Why did the Cutie Mark Crusaders cross the road?
Qu’est-ce qu’on faisait déjà ?
In a room among the long, convoluted hallways of the Castle of Friendship, a princess sat snugly on a velvet pillow. She held a book in her magic, reading it keenly with eager eyes.
Although almost the entire castle was technically a public area, except for the living quarters, the library never received any visitors save for those invited. This was in spite of the fact that she’d displayed hornwritten signs at the entrance with directions to the library, and she’d also included within a not-so-subtle suggestion to give it a visit at the earliest convenient time.
Everything was written in ancient Equestrian, of course. Surely, after she placed that sign, the number of visitors to Twilight’s library would increase, right? Twilight stopped poring over Haycartes’ Passions of the Soul for the 529th time to ponder this. Maybe she hadn’t been clear enough with the wording? Was it possible that the Ponyville populace have been interested in the library, but couldn’t understand the directions in Old Equuish?
No, that was impossible. They were educated individuals and definitely informed in linguistics too. She dismissed the preposterous idea and returned to her light reading. An activity which involved a stack of Haycartes’ books, which sat as neatly as the doorway-high Jenga tower Spike was in the midst of building in his own room.
A shrill voice pierced the silence. “Hey Twi-Twi! Whatcha doin’?”
The sudden remark caused Twilight to spring a whole pony-length into the air and, to her irritation, the book stack to collapse. She glanced around, trying to find the source of the noise. “Pinkie Pie, what are you doing here? And don’t call me that.”
“Oh, just wanna tell a joke. Why did the Cutie Mark Crusaders cross the road?”
Twilight analysed the possible implications of Pinkie’s statement, pondering how the three fillies had to do with anything but disaster, how disaster and wreaking havoc in general was in any way funny, and how tree sap could potentially be turned into a punchline. She eventually gave up. “Alright. Why?”
“I’d tell you, but not until we go on an adventure first!” Pinkie said, playfully.
Twilight glanced back and forth from her book to the cheery pony in front of her, and she started to fumble an excuse. “Um… I’m a bit busy right now. Reading… uh… a very important Haycartes book about emotions, because I totally didn’t read this hundreds of times already. How about later?” She hoped that Pinkie would just forget about the joke, but Pinkie had the memory of an elephant, and Twilight knew that she never forgot. Ever.
“Well, it’s weird that you’re reading the same book 529 times, but it’s not like I do the same thing so many times either! Like seriously, how do ponies not get sick of parties? Ooh, ya’ look a teensy busy at the moment. Toodles, Twily!” Pinkie said in a chirpy tone, before disappearing from Twilight’s view. As to where she went, the alicorn wasn’t sure.
After heaving a sigh, she carried on leafing through the book, skimming through article 159 and its discussion on unvirtuous humility, before abruptly shutting the cover in frustration and meticulously placing it back on the stack. Pinkie’s joke bugged her mind, and she knew it. Why did the Cutie Mark Crusaders cross the road? Don’tcha wanna know? her mental voice, which at the moment sounded suspiciously like an alto version of Pinkie, teased.
It was like the paparazzi that incessantly stalked her and not-so-discreetly took photos of her cutie mark, while she was in the public areas of her castle (until she gently reminded them that they were committing lèse-majesté, punishable by death).
It was like the unnerving hunch that a changeling was sleeping under her bed—the moment Spike wasn’t there, she’d run a knock-unconscious spell each night all around her bedroom to reveal anyling who could be hiding there.
It was like a flea clinging to her mane that never let go, sucking the blood out of her like Flutterbat piercing her skin with sharp fangs—
Twilight winced from the imagery. As her heart throbbed, she forced her eyes shut and took a slow, deep breath. She focussed on how the diaphragm expanded and retracted, how the refreshing air was drawn in and exhaled out, pleasant things like petunias and irises, and not the unknown punchline to Pinkie’s joke, and not quesadillas. Tariff-obsessed quesadillas.
Then she kept at it for Celestia-knew how long.
C’mon, Twi-Twi, I thought you suck up knowledge like a vacuum cleaner! the voice teased again. The voice simulated a sucking noise, which Twilight thought sounded more like a dying kitten.
Unless it’s on tariffs, Twilight replied. She sighed and levitated towards herself an arbitrarily chosen magazine and flicked it open to a page near the middle.
Obsessive Thoughts and You: How to Deal with the Anxiety of Not Knowing the Punchline to a Joke
She slammed the magazine shut. After ensuring that she’d fluffed the pillow twice for her next reading session, she began to walk towards the entryway. Pinkie’s joke still occupied her mind like the terrible brainworms that the Pinkie created over the years.
As a matter of fact, Twilight needed to know the punchline. It was urgent, obligatory, imperative to her wellbeing.
She had to do whatever she could find out.
Suddenly, her head knocked against the spring-green crystal of the library entrance, which incidentally was actually a spring door. Momentarily disorientated, she rubbed a hoof on her head, wincing at the pain, before lightly pushing the door open and stumbling through into one of the many hallways.
With a glimmering of her horn, the alicorn magicked a mulberry-coloured projection of Ponyville. A small picture of Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark shone above on the thaumic map, via a long-term locator spell she’d discreetly applied on Pinkie Pie last month.
It appeared that she was at Sugarcube Corner, as Twilight had expected. The party organiser was probably baking mulberry cupcakes with chocolate sprinkles. Admittedly, it did make her day whenever Pinkie Pie decided to concoct them, even if she had to suffer through an entire day of the colour pink beforehoof. The thought gave her some semblance of hopefulness, until she walked through the front door of the castle and was enclosed by pink.
⸙
“Pinkie Pie, why did you bring me here?” a voice whispered. They were inside a nondescript bush at the fringes of town, which would have been inconspicuous had it not been the only bush in the grassland area and hadn’t been floating half a hoof off the ground.
“To see the Cutie Mark Crusaders of course, silly!” the other voice replied. She giggled quietly, placing a hoof over her mouth.
Four pony-lengths away, Scootaloo ambled past with stubby legs, while Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom tagged behind, creating a small horde of eager foals. They deliberated enthusiastically about the raising of tariffs on foreign, commercialised tree sap, to create a miniscule increase on Princess Celestia’s heap of tax bits.
Sure, Twilight could be compared to a vampony when it came to knowledge, but even she had limits as to what constituted interesting. Taxation laws, as Celestia put it, got messy, when the Canterlot nobility was involved (which was always), and besides, it lacked the substance and coherency that magic studies had.
Surprisingly, the trio’s discussion reminded Twilight of herself. Was that how other ponies felt when she presented to them her unsolicited, but well-researched lectures?
Could it have been possible that, while trying to convert her friends into her intellectual cause, she caused the opposite effect—crushing any iota of interest that they had for her topics beforehoof? Rarity’s offhoof comment on her “verbose tendencies” suddenly made sense. It was said with much tact, of course, but the sentiment the unicorn wanted to express was there.
“Twi-Twi?”
Her daydream instantly collapsed, having been evicted from the apartment of Twilight’s attention and then bludgeoned mercilessly into shreds by the harsh landlord of reality. The depressing reflection of whether anypony truly cared about her research topics remained. “Pinkie?” she said, worry creeping into her voice.
“Look over th—”
Twilight interrupted. “Shush, I need to ask you something first.”
“Okie-dokie.” Pinkie brought the pair of binoculars down from her eyes, leaving it dangling from her neck.
“When I gave you a crash course on Lie groups, how much of it did you actually listen to?”
“All of it, duh.”
“Wait, what? I thought it’d, you know, fly past your head.”
“Well, sometimes ponies’ demand for our minerals isn’t as high, so we have a surplus of rocks lying around. When that happens, Ma and Pa let us have some free time, and my relatives on my father’s side pop in to teach us all about maths. Oh, and my relatives on my mother’s side all love studying economics, so they pop in to teach us about tariffs and taxes as well!” Twilight cringed slightly at her remark, while Pinkie merely shrugged and, not skipping a beat, continued. “Anyway, Twi-Twi, take a look!” Pinkie pointed a hoof at the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who were at that moment galloping the murky forests of the Everfree happily.
“Pinkie, why are the CMC going into the Everfree again?” Twilight asked.
“We’ll find out.” Pinkie was already furtively tip-hoofing towards and into the forest, taking the bush, and Twilight, with her.
⸙
As the Cutie Mark Crusaders strolled on the weedy dirt path, Twilight and Pinkie followed.
The two ponies kept a few pony-lengths behind the fillies, carefully treading among the numerous trees and ferns that lined the edges of the hoofpath. Oddly enough, the Crusaders fell mostly silent after entering the forest, communicating in high-pitched clicks every now and then.
Apple Bloom, from her position as Zecora’s assistant, must have introduced them to one of the many Zebrican click languages. However, it didn’t sound at all like any of the varities she’d studied—didn’t click languages contain vowels and other consonants as well?
A conlang was also possible. Twilight had gifted Sweetie Belle her treatise on constructed languages for the filly’s birthday, seeing that Sweetie Belle was a dictionary aficionado.
Well, the alicorn had later found said gift in the deepest bookshelves of the Carousel Boutique many months later, covered in dust, and with its plastic cover untouched. It was still possible that Sweetie Belle had read the book and magically absorbed its contents without opening it. Fillies could not be underestimated in what talents they bore, of course.
As for Scootaloo, with her seemingly infinite adoration of Rainbow Dash, it was plausible that she had been inspired by the Wonderbolt’s silly antics. To be honest, Twilight had never seen Rainbow communicate in clicks within earshot, but who knew what topics they liked to joke about in private?
Satisfied with her plausible theories and rationalisations, she shoved her thoughts into a neatly organised box, part of a vast imagined storage facility maintained by a part of her hippocampus named the Twilight Archives, which was in turn managed by her brain’s Department of Internal Affairs.
“Twi-Twi, I’m waiting for you~!” Pinkie whispered.
That single statement hurled her mind from the realm of rêverie and caused her poor noggin to violently crash into the physical realm where her physical self stood. In time though, she started walking towards where Pinkie waited for her, though a bit fazed.
She could have sworn that while they continued following the Crusaders, the latter were emitting light buzzes as well. It had to have been a conlang, then.
Lacking stimuli, the pair of ponies continued tailing the Crusaders for what Twilight felt was a couple of hours. The humdrum was broken when the CMC took a sudden left turn, across from where Twilight and Pinkie was hiding.
“So here we are,” Twilight whispered in Pinkie’s general direction.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders leaped into a nondescript bush, not unlike the bush. In fact, Twilight was sure that all bushes looked the same, as to not call attention to them. Some quirk of their universe, she posited.
Instead of coming into contact with twigs and leaves, however, they and passed straight through it. It was as if the bush was actually part of an elaborate illusion spell.
“Huh, turns out the bush was part of an elaborate illusion spell,” Pinkie said.
“Sweetie Belle must’ve been practising magic in her spare time,” Twilight replied, the pride of a successful mentor growing within herself. “My Twilight Time lessons must be more effective than I thought.”
Before Pinkie could advance forward, Twilight stopped her with a hoof, conjuring a sphere of brilliant light from her horn. The light rapidly grew, and the pony-detecting spell covered their surroundings with an amethyst glow that faded just as quickly.
“Looks like there’s nopony following us. Let’s go.”
After Twilight had scried the bush with numerous trap-detection spells, the two ponies passed through, or rather, went into it to emerge at the top of a spiral staircase. Although the bush blocked no light, the alcove where the stairs were hidden was an especially dark area of the forest, so they were shrouded in darkness.
A light spell from Twilight flooded the area with light, revealing small cracks that spread from the centre of the stairs. Faded harlequin stains and trampled, twisted vines gave the setts an eerie look. She theorised that the latter being trampled was a sign that many ponies passed through in the past.
The spiral structure showed little resemblance to King Sombra’s fondness of stairs, yet the horrendous memories evoked still caused Twilight to shudder at the sight.
Fanciful bedtime stories had it that King Sombra’s laugh reverberated in those possessed by his shadow, doomed to become the new host of the villain’s soul. As foalish as it was, Twilight had been haunted by King Sombra’s laugh ever since his defeat in the Crystal Empire. Combined with her awareness that she was an invaluable (unwilling) renegade for her talent in magic, it couldn’t have been a far stretch to assume that she would be King Sombra’s prime target.
Could the spiral staircase be a sort of signature as to its malevolent creator? What terrible atrocities appeared after the staircase? Was their following the Cutie Mark Crusaders enticing them into an intricate trap, one that they were entering hook, line, and sinker? Or in their case, would it be hook, line, and slinker? Were puns acceptable in morbid thoughts of imminent doom?
“Twi-Twi, you awake?”
“Oh! What was I doing?” Twilight shook her head to rid herself of her thoughts.
“Your body looked kinda lifeless and limp, and your face looked like it was going to die from being scared so much!” Pinkie made an exaggerated shocked expression that put Lily’s to shame.
“Huh.”
“And I was getting kinda tired from all this waiting, so I checked if you were awake!”
“Oh.”
Silence fell upon them for a moment, time stretching to such lengths that each second was elongated into an hour bereft of words, like a black hole that annihilated every syllable forming in the larynx before they could be uttered.
It was unsettling, the absence of any noise whatsoever. The silence reminded Twilight all too well of her incident with the verdaciers in White Tail Woods.
So, deciding to restore order in the world once again, Twilight took the first step of her arduous journey down the stairs. Pinkie bounced along behind her, having returned to her usual elated smile.
⸙
Pinkie stopped her bouncing to motion a hoof at something. “Twi-Twi, look!”
Twilight kept her gaze to the left wall of the spiral staircase, while wincing from the putrid smell inundating her sinuses. “I know, Pinkie. That’s the third changeling corpse you’ve noticed on these stairs so far. I appreciate your help, but I’ve got plenty of specimens from after Princess Cadance’s wedding.”
“No, ahead of us, ya’ silly!”
The alicorn’s glance ahead revealed that the staircase ended about five pony-lengths from where the two ponies stood and a spacious cavern began. It was connected to tunnels spanning in every direction, each leading to places too far for Twilight to see. Coating those walls was a jet-black, glossy substance that was very eerily similar to a changeling’s carapace; and a green, viscous substance oozing from the cracks, which was likely the source of the harlequin stains from earlier.
Every few seconds, a different changeling would flitter from one tunnel to another, carrying saddlebags that matched the colour of the chitin. Their eyes focussed solely towards its destination; they were like worker bees, or ‘drones’ as she called them, as each of its apparent purpose was a cog in a metaphorical machine. Twilight filed this information into another box of her brain’s Twilight Archives for later use.
After scanning the tunnels briefly, Pinkie bounded towards the tunnel directly ahead of them. Twilight could only gape at Pinkie’s recklessness. They were changelings in their presumed home, who fed on love from ponies, rendering their victims… actually, she hadn’t studied the short-term or long-term effects of this due to the lack of living changeling subjects available, in which case, progressing further into the cavern could provide valuable insight into their biology. If she repurposed this excursion as a scientific field trip, then perhaps she’d feel more comfortable with her perilous adventure…
So with renewed interest and piqued curiosity, the alicorn tagged along, taking care to avoid the changeling ‘drones’ that passed by.
⸙
Back at the castle, a young dragon tentatively placed a single playing card in the middle of his bedroom.
He reached for the second card from one of twelve neatly arranged stacks. Although Twilight’s perfectionist behaviour had rubbed off on him over the years, having such a habit instilled into instinct was surprisingly helpful sometimes.
A gleam of a grin formed on his face. Sure, his role as an assistant was onerous at times, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Returning to his activity, he picked up his second playing card and laid it beside the first. Already, apprehension was building, and it was no surprise: he was immersing himself in a demanding test of intense concentration. Even in its mundane beginnings did every action matter; a weak foundation would cause the entire structure to topple.
In addition, his success or failure in this test would determine the ultimate fate of his bedroom: whether he would be forced to clean up afterwards in an utmost miserable fashion or relish in the glory of his hoofiwork… or was it handiwork in this case?
“Hey, Twilight! I’m making a tower of cards—wanna join?”
When no response was heard, he made for Twilight’s library, running past an innumerable number of rooms, all of which were indistinguishable from each other unless he opened each door one by one. Instinctive memory aided him in finding the correct door, and he opened the 53rd door to the right.
As he wandered around the library—Twilight’s monstrous collection of tomes, magazines, and most importantly, comic books—exactly three objects lay on the floor: Haycartes’ Passions of the Soul, opened to the section on unvirtuous humility; the newest edition of the Mental Illness for Nutjobs magazine, whose special feature was anecdotomania (the obsession with jokes); and a comfy velvet pillow that Spike liked to steal from Twilight when she wasn’t looking.
“Huh, she’s gone.” He kicked the pillow in disappointment. “Welp, I’ll just do this by myself, then.”
⸙
Twilight and Pinkie explored the labyrinth of passageways, staying well clear of its shapeshifting inhabitants. Twilight took care to not make contact with the chitinous walls.
Every twelve pony-lengths or so, the tunnel would lead to another cavern virtually identical to the first. Each time, Pinkie would continue skipping merrily forward, resolute in her direction.
However, while the tunnels were unchanging, the activity of the changeling ‘drones’ were not. In fact, as the pair of ponies travelled through an endless number of caverns, the buzzing of wings from scurrying changelings increased, all of whom held saddlebags on their back. Some held large crystals in their hooves as well.
Throughout their delving deeper into the subterranean maze, Twilight pondered what those saddlebags held and what significance their contents held. This question was answered when a changeling, between a foal’s and an adult pony’s height, stumbled over its cavity-filled hooves. Smooth pebbles of a multitude of colours fell out of its saddlebag, glowing vibrantly. Hastily, the changeling grabbed the gems in its magic, crammed them into its saddlebag, and continued to scurry off through the tunnel. Twilight watched the entirety of the events unfold intently before catching up to Pinkie’s path.
As they reached to the fifteenth cavern, however, Pinkie took a sharp turn towards the second tunnel to her left.
“Why did you turn left?” Twilight inquired.
Pinkie paused to shrug. “My Pinkie Sense told me that there’s something different there.”
She was right; the changelings travelling in her direction were more relaxed in their pace. In addition, the atmosphere felt subtly heavier, as if gravity had suddenly increased as they strolled deeper into that particular tunnel. Perhaps the old cliché “love is in the air” could be applied in a literal sense, and with the changelings’ fondness of love, it would be relevant on more levels than one.
Interestingly, that was not Twilight’s most notable observation. At the end of the corridor were the Cutie Mark Crusaders, waiting outside a pair of membranous double doors. They were deathly silent, scrutinising the left wall far more intently than was reasonable.
Pinkie, for the first time in their journey, reduced her bouncing to a walk from that point on. Twilight shared her tentativeness, hunching slightly. “I think this is a trap,” Pinkie said in a hushed whisper.
“I don’t know. But this journey definitely won’t be in vain, because we’ll save the Cutie Mark Crusaders from changelings,” Twilight replied, as she and Pinkie slowly approached the fillies, and in turn, the end of the corridor.
In reality, the alicorn’s incentive to enter changeling territory was only to gain knowledge first-hoof about the elusive species. The CMC was perfectly capable of saving themselves, having devastated and annihilated adversaries such as the Carousel Boutique, the Ponyville schoolhouse, and the Cloudsdale Weather Factory effectively in the past.
The CMC’s expressions didn’t make sense, though. Twilight anticipated that their terror would be evident through their faces, but there was none to be seen. And on a related note, why could she not shrug the feeling of apprehension building in her own body?
A bulkier and heavily armoured changeling guard swung a steel-tipped pike in front of the doors, obstructing them. It stared, expressionless and impassive, into Twilight’s soul to her immense discomfort. The guard then attempted to do the same for Pinkie as well, but the latter bounced too fast for its menacing glare. “You may not enter without the correct code,” it eventually said.
Pinkie’s ears perked up. “Oh, can we go in? Pretty please?”
Twilight interjected, “Pinkie, the guard’s just said that you ca—”
“No.”
Pinkie fell to her rump weakly, her ears drooping. In a rough emulation of Fluttershy, she made an exaggerated pout and enlarged her irises until the whites of her eyes completely disappeared. To complete the despondent expression, she liberally applied tear stick under her eyes, holding the tear stick with her mane. “Pretty please?”
“That is the correct code. You may enter.” The guard relaxed slightly, returning its pike to its original upwards position. It shifted its position towards the side to not obstruct the doors.
The doors—pocket doors, as Twilight realised—slid into the walls, revealing a dark, spacious chamber bereft of light. It was moderately decorated, with its walls adorned with dreamy paintings of blasé scenes like Princess Luna’s night sky or ships docking in a port. A mirror, about two and a half pony-lengths high, was affixed on the right wall, surrounded by an elaborate chartreuse and onyx frame. From first glance, it didn’t appear to be magical.
To the mirror’s left was a dressing table accompanied by its own mirror, both of which were coloured similarly. It looked as though changelings were excellent at consistent colour schemes.
However, nearest to them and leftmost of the furniture were nightstands, upon which candles and roses rested. They flanked a large bed, whose ebony frame had embedded within emeralds and lustrous pitch-black tourmalines. Below the canopy were several layers of forest-green satin blankets, which, to Twilight’s envy, looked much more comfortable than hers.
Lying in the bed was Fluttershy, nuzzling the crook of Queen Chrysalis’s neck affectionately. The pegasus, her body facing away from Twilight and Pinkie, cuddled the changeling by the barrel, as Queen Chrysalis purred softly with pleasure.
Twilight was certain that the Fluttershy they had stumbled upon was an impostor, but there was a wholly disturbed but growing minority in her head that worried that it was not so. In fact, the minority in her head had squawked at her to halt her very evident invasion of privacy many times now, yet her head was paralysed in the possibly-faux Fluttershy’s direction tighter than an insect fossilised in dried amber.
“Eek!” Twilight exclaimed.
Fluttershy, or possibly the changeling disguised as Fluttershy, turned her head to Twilight swifter than a hummingbird’s flap—
“Twilight, Pinkie, what are you doing here?!” Heat flared from her cheeks, as she pushed the blankets down the bed.
“Um… we were tracking down the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” Twilight said, far less confident than she’d hoped. Why was she talking to an impostor of Fluttershy? Or was it the real Fluttershy? She pushed the confusing thoughts into the unspoken abyss before it consumed her mind.
Queen Chrysalis sighed. “Drones, come in.” Her eyes remained closed as she tugged the aforementioned blankets back to their original position and prodded for Fluttershy to rejoin her.
The alicorn’s eyes gradually turned leftwards, as the three fillies stepped into the chambers. Green flames swept up their bodies, replacing their fur with the holey carapace of changelings. Residual embers remained for a brief moment before fading away.
In hindsight, she should have known that no sensible pony, or non-changeling for that matter, could engage in discourse on tariffs without gaining the overwhelming urge to regurgitate their most recent meal. Their entire journey here was in vain, and Twilight, for the first time in her life, had learnt something that she direly wanted to unlearn.
In a stark contrast to Twilight’s figurative and literal inability to move, Pinkie was awestruck by possibly-faux Fluttershy’s rendez-vous to the highest degree, her beaming so extreme that it transcended even her own limits.
Twilight shook her head vigorously, recovering from her brief episode of immobility. “Um… are you the real Fluttershy?”
“Chryssy, should I answer yes?” Fluttershy whispered to her companion.
“Maybe,” Queen Chrysalis whispered in return, too content in her comfort that she no longer paid any particular attention to the disturbance.
“Um… maybe?” Fluttershy said. Her eyes never quite met Twilight’s or Pinkie’s, twitching from the dressing table to the three changelings near the entryway.
Pinkie exclaimed, “Does this mean that Flutters finally has a marefriend? Oh, I’d be so excited to help prepare for your wedding!” She put a hoof to her chin. “Or maybe you’re lying and Ms Swiss Cheese just wants to cuddle with her own changelings.”
Apparently unsure of her own identity, Fluttershy hid in the blankets, which fortunately for her, were aplenty.
“Perhaps,” Queen Chrysalis mumbled, reaching out for her amie and pulling her towards herself. As soon as she found herself snug, the changeling nibbled on Fluttershy’s ear.
“Pinkie, I think we should go. Now’s a bad time, I think.” As she said this, Twilight backtracked towards the door in cautious, deliberate steps.
“But—” Pinkie tried to protest, but Twilight zipped Pinkie’s mouth shut and, with her magic, dragged her to from where they came.
⸙
At the entrance of the Everfree Forest, Twilight walked out, still a bit perturbed. Pinkie followed her chipperly with an elated grin that, although it had recovered to less severe levels, remained pleasantly high-spirited throughout their trip back. It was as though her facial expressions were controlled by a switch—one that was duct-taped to the “on” state in order that it could not be turned off.
Twilight stopped to conjure up a projection of Ponyville and started glossing over the plethora of cutie marks dotted on it. “Let’s see, the real Crusaders are at… the Schoolhouse. Why didn’t I realise that at the time? Don’t they go there every weekday?” she said more to herself than anypony else.
Pinkie leapt from her position and took a hearty lick at the map. “Mmm… tastes like raspberries!”
The remark stole the alicorn’s attention off her magic for a second, and the map flickered before fizzling out completely. “I thought it tasted like grapes,” Twilight said as she eyed Pinkie, sceptical.
Pinkie stuck a playful tongue out. “Nope, silly! That’d be your horn.”
“Huh,” Twilight said. The alicorn prepared her horn to restore the projection but found herself too perplexed to do so. “Anyway,” she continued, we’ll just have to pass… oh no.”
She shuffled closer to Twilight. “What is it?”
“Today’s Flash Mob Day in the Town Square,” Twilight replied.
Pinkie resumed her pace, though it was once again bound to a mere walk to allow her to speak. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
“You wouldn’t know; it’s a thing Discord made up yesterday evening when he visited my castle unannounced,” Twilight replied, irritation seeping into her voice. “Well, it’s the 529th time he’s visited this year, so it’s not as big of a deal any more.”
“Flash Mob Day, or the fact that he’s visited so many times?” Fortunately for Twilight, Pinkie was too swept up in her ambiguous statement to notice that the alicorn had just conjured a lavender portal to the Schoolhouse in front of them.
“Oh look! Here we are. That was quick, wasn’t it?” Twilight said, as she inwardly panicked to desummon the portal before Pinkie noticed.
“I’m going to apply a ranged invisibility spell now, so the CMC doesn’t know we’re stalking them.”
Pinkie nodded dumbly. The Ponyville Schoolhouse was distant but coming in view, along with its aged poplar trees and off-white picket fences.
To any observer standing outside a conjured spherical shield, their bodies would appear to fade away into nothingness. However, to Twilight and Pinkie, their bodies remained visible as before.
The alicorn motioned for Pinkie to hide behind the fence, close to the playground. And so they waited, though not for long.
Conveniently for the two ponies, the bell located on the roof of the Ponyville Schoolhouse rang a second later, and a large horde of foals scampered out of the door. Amongst the crowd were three rambunctious fillies, chittering to each other words that Twilight could not hear. They were definitely less high-pitched than the faux-fillies from earlier, she observed.
Leading them was Scootaloo, who gestured for the trio to travel towards the Town Square, followed by Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom.
The trio kept their lively gait all the way to the plaza outside the Town Hall, where swathes of ponies were forming mobs.
“So, Twi-Twi, have you figured out why the Cutie Mark Crusaders crossed the road?” Pinkie said, with eyes wide in anticipation. She bobbed up and down like a seesaw in anticipation, in a hypothetical universe where it was probable that a seesaw could have feelings.
Twilight already knew the answer, of course, but she also knew that Pinkie always relished a joke for all its worth, and that included announcing the punchline.
“Because they’re following Scootaloo.”
⸙
“You do realise you could’ve just told me the punchline at the start, right?” Twilight said, as they ambled back to the castle. Living up to their name, the flash mobs from earlier had dispersed like water, with the main stream meandering towards the previously-deserted Ponyville Market.
Pinkie cocked her head towards Twilight, incredulous. “I could! But where could the fun be in that? Think about it, Twi-Twi! What did we learn today?”
“That all good things in life will be completely ruined by pointless obstacles that some dim-witted jester decided to make just for the fun of it?” Twilight remarked offhandedly.
“Exactly!”
“But… wha…” The alicorn’s face scrunched up into an unimaginably grotesque expression. It was a face only Pinkie Pie could provoke in her.
“Oh, look at the time!” Pinkie patted her pastern with a foreleg, as if she were wearing a watch. “Mr and Mrs Cake probably wants me back at work now. Probably a lot of customers popping in after that demonstration. Toodle-loodle-loo!”
And as soon as she said the final word, Pinkie Pie disappeared, with only a trail of whisked-up dust left in her wake.
Then she skidded back. “Oh, I forgot! On the house.” She dropped a plain cardboard package on the ground before disappearing again. Its sides slowly opened up to reveal a mulberry cupcake with chocolate sprinkles.
Twilight smiled.
Author's Note
Joke source.
