Pinkie Pie Throws an Alicorn Party
Pinkie Pie Throws an Alicorn Party
The sun had risen, casting the light of a new day over Ponyville. Pinkie Pie stirred and rose, ready to discover whatever joy this day had in store for her.
"Rise and shine, Gummy! It's a brand new day, and I bet it'll be even better than the last one!"
Pinkie hopped out of bed, her bounces unusually airy. A less cheerful, more reflective pony would have noticed something amiss, but Pinkie merely basked in the thrill of bouncing a little bit higher and farther than usual. Truly, today was already spectacular, and Pinkie knew somehow that it was only going to get better from here.
Suddenly, Pinkie noticed something. Her forehead felt a little...bunchy. It felt kind of like a Pinkie Sense, but it was less wobbly. Normally, things would twitch or itch or wobble or pinch, but the feeling would waver a little bit, or a lot, or so much that Pinkie would shake along with the feeling. This bunchiness, on the other hand, was just...bunchy.
"Ooh, I've got a bunchy forehead, Gummy! Never had that before. Wonder what it means?" Gummy merely flicked his tail.
She went into the loft bathroom for her daily oral health regimen. (A pony as fond of sweets as Pinkie had to wage total war upon plaque, and the nuclear option of triple-strength mouthwash was always on the table.) She bounced over to the sink, readying her toothbrush, when something caught her eye in the mirror.
In the mirror, she saw herself as usual: poofy mane, blue eyes, perpetual smile, lots of pink. But she also saw a unicorn horn.
Pinkie called to her pet alligator. "Gummy! I figured out what a bunchy forehead means! It means I'm a unicorn!"
Pinkie wasn't quite sure how she felt about this. On one hand, being a unicorn was new and exciting, and if there was anything Pinkie loved, it was new and exciting. On the other, she'd have to learn so much party magic from Twilight, and she wasn't sure if party magic was even a thing, or how it'd even work. Like, would she cast a spell and poof, cupcakes? Ooh, her cutie mark was balloons, so maybe she could make it balloons everywhere! Or maybe not make the balloons, but just make it look like there were—
"Aah!"
Pinkie jumped; her wings flared. Something had pinched her rump; after the initial shock wore off, she realized it was obviously Gummy. That pesky alligator.
"Oh, Gummy!" Pinkie giggled. "You know better than to sneak up on me like that! If I didn't know any better, I'd say you turned me into a unicorn just so you could pull that prank! I'm gonna have to—"
Wait.
Her wings had flared.
Her wings.
Pinkie looked at her sides; she did, in fact, have wings. She looked in the mirror again; she also had a horn. Wings and a horn. Pinkie's mouth flopped open in astonishment. She looked at Gummy, her wide eyes meeting those familiar vacant slits, and whispered.
"I'm a party...pegacorn pony?"
It was a crisp fall morning, perfect weather to—dust the library, apparently.
"Come on, Twilight!" Spike grumbled. "Can't I at least go out for a quick walk?"
"Spike, we've got an entire library to dust," Twilight said, eyes focused on the duster she was using from across the room. "It'll never get done if we go off and frolic. Besides, it's too cold for a walk."
"It's not cold, it's crisp. And I'll only be gone a few minutes."
"Spike—" Twilight began, but was interrupted by a knock at the door. "—could you get that?"
Spike opened the door, and Pinkie Pie stepped in. For some reason, she was an alicorn.
"Hey, Twilight! Do you know anything about, well, this?" The pink pony waved her hoof around, pointing to her wings and horn.
Twilight snorted. "Ha, good one Pinkie. Sorry, but I'm a little busy right now. Your costume looks great, by the way."
Pinkie tilted her head. "Costume? Oh, no no no, this is real. See?" She flared her wings, trying not to knock over anything. Despite her caution, she knocked over a stack of unsorted books.
"Oh, that's really good!" Twilight cupped her hooves over her mouth and began to shout. "Good one with the wings, Rainbow Dash! I mean it! You did a really good job with the wire, because I can't even see it!"
"No, Twilight, you just don't get it! The wings are my wings! The horn is my horn! I'm a pegasus unicorn. A pegacorn. A unisus. An, uh...a unicorn with wings! Whatever you call it, that's what I am now." Seeing that Twilight didn't respond, Pinkie continued. "Do you happen to know anything about earth ponies suddenly turning into pegaunisuscorns or whatever I am now?"
"The correct term is 'alicorn,' Pinkie. And forgive me if I'm skeptical, but seriously, I don't have time for...whatever it is you're trying to pull." Twilight picked up her duster again and swiped it over a disused shelf. A cloud of dust wafted off it.
"You know, Twilight, this is Pinkie we're talking about here," Spike said. "I'm pretty sure she does six or seven impossible things before she brushes her teeth in the morning."
Twilight, however, started repopulating the shelf she had just dusted without comment.
Pinkie's head fell. "Oh, how am I going to convince Twilight that this is real?" Without noticing, she reached out with her magic and began twirling a couple fluffs of her mane.
Spike's jaw shot open at this. "T-T-Twilight! Pinkie is..."
Twilight, despite herself, took a glance. The duster promptly clattered against the ground. The room was then silent, save for the hum of Pinkie's magic, flowing pink around her horn and mane.
"Pinkie, tell me everything."
"...and when Gummy gummed me, my wings popped out. That's when I realized I was, uh, an alicorn."
"That shouldn't be possible!" Twilight started pacing around the library. "It took the Elements of Harmony to make me an alicorn, and I've been studying magic intensely for years. This shouldn't even be possible. But it is! Pinkie's an alicorn! But she shouldn't be. That means..." She paused.
"...we should write to the Princess?" Spike proposed.
"That's probably the best thing we can do. Spike, take a letter."
Dear Princess Celestia,
I've encountered quite a vexing problem. As you know, my friend Pinkie Pie is an earth pony. Or, rather, she was. Today, she came into the library with a horn on her head and wings on her body. Yes, Pinkie Pie has become an alicorn.
My first assumption was that it was a prank, but Pinkie's wings are fully functional, and she is capable of simple magic. I'm planning on doing some further tests on the matter, but I request any insight or advice you have before I proceed.
Your newest princess,
Twilight Sparkle
Spike sent the letter. Seemingly immediately, he received a reply:
My dear Twilight,
I'm glad to see you've found yourself a sense of humor! A bit of advice, though: if you decide to pull a prank on me in the future, it would help if your story were less ridiculous. Subtlety is important when setting up a prank; the goal is to make it obvious, but only in retrospect, so the victim is suckered in at first and is embarrassed for doing so later.
Of course, I trust that you will not prank maliciously, nor too often. I have seen many a pony overexert their wit; invariably they have spread destruction when they do so, and I do not want you to suffer the same fate.
But please continue your studies of humor!
Your loving co-princess,
Celestia
"Oh, come on!" Pinkie stomped in frustration. "Why does nopony believe it when I say I'm an alicorn!"
Twilight knew exactly why. She considered explaining the numerical probabilities to Pinkie, but decided firmly against it. After all, the formula "for all events E, P(E|Pinkie) = 1" had long ago been proven. (From there it was easy to disprove the law of non-contradiction—by contradiction. Twilight would have strained herself thinking about the implications of that, but for the obvious conclusion: Pinkie was Pinkie.)
"If it makes you feel any better, Pinkie, I can try and research a way to change you back."
"Change me back? Thanks, Twilight, but I didn't come here to be changed back."
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Well, what did you want?"
"I want to learn how to do party magic!"
One checkout later, Pinkie was the proud borrower of Pin the Tail on the Aether: A Reference to Party Magic. Twilight had also thrown in Structure and Interpretation of Magical Constructs, which Twilight had sworn all novice unicorns should read. ("But for some reason, most ponies never do," she had added.)
Party magic! Before today, Pinkie hadn't even known it existed. In retrospect, it was obvious; after all, everypony loves parties, and a unicorn might want to throw a party every now and then if they didn't know a party pony. But still, the discovery elated Pinkie. She imagined the sort of parties that party magic could make, and oh, were they glorious!
Pinkie had been searching for a secluded place to read her books—she wasn't quite ready to draw attention to her new state before her "Pinkie's an alicorn!" party. Finally, she found a sufficently remote hill. Satisfied, she sat down and began to read.
And then stopped, because the very first spell, "aardvark-aardvarks," was quite possibly the silliest thing she had ever read, and Pinkie tended to read some very silly stuff.
"I mean, a spell to aardvark aardvarks? They're already as aardvarked as aardvarks can be; if you could aardvark them any more, they wouldn't be aardvarks, just almost-aardvarks or half-aardvarks or not-even-close-to-being-aardvarks—ooh, 'aardvark' doesn't sound like a real word anymore, same thing happened to 'kumquat' and 'barrel' and 'hoof,' and that was really funny when it happened to 'hoof.' I laughed for weeks! I wonder if I can make it happen again? Hoof hoof hoof, hoof hoof hoof. Hoof? Hoof. Hoo—"
Ahem.
There was a book. It had party magic. Party magic is about parties. Pinkie did not know party magic. That needed to be fixed.
Pinkie ran a hoof down the index, looking for something that sounded both simple and spectacular. "Inflate-balloons" sounded, well, boring, but worth practicing. Judging from prior experience, "produce-confetti" sounded like an extremely difficult spell, and she'd have to pass on that one. Maybe later, but not now.
Ah, "amplify-sound," that sounded like a good thing to have. She'd be able to not hire Vinyl Scratch this time, which was good; since the Royal Wedding, poor Vinyl had to triple her rates so she could keep up with the requests, and Pinkie really didn't want to bother her right now. Pinkie turned to page 106 as the book's index directed.
Hm, that was...she'd have to refer to the other book, the one with the goofy robot on the cover. She couldn't make heads or tails of those symbols. Heck, she was scared that she wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of herself if she messed this up, but that was less important than, you know, party magic!
It took a good half-hour, but Pinkie finally thought she deciphered the thing. Apparently, you just had to think of loud. No, not a loud noise, but the concept called loud, which wasn't quite the same thing as loudness. SIMC had said that this sort of thing was tricky, but Pinkie didn't really think so. Anyway, amplify-sound had three parts: first you think of loud, then you let the loud flow into your horn, then you push the loud where it needs to be.
And that rock over there needed some loud. Pinkie closed her eyes and thought of lightning. No, that wasn't it. She thought of Pumpkin Cake crying loudly. Still no. A loud bird? Nuh-uh. A loud? Hm...
Pinkie let the loud fill her mind. Her horn felt a bit empty, so the loud rushed into it. Pinkie wasn't expecting that; her concentration broke immediately. She swallowed; this was a bit trickier than she thought it would be. She tried again.
Pinkie let the loud fill her mind. Her horn felt a bit empty, so the loud rushed into it. (At least, that's how Pinkie would describe it.) Pinkie shoved some raw magic into her horn. At that, she felt the loud press up against the tip, and she heard the familiar hum of magic. She opened her eyes and pointed her horn at the rock, and gave it all one last shove. The rock lit up pink for a moment, then dulled, the hum fading with it.
"Did it work?" Pinkie frowned; the rock didn't seem any louder. Of course, rocks don't make noise to begin with; Pinkie realized that a rock may not have been the best thing to cast amplify-sound on. But—what was that Pinkie heard? It was coming from the rock. Pinkie bounced over to the rock; she didn't see the rock doing anything, but she heard the sound more clearly. Well, more clearly than before. It sounded like a scratchy mess with some clicks in it.
Pinkie put a hoof to the rock, then—aah!—she was startled by the sound her hoof made against the rock. It sounded an awful lot like a hoof touching a rock, except loud.
"YES YES YES!" Pinkie Pie jumped around, her wings being the only thing preventing her from literally vibrating. Sweetie Belle had told Pinkie an embarrassing story about Twilight once; Pinkie suspected that this was exactly what Twilight had felt then. It was literally impossible not to jump for joy. First of all, Pinkie jumped for literally everything; second, Pinkie had just cast her very first bona fide spell! And it worked! Well, she still needed to make it sound less scratchy, but that'd just take practice!
Pinkie dove into her books, exploring the world that had just opened to her.
She had a knack for this party magic stuff.
Pinkie had gotten pretty good at a dozen spells or so, and it only took a day of practice. Her favorite was produce-confetti, because it made temporary confetti. Imagine! Confetti you didn't have to clean up! Pinkie had always hated the cleanup. That was the only thing that had stopped her from spraying tons of confetti for literally no reason.
The only problem Pinkie had with produce-confetti was that it only produced (what Pinkie considered) a tiny bit of confetti. Thankfully, she stumbled upon a way to make it produce more. SIMC really was a useful book.
So Pinkie was going to throw a party—no, she was going to throw the greatest party in the history of Equestria. With her natural talent, her years of experience, and a pinch of magic, she was going to break records.
Naturally, everypony in Ponyville was invited. She was going to try the singing telegram again, but she'd only have to sing it once this time. It was way faster than writing all those invitations, which meant she'd have more time to bake all those cupcakes. (And that'd be a lot of cupcakes. The Cakes would have to cut her pay for months to pay for the ingredients!)
And—this was the most exciting part—she could hold it in the town square! Now, normally, she'd have to use a smaller space, because a pony can only move so fast, and Pinkie's friends, amazing as they were, just didn't have her knack for sensing precisely where the hostess needs to be. But with wings, Pinkie could swoop down where she was needed, do stuff, and mingle a bit, only having to fly back up when she needed to be elsewhere.
Alicorns throw the best parties.
"Oh...oh my."
Fluttershy wasn't expecting such a big party. Perhaps she should have; Pinkie had stressed that she wouldn't mind if Fluttershy stayed home, since everypony in Ponyville was invited. But this was a "Pinkie is an alicorn!" party. Even Fluttershy was dying to see what Pinkie would do with her new powers. Besides, it wouldn't be so bad if she could just find some of her friends.
"Fluttershy?"
She almost jumped at the raspy voice behind her. Almost. (She was getting better at this!) It was just Rainbow Dash; no need to be scared of her.
"What are you of all ponies doing at what's gonna be the biggest—and most completely awesome—party in Equestria?"
The normally shy pegasus smiled at Rainbow Dash. "Normally I'd just stay home, but not even I want to miss whatever Pinkie's planning to do this time."
"I don't blame you, Fluttershy."
"Nor do I." Rarity had noticed the pair and strolled up for some conversation. "I must say, the refreshments are as excellent as ever. I'm impressed that Pinkie managed to keep them perfect on such a scale."
"Yeah, Rarity," Rainbow said. "And I love just how big this party is! There's like three games of pin-the-tail-on-the-cloud going on right this moment. It's like there's a million parties rolled up into one!"
Just then, the hostess herself swooped down from the sky and landed among her three friends. "Hiya Rarity, Rainbow Dash!" She gasped at Fluttershy's presence. "Fluttershy! I'm so glad you decided to come! There's a game of midair pin-the-tail-on-the-cloud going on. Pegasi only, of course. You wanna play?"
"Midair?" Fluttershy asked. "How's that working out?"
"To be honest? It's a terrible game that way, but everypony's still having a blast." Pinkie giggled. "But if you don't want to play, that's fine. We've got midair cupcakes, too, if you want. And midair dancing. Ooh, that reminds me, I've gotta go and start the music for that. See ya!" Abruptly, Pinkie spread her wings and left.
The three ponies watched their friend soar away. "You know," Rainbow Dash said, "she's actually been responsible with her newfound crazy powers. I've honestly been expecting Ponyville to go up in flames."
"Yes," Rarity said. "I must admit that I was very concerned that Pinkie, of all ponies, became an alicorn. But so far, she hasn't so much as dropped a glass of punch. Speaking of which, I'm going to get some punch; do you girls want any?"
Both Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy nodded.
"All right, three glasses coming up. And, ugh, while I did have fun playing, that game of confetti waterfall limbo simply wrought havoc upon my mane." Rarity shook her mane a little, ineffectually trying to dislodge some confetti without knocking the curls out of place. After giving up, she trotted off to get some punch.
"I swear, this confetti..."
You could tell a party was really good, Pinkie always thought, when the guests go home completely spent, with nearly-delirious smiles on their faces.
And, yes, this magic-fueled party subdued and satiated even the most voracious of Ponyville's party animals. Heck, Moondancer was in town—Twilight had told stories about her love of crazy parties—and she was mumbling something about "the best night ever" as she left.
Pinkie herself wasn't tired. At all. She'd been zipping here and there and everywhere all night, but she still felt like getting a party out of her system. Must be some sort of party pony princess power, she thought. (She giggled at the alliteration.) That'd come in handy for cleaning up after the party, because, wow, that was a lot of trash.
But it wasn't much effort to bring everything into the square, and it wouldn't be much trouble to put it back. Even the clouds were easily replaced. If it wasn't much effort to enchant her record player, it wouldn't be much effort to dispel the enchantment. And since it wasn't much effort to bake all those cupcakes—
Wait, no. It turned out that picking up the discarded cupcake wrappers would take effort after all. But not much, because Pinkie now had magic.
With furniture replaced, spells removed, and litter collected, there was just the matter of all that confetti. But it was vanishing confetti, so Pinkie didn't need to worry about it! So Pinkie just flew home to sleep, more out of habit than from any real need. Do alicorns even sleep?
They do.
Or, at least, Pinkie could fall asleep whenever she needed to and not a second sooner. That probably would have come in handy, she thought, when she was guarding MMMM. But that was past.
More importantly, the sun had risen, casting the light of a new day over Ponyville. Pinkie Pie stirred and rose, ready to discover whatever joy this day had in store for her.
Today's joy was a foot-deep sea of confetti covering her floor.
"Oh no!" Pinkie hopped out of bed and nearly slipped on the confetti. Bouncing was completely out of the question. "Gummy, where are you?" A Gummy-shaped pile of confetti rustled. Pinkie swept it up in her forehooves; it was, in fact, Gummy. "Are you OK? You didn't choke, did you? Oh, I'm so glad you're alright!" Elated at his safety, Pinkie set an utterly nonplussed Gummy down on the floor.
Pinkie slowly opened the door, afraid that the Flying Confetti Monster might be lurking outside, waiting to smite her for tampering with His sacrament. Thankfully, His Colorful Appendages were nowhere to be found.
More importantly, the rest of Sugarcube Corner was mostly devoid of confetti, save for what little had flowed out of her room. Even more importantly, Mr. and Mrs. Cake weren't drowning in, slipping on, or being tormented by an angry god of confetti.
They were, however, a bit annoyed at Pinkie. Or scared of her. Either way, Pinkie failed to notice.
"Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Cake! I'm terribly sorry for asking right after this party but I've gotten swarmed by confetti very mysteriously and I need to solve this mystery pronto so could I—"
Mr. Cake held up a hoof, silencing Pinkie. He then pointed out the door. "Pinkie, I think your mystery is a whole lot bigger than you thought."
Pinkie looked outside, and all of Ponyville was littered with confetti. Literally littered, that is, as ponies had been arrested for lesser violations of Ponyville's anti-littering law. "But...that confetti was temporary! There shouldn't be any left!"
"And it just keeps coming!" A deep voice boomed from the doorway; Pinkie and the Cakes turned to face it.
Bon Bon coughed and started to blush. "Um, that is..." She shook her head; her voice had returned to something more typical for her. "Never mind. As I said, it just keeps coming. Agh, stupid voice. Anyway, it's like the parasprite invasion, except the confetti doesn't eat anything, thank Celestia for small mercies. But it just—it gets everywhere!"
"Hm, it shouldn't be that bad," Pinkie said. "Just sweep it into the trash when it gets in the way."
"Just sweep it into the trash? Pinkie Pie, do you know how long it takes me to put these curls in my mane every morning?"
Pinkie shrugged. "I dunno. My mane curls naturally, so I've never tried."
Bon Bon continued. "About an hour, give or take. But with confetti popping into it every five minutes? I get up at sunrise every morning—old habit of mine from when I lived on a farm—and I just finished a few minutes ago. So I figured first thing I'd do when I got done is come over here and yell at you.
"But," she said, "that party was crazy fun, so I won't. Still, you better fix this. Like, now." Bon Bon tilted her nose up a bit—just a bit—and walked away.
"Pinkie," Mrs. Cake said, "we know you didn't intend to make this mess, but like Bon Bon said, you really should help clean it up. After all, you have magic, right? I'm sure you and Twilight can find a spell to get rid of confetti."
"All right, Mr. and Mrs. Cake! If my confetti is causing everypony problems, it's my duty to get rid of it."
Oddly enough, the confetti problem got worse the closer Pinkie got to the library. Between foals making confetti sculptures—Pinkie swore she saw the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying to make a scooter ramp—and Daisy shouting "The horror! the horror!" every fifteen seconds, Pinkie realized that she'd caused an absolute disaster.
She knocked on the library door; an irate Twilight Sparkle answered.
"Twilight, I'm so sorry for breaking Ponyville!"
"Pinkie." Twilight was glaring very hard. "Do you realize exactly how badly you broke Ponyville?"
Pinkie shook her head, and Twilight continued. "Produce-confetti should be self-limiting, and this confetti most definitely is not. So either you've cast the spell very, very incorrectly, or Discord has gone mad again. And we know it's not the latter, because there's no chocolate rain. We're all dry and we're all hurting, so...fess up, Pinkie. What did you do to the confetti?"
Pinkie squirmed. Sweat beaded on her face. "I, um, I uh—"
"What. Did. You. Do."
"I didn't think the spell made enough confetti so I did this thing that the other book you gave me talked about which made it produce lots more confetti and that's exactly what happened but now it's making way too much please don't be mad at me Twilight!"
Twilight's glare softened at those last words, but she was still frowning. "That agrees with my hypothesis. You see, produce-confetti was originally a modified produce-litter spell."
"Uh huh." Pinkie nodded.
"So in order to make the spell more convenient, the designers combined it with a remove-litter enchantment that would go off after a couple hours. That's what makes it temporary."
"And I...must have stopped that, right?"
"No, even worse! The easiest way to increase the spell's yield is to make the spell refer to itself—to push out the concept of the spell itself along with its effects—and to apply more force. That's what you did, right?"
"...yes." Pinkie looked at her hooves and shuffled a bit.
"Then, most likely, you clobbered the remove-litter enchantment, then wound up enchanting the confetti with produce-confetti. The confetti replicates! And you're far more powerful than a normal unicorn, too, so you seem to have infused each piece with enough power for forty generations."
Pinkie smiled. "Oh, so it's not so bad! All we gotta do is just wait until they're out of power and then sweep it up."
"No, Pinkie! If we do that, Ponyville will be buried in confetti! One piece becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight, and so on. Do that forty times, and one piece will become over a trillion pieces! And that's just one of the original pieces! Oh my gosh, this is really really bad!"
Twilight was freaking out, and Pinkie couldn't blame her. Even Pinkie knew how frightening a trillion pieces of confetti would be. Still, having Twilight freak out was at least as dangerous as the confetti itself.
Pinkie put a reassuring hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "Don't worry. I mean, yeah, this is terrible. I get that. But we can fix it, I'm sure!"
That seemed to be comforting, as Twilight managed to stop hyperventilating and only had a few hairs out of place in her mane. "Right." She called over to another room. "Spike, could you fetch our copy of Nullification Theory and Practice?"
"Oh!" Pinkie abruptly remembered something. "What about that fail-safe spell you tried back when Discord ruined everything?"
"Funny you should mention that," Twilight said. "Turns out it's actually called 'fail-safely.' Guess what it does."
"Fails safely?"
"Exactly."
Spike then came into the room, carrying the book Twilight requested. "Found it!"
"Great! Now Pinkie and I can try to fix this confetti problem," Twilight said. She grabbed NTaP, along with a couple other books, and tossed one to Pinkie. The two began their studies, though Pinkie was really only doing it just so she could feel helpful.
Though nopony noticed, Spike had sneezed, catching a pile of confetti in his flame.
Twilight slammed a book shut. "Pinkie," she said, "I've got good news and bad news. Good news: I've found the solution to the confetti problem!"
Pinkie beamed. "That's great! But what's the bad news?"
Twilight re-opened the book and slid it over to Pinkie. "Look at this spell. It's called nullify-pattern, and it allows you to utterly cancel your enchantments. There are two problems, though. First of all, only the original enchanter can cast it, so you'll have to pick it up, and it's not the simplest spell in the world.
"But that's a simple matter of spellcraft. More importantly, it'll banish the enchanted object from Ponyville. But due to the nature of the enchantment—" Twilight sighed. "If you cast the spell correctly, Pinkie, there will be never be any confetti in Ponyville again."
Nope. Pinkie wasn't going to do that, not ever. She frowned. "Isn't there another way?"
"If I had found one, I would have told you. I can't say there isn't, but I don't know if we even have time to look for it. So, no, nullify-pattern is the only way."
At that, Pinkie just fell to the ground, not quite crying, but perilously close. It was so unfair! She made one tiny mistake! And now, she had to give up confetti forever, or else watch Ponyville drown in it.
If she had just kept the spell the way it was, none of this would have happened.
Pinkie felt a hoof on her shoulder. Twilight was there, giving her a reassuring little smile. "Pinkie, I can't lie; this is a really big mess. But I know you didn't mean it. You're a good pony, and nopony throws parties like yours. Confetti or not, we'll still be there for all of them."
Pinkie still didn't cry, not at full intensity. She sobbed a little, a mix of grief and joy. She'd made her choice; she'd regret it, sure, but at least she'd have her friends and her parties at the end of it all.
"Twilight, show me the spell."
It actually wasn't that hard for Pinkie to get a grasp on nullify-pattern. Yes, it took some effort to learn—more than she was used to, as she had no talent for such magic—but it wasn't, you know, rocket surgery.
Pinkie could still back down, but why would she? What would be the point, if it would just choke out the town? So she bore down with her magic and ripped the abstract form of confetti out from the world around her.
Nullify-pattern wasn't anything flashy. Pinkie Pie expected a huge wave of energy to sweep all the problems away, but the confetti just vanished. That was it. She saved Ponyville.
That is, she saved Ponyville from herself.
Pinkie bid Twilight farewell and walked home. She dared not fly; she didn't deserve her new powers, anyway. Knowing her luck, she'd knock over a raincloud and ruin somepony's day. Or she'd knock over two rainclouds and make a farmer lose precious rain. Or, worst of all, she'd fly straight into a thunderstorm and—no, she didn't want to think about that.
Reaching behind a tree, Pinkie grabbed a roll of streamer that she'd hid there (for emergency reasons.) She tore off a segment and split it into smaller and smaller pieces. Broken streamers may as well be confetti, right?
Indeed. The pieces disappeared as soon as Pinkie thought they were small enough.
"Agh!" Pinkie threw the rest aside. The streamer roll hit the ground; the thin, bright pink paper unfurled itself down the hill, covering itself in dirt.
She never really thought of confetti as being that important. Fun? Yes. But why was she so upset over losing confetti?
Because you nearly destroyed the town, Pinkie. She sighed. You tried to do too much, and a little bit of fun is gone from Ponyville forever.
On the other hand, the party may well have been the best she'd ever thrown. With such power at her disposal, there were no limits to the fun. Maybe if she'd been more careful, things would have gone perfectly.
But that was past. She'd keep things mundane for the time being, maybe get some lessons from Twilight, and come out a wiser pony more suited to party conjuration.
It was early in the afternoon, but Pinkie Pie was already tired. She continued her walk home. For once in her life, she just needed some peace and quiet.
"Are we still dusting, Twilight?"
Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes. Couldn't Spike see the gobs of dust everywhere? The place was virtually covered in dust bunnies, including the one that literally looked like a bunny.
"Yes, Spike. It's still dusty."
"But if Pinkie got rid of all that confetti, can't you just banish all the dust from Ponyville?"
"We tried that once. Don't you remember?"
Spike scratched his head. "No, can't say I do."
"Exactly."
Spike shuddered. "But maybe you should take a break. I'm sure looking at book spines all day can't be fun."
"No, Spike, no it isn't." Twilight jumped off her ladder, excited to do something other than dust. Realizing that she was hungry, she went to the kitchen for a snack. But something caught her eye on the library floor.
"Hey, Spike, do you know where that scorch mark came from?"
"I, uh, sneezed."
Um. "When was this?"
"Um, back when you and Pinkie were, uh, looking for that spell?" Spike began to sweat.
"So you sneezed on a pile of self-replicating confetti and sent it to Canterlot?" Twilight, too, was far too nervous for her own good.
Before Spike could respond, he burped—and did not stop burping. A continuous stream of fire poured from his mouth. At the end of each flame, squares of confetti materialized, only to vanish immediately.
"Ah. Problem solved." Twilight went to the kitchen to make a sandwich, and she poured Spike a glass of water. He'd need it. When that was done, she pulled down Aethon Shrugged—a bit of light reading until the storm passed.
Fifty pages later, Spike's transfer-belch was finished. Gasping desperately for breath, the poor dragon still had to cough out one last item: a letter from Celestia.
Unrolling the letter, Twilight began to read.
Dear Twilight,
Great prank.
~ Princess Celestia
Author's Note
Written for One-Shotober.
Well, not really. I've had this fic sitting around for quite some time—before Twilicorn was a thing, at least, because I remember slightly revising it to fit in Twi's ascension. Eventually, I got around to finishing it.
I don't like centering correspondence, but the quote tags—which would otherwise be perfect—look terrible if you aren't using the "Light" color scheme. So I just did the next best thing.
