1. Square Root of Five-Hundred Twenty-Nine
I had everything in place. Gummy and I had forged a letter from Celestia, and I’d bribed Spike with a triple-layer chocolate gem cake to have it delivered to Twilight. Any second now, all five of my best friends would run into the library in a panic to retrieve the Elements.
I shifted my weight onto my back hooves and put my goggles and flak helmet on. Just a little longer and they’d step through that door and I’d push the button on my party cannon and surprise the heck out of them.
Oh, this was going to be the best party ever!
“Wait for it. . .” I said.
“Wait for it. . .” I repeated.
“Uh, Pinkie? Why are you talking to a pillow cushion?” Lyra asked.”
“Shut up! You’re ruining their immersion!”
“Whose immersion?”
The door swung open and Twilight flicked on the lights with her magic. With a smirk, I pushed the button.
“Surprise!” everypony shouted.
Several things happened at once. Twilight, being the jumpy alicorn she is, teleported to safety as the gunpowder charge in my cannon detonated. Dash, being twenty percent faster than the average Pegasus, rolled to the side. Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy stood there like rabbits in front of a runaway apple cart.
Poor Fluttershy took the brunt of the blast as several rolls of streamers that failed to unwind hit her in the face. Rarity swallowed a large quantity of confetti and began choking on it. Applejack got hit in the face with silly string, which, in hindsight, isn’t so silly when propelled at several hundred miles per hour into your face.
As the smoke cleared and the guests got a good whiff of the sulfurous air, I rushed over and smiled as wide as I could.
“Happy birthday, girls!”
Fluttershy was curled up in a ball, crying in joy.
“Pinkie! What did ah tell ya about that darn party cannon?!” Applejack shouted.
“That it was super fun and gets you every time?”
“Ah think the exact words were ‘it’s a big gun and likely to kill us next time.’”
“But look, Fluttershy enjoyed it!”
Rarity coughed up some confetti as she got to her hooves. “Please. . .” She cleared her throat again. “Please, Pinkie, she has post traumatic stress disorder from that party cannon. Didn’t you see her at the Summer Sun Celebration when they shot the fireworks?”
“Is that why she kicked Scootaloo in the face, stole her helmet, and dove into that ditch?” I asked.
“Yes!” Rarity barked.
“Oh, it makes so much more sense now! I thought it was because the breeze caught my tail, and she thought it was a twitchy tail, and that a firework was going to fall on her head and explode and mess up her mane and she’d have to go to the salon but they’d be like ‘sorry Fluttershy, your mane is completely burn—’”
Applejack jammed her dirty hoof in my mouth. My friends always talked to me about boundaries, and yet anytime I started to talk for too long they just shoved the nearest foot or blunt object into my mouth. Was that even sanitary? I always washed my hooves before I eat; I don’t want dirt or rabbit poop in my salad. And yet, I open my mouth and bam! In goes their foot.
I bit her leg, causing her to pull her hoof out of my mouth. “Applejack, that’s nasty—”
A loud pop interrupted me as Twilight rematerialized. “What’s going on?”
Dash flew down from upstairs, peeking her head over the guardrail. “Is it safe to come out?”
“Of course it is!” I lied. I had more fun surprises planned and I couldn’t have her hiding from them. She came downstairs and was greeted by the other ponies. I had invited every single one in Ponyville to this party. As they were distracted, I went back to my party cannon and loaded the back-up charge. I wouldn’t let Twilight go home un-silly-stringed this year!
“Fire in the hole!” I shouted, hitting the button. With a loud explosion, my special super-sticky-silly-string shot out of the barrel. Twilight threw up a shield just in time to cause the detonation to splatter over every single pony in the room except for her.
“Pinkie!” She fired her horn up again, causing my party cannon to vanish.
“Awww, come on, Twilight! I make sure to only launch stuff at safe velocities after I put Mr. Cake in that coma for a month,” I explained.
Twilight laughed and trotted over to me. “Tell you what, how about I let you shoot a little silly string in my hair, and you stop assaulting my party guests? After all, you’re turning twenty-three, too! Don’t you want to eat some cake?”
“Do I ever! It’s not often all six of us have the same birthday, in fact, it only happens once a year! I baked our special cake all by myself! It’s got over twelve pounds of sugar, forty-two pounds of baker’s chocolate, half a barrel of flour, and like a bazillion eggs!” I was already bouncing on my hooves to get a taste of that delicious cake.
As ponies spread out and the party got into the normal rhythm, I took up my place beside the snacks table. Being a party planner was a full time job and meant mixing work and play. Still, when your work is play that just makes it twice as fun. I’d baked some ‘special cupcakes’ and even saved up six barrels of hard apple cider for tonight. The secret is to cut the hard apple cider with grain alcohol so you never run out.
“Um, Pinkie?” Fluttershy whispered.
“Yeah? Did you come to play pin the tail on the pony?” I asked.
“No, I, uhm. . . Please stop firing cannons around me. And, if it’s okay, I’d really like a slice of cake.”
I smiled and handed her a corner piece of the greatest cake ever baked by a pony. “Here you go. Just be sure to brush and floss after eating it! Colgate says I’m gonna get even more cavities if I don’t do so every time I eat a cake, but flossing is way too much work personally.”
“Um, okay. Thank you, Pinkie.”
“You’re welcome! Hey, Spike, how’s it going?” I asked.
He looked at me from across the room. Spike had on an apron and was carrying a broom and dustpan around. “How does it look? Twilight didn’t find your prank very funny, and now I’m stuck cleaning up the mess.”
“Hmph, what a party pooper. I’ll go talk to her.”
I headed across the improvised dance floor and found the girls enjoying some hard apple cider. I’d forgotten how many times I’d cut it with grain alcohol, but it still tasted like cider and wasn’t flammable, so how bad could it have been? I took a cup and drank it, feeling a layer of my throat get burned off on the way down. Yep, pretty much pure grain alcohol at that point.
“Sho, I wash like,” Twilight slurred. “Like coem here you chunk ohf sthallion! Ah whaz gonna let him mount me, rightsh in the midzle of clash!”
“Haha, great story, Twilight! How many have you had to drink?” I asked. She was easily the biggest lightweight in Ponyville and it was my job as the designated party-pony to ensure nopony wound up in the hospital.
“Sheven,” she responded.
“Okay, can you cast that one spell that makes all the alcohol in your blood go away? You’re gonna have one hell of a hangover at this pace!”
“Shure,” Twilight answered. She lit up her horn and I heard a large snapping sound. Seconds later, a branch two feet across fell down in front of the window, sending up a wave of dust as it landed. “Hehe, jush a little to the lefht.”
“Um, on second thought, why don’t you take a nap, Twilight?” I asked.
“Yeah, ah hate ta shee such a lightweight wastin’ my cider!” Applejack shouted. She started laughing and was joined by Dash.
“Hey, try these cupcakes Pinkie made,” she offered.
“Wait, Dash, are those the crystal cupcakes for Spike? I heard methylamphetamine gems are only healthy for dragons to eat!”
“Nonsense, they’re tasty!” Dash jumped in the air, her wings flapping like a hummingbird. “I feel like I could do a rainboom in two seconds flat!”
“Uh, maybe you’ve all had enough. This is getting out of hand.”
“You need to loosen up. Get her, AJ!” Dash shouted.
“Gettin’ who?” Applejack looked at us in confusion. She saw Dash grab a mug of hard cider, and fly towards me. “Oh!”
I felt my hock tickle, which meant I was about to be tackled. Unfortunately, Dash was faster than normal from the crystal cupcakes, and Applejack used a lasso. It was hardly a fair fight. Seconds later, I was being force-fed hard cider through a funnel, just like back in college.
I kept gasping for air as mug after mug of hard cider flowed into me, and pretty soon I was plastered. Yep, I, Pinkie Pie, was shit-faced.
“Chug! Chug! Chug!” Applejack chanted.
Finally, I squirmed to the side and threw up.
“Aww, she wash on the twelth mug too! That would’ve been a new record.”
“Guysh, I dun feel sho good,” I slurred. Mah vizion waz gettin’ blury and sho hard ti thnki.
Mah fets got up and over the soda to pillow ah nap. Is shuper spinny and fzunny and Shyflutter makz gud blankte.
I rolled over and moaned as the sunlight came in the room. My mouth tasted like pizza and orange juice. It always tastes like that after throwing up a few times, except when I burp. When I burp, I can still taste the apple cider.
My attempt to stand up failed horribly and I collapsed to the ground. I shook my head and examined myself for any further injury. My mane was still pink and fluffy, my fur still fuzzy salmon colored. My flanks still had three. . .
“Wait, where is my cutie mark?!”
I sat up, trying to ignore my headache, as I looked at my blank flank. Where I had once had a cutie mark, there was now nothing but a blank spot! I checked my other flank and found it was blank as well.
“Twilight?!” I yelled, regretting it as the loud noise hurt my ears. My mind tried to recall how many drinks I’d had last night. I remember a funnel, Dash, and Fluttershy waking up as I drooled on her chest.
“Fluttershy?” I called out. She was laying on the couch with a leg dangling over the side. I used the couch for support and walked over to her, lifting up her hind leg. She woke up as I was checking out her flank and plot for her missing cutie mark.
“—Cutie mark! It’s gone!” I interrupted.
“Huh?” Fluttershy rolled over and looked at her side. “Oh no! Pinkie, you put it back right this instant!”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Fluttershy, when have I ever cutie mark-napped a pony? I didn’t make them go away. Look!” I turned to my side and showed her I was also a blank flank.
“How is this possible? What did Twilight say?”
“I haven’t found her yet. Come on.” I stumbled forward towards the stairs, and was surprised to see Fluttershy fly to the top with ease. “What the hay? How are you not hung over?”
“Oh, well, I used to win a lot of bar bets because I look like a lightweight. Over the years, I’ve built up quite a tolerance.”
“But you’re only twenty-three, and the drinking age is twenty-one!” I cried.
“Heh, only goody four-shoes don’t sneak out of their parents’ house as soon as they hit sixteen to go to parties and drink,” Fluttershy said. The way she looked at me removed all doubt: she clearly had a wild, rebellious streak as a filly.
“Wow, I learn something new about you every day.”
She blushed and looked away, remembering her own nature. “Well uh, I only did that so much to hang out with Dash. . .” After an awkward silence, she left to go upstairs.
I followed her up to Twilight’s room, taking ample time to wait for the steps in the staircase to stop moving. I’d have to talk to Twilight about that. Once I made it up there, I walked in to see Fluttershy staring in shock.
“What’s up?” I asked. As I walked around the corner, I saw her and Dash in bed together. “Oh, wow, I didn’t know they wanted to sixty-nine. Everypony knows it takes three twenty-three year olds to make sixty-nine!”
“Come on, Pinkie, let’s wake them up,” Fluttershy said.
“Okay, but I don’t wanna touch them! They’re covered in glitter!”
She rolled her eyes. “Pinkie, these are our friends. This whole party was your mess, after all.”
“Hah! I didn’t make them curl up in bed and cover each other in magic residue. I blame the alcohol!”
Fluttershy walked up and pushed Dash, causing her to roll out of bed and hit the floor. “Oops.”
“You’re mean.”
“That was an accident!” She started poking Twilight in the face. “Wake up, sleepy head!”
I walked around the bed and found Dash groggily getting to her hooves. “Ugh, Pinkie, how much of that cider did you bring?”
“Plenty. I’m pretty sure you drank two barrels all by yourself. In fact, you should be dead!” I exclaimed. “So, how are you feelin’, Dashie?”
“Uh, hungover? Why?”
“Notice anything different this morning?” I chuckled and moved, making sure she couldn’t see my flanks.
“Uh, no, why would I?” Dash asked.
“Oh, no reason. I just thought you might want to look in a mirror.”
She hit her face with a hoof and groaned. “If you drew a penis on my face again, I’m gonna clobber you.”
I fought the urge to laugh, waiting until she reached the mirror on the other side of the room.
“And there better be no mustaches either!” Dash stepped in front of the mirror. “That’s odd, you didn’t draw on me at all.”
I began laughing, drawing her gaze. Fluttershy looked at us both, and began to giggle as she realized what was going on.
“Damn, what’s so funny?” Dash asked. She began walking in circles, examining her body for what we had drawn on her. “Oh shit! Where’s my cutie mark?!” She frantically writhed around in front of the mirror, looking for the impossible vanishing cutie mark.
I rolled across the floor laughing, bumping into the bed. I could hear Twilight waking up and Fluttershy talking to her, but everything else was lost in the ruckus.
Once I settled down, I realized Twilight was talking to them. I got up and saw that Applejack and Rarity had joined us.
“So, I don’t know any spell that can remove a cutie mark. I’ll write to Celestia right away. I bet fifty bits this was Discord! He’s always causing mischief!” Twilight stated.
“I don’t know, Twilight, that seems awfully clichéd,” I replied. “I mean, Discord is automatically the root of all evil? All he wants to do is make it rain a little chocolate milk.”
“Then who do you think did this to us?” she asked.
“Well, it’s clearly a linear algorithm with a finite number of solutions as X approaches infinity, which leads me to the answer through simple process of elimination. We turned twenty-three last night, and got hammered. Seeing as how alcohol can’t cause cutie marks to vanish, clearly our turning twenty-three triggered some kind of curse to erase our destinies. I bet some sequences of narrative flashbacks or conveniently-timed spells by you and Celestia will help us learn what’s really going on here,” I explained.
“Dammit, Pinkie, can’t yah take anything serious? We all just lost our cutie marks! We’re the Elements of Harmony—Equestria is defenseless!” Applejack said.
“Exactly!” I threw my hooves in the air. “Anypony would know that cursing us is the quickest way to take over Equestria, and what better way than a curse that takes twenty-three years to activate? Can’t you see, the number twenty-three is the answer to everything!”
“I thought that was forty-two,” Twilight said.
“Don’t be a smart-ass, Twilight, it’s twenty-three!”
“I’m confused,” Rarity interrupted. “How do forty-two and twenty-three have anything to do with our situation?”
I sighed and walked up to a chalkboard, and pulled some chalk out of my hair. “Okay, imagine we had some sort of curse that would trigger at twenty-three years old. Now, we all know there are twenty dimensions in the universe, including those of time and other relative dimensions in space. Not all of them are observable, and there are likely other life forms living in the other dimensions. When you take twenty-three and multiple it by twenty, then divide it by a score—”
“Wait,” Twilight interrupted. “You want us to multiply twenty-three by twenty and divide by twenty? Isn’t that the same as twenty-three times one? That equation makes no sense!”
“Shut up! Ugh, you’re frustrating me. Clearly the answer is twenty-three! How do you think I can pull a tuba out of my hair?”
“Pinkie, this obsession with twenty-three isn’t funny! We’re going to go find Celestia and get this sorted out. I promise you, the number twenty-three has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh yeah?” I interrupted. “Look at the time!”
“Yeah? It’s eleven,” Rarity stated.
“That’s twenty-three in military time!”
“Now you’re just seeing what you want to see and ignoring all logic,” Twilight said.
“So, you’re gonna go see Celestia by train, right? And what number is the twelve-o’clock train to Canterlot?”
“Twenty-Three,” Applejack stated. “Well, ah’ll be.”
“Exactly! If we follow the number twenty-three back to the source, we’ll find the pony who cursed us!”
Dash fell onto her haunches, looking dizzy and out of breath.
“Dash, are you okay?” Fluttershy rushed to her side.
“Please, make Pinkie stop! All this math is hurting my brain!” Dash cried.
Twilight helped Dash to her hooves. “Pinkie, you’ve done enough. Come on, Dash, let’s get you some tylenol and then go see Celestia.”
My five friends walked out of the room solemnly in search of their answers. Part of me knew for some reason the number twenty-three was evil. I would go home, making sure the number of steps it took to get to my house was a multiple of twenty-three. Then I’d make twenty-three observations about our current situation and figure out twenty-three explanations for it.
Yes, with Pinkamena Detective Pie on the case, us twenty-three year old ponies had nothing to worry about.
