"Seriously, Pinkie, who're you talking to?" asked Rainbow Dash.
Pinkie turned around.
"Don't worry about that, Dashie. I'm sure with their help, Twilight will figure it out and then I can give her the surprise!"
Twilight remained where she had fallen over after Pinkie Pie had pushed her out of the way of the camera. After a short delay, she sat back up, pensive, focused, deep in thought. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie waited for her response.
And waited.
"Uh, Pinkie?"
"Yeah, Rainbow?"
"I think you broke Twilight."
Twilight had been sitting motionless on the grass, staring at a small pebble, muttering to herself for nearly ten minutes now. Occasionally she would trace a hoof on the grass, and every once in a while one could hear a distinct "standard deviation", "Bayesian", or at one point "but the space-time curvature...".
"Oh, I'm sure she's fine."
"I dunno, Pinkie. The last time she looked like that, she started a riot with that magical doll and Celestia had to show up and the doll nearly made me go crazy! ME!"
"It can't be that bad. I mean, at least she's not trying to count every star by hoof."
"I guess. And there's nothing for her to cast a spell on. I mean, what's she gonna do, cast some sorta crazy spell to count every star?"
They both chuckled for a while at, then they stopped chuckling, frowned, and looked at eachother. Amusement became concern.
Nervously, Rainbow Dash asked "You don't think she'd really try..."
Pinkie reached a hoof out. "Twilight?"
Spontaneously, Twilight assumed her Lesson Zero face again. "Pinkie! I figured it out!"
"Great, Twil-"
"I figured out that I CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT!"
Twilight flopped over backwards and flailed her hooves uselessly.
"It's pointless! There's no correlation between a number and whether or not it's right! Even ignoring the numbers I said that were the same as yours! Nothing! It's not evens, it's not odds, it's not scale, it's not nearest square, it's not number of factors, it's not number of digits, it's not number of letters in spelling the number, it's not ANYTHING!"
Wisely, the pegasus and the earth pony started backing away from the mentally spiraling alicorn.
"The ONLY significant difference between the wrong answers and the right answers that I can find is that the right answers have the postfix 'stars tonight', or equivalent, which can't be right! So what is it???"
"Twilight?" asked Pinkie softly.
Twilight blinked. She took a deep breath, raised her hoof to her chest, then pushed it away as she let her breath go. She then folded her wings back in, which had been at full aggression display.
"Sorry."
"Twilight... that is the answer."
"But it can't be! That would be completely illogical."
"Silly Twilight, you can't count all the stars! You said so yourself! The whole point was to say that there are however many stars tonight!"
"But that's wrong..."
"That is the answer!"
Twilight looked down, and her mane fell over her face.
"Cheer up, Twi. It's just a riddle."
The corners of her mouth ever so slightly turned up.
"Nope."
"Huh?"
"It's not just a riddle. While I was pacing in a circle, you told Rainbow Dash it was a logic game. You wanna talk logic?"
Twilight looked up with a sly grin. "Let's talk logic. Reductio ad absurdum. I'll answer your riddle with another riddle."
Pinkie sighed. "Oh boy."
"How many books are in my castle tonight?"
"Umm..."
"Earlier, Rainbow Dash said there were no stars tonight, and that was supposed to be correct. By the same logic, saying that there are no books in my castle tonight is supposed to be correct. Unless Discord is watching us and messed things up just now, that conclusion is decidedly incorrect. Therefore, the original premise was incorrect, unless the actual purpose of the riddle was to be bad at speaking Equestrian."
Pinkie Pie sighed again.
"How many ponies are here tonight?"
With another sigh, Pinkie Pie answered, "There are three ponies here tonight."
"Nope."
She blinked.
"There is one pony here tonight."
"How do you figure that?" asked Rainbow Dash, who was somewhere in between intrigued and annoyed and tired.
"I am standing right here, and I am one pony, so therefore there is one pony here tonight. There are two ponies close by, but only one here."
"Twilight," started Pinkie.
"As a wise, if strange, and occasionally violent pony once said, Communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness. I hope we've learned something today. ... That last bit was part of the quote, but I do hope we've learned something tonight."
"Don't give riddles to Twilight?" asked Pinkie Pie, wincing.
"No, riddles and logic games are fine. Misusing Equestrian to make a puzzle difficult is equivalent to telling someone a puzzle when your mouth is full of peanut butter to make it difficult. It's fake, and makes you look ridiculous to those who make actually difficult puzzles. It only really works if the joke is you have peanut butter in your mouth. I'm... not upset, just tired, and confused from breaking the fourth wall earlier. My eyes hurt from that too, and my head. Goodnight."
With a flash, Twilight teleported away, leaving Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash.
"... I guess I'll give her the surprise tomorrow, when she's slept this off. Nighty-night, Dashie!"
Pinkie Pie pronked off to Sugarcube Corner, leaving Rainbow alone and still confused.
"What just happened? Who were they talking to?"
Oh, just us humans is all.
"Okay."
"Wait, what? Hello?"
"Hello?"
"... Twilight forgot the telescope again. *sigh* She'd better not be asleep yet..."
Rainbow Dash flew off in the general direction of the castle.
Author's Note
I'm a soulless, humorless monster who feels an excessive need to defend the honor of his waifu. Roar.
Also, I still don't know how to spell Yukualdehai without actually looking at it. It's been years since I first saw the Pony Starcraft portrait series, and I still cannot for the life of me spell their name remotely correctly.
For future reference, it is in fact Yudhaikeledai.
