Orange, Farts, and Candy Hearts

At precisely six o'clock in the morning, Celestia raised the sun to make way for a new day. The sun gleams over the horizon, awakening the birds, and painting the sky in a pastel rainbow. This process takes fifteen minutes. On a cold day like this, a few weather ponies switch on the fog and the ice, while Luna spreads it around the land as she flies back to Canterlot. However, there is a thirty-second period in which the sky is a gorgeous cornflower blue streaked with lavender, as well as a color no pony else has seen before. No pony, not even Celestia, has seen this moment and lived.

Except the strangest pony this side of Fillydelphia, who has a small, toothless alligator that bites her balloon-adorned flank at exactly this time every morning so they can see it together. This mare, as you may have guessed, is Pinkamena Diane Pie, party pony extraordinaire, creator of the confetti cannon, PFF of Twilight Sparkle, and former Element of Laughter. Only her three sisters can come anywhere near predicting what zany act she will do next, and even then they are not accurate all the time. Today would be an even stranger day than most, as Pinkie Pie had a bad twitch and a small itch in her left front kneecap. As soon as she and Gummy had finished looking at the sky, she cried, "I need to check my knees!", in the iconic voice that sounded like a chipmunk on helium. So she got out her list to check what this meant in the Pinkie Sense. Her three sisters, Maud, Marble, and Limestone, had helped her make this list years ago, and she had memorized most of it. She flipped to part 1, Bones, chapter 167, Kneecaps, to see what this meant. "Left front, bad twitch, small itch... HWHOOWEEHH!" Pinkie inhaled. She turned to Gummy, her trusted confidant and friend. "We need to find Thunderlane as fast as we can, and bring the Party Cannon - AND NO ORANGE CONFETTI!!!" the mare screeched, shoving the tiny gator in her fluffy mess of a tail and rooting through her closet to find her preferred weapon. Soon she was armed and ready to find poor Thunderlane.

The black Pegasus in question was just walking to the store as to get a pie, when he heard the sound of pure happy a few yards behind him. Thunderlane froze. "Not today..." he whispered. "Not Pinkie, not this early, not now!" The reason for his complaining was that he had not brushed his teal Mohawk of a mane this morning, making it bear an uncanny resemblance to Pinkie when she tried to be a zebra for the day. (Needless to say, Zecora was not amused.) Because of this she might consider them "Hair Buddies" as she did with Cheese Sandwich, and then he would have a mad mare on his back all day, speaking in riddles and getting random stuff out of trees, like eyepatches, and insisting that they were best friends. Oh Celestia, he just wanted an apple pie, not a Pinkie Pie! He should have written a will before this. Thunderlane resigned to his fate and turned to face the pink menace. He was surprised, however, when Pinkie ran past him, then turned, aggressively handed him a balloon full of something, and sprinted away, cannon in tow and small alligator clinging to her - wait. Gummy was just there. Where was he? Thunderlane turned to see a toothless reptile clinging to his wing, then crawled to the balloon in his hoof, promptly biting it. The balloon exploded into a mass of orange confetti. The poor stallion had a sneezing fit, then promptly blacked out.

Seeing this happen, Pinkie clapped her hooves together evilly... Or as evil as Pinkie can be. "Excellent,” she squeaked. “Now for Phase 2… we need Photo Finish and Cloudchaser!”