Disco Fever

Chapters

1,

Secrets.

Some are better held than others.

Spike's crush on Rarity, for instance, is a secret insofar as everypony agrees not to talk about it. The fact that everypony already knows – thus rendering it not worth talking about in the slightest – might have made it moot, but it was designated a secret all the same.

Other secrets, like Applejack's love of oranges, or Rarity's love of banjo music, would be carried to their respective graves. This is in no small part because, if anypony were to find out, the secret holders quite possibly might die of shame, taking it to their graves quite a lot faster than they had intended.

The point is, Twilight Sparkle had a secret. Well, really, she had many secrets of all shapes and sizes, some light as white lies – merely embarrassing – and others dark as the eternal abyss and potentially world-changing. Those secrets, whilst not unimportant, were not the focus of this desperate study session in the depths of her castle basement, where shiny new lab instruments glinted menacingly in what little candle light they could catch.

The lab instruments were not the focus of today's study session, either.

Dark, leather-bound books – genuine leather, which made Twilight shudder at their touch – lay in stacks and piles around the faint glow of the pentacle she had drawn in magically-conductive liquid opal.

She had deprived Spike a breakfast to do this. She had risked Spike taking a bite out of one of the castle walls as a result. She severely hoped he didn't try to munch anything load-bearing, or something she couldn't hide behind a tapestry. She had done the math, and deemed the risk acceptable.

Anything to rid her of this ghastly secret.

It was a secret about as well-kept as Spike's, but still as embarrassing as Rarity's, or Applejack's, and in her desperation she had turned to not-quite-black-but-definitely-a-dark-shade-of-grey magic.

The truth was, Twilight Sparkle couldn't dance.

Oh, that wasn't to say she wasn't physically capable of it, no. She could certainly sway her hips, and move her forelegs, but not in any sense rhythmically. Or in coordination with each other. Or, err, in any manner that was visibly appealing. Also, she could never quite figure out what to do with her tongue.

Her friends, most emphatically Rarity, had insisted she need not do anything with her tongue at all, but that seemed like a waste of a potentially wiggle-able appendage. Wigglable? Hrrm.

Still...

She wished she could dance as well as Rainbow Dash, who could appear boneless when she got into the swing of things, or as effortlessly as Pinkie Pie, who still retained a modicum of dignity whenever she cut loose and lost herself to the music.

She wished she had Rarity's elegance, or Fluttershy's grace, or Applejack's decorum.

She wished she didn't have the coordination of a bookworm. Perhaps her egghead threw off her centre of gravity? Some more maths would be required.

And that was why, today, sitting in the shimmering kaleidoscope glint of guttering candelabra flames on liquid opal, Twilight smiled almost-but-not-quite wickedly. A wicked smile, a maniacal laugh, that was all that separated her from being a not-quite-black-but-definitely-a-dark-shade-of-grey magic practitioner and from being an outright black magic practitioner.

And that would be a bad thing indeed.

Probably.

Twilight's almost-but-not-quite wicked smile faded, just to be cautious.

She flicked another page.

Her search into dark-grey magic spells on dancing had come up frustratingly fruitless. It's not to say that she didn't find anything – a lot of these spells were fascinating, and wonderfully complex – it's just that most of these dark-grey spells were cast by dancing, with elaborate choreography, as opposed to spells on how to dance the aforementioned elaborate choreography.

She flicked another page.

At this rate, all the liquid opal – expensive – she had used up to safeguard herself should the book try any funny business was going to go to waste. Safety precautions were never a waste, even when nothing went wrong, but... eugh!

She flicked another page, her hoof pressing down to the book, when her eyes darted over its contents.

Twilight beamed brightly. She had found it! A spell that would make her dance well.

As she read down the page, her smile faded as quickly as it had come, replaced by a venomous scowl.

It was one of those spells that required her to be able to dance well to cast it.

"Gah! What kind of horribly cruel unicorn comes up with a spell that teaches you to dance, but makes you have to dance to cast it?"

Was it just her imagination, or did the page just laugh at her?

She nearly slammed the book shut before catching herself. As frustrated as she was, nothing could possibly justify violence against books. She closed it firmly instead.

It wouldn't close right. The pages weren't flush together in the centre, bulging apart slightly, a telltale symptom of a damaged spine.

Twilight's hooves clapped to her mouth. Had she done this? The book had laughed at her, but-

No, she must strive to be better than the book. She was the better pony. She would fix this.

A quick inspection of the spine showed it to be utterly undamaged, even though the pages didn't quite sit together. An eyebrow quirked, eyes darted across the cover. She opened the book to the middle page.

Sitting in the book was a paper sleeve. With a tender little shake of it, a vinyl disc a bit wider than her hoof slid out, with a paper cover on the top saying 'Side A' in dark red ink, which didn't look like dried blood, of course it didn't.

"A record? What's a record doing in a hundreds-of-years old book on darkish magic?" Twilight mused to herself.

The back of the paper case had an intriguing diagram. Unlike the old Equish that the rest of the book had been written in – which Twilight had spent days painstakingly translating – this was written in easy-to-understand symbols, which made Twilight suspicious.

High magic was written by the stuffiest of scholars and the most erudite of experts. It was a known fact that such types didn't particularly care how accessible their information was to curious eyes; in fact they seemed to take great glee and delight in confusing the unenlightened with obfuscated messages.

Mages in particular were one step worse than doctors, but still one step below lawyers.

She glared down the easy-to-understand symbols, almost as if they would break down and admit that they were a hoax, a lie, false hope in her hour of desperation.

But no, the symbols did not change. They remained simple... almost a comic strip.

The first scene showed a sad pony placing a record on an archaic gramophone.

The second showed the record playing and the pony dancing with a smile.

The third showed the happy pony dancing away as friends watched. Some of them were dancing too.

There was no other way to interpret this. This record would obviously make a pony dance well enough that they wouldn't be ashamed to dance in public. That's what the rest of the spells around this section of the book were about, at least.

Twilight's upper lip trembled. She caught the traitorous tremble, but her lower lip shot out, taught, dragging the rest of that side of her mouth with it into a crooked, hopeful half-smile. She tried to scowl at her smile, but that just lowered her guard on the rest of her mouth, and she felt it spread into a cheerful, hopeful grin.

Curses. Her emotions were getting the better of her.

Nothing for it but to pull the gramophone out and play the small record, and hope for the best. Her crystal lab was shielded against all sorts of magical and physical effects: Worst case scenario the emergency fire ax would be brought out to hack the record to itty bitty bits.

Science was occasionally vulgar in its execution.

A gramophone was dragged from a study corner. The Beethooven record was delicately placed in its correct folder and placed back in its correct spot on the correct shelf. The small record from the book took its place, the needle poised over the start, ready to slot into the groove.

Twilight hesitated. Did she really dare unleash the magic of an unknown spell on so meagre a whim? Dare she risk lowering her carefully laid-out safeguards just for it to work?

She thought about it and decided that, yes, yes she did.

"After all," she said to herself, succumbing to that terrible habit of saying things out loud, "what's the worst that could happen?"

The needle fell, and a layered wall of sound began to play. It was discordant, but not altogether unappealing. There was a saying that, in jazz, it wasn't the notes that were played so much as the notes that weren't played.

Apparently this record was where all those unplayed notes came to die.

In a way, all those wrong notes came together to produce a new melody that was so wrong it approached right from entirely the wrong direction. Like a double negative.

Twilight began to rise and fall in time with the simple melody, her knees buckling and unbuckling, and she couldn't help but smile at the absurdity of it.

"This must be a school of chaos magic," she murmured, bobbing her head up and down. "It's fascinating, really."

The record reached a crescendo, the beat quickening and the notes becoming more layered. Twilight couldn't help but grin, as opposed to the wan smile she had been sporting until this point, as her hooves began to kick off the floor and her tongue began to waggle out of her mouth. Her eyes closed in delight as the music flowed through her, leaving her feeling more excited, more energetic still.

And so Twilight danced.

The music kept going. So Twilight kept dancing, waggling her rump to and fro.

The music kept going. So Twilight wiggled her hooves all around.

The music stopped. So Twilight... kept dancing?

Twilight's eyes shot open. The record had stopped a few seconds ago, she had noticed, but she hadn't. She tried to stop her rump from waggling. It kept waggling in spite of her efforts. She tried to stop her hooves from wiggling. They had a mind of their own.

Twilight glared the record down furiously, at least whenever her head wasn't jerked around by her dancing. The book it had come from was definitely laughing at her now, she could hear it in the dry rustle of paper-on-paper as it rocked back and forth in its own subdued uproar. She navigated herself over to it and waited.

-Two, three, four, one!

Her front left leg jerked to the rhythm of her 'dance', sending the book flying.

"Oops!" Twilight apologized, "I couldn't help it, I can't stop dancing. Not my fault!"

The book pouted at her from the corner it had smacked into, but otherwise remained silent.

Her ire turned back to the record player.

"So, 'what's the worst that could happen', huh? I should know better than to say stuff like that out loud." Twilight muttered bitterly, struggling to keep her tongue in her mouth, it doing its level best to fight its way from out between her lips again, "Why don't we try to fix this, then?"

Twilight used her magic, somewhat distracted by all her asynchronized bobbing and weaving, to toggle the little settings dial of the player into the 'reverse' position. The record started playing backwards.

Twilight waited patiently for the record to play back in its entirety – a standard failsafe for such spells was that playing the record in reverse would undo the spell.

That was common sense.

So, of course, as the record reached its backwards conclusion, that was exactly what didn't happen. Twilight heaved a bitter sigh as she still tottered back and forth like her hooves were lumps of butter slipping in place on a greased skillet .

"Of course," she groaned, "because that would be far too convenient."

She stopped to think, a serious exercise that was only somewhat undermined by her furious flurry of flailing limbs. During one particularly violent head-toss, her eye caught the sleeve of paper that she had pulled the (literally) cursed record from.

Figure three was still the dancing pony showing her friends.

Twilight sighed again, almost becoming lightheaded from so many bitter and miserable heaves passing through her lungs in so short a duration. She'd have to cut back.

So, if she wanted any chance of fixing this, she was going to have to go out and show her friends?

"Is that it, spell? You're going to force me to dance until I show my friends, so I can't be self-conscious about it anymore? I get what that might be supposed to do, but I'm not scared of showing my friends my dancing, like Fluttershy with her singing. I'm just really... eugh... really bad at it. So can you cut me a break and just fix yourself already, before I'm forced to go out like this?"

The spellbook rested in the corner. As Twilight watched it, pleadingly, a red silk bookmark fell out the side of it, looking for all the world like the book was sticking a tongue out at her.

"Oh, fine."

Twilight managed to make it upstairs and boogied her way around, looking for Spike. Trying to call him would probably just result in her biting her tongue.

She eventually found him in his bedroom. One of the nice perks about having a palace to themselves was that Spike had his own room, now. She had to knock and everything!

He definitely drilled into her that she had to knock, too.

She had no problem knocking, now. She had trouble stopping at just once though, with the way her limbs were jerking.

"You can come in."

Twilight stared at the door in frustration. Magic! She could open it with her magic. Her horn lit up and an aura of magic surrounded the doorknob. It twisted, and-

There was the gnarled tearing of splintering wood and the protesting screams of metal rending.

The door was ripped from its hinges as Twilight's head jerked to the silent rhythm, pulling her horn with it as a result. Spike sat on his bed, where he was reading comics, now staring at Twilight in shock.

"Woah. I said you could come in, not rip my door off. You don't have to throw a fit."

Twilight opened her mouth to retort, but just ended up biting her tongue. Not figuratively, she actually bit her tongue. It hurt.

"Wait – Oh geeze, you are having a fit aren't you?" Spike's eyes widened as he pushed himself off his bed, "I told you I don't trust you alone with the alchemical stuff. You need, like, a spotter or something."

Twilight's tongue throbbed a bit as she danced in the doorway, pushing herself forward in between bouts of 'The Monkey'. Spike plodded up to her and thrust a sock into her mouth. At least it tasted clean.

"There. Now you won't choke on your tongue or bite it off until this wears off. Let's hope it's soon, 'cause you kinda look ridiculous."

Twilight's eyes narrowed as she spit the sock out. "I'm not having a fit, Spike."

Spike looked her up and down slowly. "You sure?"

Twilight growled as one of her legs came out from under her. "Positive. I found a spell in an old book – rather, on a music record in an old book – that was supposed to make me dance better. Now I can't stop dancing-"

"Wait, that's dancing?"

"-until my friends see me," Twilight continued, doing her best to ignore Spike's interruption, "I was sort of hoping just showing you would be enough, but it appears not."

"Oh." Spike announced lamely, picking up the sock Twilight had spat out and throwing it in a pile of dirty clothes on the other side of the room. It was a teenager's bedroom: Even if he didn't wear clothes, he had to have a dirty pile of them on the floor, So Sayeth The Universe. "So, now what?"

That was a very good question.

"I suppose round my friends up in the ballroom and unleash this on them. That should fix it, and then I never, ever have to dance again." Spike stared at her a long while, unmoving, making Twilight feel a bit itchy. "What?"

"Well, are you sure you want your friends seeing you like this? Even I don't want to see you like this, and I've heard you sing in the shower."

Twilight bristled at that, though any indignance she had couldn't really be conveyed whilst she was flopping about like this. "Hey! I'm a very good singer, thank you very much."

"Oh, yeah, most of the time," Spike agreed, "Just not in the shower."

"If I had any ego to start with today, I'm certainly not going to have one by the end of it, am I?" Twilight sighed, her legs jerking with a somewhat melancholy inflection, obvious to anypony who had studied arthropod mating dances.

Spike noted that with a thoughtful, almost philosophical, nod. "Who do you think's going to laugh at you harder? Rainbow or Pinkie Pie?" This was asked not with malice or carelessness, but with the precise thought that comes with genuine consideration.

Twilight bit back a kneejerk retort when her front left and back right knees jerked. Instead she resorted to actually thinking about it, herself. "They're both my friends, and I’m sure they'll try to be very understanding and, hopefully, sympathetic."

Spike raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, that’s all well and good, but let’s be realistic here. C’mon.”

"That being said, they're also Rainbow and Pinkie. So when they do laugh at me, Rainbow's probably going to be crueler about it whilst Pinkie, though far less malicious, will laugh harder. Because of course she will."

"Right. So. Me, getting them now?"

Twilight backed out of the doorway, giving Spike enough room away from her flailing to pass her safely. "On second thought, take your time, I'm really not in any particular hurry for them to see me like this."

Twilight had a ballroom now. That was, quite certainly, a thing that had happened.

It was a huge sight more than her old library could have held – There were twenty foot high pale purple crystal columns around the edges, a row of arched windows reaching from the floor with their gilt tips touching the ceiling along the left side wall.

A raised platform at the far end of the room served as a stage, where a throne, or thrones, could be put for the Princess, or Princesses, to watch over the dancers, and a thick, dark red curtain to unveil whatever was placed behind it for dramatics. Rarity herself had picked the most dramatic-looking curtain available.

The ceiling was polished and reflective, making the room feel larger than it was and granting the dancers below a sight of themselves. It gave its audience the curious pleasure of seeing those with big egos or poor self-confidence get distracted staring up at themselves and then stumble over dizzily.

Probably an unintentional, but not unwelcome, side effect of the... well, no architect designed this place, did they? It just sort of... happened.

Actually, how did a tree know how to design her new home? Was it etched into its memory? Was the tree sapient, or even sentient? Why had it not made such structures before, or since?

Such thoughts distracted Twilight as she stared at the closed red curtains in front of her, her gramophone sitting innocently beside her. The record in it wasn't the same one that cursed her, but with a little trial and error she had found that her dancing changed in tempo to match the rhythm of whatever music was playing. Further... experimentation had led her to believe that hectic, fast paced music most complimented her erratic dancing style, so that was what she had chosen.

It made her look far less silly than dancing in silence, at least.

A little purple head popped in between the heavy fabric in front of her, eyeing her nervously.

"Uh, everypony's here,” he said with some trepidation. “They've promised to be understanding, and not to laugh until you're done. Pinkie even Pinkie Swore, so there's that."

Twilight smiled, just a tad bitterly, but still overall grateful. "Alright Spike, thank you. Let's just get this over with, shall we?"

Spike eyed her up and down. "You've been dancing like that for hours now. Aren't you tired or something?"

"I am utterly exhausted, Spike. My everything hurts, especially in places I only academically knew could hurt but never really thought possible. I might even consider burning the book that cast this spell on me," Twilight informed him matter-of-factly, thinking fiery thoughts. The book would burn like her joints did, that was for certain.

"Wow, you're actually going to hurt a book?” His eyes widened. “That's pretty harsh for you."

"Bibliocide might seem harsh, Spike, but I believe, in this case, it’s much deserved. Now, take your position and get ready to open the curtains on my signal. I don't want to have to do this more than once. In my lifetime."

Spike crawled the rest of the way under the heavy red fabric and got up, snapping off a quick salute before he plodded over to the thick ropes, thicker than Spike's arms, and gripped them. Twilight's magic gripped the needle, and this time she took extra care not to let the jerks of her head affect the delicate movement. She'd lost a few good records like that, waiting for Spike.

A dull, throbbing bass wafted from the gramophone.

Twilight counted, two, three, four and nodded to Spike. He nodded back and his hands became a blur of motion.

The curtains pulled apart, revealing five pairs of eyes staring back at her in equal parts worry, concern, and amusement. They had gathered into a loose crowd, sitting on the ballroom floor in front of the stage. Only Rarity had bothered to find a cushion.

Her audience awaited.

Twilight took center stage and cut loose, balling up the embarrassment and shame and forcing it deep, deep down. After this, she'd never have to do it again.

From the gramophone blared the one song that might make her dancing look somewhat appropriate:

She's a mane-iac, mane-iac oh woah

and she's dancing like she's never danced before

Twilight didn't really have to do anything. Because of the spell, all she really had to do was let herself do what she was already doing. The music let her feel less silly, but she was still rather self conscious about it.

Rightfully so, based on her friends' reactions.

Rarity appeared to be smiling at her, but the smile was too angular and showed far too much teeth. There was a visible tension to it, that looked like it very much might snap.

Fluttershy hid behind her mane, looking embarrassed enough for both Twilight and herself, daring only peek a single eye out from behind it.

Applejack hid underneath her hat, her lips tugging at the edges into a smile that betrayed her. She quickly reined it back in, at least until Twilight got to the chorus again.

Rainbow Dash’s response didn't surprise her in the least. Her eyes appeared to be watering, and she was rolling on the ground, changing direction only when she bumped into Pinkie or Applejack beside her. Her hoof hammered the ballroom floor to punctuate her guffaws. She only seemed to laugh harder as the song went on. Rarity, to her credit, occasionally shot her a nasty glare, for what good it did.

Pinkie... Twilight couldn't decide if her reaction was the best or the worst. Pinkie had found a bag of popcorn and was watching Twilight with rapturous fixation, eyes wide and almost sparkling. There was no smile, no laughter – just a tight look of fascination.

The song came to a close. Twilight had opted to pull down a bucket of confetti, in lieu of water, as it was autumn and the water would have been rather cold. Pinkie Pie nodded seriously.

There was a pause. Twilight remained still, breathing heavily, air burning her raw throat after so many hours of intense dancing.

That was when she realized it... she was just standing still, breathing heavily. She wasn't dancing.

She wasn't dancing!

"Oh, it worked!” She exclaimed, almost in surprise, which in itself surprised her, “I mean, I had no reason to doubt it would work, but I'm so grateful that it did because can you imagine what it would be like to have to dance all the time?"

Her friends, bar Rainbow who was still busy gasping with laughter, sighed in relief.

Rarity's rictus grimace softened into something natural. "Oh, good, dear. It would simply be unthinkable if you were forced to dance like... that... for a second more."

Twilight's relieved smile flickered a bit. "Well, I mean, I'm more relieved about not having to dance. Not that I was so bad at it."

Rainbow's laughter redoubled again, tears flowing freely by this point, probably in no small part because of how painful three solid minutes, now, of wretched cackling laughter must be. "If you could even call that dancing. You looked like a spider caught in a bug zapper. While having a stroke."

"Rainbow!” Rarity chided. “That was needlessly cruel!"

Applejack shrugged, knocking her hat back and standing up, stretching a bit. "Sorry, Rares, but I gotta admit, Rainbow's anala-whatsit was pretty much on the money. Spider on a bug zapper... yeah, I can see that."

"Rainbow's analogy was not apt!" Twilight growled, her legs bobbing again.

"Hey, it's not my fault you messed up another spell. For an egghead, things seem to blow up in your face pretty spectacularly, like, every other week, you know that, right?"

"That's not fair! Ninety nine point three seven three percent of the time absolutely nothing goes wrong with the spell! This is just one of the point six two seven percent of the times that it does." Twilight paused, considering that. "Except, I think that the spell went completely right, and the pony who came up with the spell was just a jerk."

"Huh. So, this one time you get the spell right is the one time you really wish you had stuffed something up, yeah?"

Twilight stared at Dash with apoplexy, her body practically vibrating with irritation. Vibrating like a metronome, even, with her hips keeping time – she was apparently just that mad.

Pinkie thrust her popcorn at Rainbow, stalking towards the stage as if in a trance.

"Pinkie Pie?"

"That," she paused, looking her up and down with a serious and appraising stare, "that was amazing. You were all like swoosh and pew and woo!"

Twilight sighed happily, nodding her head, partly in relief, partly in gratitude. "Thank you, Pinkie."

"I wish I had the self-confidence to dance that badly on purpose. I don't think I could, even if I tried!"

Twilight's head didn't stop nodding, even as the gratitude faded.

"Thank you, Pinkie."

"I mean, I get what you would totally call exuberant, because that's that word you used that one time, but never like that. It's like you didn't even care what ponies could possibly think of you! Boy, I tell ya, any other pony would be so embarrassed to be caught dancing like that, or ashamed, mortified even. But not you! Where another pony would lock themselves up in a deep hole forever and ever, never to see another pony so long as they live if they got caught dancing like that, you just kept going! Wow! I wish I could be as brave as you!"

"Thank you, Pinkie." Twilight repeated through gritted teeth, biting her tongue to stop herself from saying something worse. At least, she thought that was why she bit her tongue.

"Ah, sugarcube, don't think Twilight had much choice in the matter. Reckon it was just 'cause of the curse."

"Oh. Then why have I seen her dance like that before?"

At that, Rainbow's laughter redoubled. Fluttershy stared at Rainbow in mute horror, and Rarity remarked on just how gauche her behaviour was. It seemed Applejack was having just as much trouble holding back her own guffaws.

Pinkie noted Twilight's glare and offered her a sheepish grin.

"I, uh... no offense?"

"I would very much like to be alone right now."

"Oh. Oh, that's okay. Uh, get well soon?"

Twilight pondered that as she stormed out of the room, head swaying and knees bobbing. She'd just cured herself with that little display. Wasn't that obvious?

Behind her, Applejack started laughing just as hard as Rainbow. She heard Rarity's titters join shortly after, and even a few very subdued snickers from Fluttershy.

"Don't be mean, girls," Pinkie Pie scolded behind her. Twilight paused in the stage doorway, hopefully looking back over her shoulder. "I mean, can you imagine what it would be like to have to dance like that for even a single minute? I don't know how I'd even be able to live with myself!"

The doorway slammed behind Twilight. She could still hear the laughter through it.

But as her hips waggled and her tongue wiggled back out of her mouth, Twilight took some solace in the fact that at least she was cured.

2,

Rainbow Dash was napping on a cloud.

It was pretty awesome.

The cloud was fluffy and conformed to the contours of her spectacularly muscled back, cradling her just right to completely forget about the worries of the world below.

She needed this nap. She was exhausted after laughing at Twilight so much.

It's not like it was Twilight's fault or anything. Dash knew that. And she knew she was kind of mean about it.

Actually, she felt kind of bad, thinking about it. Kind of really bad.

But still, she thought with a smile, she was dancing like that. It was so uncool! It was the dorkiest, least-coordinated thing she had ever seen. Even the Cutie Mark Crusader's musical performance didn't come close to the sheer levels of awful that was Twilight Sparkle dancing like a mane-iac (oh, woah).

Went and got that dumb song stuck in her head, too, Dash grumbled, tapping a hoof on the cloud in time to the remembered beat.

'I mean, who could blame me for laughing', she thought to herself, 'Could you imagine medancing like that? Like, in public? It was so far from radical it was almost lametrocious, and that's not a word I use lightly. That is the grade-A hard stuff right there, but that's what it was. Lametrocious.

If anypony ever saw me dancing like that, I'd fly into the Everfree and let myself get eaten by the first thing that wanted to, which would probably be everything since I probably taste awesome too, 'cause my life would officially be over after that. Like the Wonderbolts would let me in after catching me with that kind of coordination. Ha!'

Rainbow's hoof kept tapping to an unheard beat as these thoughts raced through her head. Thoughts always raced through her head, it was sort of her thing.

Like cool. Which that dancing wasn't.

The thought left a smile as her head bobbed against the pillow-soft cloud, drifting off into what was going to be a most excellent nappage.

Applejack bucked at the tree.

Applejack missed.

“Now, just what in the hay just happened there? Bucks? Kicks? How could you just go and plum miss a whole heapin' tree like that?”

Applejack shook her head and just kept shaking it.

“Now, somethin' ain't right here. Let's try this again, fellas, and see if we can't get somethin' for supper already.”

Applejack bucked at the tree again.

This time her hooves connected, but they didn't hit at the same time. They hit with a one, two.

'Three, four', Applejack finished counting off in her head, even as the uneven blow caused her to twist around and fall flat on her face.

“Now, just what in tarnation is goin' on here?”

Rarity made another unseemly gaffe.

As she worked the delicate satin for her latest ensemble through the sewing machine, taking great pains to keep the difficult material straight and level, it had slipped in her hoof again, totally ruining the seam she was so carefully creating.

It was the third such schoolfilly blunder since seeing Twilight's... little performance.

She felt sorry for the girl, truly she did, but she seemed all better now and really there was no need to have that song still stuck in her head, distracting her so.

It was rather frustrating, to put it in such plain terms.

Never before had such a simple matter as having a pop tune stuck in her head caused her to create so many trivial, silly errors, however. Much like the satin before her, it was unseemly.

“There's simply nothing else for it,” Rarity muttered to herself, working quickly to salvage what she could of her error – particularly for such an expensive material, “I shall have to, what is that expression Applejack once expressed... ah! Yes. 'Whistle as I work'.”

Rarity nodded at her fine decision. In fact, her decision seemed so grand, she just could not stop nodding.

She whistled a single bar of whatever came to mind and winced.

“My, my, that was simply atrocious. Did I truly produce that discordant mess? Truly? Rarity, dear, you must – well, first you must stop talking to yourself, you'll seem a madmare – but you must compose yourself if that horrible composition is anything to go by, which surely it is.”

She tried another bar.

Once more the notes that came out didn't follow any scale, chord, key – anything really.

Still, her hoof seemed to be tapping along to the tune, whatever it was.

“Well, Rarity, what has gotten into y- ow!”

Her fine, silver tongue! Prized treasure of her mouth! How could she have allowed herself to have bitten it! Why, she was about as coordinated as Twilight earlier...

Oh.

Oh, dear.

Rarity fled the boutique, pausing only to grab her 'I'd rather not be seen, but still be seen as fabulous' shades and headwrap.

She had to see the other girls. To make sure...

Who first, however? Now, that was a question.

Applejack? No. No, she'd be put off until last – if this was going to turn out how she expected, the farmer would shake mud and sweat and ick off on her like a wet dog. Not entirely her fault, but best avoided.

Celestia only knew where Rainbow Dash would be around now, and whilst Pinkie Pie was close she was also on the way to Applejack's orchard should Rarity double back after involving Fluttershy.

The pegasus had the added ability to fly, well and truly out of range of an errant hoofstrike or bit of filth touching her pristine white coat. Yes, Fluttershy it was then.

Rarity hurried, noting with horrified fascination that her hoofsteps were slightly out of synchronicity, but remained padding the ground with precise rhythm.

Perhaps she shouldn't have laughed at Twilight. It was very unladylike, but Rainbow's own amusement had been dreadfully contagious...

Rarity's eyes widened in horror, in realization; one was indistinguishable from the other. Dear heavens, it was contagious, wasn't it? Not just the laughter, of course, but-

She redoubled her pace to the cottage.

Fortunately the trek through Ponyville proper had been almost entirely uneventful, with nopony truly around at this time of the afternoon. It was just the cusp of sunset, when ponies had headed home for the day but hadn't quite started coming out for the night. Good, the less who were exposed to her dreadful condition the better.

Fluttershy's cottage looked dark. Animals milled around outside, certainly, but not with purpose. Fluttershy almost certainly wasn't here.

Rarity knocked on the door just to be sure.

She recoiled away, though, immediately after, as if the door had burned her terribly. Instead of her customary two-tone knock, what had come out was...

One, two, three, four.

Just what was happening to her? Was she no longer in control of her faculties?

Good heavens, what would happen if it started attacking her thought patterns? Would she speak in rhyme? What would that even sound like?

Oh. Probably like Zecora.

Rarity cheered from her existential crisis at what could potentially eradicate her notion of self might leave her sounding rather fancifully exotic. It seemed a fair trade-off.

Still, that left her wondering where Fluttershy could be... She hadn't answered for the duration that Rarity had been standing on her doorstep after knocking, contemplating what it would be like to erupt on the Canterlot socialite scene with a Zebra tongue. Or how she'd look in vertical stripes, which were apparently quite slimming...

Hrrm. Perhaps dancing non-stop wouldn't be so bad after all, then. At least she was a much more graceful dancer than Twilight, poor dear.

Rarity trotted away from the cottage thoughtfully, less rushed than she had be when she had arrived. Head held high and proud, she made her way back to the next pony on her list, Pinkie Pie.

She did note, though, as she walked the long road from the cottage to the centre of town, that her hips didn't have that same silky sensuality that they usually did. No longer did they sway like wind rippling through velvet curtains, but now they seemed to grind into themselves like a pair of bent eggbeaters.

And, try as she might, she could not convince her tongue to stay in her mouth, which was rather frustrating indeed.

Perhaps if her head would stop bobbing it would be easier...

Still, this was obviously just the first stages of this dreadful curse taking hold. Soon she'd be forced to dance in her wonderfully alluring way, which would be a sight better than this dreadful asymmetric nonsense.

Still nopony around as Rarity made her final approach to the bakery and darkness was just falling, concealing her shame. Excellent.

The bell above the door rang as she walked in, head down, shades lowered meaningfully. Mrs Cake's voice wafted over the counter with the heavy, sticky smell of day-old stale pastries.

“I'm sorry, dear, but we were just closing when – Oh! Rarity, love, are you here to see Pinkie Pie, then?”

“I'm afraid so. I'm sorry I'm not here to take some of these pastries off your hooves.”

“Oh, that's alright. I tend to make too many some mornings just so I have an excuse to sneak a few at the end of the day,” Mrs Cake admitted sheepishly, surreptitiously sneaking a profiterole when she thought Rarity looked away.

“Honestly, with your figure? I find that quite hard to believe,” Rarity smiled warmly, “I don't know where they'd all go.”

Mrs Cake blushed slightly, warmly. “You're far too kind, dear. Pinkie's just upstairs, I'm sure she'd love to see one of her friends.”

With a smile and a slight nod – which rapidly devolved into a rather prolonged series of head sways – Rarity headed for the stairs to Pinkie's room.

She stopped outside, though, when she heard Pinkie Pie singing.

Singing tunefully. It was a rather saccharine number, as sickly sweet as the candies she was so fond of, but it was definitely a rather pretty piece.

Rarity headed back down the stairs. Whatever they had caught from Twilight hadn't affected Pinkie Pie, at least not yet.

“Leaving so soon?”

Rarity spasmed. She was getting worse. “I'm afraid so, Mrs Cake. Give Pinkie my best, please.”

“Well... alright. Are you sure you don't want something for the walk home, Ms. Rarity?”

“I'm sure I don't, though I appreciate the offer.”

“It just looks like you have a bad case of low blood sugar, and it wouldn't do for you to fall faint--”

Rarity practically dove for the door before she could make a further scene of herself.

The road up to Sweet Apple acres was a long one even under the best of circumstances. Tapdancing up the path like a schizophrenic centipede trying to look over both shoulders at once was decidedly not the best of circumstances.

There seemed to be a pile of blue and yellow twitching spasmodically by the gate to the Apple properties, however.

It was here that she managed to find Rainbow Dash and then, rather succinctly, Fluttershy.

“Ah, here you girls are. I've been looking for you for a little while now. I take it you're starting to notice the same thing that I am, yes?”

Rainbow Dash grunted and writhed in response. Fluttershy squeaked and whimpered underneath her. Rarity raised an eyebrow delicately. It would have been an expression of composed surprise had her head not chosen that moment to make a valiant attempt to leap off her neck in several directions.

“What happened here, darlings?”

Rainbow tried to disentangle herself from Fluttershy, but that plan was foiled by an ill-timed bout of 'The Monkey' that ended up with them tangling further, tails knotted together like a bow, only now with Fluttershy on top.

Fluttershy at least had a decent enough vantage point to explain their predicament.

“Well, I noticed that something strange was happening, like to Twilight,” Fluttershy explained in a voice whisper-soft, “so I went to find Rainbow Dash. But she was napping on a cloud.”

Rarity looked up and noticed a distinctly cloudless sky. “I see. Then what happened?”

“Well, I stood underneath it, calling up to her like this. Rainbow! Rainbow, wake up!”

Rarity had to amend the exclamation marks in her head, as her shout was intent only. Truly, she couldn't have woken a breezy if she tried that in its ear.

“Yes. I take it that didn't quite work, darling?”

“How did you know?” Fluttershy asked in genuine surprise.

“If she had simply woken up, well, this calamity wouldn't quite have gotten this far, now, would it? So, what happened next?”

There was another bout in the pony-heap – one that looked vaguely like an ouroborous attempting a conga line with itself – and the two ponies shifted once more, now with Rainbow on top again.

“I kind of busted the cloud wide open when I started jerking like this in my sleep. And sort of fell on her. And we've kind of been stuck like this for a while now.”

Rarity winced. “That couldn’t have been pleasant.”

“Well, Rainbow and I have always been very close friends,” Fluttershy declared from the approximate region of Rainbow's posterior, “But this might be a little much. Uh, no offense, Rainbow.”

“No, I'm totally on the same page as you here, Flutters. You, uh, mind helping us a bit here, Rarity?”

Rarity's horn glowed, as did the two-pony pile. Unfortunately she attempted this on the three beat, and her head jerked wildly on the fourth, ripping the two ponies apart with far more force than she had intended.

Fluttershy seemed fine, merely falling to the ground with a slight cloud of dust from the dirt path puffing up around her. She coughed daintily.

Rainbow Dash, meanwhile, was flung into the branches of a nearby appletree, tumbling out of it sticky and hair matted with various twigs stuck in it.

Before anypony could comment an orange blur raced past them, legs kicking out occasionally.

It stopped a few meters away from them, or at least made a valiant attempt. The twitching orange blur fell flat on its face and swore loudly. A jerk of its head seemed to push it back upright – Rarity's neck twinged in sympathy.

“Applejack?”

“Huh. Got you girls good, too?”

“Indeed it did. Where were you going in such a hurry?”

“Twilight's. Figured she'd fix this and all.”

“I'm not entirely certain she knows how, though I suppose she does seem our last, best hope at this point...”

“Right.”

Dash spat a chunk of apple out, looking at Applejack oddly. “AJ?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you tie your hat to your head with rope?”

Applejack's head twitched to the same rhythm that seemed to be looping incessantly in Rarity's own head.

“Oh. Right.”

Rarity tutted, getting in as close to Applejack as she could without them risking headbutting each other, or her horn gouging out somepony's eye accidentally.

This required more distance than one would otherwise hope.

“You're going to destroy the brim of your hat like that, Applejack. It wasn't meant to be bent down like that.”

“Well, I ain't got many alternatives.”

“You could not wear the hat.” Rainbow Dash pointed out as she desperately tried to push herself back up using the tree, fighting the constant waggling of her hips.

“No way, no how is that an option. I need all the familiar comforts I can get at a time like this. 'Sides, makes my head feel naked without it.”

“Thank you for that... wonderfully vivid choice of words,” Rarity said with the sincerity of a child receiving boiled spinach, “I suppose, should this become more of a long-term issue, that I could thread a pull-cord for you. It would look far less ludicrous, at least.”

“Well, that ain't going to need ta happen, 'cause Twilight's goin' to fix us up, right good and proper, ain't that right?”

“I certainly admire your positivity. Let's hope it's well-placed.”

“Well, at least it's gotten dark,” Rainbow grunted, “Nopony can see us like this.”

Fluttershy mewled in agreement as her own reasonably rhythmic ball of twitching limbs caught up to the other three.

“I'm sure that's good for more reasons than you know, Rainbow,” Rarity whispered, “As near as I can tell, whatever we have might be contagious.”

“What, Pinkie's like this too?”

“Strangely not. Though I haven't the slightest idea why.”

“Well, consarnit, how do you think it spreads, then?”

“I don't know that, either. Pinkie got the closest of us, yet she's the only one not affected, so it can't simply be proximity to... the infected.”

They had reached the edge of town, now, their clopping of hooves over the cobblestone bridge in declaring their bizarre beat to anypony who cared to listen.

“Pretty sure Twilight didn't bite any of us, so it's not like zombieism.”

“Don't even joke, RD.”

“Who's joking?”

Fluttershy 'eeped' and hid behind her mane, though that was rendered ineffective by the next head toss. She attempted to hide again, jerking her neck out to collect as much of her fringe as possible, but that just rendered the next predictable head-toss that much more volatile.

Didn't stop her from trying though.

“Rainbow Dash, that's no excuse to be crass.”

“No, seriously, think about it. It's not just us dancing. We're dancing like Twilight. She's patient zero! There's always a patient zero in zombie stuff.” Her head bobbed as if to agree with herself, though judging by her scowl it was completely involuntary.

Rarity stopped in her tracks, as much as she could at least.

“Are you saying you don't think this is just the first stage of the disease?”

“I'm afraid it looks that way, sugarcube,” Applejack agreed sadly.

“This is how we're stuck like, then?”

“Eeyup.”

Rarity screamed, shrill and unladylike. “No! No, no, no, no, no, no!”

“Shh!” Rainbow hissed, “You want somepony to see us?”

A few shutters opened. Some ponies leaned out of a nearby club, trying to identify the source of the bloodcurdling cry.

Some snickered. Some chortled. Some giggled or guffawed at what they saw.

Almost all of them laughed in some sort of way.

Rainbow flushed furiously, wincing, head tilting down. “Eugh. Now everypony's gonna see.”

Fluttershy whimpered.

A crowd was starting to form around the edges of the street as they walked. Applejack turned as she 'danced' to face Rainbow, a fierce look of stoic determination etched into her features ruined only by the wrenching jerks of her head.

“Rainbow. Beatbox. Now.”

“What? Why?”

“I have an idea. Just trust me. Beatbox, now.”

Rainbow did as she was told. The group's jerking movements started to match the beat of Rainbow's beat.

“Alright, everypony swallow your pride and get in line. There's strength in numbers and all that. One of us at a time doin' this looks pathetic. We do this altogether, we might come out of this with a shred of dignity. Ante up, everypony.”

Fluttershy whimpered again, but stood flank-to-flank with Applejack. Rainbow fell in on the opposite side.

Rarity sighed, noisily gulping with a too-dry throat, and fell in beside Fluttershy.

Miraculously, together like this, they seemed to reach some sort of coordination with each other. They were still jerking ridiculously, out of their control, but at least now they were matching the pony beside them.

“See? Now it ain't lookin' so bad.”

“Then why, pray tell, are they still laughing at us?”

“Because we still look really ridiculous. Face it, this is just damage control, ain't nothin' goin' to make this look good on anypony.” Applejack's head jerked again, though the rope held fast and her hat remained firmly stuck on her head... sort of. It fell from horizontal to vertical covering her left eye.

“Oh, here, darling, let me help with that—”

Rainbow's eyes widened as Rarity's horn glowed. “No, wait, stop!”

Too late. Applejack was already being hurled hat-first through a nearby plate-glass window. Fortunately the hat protected her from most of the glass damage.

“Ow! Ow, ow! Sugarcube, why'd you go and do a – ow! – gosh darned thing like that?”

“I'm so sorry, Applejack, I was just trying to help!”

Rainbow had stopped beatboxing in shock. The rudimentary teamwork fell apart, limbs falling to their owner's own personal rhythms.

“Right, now we do things my way,” Rainbow declared. She sucked in a deep gulp of air and...

“Everypony, run for it!”

A yellow, orange, white and rainbow blur shot through town to the crystal palace as fast as their horribly uncooperative limbs could conceivably carry them.

“Ah, Twilight? Your friends are here.”

Twilight lay twitching in bed, face down with a pillow wrapped around her head. Her answer was screamed through it, with remarkably less effectiveness than had it been, say, a megaphone. “Tell them to leave, Spike! They're just going to laugh at me again.”

“I don't think they are, Twilight. And, uh, when I said your friends are here, I meant they already sorta let themselves in?”

“What?” Twilight's head jerked off the pillow, and at least eighty percent of the gesture was voluntary. There was a hammering on her bedroom door.

Twilight boogied her way over to it and opened it with a hoof in between bouts of 'The Navigator'.

She was hurled back to the floor by a frantic white-and-purple blob of gyrating motion.

The white and purple blob spoke thus; “Fix this! Fix it now!”

“I know my dancing's bad, girls, but it shouldn't affect you if you don't look at it.” Twilight heaved the words out bitterly, “I've only abandoned all equine contact for a few hours now, I didn't figure anypony would notice yet.”

Twilight briefly considered the acquisition of a crystal moat, to prevent ponies barging in to her house just to point out her flaws from happening again.

“What? No! Fix us!”

"Us? Why, what's...” Twilight trailed off as she saw Applejack and Fluttershy standing sadly in the doorway, unable to keep their bodies still or, strangely, keep their tongues in their mouths.

Oh. So, apparently, this was happening. Little bits and pieces fell together in her head as she joined the dots.

Twilight glanced around her bedroom. Fragile telescope, fragile and neatly sorted bookshelves, various sculptures she didn't want knocked over...

“Okay, we need to take this to the ballroom, right now.”

There was a clunk and a crack. Twilight jerked her head to look over her shoulder. Rainbow looked back at her – mostly at her – sheepishly, a delicate Fourth City horsehead sculpture in tattered ruins beside her.

Twilight sighed heavily.

As they traversed the castle hallways, Twilight took the time to observe her friends, but otherwise no words were exchanged until they had reached the big, open, no-fragile-objects ballroom. As they entered, nopony dared look up at the ceiling to see what they looked like. Their actions were already being mirrored in their friends around them.

“Alright, sugarcube, so what's the cure? Ancient amulet in the Everfree? Some complicated ritual whatchamjiggit? Rainbow Power?”

“I'm sorry to say this, girls, but I've been looking all day for something, anything, that could reverse the effects even in myself. I had no idea it was contagious until now,” Twilight growled like a truly vicious creature, and everypony reflexively took a boogying step back, “What was supposed to be the 'cure' step on the spell's instructions must have been a trick to try and get the spell to spread mimetically as fast as possible, rather than just risking the spellcaster hide away and keep themselves quarantined.”

“Woah, quarantine. See? Total zombie-”

“Rainbow, you say that word one more time, my hoof is going somewhere Celestia's sun don't shine.”

Rainbow made a mouth-zipping gesture.

“Right, so, just how hard would it be to come up with a cure from scratch?”

“Well, there is one thing I can think of. I can isolate the section of the brain that the spell has targeted and perform an incredibly localized lobotomy that-”

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Darling, please tell me you're joking?”

Fluttershy fainted.

Twilight watched Fluttershy continue to dance herself around on the floor in a circle, in spite of being arguably unconscious. “I'd just have to use a very specific amount of magic that-”

“Rarity just tried to adjust Applejack's hat and ended up throwing her through a building. Her hat. And you want us to let you try doing that to our brains like this. Can you imagine what would happen if-”

Rarity fainted.

“- yeah, see, Rarity gets it.”

Twilight aimed her head directly between the two remaining ponies so that the head sways resulted in her looking between the two of them with some modicum of seriousness.

“Well, that's it, I'm afraid. I don't think there's anything else that can be done.”

“Surely you're not sayin'-”

“Girls... I think we might be stuck like this... forever.”

3,

Twilight returned with some smelling salts, walking and dancing in a very weak imitation of something she must have seen in 'Northside Story', snapping the tips of her wings like Spike would with his claws.

Rarity's eyes fluttered open. "Oh, darling, I was having the most horrible nightmare. We were all forced to dance horribly, with no grace or elegance, without end."

"You wanna break it to her," Applejack murmured to Twilight, "or you want me to do it?"

"She'll figure it out on her own in a second anyway."

Rarity rocked herself back up to her hooves as best as she was able. She stared down at her limbs with numb bemusement as they continued to splay about. "Drat."

"Isn't there some sort of counterspell?" Rainbow practically begged as she was dragged into a particularly poor interpretation of 'The Twist'.

"I'm afraid not," Twilight sighed, emphasizing the 'afraid', "this magic is too complex, I haven't seen anything exactly like it before, or even close enough."

Rarity retreated to a safe distance from her friends as Applejack's hoof splayed out towards her head again. "So why didn't it seem to, well, infect Pinkie Pie?"

"I don't know, Rarity."

Applejack scratched the bottom of her jaw in thought, at least until her hoof spasmed and started slamming up into it to the beat. The clacking of her teeth made a sound not entirely like maracas. "Or Spike?"

"Probably because he's a dragon, not a pony. The spell might have a species boundary."

"So, Pinkie Pie probably isn't actually a pony then?" Rainbow mused.

Applejack grinned. "Called it."

"Pinkie Pie is definitely a pony," Twilight sighed, "at least to a point zero seven percent margin of error. Trust me, that was one of the first possibilities I looked into in my efforts to explain Pinkie Sense. But, no, that would have made too much sense."

"There must be some reason, then," Rarity insisted, tripping over her own hooves and bumping into a wall, "it can't be just random."

Rainbow shook her head – though once she started she couldn't stop. "It's Pinkie Pie, Rarity. Of course it can."

"She didn't laugh," Fluttershy's whispered to herself, head raising slightly, eyes wide. She bit her tongue immediately, realizing she had nearly drawn attention to herself, ducking her head.

"Think, girls, Pinkie Pie could be the key to everything!"

Rarity had resorted to lying on her back at this point, allowing her legs to flail in the air above her uselessly. "She was there with us, that much is certain."

Fluttershy grew more bold. This time she said it with purpose, on purpose. "She didn't laugh. Pinkie Pie didn't laugh."

Nopony heard her. Fluttershy's confidence leaked out of her like a balloon.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash moved to copy Rarity, Applejack lying comfortably on her side – well, when she didn't end up occasionally flopping like a fish out of water for her efforts – and Rainbow attempting to lie on her back. Twilight watched her with a knowing look.

Rainbow's wings snapped, flipping her off the ground and back on her feet.

"Sorry, Dash, it doesn't work with wings. I'm going to have to strap myself down in the examination bed in the lab if I'm going to get any sleep tonight. Or at the very least get Spike to help. I think I have a spare, you might want to sleep over tonight. Or maybe get one of your own, if we can't figure out what Pinkie Pie already has."

"She didn't laugh," Fluttershy insisted.

Rarity heard her, Fluttershy saw with a smile. She was looking up at her thoughtfully. "It's okay, Fluttershy, nopony is laughing at you. We all look like this, you aren't alone."

Well, Rarity sort of heard her. Fluttershy opened her mouth again to correct Rarity, but it looked like Rarity was still talking, so she decided to wait patiently.

"Earlier, this morning, when we were watching Pinkie Pie," Rarity's brow scrunched up in thought, in memory, as one of her rear legs spun her on the floor in slow, lazy circles, "when we were all, well, I'm ashamed to admit it now, laughing at poor Twilight's unfortunate situation, Pinkie Pie was the only one who was reminding us how awful it must be to have been in Twilight's position."

"Oh yes," Twilight spoke through gritted teeth, her molars possibly capable of turning coal to diamonds at that point, "I remember. I am excruciatingly aware of what Pinkie said."

"Well, yes, darling, but think about it. Pinkie Pie was the only pony who didn't laugh."

Twilight paused a moment, brow scrunching up much in the way Rarity's had, like someone had bopped her on the nose unexpectedly. It exploded into a delighted smile, and her jerking 'dance' seemed to brighten considerably.

"You're right! Rarity, you're a genius! So long as nopony laughs at us, the contagion shouldn't spread until we find some way to fix this!"

Fluttershy looked between the pair helplessly. Rarity turned to her, or at least rolled on her side a little until she was facing the pegasus's general direction, and smiled warmly. "Thank you, Fluttershy, for making me think of it."

She was about to protest, but Rarity's smile was so genuine, and Twilight looked so excited... maybe she'd tell them later.

"So, as long as nopony laughed at you on the way over here, we should be fine, right?"

The four of her friends looked at each other with expressions that all seemed to say the same word, just with a different choice of inflection.

Their looks simply said 'Horseapples'.

"Alright, who wants to be the one to tell her?" Applejack sighed.

"What? Tell me what?"

"Well, you started, might as well finish. I ain't tellin' her," Dash insisted. Rarity glared at her, mouthing 'rude', but Dash noted she didn't exactly jump in to Applejack's rescue, either.

Applejack sighed again, looking up at Twilight from her spot on the floor, trying to retain as much dignity as she could while her legs made it look like she was being tazed. "Thing is, Twilight, everypony saw us on the way here. Everypony. And they were all laughin'."

"Yes," Fluttershy echoed, "all of them. It was awful."

Twilight massaged the bridge of her nose with a hoof as she performed a rather jerky approximation of the Can-Can. "Are you telling me that you have already quite possibly infected the entire town?"

"Kinda looks like it, huh?" Rainbow nodded, then kept nodding and nodding and nodding and-

"Dangit all, Apple Bloom let me have it something fierce before I ran into you gals. Big Mac might be alright, and Granny Smith napped through it, bless her heart, but if Apple Bloom runs into her friends like that-"

"Sweetie Belle!"

"Scootaloo!"

Rainbow and Rarity gasped simultaneously.

"Wait, why am I concerned?" Rarity mused, tossing her frazzled mane back with a flick of her head that, astonishingly, seemed intentional, "Sweetie Belle is far too kind and civilized to laugh at her friend's misfortune like that."

"You mean, like you did?" Rainbow pointed out.

"Well, yes, like I did," Rarity deadpanned. "Oh, who am I fooling, she's doomed."

"Girls, I'm trying very hard not to be offended here, but you're not making it easy for me," Twilight tried to look as stern as she could whilst stuck in a fit of the hokey-pokey. "Could you please ease off the 'Twilight's dancing is a fate worse than death' cracks?"

"We said no such thing!" Rarity admonished.

"You have been implyin' it rather heavily as, what's the word, subtext? Yeah, subtext." Applejack smirked.

"Sorry," Fluttershy apologized.

Rainbow snorted at that. "Why are you sorry? You haven't said anything!"

"Oh... sorry."

"I'm going to Zecora's, to see if she knows anything about this," Twilight declared, loudly, bopping her way to the door to the ballroom, "If you need anything, ask Spike. Just... stay in here, where you can't break anything or infect anypony else. If you need to sleep, I'm sure he can organize more restraints or something. Think of it like a really terrible slumber party."

There was a pause as Twilight considered that. "Actually, you tend to break everything at my slumber parties anyway – I'm surprised it was Tirek that finally did in my old treehouse, rather than one of you. So just play Truth or Dare or something until I get back."

Twilight counted out the beats in her head. Two, three, four, one!

She teleported before the others had a chance to protest.

Twilight teleported every count of four, to avoid the risk of an unexpected head movement causing her to teleport, say, into low orbit. Or inside a boulder. Possibly into a parallel universe.

Worst of all, she could teleport inside a boulder in low orbit in a parallel universe, where there was an imminent asteroid strike, and fall to Equestria and explode.

So, she counted patiently and waited. Just in case.

Fortunately she was never in one spot long enough for people to see her... condition, so she didn't risk infecting anypony. It made the trip to Zecora's hut in the Everfree rather uneventful.

Twilight moonwalked the last ten meters to the hut tentatively. There were no lights, no candles lit. Was Zecora here? Was she just asleep? Would it be rude to wake her even if it was an emergency? How was she going to approach this situation?

"Zecora?" she called with a slight tremor in her voice from the door, "are you home?"

Light flickered into being in the hut, casting harsh shadows into the forest floor beside Twilight.

"Twilight Sparkle, is that you? A visit, I say, much overdue."

The door moved to open, but Twilight held it shut with her magic. Then, realizing she was on a one count, and Zecora faced no such time constraints, she reached for a nearby boulder with her magic and dumped it in front of the door.

The door opened with a grunt from the zebra as Twilight released it, only for the unicorn to watch her black-and-white mohawk bob in confusion around the contours of the boulder.

"You seem to have brought a most unexpected gift, though I do not know what to do with it."

"Oh! Ah, sorry, Zecora, but I don't think you're allowed to see me until you promise not to laugh."

"Laugh? At you? Why surely you jest! But I will hold my tongue firm, if that you request."

"Thank you, Zecora, but trust me, it's not for my sake. My friends have already driven me way past the point of caring. This is for your own safety."

"My own safety, well, now my interest is piqued! So away with the boulder and away this mystique!"

Twilight sighed and gripped the boulder to remove it. She had, unfortunately, lost count as she followed the flow of Zecora's couplet.

Where she thought she was on a two she was actually on a three. Which meant she still had the boulder in her grip for the count of four.

The boulder was sent flying over the treetops at a positively alarming velocity, narrowly missing a passing crow.

Zecora stared after it with a rather surprised expression.

Twilight decided to explain whilst the zebra was still watching the – wow, it still hadn’t fallen yet? – boulder rather than her.

"I got cursed pretty bad, and now I need your help, or else everypony in Ponyville is going to be stuck dancing like this tomorrow, and then for the rest of their lives."

Zecora's ear twitched as the boulder finally, finally, hit earth quite a while away. The thump sounded almost like a distant thunderstrike. She turned back to see what Twilight meant.

The zebra put a hoof to her mouth and choked back a snort.

"It's contagious if you laugh at it, apparently," Twilight sighed, and Zecora's hoof jerked into her mouth in surprise, the strangled laugh dying in her throat. "I warned you!" Twilight accused.

"My, oh my, that is quite a curse, and you say that the laughter is what makes it worse?"

"Or at least spread, yes. It's unlike any magic I've ever seen before!"

"So this curse, it makes you dance like a fool? Never before have I seen a pony dance so... 'uncool'." Zecora smiled a little at that, looking at Twilight hopefully. She had been attempting to mix pony colloquialisms into her speech a bit more, recently, and normally Twilight would have been proud of her.

Normally it wouldn't have been at her expense.

"Actually, Zecora, this is how I normally dance. I guess. I ended up cursing myself trying to fix it."

The shaman's – shawoman's? No, no that just sounded awful – eyebrows shot up. "My, my, that does sound quite reckless. Why not try dance lessons, if you felt so feckless?"

"Too late, now," Twilight grumbled.

Zecora 'hmm'd' thoughtfully, trotting around the wildly volatile Twilight Sparkle, who for her part tried to tolerate the inspection like a doctor's visit.

"Normally I would ask to go inside, where there is more light, but I do not wish to see you knock over my possessions this night."

"Yeah, not being able to hold still is becoming a bit of a problem," Twilight agreed. "So what do you think it is?"

"To be honest, purple pony, I haven't a clue, I don't think it is within my power to fix you."

Twilight sighed loudly. "Thanks anyway, Zecora. I didn't think you would, but–"

"Wait! I may not be able to cure this ill, but I might have a potion to keep you still," the zebra nodded, just once, and turned back into her hut, coming back out with a satchel and watching Twilight's dancing carefully. Then, with all the poise of a ballerina, Zecora rose on two hooves and weaved between Twilight's errant hooves, dodging them with a fluid grace that made Twilight seethe with envy. As a hoof made to strike her from behind, Zecora bent backwards over it, forehooves touching the dirt and carrying the rest of her body up and over, like a slinky.

"A dose of this potion should cause neck-down paralysis, for a few hours at least – so don't doubt the truth of this."

Twilight took a moment to recompose herself. It wasn't Zecora's fault she was so good at being Zecora. It's not like she could be anypony else just because Twilight was feeling a little self-conscious.

"Oh! Well at least this might help everypony sleep. Now we don't have to break out the beds with the straps and restraints."

Zecora's eyebrow raised, and a rather amused smile touched her lips. "Twilight Sparkle, I am surprised. Your interests are bolder than I had surmised."

What did... oh! Twilight felt a blush rise to the tips of her ears.

"They're for scientific and medical purposes," Twilight gently corrected, "nothing else!"

The amused smile just grew a little. For a very short, very bitter moment, Twilight hoped it was enough to make Zecora get infected.

Zecora shook her head slightly, still smiling. "Take this potion to your friends, and I hope this curse soon ends."

"Thank you, Zecora," Twilight said, her gratefulness sincere. "Let's hope the curse just wears off in the morning."

A few jumps later with her teleportation, two, three, four, Twilight found herself back in the ballroom of her crystal home.

Her triumphant return was marred, somewhat, by the spectacular sights that greeted her.

Fluttershy seemed to be dangling from a chandelier, lazily buzzing in small circles beneath it as her wings twitched to the beat. Rarity was buried beneath a pile of apple cores with a distended stomach, groaning slightly, her legs still twitching above her like that of a dying ladybug's. One of the incredibly expensive, luxurious curtains appeared to be on fire, with Spike doing his absolute best to put it out with a row of buckets.

Twilight noticed two things about Applejack. The second thing she noticed was that her hat was now modified with a drawstring, as Rarity had promised. The first thing she had noticed was that Applejack was now bright pink. Rainbow Dash, meanwhile, now had a tail that seemed to have been styled like Rarity's.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash looked at each other, at the fire, at the very confused and annoyed Twilight, then back at the fire. Simultaneously, each pointed a hoof at the other.

"She did it!" they shouted in perfect in unison.

A polished crystal ceiling panel crashed to the ground beside her, shattering into dozens of tiny pieces.

Twilight sighed and took some small solace from the thought that she was about to cripple them all from the neck down.

Temporarily, she amended. They were still her friends.

Just as Spike's last bucket toss managed to put out the fire and save about two-thirds of the curtain, the rope holding Fluttershy snapped, sending her tumbling down for a hard landing – since her wings were locked in their attempt to perform The Navigator – softened only by Spike, who had unintentionally gotten between her and the ground.

A bucket skittered across the floor, clanging noisily, until it came to a rest at Rarity's side, who promptly gripped it with two visibly shaking hooves and, head thrust inside it, ejected an impressive volume of applesauce.

Twilight made no effort to suppress a sigh.

They awoke on the ballroom floor, tangled in the tattered remains of the curtain Spike had thrown over them as a blanket the night before, to a chorus of screams.

"Literally everypony in town saw you last night, huh?" Twilight grunted as she sat up, noting with some satisfaction that the potion hadn't quite worn off. Movement was still difficult for her, so instead of dancing, her limbs just twitched a bit, like they would if a physician were testing their reflexes to a four/four beat.

"Must have," Applejack grunted, pulling her newly-modified hat's brim low. "Probably explains the screamin'."

Rarity groaned something like "Never again," and promptly went back to twitching on her side.

Fluttershy, who was at the end furthest from Twilight, stirred, sitting upright. Her ear cocked like a radar dish, scoping out the sounds of the screaming in the distance. Finally, she looked across the bodies of their three other friends and met Twilight's gaze. "Maybe it's time to write a letter to Princess Celestia?"

Twilight whimpered like a kicked puppy. Fluttershy pulled her 'blanket' up to her chin, looking like she'd just accidentally kicked a puppy.

"That's an option? Yeah, we need to do that," Rainbow Dash agreed, wrapping her pillow over her head.

Twilight relented, shoulders slumping. "Alright, this has gotten way out of hoof. Even if Celestia is going to be really, really disappointed in me, and probably never forgive me for this... We can't exactly hide this from her forever..." The light of hope flashed desperately, almost manically, in her eyes. "Unless–"

"Spike!" Rarity cried, "take a letter, before Twilight can finish her train of thought, please?"

Ponyville was not coping well, that morning.

The infection had spread far and fast since the night before. Neighbours mocked neighbours, friends snickered at friends and enemies ruthlessly teased enemies. Foals laughed at parents, parents laughed at grandparents and grandparents laughed at foals, as is the circle of life.

By midday, when their guttered chorus of hopeless screams awoke the six friends in the Crystal Friendship Castle, hardly a soul was left unaffected.

Save, of course, Pinkie Pie.

She didn’t know why the Cakes couldn’t stop doing the Pony Pokie like Twilight. She had asked nicely, but they had said they didn’t know. Well, less said, more panicked and bawled and pleaded to higher powers, but that was just silly and being silly was her job.

Baking was their job, but they weren’t very good at it at the moment. The kitchen was rapidly becoming a total, ginormous disaster area!

The Cakes seemed very sad, even though their dancing made them look really happy and excited, and that made Pinkie worried. The Cakes weren’t sad ponies; sometimes they worried a lot, probably too much, but they were... well, Mrs Cake called it ‘cautiously optimistic’.

So for ‘cautiously optimistic’ ponies to be so sad was a tad bad.

Pinkie tried helping again, grabbing dropped trays before they hit the ground and pouring ingredients so the Cakes didn’t have to.

“Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“Maybe your friend Twilight could – argh! Bi’ mah tungue,” Mr Cake suggested.

Pinkie frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t know how getting Twilight to bite your tongue would help anything, but I could definitely ask! Absolutely positootly!”

Mrs Cake sighed, moving in a wobbly samba with a tray of snickerdoodles on her back. Pinkie grabbed the tray and put it on a counter, before any more could rattle off. Even if she did get to eat the floor cookies ‘cause nopony else wanted them. “What Mr Cake meant, Pinkie, was that maybe you could get the Princess to help us. I’m sure he just bit his tongue trying to say it.”

Mr. Cake nodded sadly, his throbbing tongue hanging limply out of his mouth, except for the occasional wiggle.

Pinkie ducked and dived under the Cake’s flailing limbs as they danced around the kitchen, doing her best to catch the ingredients and pastries being haphazardly dashed and tossed about the room, since they weren’t nearly as good as dodging as she was.

Which was probably good, usually, because that would have made them harder to eat.

Mr Cake’s tongue managed to work its way back into his mouth long enough for him to talk again, right when Pinkie was enforcing the five second rule. “Really, Pinkie, as helpful as you’re being right now, if you could go get your friend Twilight, that’d be really nice right now.” His genuine smile twitched a bit, like they always did when ponies really wanted Pinkie to go do something that wasn’t... well, wherever that smile was.

“Okie dokie lokie,” Pinkie shrugged. “Twilight’s been stuck like that since yesterday, and she seemed to figure out how to fix it then. I’ll go ask her.”

Pinkie Pie bounced out of the kitchen as a rather stunned Mr. Cake managed to work out two more words, “Wait, what?”

But Pinkie was already off on her adventure to solve the conundrum of the dancing bakers!

It wasn’t much better outside.

It looked like all of Ponyville was dancing like Twilight was yesterday, now, only it was happening today to ponies who weren’t Twilight.

Ponies trying to set up their markets stalls, only for a jerk of limbs to send it crashing down on top of them.

Ponies trying to go about their daily business, only to keep bumping into each other, or walls, or bump each other into walls. Or knocking walls over, in one extreme case.

Ponies trying to deliver the mail... actually doing surprisingly well. Pinkie gave the mailmare a sharp salute.

Itchy hoof. Scrunchy nose. Stomach gurgle. Panicked feeling.

That last one wasn’t part of the combo, it was just because of it.

Pinkie wished she had a megaphone. “Everypony, watch out!”

Two ponies pulling a massive delivery of cooking oil came careening around the corner, at least four ponies in length and two in height. The dancing cart-ponies weren’t able to regain control of the lost tanker cart and it rolled, carrying the burly stallions with it, as it crashed against a building. The street was awash in a thick coating of slippery oil.

More ponies tried to rush to help the cart ponies, but just ended up slipping on the oil, landing on their backs. The slippery, oily dancing ponies just couldn’t get up.

More ponies tried to rush to help the ponies who tried to help the cart ponies, but they, too, just slipped on the oil, adding to the growing pony pile up.

Pinkie watched the technicolour mass of writhing limbs helplessly. There’d be no way she could help all these ponies, and now her path to the Princess’s castle was blocked!

There was only one way across.

She wasn’t going to like it but... Okay, that was a lie, it was going to be heaps of fun, but she couldn’t admit that.

“Cannonball!” Pinkie screamed as she took a running leap, stagediving the ponies.

She rode their twitching, dancing limbs, crowd-surfing the upside down ponies.

“Sorry! Sorry! My bad! Just trying to get through! Oh, you have nice muscles! Wee! Sorry, sorry, that was rude of me. Sorry! He he! This is even more fun than I thought it wouldn’t be, I’ll have to do this again sometime when you’re not all dance-sick!”

Pinkie flopped safely on the other side, prancing away from the twitching, writhing mess of groaning and moaning equinity behind her.

Twilight’s castle wasn’t very far away, because it was a very big castle and Ponyville was a very small town. There wasn’t much room for it to be far from anywhere.

There wasn’t a doorbell, so she knocked.

Pinkie bobbed happily on the spot until Spike eventually answered. It took a while, because it was such a big castle, but she couldn’t just go in. Even if the big doors were unlocked, you can’t just do that.

It wasn’t like a public library.

“Hey, hiccup Pinkie!” Spike greeted her, his hiccup curling a wisp of green flame at her that singed her little pink nose. It twitched irritably. “Sorry, I’ve had -- hiccup! -- the hiccups all morning. Could be worse, though. Not dancing, at least.” Spike eyed Pinkie’s happy bouncing, “Got you too, huh?”

“Oh, no, I was just bored,” Pinkie admitted cheerfully. “The Cakes asked me if Twilight was better, yet? Or knew how to make them better. But if Twilight knew how to make herself better, she’d know how to make the Cakes better, so it’s sort of the same question, right?”

“Ah, yeah.” Spike nodded. “No.”

Hiccup.

“What? It totally is!”

Spike’s expression went tight for a moment, like he was keeping it in neutral whilst his brain came up with a better position to park it in. There was an audible little click as he finally got it, masked by the sound of another hiccup.

“No, I mean, yes it is the same question, but Twilight isn’t any better. The rest of the girls are all paralyzed until further notice, because apparently it was just easier that way.”

“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie nodded cheerfully, still bobbing and smiling. If Twilight thought paralysis was the best solution, who was Pinkie to question her judgement?

“It looks like everypony in town might need some Pinkie-Pie-patented cheering up, so this obviously calls for the biggest dance party this town has ever seen! It’s all everypony can do right now anyway, right? Sooo we might as well make the moster-roaster out of it, right?”

Spike hiccupped again. “Right,” he agreed, somewhat cautiously.

“It’s a good thing I made invitations, just in case of just this very emergency,” Pinkie declared triumphantly, pulling an invitation from her mane from the small filing cabinet that resided therein – held on by a small chinstrap the same pink as her fur, all the better to hide it.

Then Spike hiccupped again. The gout of flame licked the corner of the invitation and then fwoomf, it was away in a burst of green smoke.

“Huh. Should have seen that coming,” Spike stared at Pinkie’s now-empty, slightly singed hoof, before adding a rather lamentable, “hiccup!"

“Did you just send Princess Celestia an invitation to my dance party?”

“Err... I guess so?”

“Woo-hoo!” Pinkie cheered, “Now I gotta make sure everypony comes if Princess Celestia is going to be there! Thanks, Spike!”

“Uh... you’re welco-hic!-me?”

“Try a teaspoon of sugar!” Pinkie called over her shoulder, already pronking away, hoofing an invitation to everypony she passed. “I gotta go help some ponies!”

Spike shrugged and turned to go back inside, hiccupping.

“Ugh, puh-leaze, Miss Spit-fi-ah, must you fly through all these deee-sgusting bugs?”

“I’m very sorry, Ms Shores,” Spitfire spat through gritted teeth, “but the Wonderbolts don’t normally act as a taxi service. We aren’t exactly unencumbered with this giant golden chariot you insisted on.”

“Well, whilst I am grateful for your services, Miss Spit-fi-ah, you must understand, I could not just leave my stage behind! These ponies are expecting a performance!”

Spitfire grunted. “Please, Ms Shores, stop dancing in the chariot. You’re throwing our balance out of whack.” Beside her, Soarin twisted uncomfortably in his restraints. “If you don’t stop bouncing around, we’re just going to end up hitting more bug swarms.”

“A pony does not receive an invitation from dragon mail unless the event is most exclusive!” Sapphire Shores declared, bopping and grooving away in her very spacious chariot, sparkling gold and rubies and emeralds and, of course sapphires.

Did you know gold weighs more than even lead? Spitfire and Soarin were becoming increasingly familiar with that little factoid.

“Darnit, Spits,” Soarin’ shout-whispered at the captain, neck-veins bulging slightly, “she’s melted down the entire treasury to make this thing, and I’m not an endurance flyer.”

“She’s paying for it, though,” Spitfire reminded him, “and you know how much that Rarity is charging us for new flightsuits!”

“Oh, man...” Soarin made a whiny little noise, not unlike a kitten with colic, “I really want that. Have you felt the fabric she uses? It’s like a second skin, if skin hugged you back.”

“Besides how obviously gross that mental image is,” Spitfire stuck her tongue out in disgust, getting a bug in it as a reward, “this is what we need to do to get it.”

“Ah! There it is, there it is!” Sapphire Shores cheered behind them, “and look at that, party’s already underway. Hoo-wee, these po-nies like to par-tay! Look at ‘em go!”

Spitfire and Soarin’ looked down. Those ponies certainly were... energetic. They decided not to remark further, though.

Fleetfoot, however, had less tact. Probably because the chariot only had room for two ‘puller’ ponies, and her mouth ran as fast as her laptimes.

“Wow, everypony down there is dancing like a total spaz!”

Sapphire Shores gasped and made some loud, hacking, choking noises which Spitfire took as the universal wordless phrase “I am not leaving a tip”.

“Fleetfoot!” Soarin’ snapped.

“Go ahead and scout for somewhere for us to land right now.”

“Harrumph!” Sapphire said the word as much as she performed it. “Some ponies just don’t appreciate jen-you-wine enthusiasm in this day and age. This is going to be – ah! – fab-u-lous!”

Spitfire shot an aside glance at Soarin’, and noticed him doing the same.

Right.

“Faster, my wonderful entourage, faster!” Sapphire cheered, leaning forward in her chariot, shifting its centre of gravity just enough to seriously panic her two drivers but not quite enough for them to fall out of the air, hurtling to their deaths. The pop-star remained blissfully oblivious, as much of how near she had come to her short-term doom as she was of the doom that awaited her below.

There.

It had taken at least an hour, but Pinkie Pie had delivered an invitation to every single pony in town!

She was getting slow. Maybe it was babysitting for the Cake twins so much... Maybe she was just getting older.

Maybe it was just all the time it took to find the ponies hiding, too embarrassed to be seen in public.

There were a lot of those.

That was probably it.

Well... that left her with a remarkable lack of things to do until the party.

“Hey! Hey, Pinkie Pie!” Applebloom shouted at her.

Wait, why was Applebloom shouting at her?

Oh right. Because the last pony on her list was Cheerilee, so she was still waiting next to the schoolhouse. That made sense. Her route had been the first ponies she saw, then the ponies she found, then the last ponies she’d look for, and then the rest. This route obviously put Cheerilee last, because she had spent a lot of her younger years ‘finding herself’, she said. Pinkie just assumed she’d already be good at getting her own invitation.

She hadn’t. Apparently ponies who practice finding themselves never do anything with it. What a complete waste of time!

Wait.

So why was Applebloom shouting at her?

She plodded happily over to the filly to find out. Applebloom wasn’t alone, though, oh no! There were her two biffle-bestest-buddies, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, as well as the two meanie-pants fillies Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara. Ooh, this looked tense.

They were angrily dancing at each other, in their two groups. Pinkie could tell they were dancing angrily because they were dancing just like everypony else, except they were stomping a lot more and looked real mad.

“Oh, great, why’d you have to drag Pinkie into this?” Scootaloo didn’t moan, because that would have been silly if she had said that.

“Because,” Sweetie definitely replied to the thing Scootaloo didn’t say, “she’s an impartial observer. She’ll settle this once and for all!”

“What’s an imparcel observer?” Applebloom asked, twisting her head from Pinkie’s approach to Sweetie Belle, probably on purpose.

“Am I the only pony who listens to Twilight’s lectures?”

“Yes,” Applebloom and Scootaloo declared simultaneously. Sweetie seemed to deflate a little, or at least dance a little closer to the ground.

“Alright, Pink one,” Diamond Tiara declared to the now-arrived Pinkie Pie, “settle for us once and for all –”

“That’s what I said!”

“– who the better dancers are. I think you’ll find that we have far more grace than those... blank flanks.”

“Alright!” Pinkie agreed, nodding. This would be fun. She plonked herself down on her butt and put on her best appreciative-audience face.

“We’ll go first!” Scootaloo insisted, dancing her way into the center of the makeshift circle. She grooved it out, just like Twilight had, but without any music to help her along. Pinkie started beatboxing, ‘cause it seemed like the right thing to do, really, and Scootaloo gave her a grateful look.

After a few seconds of dancing, Scootaloo moved back to her friends, who patted her on the back supportively. Well, tried. They came really close to it though!

Diamond Tiara went next, and Pinkie Pie dutifully kept up the beat. She was just as bad as Scootaloo was, no better or worse! Just as confident, though.

“Beat that, blank flanks!” she sneered as she fell back to Silver Spoon’s side, the other filly grinning triumphantly.

“We’ve got this in the bag!” the grey filly whispered loud enough for Pinkie to hear.

Sweetie Belle looked nervously at Applebloom, but was sent boogying into the middle with a determined nod of the head with the big red bow.

She danced, never looking at her opponents, occasionally sending a pleading look Pinkie’s way, but she stayed for the entire length of her time, which made Pinkie happy for her.

She couldn’t tell her how proud she was of Sweetie’s bravery, though, because her mouth was too full of beatbox, but it seemed Applebloom and Scootaloo totally had her covered.

“Alright, let’s show these fillies what a real dance master can do,” Silver sneered as she stepped into the showdown ring, locking eyes with Sweetie and holding them as much as she could for her routine, which was kind of exactly like the other girl’s routines, but they didn’t seem to notice that so, who was Pinkie to judge?

Oh, right. She was the judge. Silly her.

“Alright, time to show these two how it’s done down on the farm!” Applebloom shouted triumphantly, jumping in immediately after Diamond’s graceless exit and grooving out for her allotted time. Still looked exactly like the others, but it looked like she had a lot of fun doing it, which was good for her. Then it was over.

“Ah, Pinkie? You can stop beatboxing now.” Applebloom grinned hopefully.

Diamond Tiara pouted, an expression like apple vinegar; possibly sweet, once, but spoiled rotten and turned to acid. “Yeah, tell us we won!”

“No,” Pinkie hummed thoughtfully, a rare sound indeed from her, “I’m pretty sure the Cutie Mark Crusaders won that one.”

“What?!” Diamond Tiara snapped, like a bear trap, “How?”

“Your dancing was mostly the same,” Pinkie admitted, “but there's more of them, isn't there? So they had more of it. If you had more friends, I'm sure it could have been you. But you don't!"

At least she made Applebloom and Scootaloo laugh, but it seemed like the losers would be grumpy for a little while.

That was when the golden chariot pulled by the Wonderbolts flew overhead!

“Woah? Did you girls see that?” Pinkie breathed, neck craned at an impossible angle. “And they’re heading right for the center of town! Come on, let’s go check it out!”

Her head snapped back, since it’s kind of hard to hold the top of your head to the middle of your back just to watch ponies. When it did, she saw Scootaloo already helmeted up, grinning defiantly, dancing excitedly. Well, dancing like she was cursed to, but kind of enthusiastic about it.

“Jump on the cart,” she grinned, “I’ll take you.”

The golden chariot had landed hard, which was great for Sapphire Shores, as it hit the mechanisms with enough force to unspring the chariot into the glorious golden dancefloor stage it could be. Elevated above on a golden podium encrusted with jewels, Sapphire clutched her mic.

Spitfire and Soarin’ did their noblest, most valiant best to climb out from under a gold panel that had landed on top of them, which seemed to involve a lot of wriggling.

“Hell-o, Po-ny-ville!” Sapphire Shores boomed, her incredibly expensive portable stadium sound system amplifying her voice. “Are you ready to dance?”

This got some confused looks from the town’s ponies.

Of course it did. They were obviously ready, just look at ‘em go!

“Here is the latest and greatest that I, the fabulous queen of pony pop have to offer you! Are you ponies ready?”

A crowd was milling.

From the speakers, a dull bass throbbed.

A crowd was being drawn like moths to the flame.

Sapphire smirked as ponies, all of them carrying the same invitations that had led to her own arrival, came to see her stand there fashionably early.

A crowd had become a mob.

It's close to midday... and catchy rhythms got you playin’ your part

So let’s all boog-ay, feel the beat and feel it in your heart

You gotta dance... So tremor at the sound that I’m unleashin’!

So break it down! Feel helpless to the beat it’s so enticin’,

It’s paralyzin’!”

Ponies were all dancing now, in a neat, orderly grid. They seemed just as confused as Sapphire was. Did they plan this? Was a demo leaked? She’d have to call her manager.

They were even all dancing exactly the same. It was exactly like the groove she had in her head. She couldn’t help but join them as she kept singing.

“'Cause this is thriller, thriller right,

Everypony’s gotta dance so come on let’s get you psyched!

You know it's thriller, thriller night

You’re dancing for your life inside a killer, thriller, right?”

The mob kept dancing. There were screams of panic, of fear.

“Stop her! We can’t help it, somepony stop her!”

A rumble of agreement. Sapphire Shores was about to put the microphone down in disgust, get the Wonderbolts out from under her stage and fly her back to Manehattan, where ponies were more grateful!

But, as her head bobbed to the beat, she realized she couldn’t do it. She had to dance.

'Cause this is thriller, thriller right,” she got into the chorus again.

More cries of distress.

Everypony’s gotta dance so come on let’s get you psyched!

Ponies tried rushing the stage, doing so whilst retaining perfect formation. They didn’t advance upon her so much as they encroached. Their movements were perfectly co-ordinated to the beat that not even Sapphire herself could ignore at this point.

You know it's thriller, thriller night

The ponies knocked the microphone out of her hooves, but to no avail. With the absence of the microphone in her ears, she heard what the ponies were chanting underneath the screams and panic.

They were chanting her song back to her.

You’re dancing for your life inside a killer, thriller, right?”

Sapphire fell, her limbs a writhing mess of frantic blobs, grabbing at a towering speaker for balance as she fell, pulling it down beside her, pointing at the castle.

She screamed into the microphone.

Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack (now returned to her usual orange hue) and Fluttershy ‘ran’ to the source of the screams.

A panicked crowd greeted them... sort of. Pinkie Pie greeted them more genuinely.

“Pinkie Pie? What are all these ponies doing upside-down?”

“Well they were all stuck dancing, right?” Pinkie explained with a nod, “And they were all mob-like and panicked. So I got Sapphire Shores–”

“Sapphire Shores was here?!”

“–anyway, yeah, Rarity, Sapphire Shores to lead all the ponies dancing towards the oil spill, so we could keep them all in one place.”

“Well, that makes complete sense.” Twilight nodded. Applejack gave her a look, to which Twilight shrugged. “Well, it makes sense by Pinkie Pie’s standards. And it worked!”

Pinkie Pie beamed proudly.

“I’m sorry, darling, I tried to keep this from you,” Rarity admitted. Whereas normally she’d rest an affectionate hoof across Pinkie’s shoulders, she felt attempting to do so would result in Pinkie Pie being sucker punched. Which would be a bad thing. “But it appears doing so now is unavoidable.”

“Princess Celestia’s on her way though,” Rainbow Dash nodded (and kept nodding), “so yeah, that’s cool.”

“Speak of,” Applejack grinned, tightening her hat so its brim held low, pointing at the sky, “looks like that’s her.”

“It seems she’d understand this is urgent, after the Want-It Need-It spell!” Fluttershy whispered loud enough for Twilight to hear. She wished Fluttershy had been just a little quieter, for once.

Celestia's chariot swooped low over the carnage of town. By the time it stopped beside Twilight and her friends, the Princess had seen everything.

All attempts to bow seemed to be misonstrued by the spell as attempts to 'get on the floor', so Celestia was warmly greeted by a five ponies doing 'The Dinosaur' in synchronicity, with Pinkie Pie bowing but, ultimately, deciding The Dinosaur would probably be more fun. Besides, she didn't want to be the odd pony out.

"Twilight? What in Equestria happened here?"

"A book tricked me," was the rather sullen reply.

"Ah, I see." Celestia smiled warmly, stifling a chuckle. "You always were too trusting of the things you read in books. Let's get this mess cleaned up, then, so you can better tell me all about it."

Celestia's horn glowed, as warm and as bright as the purest of sunbeams, and the pony friends shielded their eyes from its brilliance. Magic flowed through them, snaking through the entire town, touching upon every infected pony in its wake. Then, it was over.

They opened their eyes to Celestia's serene, peaceful smile.

Their knees bobbed. Their heads nodded. Their tails shook. Their tongues wiggled.

Celestia's smile faded, then cracked. "That should have worked."

Fluttershy gasped, pointing a trembling hoof at the Princess. It didn't take the others long to work out why.

Celestia's knees had started bobbing. Her tongue was slowly trailing its way out of her mouth.

Celestia... was infected.

"My little ponies, why do I catch you staring at me like that? I'm certain that, together, we will find a way to... to... oh. Oh, dear."

“Why are you infected?” Twilight panicked, her flailing limbs reflecting her shock, “You didn’t laugh! Pinkie didn’t laugh, and she’s fine!”

"Ha ha ha ha!" A rich, deep, baritone voice echoed around them, "Good show. Jolly good show indeed."

"Discord!" Twilight hissed, "Did you do this? I thought I recognized chaos magic!"

Discord strolled from around a corner, decidedly not dancing, with a lawn chair in his claw and a bag of popcorn in his other paw. "I'm rather ashamed to say that this was most definitely not my doing, young Twilight. It does certainly seem like something I would do, I would admit, but I didn't think of it. A pity. This could have been fun, a few thousand years ago."

"But he's reformed now," Fluttershy beamed, sounding rather proud.

"Quite right, my dear friend, quite right," Discord agreed, unfurling his lawnchair and lazily reclining in it, "Which is why I come to offer my assistance in the matter. I'd hate to see my poor little pegasus friend stuck like this for the rest of her life. It'd grow dull and, frankly, I'd grow bored of it after a decade or so. I presume it would take you significantly quicker, yes? To get bored of it, I mean, not to fix it with your assistance. It’s become rather obvious that, unlike myself, you can’t! Isn’t that a hoot? The only reason Pinkie Pie isn’t affected is because of her rather sterling resistance to chaos magic. She does channel an awful lot of it..."

"Get to the point, Discord," Celestia almost snarled, a firm command for the one being she knew she didn't have absolutely authority over.

Discord was decidedly unamused. It seemed he knew it, too. "Alright, well. I suppose you might want to pick a kinder tone with me, Princess, because-" and here Discord burst into another guffaw, silencing himself with another moutful of popcorn, "-you're just as helpless as the rest of your little ponies. I imagine it would be rather hard to fit on the throne if you couldn't stop grooving about like this lot, yes?"

So be kind, Celestia dearheart, it looks like I might be the only way out of this that you have."