Lunch Meeting Apocalypse
a brief amusement by Captain Horatio Hairball
Pinkie Pie had ordered the grassloaf, with mashed potatoes and peas. She had demolished the grassloaf, built a towering mesa out of the potatoes, and was painstakingly leveling off the top with her knife and spoon.
“Pinkie, what are you doing?”
“I like big buttes, and I cannot lie,” said Pinkie, narrowing her eyes, and waving her hoof over the top of her creation.
“Pinkie, stop that! You’re not supposed to play with your food.”
“I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.” Clearly unhappy with her work, Pinkie smashed it down into her plate with her hoof and started again.
Twilight sighed, and made a mental note to discourage Pinkie from ordering mashed potatoes the next time they dined out. She magically pushed her plate, littered with the remnants of her hayburger, off to one side, where it was discretely collected by the cream colored stallion with the slicked back mane. Even though it was lunchtime, the café was largely deserted. Twilight felt a little bad. A lunch meeting had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she could understand if ponies found her current company a little unsettling.
Twilight tapped her hooves together, and fluttered her wings nervously. “I was hoping we could have a conversation.”
“We are having a conversation.”
“This isn’t really a conversation.”
Pinkie rolled her eyes. “‘Noun: conversation; plural noun: conversations. The informal exchange of ideas by spoken words.’ The thing we’re doing right now.”
“I had some particular ideas I wanted to discuss. Ideas I can only really talk to you about.”
Pinkie perked up, bouncing slightly in her chair. “Oh! Did you want to learn about cupcakes? I have some ideas I’ve been bouncing around. Very cutting edge. I’m really questioning the distinction between cupcake and muffin. It’s pretty avant-garde. Honestly I don’t think the mainstream is ready yet.”
“I wanted to talk to you about your Pinkie Sense.”
Pinkie froze. “Judas! You lure my here with promises of mashed potatoes. And now this!” Slowly, calmly, she reached under the table and pulled Gummy up to her chest. “It’s a trap!” She croaked.
Twilight gasped. “Pinkie! This is a restaurant! Pets aren’t allowed in here! Also, what’s a Judas?”
Pinkie was indignant. “Gummy’s not a pet. Gummy is a philosopher!”
Twilight raised an eyebrow at Pinkie. “Gummy is a philosopher?”
Pinkie nodded firmly, setting Gummy in the empty chair next to her and feeding him a pea. “Have you heard any of his soliloquies? He’s really profound.”
“This is important, Pinkie. I’m coming to realize there are whole categories of pony powers that don’t follow the usual rules of magic. Your Pinkie Sense. Fluttershy’s Stare. The Sonic Rainboom. Even pegasus flight itself…”
Pinkie looked at Twilight contemptuously. “Um, Twilight? Pegasi have wings. Mystery solved.”
Twilight shook her head. “It’s not that simple. The average pegasus is only 1.23 stone lighter than the average earth pony. Their wings are far too small to provide lift for that kind of mass.”
Pinkie rolled her eyes. “We went over this, Twilight. Some things — like my Pinkie Sense — are unexplainable, and you just have to have faith and believe in them.”
Twilight thumped her hoof on the table. Pinkie’s peas bounced from the force of the blow. One rolled over the edge of the plate, and across the table. Gummy watched it careful as it traveled towards the edge, considering. But he was still chewing the first pea, and decided to let it go. “I believe that your Pinkie Sense exists,” said Twilight. “If it exists, then it follows certain rules. Rules that can be examined and understood.”
Pinkie crossed her arms and snorted indignantly. “Pinkie Sense doesn’t care for your rules, Twilight.”
Twilight waved her forelegs in the air. “Everything follows rules! We may not know what those rules are, we might not understand them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If nature didn’t follow rules, everything would be… well, chaos!”
“Which I assume is why you invited me,” said Discord.
Discord had been silent through most of the meal. Like Pinkie, he had ordered the grassloaf, but it lay untouched in front of him. He was dressed in a frilly pink dress, with a matching magic wand holstered at his hip. His tiara was hung casually over the back of his chair. Twilight wasn’t sure if he was trying to make some kind of comment, or had just woken up in a princess-y mood that morning. Right now, he was holding a small plastic rectangle that looked suspiciously like a smart phone from the Human World, and stroking it brusquely with his thumb every twenty seconds or so. Every once in a while, he would chuckle softly to himself.
“Yes, Discord,” sighed Twilight, “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting you, but I was hoping you’d have some insights.”
Discord tucked the device into his otherwise empty bodice, “No, it’s all right. My Twitter feed is dead today.” He put his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers against his paw. “So. What can I help you with?”
“Well, I was thinking about Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense…”
Pinkie had rebuilt her mesa, and was carefully constructing a spiral ramp down the side. “Can we call it 'P.S.' or 'the Sense’ for short? It’s going to get tiresome if you keep saying 'Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense' all the time.”
Twilight ignored her. “…and how it doesn’t follow the rules of established magic. It happens at random, without Pinkie’s volition, and the signals aren’t consistent or reliable enough to utilize it in a systematic way. But if can still sometimes provide accurate information about the…”
“Twitchy tail! Twitchy tail!”
Twilight ducked, and called a magic shield into existence over her head. The rolled up armadillo bounced off it, and wobbled in a small circle like a spun bit on the carpet before settling down. A single eye opened, looked around frantically, and snapped closed again.
Twilight scowled. “Discord!”
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
Twilight supposed she shouldn’t have expected any better. “Anyway, Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense…”
“P.S.! P.S.!”
“…Can provide accurate information about the future. And I thought, who else has magic like that?”
Discord leaned his jaw against his paw. “Don’t beat around, the bush, Twilight darling. The suspense is killing me.” He yawned.
“You do! Your powers are completely random! You seem to be able to control them, but you do things at will, rather than by using some kind of spell or technique!”
Discord examined his claws. “So you’re suggesting that Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense…”
Pinkie ducked her head and waved her hooves dramatically. “The Sense!”
“…Is related to my chaos magic.”
“Yes! Though is what you do really magic? Magic is something you study and practice. It only happens when you decide to do it, and it's meant to make something specific that you choose to happen, happen.”
Pinkie Pie eyed Twilight suspiciously. “I’m pretty sure you’ve used those exact words some other time.” She carefully set a single pea down on top of her ramp. It rolled down, circled the ramp, then hit the little ski jump at the end. It flew through the air in a graceful arc, and landed in Gummy’s open mouth. The first pea, only slightly worse for wear from being chewed on for the past five minutes, was dislodge by the second, and rolled out onto the floor. After a few seconds of thoughtful meditation, Gummy, now chewing the second pea with determined vigor, slid down out of his chair after it. The armadillo gave Gummy one look, and decided that it now was the time to unroll, and risk a waddle for the door.
“That was a remarkable feat of engineering, Pinkie!”
Pinkie batted eye eyelashes flirtatiously at Twilight. “I know. I’m a natural!”
“An old friend of mine used to put it more simply — ‘Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will,’” said Discord, smirking superiorly.
Twilight turned towards Discord so quickly she nearly fell out of her chair, and had to thrust her wings our for balance. “You knew Aleister Cowley?”
Discord casually drew his wand and flicked it in the air. Dust and rhinoceros beetles flew out of the end. “Yes. He was terrible at checkers.”
Twilight tapped her chin with a hoof, and squinted skeptically at Discord. “But you were encased in stone throughout his entire lifetime!”
“Oh, like you’ve never traveled in time. Could you pass the salt?”
Pinkie had picked up one of the rhinoceros beetles, and was simpering over it. “Awwww, who’s a cutesy wootsie little buggy wuggy?” The beetle’s long, spiny legs swam helplessly in the air.
“The Kirin keep them as pets, you know,” offered Discord, finally deigning to dig into the grassloaf. “Oh! This is… this is terrible. How do you ponies eat this garbage?“ He snapped his fingers, turning the whole thing into a massive, steaming rack of ribs. Twilight’s stomach turned at the smell of cooked meat. She remembered the hamburgers and hot dogs she’d eaten in the Human World, not knowing what they were made of, and considered making a bolt for the little filly’s room.
Pinkie, meanwhile, seemed quite taken by the idea of keeping rhinoceros beetles as pets. “Do you think Gummy would be jealous?” She looked around. “Where is Gummy, anyway?”
Twilight rubbed her temples with her hooves. What had they been talking about? Talking to Pinkie and Discord at once was like blundering into the event horizon of a black hole. By the time you realized what was happening, it was already too late to escape. “So you’re saying that Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense happens because she wills it to? But she can’t control it!”
“Can she? Pinkie is an…” Discord hesitated, as if he were actually choosing his words carefully. Twilight considered that highly unlikely. “…an innocent, simple soul. For her, will and action are one and the same. What she imagines, she then makes real. So her magic appears instinctive.”
Pinkie’s rump was up in the air as she searched under the table for Gummy. The beetles, forgotten, wandered aimlessly around the table. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a genius.”
“I was going to say idiot savant,” drawled Discord, casually sucking the flesh from a rib. A rib that had been part of a pig, once. Or had it? Had Discord used some kind of spontaneous generation spell, or had he magically murdered and cooked some poor piggy? Twilight tasted bile. She pushed a hoof against her mouth. She was on the verge of learning something important from Discord, if she could get just him to focus. She had to hold it together for at least a few more minutes.
“Takes one to know one, Pal.” Pinkie hopped down from her chair, and pronked off to look for Gummy. The waiter pony took this opportunity to scoop Pinkie’s dishes off the table and head for the kitchen with them.
“So Discord, are you suggesting that all ponies have magic? Not just unicorns?”
“Of course they do, dear. You just watched an earth pony pick up a plate with his hooves.”
Twilight blinked. He had, hadn’t he? Diamond dogs, griffons and humans used their thumbs to manipulate things, but ponies did a lot of the same things with flat, leathery, slightly flexible hooves. She looked at her own — there was no way she should be able to pick things up with them, but she did, all the time. She’d never really thought about it; it just seemed natural to her. “This… the implications of this are incredible! Why, what if earth ponies and pegasi could learn to control their magic like unicorns do?”
Discord smiled a slow, toothy smile, “I know. What harm could possibly come from that?”
That gave Twilight pause. If Discord thought it was a good idea, then it probably wasn’t, right? And yet it was certainly an interesting avenue of research. She didn’t have to try to make any practical developments, just investigate…
“These ribs are to die for. Would you care to try one?” The rib Discord held out to Twilight was soaked with dripping, blackish red sauce, flesh sagging from the bone, glistening with oils. There was the flat edge of the bone, where it had been sawn from the pig’s body, and… oh Celestia, was that a vein?
Twilight turned bright green, and bolted for the restroom.
Across the dining room, Pinkie was shouting at her pet philosopher. “Gummy! You get that armadillo out of your mouth right this instant! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What has he ever done to you?”
Discord smiled. He hooked his tiara off the back of the chair and settled it on his head at a jaunty angle. It felt good to do an honest day’s work sowing chaos. He so rarely got the chance, these days. The waiter was staring at his plate, shaking with disgust at the prospect of picking it up. “Her Highness will be paying,” said Discord, and sauntered out the door.
