"So, um, do we walk back up the slide, or... or what?" Fluttershy asked, eying the slide Pinkie had just apparently slid back up on.
"I wanna stay down here a little while," Rainbow said, her hooves full of profiles and dossiers and plans for parties. "Look at all this cool stuff!"
"Rainbow!" Twilight frowned at her. "We've kinda got a diplomatic incident to deal with here."
"Pinkie's handling it. You saw her, she's gonna knock out out of the park. We've got a few minutes before the yaks decide to trash everything."
Twilight looked horrified at the prospect.
"Or not." Rainbow shrugged. "They probably won't. Come on, aren't you a little interested about what's in all this stuff?" She brandished the documents at Twilight.
"I must admit," Rarity interjected, "I for one am just the teensiest bit curious about what Pinkie's been taking notes on."
"Okay," Rainbow said, "one for my side."
"We're not--" Twilight tried to say, but Rainbow cut her off.
"Fluttershy!"
Fluttershy jumped at the sound of her name and took a step to hide behind Twilight.
"What about you?" Rainbow asked. "You wanna check this stuff out, right?"
"Um, we should probably be making sure Prince Rutherford hasn't left..."
"Pfft, that's no fun. AJ, you've got my back on this, don'cha?"
"Well..." Applejack looked around the secret party-planning cave. "It is awful temptin'." She picked up a folder and flicked through it with a hoof. "Sorry, Twi," she added.
Twilight sighed and hung her head. "Alright, fine. Five minutes." She pointed at Rainbow, who was gleefully raiding a filing cabinet. "If Ponyville is a crater when we come back out then I'm holding you responsible."
"Fine, fine," Rainbow dismissed.
"Five minutes!" Twilight barked. "I'm timing you." She stood beside Fluttershy, who was waiting at the base of the impossible slide. They exchanged a glance that went unnoticed by their three friends.
"She just about has everythin' on everypony in town, don't she?" Applejack eyes the cabinet Rainbow was busy with. "How far back does this thing go?"
"And so many plans for parties to celebrate things that haven't even happened yet," Rarity added. "This is for the Cake twins: 'party for first tooth', 'party for first steps', 'party for first words', 'party for first day of school', 'party for first fit of teenage rebellion', it just goes on and on."
"I, um..." Fluttershy cleared her throat. "Maybe we shouldn't be looking through all of Pinkie's things?"
"I'm sure it's fine, Fluttershy," Rainbow said, not looking up from the drawer she had open.
"What if you had a hidden room in your cloud house," Twilight asked, "would you be fine with Pinkie rummaging through it if she felt like it?"
"Well, first, I don't have a hidden room in my house. But if I did, it would be full of awesome stuff so I could see why ponies would want to look at it. And, also, I don't think any of us could stop Pinkie doing something she just felt like doing."
Twilight buried her face in her hooves. Fluttershy patted her on the shoulder. "Rainbow," Twilight groaned, "that's not what I--"
But she was cut off by Rarity making a noise that sounded somewhere between a shriek and somepony being strangled. The other four ponies looked at her. She was holding a folder open and veering away from it as if it might bite her.
"What, ah," Rainbow ventured, breaking the silence, "what'd you find there, Rarity?" She had an eager grin on her face.
"Nothing," Rarity squeaked, her eyes locked on the folder.
"That don't look like nothin' to me," Applejack said.
"Yeah, Rarity found something jui-say." Rainbow pumped her hoof in the air. "C'mon, give it here."
Rarity shook her head. Speech, it seemed, was beyond her.
A brief tussle broke out, one side consisting of Rainbow and Applejack and the other of Rarity's blue magical aura. Nopony except Twilight heard Fluttershy call girls? girls? several times over. Eventually, Applejack's strong hooves wrenched the folder out of Rarity's grip.
"Now," she asked to the room, "what in tarnation has got you so worked up?" She opened the folder, even with Rarity pleading with her eyes to leave it closed.
"You've got three minutes, Rainbow," Twilight announced.
Rainbow ignored her. "What is it, what is it?" She darted around Applejack's shoulders, flying in the limited space she had.
But Applejack had gone almost as pale as Rarity. "Uh," she said, holding the folder to her chest, "maybe Twilight's right, sugarcube, maybe we shouldn't be pokin' into Pinkie's things..."
"Oh come on!" Rainbow lunged and snatched the folder and sped off to the corner with it. "Ha!"
Applejack and Rarity shared a mortified look. Twilight raised an eyebrow. Even Fluttershy leaned a little closer, curious about what Rainbow would find.
"'Wedding plans for Rarity and... Applejack...'" she read aloud. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," Rainbow said, dropping the folder so she could look at the alleged couple, "are you two dating?"
"No!" Applejack wrinkled her nose.
"Most certainly not!" Rarity exclaimed. "No offense intended, of course, Applejack, dear--"
"None taken."
"--But the very idea is ludicrous!"
"Yeah," Applejack said, "can you really imagine us together?"
"Pinkie apparently can," Rainbow retorted, "and a whole lot more. And she's psychic!"
"Technically," Twilight said from the base of the slide, "Pinkie's extra-sensory abilities don't fall under the umbrella of psychic phenomena."
"Okay, whatever, she can see the future."
"She can't really--"
"So if Pinkie says you're gonna get married one day," Rainbow said, rounding on Applejack and Rarity, "then you have to be at least dating."
"We ain't." Applejack tipped back her hat.
"Well, you will."
"Darling," Rarity said with as calm and kind a voice as she was able to muster under the circumstances, "although Applejack is a pony I have the utmost respect and admiration for, and although she is kind and noble-hearted, and although she is, in her rugged and down-to-earth way, quite attractive--" She held up a hoof to silence Rainbow's oncoming whoop of triumph. "--That does not mean I am attracted to her."
"But..." Rainbow itched behind her ear. "...You have to be. I mean, you're total opposites."
Applejack and Rarity stared blankly at her, twin expressions of incomprehension on their faces.
"That's two minutes left, guys," Twilight said. Nopony reacted.
"You know," Rainbow said, "how opposites attract? How you're meant to be into the kind of pony who's nothing like you?"
A smile crossed Applejack's face. Rarity let out a nervous titter.
"Sugarcube," Applejack said, sounding like she was trying not to laugh herself, "that stuff's just for stories."
"Quite so. It might work on the pages of a romance, but in real life? Hardly!"
"So, but, um, wait." Rainbow paused before she could stumble over any more of her words. "Aren't you supposed to be into, like, a pony who does things completely different to you, so they can, y'know, frustrate you and challenge you to do different stuff and you become more complete as a couple or whatever?"
"That sounds like a surefire recipe for disaster." Applejack sat beside a thoroughly confused Rainbow Dash. "Just take me an' Rarity here. If we were datin', we'd fight all the time. Over every little thing."
"I would make dinner plans at a nice restaurant and Applejack would show up with mud still on her hooves from the farm and her mane uncombed."
"Yeah, or Rarity would drag me to some frilly shindig that I wouldn't see the point in, and I'd have to stay through the whole thing even though there'd be soil that needed tilling."
"I'd try to beautify the old barn only to find out it needed to be torn down."
"I wouldn't be able to see the difference between this necklace or that one even though one of 'em clashes with something."
"Even if we did love each other in that way," Rarity said, "we'd spend so much time arguing that we wouldn't remember it."
"Rainbow," Applejack said, "you'd want a special somepony who would keep up with you, right?"
"Tch, there's nopony that can fly as fast as me."
"T'ain't what I meant. Somepony who could match you for energy and enthusiasm. You'd get bored mighty fast of somepony who couldn't."
"I mean, I guess." Rainbow shrugged.
"So," Applejack asked with a smirk, "are you attracted to Fluttershy?"
Fluttershy, who had been intently following the conversation despite remaining quiet, squeaked and ducked behind Twilight's tail. "Don't bring me into this," she whispered.
"What?" Rainbow exclaimed.
"Well," Rarity said, "she's your opposite, is she not? Where you are bold, she is cautious. Where you are brash, she is demure. Where you speak every thought that crosses you mind--" She gave Rainbow a pointed look. "--Fluttershy has the grace to hold her tongue."
"It's, um," Fluttershy mumbled, "sometimes it's that nopony hears me..."
"Yeah, but I'm not, like, into Fluttershy," Rainbow said, sweeping her mane back with a hoof. "I mean, we kissed once, but like, so what?"
"One minute. Wait, huh?"
"It was ages ago. I don't like her now. I mean, I like you, Fluttershy, but I don't like like you."
"I understand," Fluttershy said, giving her friend a smile.
"And why is it that you don't like-like her, Rainbow?" Rarity prompted.
"Well, like, Fluttershy, you're cool and all, but I'm not super-into animals and stuff. And I know you try to be supportive when I'm working on a new trick, but you're really bad at it. I mean, Pinkie is always really excited about every trick I can think of, even the ones that I'm pretty sure are impossible, and even Twilight gets interested in like the stuff where she can calculate the pitch and the veracity--"
"Velocity," Twilight interjected automatically.
"Whatever."
"So, you wouldn't be able to make it work out 'tween you two, you don't think?" Applejack asked.
"Well, no! I just said, we're too different! We're complete-- oh. Oh!" A sheepish smile spread across Rainbow's face. "I, uh. I get it now."
"Now that that's all been cleared up," Twilight said, "could we all please get back up to Ponyville? So we can make sure there still is a Ponyville."
"Oh," Rainbow said. "Yeah, sure thing, Twilight."
"Thank you."
And with a flash of light, she teleported them out of Pinkie's party cave.
-/-
Later that night, two ponies were snuggled together in bed, talking.
"I'm glad that all worked out alright," Twilight said.
"Making friends with the yaks," Fluttershy asked, "or Pinkie knowing about us?"
Twilight sighed. "Both. Those things could have come on separate days. It was lucky you found my folder before anypony else did."
Fluttershy adjusted herself, settling under Twilight's outstretched wing. "Do you think she'll tell the others?"
"She hasn't yet." Twilight kissed her forehead. "I'm sure she'll wait until we're ready."
"Mm, I hope so."
"So..." Twilight said. "...Did you really kiss Rainbow Dash?"
"It was in flight camp. We were just kids. Why?" Fluttershy turned her face up to Twilight's, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Are you jealous?" she asked sweetly.
"No, it's just surprising, is all."
"I'm full of surprises." Fluttershy rested a hoof on Twilight's chest.
"Was she a good kisser?"
"Do you want to kiss Rainbow Dash?"
"I'm just curious!" Twilight laughed. "It's just... something I didn't know about you."
"Well..." Fluttershy stretched up to kiss the tip of Twilight's muzzle. "I didn't know you were afraid of quesadillas."
Twilight flinched, then smiled as she saw Fluttershy was grinning. "I'm not afraid afraid of them..."
"It's just such a strange thing, so be afraid of quesadillas."
Twilight kissed her. "Stop saying that."
"I mean, I'm not afraid of quesadillas..."
Twilight kissed her again, trying in vain to distract Fluttershy.
"...And I'm afraid of everything," she said after breaking free.
"You're not afraid of everything."
"I'm not afraid of quesadillas," Fluttershy said with a smirk.
Twilight silenced her with her lips.
Author's Note
"Opposites Attract" by Paula Abdul featuring MC Skat Kat is... something that happened. Don't let the Internet nostalgia trick you, kids: the 90s were awful.
Oh, and happy gay marriage, America. Good on you guys. Have some lesbian horses to celebrate.
