Five of the six ponies responsible for defeating yet another of Equestria’s most heinous threats sit stately and still in their seats, watching with jaded disinterest as a sizable outpouring of poncy, opulently clad ponies swarm through the doors. However, Twilight can’t help but fidget as she watches the very same procession of lavish hobnobbers file through the doors in a procession gaudy enough to make her head spin.
“Isn’t this great, Twilight,” Spike mumbles around a mouth full of gemstone cupcake.
“Yeah...great.” Twilight is aware how unenthused she sounds, Spike picks up on it too.
“What’s the matter?” Twilight doesn’t even look at him; she’s too busy eyeing all of the affluent aristocrats pouring into the room one after the other to notice.
“Hello, earth to Twilight?” The waving claw breaking her line of sight to the throng of painfully garish ponies flooding in seems to snap her out of the zombified stupor she’s experiencing.
“Sorry, I guess I’m just a little…” She takes a moment to fish through her extensive vocabulary but comes up short, despite the vast repertoire of words at her disposal.
“Distracted?” Spike offers, but her attention is already back on the door.
“Twilight!” A sharp snapping of claws brings her attention back to Spike. “Alright, spill, what’s the deal?”
“I’m just...looking for somepony.” Spike is clearly not happy with the pittance of a response he is given.
“Who?” Twilight ignores him yet again in favor of pony-watching. Spike frowns. “Is it that guard-pony you totally have the hots for?”
Twilight attempts to squelch any further libel with a hoof whilst not taking her eyes off the steady trickle of party goers; the sudden affirmation makes Spike giggle around the appendage in his mouth. “You’ff goh it bad huh?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Spike.” Her hoof is removed from the little dragon’s mouth via his own claws. Twilight doesn’t offer any resistance; she hardly even notices.
“Hey, I call em’ like I see em’ and I can see you’ve got it pretty bad.”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?”
“No, you don’t. You’re just a baby dragon, what could you possibly know about love?” It is at this point that Twilight realizes just how far down her throat she put her hoof. The floundering alicorn sends her assistant a positively searing look and Spike silently counts himself lucky to have a permanent suit of fire-proof scales.
Twilight opens her mouth, ready to do some major damage control before a swell of regal sounding horns fills the room. All idle eyes turn toward the same doors Twilight is so transfixed on to find both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna standing in the archway, looking regal as ever.
All conversation is reduced to a quiet murmur as the two princesses make their way to their thrones at the back of the room. Once the two are seated, Celestia readies a toast with the raise of her glass. Everyone else in the room follows suit.
“My loyal subjects, we are hereby gathered here today to celebrate Tirek’s defeat at the capable hooves of my brightest pupil and her five friends.”
The shift of all the eyes in the room from Celestia to Twilight and Co. is almost audible. Even Celestia’s own eyes are on them now, hawkish and expectant.
Twilight cranes her neck to the left and carries her gaze over all five pairs of pleading, expectant eyes before she sighs and rises from her seat, clearing her throat awkwardly.
“Thank you everypony,” she starts, her voice quiet and meek. “It means so much to us that you all came.” Saying her piece, she shrinks back into her seat and quietly sizzles as the heat of embarrassment wells up within her. Celestia raises a brow at the curtness of her pupil but says nothing edgewise.
A shout of “here, here” emanates from somewhere in the crowd and then is echoed by all the other patrons in the dining hall. All of the glasses in the room rise toward her and Twilight can’t help but feel intimidated.
Celestia takes a demure sip from her glass before wiping it with a rag and setting it down. “Now please everypony, enjoy the night while it’s still young.”
Celestia turns from the crowd to her distraught looking pupil. “What seems to be troubling you, my student?”
“I’m not sure. I guess the whole 'party honoring you saving Equestria' thing should be usual fare by now, but I still can’t get used to having so much attention thrust my way.”
Spike sashays effeminately between his surrogate mother and her teacher, one claw on his hip and the other hanging limply out in front of him.
“Plus that absolute hunk of a Pegasus hasn’t shown up to whisk me off my hooves yet.” The harsh tug of magic on the fin on Spike’s head reminds him that neither his little interjections-nor his admittedly awful interpretations of Rarity-are welcome at the moment.
“I assume he is speaking about Flash Sentry.” Twilight lowers her head to hide her brilliantly radiating blush. Celestia’s full attention is an absolutely crushing burden she’s never quite been able to ease off her shoulders once it is settled.
“It’s just...he said he was going to meet me here and I’ve actually been meaning to tell him something for a while now...”
“Oh?” Celestia raises her brow in the implicating way she always does that may as well double as a truth serum for the cowering purple Alicorn princess.
“Well you see I-” Twilight sputters valiantly but is unable to give the words itching to escape her maw any significant lift. The weight of a cyan hoof wrapping around her shoulders forces her head to turn, meeting the chest feathers of a maniacally grinning Rainbow Dash.
“See, Twilight here’s got something of a crush on Flash Sentry.” Twilight’s mouth unhinges and falls open, the barest inkling of a smirk gracing Celestia’s own.
“Is that so?”
“Oh yeah,” Rainbow Dash leans past Twilight to whisper a little too loudly into Celestia’s waiting ears. “And between you and me, she’s got it bad.”
“I do not!” Twilight regains a bit of her lost brain function, but by then, the bullseye is already striped and dotted.
“It’s true,” Rarity confirms, already dough eyed and swooning.
“She’s head over heels like a tipsy horse on race day,” Applejack adds.
“The worst case of lovey-dovey, hearts in your eyes mushiness I’ve ever seen,” Pinkie finishes sagely.
“See, Twilight,” Spike says, crossing his arms in an I-told-you-so manner. “I’m not the only one who could see it. After all, it was soooo painfully obvious.” Twilight grunts beastially, zipping Spike’s mouth shut and forcing all of her friends-who are leaning over such as to better interject their severely undesirable opinions into the conversation-back down into their seats with a shining flourish of magic.
“I do not like him like that!” Her outburst causes a pregnant silence to linger in the air that only evaporates after Twilight sinks back down into her seat.
“I reckon y’all wouldn’t be so red if you really didn’t fancy that fancy guards-pony so much.” Applejack’s observation is so woefully accurate that Twilight feels as though she is backed into a corner by a pack of starving timberwolves as the eyes of her friends and her mentor converge on her like so many glistening spears.
“Alright!” Twilight relents loud enough to cause another minor scene and strike up a fervid whisper that carries throughout the room like wildfire before her and her radiating blush collapse in on themselves like a black hole. “Maybe I do like him a teeny tiny bit.”
“If by teeny tiny bit you mean a whole super duper lot,” Pinkie Pie exclaims, frantically gesticulating in Twilight’s face with her hooves.
“Enough!” Twilight makes a mental note to herself to learn to control her volume after the room is cowed into another stretch of dead silent stillness after her third outburst. “Even if I did like him like that, we probably wouldn’t be able to date, anyway. He’s probably bound by some honor code that prevents him from dating a princess or something.”
“That isn’t entirely true,Twilight,” Celestia informs, sipping casually from her cup. “Just look at your brother; he married princess Cadence, did he not?”
“Yes but-”
“So you have no reason not to tell him.”
“I know, its just that I’m-”
“Scared?” Twilight hangs her head in admittance. Celestia lets a chuckle escape into her cup.
“Forgive me for laughing, Twilight. I simply find it funny that a pony who has had to face as many seemingly insurmountable hurdles as you have and has taken down creatures that most ponies think to be just fairy tales could be so intimidated by something as harmless as a crush.”
“I know, it’s pathetic.”
“Not at all,” Celestia tries, her words proving ineffectual at a sideways glance toward her distraught student and the submissive hanging of her head. “I have seen the strongest of ponies crumble under all that love and relationships can bring. You have every right to be nervous. However, it is wise that you do not wait too long for it has been said that those who procrastinate choose last.”
“It’s just...what would I even say? How would I even bring it up?” Celestia impassively tilts her cup to her lips.
“Those are answers you must find on your own, dear student. And it seems that now is the perfect time to find those answers.” Twilight glances up in puzzlement before gasping and rearing back in her seat. There, walking down the carpet in the center of the room, is Flash Sentry. His usual golden armor is shorn in favor of a simple black dress suit and bowtie.
A literal flood of thoughts race through Twilight’s head, at the forefront of which Why in Equestria is he here of all places instead of doing his guarding...things he’s supposed to be doing?
Twilight stares up at Celestia, eyes hungry and desperate. Celestia smiles back warmly.
“He was off for the night, so I invited him to the celebration. I hope that is OK with you.” Twilight’s eyes whip back to the veritable shark in the water, her body becoming more drawn up and tense the closer he gets to where she is sitting.
“Haha of course it is. Why would it not be?” Twilight feels her reply is the picture of calmness and control, until she opens her mouth and feels a noticeable weight ease off of her teeth. She watches with building trepidation as he stalks closer, algorithms calculating the distance separating him from her firing off in her head; a defense mechanism so deeply within her that she doesn’t even realize it’s happening.
As the distance between them shrinks, Twilight becomes all the more anxious and nervous, and by the time there is naught but a strip of carpet barely big enough to stand on separating her from his bowing head, Twilight is already on her hooves and making her way past him and out the door.
“Twilight!” Spike calls, already making quick work of the lengthy expanse of carpet before the other five are even out of their seats. Fluttershy is in the midst of taking off herself when she is stopped abruptly by a hoof anchoring her to the ground by her tail.
“Pinkie Pie what-”
“Fluttershy wait, we can’t all leave. These ponies are here to see us, somepony has to stay behind and mingle.”
“And you think that pony should be me?”
“Of course I do.” Even as she says this, she is already halfway across the room. “Me and Gummy have been talking and we think you’re more than qualified for the job, so...good luck and happy mingling.”
Fluttershy watches Pinkie’s tail disappear between the gargantuan double doors and sighs heavily, wondering why the most interpersonal parts of their group dynamic somehow always fall upon her shoulders.
Twilight crashes through the double doors and skids into the wall before taking off down the corridor; Spike, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity hot on her hooves. The foursome trail the last vestiges of Twilight’s tail around a corner and find the purple alicorn princess with nowhere left to run.
“Twilight, wait! Why in Equestria are you running?” Spike calls. Twilight rounds on her pursuers, the smile on her face an obvious last minute addendum.
“Just needed some...fresh air,” she heaves. Applejack steps forward and adjusts her askew stetson before clearing her throat awkwardly.
“I hate to be the one to point out the obvious but that right there looked more like downright panic to me.”
“Panic? I’m not panicking. Who’s panicking?”
“I’m afraid she’s right darling,” Rarity comes to stand beside Applejack in solidarity. “It’s going to be pretty hard for you to downplay your feelings after that…” Rarity does her best not to cringe, “display.”
“You went totally white like you just saw a ghost or something and then you zoomed out of the room like zoooom, wooosh and we were all like ‘Twilight come baaaaack, and then we chased you all the way down the hallway and now we’re here.” The tableau of angry glares she gets is enough to cow Pinkie into silence.
“Twilight,” Rarity starts. “Simply go back in there and strike up a conversation with him, surely it can’t be that difficult.”
“But I can’t go back in there! He’s in there and he probably saw me freak out and he’s so handsome and-” Applejack presses a hoof to Twilight’s babbling maw.
“You’ll be fine Twilight. You’re probably the smartest pony I know.” Applejack swings a hoof around Twilight’s neck and begins to herd her back toward the party much like she would wandering cattle.
“But I don’t even know where to start.”
“Just start with small talk. Y’know stuff like how’s the weather, read any good books lately; stuff like that.” Twilight blinks as the imposing double doors leading to the ballroom tower over her.
“Small talk,” Twilight inhales a full breath through her chest. “Got it.” Twilight pushes open the door and trots back into the ballroom, her chest full of air and her head high and confident. She takes one last look back over her shoulder at her friends-who are all doing their best to encourage her-before she continues toward the back of the room where Flash Sentry is conversing with Celestia.
“Go get em Twilight” Rainbow Dash cheers from the doorway.
“You think she’ll be alright?” Spike asks, looking for all the world like he is partially responsible for feeding Twilight to the beasts.
“She’ll be fine,” Applejack draws. “That mare can talk the hind legs off a donkey.”
The first fifteen or so steps maintain a level of poise that is matched only by the haughtiest of ponies and the vainest of models. However, over time her steps begin to slow and drag like a boat at the mercy of a dying breeze, eventually stopping altogether not ten steps from where the object of her affection and anxiety stands casually conversing with Princess Luna.
A deluge of thoughts race through Twilight’s head; thoughts that make her falter considerably; thoughts that completely crumble her resolve and turn her in the opposite direction.
“Twilight, there you are!”
Oh buck.
“Oh, hey Flash,” Twilight whirls around, the false, unctuous smile she is wearing already beginning to slip from the rest of her face.
“You left in quite a hurry earlier, the princesses and I wanted to know if you were feeling OK?”
“No; no, I’m fine,” Twilight feels her dress begin to dampen with a sheen of nervous sweat. “Just had some...princessly business to take care of.”
“Alright, well as long as you’re OK…” Flash gives her a perfectly gentlemanly smile and moves to go past her toward the crowded tables opposite the throne.
“Wait!” The slightly panic stricken voice of the newest alicorn princess causes Flash Sentry to stop mid stride and turn to face her “Would you maybe like to get a glass of cider or something, and, I don’t know...talk for a little bit?”
It is evident to both parties how difficult it is for Twilight to articulate at that particular moment, but Flash smiles warmly at her just the same. However, he also looks conflicted; almost as if the things that are making Twilight act so skittish and shy are affecting him as well.
Flash Sentry’s eyes shoot around the room and his head swivels with them, almost as if what he and Twilight are discussing is sensitive information worthy of the gallows. “Are you sure that’s OK? I mean, you’re a princess and everything.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.” Twilight fails to convince even herself that such an action is acceptable.
“Well, if you’re sure it’s ok then I would love to.” Flash Sentry smiles warmly at her and Twilight thanks the stars above her blush is as light as it is. Flash Sentry gives the immediate area a cursory once over and spots a table just to the left. Trotting over, Flash pulls out a chair for Twilight before commandeering a seat of his own just across from her.
“So...” the stallion starts, heaving a grin too large for his face toward Twilight who fights against every urge she possesses not to shy away. “Savior of Equestria for the second time eh?”
“Third actually.”
“How’s it feel?” Twilight takes a breath through her nose.
“Surreal.”
“Still not used to it all?”
“I feel like I should be but...it gets pretty overwhelming a lot of the time.”
“I can imagine,” Flash nods in assent. “I don’t think I could ever be in the position you’re in, what with constantly being the center of attention and all.”
“Yeah,” Twilight agrees shyly. “It can get hectic.” That’s it; the proverbial nail in the coffin; the steak through the heart of their conversation and the genesis of a silence so dense and burdensome it is comparable to a black hole or the pit of a singularity. Flash taps his hooves on the table awkwardly before stating that he is leaving to get the two a couple fresh cups of cider.
Once Twilight is certain Flash is far enough away from her that he cannot see their table she practically leaps out of her chair, dragging whatever parts of her the leaden silence haven’t ground to an unrecognizable, disfigured pulp toward the monolithic double doors of the ballroom. As she breaks the threshold she is bombarded by a litany of questions, all of which leaning toward more or less the same thing.
“Twilight!” Spike squawks.
“Twilight dear, what happened?” Rarity questions.
“He said something rude didn’t he?” Rainbow Dash snarls, pounding her hooves together.
“Did he finally reveal his grotesque second head?” Pinkie gasps, flitting around the purple alicorn like a fly would manure. Twilight parts the wall of inquiring ponies and steps into the hallway behind them.
“I don’t know what happened, everything was going fine and then it just...fell apart.”
“Didja small talk like I told ya?”
“I tried; I don’t know what my problem is. It’s like my brain refuses to work whenever I try and talk to him.”
“Twilight, darling;” Rarity takes this opportunity to pow-wow with Twilight, steering her away from the other three vessels of overflowing inquisition and into a space between her and the wall.
“It seems I misspoke earlier, Twilight. A stallion like Flash Sentry-” Rarity’s Irises crawl to the top of her eyes and her brow knits in thought. “A stallion like Flash Sentry is going to be a tough nut to crack. He is practically imbibed in the run-off of the rich and sophisticated every day. You can’t simply meander in there and hope to win him over with small talk.”
“Well what the hay am I supposed to do then?”
“You mustn't just talk, you must woo him.”
“Woo him?”
“Yes, woo him. Entice him. Make yourself seem like the most irresistible mare in all of Equestria. Let him know that turning you down would be an egregious mistake.”
“How the heck do I do that?”
“Simply muster up a bit of feminine charm. I know you have it, every mare in Equestria’s got some somewhere.”
“I don’t know if charm is really my thing…”
“Nonsense, you’ll do fine.” Rarity croons as she maneuvers Twilight toward the doors.
“Just remember, feminine charm.”
“Feminine charm,” Twilight recites as she walks through the threshold and back toward the table. “Feminine charm.”
