Pie extracted herself from the tangle of wires and circuitry and wiped her brow with a hoof. Setting everything up had been sweaty work! But it was all worth it; this one would be better, faster, more totally awesome than the one that came before. With this type of power at her hooves, why, the things she could accomplish, the info she could acquire… the possibilities were limitless.
Pinkie’s hoof approached the switch. “And now, to turn this bad boy on and-“
“Pinkie!” Shoot! She had forgotten about Twilight’s remedial baking lesson! Now the most inquisitive mind in all of Ponyville was snooping around Sugarcube Corner looking for her!
Pinkie forced herself to calm down from that initial spike of magic. This was salvageable. All she had to do was quickly head upstairs and meet up with Twilight, and the unicorn would never suspect-
“Huh? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this door open before…”
Well, ponyfeathers.
Pinkie got to the basement stairs just as Twilight was descending them, the scholar’s eyes taking in everything but her pink friend. “Pinkie, what is all this?” she asked after a moment, turning her inquiring gaze to Pinkie.
“Oh, nothing much, just a hobby,” Pinkie replied quickly, trying and utterly failing to keep her nervousness out of her voice. “Hey, bet you’re ready to give those cupcakes a fourth try, how about we head up to the kitchen and-“
“Just a hobby?!” Twilight interrupted, her expression changing from mere curiosity to suspicion. ”Pinkie, you’ve got more computer equipment down here than the IT lab at Canterlot University! What could you ever need this type of tech for?”
And there it was, the question Pinkie had hoped Twilight wouldn’t ask, because now she just had to answer. “Because information wants to be free!” Ignoring Twilight’s raised eyebrow at the sudden outburst, Pinkie continued, “Keeping data all to yourself is like having a delicious cake and not offering any to your friends! It’s not like Applejack’s apples or Rarity’s dresses, it’s little ones and zeros that can be copied a million-billion times over without hurting them, so why shouldn’t everyone have it? Why shouldn’t I download all the songs, movies and games I could ever enjoy? Why shouldn’t I sneak in to make sure the high heads in Canterlot aren’t secretly plotting behind our backs? I’m a pirate of the digital seas, Twilight, and no navy can stop me!”
The room was quiet for a few moments, save for Pinkie’s heavy breathing as she recovered from her impromptu speech. It was Twilight who broke the silence. “You’re a hacker, Pinkie?” she asked, disbelief evident in her voice.
Pinkie smiled sheepishly. “I really prefer the term ‘pirate.’ It’s more romantic, you know?”
Twilight shook her head furiously. “This is serious, Pinkie! Seriously illegal! What if the authorities find out about this? What if Princess Celestia does? Oh my gosh, what if she decides I’m an accomplice!? And not to mention all those poor artists who don’t get compensated for their hard-“
“Oh, don’t you condescend to me, Twilight Sparkle!” Pinkie shot back, pointing a hoof at her friend. “How many songs on your neighPod did you pay for?”
Suddenly, Twilight was on the defensive, and she timidly replied, “A-A lot of those songs aren’t available on online stores…”
“Uh-huh,” Pinkie said in response, her tone growing sarcastic. “And how many fandubs do you watch?”
“Fandubs, uh, help the anime industry by building interest in foreign markets, and many ponies purchase the series when it gets released officially…”
Twilight was losing, and Pinkie knew it. “And how many have you watched and not purchased?”
“…a few,” Twilight admitted in defeat, lowering her head.
Pinkie lifted her friend’s head, showing her an understanding smile. “And what show currently has your eye?” she asked as she finally hit the power switch, letting her latest monstrosity hum to life.
“You’d… after all I said…” Twilight was stunned, letting Pinkie easily guide her into a spare office chair by her side.
“We’re in this together now, Twilight. After all…” Pinkie flashed a grin over at Twilight. “A pirate needs her first mate.”
The ironic part was that if Pinkie Pie had simply been blindfolded, she wouldn’t have been tempted to peek even one bit. Blindfolds were an integral part of many of her best party games, and the sanctity of the pact between blindfolder and blindfoldee was something Pinkie held deep in her heart. In all her years of partying, she had never once peeked when her turn came, and she would hold to that until her very last celebration.
But this wasn’t a blindfold, so the blindfold rules didn’t apply here. So Pinkie certainly felt a desire to sneak a quick little look at where she was being led, but that wasn’t going to be possible with the spell Twilight had cast. She was actually blind, at least for the moment, and she was actually feeling a little nervous about it. Hence the desire to peek.
The issue was only made worse by how she couldn’t hear anything as well, another spell of Twilight’s. With only the nudging of who she assumed was still Twilight to concentrate on, making sure was going where she needed to, Pinkie had all the time in the world to think… and that only ever led to problems.
Sure enough, the part of her that Pinkie had learned to ignore at that birthday party years ago was speaking up, saying that this was obviously the setup to a cruel and mirthless prank. Maybe she would be left like this for days, or forever. Maybe Twilight would push her into a muddy ditch and dispel her magic just so Pinkie could look up at the cruel look on her face as she said that the last few years had been a mistake, that Pinkie had been a mistake. Maybe-
No! That was wrong! Twilight would never do anything like that! She was the nicest, bestest pony in all of Equestria, not some terrible jerk who took correspondence courses from the Discord School of Being a Total Partypooper. The surprise Twilight had promised would be joyous, not heart-wrenching.
And as though she were being awarded for her positive thinking, light suddenly returned to Pinkie’s world, forcing her to blink a few times as her eyes adjusted. Her hearing returned at the same time, but wherever she was was almost quiet enough for it to not make a difference. Pinkie could still hear something, though, something like… anticipation.
When her eyes had adjusted, the earth mare finally took in her surroundings, finding them both familiar and strange. This was the Electric Trough, Ponyville’s classiest club (by virtue of being one of two, and the other being a grungy hole in the wall). Pinkie had been here dozens of times, sometimes to perform, sometimes simply to party the night away. But it was always packed with partying ponies, not nearly empty like it was now. There was nopony on the dance floor, and the tables were empty save for five faces, five that were parts of Pinkie’s own heart.
At one table, Rainbow Dash and Applejack had their eyes on Pinkie, the farmer giving her a reassuring nod as she noticed Pinkie looking.
At another, Rarity and Fluttershy sat with Spike between them, the dragon being the last creature Pinkie would have expected to see here. He was underage, after all! And indeed, Fluttershy’s attention seemed divided between watching Pinkie and making sure Spike didn’t have just a sip of Rarity’s drink, the unicorn obviously willing to indulge the young dragon’s curiosity herself.
With everypony else here, and considering she was the pony who had brought her here in the first place, Pinkie expected to see Twilight, but she didn’t see her marefriend anywhere… that is, until she looked in the one place she didn’t expect to find Twilight. On the stage. In the spotlight. In front of a microphone.
“Pinkie, I brought you here tonight to… to ask you something important,” Twilight began as Pinkie’s eyes found her mesmerizing amethyst irises. “And I want to ask you in the language closest and dearest to your heart. The language of song.”
It took all of Pinkie’s willpower to stop herself from shouting “YES!” right then and there. But stop herself she did.
She wouldn’t ruin all of Twilight’s hard work to set this up.
Any minute now, Derpy was going to walk into Sugarcube Corner, just like she always did every morning after she was finished with her route. But unlike all of those other mornings, the mailmare was not going to find any muffins awaiting her.
Because they were out.
Out of muffins.
They had run out of muffins. How had this happened? Why had so many customers wanted muffins this morning? And how could Pinkie have let the replacement batch burn so badly? She was baking another batch as fast as she possibly could, but Pinkie knew Derpy’s routine like the back of her hoof. The muffins weren’t going to make it. Any second now, Derpy was going to walk in, see the empty spot in the display counter where the various types of muffins should have been, and let out a wail of anguish so great that the Princesses would hear it.
The bell over the door rang, and Pinkie looked over to see the beginning of her nightmare scenario playing out. Derpy was standing there, empty mailbags hanging at her side, and her eye was staring straight at where the muffins would have been had they still existed.
Except, no, that was Derpy’s other eye, the “mischief maker,” as the blonde pegasus called it. Her good eye was firmly set on Pinkie, and she let out a cheerful, “Good morning, Pinkie!”
“Uh, hey, Derpy,” Pinkie replied sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head with one hoof. “Er… how was your route this morning?”
“Oh, you know, same old, same old,” Derpy replied with a beautiful smile, one that Pinkie savoured as likely the last smile she’d ever see. “Lots of letters today, though, so I had to fly extra fast to keep to my schedule! I built up a big appetite, so I hope you’ve got a lot of muffins!”
“About that, Derpy, I…” Pinkie took a deep breath, and then began speaking in rapidfire. “We ran out of muffins and I burnt the next batch so I don’t have any muffins for you and I’m so sorry and I’ll understand if you want to break up with me and never see me again.”
Pinkie cringed, eyes closed as she finished her whirlwind explanation, awaiting the wrath of a Derpy denied, but it never came. Instead, she felt the soft breeze of a pegasus’ approach, followed by a quick kiss on her cheek. Perplexed, she opened her eyes, only to find Derpy hovering near her with an understanding smile. “Don’t worry about it, Pinkie.”
“What?” Pinkie asked incredulously as she got back on her hooves, looking up into the eyes of her marefriend. “But… you love muffins! You rave about them!”
“I do like muffins, silly!” Derpy replied with a giggle. “But I like you a lot more, and besides, it’s not like I don’t know what it’s like when things just go wrong. That’s how I lost my shipping job, remember?”
“So you’re not mad?” Pinkie replied with a hopeful smile, her question answered a moment later as Derpy pounced on her, the pegasus’ lips and tongue meeting hers in just the sort of makeout session that the Cakes had said Pinkie needed to stop having on company time. Too bad they weren’t here this morning!
After a few minutes, Derpy broke the kiss and gave Pinkie an amused grin. “There, you okay, Pinkie Pie? Because now I’m even more hungry, not to mention thirsty. What sort of pastries to you have ready?”
Pinkie was just about to answer when the buzzing of the oven alerted her. “Oh! The muffins are ready!” She ran off to the back of the bakery to pull out her baking, leaving Derpy to just shake her head at her marefriend’s antics.
“Princess, it’s almost time,” Twilight said in a quiet voice as she approached her mentor’s side. The alicorn glanced back for a moment at her faithful student – no, at this point, her closest friend – before turning her attention back to the view her personal balcony afforded her. The sky practically glowed with a multitude of colours, the reds and oranges of sunset quickly deepening into the purples and blues of Twilight’s namesake, and she could make out the faint roar of the crowd far below, gathered in the common square before the pronouncement balcony.
“You shouldn’t call me that, Twilight. ‘Princess.’ Soon enough, it shall no longer be my title to bear.” Celestia turned to look back at Twilight again, a wry smirk playing on her features. “Thanks in no small part to you, I should add.”
Predictable as always, Twilight began to stutter and stammer as she struggled to find her words. “I-I can call everything off if you want, Princess! I can call Pinkie here in an instant, she can make it all seem like one big elaborate prank, and everypony will laugh! We don’t—”
Like so many times in the past, like the day Celestia had taken her under her wing to guide her, all it took was one gold-encased hoof on Twilight’s shoulder to calm her down. “No, Twilight, this is right. Your idea is… right. Forgive an old mare her nostalgic tears, for I truly am looking forward to what is coming. I worry that you might not make the transition as easily if you cling to that title, though.”
Twilight shook her head violently, as though denying the thought entry, before she looked up at her mentor. After a visible effort, she said, “…Celestia, you’ll always be my Princess, no matter what your title actually is.”
“And what of us, Twilight Sparkle?” a deeper voice echoed through the chamber, and Twilight turned to see Princess Luna entering the chamber, a faint grin on her face. “Do we hold such a hallowed place in thy heart?”
“Um, of course, Princess Luna! Well, um, not as much, but through no fault of yours, it’s just, well, Princess Celestia taught me for—”
Celestia tsk-tsked at Luna as her horn lit up, her magic helping smooth the creases that had appeared in Twilight’s outfit – a smart business ensemble custom-crafted by Rarity – as she gave her sister a playfully cross look. “Now, now, Luna, no need to be jealous. And why have you fallen back into that terrible habit of misusing the Royal We?”
“Quite simple, my dear sister,” Luna explained, her smile growing wider. “After today, I shall not be able to use it, so best to take advantage while I still can, right?” The thought drew chuckles from both Celestia and Twilight. “Anyway, it is time. Shall we make our way to the pronouncement balcony?”
“Friends, all of you, we are gathered here today to witness history in the making, to bring about a new age of peace and equality.” Celestia’s millenia of delivering speeches served her well, her proud, clear voice needing no magical enhancement to reach even the further members of the assembled crowd.
“Make no mistake; I am proud of the nation of Equestria. For thousands of years, it has stood as an example of peace and harmony. But as we are all aware, this peace was not afforded to all. Ponies came together to form this nation, but the three tribes of ponykind barely got along with each other; no consideration was given to any of the other sentients of the world, griffons and bovines, donkeys and minotaurs. Even the name Equestria, borne from the word ‘equine,’ denoted this as a nation for ponies.
“But such short-sighted views are a relic of the past! Today, creatures of all types embrace each other in friendship, and though there are a few who would use our differences to separate us, more and more celebrate our individuality.” Celestia’s horn began to glow, finished the task of setting the sun beneath the horizon, and beside her, Luna’s own horn began the task of raising the moon.
“Tonight, the sun sets for the final time on the nation of Equestria.” Celestia paused for a moment, both for effect and to take a final chance to accept it herself.
“But tomorrow, the dawn shall bring the birth of the new nation of Harmony!”
“What… is that?” Rainbow Dash asked, though the prismatic pegasus clearly knew exactly what she was looking at.
“Why, it’s your new dress for this year’s Gala, of course!” Rarity exclaimed in response, her voice as cheery as she could make it to hide the fear she was feeling at this moment. Rainbow Dash wasn’t supposed to see this dress, this gift, until it was done, when its radiant beauty would certainly make the obstinate mare see the light. But Rainbow had burst into her workroom, unannounced and unexpected, the question on the pegasus’ lips dying as she had seen the dress Rarity was working on, and now Rarity found herself scrambling to stick to her plan. “As you can see, I chose to go with a design inspired by the wide-open sky this year, very light and airy. You should be able to perform almost any of your stunts—”
“Why would you do this?”
It wasn’t Rainbow’s usual brash interjection; it was barely loud enough for Rarity to hear over her own voice, but the anguish in the words caught her attention, and the unicorn turned from her creation to see her friend in tears. “I-I always make everypony’s dress for the Gala! It’s a tradition! And I don’t see how just because you think—”
“Why won’t you accept it!?” Ahh, there was Rainbow Dash’s anger; Rarity had to practically brace herself against the pegasus’ words. She noticed that Rainbow’s tears didn’t abate. “Everypony else has come to terms with it, all of our friends! And I thought you had just quietly come around without saying anything, without apologizing, and I was fine with that, ‘cause I don’t really like saying sorry myself! But then I find you making this—this dress!” Rainbow spat the word like it was poison. “What did you think this was going to do, Rarity, except open up some wounds?”
Rarity felt her own indignation flare in the wake of Rainbow’s anger. “I wanted you to be beautiful, radiant! Every inch the pretty young mare that you are!”
“I! Am! A! Stallion!” Rainbow Dash screamed each word with more and more emphasis, until she had to pause afterwards to catch her breath. “I am a stallion, Rarity. Why can’t you accept me for who I really am?”
“Because you’re not!” Rarity knew she’d hit a breaking point for her own anger and frustration, but the sad consequence of reaching that point was that she didn’t care at the moment. “You are a mare, Rainbow Dash! You make have some tomcoltish tendencies, but you are a lady, and if you would just cease this foolish nonsense and accept that, you would be a lot happier!”
Rainbow Dash breathed in as though she were about to yell once again, but then she appeared to think again. “That’s it. I’ve had enough.” With an angry burst of wind, the pegasus shot into the air and over to the open window. “I thought you were my friend, Rarity, but if you can’t accept the real me… I guess I was wrong.” Rainbow sniffled, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to undermine her words. “Later.”
Rarity watched as Rainbow Dash flew off for a moment, before she turned to the unfinished dress. All the extra planning and work she had put into it. All the effort to finally show Rainbow Dash the truth. The stress and frustration took full hold of Rarity, and before she regained control of herself, she had lifted the dress – and the ponykin it was draped over – and thrown it across the room with her magic.
She stared at the crumpled, dishevelled mess in the corner, her nerves calming down. It hadn’t been the answer. What was the answer? Rarity needed the answer to this dilemma more than anything else, and at this point, she’d be willing to try anything.
The unicorn glanced over at the sole bookshelf of the room, filled with style guides and reference materials. Her horn glowed once again, and a book she hadn’t looked at it years floated out, the volume trailing a cloud of dust behind it as it floated over to her.
Cleaning it off with a gust of air, Rarity cracked open The Art of the Suit and began to read.
“So, do you think you’ve got all that?” Twilight asked as she turned from the blackboard she had covered in grids and notations. She repressed a sudden desire to frown as she saw the annoyed look on her sole student’s features, instead keeping her lecturing smile glued in place.
“Pssh, no need to treat me like a foal, Twilight,” Pinkie replied with a raspberry and a dismissive wave of her hoof. A confident grin appeared on the pink pony’s face. “You’re talking to the Board Game Champion of Ponyville! If I can master Settlers of Cataan, chess will be filly’s fun!”
The sense of relief Twilight had felt on seeing Pinkie’s smile was quickly overtaken by another feeling, one the modest unicorn rarely felt: the desire for victory. “Really now?” she asked in a smirking tone, her horn glowing in preparation. “And how, praytell, did you earn such a prestigious title?”
“Simple, my dear Twilight!” Pinkie closed her eyes as she began to explain, just as Twilight had anticipated, and the unicorn quickly floated what she needed from the shelves. “I am undefeated in any and all board games since I arrived in Ponyville years ago! I am terrific at Trivial Pursuit, superb in Sorry!, and a master of Mouse Trap! The only time I’ve even come close to losing is in Monopoly, because Applejack plays one mean game of Monopoly.” The earth pony opened her eyes, giving Twilight an honest look. “No, seriously, she’s mean about it. She gets this look in her eye, and she’s absolutely ruthless when—ooh, what’s this?”
Pinkie’s eyes widened in surprise as she finally noticed the ornate wooden box in Twilight’s magical grasp, the unicorn ever so gently setting it down between the two ponies. Twilight’s smile became more natural as she undid the golden moon-and-sun themed clasp that held the box closed, lowering the two halves of the lid to reveal a beautiful chess board of alternating white and black marble. A flash of light drew a gasp out of Pinkie as the enchantment on the board activated, placing the two armies – one white with golden accessories, one black with silver accessories – in their proper places.
“That’s beautiful, Twilight…” The awe in Pinkie’s voice made Twilight forget about the competitive spirit burning within for a moment, her cheeks beginning to burn for some silly reason.
“Princess Celestia got it for me for my sixteenth birthday…” Twilight practically whispered in reply to the unasked question.
“Aww, this was your sweet sixteen gift?” Pinkie’s question took a darker tone, and Twilight realized that she had better get the game started, lest her pink friend delve too deeply into what the scholar was slowly realizing was a rather sad past.
“Alright, Pinkie, time to put your bits where your breath is!” Twilight exclaimed, feeling that spark of competition in her heart rekindle. The enchantment was set to automatically place the white army next to the chess set’s owner, but with the magical equivalent of a finger flick, Twilight turned the board so the black army was on her side. “To be fair, since this is your first game, I’ll let you go first.” This was a little white lie – Twilight always played as black – but she figured it was harmless enough.
“Why, how very generous of you, Miss Sparkle.” Twilight didn’t know exactly where Pinkie had just gotten the monocle from, and she knew enough by now not to ask. “Hmm, decisions, decisions… The choices are infinite, I daresay!”
“Actually, though the full game has nearly infinite possibilities, there are only twenty possible opening… moves…” Her words trailed off as Pinkie glared at her, the monocle heightening the effect somehow, and she remained silent as her opponent aggressively moved her prince’s bearer’s pawn forward two spaces. It was an interesting choice; most beginners gravitated towards the prince's or princess’ pawns in the centre of the board, but if a single word could define Pinkie, it would be unconventional.
Not that the central pawns were only for beginners, Twilight reminded herself as she led with her own prince’s pawn, advancing it forward one space. She tended to favour more conservative openings, though she knew when to get aggressive.
“Aww, not going to challenge my pawn?” Pinkie said, a twinkle in her eye as she moved her prince’s knight’s pawn up two spaces as well.
Twilight sighed. “There was nothing for me to gain; you would have taken my pawn, so I would have been down a piece without a superior board position. Just a bad plan all around.” The scholar looked back down at the board, moving to the next part of her relatively simple opening, when she realized with a start just what Pinkie had done.
She could win.
She could win on her second turn.
Twilight had read about the Foal’s Mate, of course, but she’d never actually seen one in action; as a filly, she generally played against ponies older and more experienced than her, ponies that would never make such an amateurish mistake. But here it was in front of her: an terrible opening left by Pinkie that left her prince open to assault from Twilight’s black princess, with no way to escape.
All she had to do was that one move. Qh4#. Move the princess to the edge of the board and shatter Pinkie’s self-proclaimed title. The competitive flame within her demanded that she do so, that she grasp her victory when it was within her reach.
But if Twilight did so, if she took advantage of this amateur mistake, Pinkie would be devastated. It was likely that, no matter what, Twilight would win the game anyway, but if she won in such a quick and humiliating manner, Pinkie would probably never want to play chess again.
Twilight would never play chess with Pinkie again.
Her decision made, Twilight’s magical aura surrounded her princess’ pawn, shifting it forward two spaces. “Your move.”
“But I’m not tired, really!” the purple dragon protested as he begrudgingly got into his bed, glaring as defiantly as he could at the one forcing the issue… which pretty much just meant a pout with his young features. “Why doesn’t Pinkie get to stay out as late as she wants and I have to go to bed early?”
“Because Pinkamena is a teenager, and you’re just a baby dragon, Spark,” the much larger dragon replied, a smirk travelling the full length of his snout. “And as I always heard when I was younger, baby dragons need their sleep.” He lifted himself onto his hind legs as he drew closer to the whelp’s bed, his massive claws delicately handling the blanket as he tucked in the younger dragon. “But if you’re not tired, perhaps a bedtime story is in order…”
“Aww!” Spark scrunched up his face at the suggestion. “I’ve heard all of your stories a hundred times, Dad! Aunt Twilight was cool and all, but even her adventures are getting kinda old.”
Spike paused for a moment at his son’s words, trying not to show how much they hurt him. It wasn’t Spark’s fault that he didn’t truly understand what Twilight meant to him, to Equestria, to the whole world and all its inhabitants. It wasn’t Spark’s fault that he didn’t know just how much the memories of his namesake meant to Spike.
But perhaps there was a story that would convey that meaning.
“Alright, then, Spark, since you’re insisting that you’re old enough to stay up, maybe you’re old enough to hear this story.” Spike settled down next to Spark’s bed, bringing his head close to the young dragon. “You haven’t heard it before, not just because you were too young, but because… because it’s rather painful. But it’s important that you hear it at some point, so…”
“This is how your Aunt Twilight died.”
Spark’s face was a picture of rapt attention and awe as Spike launched into the tale he wouldn’t soon forget. “As you might have heard once or twice, Twilight lived for a very long time; to this day, there’s no pony who has lived as long, save for the Princesses. Some say that it was the Element of Magic that kept her alive so long, but I still think it was just because she was that stubborn; she wouldn’t die as long as she had a reason to live.”
Spike frowned. “And I think I was the reason she kept going as long as she did, that she didn’t want to leave me alone. Even after your Aunt Pinkie died – Twilight was devastated for months, and I totally thought that I’d lose her as well, but she eventually pulled through. She was never the same after that, but… she kept going.
“And then he returned.” Spike noticed the horrified look on his son’s face and silently chastised himself for putting so much anger into those words. Even now, decades later, the hatred he felt burned in his heart hotter than his deadliest flame… but that was no reason to scare his son.
“The Elements cannot be passed down until all the bearers have passed on, so Twilight was the only Element of Harmony left, and that weakened Discord’s seal enough so that he could escape and wreak havoc once again. And he had learned his lesson this time; he made a beeline straight for Twilight and me, intent on dealing with the only pony capable of stopping him.
“It was a terrible battle; half of Ponyville was demolished, and if it weren’t for Twilight’s evacuation plans, a lot of ponies would have lost their lives. Some still did, even with the plans in place.” A few that had been newer friends of his. A couple that chose to try to help in the fight, only to be overwhelmed by the level of magical power being idly tossed around. But Spike decided to leave those parts out for now; this story was sad enough as it was.
“I lent my strength and my flame to the battle, but I was barely a match in the wind compared to Twilight’s century of magical study and Discord’s blatant disregard for anything resembling the laws of reality. She tried so hard, so very hard, but he was just too much, and in the end, he stood gloating over her.
“And then, somehow, despite everything he had done, despite her age, despite everything, Twilight stood up defiantly, her tiara appearing on her head. And Discord just laughed as she floated into the air, her eyes taking on that glow they did sometimes when Twilight was one with her magic. And at the time, I wondered why he was laughing, but I figured it out afterwards: he couldn’t see them.”
“See who, Dad?” Spark asked, his enthusiasm palpable.
“The other bearers. Twilight’s friends. In her final hour, they answered her call one last time, four of them floating beside her, and Pinkie right behind her, holding her. The rainbow beam shot forth like it had nearly a century earlier, and I don’t know how Twilight did it, but Discord didn’t turn to stone like he had in the past. This time, when the rainbow faded away, a statue of pure diamond stood there. It will never crumble. It will never collapse. Twilight managed to do what even the Princesses could not: seal Discord forever.
“Afterwards, her friends didn’t disappear. They were still around Twilight, beckoning to her, and—” Spike paused as he wiped at his eyes, dealing with his tears as they began to form. This had been the same place he had teared up when he’d told Pinkamena. “Twilight turned to me. The look on her face… she was still worried about me. So I did the only thing I could.
“I smiled, and I nodded.”
As Spike reached the conclusion of his story, he realized that he wasn’t the only dragon in the room trying desperately not to cry, but Spark wasn’t faring quite so well. “P-Poor Auntie Tw-Twilight…” he sputtered as he tried to brush away his sadness.
“Poor Twilight?” Spike shook his head. “No, Spark, she finally found her happiness again that day, reunited with the mare she loved and all of her friends.” He lifted a claw to wipe away a tear Spark had missed. “And I never moved her from that spot. That’s where she lies to this day, within the monument I built with my own claws. That’s where both Twilight and Equestria found the peace they deserve.”
Downside to Everything - Drama, Alternate Universe
“Scootaloo, stop fidgeting around. Your mother and I raised a proper young pegasus, not some rambunctious earth pony!”
The younger pegasus sighed as she sat up straight in the chariot. She didn’t know why her father had made her accompany him on this stupid business trip. She didn’t know why she had to dress in clothing that she couldn’t fly in, forcing them to take a chariot; it was degrading, having to be flown around like one of the grounded. And she didn’t know why they had to deal with a filthy earth pony town like Ponyville, anyway. What did pegasi need from those limited by such two-dimensional thinking?
Scootaloo was honestly surprised when their destination came into view before she could smell it. It was a tiny village, composed of straw and tile and brick, the limits of those materials found on the ground. Nothing like the amazing towers and vistas of Cloudsdale, where the cloudscapers were only limited by their imagination when forming the cloudcrete.
In the skies above the squat little town, Scootaloo could see pegasi clearing the sky of clouds… including a glimpse of a sky-blue mare with a prismatic mane and tail. The filly gasped in recognition. That was the winner of the Best Young Flyers Competition, Rainbow Dash! Scootaloo had seen her performance from her family’s box seat, watching in awe as Dash had made myth into reality… and all to save some unicorn who dared to think her magic could compete with a real set of wings.
And here she was, the fastest young pegasus in the world, clearing the skies of some earth pony town. Scootaloo shook her head; clearly she needed to fine a better role-model.
The chariot finally landed, both Scootaloo and her father coughing at the unfamiliar sensation of breathing in dust. “Ahh, finally,” her father commented as he finished coughing. “Come now, Scootaloo.” He stepped off of the chariot, grumbling a bit beneath his breath. “The sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can leave.”
Scootaloo gave the dirt road a wary eye, but a glare from her father got her moving, the younger pegasus gingerly stepping down off of the chariot. It was such a disgusting feeling, little bits of dirt and rock and who know what else sticking to her hoof. Trying to ignore the dirt, she followed after her father, taking in the sights of Ponyville… such as they were.
They had just reached the market when another pegasus suddenly appeared out of nowhere, landing directly in front of her father. The old stallion seemed to be unfazed by this, however, and quickly exchanged words with the unfamiliar pony, his tone low enough that Scootaloo couldn’t make out the words. The tone, however, she had heard a thousand times before: her father was angry.
Her father abruptly turned to face her. “Scootaloo, I’m afraid I must go deal with an issue before we get on with our business here. Stay here, and keep in plain site.” He looked around for a moment, and then frowned. “If you get into trouble, take your dress off, fly up, and find a fellow pegasus, understood?”
“Yessir,” Scootaloo replied in a humble tone she reserved only for talking to her parents. She stood and watched as her father followed after the strange pegasus, the two disappearing down an alley.
Great. Now what was she supposed to do?
“Apples! Get yer apples right here!” a young voice cried out over the din of the market, and Scootaloo curiously tracked the sound to an earth pony filly standing at a nearby stall. The filly was about the same age as Scootaloo, with a light yellow coat and an unruly red mane barely held in place by a bow. “Apples, nature’s finest treat!”
It took a moment for Scootaloo to place just why the filly’s barks were catching her attention so much: she hadn’t had a chance to get any breakfast this morning. Sure, the apples that filly was hocking might be inferior earth pony fare, but right about now, the pegasus’ high metabolism was screaming for food, and so Scootaloo found herself approaching the stall practically against her will.
“Well, howdy, there!” the earth filly said as she saw Scootaloo approach. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around these parts before.”
“I-I’ll have one of the red ones,” Scootaloo mumbled, trying her hardest not to get caught up in a conversation with the filly.
“Okay, but which red ones did you mean?” the redhead responded with an honest laugh. “We’ve got Red Delicious, Winesap, Big McIntosh, Gala… Oh, I’m sorry, I’m being just plum rude, aren’t I? My name’s Apple Bloom. What’s yer name?”
“Um… Scootaloo,” she replied hesitantly.
Walking around the counter with a big red apple in one hoof, Apple Bloom’s grin widened. “Well, it’s nice to meet ya, Scootaloo. Sorry about that; I kinda forget sometimes that most ponies don’t know their apples like we Apples do. Here, try this Red Delicious; it’s a classic!”
The earth filly held out the apple, her eyes urging Scootaloo to take it, and the pegasus reached out to grab it. But as the apple changed hooves, Apple Bloom’s coat brushed against Scootaloo’s, and she suddenly recoiled as though a sky serpent had bitten her, letting the apple fall to the ground.
“What?! What was that-” But Scootaloo didn’t hear the rest of Apple Bloom’s protest, as she turned and ran from the apple stall as fast as her useless legs could take her, thinking all the while of how she had almost just defiled herself.
We had no idea this would happen, mind you. It was the first time in equine history that any pony had used the Elements of Harmony three times; even Princess Celestia herself has only used them twice. I sometimes wonder how our lives would have changed had we been able to use the Elements when the Changeling Queen attacked my brother's wedding; a lot changed between us in the year before Tirek's invasion, and it was those changes that helped us accept what had happened.
Oh, but that's getting into hypothetical situations. The simple truth of the matter is, when we united the power of the Elements to drive away Tirek's army of darkness, the bonds of love and friendship strengthened in ways we could have never have imagined. At that moment—
Seriously, Twilight, what are you up to? Are you trying to write that autobiography again?
I will be satisfied with what I write this time, I'm certain of it!
Are you certain, darling? I would hate to see your heart crushed again as you throw out yet another near-complete draft, and I don't say that simply because I would feel the despair as well.
You too, Rarity? The world needs to hear our story. The consequences of using the Elements of Harmony thrice needs to be written and published, so that any future Bearers have all the data and can make an informed decision.
Uh, couldn't one of the Princesses tell the Bearers about that? They'll still be around, right?
But what if they aren't?! The first time we used the Elements, Princess Celestia was abducted and Luna was... not available. We need contingency measures in place, and what better place than in a book? ...don't think I didn't feel that groan!
Really, Twilight, I feel that you're a bit—
Rarity, Rarity, I just had a great idea! We take marshmallow fluff and spread it all over your inner thighs, all the way up to—
Pinkie! What have I said about discussing our love life over the link?! The other's do not want to hear about it!
Hey, don’t put words in my mind! I don’t mind hearing about it at all!
...fine, I do not want others hearing about it! Pinkie, my dear, what goes on in our bedroom should stay in our bedroom.
Oh. Okay. ...so does that mean that I can talk about what we did out on the balcony? Because that was so fun, girls, I mean, Rarity did this thing—
Hold up there, sugarcube, I already had to live through it once. I definitely do not need the play-by-play.
What!?
It wasn’t exactly my idea of a fun time, Rarity. I was trying to get to sleep after a long night of preparing for the zap apples when suddenly you two were making more racket than a minotaur in a magic shop.
Wait a second, you aren’t blaming us, are you? Because we waited for the agreed-upon time.
Yes, Pinkie is absolutely correct. You were supposed to be asleep by then, Applejack! That’s the rule that we established to maintain some semblance of privacy despite our situation.
And I would have been, but you know about the zap apples! Those traditions wait for nopony! And I wouldn’t have even have mentioned it if Pinkie weren’t so set on making me relive it!
Girls, girls, calm down, no need to be unreasonable! If our rules needs some modification, we can all meet up for dinner and figure things out. But for now, could we please be quiet? I don’t want to wake—
I WAS TRYING TO SLEEP!
…
…
…
…
—Fluttershy...
Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, girls, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that I was up all night tending to my nocturnal friends and I’m so very sleepy right now... Wait, Rarity, what is that I’m feeling from you?
So you... felt us as well... last night?
Um... I... I tried to ignore it... as best I could... Pinkie’s so loud...
Wait, am I the only one who missed this? What a bummer.
You all should have missed it! ...okay, calm, calm. Girls, we will discuss this in person over dinner tomorrow night, as Twilight suggested. Until then, I am going to my very best to ignore the link.
Oooh, oooh, I’ll make dessert!
I reckon we all assumed that, Pinkie, and I guess that leaves me to cook the meal itself.
I could try—
No, you couldn’t. You’re banned, remember?
And so are you!
But I don’t keep trying!
Twilight, dear, please, let it go...
Fine, fine, I’ll just get back to writing this very important book.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.
AHEM! Though it hasn’t been without its fair share of challenges, this link with my friends has brought me closer to them than I ever thought possible. For better or for worse.
“What do you mean, ‘the stars aren’t your domain’?” Twilight asked in an exasperated tone, the sort of tone she reserved for those moments when her entire worldview was irrevocably shattered. Like it had been just now.
“The meaning should be clear, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna replied with a patient sigh, idly trotting over to one of the powerful telescopes she employed here in her Royal Planetarium. “Though I can enhance the features of the night sky as seen within our land — brightening some stars, dimming others until they cannot be seen by the naked eye — the stars themselves are beyond my reach.”
“But-but-but…” It was a rare moment for Twilight to become so confused that she couldn’t form a coherent sentence. She shook her head in an attempt to get her thought processes moving again, and the words she finally managed to get out were, “But that’s not what Princess Celestia taught me at all!”
Luna smiled rather cryptically at her as she used her magic to adjust the telescope nearest her. “My dear sister does not know the night sky as I do, not all of its intricacies and nuances.”
“But she controlled it for a thousand years!”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Twilight regretted them. It was as though an arctic breeze had blown through the planetarium; the room was so cold, so suddenly, and the scholarly unicorn didn’t know if it was actually that chilly or simply her mind interpreting the feelings coming off of the Princess in a manner it could understand. “Princess Luna, I’m sorry, I—”
“Do you understand every aspect of magic, Twilight Sparkle? Every nuance? Every theorem?” Luna’s voice betrayed none of the anguish her body was expressing.
Twilight blinked at the random question. “N-no, I’m just a graduate student! I still haven’t even touched a fraction of what is out there, and—”
“Yet you still practice magic every day, do you not?” Luna interrupted with another question.
“Well, yes, but I—”
“It was much the same for my sister, Twilight Sparkle.” Luna’s horn stopped glowing and she began to take measured steps towards Twilight. “She knew how to alter the night sky, and she fully understood that which does fall under my domain — the moon, the auroras, the assorted comets and meteor showers — but she didn’t know the truth of the stars.” Having come within reach of Twilight, Luna stopped and closed her eyes. “Because I did not tell her. One of the many truths I kept from her in my jealousy.”
Twilight just looked on in awe at the regal figure standing above her, trying desperately not to cry. Hesitantly, Twilight reached out and placed a reassuring hoof on the princess’ diadem. At the touch, Luna opened her eyes and smiled softly at the unicorn before her.
“Instead of arguing with me about what you believe the stars to be, Twilight Sparkle, allow me to show you what they truly are.”
“Yes, Princess Luna,” Twilight said with a deep and apologetic bow. “I’m sorry for doubting you.”
Luna smirked at that, making Twilight blink at the gesture. “You should save your apology, as I believe you shall be doubting me again before the night is over.”
Twilight shook her head in denial. “No, no, I swear, I won’t doubt anything you say again, Princess—”
“The stars are each a sun unto themselves, like that which my sister commands.”
At a loss for words once again, Twilight struggled to process what she had just learned. After nearly thirty seconds, she finally came up with the only reasonable response.
“You have got to be joking.”
Love Blooms in the Most Unexpected Places - Romance
“That was amazing! Spectacular! Awe-inspiring!” Pinkie Pie seemed to be on a quest to find every single superlatitive in the dictionary and use it, causing the two singers to blush. “Extraordinary! Superb! Incred-ooooh~”
The relentless rush of words was dammed as Twilight gave Pinkie a nuzzle against her neck, silencing her spouse with a moan. “Calm down, cupcake, give the two girls a chance to respond.” Turning to the two wedding guests, the pink-suited bride offered up an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. Pinkie was just so happy when you two offered your voices to our wedding reception. We would have asked some of our bridesmaids, but… well…”
The newlywed unicorn gestured over to the buffet, where the two singers could see Applejack and Rarity. It was muffled through the crowds of ponies milling about the Royal Gardens, but it sounded like the two were bickering over… hors d’oeuvres?
“Oh, I totally see what you mean,” Daydream said with a chuckle, even as her pegasus companion shook her head. “Those two are going to bicker all the way to the altar, aren’t they?”
“Heehee~” Pinkie laughed her most secretive giggle, which wasn’t very quiet at all. “We just have to make them see it first.” The pleased pink pony in the purple apparel gave the two ponies in front of her a sly look. “And speaking of altars, when are we gonna see you two tying the knot, huh, huh?”
“What?” Hasty Hooves let out a incredulous laugh as she looked over at her friend, who seemed similarly confused. “I— but— we’re not even dating! We’re just friends, Pinkie!”
Pinkie confused. “What, really? But I totally saw you two out for a date a few months ago, at that fancy Neighponese place on Main Street! You seemed so happy!” She noticed the suddenly distraught look on Daydream’s face and took a step back. “Oh… did I make a mistake? I— I didn’t—”
Hasty Hooves sighed and placed a hoof on Daydream’s shoulder, rubbing her yellow coat in a comforting manner even as she answered Pinkie. “You did, Pinkie, but it’s not that big a deal. You just confused me for my stupid brother.” She struggled not to frown, not doing a very good job of stopping herself. “Happens all the time.”
Twilight turned from her crowd watching to see that the conversation had taken a decided downturn while she wasn’t paying attention. She took a step forward, a question on her lips, but Pinkie held her back, shaking her head when her spouse looked at her questioningly.
“I really am sorry about bringing that up,” Pinkie said quietly as she turned to mingle with her other wedding guests. “If there’s anything we can do to make it up to you…”
Hasty shook her head. “Pinkie, this is your wedding! Don’t feel down on our behalf! Go, you two, go and makeout! I insist!” She savoured the intense blush that overcame both Twilight and Pinkie as the two walked off, before turning to Daydream, who was still looking morose. “Sorry about that; I didn’t really want to bring him up…”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Daydream replied with a sniffle as she lifted her head to look at her friend. “I’m… mostly over it now, really.” Her eyes hardened, an uncharacteristic look on the blue-maned pegasus. “I mean, I still don’t understand how he could break up with me even when I said I didn’t mind him having another girlfriend, especially if we could all have fun together…”
“Fiesty is a moron,” Hasty said with conviction, as though it were something she’d said a million times in the past. “Seriously, what stallion wouldn’t want a lovely mare like you by his side? He doesn’t know what he’s missing.” She shook her head sadly and gave Daydream a hug. “You’ll find the right one for you. I promise.”
Daydream gladly accepted the embrace, surprised by just how comforting and loving it felt. She inhaled the subtle fragrance of Hasty’s blonde mane and, in doing so, began thinking of what Pinkie said in a new light. Reluctantly, she pushed herself away from her pegasus friend so that their blue eyes could meet. “Maybe… maybe I already have…”
Hasty found her breath stolen away as she looked into Daydream’s eyes. “I—I never considered a mare, but… I like to keep…” Her words faded into nothingness as her muzzle came forward almost against her own will, until it met Daydream’s lips in a passionate kiss.
In a throng of ponies nearby, Pinkie took a moment out of imparting the world’s best cupcake recipe in order to glance over at the two mares madly making out. “Mission accomplished,” she whispered.
Pinkie sighed into her covers, trying hard not to pay any attention to the setting sun visible through the crystalline doors. She instead looked over at Gummy, splashing merrily away in the miniature water park she had gotten from… no, no, she wasn’t going to think about her! Thinking about her made Pinkie start blaming her, and Pinkie didn’t want to blame her for this! She was very busy, it was all very understandable, it was… Pinkie sighed again.
Inevitable.
“Pinkamena?” Only one pony in the palace insisted on calling Pinkie by her full first name, and Pinkie raised her head to see the Princess of the Night standing in the doorway to her chambers, a concerned look on her face. She managed a weak smile for Luna’s sake. “Hi, Luna!” she said with as much cheer as she could muster. “You’re up pretty early tonight. Did you have some sort of special plan for tonight?” She propped herself up with her front hooves, her face suddenly splitting into a wide grin. “Oh, can I help? I promise it won’t end up like last time!”
Luna quickly shook her head. “Nay, Pinkamena, I do not have any special plans of note. May I enter?”
Pinkie giggled, even as she wondered if she might be trying a little too hard to be herself. “It’s your palace, silly! Of course you can come in!”
“It is not my palace alone,” Luna observed as she entered the room, idly glancing about at the predominantly pink furnishings. “As in all things, my sister and I share it equally, and she granted you this room to do with as you see fit.”
From Luna’s raised eyebrow, Pinkie realized that she had failed to hide the pain on her face when the other Princess had been mentioned. “Oh, well, in that case, I’m feeling tired rather early—” The earth pony faked a ridiculously huge yawn. “—so I should actually turn in early. The early pony catches the quartz, my father used to say.”
A look from Luna was all she needed to tell Pinkie that she wasn’t falling for such an obvious ploy. “You’ll find that once permission is granted, Pinkamena, it is not so easily revoked.” The alicorn sat down beside the grand bed Pinkie occupied, bringing her head to the earth pony’s level. “Besides, I think you could use a friendly ear,” she added with a wiggle of said appendage, making Pinkie giggle despite herself. “Tell me what troubles you.”
Pinkie’s giggles faded away quickly, leaving a frown in their place as she contemplated whether or not to tell Luna about her little problem. After a moment, she finally sighed and said, “It’s my birthday today.”
“It is? A grand and joyous event this is!” Luna quickly paused to get her voice under control, the windows of the room having begun to shake in her excitement. “But should you not be out celebrating with my sister and your friends?”
“That’s the problem!” Pinkie suddenly blurted out, and once the dam was broken, she couldn’t stop. “I told Tia about my birthday when she asked after I finally managed to get her to break down and tell me her real birthday, not just the holiday, and so I know she knows it’s my birthday but she didn’t mention it at breakfast and she’s been busy all day and I know she has so many responsibilities and duties and I understand but I don’t want to understand! I want to be selfish and have her all to myself today! I want Tia to remember…”
Luna gently lifted a hoof to Pinkie’s face and wiped away the tears that had begun to flow. “We cannot help but have that core of selfishness in our hearts, Pinkamena, and it’s important that we indulge it on occasion, lest it build up until we do something we regret forever…” The alicorn looked out at the setting sun as she said this, her features wistful and thoughtful. “Come, Pinkamena. I have decided that there is something I could use your help with after all.”
Pinkie blinked away the rest of her tears as she quickly stood up and followed after the departing alicorn. The two walked silently through the halls of the palace, servants and guards giving respectful nods to Luna and even occasionally to Pinkie, so accustomed they were at this point to Princess Celestia’s consort.
The two mares made their way out to the main level and out into the gardens, Pinkie giving the statue of Discord a silly face like she always did when she passed by him; she always felt he’d appreciate the token gesture.
Luna finally came to a halt near a building Pinkie was vaguely familiar with, the place where Twilight had had her birthday party that one year in Canterlot. “We have arrived, Pinkamena,” she said as she turned to the smaller pony, “and the task I have for you is to be the first to enter the Royal Ballroom.” At Pinkie’s skeptical eyebrow, she hastily added, “Do not worry. There is a threat in there, but only to me, and only if I enter first. You shall be safe, I promise you.”
“I dunno…” Pinkie said hesitantly, only to be met by the most terrible weapon in Luna’s arsenal: a set of adorable eyes that a pony that towered over most should not have been able to use effectively but that Luna somehow still managed to pull off. With a sigh, Pinkie relented. “Okie dokie loki…” She turned and walked over to the doors of the ballroom, pushing them open and walking inside. She only had a moment to realize that a room with so many windows shouldn’t be completely dark when…
“SURPRISE!”
Suddenly, light returned to Pinkie’s world as the magical darkness was lifted, revealing itself to be the work of one Twilight Sparkle, who stood among her other bestest friends, the closest of a massive crowd of close to a hundred of Pinkie’s friends. The light revealed games, buffet tables, a polka band that struck up one of Pinkie’s favourite tunes immediately, and most importantly, the love of Pinkie’s life, standing there right behind her friends, a knowing smile on her immortal features.
As Pinkie’s friends moved to embrace her, each one given their own birthday wishes to the birthday filly, Pinkie struggled to stop herself from leaping from their grasp and embracing Tia, but she could wait.
Tia had remembered, after all, and that was good enough for Pinkie.
Every time I step onto the stage, blinking under the glare of bright spotlights that I still haven’t taken a liking to, and look out over a crowd of ponies shouting my name, cheering for me, proclaiming their love and worship of me, I take a moment and wonder just how this became my life, so far from the orchards and the ponies I love.
Mind you, that’s more one of Twilight’s philosophical questions, because I can tell you just how I ended up in this position. See, it all started at the wedding of Twilight’s brother – the real one, mind you, not that business with the changelings. Pinkie was put in charge of the reception, and let me tell you, that mare was set to use everything she could get her hooves on to make that the rowdiest shindig Canterlot had ever seen. That just so happened to include the talents of certain ponies that called her friend.
I don’t usually cotton to playing my fiddle in front of a crowd; I prefer to save it for Apple family gettogethers, because I know my kin can appreciate a good fiddling. But when Pinkie’s got her mind set on something, Celestia help the pony that tries to deny her. So I agreed to play a few songs on my ma’s old fiddle at the reception, and I figured that would be the end of it.
Well, it turned out that I figured much too soon. Something about my fiddling touched the hearts and souls of them hoity-toity big-city ponies, and I soon had one of the biggest crowds at the party gathered around me and my fiddle. The bride and groom wandered over to listen and stomp their approval; shoot, even Vinyl turned off her fancy rig for a while so I could take the spotlight. I played just about every song I knew and still had the crowd clamouring for more… and that’s when somepony slipped me their card.
His name is Double Platinum, and he likes to boast about representing some of Equestria’s finest musical talent. He likes to boast about a lot of things, actually; when I went to visit his fancy office a week later like he asked, he couldn’t help but show off his fancy suit and his fancy chariot and his fancy wife. I wasn’t mighty keen on him, but when he got down to business, well, the things he said were like music to my ears. He was talking about fame and fortune, all for taking my ma’s fiddle road and playing for ponies throughout Equestria, and while I wasn’t too sure at first, the number of bits he was talking about sure convinced me in a hurry. With that number, I could fix up Sweet Apple Acres, hire hands to make up for my being on the road, even send Apple Bloom to that fancy art college I’ve had my eye on. We could live in luxury, and it wouldn’t even be dishonest; Double Platinum told me no tales when he said how difficult the life of a star could get, the long hours and the constant travel, but I’ve never been the type to shy away from hard work. We shook hooves, and Applejack the Country Music Legend was born.
And now I’m here, one of the smaller venues on my tour, but one that is near and dear to my heart. And as I raise my fiddle and my backup begins their tune, I look down at the front row and see those ponies who, unlike the rest of this crowd, really mean it when they shout that they love me. Dash and Pinkie seem to have challenged each other to see who can wear more of my memorabilia, Rarity and Twilight are hooting and hollering in a decidely un-unicorn-like fashion, and even Fluttershy is cheering, though I can’t hear it. And there’s Apple Bloom, sitting on Big Macintosh’s back to see properly, and both of them are looking up at me with such love that I know I made the right decision.
…wait just one minute, what is Big Macintosh doing bringing Apple Bloom to my concert? She’s got school in the morning!
When you had lived as long as Celestia had, it was easy to seem omniscient. A lot of memories combined with a little attention to detail and some pattern recognition went a long way in making it always seem like you knew just what was going on. It had its downsides – there were times when Celestia hadn’t been told something vital because it was assumed she already knew – but it was worth it for moments like this, when she answered, “Come in, Spike,” to the knock at her door of her private study, despite having thought that her faithful student’s assistant was in Ponyville at the moment.
The door creaked open and the baby dragon peeked his head in, looking straight at Celestia with wide eyes. “H-How’d you know it was me, Princess?”
Celestia could have told Spike that he was simply the only one of the few permitted to visit her private study who would knock that close to the bottom of the door, but she instead smiled knowingly at him and said, “Come in, Spike. It’s been a long time since you’ve been to my study.”
“Heh, I guess it has been, hasn’t it?” Put a bit at ease by Celestia’s smile, Spike fully entered the study and closed the door behind him, crossing the room to sit down on the one backed seat the Princess kept on hand for bipedal creatures (or ponies who sat in an unusual fashion). He opened his mouth to speak, but seemed to think better of it, and Celestia realized that she was going to have to ease the young dragon into it.
“So what brings you to Canterlot today, Spike?” she asked as her horn lit up with golden energy, her magical aura surrounding the teapot and two teacups of the Griffindian tea set she had chosen to use today.
Spike accepted the floating teacup as it approached him, holding it steady as the teapot poured its fragrant elixir out for him. “Twilight brought me along. She’s visiting her parents for the weekend. Mother’s Day, y’know?”
Celestia nodded sagely as her own cup was filled; she had figured that was likely the reason behind this visit. “So it is,” she said before taking a sip of her tea, the gesture encouraging the dragon to do the same. “And yet, my little dragon, you find yourself here. Should I be reading something into this?” she added with a smirk.
Spike let our a little cough of flame as his tea went down his firepipe on shock, shaking his head at Celestia’s question. “No, no, Princess, I mean, you raised me and taught me, and I really appreciate it, but…” The dragon trailed off, unsure of how to continue.
The princess had an idea of where this was going, however, and though it wasn’t something she liked to dwell on, Spike deserved to know. She offered, “Spike, would you like to know where we got your egg from?”
Reptilian eyes looked up at her in awe, amazed that she had touched on the very issue closest to his heart on this day, and it was all Spike could manage to nod slowly.
“Very well.” Celestia rose from her seat, and Spike moved to rise as well before the princess made a gesture for him to stay seated. Moving over to the large window that lit up her study, she looked up at her charge, already darkening as it prepared to set for the evening. “It’s a tale I should have told you before, but it’s… not a memory I particularly like to recall.” Spike managed a single syllable before Celestia shook her head. “No, it’s alright. One shouldn’t shy away from memories just because they are unpleasant.”
Turning back to Spike, she recited, “Once upon a time, there was a dragon. She was beautiful by the standards of dragons, with shining scales of purple and graceful, slender horns, and she was bold and clever. Dragons establish their hierarchy by their hordes, and so she planned to have the greatest horde ever imagined, and she would not gather it bit by bit. She would take it all at once, from the opulent palace of ponykind: Canterlot.”
“Whoa,” Spike muttered, knowing as well as anyone the defences Canterlot had at its command.
Celestia nodded. “Even then, no single dragon could possibly attack Canterlot through raw power alone, but she was tricky. She flew by several times, not attacking anypony, because she knew we would hunt her down if she hurt anypony. As it was, she was merely an annoyance, and the pegasi of the Royal Guard gave chase each time only long enough to mark sure she left. But even those dedicated to their duties can get weary of them, and after the fifth time, the pegasi didn’t chase her quite far enough, and that was when she whipped around the side of the palace and burst straight through the doors leading to the treasure chamber. Where I was waiting.” Celestia smirked a little. “I was always a little too clever for my own good.”
“She knew of me, knew what I was capable of – though I always suspected she had heard more of the legend than the truth – and we stared at each other, alicorn and dragon, each measuring the other. And then I lifted one of the greatest treasures within our vaults, an amethyst larger than you the precise colour of her scales, and I offered it to her.”
“Really?” Spike asked, noticing only after Celestia’s amused glare that he was drooling a little at the sound of such a gem.
“Really. She hadn’t hurt anypony – she had caused minor damage to the palace at best – and I wanted to avoid hurting her.” She cocked her head to the side. “Avoiding an epic battle that would have probably have collapsed the palace was also a concern. So I offered her the gemstone, and she looked at it, at all the riches besides that gem, and then at me. Finally, she grabbed the gem in one mighty claw, looked me straight in the eye… and thanked me, before she flew off.”
Spike raised an eyeridge in question. “And how does that lead to you having my egg?”
“I’m getting to that, Spike, be patient,” Celestia gently admonished, which as usual caused the one being admonished to act as though she’d just ordered banishment. Sighing softly, she continued, “That was not the last time I saw the dragon I came to know as Amethyst. She came again a fortnight later, this time landing in the courtyard and asking to see me. Well, demanding is more like it. The guards refused to let her see me, but it caused enough of a ruckus that I heard and came to see her myself.”
“What did she want to talk about?” Spike asked, finally relaxing after spending a minute trying not to even breathe, lest he make a sound.
“Well, the pretense Amethyst gave was that she simply wanted to thank me again, but honestly, I think she just wanted to talk. Dragons rarely socialize after they are fully grown, only coming together during migration, and I believe she simply wanted some… companionship.” Celestia glanced up at the intricate mural on her study’s ceiling, her expression growing wistful as she stared at the two ponies in the centre. “And that was what I needed as well. That was some five hundred years after Luna and I had been… separated, and I was longing for a friend who wouldn’t… who I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to so quickly.”
Her voice took on a slightly bitter tone. “Or so I had hoped.”
Spike didn’t dare to voice the question, but his eyes asked it anyway.
“My little ponies happened. There was a sizable contingent that felt that their princess, their pure goddess of the sun, was being corrupted by the dragon that visited her at least once a month. They feared that Equestria’s policy towards dragonkind would become too lenient, that ponies would be less protected because of our friendship. I tried to tell them time and again that they were mistaken, but they would not listen to me. They took matters into their own hooves.”
*TIME LIMIT*
“To this day, I’m not certain what I would have done to them, had I gotten my hooves on them. They attacked Amethyst when she was a couple months into her long nap. Even sluggish and disoriented, she managed to slay them all… but not before they managed to mortally wound her.” Celestia took a deep breath as she prepared to relive one of her worst memories. “She was… barely holding on when arrived, but all the healing magic I command could not help a fully-grown dragon, not with their resistance to magic. She said that her kind would deal with her horde in their tradition, but she asked me to take one thing, to remember her by, and to keep safe.” She looked down at Spike, who was now sniffling, trying to hold back his tears. “Your egg.”
The young dragon wiped a claw across his eyes, trying to stem the growing tide. “What… what about my father?”
Celestia had been hoping Spike would make this inquiry after her story; it would allow her to end on a light note. “What about your father? You live with her.”
Any sadness in Spike’s features was replaced with utter confusion. “Huh?”
“Spike, dragon eggs don’t take half a millennium to hatch,” Celestia instructed, her familiar smirk taking its place on her lips once more. “But they can last forever if they aren’t fertilized. The test we had entrants to my school perform wasn’t really about hatching your egg; it was supposed to be about creativity, thinking outside the box.” She looked to her desk, where a photo of her trusted student and all her friends sat in a place of honour. “But Twilight Sparkle… with her raw power, she hatched your egg, an egg that should have never have borne life. Twilight is, for all intents and purposes, your father.”
Spike was silent for a moment, before he raised a claw in question, but before he could manage to voice it, he passed out from the shock.
Celestia shook her head, the smirk not leaving her face. “I wonder if Twilight will handle the news any better.”
Can You Tell I Wrote This In the Intermissions of a Batman Triple Feature? - Romance, Comedy
The room was suddenly plunged into darkness, eliciting a collective gasp from the ponies gathered within. “What was that?” a quiet voice barely whispered, fright tingling every word.
Lightning cracked outside, briefly illuminating the room and the dark figure within, her black cowl and cape concealing every bit of her blue coat, save for her muzzle. As the light faded, only her silhouette was barely visible against the window. “I’m Batmare,” she intoned in a low, gravelly voice, “and I heard you need assistance.”
Twin beams of red light fired out of the darkness in response, relighting the candles that had been snuffed out, and revealing a purple unicorn in a outfit of dark blue and red. A genuine smile formed on her lips as she looked at the mare in black. “Good to have you here, Batmare. We have a crisis on our hands, and we need all the help we can get.”
“Supermare speaks the truth,” a light grey unicorn in golden barding said as she stepped forward, a coiled rope hanging from her flank. “Never has our need been greater for your expertise. Only by using our skills together can we resolve this! So speaks Wonder Mare!”
“…oh, is it my turn? I’m sorry…” The yellow pegasus took barely half a step forward before shying away, her orange-and-green ensemble clashing terribly with her pink mane. “Um, well, I’m Seapony, and I’m ready to help you all, me and all my fish friends… if it’s okay for them to help…”
The orange mare rolled her eyes at Seapony, reaching up to adjust the unfamiliar pointed green hat perched on her head. “Well, Ah’m not sure how much of a help yer fishy friends are gonna be, seeing as we gonna be fightin’ on land and all.” She brought a hoof up in contemplation. “At least, Ah sure hope we aren’t fightin’ in the ocean. A bow and arrows ain’t too useful underwater, y’know?”
“Hey, neither are guns, and you don’t see me complaining!” laughed the last pony in the room. Her body was covered from head to hoof in red and black fabric, with only her bright pink mane showing. “Well, unless it’s funny complaining, I do a lot of that, like ‘did this villain get his henchmen at a discount,’ or—”
“Pinkie!” Twilight interrupted, completely breaking her character. “I thought we all agreed to pick DC characters for tonight’s session! Deadhorse is Marevel!”
“But Twiiiilight, Deadhorse is the perfect fit for me! He’s wacky, I’m wacky! He breaks the fourth wall constantly, I break the fourth wall constantly!”
“For the last time, Pinkie, this is the real world! There is no fourth wall!”
Rarity let out a exasperated sigh as she was forced to break character. “As fascinating as it would be to retread this metaphysical discussion yet again…” She turned to Pinkie. “Pinkie, dear, if we don’t all choose characters that mesh together, it ruins the immersion of roleplay night.”
Dash’s “ha!” was muffled by the cowl she was busy taking off. After she finished freeing her prismatic mane from the costume, she continued, “Like it can really be immersive with you overacting all over the place!”
The pale unicorn gasped. “It is called ‘getting into character,’ and it involves more than simply growling every word like you’re some Diamond Dog!”
As the two arguments continued on, Fluttershy sidled up next to Applejack. “I’m starting to think roleplay night is a bad idea.”
The farmmare nodded safely at this wisdom. “Ah still want to know why our love life needs spicin’ up when we’re all sleepin’ with five other ponies.”
Fluttershy nodded, just before a thought crossed her mind. “Um, Applejack…” She looked over at Applejack, her eyes lidded. “If we started without them, how long do you think it would take them to notice and join in?”
Applejack smirked. “Well, sugarcube, Ah guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear - Comedy, Action
It was a serene and beautiful night in Whitetail Woods. The moon was full, blanketing the tranquil forest in its cool light, and the woods were quiet save for the chirps of crickets, the hoots of owls, and the roar of something very large chasing after the pink truck that had just crested over a hill at decidedly unsafe speeds.
“Must go faster, Rarity, must go faster!” Pinkie yelled out from her spot in the back of the truck, her eyes wide with terror at the sight behind them. She struggled to turn her head and look in the cab at her pale friend, the massive gashes on her rear leg causing her considerable pain.
“I have the pedal pressed to the floor, Pinkie!” Rarity shouted back, not daring to look over her shoulder at her friend, lest they crash into a tree and quickly become a snack. She chanced a glance at the rear-view mirror, however, and the monstrous threat that was slowly but surely gaining on them. She growled in anger. “Applejack, why does your truck have to be such a garish piece of junk!?”
“If you hate it so much, why did you borrow it?” Pinkie responded as she turned back to the rear of the truck, staring at the creature that had injured her with wide eyes. “Why did you borrow it and drag me out to the middle of the woods in the middle of the night just so I could get in the middle of a duel and get my leg chomped clean in the middle?”
“I needed a witness!” Rarity exclaimed, lifting a hoof from the steering wheel. “Vengeance was to be mine! I would do unto her a hundred times the travesty she did to my mane!”
Pinkie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Rarity, I heard you when you first told me about your little duel.” She shook her head, the gesture turning into a wince of pain as the apple truck bounced hard on the uneven terrain and jostled her hurt leg. “Owwww! This is worse than that time with the winged apes! Why did you cast that spell on her anyway? How do you even know a crazy spell like that?”
“I stumbled across it when I was studying old fashions— oh no. Hold on, Pinkie!” Rarity desperately span the steering wheel as fast as she could, the truck’s tires kicking grass and dirt into the air as it tried to turn. Pinkie, not finding anything to hold onto, tumbled a few times with some decidedly un-Pinkie-like curses coming out of her mouth, but she managed to avoid falling out of the truck and into the jaws of the beast pursuing them. The truck finally stopped skidding moments before it ran into the solid wall of trees Rarity had been trying to avoid, and took off on its new trajectory, leaving behind the sound of falling trees and pained roaring.
“As I was saying, somepony had left it as a bookmark in an old fashion journal I had borrowed, and it was such a ridiculous spell, but it caught in my mind. I just had to learn it, to master it! And so I did, and Opal spent the day as the cutest little ankylosaur, and then I honestly forgot all about it, darling.” She shook her head. “Until tonight’s duel, that is, when I was desperate for something, anything to turn the tide. But that spell bases what you turn into on your personality – I had forgotten that – and, well, you know how Trixie sees herself.”
“Great and Powerful indeed,” Pinkie replied with a sage nod, turning to look once again at the transformed traveller terrorizing them… only to be pleasantly surprised. “Rarity, look, look! We lost her!”
“We did? HaHA!” Rarity let out a squeal of glee, but she didn’t let up on the speed. “I’m not taking any chances, though. We’re getting back to Ponyville as fast as we can and hiding out until that spell wears off.”
“Yay! Slumber party at Rarity’s— ow!” Pinkie smiled sheepishly. “Well, I guess after my trip to the hospital.”
Further into the forest, a massive creature finally freed itself from the tangle of broken lumber that had cost it its prey. Light blue skin, rippling over powerful muscles, glowed in the moonlight as the creature raised its head to the sky, a tiny star-spangled hat perched between its eyeridges.
Opening her mouth, Trixiesaurus Rex roared her frustration out into the night.
The first thing she saw was her parents standing there, looking down at her with smiles tinged with sadness.
The first thing she said was, “Aww, nuts.”
Her father chuckled despite himself. “That’s exactly what Ah said, all them years ago! Nice to see this Apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree.” Applejack had grown up significantly since the last time she had seen her father, but the reddish-brown stallion still towered over her as much as she remembered; Apple Tree was the source of Big Macintosh’s size and strength, after all.
There was something different about him, though, and it took Applejack a moment to place it: his signature hat wasn’t perched on his head, likely because it was on her own. “Ah’m dead, ain’t Ah?” Applejack asked, already knowing the answer. How else would she be seeing her parents?
“I’m afraid so, darling,” her mother asked, her drawl taking on a touch of that Manehattan accent that she had never quite shaken, even years after the mare named Golden Orange had left the big city and its high society behind to be with the love of her life. “I always told you that there were problems you just couldn’t solve by bucking, and a lightning elemental is certainly one of ‘em.”
Applejack shook her head. “It was after Twi. Ah couldn’t just stand back and do nothin’.” She glanced over her shoulder, only to see more of the great white expanse behind her, and she sighed. “Sure hope she stopped that thing.” Turning back to her parents, she had tears in her eyes as the gravity of the situation hit her. “Ah’m sorry, ah should be grateful to see you again, and Ah am, but… but me and Twi, we…”
Her mother stepped forward and nuzzled her filly, Applejack taking comfort tinged with nostalgia from the old gesture. “Oh, Applejack, that’s exactly how we all feel when we get here,” Golden said, stepping back and bringing a hoof up to wipe away her daughter’s tears. “Being attached to those in your life is what is really important.”
“Darn straight!” Apple Tree joined his family and playfully adjusted Applejack’s hat. “Hat looks good on you, by the way. And you should know, AJ, that once you been here a while, you come to be able to sense certain things. So I’ve got a feelin’ things are gonna turn out alright.”
“But Pa, how–” Applejack was interrupted as the worst pain she had felt in her life wracked her body, like every single one of her nerves had been set on fire. She would have fallen to the ground if not for her dad’s strong grip. “–what… what was that?” she gasped as the sensation ended.
“That, AJ, is the work of one Twilight Marigold Sparkle.” He smiled broadly at his daughter, even as his tears began to fall. “Ah’m mighty proud of you, Applejack, fer everything you did after we were gone, takin’ care of my Ma and yer siblings, helpin’ Sweet Apple Acres thrive, makin’ so many good friends, and especially yer marefriend, who happens to know some mighty powerful reses– er, resoos–”
“Resuscitation, dear.” Golden helped her husband along, before giving Applejack an almost smothering embrace. “Now, Jackie, I want you to be careful from now on. I don’t want to see you up here until you can tell me all about my great-great-grandchildren, you hear?” She kissed Applejack on her forehead, just like used to when she tucked her at night.
“Ah promise, Ma,” Applejack replied with a nod. “Ah guess this is good–” The excruciating pain returned, and with it, Applejack’s parents faded away.
…
Applejack opened her eyes.
Every muscle in her body was begging her to stay down, but despite their protests, Applejack propped herself up and kissed the weeping unicorn leaning over her.
The sun was sinking towards the horizon, painting the towers of Canterlot in yellow and orange hues, as the princess who commanded both sun and city returned home. It had been a very interesting day for Celestia, and despite the setting sun, it wasn’t nearly over yet.
As she approached the balcony to her chambers, Celestia noted a most unusual sight: her sister, outside. Since her return, Princess Luna had sequestered herself within Canterlot Castle, insisting that she catch up with what had happened in her thousand-year absence. At least, that was the reason that the nocturnal mare gave for not setting hoof outside the castle, but Celestia was certain that it had more to do with worry over how ponies would react to her, rather than any knowledge gap that was there.
Whatever the reason, seeing her sister outside of her own volition, even if it was just on the most private balcony in all of Canterlot, filled Celestia’s heart with even more happiness. This truly was a good day. Nodding to her Royal Guard escort, Celestia waited a moment for the two pegasi to take their leave before descending to speaking range. “Hello, Luna. It’s good to see you out and about.”
“Hail, fair sister,” Luna replied, and Celestia repressed for the hundredth time the urge to push her sister into using a more modern dialect. Her sister’s issues had to be tackled one at a time. “I pray thou forgive us this intrusion, but I had need to speak with thee before thou retires for the evening.”
“You never need to worry about intruding, sister, or about needing to speak with me,” Celestia said as she landed in front of Luna, quickly stepping forward to nuzzle her sister in greeting. This close to Luna, the solar princess could see that her sister’s mane was just starting to regain its former glory, a few wisps of light blue hair floating above her withers. Stepping back, Celestia added with an enigmatic smile, “And I wasn’t actually going to head for bed just yet, for reasons I suspect are related to your reason for wanting to talk.”
Luna nodded. “I thought thou might have felt it as well. I was asleep at the time, but the power I felt roused me from my slumber. It felt like… It felt like the Elements of Harmony.” She chuckled darkly, shaking her head. “I suppose I now have need to clarify; it felt like using the Elements of Harmony, like it did when we dealt with the Spirit of Chaos, not like when I was the target.”
Celestia sighed inwardly; Luna always brought everything back to the Nightmare. Choosing to ignore that tendency at the moment, the elder princess nodded. “Not only did I feel the power, I was actually present at its origin.” She passed by Luna and into her chambers, gesturing for her sister to follow. “That, Luna, was a Sonic Rainboom, when a pony moves so fast and with such conviction that they temporarily pierce the veil.”
“The Rainbow of Light,” Luna whispered in reverence, pausing in the middle of Celestia’s chambers as she considered the possibilities. Her sister went over to a closet on the wall, opening it to reveal not clothing, but a glowing blue crystal, suspended in midair. “Wait, is that…? I had thought them all destroyed!”
Celestia smirked again, touching her hoof to the crystal. “I managed to save one or two of them. They’re quite useful.” She gestured towards the crystal with her horn, and Luna reluctantly approached, placing her own hoof against the thrumming gem. Celestia’s horn glowed, her yellow aura encompassing the crystal, and with a flash of blue light, the two princesses vanished from one of the highest points in Canterlot.
They reappeared in one of the lowest points, a darkened cavern deep within the abandoned crystal mines. Being the princess of the night, Luna’s eyes needed no time to adjust to the near darkness, and she looked around in surprise. “Why would thou use such a valuable artifact just to go downstairs?”
“Because there are some resources too valuable to risk falling into anypony else’s hooves,” Celestia replied, her own eyes having adjusted enough to see the bubbling cauldron in the centre of the cavern. “Eye.”
Luna looked puzzled. “I didn’t ask thee anything.”
“She’s not saying ‘aye,’ you daft time-lost filly!” a creaking but energetic voice said from the darkness, and out from behind the cauldron walked an elderly unicorn mare. Whatever colour her coat and mane had once been was lost to time’s ravages, having gone white and grey respectively. The eye on her flank was still vivid and blue, though her actual eyes had greyed, a certain sign of blindness. “She’s saying my name!”
“Old mare, thou dares to speak to Us in this manner?” Luna shouted indignantly, the Royal Canterlot Voice echoing painfully off the crystalline walls. “Thou shalt show the proper respect when thou—”
“Enough, Luna,” Celestia said, her normal tone easily silencing her sister. “Seeing Eye has served the crown faithfully for decades now. She has earned a little leeway when it comes to protocol.” She took on a sly smirk as she turned to the elderly mare. “Sometimes she needs a lot of leeway, though.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Celly!” Seeing Eye grumbled loudly. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to show up! I was starting to think you’d forgotten all about me!”
Celestia shook her head as she stepped towards the cauldron, Luna at her flank. “Like anypony could ever forget you, Eye. So you’ve found them all already?” she asked, looking into the roiling water.
“Four of them. I don’t think one has found it just yet – just like that pink filly last time – and one I know is out there, but I just can’t seem to get a good look.” The elderly mare shrugged. “I think she – or he, who knows? – got a mark for subterfuge of some kind, but I’ll find ‘em! There’s never been a pony that ol’ Seeing Eye couldn’t get a look at!”
“Show them to me.”
At Celestia’s command, Seeing Eye’s horn began to glow, and the boiling water began to smooth, taking on the surface of a still pond as images began to appear in the depths. A blue pegasus filly rescuing a foal far out at sea, a brown earth pony colt covered in splotches of colour, a pink unicorn filly lifting what appeared to be several boulders above her head to the cheers and applause of a crowd, and a red pegasus colt laughing despite his bruised face and blackened eye all showed up with the waters for a few seconds before fading to the next.
“Who are these ponies, Tia?” Luna whispered, her eyes transfixed on the images within the cauldron.
“They are the next Elements of Harmony,” Celestia explained. “And I pray that they will never be needed.”
“Oh no! This is going to be a disaster! A tragedy! A catastrophe!”
“What are you, a thesaurus?” Scootaloo snarked at the panicking pink pony, but Pinkie paid no heed to the young pegasus, instead rushing from pony to pony in her increasing agitation.
“How could I have let this happen!?” she gasped, sobbing into Fluttershy’s pink mane as the shy pegasus gingerly patted her friend’s back, offering the rest of the room a nervous smile that said “I have no idea what is going on here.”
“Why, oh why, did it have to be today!?” Pinkie wailed as she shook Applejack back and forth, the farmmare’s eyes whirling in their sockets as sense and reason were rattled out of her by Pinkie’s powerful pulls.
“How will we possibly survive!?” the baker cried as she held Rainbow Dash’s face between her hooves, her lips pushed into an exaggerated kissy face as her eyes let Pinkie know that she was not pleased at all about what she was doing.
“And it’s all my fault!” Pinkie screamed as she grasped onto Twilight’s forelegs, her friend simply shaking her head at Pinkie’s extravagant and over-the-top behaviour (and the tears soaking into her fetlocks).
“Pinkie, this isn’t the end of the world! It’s just—” Twilight’s sage advice was interrupted as her vision was suddenly filled with enraged pink mare.
“Just what? Just the end of my livelihood? Just the end of fun and games and laughter? Just the end of everything that makes life worth living?!”
Twilight stammered for a response that would calm her friend, but fortunately, she was saved by the bell… the bell on the door of Sugarcube Corner, that is. Both mares turned to look at the new arrival, and where Twilight saw another one of her friends, Pinkie saw the most beautiful sight she had ever seen in her entire life. Not even the first Sonic Rainboom could compare.
“Darlings, Rarity has arrived!” the eponymous mare announced, gesturing to the bowl held over her head in a blue aura. “And I have procured the punch, so Pinkie—”
Rarity didn’t have a chance to finish as she was suddenly tackled by an ecstatic earth pony, who immediately set to work in smothering her with kisses. Her concentration lost, the punch bowl dropped for a second, but was fortunately caught up in a purple field of magic, Twilight simply shaking her head as she walked off to set down the punch and continue enjoying the party.
Near the doorway, Pinkie finally relented with her kisses long enough to say, “Rarity, you are my hero!”
Rarity smiled at Pinkie’s proclamation. “Nonsense, Pinkie, my dear. I did what any marefriend would do for her beloved. Besides, I know better than most just how something seemingly insignificant can feel like the worst possible thing.” The unicorn’s smile transformed subtlety, sending a thrill of desire through Pinkie. “Of course, I wouldn’t object to a hero’s reward, as it were…”
Pinkie gave Rarity a seductive smile in return. “A special party for later tonight? I suppose I can add it to my schedule…”
The palace rumbled insistently, as though it were angry at Twilight Sparkle for ignoring its protests of pain. Debris fell from the ceiling, magically-shaped stone that withstood millennia of wear only to fail now, and but it simply bounced off the unicorn’s shield spell, Twilight barely noticing it as she frantically scribbled down the last part of her message.
”’…should anypony… no, any creature ever read this,’” Twilight muttered, tongue sticking out as she concentrated. The last week had been so taxing on her magic that even lifting a quill was difficult, but she would finish up. There had to be a record, a warning, left behind. “‘Don’t make the same mistakes we did. Embrace the darkness as well as the light. Without both light and darkness, there is no balance, only… chaos and destruction. We learned that too late.’”
Twilight let the quill drop to the ground as she finished up. It wasn’t the best ending line, but it was a warning, not a grand novel. She quickly shoved the book into the waiting box and engaged the magical lock with a spark, sealing it within until such time as a creature of reason discovered it. She hoped the box would survive the destruction; it would have all been pointless otherwise.
“Twilight, you must go now!” The insistent voice of Princess Celestia filled Twilight’s head suddenly, and the unicorn frowned. She knew how much time she had! It had been her calculations that had determined just how much time Equestria had left in the first place.
“I’m coming,” Twilight spoke aloud, hoping Celestia would hear her; she did not have the energy for her own telepathic message at the moment. Turning from the desk she had been writing at, Twilight gingerly stepped around the fallen debris in her path and stepped out onto the balcony, taking in the view from Canterlot for perhaps the last time.
Not that there was much to the view anymore. Where once green forests and blue rivers had decorated a pristine landscape, now there was nothing but flickering orange flames consuming the plant life, black pits where the very earth itself had fallen into the mantle of the planet. A tear threatened to leak from Twilight’s eye as she looked at one such crater, where once the town of Ponyville had stood… but no. No, she had shed her tears for Ponyville already, and at least most of the residents had gotten out safely. Not the same could be said for some of the larger cities.
Forcibly tearing her gaze away from the destruction of the world she held dear, Twilight looked at her destination. It had been Pinkie Pie’s idea, really, and like most of her ideas, it had been completely ridiculous, but when everything else had failed, they had turned to the pink party pony’s peculiar plan. It had taken the full power of the Elements of Harmony, pumped straight into Princess Luna, but it had actually, amazingly worked.
Twilight focused on the transformed moon above her, forests of blue and rivers of purple where there had once been merely rock and dust, and said in a shaky voice, “I’m ready to visit our new home.”
“And it welcomes you, Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia’s voice replied in her head, and in a flash of golden light, the last pony vanished off the face of Equestria.
“Do I really need to go through my list of reasons why this is a bad idea?” Twilight asked as she followed behind Pinkie, her head held low as she trudged through the snow.
“You can if it’ll make you feel better!” Pinkie replied with a smile. Pinkie had dozens of different smiles, Twilight had come to learn over her years in Ponyville, and this one meant that the earth pony knew she had the upper hoof.
Twilight gestured to the blue, green, and brown vest she was wearing, the sight of which filled her with pride – as well as a little bit of disgust. She wasn’t as picky as Rarity in this regard, but she really needed to get around to changing the vest to something that didn’t clash so horribly with her coat. “As always, I’m the All-Team Organizer, so I really should be back at Town Hall keeping track of our progress,” she offered.
Pinkie gave an exaggerated shake of her head. “And you’re so super organized that the teams will run like clockwork for the hour that you’re gone!”
“The last time I tried to do this, I was, to quote a certain snarky dragon, a ‘natural disaster,’” Twilight said, wincing at the memory.
“Hmm… that is true.” Pinkie nodded sagely, and Twilight saw a glimmer of hope, but then that poofy mane gave another shake. “But that just means you’re not a natural like me! That’s why this time I’m going to teach you, nice and slow, so you can get the hang of it.”
Twilight would have sworn when she started this list that there had been more to it, but she was left grasping at straws as she said, “I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of other ponies.”
Pinkie abruptly stopped and turned to Twilight, the unicorn almost stumbling as she tried to halt her forward momentum. “It’ll only be you and me at the lake. I convinced Rarity that Spike’s little claws would be ideal for helping with the bird’s nests – and Spike certainly didn’t need much convincing to help out Rarity – and I looked at your giant enormous master schedule. You don’t have anypony assigned to do anything anywhere near this lake for hours yet.” Pinkie smiled another one of her smiles at Twilight, this one sincere and reassuring. “That just leaves little old Pinkie, and you know you never have to be embarrassed around me, Twilight.”
Twilight couldn’t help but blush at Pinkie’s words, her own tongue failing her as Pinkie took the lead once again. She only managed to find her voice as they crested the last snow-covered hill and she saw the lake below them. ‘Lake’ was definitely the right term; this wasn’t like the pond she’d stumbled upon Pinkie at a couple of years ago. This had to be one of the largest lakes in Ponyville.
“Pinkie, you really have to handle this all by yourself? I must have made a mistake in the schedule…” Twilight said as she finally trotted down the hill, catching up with the pink pony already putting on her skates. She couldn’t believe she had made such a terrible error. Maybe if she got back to Town Hall quickly enough, she could find some ponies who had finished their assigned tasks early and—
“I’m not handling it by myself, silly!” Pinkie replied as she finished tightening her rear skates, jumping onto her now-bladed hooves and stepping towards Twilight with yet another one of her smiles. “Relationships are all about give and take; I read that in a book, so it must be true, right? I teach you how to ice skate, and then you help me take care of breaking up this enormous lake. Sound good?”
Twilight smiled back at Pinkie’s planning, practically the equal of her own, and nodded eagerly as she started putting on her skates.
“Oh, and Twilight?” Twilight looked up from the task at hoof to see one more of Pinkie’s smiles, this one a sly smirk. “I’m not from Ponyville, so if a little magic happens, there won’t be anypony around who would really care.”
“Heh. Thanks, Pinkie, but I’ll try not to cheat. After all, what would Applejack say?”
Twilight smirked as well, but inwardly, as the master planner made another scheme. She’d show Pinkie a little magic, alright, the sort that all her friends would approve of, even on Winter Wrap-Up Day.
Alicorns Can Only Be Female - Romance, Alternate Universe
“Oh, wow, I’m nervous. I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous in my entire life! Oh boy oh boy oh boy…”
Dusk Shine rolled his eyes as his husband tried his hardest to pace a rut into the marble floor of the antechamber, to little avail. “Bubble, will you please settle down? It’s going to be alright.”
Reluctantly getting up from the awfully comfortable couch, the unicorn moved over to nuzzle Bubble against the base of his neck; it always worked to calm down the pink party pony when he got worried. He wished sometimes that he had some similar weakness that Bubble could take advantage of. “Or do you not want to go through with this? We can back down right now if you want; I’m certain Radiant would understand, and we can always look into magic again.”
Bubble sighed, stepping back from Dusk and giving him a sheepish smile. “No, no, I’m alright. You know as well as I do – no, better! – that magic isn’t always reliable for this. All-natural is the best way.” He raised an eyebrow at Dusk. “And it certainly doesn’t hurt that your sister is such a hottie.”
Dusk shook his head violently, sitting down so he could flatten his ears to his head and place his hooves over them. “Nope, not listening, lalala, not hearing anything about my sister in this sort of context!” “Really, Dusk, you’re not being very mature about this.” Bubble turned towards the voice, and seeing his husband react, Dusk did the same, only to find Princess Cadance staring at him with a smirk.
The noble scholar quickly leaped to his feet, brushing a hoof against his unruly mane. “Oh, sorry, Cadance. I just— Bubble was— You just—”
“Thank you again for being so understanding about this, Princess,” Bubble said, covering for his stammering mate. “Duskie and I really appreciate it!”
Cadance shook her head with a soft smile. “It was Radiant’s decision to make, not mine. Who am I to prevent my love from helping her dear brother?” The alicorn stepped forward and to the side, gesturing to the door she’d just opened. “She’s ready for you, Bubble Berry.”
“Oh.” The news hit Bubble like a truck, and he looked from side to side nervously. “Then— I suppose— I guess I should— OW!” He turned to Dusk, who was smiling gently as his horn’s glow faded. “Dusk!”
“Get going, Bubble. Don’t want to keep my sister waiting.” He glanced up at the ceiling, purposefully looking away. “You know how us Shines get when we have to wait.”
“Ah, right, then.” Bubble quickly ducked in to give Dusk a brief but tender kiss, and then with a parting nuzzle, he turned to the waiting door. He nodded once again to Princess Cadance as he passed by her, but paused as the alicorn quickly turned and began to whisper in his ear. Dusk couldn’t hear what was being said, but it made Bubble’s cheeks darken from pink to red. “I–I’ll keep that in mind,” he stuttered as he walked in and closed the door behind him.
Dusk and Cadance were left in awkward silence, both of them thinking and trying not to think of what was happening behind that door. After a moment, Dusk managed to get out, “Want to go get some Donut Joe’s like we used to?”
“Oh, by the sun and moon, yes,” Cadance replied, and the two shared a familiar laugh as they walked out of the antechamber, leaving behind their significant others to their important task.
“So Spike, here’s the plan,” Twilight said as she surreptitiously peeked around the corner, making sure the coast was still clear. “When the head chef goes on his break, I use my horn to cause a big ruckus, and his sew— sow— er, assistant chef will go to see what happened. That’s when we rush in there, get the goods, and get out before she comes back.” The unicorn turned back to the dragon behind her. “We’re going to have to be quick, daring, and courageous, just like Daring Do! Are you ready?”
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha Twilight!” Spike exclaimed in glee before he brought his tail to his mouth, the baby dragon delighted to be with his big sister. A strange look came over the baby, though, and he waddled over to the filly, tugging on her mane with her claws. “Twilight, Pwincess angwy?”
The young filly shook her head. “She’s the ruler of all of Equestria, Spike!” Twilight’s horn lit up, the filly straining to lift Spike off of the ground; fortunately, her lessons had been paying off, and she managed to place her surrogate baby brother onto her back. “She’s not going to miss one little container of ice cream!” She peeked back around the corner again, smirking as the head chef headed out of the kitchen, whistling an unfamiliar tune. “Okay, there he goes.”
Spike, meanwhile, had given up his tail-sucking for the far more enjoyable pastime of yanking her mane. The young filly simply bore it, barely grunting in pain; she was used to the dragon’s strange fascination with mane-pulling. She thought it might be because he didn’t have a mane, but her science classes had just recently taught her that that was only a hypothosis, one that required testing.
The testing would have to wait for another time, however, as Twilight saw her chance and struck. Her horn glowing intensely, the young filly pushed open a nearly-hidden door down the hall. The fancy false wall opened up to reveal a much more utilitarian broom closet, one filled with all the tools necessary to keep the palace neat and tidy. They could also be used to create a huge mess, as Twilight proved by pushing blindly into the room. She couldn’t see what she had just done, but the cacophony of falling brooms and spilling liquids was certainly audible, both to her and to the chef’s assistant.
Twilight ducked back around the corner as the grumbling mare came storming past, and then quickly ran for the kitchen as fast as her little hooves could carry her, Spike only staying on her back thanks to his deathgrip on her mane. The vast kitchen loomed over the unicorn filly as she entered, but she knew exactly where she was going, and within a minute, she was standing in front of the enchanted iceboxes.
“Okay, Spike.” Twilight sat down, letting the baby dragon slide off her back with a giggle. “These doors are heavy, so I need to concentrate. Watch my back, okay?” Spike replied with another laugh that didn’t really indicate that he knew what Twilight was talking about at all, but the filly accepted it and concentrated on the task at hand. A purple glow surrounded the handle of the icebox, and ever so slowly, the door opened up, causing the two children to shiver at the sudden wave of cold air.
When the door was fully opened, Twilight moved her attention to the tub of ice cream within, but as she was pulling her prize out, Spike suddenly gasped. The sound was followed by an angry, “Young filly, just what do you think you’re doing!?”
“Aaaah!” In her panic to turn around and look at the assistant chef, Twilight broke her concentration on the tub of ice cream, and it fell, hitting the edge of the icebox and bouncing forward. Twilight watched it sail over her head, her bright young mind seeing where it would land moments before it actually did, unable to do anything as the massive container landed directly on Spike’s head.
“Spike! Spike, are you alright?” she asked as she shifted the ice cream off of Spike with her magic, but she found the baby dragon only giggling and laughing. Breathing a sigh of relief at just how indestructible dragons were, Twilight’s mind shifted to the other problem on hoof: being caught. In a startling display of multitasking for a young unicorn, Twilight swept Spike back onto her back, lifted the tub of ice cream, and ran for dear life, the assistant chef only chasing after her a bit before deciding that it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Hmm… that’s strange.”
“What, Your Majesty? What is so strange?” the head chef asked, his mind quickly flipping through all sorts of nightmare scenarios. Things rarely turned out well for him when the Princess herself came to the kitchen.
“The rocky road ice cream seems to be gone,” Celestia said with a sigh, shutting the ice box. “And it hasn’t been served with dessert for the last week.” The royal visage pouted a little, the way only her servants ever saw. “I was looking forward to a bowl of that.”
“We are pleased to announce the result of our search for the newest Wonderbolt!”
A cheer followed Spitfire’s words, the crowded Cloudsdale Colosseum loud enough to almost be deafening even back stage, and the pegasus felt a twinge of that fear she had lived with for so long. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had once been – she had once been almost crippled by it – but it was still there, lurking underneath her fresh new Wonderbolts uniform. She swallowed nervously, trying to remember what she had learned about fighting her anxiety, and it worked. Mostly.
“This proud young pegasus, a graduate of our own Wonderbolts-sponsor Summer Flight Camp, proved her wings’ worth in our latest open recruitment call, beating out over a hundred other applicants for the position!”
She stepped closer to the curtain, hearing Spitfire approach her cue to fly out. She quickly did a once over of her uniform, making sure everything was in place and looking good. Her friends were out there, after all, courtesy of Twilight’s magic, and she wanted to make sure she impressed all of them, especially Rarity. Rarity had insisted that she was so proud of her anyway, just for making it so far, but the new Wonderbolt wanted to especially dazzle her fashionable friend.
“Please join me in welcoming our newest Wonderbolt…”
She took a deep breath. After everything she had gone through to get here, she wasn’t going to have performance anxiety for a simple announcement, was she?
“Fluttershy!”
Fluttershy flew through the curtain, glee filling her as the massive cheering crowd before her only produced mild nervousness instead of an overwhelming need to hide. As she flew over to the stage to stand next to her captain, the pegasus reflected back on just how she ended up in this position.
“I turned them down.”
“What!?” Fluttershy could count on her hooves the number of times she had raised her voice to her marefriend in all the years she had known her, and this was one of them. The news had just shocked the loudmouth within her right out. Calming herself a bit, she asked, “Why would you turn down the Wonderbolts? This has been your dream since before I met you. You worked so hard for it.”
“I know that, ‘Shy. I was kinda there for it.” Rainbow Dash stepped forward and placed her forehead again Fluttershy’s, sighing deeply as her magenta irises locked with aquamarine. “But when I was a little filly, I didn’t have you. Well, I did, but just as a friend, not as we are now. You’re my dream now, ‘Shy; I wouldn’t leave you behind for the world.” She chuckled. “They said they’d leave room for me if I change my mind – guess saving them that one time did mean something – but I’m not going to.”
Dash’s words filled Fluttershy with both joy and dread, and as she often did, she focused on the dread. “No, no, I can’t be the reason you give up on the Wonderbolts. You don’t have to leave me, Rainbow Dash; I’m fine with you being off all the time. It will just make our time together all the more special.”
Dash was tearing up at Fluttershy’s words, shaking her head slowly. “No, Fluttershy, it doesn’t work like that. It wouldn’t be a week here or there without me. I’d be gone for months at a time! Training, shows, appearances. I’ve been following the Wonderbolts my whole life, I know what their schedules are like. And you don’t deserve that.” She lifted up her face and kissed Fluttershy on the forehead. “It’s alright. It’s not your fault. It’s not anypony’s fault. I just changed. I found something better, somepony better.”
“But…” Fluttershy sighed. “Alright, Dash. I can accept that.”
But Fluttershy wasn’t the Element of Honesty. She had lied. She could not accept that, could not accept Dash giving up her dream. But she couldn’t break Dash’s heart either… or her own, if she was being truthful with herself.
There had been only one course of action.
She had known her marefriend’s training regimen by heart, and she had pushed herself to meet it. This wasn’t trying to get up to some minimum wingpower to fuel a tornado; this was joining the most elite flyers in all of Equestria. Night after night, under the watchful gaze of Luna’s charge, she had pushed herself further and further, trying to go faster, trying to be more agile, and trying all the while to keep Rainbow Dash in the dark about it; she knew that if Dash learned about what she was doing, she would put a stop to it.
One by one, her other friends had been recruited to help her. Twilight had lent her her planning expertise, as well as the means to measure her progress. Pinkie may have specialized in cakes and pies, but the pink pony understood proper nutrition as well, making her meals that would fuel her flight but not weigh her down. Rarity had always supported Fluttershy in everything, and she had insisted to Rainbow Dash that it was her idea to move their spa visits, so important in taking care of Fluttershy’s aching muscles, from weekly to every other day. Even Applejack had eventually caught wind of the plan, and though she had nothing to offer, the fact that she had chosen to keep quiet about it for Fluttershy’s sake had meant the world to her.
Eventually, the Wonderbolts had put out their call for new recruits, and there had been no way to hide it from Dash any longer. Her friends had offered to be there, but Fluttershy had chosen to break the news alone to her marefriend. Rainbow Dash had been angry at first, so angry that she had yelled at Fluttershy, but the older pegasus had known that was coming and had been ready for it.
When Dash had exhausted her anger, she had admitted that she was touched that Fluttershy would do this for her, but she had demanded that this would be it, this one shot. Either Fluttershy made it in and they’d both be Wonderbolts, or she wouldn’t and they’d live a life without them, and they would be content either way.
“We also have a special announcement to make!” Spitfire announced to the gathered pegasi after they had finally quieted down enough for her magically-amplified voice to be heard. “Fluttershy is not the only one joining the Wonderbolts today!”
Fluttershy saw the confusion ripple throughout the crowd; only one opening in the Wonderbolts had been posted, so a second new recruit was unexpected. The only ones not looking confused were the four normally earthbound ponies near the centre; they knew exactly what was going on.
“Our second new addition needs no introduction! Many of you were here in this very stadium when she both won the Best Young Fliers Competition of 1000 and saved the lives of four ponies simultaneously!” The crowd began to grow louder again as realization spread through them. “I was one of those ponies, and since that day, I have looked forward to the moment I would get to say the following words: please join me in welcoming our other new Wonderbolt… Rainbow Dash!”
As they had planned it, Rainbow Dash’s arrival was much flashier than Fluttershy’s, a Sonic Rainboom exploding right over Cloudsdale Colosseum. The prismatic-maned pegasus landed in a flash to the other side of Spitfire, waving to the crowd, who was now cheering far louder for Dash than they had for Fluttershy.
Fluttershy didn’t mind however; the only pony she wanted the attention of turned to her even as she continued waving to the assembled pegasi, tears in her eyes as she mouthed, “Thank you,” to her marefriend. Fluttershy simply nodded to Dash, even as she felt her own tears hit her.
“Fluttershy, you really don’t need to trouble yourself on my account,” Rarity said, lifting her head from the table and looking over her shoulder at Fluttershy, raising an eyebrow at the supplies her friend had prepared in front of her.
Gently but firmly, the pegasus pushed Rarity’s head back into place, leaving her with a pleasant view out into the meadows surrounding Fluttershy’s cottage. “Please relax, Rarity. Oh, and it’s no trouble at all. You’ve been working so hard all week; you deserve your spa day, even if the pipes have burst down at the spa.”
Rarity nodded lightly before letting her head rest on the table. “As you wish, my dear.” She let her eyes close, smiling slightly. Fluttershy so wanted to do this for her, so she’d relax and enjoy her friend’s touch, even though Fluttershy’s hooves wouldn’t be nearly as skilled as those of a professional masseuse. And then she’d insist on giving Fluttershy the same treatment, and—
That thought, no, all thought left Rarity’s mind as she felt a jolt of electricity run up her spine, and it took her a moment before her brain restarted and she realized that it had been a cramped muscle finally loosening up. After a moment more, she had regained enough awareness to finally feel Fluttershy’s hooves on her back, and it wasn’t the oh-so-gentle, feather-light touch she had expected, but strong determined strokes, pressing hard enough to force her muscles into relaxing.
The unicorn simply melted onto the table as relaxation overtook her, and she lazily asked, “Fluttershy, dear, how did you get so good at this?”
An innocent giggle was her response. “Oh, once you’ve massaged bears, ponies are pretty easy, actually.” Rarity tried to parse Fluttershy’s words – massaging bears? – but thinking about such confusing things was beyond her at the moment, and so she simply settled down and enjoyed her massage.
Rarity had almost dozed off when a gentle voice in her ear whispered, “Rarity, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to work on your bottom.” Rarity responded with a nod and reluctantly rolled over, not even bothering to open her eyes as she felt Fluttershy’s hooves press into her chest. Her touch here was more delicate, the bottom of a pony not meant to take nearly as much abuse as their back was.
Strangely, the lighter touches kept Rarity more aware of what was happening, and so she noticed immediately when she suddenly started being massaged in four places at once. The two new sensations were as delicate and feather-light as Rarity had expected Fluttershy’s massage to be in the first place, and she realized that it was her friend’s wings entering into the fray.
With the four different points of contact all moving further down her body, Rarity was starting to feel an entirely different sensation, and she wondered if she should tell Fluttershy to stop. After a moment, she dismissed the thought; Fluttershy would be mortified to learn how she was causing Rarity to feel. There was no way the shy pegasus could know what she was doing to her, after all.
At least, that’s what she thought right up until she suddenly felt Fluttershy’s muzzle against her own. Rarity decided to return the kiss after a moment’s surprise, the pegasus’ tender lips gently teasing at hers and encouraging them to open up and let her in. As their tongues wrestled with each other, Fluttershy’s showing some surprising aggression, Rarity began to wonder just how long her closest friend had felt this way about her.
As the two parted their lips, Rarity finally opened her eyes to find Fluttershy’s beautiful aquamarine irises staring at her, filled with a worry Rarity was familiar with in her friend… as well as a hunger she was not. “Fluttershy, I… I had no idea—”
“I–I know we have to talk now, Rarity, but, if it’s okay with you… I’d like to finish your massage first.”
The tone in Fluttershy’s voice made perfectly clear just what sort of massage she was talking about, and after taking a moment to collect her wits, Rarity nodded, a smile growing on her face. The unicorn laid back her head and closed her eyes as Fluttershy started to show her exactly how talented her hooves were.
When her marefriend had, completely out of the blue, invited her to come with her on her yearly trip home, Applejack had figured that it was a golden an opportunity as any to once and for all get the truth of Pinkie’s past. As long as she had known the pink party pony, all the way from barely-tolerated acquaintance to good friends to tail-tied lovers, Pinkie had maintained that same story, the one about the rock farm and a family that never smiled, and while Applejack trusted Pinkie as much as her own flesh and blood, she knew that there had to be some sort of catch, some twist that made it all make sense. Applejack was a farmer herself, and she knew, as certain as apples were the best food on Celestia’s green Equestria, that ponies did not farm rocks.
But everything she knew had been shattered the moment they’d crested that final hill on the walk from the Rambling Rock Ridge train station, and Applejack had laid her eyes for the first time on the place her marefriend called home. She was seriously considering going out and partaking of some pears now, or maybe some bananas, because this was seriously bananas.
Applejack had wanted to convince herself that it was just a field left fallow, or perhaps some terrible disaster had befallen the Pies’ crop, but she was a farmer, and she could tell the moment she stepped past the gate that the soil wouldn’t ever sustain anything worth growing. It had been too much, and as much as she could understand Pinkie wanting to see her parents again, she had forced her marefriend to show her exactly what it was she had done on the farm.
She had watched as Pinkie rolled a rock from one part of the field to another, giggling all the way and saying how much easier it was now that she wasn’t a little filly, and that had drawn out the phrase, the one Applejack hadn’t wanted to say out loud but had been forced to. So she saw that oh-too-familiar expression on Pinkie’s, the one that meant that she had been hurt by something Applejack had said or done, and she knew she had messed up big time.
“You still don’t believe me,” Pinkie said, her voice not even accusing her, just pointing out the simple fact. “We’re here, you can see for yourself what we farm, and you still won’t believe me.”
“I’m sorry, Pinkie, I really am,” Applejack said, forcing herself to not look away from Pinkie’s pain-filled gaze. It hurt, but she deserved it right about now. “Everything you said seems to be true, but… I just don’t get it. What’s the point of farmin’ rocks? Y’can’t eat ‘em, there’s not gonna be much of a market for ‘em… How does yer family make its livin’, sugarcube? That’s what I can’t see.”
Wordlessly, Pinkie stood up and turned, and for a moment, Applejack thought she was about to just walk away and leave her. She was prepared to race after Pinkie when the pink mare suddenly leaned forward, putting her weight into a well-formed buck that cracked her hooves against a particularly large stone. The stone split apart down the middle, the two halves falling to either side, and Applejack had shield her eyes against the sudden blinding brightness.
When her eyes had recovered, Applejack blinked a few times and looked at the split open rock. Inside it sparkled gems like she had only ever seen in Rarity’s possession, a cacophony of colours that covered the full spectrum. “Well, I’ll be darned…”
Pinkie managed a weak smile. “They’re sunstones. They naturally convert sunlight into gems inside of them. They work naturally – that’s what Rarity found when she was a filly, a huge natural sunstone! – but our family found out a long time ago that if you rotate them and move them around to catch more sunlight, you could grow gems inside of them much muchfaster.” She looked at Applejack, her stare suddenly very serious. “And that’s a Pie family secret, Jackie, never to be revealed to outsiders, so there’s only one thing we can do now.”
“Pinkie Promise?” Applejack asked as Pinkie turned and leaned into the split sunstone, her muzzle fishing through the assorted gems for something.
“Mmm-mmm,” Pinkie said with a shake of her head, her mouth now holding a particularly round red gemstone. The pink pony turned to her own saddlebags, digging through them for a second before she found what she was looking for. She turned and fiddled around with her hooves for a second, and Applejack couldn’t figure out just what Pinkie was doing.
Then Pinkie turned back around, and Applejack’s eyes widened so much she was afraid they’d fall out. Hanging around one of Pinkie’s hooves was that same stone she had just plucked from the sunstone, now set rather expertly in a golden necklace. A golden necklace in the shape of a heart, that Applejack knew could only mean one thing.
Pinkie smiled, sweet and sincere. “No, the only course of action left to us… is a Pinkie Proposal.”
“Nhhehehehe… Hahahaheeheeheeheeheehee! Oh, this is too rich, darling, heeheeheehee!”
Applejack wasn’t normally the type to think through all the scenarios; when she made a plan, she tended to just assume things would work out the way she wanted and resolved to think on the fly should something go amiss. But for this plan, she had actually gone and tried to figure out all the ways Rarity might react.
Rarity laughing right in her face, so hard that the farmmare could hear her natural accent slipping through, had not been something she had considered. It was even more proof that Applejack truly didn’t get Rarity.
“Now what’s so darn funny!?” Applejack asked, her annoyance seeping into her words despite her attempt to hold them back.
“Oh-ho-ho-ho, Appleja-a-ack,” Rarity said as she tried to hold back her laughter. “And here I expected Pinkie’s present for my birthday to give me a good laugh, not yours! Oh, my.” She giggled a couple more times, wiping a tear from her eye as she regained her regal composure. “I must thank you for that, darling. I really did need that laugh; getting older is only getting more and more depressing, don’t you find?”
Applejack grit her teeth together, desperately wanting to bite back the words she felt rising up unbidden, but she was the Element of Honesty for a reason. “Not as depressin’ as havin’ the fancy outfit you only put on for a friend’s benefit get mocked by said friend.”
The smile slowly disappeared from Rarity’s face, her eyes widening. “You mean you–you didn’t intend this as a farce? This was a legitimate attempt at dressing up?”
“That’s right, it was! And I’m sorry for patronizin’ yer competition, but I wanted this to be a surprise, dagnabbit!” Applejack’s voice was getting louder as she went, but she knew the only way out now was to get it all out of her system. “I went and spent good bits on this here dress. I had my hair done up all nice and shiny. I got us a reservation for two at that fancy new restaurant that you haven’t been able to shut up about; I had to pull some strings with the kitchen staff, give ‘em a good deal on my apples to do so. Tarnations, Rarity, I even left my pappy’s hat at home! And now yer tellin’ me it was for nothin’!?”
The only sound in the Boutique was Applejack’s heavy breathing, her eyes fixed on Rarity’s, which were brimming once again with tears, but of an entirely different kind. After a few moments of silence, the earth pony lowered her gaze to the ground. “Look, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to be yelled at on yer birthday… You shouldn’t have to be yelled at at all, Rarity.”
A few hoofbeats were all the warning Applejack got before she felt Rarity’s muzzle against her neck, the nuzzle forcing her to raise her head and see Rarity’s sad smile. “It’s quite alright, dear. I should be the one apologizing, not you; you do all these wonderful things for me, and I reward you by laughing at you?” She shook her head. “No. Applejack, I am truly sorry. You are a wondrous, considerate friend.”
Applejack moved to nuzzle Rarity in response to her apology, but the unicorn was already stepping back, her horn beginning to pulse with light. “However, I’m afraid the same cannot be said for the charlatans who sold you this dress.” Rarity’s tools of the trade floated into Applejack’s field of view, worrying dominated by a large variety of scissors and shears. “Applejack, would you mind if I made a few… adjustments?”
“I… suppose not,” Applejack replied hesitantly.
Rarity smiled wickedly. “Excellent.” The tools suddenly flew towards Applejack at what she felt were decidedly unsafe speeds, and she struggled to hold still for a moment before realizing that Rarity’s precision was simply perfect, the various implements of fashion not even harming a hair in her coat as they worked on the dress.
All the while, Rarity criticized the work of her competitors, her eyes set in a hard glare. “Are they colourblind? This fabric doesn’t match your coat in the slightest. This is far too wide for the back; are they trying to make you look overweight? By Celestia, this is the gaudiest ornamentation I have ever seen.”
In a couple minutes, Rarity’s weapons of war had done their dirty work, excising everything the fashionista had found offensive about the dress. As the sharp blades retreated back to their homes, Applejack finally chanced a glance downwards, and found herself as naked as the day she was born, the remains of her dress littering the floor around her. She looked up at Rarity in surprise, finding a satisfied smile on her friend’s face.
“Now your true beauty shows.”
Applejack couldn’t help but blush, rubbing the back of her head (and being annoyingly reminded of her missing hat in the process). “As long as we’re bein’ so honest and all, I gotta confess… I had sort of dreamt that this evenin’ would end with you tearin’ that dress offa me.”
Rarity smirked, giving Applejack a sultry gaze as she said, “Well, since we’ve already taken care of that, we shall simply have to see what other sorts of activities we can end our evening with. Now, about that reservation…”
Only moments earlier, the Great and Powerful Trixie had succeeded in what she had set out to do all those months ago; that purple pretender to her power, Twilight Sparkle, laid in a slightly singed heap across the open field where they had held their duel. Her opponent’s hanger-ons, who had served as adequate witnesses for her glorious victory, took in the scene with a mixture of shock and rage; Trixie would have pitied them, having their worldview shattered so thoroughly, but they were beneath her notice.
Even with all the knowledge she had gained over the course of her year of preparation, even with spells lost to ponykind since before Nightmare Moon’s banishment, Twilight Sparkle’s magic had proved formidable. But Trixie had had more than her amazing magic at her side; she had been fuelled by a rage that had steadily grown that night she had been chased from Ponyville. Sure, at first, the Great and Powerful Trixie had been perfectly willing to simply move on; so what if one town of mouth-breathing hicks hadn’t recognized her greatness? But Twilight Sparkle had not been content to simply leave things at that. Slowly but surely, towns began to scoff at her daring deeds when she arrived; some even barred her from performing, no doubt the work of that purple pest.
It had all come together when she had just so happened to catch a glimpse of her nemesis in the Canterlot Times, under the headline “Grand Galloping Gala Goes Gadzooks!” On that day, she had learned her foe’s name, Twilight Sparkle, as well as her connection with Princess Celestia herself, and she had finally realized what should have been obvious all along: Twilight Sparkle was using her connections in the Equesrian government to keep Trixie down!
There had only been one appropriately Great and Powerful response to that, and so after much study and training, Trixie had returned to this little hovel in the shadow of Canterlot and called out her nemesis, threatening ruin and destruction if she didn’t get what was her due. And now, all that time had been worth it, to see Twilight felled by her magic…
But it wasn’t enough. Not yet. Twilight Sparkle had to lose everything, just as Trixie had, and so she turned her attention to the pink pony nearest her, the only one of the four that looked at her not with anger, but with tears in her eyes. “You would still stand with this pathetic mare? Has Trixie not proven how much more Great and Powerful she is than this Twilight Sparkle?” Her horn began to glow, preparing a spell appropriate for dealing with a simple but hardy earth pony.
“It doesn’t matter how powerful your magic is! Twilight is one of the bestest friends a pony could ever have, and if you don’t understand that,” the pink pony replied, daring taking a step towards Trixie and raising herself up to make herself as large as possible, “then you have to go through me first!”
Trixie shook her head, smirking at the earth pony’s foolishness. “Very well, then. Let’s see how well you stand for your friends when you—”
“No.”
The sheer gravitas of the word stopped Trixie in her tracks, if only to look around to see which of the four ponies staring at her had just earned the right to be Twilight Sparkle’s first punishment. She realized after a second, though, that it wasn’t any of the four; it was the yellow pegasus who had been attending to Twilight Sparkle’s comatose body all this time. That same pegasus had seemed cowed before by Trixie’s Great and Powerful presence, but she was now standing, turning towards Trixie and lifting her head to stare—
Stare.
Trixie couldn’t look away from the pegasus’s fierce aquamarine gaze as she slowly approached the showmare, despite every fibre of her being wanting to. The pegasus’ voice was quiet, yet to Trixie’s ears it was the only sound in all the world, the words worming their way past her ears and into her brain. “You call yourself Great and Powerful? You might be Powerful, but you certainly aren’t Great. You’re just a bully who uses all her power to intimidate others. Instead of using your gifts to help others, you just help yourself.”
She had thought her battle to defeat Twilight Sparkle had been the hardest thing she had ever done, but that paled in comparison to the effort it took Trixie to open her mouth and barely squeak, “Trixie… deserves…”
“You deserve love and compassion like any other pony, but you try to take what can only be freely given!” At this point, the pegasus was a hoof away from her, her angry stare having become the only thing in existence to Trixie. “But you wouldn’t know that. You don’t know how to give, only take. You are the Small, Greedy, Selfish Trixie, and I will not let you harm another hair on the heads of my Twilight or any of my friends! Now sit there and think about what you’ve done.”
“Y–Yes, ma’am.” The Small, Greedy, Selfish Trixie promptly sat down on her haunches, and though she could see and hear as the pegasus stopped staring at her, running over to the stirring Twilight Sparkle and bestowing worried nuzzles and kisses on her, all she could think about was all she had taken from ponies, all she had stolen from them.
