Chapter 1: The End of the World
Looking up from the clipboard floating in the glow of his horn, the stallion at the counter shrugged. "Sorry," he said. "We're all out."
"But—" Dinky flapped her new wings. "I finally got 'em this morning, see? I'm an alicorn now, and that means I get to be a princess!"
"Sorry." The stallion didn't even shrug this time, though, raising Dinky's suspicions that he might not actually be sorry. "We assigned the last title two hours ago." The clipboard spun around just long enough for Dinky to see that the paper on it was blank, then he was pulling it back and turning to call across the empty desks of the office space behind him. "Isn't that right, boss?"
"Huh?" In a yellow-gray flash, an alicorn appeared, an alicorn whose eyes pointed in different directions.
"Mom?" Dinky's ears folded. "What're you doing here?"
"Dinky!" Another popping flash brought her mother into the lobby, that oh-so-familiar hug wrapping around Dinky. "It's my new title! And I get a whole office to myself! Well, except for Ink Slinger here." She flashed again and appeared next to the stallion. "I'm the Princess of Princessence!"
"The—?"
"It means," Ink Slinger said, not looking away from the pyramid he'd begun building with pads of yellow sticky notes, "that she's in charge of princess titles. It was the last title on the list, and Princess Twilight convinced the Princess Conclave that your mother deserved it." He cocked his head, his scent making Dinky's nose itch like somepony had just struck a match. "'For services rendered,' the proclamation said. And while the Conclave couldn't quite describe what those services had been, they all agreed that said services had thoroughly and in some cases definitively been rendered."
Dinky wanted to glare at him—she'd heard ponies use that tone when talking about her mother way too often—but a sudden thought made her jump up, her wings flaring. "Wait! Mom used to be the Princess of Postal Delivery To The Fifteen Hundred Block Of West Bridle Avenue In Ponyville! So if she's here now—"
"Sorry, honey." At least when Mom said it, the droop in her voice told Dinky she meant it. "Zipporwhill got her horn early this morning, so she got my old title. And with everypony becoming an alicorn lately—"
Ink Slinger cleared his throat, and Mom drooped a little more. "Every mare becoming an alicorn, I mean. Because, well, a stallion can't be a princess, can he?"
The smirk that crawled over Ink Slinger's snout reminded Dinky of a slug. "And neither can your daughter."
"Honey?" Mom blinked at her. "You...you're not a stallion, are you?"
Only grinding her teeth kept Dinky from shouting at her mother, but a sizzling sound startled her into looking over her shoulder. The air by the door to Princess Registry was shimmering, and a pale yellow alicorn materialized in a ball of dazzling light. "Hey, now!" the newcomer said. "As the Princess of Turning That Frown Upside-Down, I must intervene!"
Recognizing the voice, Dinky had to stare at the tiara, the fancy shoes, the sparkly emerald and ruby checkered breastplate. "Pumpkin? When did you get your wings?"
Pumpkin Cake grinned. "A couple minutes ago!" She spread them. "Aren't they great?"
"But—" The carpet felt like it was slipping out from under Dinky's hooves. "You got a title?"
"Well, yeah." Pumpkin tossed her mane. "It's one of the ones Pinkie Pie took when she became an alicorn way back when. She's been saving it for me!"
"Saving it?" Dinky whirled to face the counter. "Mom? You could've saved a title for me?"
Mom was busy putting the finishing touches on a second sticky note pyramid while Ink Slinger was twisting paper clips into an aerial tramway connecting the two. "What was that, honey?" Mom asked.
Dinky fell back to sit on the floor. "I'm doomed. I'm...I'm the Princess of Not Having a Title."
With a whoosh, Mom's ears sprang up. "Hey," she said, her eyes widening. "My Princessence Powers are telling me we don't have one of those!"
Ink Slinger sniffed. "Well, of course we don't. Princess of Not Having a Title would be a title, so bestowing it upon an alicorn would then create a paradoxical vortex into which the entirety of Equestria would tumble, time and space folding over each other like so much cake batter in a cataclysm of untold—"
Leaping forward, Dinky used her magic to slap sticky notes over his mouth. "Mom! You're the Princess of Princessence! So if you say I'm the Princess of Not Having a Title, that'll make it happen, right?"
"Umm," Pumpkin said somewhere behind Dinky.
But Mom was already nodding. "Anything for my little princess," she said. Her horn flared, and Dinky felt something settle over her forehead. Lighting her own horn, she lifted the weight, glanced up, and saw it was a glittering silver tiara.
"Mmmph!" Using his hooves and the glow of his horn, Ink Slinger managed to pry the slab of sticky notes partially off. "No! You can't! We'll be—!"
His next words vanished under a rumble that shook the whole building. "Yow!" Dinky heard Mom shout, then the air above the counter began swirling like the water in a bathtub drain. A wind sprang up behind her, caught her wings, and pushed her forward, jagged cracks of red and purple splintering out from the center of the disturbance. "Honey!" Mom shouted above the whooshing and the roaring, but before Dinky could do anything, the carpet was gone beneath her hooves, and she was sailing straight into the thing.
The air squeezed her tighter and more roughly than any hug ever had, everything flailing around her with colors either so bright, they made her eyes water or so dark, they made her head hurt. "Stop it!" she yelled, and without even thinking, she reached out with her magic and grabbed as much of the stuff as she could: if it would just stop spinning so much. she'd be able to—
A groan rang out like their house sometimes gave during a big Everfree windstorm, and the colors all shattered, taking the clench with them and tumbling Dinky head over fetlocks downward into red-black emptiness, the whole place looking and smelling like a gigantic rotting apple. Unable to think, she gave a shriek, lit her horn so she could see where she was, spread her legs to try controlling her spin, and was completely startled when her wings shot out, catching the hot, thick air and slowing her fall just in time for her hooves to touch down on some crunchy surface.
Oh. Right. Alicorn now.
"Whoa," said a quiet voice beside her, and she snapped her head over to see Pumpkin staring up at the sky. "That was a little weird."
"A little?" Ink Slinger's shout came from Dinky's other side. Snapping her head that way, she saw Mom, her mouth small and round, her eyes pointing simultaneously left and right out along the featureless yellow sand that surrounded them all the way to the horizon, and Ink Slinger, glaring directly at her. "Do you know what you've done?" he screamed. "Do you? Subsumed the world in paradox! Destroyed Equestria! Stranded us in a dimensionless dimension of nothingness and—"
"Hey, now!" Pumpkin raised a hoof. "Let's turn that frown upside-down, mister!"
Ink Slinger's jaw went slack instead, little choking sounds popping from between his lips.
Dinky felt exactly the same way. "Destroyed Equestria?" she managed to say.
"Oh, honey." Mom flapped over and put a foreleg around her shoulders. "It's okay. The first couple times you do it are the worst, but after that—"
"After that?" Ink Slinger seemed to be done with his choking. "We may be the last ponies left in the universe, doomed to wander this muggy desert till we succumb to the ravages of dehydration!"
Mom shrugged. "Or it could be up to us to repopulate the world." She gave Ink Slinger a big grin. "That's always fun!"
This time, Ink Slinger added drooping ears and wobbling knees to his choking sounds.
"See?" Pumpkin clapped her hooves together. "We just need to look on the bright side!"
"No." Dinky swallowed against the tightness in her chest. "I got us into this, so I...I have to get us out." Trying to think, she rubbed her forehead—and felt the tiara slightly askew there. "OK. If a paradox did this, then we need another paradox to counteract it."
"Excuse me?" Ink Slinger stomped the sand. "In the first place, one paradox doesn't fix another: there's no 'backsies' when you've destroyed the universe! In the second place—"
"Mom?" The idea that had sprung fully formed into Dinky's head made no sense whatsoever. But considering the situation... "You need to proclaim Ink Slinger here to be the Princess of Soulless Officiousness."
"Oooo!" Mom's ears stood up straighter. "We haven't got one of those either!"
"Yay!" Pumpkin started hopping up and down. "When life gives you lemons— Well, that's not actually my department, but still!" She did a back flip. "Let's get those frowns spinning, folks!"
The frown on Ink Slinger's face, though, had never looked more right side up, and he gave a stomp for each of his objections as he listed them: "I'm not a mare! I'm not an alicorn! I'm efficient, not officious! And I've got just as much of a soul as any other pony!"
Dinky wanted to challenge him on several of those points, but instead, she focused on employing logic. "And yet? This hasta work 'cause I absolutely refuse to be stuck here with you for the rest of my life! And since it was your soullessly officious objection to my title that caused that rift back in your office—"
"It was not!" Ink Slinger waved his hooves. "You came up with a paradoxical title! I pointed it out! That's my job!"
"Exactly!" Dinky aimed a stomp of her own at him. "So by making you the princess of that sort of soulless officiousness, we create a paradox of equal magnitude to the one that got us here! The universe'll take one look at the whole mess, blink and shrug and put everything back the way it was!"
"That's insane!" Ink Slinger shouted.
But Mom was hopping up and down beside Pumpkin. "Hooray!" Mom turned to Ink Slinger, and light burst from her horn like a diamond splashing into a pool of water.
The flickering silver droplets spun toward Ink Slinger, circled his forehead, and became a shimmering tiara. "No!" he yelled, and the whole world rumbled again.
This time, though, Dinky was ready; the instant she saw the sky begin swirling and cracking, she grabbed the others with her magic and leaped flapping for the center of the vortex. The way it was before, she thought with every ounce of her strength, not sure if the universe could hear her but not knowing what else to do. Put everything back the way it was before, and you'll never have to worry about another paradox ever again. I promise.
The pressure closed in around her even tighter than the last time, but Dinky kept flapping, kept thinking, kept pushing and pulling with her magic. It had to work. It had to!
For an hour or an instant, she strained against the force trying to crush her ribs, her spine, her skull, and just as she was about to cry out and let it crunch her into a thin filament of pony, everything seemed to belch. The tightness vanished, and Dinky found herself sprawling face first across some very familiar-looking carpeting.
"Whoo!" came a shout, and Dinky sat up in the lobby of the Princess Registry to see Pumpkin Cake hopping to her hooves beside her. "If a ride like that doesn't turn your frown upside-down, nothing will!"
Taking her first deep breath in what felt like weeks, Dinky blew it out just as the door to the office opened. A moment, and Twilight Sparkle's puzzled face peered in. "Is everything all right in here? I was passing by, and I"—her nostrils twitched—"I thought I smelled rotting apples for a minute."
Dinky opened her mouth to explain, but Mom interrupted her. "Everything's A-okay, Twilight!" A yellowish-gray pop, and Mom was standing in front of her. "I was just getting my honey her title!"
"Title?" Princess Twilight did some blinking. "Didn't we give those all out?" Her gaze moved to focus behind Dinky. "And why does Ink Slinger have wings and a tiara?"
With a gasp, Dinky spun and saw Ink Slinger standing on the other side of the counter, his wings definitely spread and his tiara definitely shining just above his horn. "I—" he started, then his eyes went wide; ducking down below the counter, he rose up again almost immediately with a huge smile. "I'm still a stallion!" he declared. "Which is impossible..." His smile began fading.
"Hey, now," Pumpkin called. "Don't make me come over there, mister!"
A purple flash brought the princess to the front of the counter opposite Ink Slinger. Her eyes narrowing, she thrust her snout close to his and seemed to be examining his tiara. His smile went all crooked and twitching, but, well, at least it wasn't a frown...
With a snort, Twilight turned her narrow-eyed look back over her shoulder. "Derpy? What did you do?"
"I told you," Mom said. "I gave my honey her title." She felt Mom's foreleg slide around her shoulders again. "Turns out I gave her the wrong one at first, though, but now we've got that all taken care of!"
"Wrong?" Dinky blinked at her Mom's grin.
"Yep!" Mom's horn sprang to life, and Dinky felt her tiara being straightened. "What you are, my sweetest little honey muffin, is the Princess of Paradox!"
The air seemed to swirl around Dinky again, but this time, it just tousled her mane like an old family friend. Something loosened in Dinky's chest, and she could tell that this was it. This was right. This was who she was.
"Yay!" Pumpkin yelled, and Dinky almost jumped backwards: she'd forgotten everypony else was there.
"Huh," Princess Twilight said. She nodded to Ink Slinger. "And what's he the princess of?"
"Ummm," Mom said.
But Dinky stepped forward. "That's, uhh, that was my paradox powers manifesting themselves, Princess. I—"
"Oh, now, please, Dinky." Princess Twilight smiled. "No need to be formal. We're all princesses here, after all. Apparently."
"Oh. Yeah." Dinky swallowed and didn't even try to think about what she was going to say next. "Ink Slinger's the, uhh, the Princess of Alicorns Who Aren't Princesses. 'Cause that's who all the little fillies are gonna be from now on, and that's not even counting all the stallions who really oughtta have a chance at it, too, y'know? But with Ink Slinger and my mom working together, I'm sure they can figure something out. Maybe even come up with some new titles! I mean, what could go wrong, right?"
In the room's silence, she half expected the building to start shaking again—and judging by Twilight and Ink Slinger's folding ears, she wasn't the only one. Instead, though, all she felt was the tiniest little shiver passing through her feathers, like the universe had sighed, rolled over, and gone gratefully back to sleep.
"Huh," Twilight said again, glancing around. "Well, if you can keep things together after saying something like that, I guess you really are the Princess of Paradox." She nodded and started for the door. "I can think of several things off the top of my head that you should take a look at, actually, Dinky. I'll have Spike send a scroll to your castle." Reaching with her hornglow for the doorknob, she looked back. "You have got a castle, haven't you?"
Now it was Dinky's turn to say, "Ummm..."
But Pumpkin jumped in. "She'll be staying with us at Pinkie's Bounce House." She gave a squeal that would've shattered glass if the office had had any windows. "I swear, this is the most fun I've had since I've been a princess!"
Twilight grinned. "You mean the past ten minutes?"
"I know!" Pumpkin started hopping again. "It seems like forever! Half an hour, even!"
"Well, all right." Twilight nodded, pulled the door open, and stepped out into the hallway. "Keep up the good work, Derpy: I knew you'd be perfect for this job."
"Thanks, Twilight!" Mom squinted and popped, reappearing on the office side of the counter. "C'mon, Mister Princess! We've got titles to think up!"
"Ummm." Ink Slinger's face fell, and he turned wide eyes to Dinky.
"Hey, now!" Pumpkin shook a hoof at him.
He sniffed. "This is merely a look of mild concern, thank you, which I believe falls outside your purview."
Dinky couldn't help laughing. "It'll be okay, Ink Slinger," she said. "I'll keep my ears open, and if anything starts rumbling, I'll be right here." Nudging Pumpkin, she gave a smile she was sure could never be turned upside-down. "Now, c'mon! My Paradox Powers're telling me that Pinkie's place is exactly where I need to be!"
