K'awka Supay

by Zaid ValRoa

Rating: everyone
Tags: Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Thriller, Comedy
Length: 10834

Twilight had seen recipes go wrong before, but this one takes the cake.

"Oh, no, no, no. That’s not why I’m here, Twilight. But I’m kind of in trouble, and you’re the only one who can help me."
Just as Twilight was about to reply, Pinkie Pie spoke once more. "Like, trouble trouble.”

Rukuy Qhepa - Retrospective

Many thanks to Fome, and the other gentlemen of the FiMFiction threads who helped whip this story into a far better shape.
Finalist for The Writeoff Association's February 2018 event: "No Turning Back".

Published 2018-10-31 19:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2018-10-31 19:00:02 UTC

Ninda Dimmea

Twilight Sparkle would later find it odd how being abruptly awakened at three in the morning had been the least objectionable part of that day.

She groaned and turned around; trying to hold onto the remnants of her restless sleep. She pulled the covers over her head; trying to ignore the hammering noise on her second-story window in the vague hope that it would eventually fade into background noise.

After the hammering noise turned into a rhythmic beat, though, she accepted that there was no avoiding it.

“Dash? Is that you?” she finally asked; dragging her words in a tired slur. With a huff, she kicked away the covers and jumped out of the bed.

All traces of sleep were chased away by the smiling face pressed against the window glass. “Pinkie?”

Twilight felt a rush of conflicting emotions swirling inside her chest. Still, she walked towards the window and opened it with her magic. Pinkie stepped backwards on the branch she stood on, giving Twilight an apologetic smile.

“It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?” Twilight muttered. After a second of silence, she whispered, “I told you we’d talk in the morning…”

This seemed to send Pinkie through a few distinct expressions of her own. Once she had recovered, though, she settled on a smile.

“Oh, no, no, no. That’s not why I’m here. Well, I mean… No, no. That’s not why I’m here, Twilight,” Pinkie said. She seemed to be doing her best to sound reassuring, but Twilight could feel an underlying awkwardness in her voice. “But I’m kind of in trouble, and you’re the only one who can help me.”

Just as Twilight was about to reply, Pinkie Pie spoke once more. “Like, trouble trouble.”

Despite Pinkie's occasional issues with boundaries, Twilight had to admit that her friend would never bang on a window in the middle of the night if she didn’t really need help. She certainly looked as though she needed help, and Celestia knew Twilight wasn’t one to turn her back on a friend in need… regardless of any unresolved matters she might have with said friend. But venturing on a trek well past the point when she should be asleep might not be not the best course of action, all things considered.

Then again, Twilight had already walked downstairs and was out of Golden Oaks before she finished that train of thought, so perhaps it was a moot point.

Be that as it might, though, she couldn’t quite shake the slight discomfort she felt as she walked with Pinkie down the empty streets of Ponyville. So she decided to focus on whatever was bothering her friend. Pinkie hadn’t said much since they’d left; after jumping from the branch, she’d just repeated her earlier complaint about there being trouble.

“So… tell me, Pinkie. What’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait until morning?”

Pinkie immediately perked up. Smiling her usual smile, she answered, “I wanted to bake something for you!”

A flurry of emotions stirred in Twilight’s chest. She slowed down, acutely aware that they were the only ones walking the empty streets. Pinkie Pie noticed, stopping a few strides away and turning around to face her.

“I thought you said that’s not why you came to see me,” Twilight whispered, but her words rang loud in the empty streets.

With uncharacteristic seriousness, Pinkie looked straight into Twilight’s eyes. For a moment, they both stood still in the cold air of the early morning. “I know, and it’s not about that. It’s just that, well…” Pinkie started moving again, hurrying onwards. “I think I messed up the recipe.”

Pinkie stopped at the intersection, looking around the corner. Eyeing her warily, Twilight walked up to her and followed her gaze.

Thick, red clouds surrounded Sugarcube Corner, while a vortex high above the building slowly sucked its roof, bending it slightly while spewing silent lightning in every direction.

Twilight blanched. Pinkie scrunched up her muzzle in annoyance.

Not a second had passed since the aura of her last warding spell had dissipated before Twilight cast the next one. She didn’t know how powerful the magic forces which had been unleashed were, but she wasn’t going to run any risk; she was going to cast everything that might possibly help.

“I’m sorry, Twilight. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Pinkie said, idly tracing the wooden floor of the room with her hoof.

Twilight was too busy mumbling the incantation of the next spell to form a reply.

“The book didn’t say any of this could happen,” Pinkie said. Suddenly, she turned pensive, and tapped her chin. “Well, there is one recipe that did, but that one required two chalices worth of blood, and I was not going to do that one. I may be a bit crazy from time to time, but that’s just unsanitary.”

Twilight stopped for a second after hearing that. She tried to sort through the myriad of questions coursing through her mind, but then a guttural groan coursed through the air. She once again focused on the task at hoof.

“Pinkie, I have to finish these spells, but as soon as I’m done, you need to tell me exactly how a portal to a dark dimension opened above Sugarcube Corner.”

Pinkie nodded furiously.

After sealing the entire ground floor with warding spells, engraving the walls with protective runes, and hanging a portrait of Celestia on the door for good measure, Twilight finally allowed herself a moment of rest. She slumped down on the floor, a tired groan escaping her lips. Closing her eyes, she tried to believe for a second that she was back at her library, and there were no unspeakable horrors waiting within the edges of reality. Before she could further entertain that thought, however, she heard the soft padding of hooves against the floor, and soon Pinkie was again standing next to her.

“I already said I’m sorry, but I just want to say it again so you know I mean it,” she said.

“Maybe going through an entire week before something threatens to destroy Ponyville was too much to ask,” Twilight deadpanned. While it hadn’t been her intention, that made Pinkie laugh, and she couldn’t help but feel a little better at that. As much better as one could feel while a dark dimension slowly sucked up the building you were in, anyway.

“I know… But I’m still sorry, Twi,” Pinkie said once her giggles had died down; and to her credit, she genuinely sounded apologetic.

Twilight stood up, and gave her friend a reassuring smile. “Start at the beginning and tell me what happened, Pinkie.”

“Okay!” Pinkie said, sitting down next to Twilight. “After… Well, after yesterday, I wanted to bake you a cake, but I knew it couldn’t be any ordinary cake. It couldn’t even be a super special cake. It had to be a super-duper, mega, extra special, one-of-a-kind cake. And my recipe books only go up to super extra special, so I knew I had to find a different recipe. I thought about checking some books at the library, but that would have ruined the surprise, and, uh, you said you needed some time alone.”

Though memories of the previous night rushed to the forefront of Twilight’s mind, she pushed them aside for the moment as she waited for Pinkie to keep going.

“Anyway… I wondered where else I could get great baking books, and I remembered how much you like to talk about the library back in Canterlot, and how your eyes get all sparkly when you talk about all the things you’ve read there, and you get this cute goofy smile when you do”—Twilight blushed heavily at her words, though Pinkie didn’t seem to notice—”and I also thought I saw a big cooking and baking section back when we snuck into the castle while wearing those nice tight suits.”

“Wait, you snuck into Canterlot Castle to get a recipe book!?” Twilight exclaimed, her momentary embarrassment already forgotten.

“What? No, of course not, Twilight.”

“Oh, thank Celestia. Then what—”

“I snuck into the old Castle; the one in the Everfree. I figured it probably had a big library too. And let me tell you, there were a lot of books in there.”

Twilight had registered Pinkie’s words. She understood what they meant and realised what had probably happened. Her body still needed some time to catch up to her mind, thought, seeing how she barely noticed Pinkie’s hoof poking her sides.

“Anyway,” Pinkie continued, as though she didn’t noticed the way Twilight’s facial muscles were twitching. “There were a lot of fun recipes in the book I found, so I made a few of them to see if I could get them right. Finally I settled on one I thought was perfect, although by the time I put it in the oven, the batter was doing all these weird swirly motions that I’d never seen batter do before. Oh, and once the cake was done I heard what sounded like singing coming from the oven, though it was a bit hard to follow the tune when it was all just throaty sounds. But after a while, things started to get too weird, even for me. I thought I should probably go ask you for help, since you always know what to do when magic goes wrong.”

Twilight’s facial spasms had reached her lips, and now her mouth was contorting into a series of somewhat painful shapes before finally settling on a wide grin. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure her eyes were frozen in horror, so the end result must have been more than a bit disconcerting to anypony watching her.

“Are you all right, Twilight?”

“Ask me again once this is all over,” she said as her features started to relax.

The vortex outside, the red clouds, Pinkie’s testimony, and the general sense of evil she got somewhere deep in her chest the longer she was there… it all pointed towards dark magic, with that cake at its centre.

While Twilight had read of certain forbidden concoctions which could create a gateway to evil dimensions, she didn’t know of anything capable of causing something quite like this. But potions were an intricate subject where, depending of the degree of complexity, you had to be careful about the specific amounts of ingredients down to the gram, lest the whole process backfire. And that didn’t even go into the many details regarding the preparation; ranging from specific mixing patterns to even the hoof you used to stir the concoctions. The complexity of some high-level potions and rituals just asked for something to go awry. Perhaps the right recipe could cause a similar result if you made a mistake.

“Get me the book you used, Pinkie. Maybe it says what to do if things go south.”

“Roger!” Pinkie shot her a small smile before bolting for the kitchen. The way she still managed to give her an earnest smile even in the midst of all of this chaos was simply… fascinating.

Twilight felt the room get a little colder as Pinkie left. While it would’ve been easy to blame the dimensional vortex of impending doom and whichever nightmarish beings could be creeping out of it and trying to sneak their way into Sugarcube Corner, she knew the real reason.

Letting out a weary sigh, Twilight scanned the warding spells to make sure they were holding up. With no immediate danger or threat to occupy her mind, there was little she could do to keep herself from thinking about the events of the previous day. They drifted through her mind like the aroma of a cake just out of the oven. And just like a cake, they were too much to go through at once.

The picnic. The furtive glances Pinkie had shared with the rest of the girls. How they’d left them alone all of a sudden. How Pinkie had become so serious… Twilight felt her cheeks burning as she thought back to Pinkie’s words; to how the orange light of the sunset had made her blue eyes shine; to how bashful she’d seemed, in contrast to her usual bouncing exuberance, when she’d said—

“Here it is!” Pinkie exclaimed as she returned to the room, a thick tome balanced on top of her mane.

“Gah!”

“Oh, are the snaky thingies coming through the walls again?” Pinkie looked around the room. “I got them out by sprinkling them with salt water the last time.”

Twilight’s previous thoughts were quickly washed away by the implication of creatures from another plane of existence invading Equestria, leaving her feeling something between dread and panic. She ought to hurry.

“No,” she tried to answer calmly, “you just surprised me; that’s all… Is that the book?”

“Yuppers! Here you go, Twi.” Pinkie held the book out, and despite her magic being perfectly functional, Twilight found herself extending her own hooves towards it.

The gentle brush of her hoof against Pinkie’s sent conflicting emotions running through her mind, which were becoming harder to ignore the longer she spent near the pink, pony-shaped bundle of energy. For her part, Pinkie just smiled; but Twilight could see her look away as soon as she let go of the book.

“Thanks, Pinkie. Just tell me which recipe… Wait, hold on. Is this leather?”

Pinkie scooted over to Twilight’s side and leaned forwards until her nose was almost touching the book.

“Huh. I guess that explains why it was so resistant to water.”

“That’s not the issue, Pinkie. The only way to get—No, you know what? Doesn’t matter. Priorities. Which is the recipe you used?”

Unfortunately, before Pinkie could reply, the windows started twisting counter-clockwise on themselves.

“Shoot! I gotta get more salt,” Pinkie said, with traces of annoyance in her voice. She spared Twilight a brief glance before running out of the room again, yelling, “Check on page two hundred sixteen!”

Twilight stood still for a second, reluctant to leave Pinkie on her own; but finally sat down and opened the book. It’d be for the best to let Pinkie deal with the small stuff while she looked for a way to counter the effects of the recipe. She didn't like leaving Pinkie on her own, but dealing with the dark manifestations as they came was starting to feel like using her bare hooves to try to stop a leaking pipe. If they were going to actually get out of this mess, she needed to focus on the big picture.

Using her magic, Twilight opened the book and rushed to the page Pinkie mentioned. Part of her wanted to ask Pinkie when she had learned ancient Suneighrian, but there’d be time for that later. Hopefully. Right now she focused on translating the recipe.

“Kanu… Arammu… Sibutum? That means… Ah!”

Though her knowledge of ancient languages was a bit rusty, these words were common enough for her to recognise; and as their meaning sunk in, Twilight couldn’t help but throw a furtive glance at Pinkie Pie, who was busy throwing hooffuls of salt at the windows until they returned to normal.

“Testimony of true love,” Twilight whispered.

“You said something, Twi?” Pinkie said as she picked up the salt, looking out for more disturbances in reality.

“N-no, don’t mind me. I’m just, uh… I’m just going to keep reading.” After that, Twilight buried herself in the mechanical task of translating the recipe from its ancient form into modern Equestrian; trying not to dwell on the odd feelings stirring in her chest.

This was considerably easier said than done.

Twilight wondered whether Pinkie was going through the same emotional turmoil as her, and was simply better at hiding it. An odd thought to entertain when talking about somepony as expressive as Pinkie Pie, for sure; but she had surprised her before.

She never would have expected her to represent one of the Elements of Harmony, saving Equestria and Princess Luna from Nightmare Moon. She would never have suspected how somepony seeming so silly could succeed at sensing shifts in her surroundings. She wouldn’t have imagined that such a carefree party lover could be so responsible when she needed to be.

But Pinkie was all these things and more. She was a kind, selfless mare; willing to give up just about anything to make a friend happy. Pinkie Pie was always full of pleasant surprises, and discovering something new about her friend was always a joy; even if she didn’t always understand her.

Yes. Perhaps she’d been hasty before… Perhaps she should just crack her skull open and see how that brain of hers worked. Yes. Machines couldn’t give her accurate readings, but nothing beat actual observation. Yes. Yes.

Twilight shook her head, reeling back from the thought. Where had such a horrible thought come from? It was then that she remembered that Sugarcube Corner was under siege by abhorrent forces from beyond reality; if they were already seeping through her barriers and into her mind, then she had to hurry. Pushing through the revulsion the thought had caused her, Twilight performed a quick magic scan of her brain.

Nothing jumped at her right away, but she kept searching, focusing on anything which could have caused her to think of… Of doing something like that. Finally, she found traces of faint dark magic weaving their way past her barriers and into her mind. Her warding spells should have sealed the entire building and protected them from any malicious influence, which meant that they must have already found a way to sneak inside. Wasting no time, she purged all vestiges of dark magic from her, trying not to grimace at to the horrible thought which had just crossed her mind.

“Pinkie, come here for a second,” she said. Pinkie obeyed and stepped in front of her. “Stay still. I want to make sure the magic isn’t affecting you.”

“Okie dokie, Twilight,” Pinkie said before closing her eyes.

Twilight hesitated for just a second before she cast the spell on Pinkie. The pink pony looked so serene with her eyes closed and a content expression on her face, as if the surrounding madness mattered little to her. Looking at her, Twilight felt even worse for thinking about harming her, even if it was due to the influence of unmentionable evil forces.

“You’re okay, Pinkie,” Twilight said once she was done with the magic scan, to which Pinkie replied with another smile.

As she cast additional protective spells on her, she wondered how her wards could be slipping so soon. She didn’t expect them to keep… whatever this was out forever—just long enough for her to figure out a way to get everything back to normal—but she could sense that they were still holding. What could she have overlooked?

One glance around the room showed just what she’d missed. At the far end of the room stood a plain and unassuming door leading to the basement.

Having seen the vortex outside, she’d warded off the building from it and anything that could come out of it, but in her hurry she had only set up spells covering the visible portion of the building. If something had managed to go underneath her wards, through the ground, and into the basement… The thought alone was enough to send shivers down Twilight’s spine.

“Pinkie… Did you happen to check the basement before coming to see me?” she asked.

Rather than answering, Pinkie pronked to the door leading to the basement; opening it wide…

A wall of writhing flesh, with a dozen eye-like orbs swimming through its folds, began to pour out of the doorway, wailing like a dying animal. Its cries were cut short by Pinkie slamming the door on it, after which she pronked back to where Twilight was standing.

“I did now,” she said as the door started thumping.

“I was afraid of this.” Twilight bit her lip in thought. “For the time being, try to barricade the door. I’ll keep reading through the recipe.”

“Okie dokie, Twilight,” Pinkie said, giving a mock salute. “By the way, don’t bother with the ingredients. There was nothing out of the ordinary with them. The preparation was the real doozy!”

Once more, Twilight pored over the recipe. Pinkie was right. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the ingredients used—save for an alarming amount of butter—which meant that the key had to lay in the preparation. As Twilight turned the page and saw the peculiar five-pointed pattern one had to follow while stirring the batter, she suspected that she was on the right track.

The translation here was tricky. Ancient languages with no practical application in real life were as fascinating as any other subject, but the Suneighrian texts which survived to this day were very few, which in turn limited Twilight’s ability to get a proper sense of the specifics of the recipe. Nevertheless, she pushed forwards, hoping that her two semesters of dead languages and literary analysis would aid her.

Lulled by the steady hammering of Pinkie nailing the basement door shut, Twilight read through the instructions detailed on the page. This wasn’t a simple recipe, even ignoring its apparent demon-summoning effect. A normal recipe would state in simple terms the process of making a dish. Here, every step was written with seemingly needless amounts of detail; and in a strangely poetic fashion. Not to mention all the little flourishes the recipe had, each symbolising some sort of blessing that something called “Inanna” would impart upon the couple.

“And thus, the leftmost… heart?” Her eyes lingered on the unfamiliar phrase. Going word-by-word didn’t seem to be giving her a comprehensible translation, so perhaps she needed to try and translate the phrases as a whole. “Let’s see… Must stir? Stir the cooking, uh, epru. That’s dust, I believe. Cooking dust… That must mean baking powder. It must stir the baking powder, the flour, and the salt with the… emuqa… Oh! Force! Stirring with the force your love stirs in your chest.”

The meaning clicked. The sentence as a whole was a direct instruction to mix ingredients. Therefore, the initial word had to be related to the way in which you had to mix them. Taking into account how certain potion making methods instructed you to use a particular hoof for some steps, this seemed to be a similar case.

“All right! The leftmost hoof must stir the baking powder, the flour, and the salt with the force your love stirs in your chest,” Twilight read with a sense of accomplishment. She could do this. “Meanwhile, the rightmost hoof must ready the cream, followed by the butter, and then a… uh... well, most recipes ask for a just a cap or two of vanilla, so I can’t imagine this one’s asking for more than that. Mixing them with the left’s… brew, much like you wish Inanna would bring you together as one.”

A bit dramatic, but it made its point. Left hoof stirs the dry ingredients; right hoof mixes the wet ingredients. If only that were the end of the complexity.

So far, the True Love Testimony lived up to its name. No step could be done mechanically. The baker had to think about the pony for whom they were making the cake. As in potion making, the intentions of the one doing the baking seemed to be critical to obtaining the desired outcome.

And to think that Pinkie had seen the recipe and decided that she could do all it asked of her… that spoke volumes of how she felt, even if the results left something to be desired. Twilight could hardly blame her for the latter; the book didn’t seem to mention anything about creating rifts in the fabric of reality.

Twilight looked up at Pinkie—who had removed the kitchen’s swinging doors and was busy nailing them to the now violently rattling basement door—and memories of the previous day rushed to her mind once more.

Twilight sat on the checker-patterned blanket. Though the sun was yet to set, the rest of the girls had all bid her and Pinkie farewell. All at the same time. All citing increasingly odd reasons. She could buy AJ having last-minute chores to do at the farm before snow season started, but she knew that most of Fluttershy’s animals had just gone into hibernation, and that Rarity had just finished a large order of dresses only a few days ago. Rainbow Dash hadn’t even tried to come up with an excuse; she’d just wished them good luck and flown off.

“So,” Twilight said. “What’s going on, Pinkie?”

Pinkie was sipping a glass of punch through an impractically large straw; perhaps to buy herself more time before having to reply.

“Oh, nothing, really. I just… heh-heh…” Pinkie smiled nervously, looking everywhere except at Twilight. Once their gazes finally met, though, some of the tension seemed to leave her face. “We haven’t had the chance to talk lately.”

“Well, I’m all ears.” Twilight smiled back at her; and as she did, Pinkie’s eyes seemed to shine brighter than they had all evening.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Pinkie said; her eyes darting back and forth again, as though she wanted to look elsewhere. After a second of silence, she cleared her throat and once more looked straight into Twilight’s eyes. “I wanted to talk with you about something.”

Her seriousness concerned Twilight. Not only was this behaviour completely different from what she’d come to expect of her, but the way she kept pawing at the ground made her think that it had to be something important. Hoping to ease her friend’s anxiety, she gave an reassuring nod, “Go on, Pinkie.”

Pinkie continued staring at Twilight, a small smile starting to emerge. “You’re always so encouraging, Twi. That’s really nice of you.”

“It’s nothing, Pinkie. Really. I just try to be a good friend.”

“No, it is something. Trying to be a good friend is something huge. And really, Twi, you’re a great friend.”

Pinkie’s next words seem to die in her throat. Her lips were still parted, and stayed that way for a few seconds, but finally she bit her lip and looked away.

It was disconcerting to see the normally spry and hyperactive pony acting so shy. Twilight reached out and took her friend’s hoof, giving it a light squeeze in what she hoped was a supportive manner. This seemed to do the trick, judging by the renewed spirit with which Pinkie started speaking again.

“It’s not been that long since you came to Ponyville, but you’re already one of my best friends. We’ve been through so much together, and, well, maybe it’s silly of me to assume, but I am very silly sometimes, so I guess it’s okay... I don’t know. I mean, I do know; it’s just that it’s kinda frightening, but not in the scream and cry kind of frightening, though it does feel like that sometimes, but it’s more of the very-very-nervous kind of frightening, because I feel like I’m about to go bungee jumping and I don’t know if I have the stretchy rope attached, and I can’t know if I do until I check, but—” Pinkie bit her own lips to stop the barrage of words from pouring out.

Twilight was about to say something, but before she could even open her mouth, Pinkie spoke. “Sorry, what I mean to say is… Twilight…”

“Do you need me to do something else?” Pinkie asked, once again bringing Twilight’s mind into the present.

“I… uh, sorry, Pinkie. I was, uh… I was lost in thought for a second,” she replied.

“It’s okay. You’re good at thinking, and right now, thinking is what we need!” Pinkie exclaimed, hopping in place for emphasis.

Twilight looked down, trying to hide the smile the compliment had elicited. Realising the meaning behind the recipe had finally released the maelstrom of conflicting emotions buried deep in her chest since the previous evening. She once again had to marvel at Pinkie’s resolve. After they had… parted ways, Twilight had been worried about how the baker would handle herself; but to know that not only had she not felt down, she’d still had the courage to try to show her feelings in such an earnest way… Demonic rifts aside, it was genuinely heartwarming.

Still, there was that reticence in the back of her mind; the same reticence which had stopped her from giving a proper answer, and had been eating her up ever since.

Wait… Eating.

“Pinkie, you finished baking the cake, right?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, I did. I was about to take it out of the oven, but then the air started to vibrate.” Before Twilight could process this, she added, “Don’t worry. It stopped once the insect-like legs came down from the ceiling.”

“Wait, insect-like? Did they look like insect legs, or did the legs themselves—No, forget about that. If you finished the cake, then all that should be left is for me to eat it, right?”

Pinkie’s eyes widened, and her lips slightly parted, in a perfect picture of expectation. Before she could say anything, though, Twilight cut her off.

“If I’m reading this correctly, everything should go back to normal once the cake is gone,” she continued, her eyes on the closing paragraphs of the recipe.

Twilight looked up again just in time to see Pinkie begin to lose her energy, much like a deflating balloon. Pinkie was looking down, her ears were drooped, and her lips formed a thin line. This did little to alleviate the knot of emotions twisting in Twilight’s chest.

Knowing that she couldn’t let their mess of unresolved feelings hang in the background anymore, Twilight closed the book, set it aside, and gently laid a hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder. “There’s a lot we have to talk about, Pinkie. You deserve an answer, and I will give you one. But right now, we have to make sure Ponyville doesn’t get sucked into the void.” Twilight ventured a smile. “Let’s go eat that cake.”

As though Twilight's words had flipped a switch in her, Pinkie brightened again. “Okay, Twilight,” she said, smiling and nodding as a light blush spread across her face. She turned towards the kitchen and walked away, leaving Twilight standing alone.

The truth was, Twilight had spoken with far more confidence than she actually had. Realising the extent of Pinkie’s feelings for her had been flattering, to say the least… but it had also dredged up a heap of insecurities. Even if the results had not quite been what she had expected, Pinkie had chosen that recipe because she’d felt that it conveyed her emotions, and the recipe went into great detail to invoke the feelings of the pony making it.

Twilight wondered, had the roles been reversed, whether she would have been able to do the same for Pinkie.

Twilight knew that she had her shortcomings, just like any other pony. She had a one-track mind, inattentive to most things while being obsessive with others. She was always one crisis away from having a nervous breakdown. Honestly, she didn’t think she could be a good partner.

Pinkie had seen all of this, though, and had even experienced some of her worst moments right alongside her. She still chose to focus on her good side; on her qualities as a friend.

Pinkie had still fallen in love with her.

“Huh, that’s new,” Pinkie said, stopping abruptly; and even if this wasn’t enough to bring Twilight out of her reverie, the unnatural green glow coming from the oven certainly was. The guttural chanting resonating in the room was of little help either.

The small portion of Twilight’s mind which wasn’t frozen in shock wondered exactly why the glow struck her as unnatural. Light worked the same way all across the observable universe. Then again, photons weren’t supposed to have mass, and the way the light creeped around the kitchen floor sure seemed to indicate mass. It slowly expanded over the floor, stopping altogether when it hit an obstacle, only to pour around it and crawl even slower before speeding up once more. Its movement made Twilight think of a very thick fog rolling out of the oven. Only completely transparent. And it lit up everything it touched while leaving everything else dark. It was around that point that thinking started to hurt, so she decided to leave any questions for another time.

She had a cake to eat.

“Do you think you can take the cake out, Pinkie?” Twilight asked, raising her voice over the chanting. She could probably have been heard regardless, but she really wanted to drown out the sinister voice.

The baker already had an oven muzzle on.

“Good!” Twilight said. “I’ll keep you safe from anything that tries to get near you.”

Nodding in acknowledgement, Pinkie turned and started crawling her way to the oven. Twilight cast one protective spell after another, scanning their surroundings for any malevolent forces. So far, they’d had no trouble; but they weren’t going to let their guard down either way.

Once Pinkie had made it to the oven, she looked back at Twilight, and gave her a reassuring glance. Finally, she turned around once more and opened the oven door.

All Tartarus broke loose.

As the oven door opened, a force seemed to explode outward, pushing them away. As the chanting morphed into a long, sustained groan, a gale-force wind seemed to come from deep within the appliance; sending all the various utensils in the kitchen flying away, yet somehow straight towards Twilight. She barely had time to put up a shield.

Several alarms were ringing in Twilight’s mind; most of them related to Pinkie’s safety. Though the green light hurt her eyes, she squinted desperately into it; trying to make out the condition of her possibly-more-than-just-a-friend.

As it happened, though, her ears were the first to inform her of the baker’s state.

“Wheeeeeeeeee!”

“Pinkie!”

Pinkie Pie was holding on to the door’s handle; the wind coming from the oven whipping her around like a flag on a cart.

Twilight quickly formed a plan. “Hold on, Pinkie! I’m going to bring you here!”

“Wait!” Pinkie shouted back. “I still have to get the cake back!”

Twilight’s eyes darted back and forth. Every second that passed was another chance for Pinkie to get hurt, or worse. She had to think quickly. “Hold on! I’m going to try pushing you with my magic!”

Looking back, Pinkie nodded, a surge of determination flashing through her eyes. Adjusting her grip on the handle, she turned back towards the oven.

After a short moment where the only sound was the howling of the winds coming from deep within the oven, Twilight enveloped Pinkie with a telekinetic field and slowly pushed forwards. At the same time, Pinkie pulled herself with all her earth pony might. The maelstrom of dark energies was a worthy adversary, but they were a pair of stubborn ponies when they needed to be.

Twilight could barely distinguish Pinkie’s shape against the light coming from the oven, and as the light grew more and more intense, she was forced to close her eyes, and finally look away. But she didn’t stop pushing Pinkie forwards; further and further into the oven.

For quite some time, Twilight would rack her brain for a way to explain what happened at that moment. But since replicating the scenario was off the table, she might never know for sure.

During an instant which stretched for far longer than it should have, the dark magic in their immediate vicinity stood still. The groaning and the winds stopped. Twilight cautiously stopped pushing, though she kept her hold on Pinkie.

Then, a pulse of energy came out of the green light, and two things paradoxically happened at the same time. The dark energies imploded and rushed towards the oven, and Pinkie and Twilight were blasted away.

Twilight lost her concentration for a second, releasing her telekinetic grip on Pinkie—just in time for them both to crash into the wall behind them.

For a second, neither moved; expecting that at any moment something new would jump at them. Finally, they exchanged a look, and each let out a long, exhausted sigh. Twilight stood up and started flexing her front and back legs, making sure that every part of her body and mind was where it was supposed to be. Pinkie, though, seemed to be holding something against her barrel.

“Is… Is that…?” Twilight asked.

“Yuppers,” Pinkie confirmed, her smile bright in spite of her exhaustion. Climbing to her hooves, she held out a small but perfectly baked cake.

“Huh,” managed Twilight, still dazed. “So you got it out in the end. That would explain why everything’s settled down… I guess.”

Putting aside questions of the exact workings of ancient Suneighriean rituals, Twilight focused on Pinkie’s cake. While it was only slightly larger than a normal cupcake, it was probably one of the most beautiful cakes Twilight had ever seen.

“When did you have time to decorate it?”

“The book said Inanna would take care of the details as long as I had a clear picture in my mind.”

Trying not to dwell on what this implied about the level of intelligence possessed by the forces that they'd been dealing with, Twilight focused on the cake itself. Though a bit squashed on one side in spite of Pinkie’s protection, the cake’s frosting showed a beautiful dark blue gradient reminiscent of the night sky. Subtle shades of intertwined dark purple and violet across the surface evoked a nebula floating amidst the darkness of space. But what made Twilight’s heart beat faster was a stray hint of pink shade on the edge of the nebula that made the whole design look remarkably similar to her own mane.

“Well, we have a dark dimension to seal,” she said through her light embarrassment, and floated the cake to her mouth.

As she took the first bite, Twilight wondered whether some of the dark magic hadn’t made it into the cake itself. After all, it seemed impossible for an ordinary cake to taste this good. She then realised that this was not only a reasonable question, but an alarming one. However, the cake tasted really good.

It was rather hard to put into words how good it was. It felt dense as she bit down, but it wasn’t long before it melted into pure flavour. The layers of filling had a faint fruity taste she couldn’t quite identify, even as it coated her tongue. The cake's outer coating—chocolate, amongst other things she didn’t recognise—seemed to vanish as soon as it entered her mouth, travelling up her skull and caressing her brain with pure satisfaction.

“This is…” Twilight mumbled between bites of the cake, “…wow.”

Pinkie bit her lip as a rosy tone spread over her cheeks. Though the cake had left Twilight already feeling satisfied, the sight of Pinkie Pie‘s contentedness was adorable, and it brought an even greater warmth to Twilight’s barrel.

“What now?” Pinkie finally asked.

Twilight savoured the last bit of cake before looking around. Everything seemed back to normal, at least at first glance. No inanimate object moved on its own. There were no more unexplained phenomena around the building, nor was there any sign of creatures that shouldn’t exist prancing around.

“Now… Well, now we should make sure that it worked. I wouldn’t want to have to explain to the Cakes why there’s a three-faced squid hidden somewhere in the pantry.”

Pinkie gave a small smile at that, and Twilight smiled back; but finally they stood up and started looking around the kitchen.

They checked every drawer and cabinet to make sure that everything was in order. As Twilight worked, she picked up the scattered kitchenware and set it on the counter. They’d have to make sure that it was clean before they left. Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie checked the oven, making sure that it was indeed eldritch-being-free, and then moved on to the food elevator.

For the first time since waking up, Twilight allowed herself to feel optimistic; realising that everything might finally be all right now. Satisfied with the state of the kitchen, she turned towards Pinkie…

Just in time to see a fleshy tentacle pull her into the elevator.

“No!” Twilight screamed; and before she had time to think about what she was doing, she had galloped across the room and jumped down the elevator shaft after her.

Instead of landing in the basement as she expected, she found herself falling through murky darkness. She could just barely make out Pinkie’s legs and fluffy pink tail, but they were getting further and further away; disappearing into the dark. In an act of desperation, she teleported herself forwards and managed to grab Pinkie by the waist; pinning the tentacle between them, much to her disgust.

“Pinkie, get ready!” she yelled, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’m going to teleport us back!” She thought she may have heard Pinkie reply, but by now she knew better than to trust her senses.

She had just started gathering magic for the spell when she noticed that the tentacle wasn’t pulling anymore. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she opened her eyes…

“Aaaaaaie!”

Only to close them immediately afterwards. Even that briefest of instants managed to send waves of unrelenting horror coursing through her mind. In that moment, she had witnessed the very fabric of reality bending around her; showing sights she was afraid to think about. Even with her eyes closed, she could still see them beckoning her, taunting her; weaving their way into her psyche and threatening to push her off the verge of insanity. She tried with all her might to ignore those dark thoughts, burying her face in Pinkie’s coat—and in doing so remembered the friend she was trying to save.

“Pinkie!” she cried out. “Don’t look!” Rather than listening for a reply, she immediately focused on casting a teleportation spell. After something which could not quite be described as a flash, the two ponies landed back on the kitchen floor, and Twilight promptly cast a dozen different cleansing spells on both Pinkie and herself.

“Wow!” Pinkie exclaimed in wonder, oblivious to Twilight’s alarm. “It was like a kaleidoscope, but all three-dimensional and without the straight lines!

“No! No, no, no, no, no! No! No!” Twilight yelled; holding on to her rationality for dear life as she kept casting more and more spells.

“What? I think I could see ourselves up ahead. But we were longer, and we didn’t have tails. What was up with that?”

“No, no, no, no!”

“It’s odd, though. Everything didn’t disappear once you ate the cake…” Pinkie rubbed her chin as she sat on her haunches. “But the recipe said everything would turn out right as long as both hooves worked together in harmony. Is it because I’m not ambidextrous?”

“Dear Celestia, my thoughts still hurt… Wait, hold on. What did you say?” Twilight turned to face Pinkie, whose words had finally pulled her back to the present.

“At the very end of the recipe, it said if it was done correctly, then Inanna would bless the couple with happiness and—”

“No,” Twilight interrupted, shaking her head and turning to face Pinkie, “the part about both hooves working together in harmony.”

“Oh! Yeah, the recipe said both hooves had to work together in harmony for everything to turn out right in the end. I think the exact wording was…”

Twilight didn’t stay to hear the end of that sentence. She immediately ran out of the kitchen, called forth the blasted book of bad bakes, and flipped it open to the section on the Testimony of True Love.

She cursed herself for not double-checking her translation. Trying to use context to guess what the instructions said had led her to believe that the recipe required one to use their left and right hooves in particular ways, just as potion-making rituals often did. Pinkie had apparently thought the same. But they had overlooked something obvious.

The recipe evoked the feelings of true love. True love wasn’t one-sided. True love was the connection between two ponies… which meant that the cake couldn’t be made by just one pony. She had been right when initially translating it as hearts. Left and right hearts wasn’t a poetic way of referring to left and right hooves; it meant—

“Pinkie, get your ingredients out!” Twilight yelled as she ran back into the kitchen. “We’re doing some baking!”

Pinkie Pie stood expressionless for a second, but then snapped back to reality. “Sorry,” she said as she ran towards the cabinets. “It’s just that I’ve imagined you saying that so many times, I wondered if I was dreaming.”

Twilight tried to ignore the blush spreading through her face; instead focusing on bringing out the pots, bowls and utensils from where she had left them. Meanwhile, Pinkie took out the ingredients they would need. They laid everything out on the kitchen counter, alongside the book.

“What’s the new plan, Twilight?”

“We do it again, only right this time.” Twilight looked through the cabinets for a whisk. “I’ll explain the details later, but both of us have to work on the recipe at the same time for it to turn out like the book promises.” She hesitated for a second as she reflected on what that promise entailed. However, given the present stakes, her doubts felt much smaller.

“Oh, so we’re going to act as the hooves?” Pinkie asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Twilight was briefly thrown off balance by Pinkie's quick understanding, but quickly recovered; nodding as she set the last of the utensils on the table. “Exactly. So, to start, we have to decide who’s going to be right and who’s going to be left.”

“Well, I hope you’re right about this, so I’ll be left,” Pinkie grinned; taking her position on Twilight’s left.

Despite herself, Twilight found herself grinning in turn. “All right,” she agreed, intending no pun. “Let’s get started.”

Just as Twilight said this, though, the room gave a violent shake. The two ponies barely managed to share a nervous look before they fell in different directions.

Staggering to her hooves, Twilight gathered her bearings and found herself standing on the wall. One look around, and she found that Pinkie had her head stuck in the paper lamp on the ceiling.

“Pinkie, are you all right?”

“Huh? Wait, I thought you were going to be right.”

Either that had been a joke, and she was trying to play off what just happened, or Pinkie was still a bit stunned. Was it Twilight's imagination, or was Pinkie slurring her words? Nevertheless, Pinkie was conscious and apparently unhurt, and Twilight was grateful for that.

“Pinkie, we have to bake a new cake if we’re going to stop this. I’m going to pass you the ingredients, and you get to work.”

“Wait, are we still going to be left and right even if we’re not next to one another?”

“Let’s just hope Inanna gives out points for good intentions!” Twilight threw Pinkie a bag of flour, a bag of baking powder, and a salt shaker. After watching each item to ensure that whatever, if any, laws of motion were currently in effect carried it to her, she took a bowl and started magically heating the cream and butter, thinking about how love melted away all insecurities and hoping she hadn’t mistranslated that line. Hurriedly, they continued to work, Pinkie focused on her bowl while Twilight kept an eye out for any danger.

Suddenly, Pinkie stopped stirring and looked into the distance. Before Twilight could ask what was wrong, the baker’s tail gave a twitch.

“Twilight, look out!”

Twilight immediately looked around in alarm.

“No! To your right!”

She looked to her side just in time to feel a rolling pin miss her head for a hair’s breadth.

“Wait, no. That was my right, so that means it was your other—”

“Never mind. My batter is ready for your mix.” Seeing a flash of mischief in Pinkie’s eyes, she added, “Save the jokes for later!”

Pinkie replied with a rather adorable pouting frown. Undeterred from their shared task, though, she threw her bowl to Twilight; who quickly combined the contents while wishing with all of her heart—just as the recipe instructed—for her and Pinkie’s lives to mix and become one.

In the meantime, Pinkie Pie got to work on separating the whites and yolks of the eggs. As soon as she’d finished, Twilight teleported her bowl and a bag of sugar towards Pinkie while she took the whites and started beating them.

They diligently kept up their work while thinking about each other in whichever odd-yet-loving way the recipe asked, and a small part of Twilight’s mind noted that if it weren’t for the increasingly violent shaking of the building and its portent of impending doom, this might actually be a bit romantic.

She sprinkled the flour over the beaten whites while thinking about how the peaks of the meringue represented the highs and lows their relationships would go through, which was why she almost missed the return of the insect-like legs coming out of the ceiling.

At least now she now knew what Pinkie had meant by “insect-like”.

“Waaaaah!” Pinkie put a stop to that train of thought, crying out as the legs crept in her direction. She held her bowl close to her chest, pulling it away from their reach. Sensing the motion, though, the insect-like legs surrounding Pinkie Pie lunged forwards, narrowly missing her head and hitting the bowl of melted chocolate instead.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Twilight yelled as she carefully aimed a series of magic blasts at the spindly limbs, making them split and contort in ways her mind decided not to process. “Pinkie, we have to do the next step together. Jump and I’ll catch you!”

“But we just lost the chocolate!”

Twilight hesitated for a moment, her mind running at top speed. Things were getting worse by the minute, and they had to act fast if they had any hope of finishing the cake.

While the recipe asked for the cake to be covered by a chocolate layer, it did so in a very minor way, going into greater detail about the way one had to think about how Inanna would cover the couple with her blessings. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind if they replaced the chocolate with something else as long as they kept to the spirit of the recipe. It was a stretch, but they were running low on options, and they had to finish the cake if they had any hope of making it up to Inanna.

It wasn’t as though they had much choice.

“Just jump, Pinkie!” she yelled. “We’ll figure something out!”

Pinkie looked at Twilight with the utmost determination in her eyes. Holding the bowl in one elbow, she jumped off the ceiling just as Twilight jumped off the wall. They managed to grab hold of one another near the middle of the room, and their different axes of gravity caused them to start spinning, neither falling to the floor nor the wall.

“Whoa!” Pinkie exclaimed.

“Don’t let go. We still have a few steps left before we can bake it.”

Nodding, Pinkie held out her bowl for Twilight to take the thankfully unspilled contents in her magic, while the latter thought about the way they would complement each other in the coming years. This came easy to Twilight, and it wasn’t just because she was holding Pinkie so close to her.

As Pinkie poured the last of her butter mixture into her whipped eggs, Twilight looked at the serious expression on the baker’s face. The book said to focus on how they would complement each other as a couple while they combined their mixtures, and Twilight didn't find it hard. Way back when they had first met, Twilight had thought Pinkie was just an aimless mound of pony shaped energy. However, as time went on and they became closer, she realised there was much more to her.

Pinkie was silly at times, yes, but she was also very clever and intuitive: be it an impromptu mystery, or planning for a dozen different possible outcomes, Twilight knew she’d find a brilliant mind with whom to share her thoughts. And while it was true that Pinkie was too much at times, she still wanted to experience all that energy and, perhaps, have some of that energy too.

Maybe… Maybe she had been thinking too much about this.

Once Pinkie was done with her bowl, she threw it away; inadvertently hitting one of the eye-like orbs of the creature of writhing flesh from the basement, which was now leaking into the kitchen through the pipes. Doing her best to focus on the task at hoof, Twilight started folding the batter gently into itself until it was completely even.

“Great!” Twilight said, with more joy than she had felt since they started baking. “Now we just have to find something to replace the—”

Her words were cut short by the fleshy tentacle from the elevator, which shot once again out of the shaft and crashed into the bowl, breaking it and sending most of the batter flying away.

“No!” they both screamed in unison.

Before despair could take over, Twilight reached out with her magic and pulled together all the pieces of batter she could see. It was barely enough for an ecláir. They had lost their chocolate icing, though, but maybe they could improvise.

“This will have to do,” Pinkie said, sounding both worried and hopeful as she eyed the floating batter. “I’ll get to work on something to use as a filling. You put it in a mold and bake it.”

Twilight nodded. With some reluctance, she pushed Pinkie away and turned around to see the oven broken in two.

“It’s okay. I have magic,” Twilight said, eyes twitching; and ignited her horn. She focused a heat spell on the glob of batter and hoped to Celestia it would bake evenly.

As the cake started to reach the appropriate degree of sponginess, Twilight noticed that the windows were once again twisting on themselves. Clockwise, this time.

“Pinkie,” she said, nervousness creeping into her voice, “how’s the filling coming along?”

“Done! Is the baked good baked and good?” Pinkie asked.

Tearing her eyes away from the twisting windows and the small vortices opening inside them, Twilight focused on the batter. A quick scan told her that it had reached a nearly perfect state, so she ended her heating spell. “Done. Now we—”

As though choosing the least convenient moment possible, a claw with too many talons emerged from one of the vortices left behind by the twisting windows, and, before either pony could react, grabbed Pinkie by the scruff of her neck.

“Oh,” was all she could say as the claw began pulling her back towards the vortex.

Twilight froze; her body no longer working. Her surroundings, as lively as they had seemed an instant earlier, now stood still, as the claw pulled Pinkie away in slow motion.

“No...” she whispered, the word hanging lifeless in the kitchen’s suddenly silent air.

No.

No.

“No!”

Pinkie Pie blinked a couple of times, her face completely expressionless as she registered what Twilight had just said. A second later, Twilight registered it too.

“Wait! No, I mean… No, no, that’s not what I—Wait,” the unicorn babbled, words flowing without sense as her brain tried to catch up with what she’d just heard herself say.

With folded ears and limp shoulders, Pinkie was turning away; ears flat against her head, as though she couldn’t bear to look at Twilight. The light had gone out of her eyes, leaving only coldness.

“I don’t mean no!” Twilight yelled, not able to take the sight anymore.

Sadness gave way to confusion. An optimistic kind, perhaps. One that seemed as though it didn’t want to advance to hope.

“It’s just… This is so sudden. I don’t… I mean, I’ve never been with anypony. I mean, I don’t think anypony has ever, you know… for me,” Twilight said. She realised she was descending into pure word salad, but forced herself to speak anyway, lest Pinkie interpret her silence as a rejection.

Twilight did realise that, as eager as she was to assure Pinkie she didn’t mean to say ‘no’, she wasn’t rushing to say ‘yes’, either.

“I… I know it must be a lot to take in, Twilight,” Pinkie said, her hoof rubbing her foreleg. Twilight realised that she was still holding Pinkie’s other hoof. She almost pulled away, but thought otherwise. “But I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know. But… I don’t want you to feel under pressure, either.”

Pinkie Pie looked nervous now. But nervous was better than sad on Twilight’s scale.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have let Rarity convince me to tell you…”

“Tomorrow!” Twilight yelled, catching Pinkie’s attention.

“Wha—?”

“You deserve an answer,” Twilight said, her nervousness putting a strain on her voice. “And you deserve one now. But right now, I just… I just can’t. I need some time alone. Time to think… But tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll give you an answer.” She looked straight into Pinkie’s eyes. “I promise.”

Pinkie’s face remained unresponsive for a second; but finally, a smile tugged at her lips.

“Pinkie Promise?” she ventured.

“Pinkie Promise,” Twilight replied; smiling in turn as she performed the familiar motions.

She’d have a lot to think about tonight, but deep down, she knew that she could sort this out. Whatever she decided, the last thing that she wanted was to—

“—hurt her, you hear me?! Don’t you dare hurt her!” Twilight yelled as she pulled back the eldritch claw with her magic. The thing might be able to bend in ways which defied reason, but Twilight was determined to find a way to bend it so it hurt.

Finally, the claw’s grip on Pinkie lessened enough for her to break free. Glancing anxiously behind her, she frantically paddled through the air towards Twilight.

“Pinkie, I don’t know how long I can hold it,” Twilight yelled to her. “You have to finish the cake!” She didn’t wait for her to reply; instead simply throwing the cooked pastry at her and trusted that she’d get the work done.

Meanwhile, the twitching claw seemed to unravel itself. In its place, dozens of fleshy tendrils now swayed as though each had a mind of its own. Twilight struggled to keep it contained, and almost didn’t notice the similar tendrils coming from the vortices in the other windows.

“Pinkie—!”

“—Promise,” Twilight said once more.

Pinkie Pie was once again smiling. There was a hint of apprehension in her eyes, but the way her chest was puffed and her whole body seemed to vibrate showed no trace of sadness.

“Okay, Twilight,” she said. “I’ll wait for you.”

The kitchen exploded. There were no two ways about it. Twilight was glad about this, because she was sick of paradoxes. However, that still left the problem of the kitchen exploding.

A shimmering golden orb floated in the centre of the kitchen, bathing the whole room with light. Shockwaves rippled through the air in the aftermath of the explosion, splintering wood, shattering glass and melting metal. The horrid creatures of nightmare squirmed in agony as the golden light disintegrated them. Pinkie and Twilight fell to the floor with the aid of normal, euclidean gravity, and were also pushed by the energy of the new cake.

Just when the walls started to give in, time stood still as reality seemed to bend towards the gold light.

Before Twilight could process what was happening, the light went away, as did the forces pushing and pulling existence—alongside most of the damage dealt to the structural integrity of Sugarcube Corner—and both mares found themselves lying on the kitchen floor once more.

After a few seconds where neither moved—expecting the skies to split apart or Discord to pop in and claim it was all an elaborate joke—both Twilight and Pinkie stood up and threw themselves at each other in the tightest hug either of them had given in their lives.

They laughed, cried, sobbed, wailed, and then went back to laughing some more. Their ordeal was finally over. Neither was able to form a coherent string of words, but it didn’t matter. They were alive. They were safe. The Cakes’ dark magic insurance would cover most of the damages left. Most importantly, they were together.

Twilight buried her face in Pinkie’s neck, drying her tears in her coat, much like Pinkie was probably doing in hers. Finally, after a few more seconds of nuzzling each other, Twilight raised her eyes—and did a double take.

“What is it, Twi? More monsters?”

“No, no. It’s just… Well, look,” Twilight pointed. Sitting just below where the orb had appeared was the little, somewhat rectangular cake they’d made.

“Oh, right. The cake.” Pinkie was apparently as exhausted as Twilight; showing none of the usual energy Twilight associated with her and pastries, though a glint in her eyes still betrayed her excitement about the end result.

Twilight floated the little thing towards them and held it between the two. It was smaller than the first cake, and while it had a simple powdered sugar dusting rather than its predecessor’s rich chocolate coating, the porous surface of the cake looked so light, airy, and enticing Twilight couldn’t help but feel hungry.

“It doesn’t look as pretty as the one you made… Though I guess we did get rid of the evil creatures, so maybe it’s a fair trade-off.”

“This is not quite how I imagined I’d be giving you this…” Pinkie started.

Twilight only smiled. “I imagine neither of us expected this.”

“Well, I was going to put on a light show,” Pinkie said.

Twilight felt the laughter coming back. But she also had something important to do.

“I accept your cake, Pinkie,” Twilight said, and smiled at the sheer joy spreading through Pinkie’s face. Without hesitation, she broke the pastry in two and floated one piece towards Pinkie.

“Wha… But, Twilight. This is supposed to be just for—”

“I know… But I want to share it with you.”

Pinkie Pie blinked and smiled faintly at her words. She was the happiest pony Twilight had ever known, and few were the times she didn’t have a smile on her face. That smile, though, that one blew them all away.

“Thank you, Twilight,” she said, her voice barely a whisper as she accepted her piece of cake. Such a little gesture, but one which held so much meaning for the two. So much that, even once they finished the again alarmingly delicious cake, neither wished to move.

“You know,” Pinkie eventually said, conversationally, “the snaky thingies ate the banana filling I was making. So I had to improvise."

"What did you do?"

"I used the leftover cream to make whipped cream.”

“Huh… Interesting.”

“So I guess this counts as a new type of cake. What should we call it?”

“I’m sure we can think of something later.” Twilight smiled. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time with each other, after all."

Pinkie Pie looked back at her, her features softening as her eyes widened, and her whole body swelled with energy. “Do… Do you mean…?” Her voice quivering with excitement.

Twilight knew Pinkie probably couldn’t take much more; and honestly, she didn’t deserve that. Leaning forwards, she gave Pinkie a quick peck on her cheek, and with a smile, she said, “I’d love to be your special somepony, Pinkie.”

The baker froze for a second, but then opened her mouth wide, inhaled deeply and jumped on Twilight, peppering her with many, many kisses in return.

Twilight Sparkle would later find it odd how even though this cake objectively hadn't tasted as good as the one Pinkie had made, it had somehow been more satisfying.

Author's Note

A Twinkie a day keeps the vengeful Goddesses away.
Thanks for taking the time to read this story.
I figured I would save some people the trouble and tell you that K'awka Supay is Quechua for Bread Demon.
K'awka means bread while Supay means devil, or demon. It appears that Incas didn't have a word for cake, if you'll believe it.
Ninda Dimmea is the same, but in Summerian.
Also, another huge thanks to Fome whose help was immensely valuable in the process of editing this story, the good people from the Writeoff Association, as well as all the people of good fortune of /mlp/ who left their comments and opinions.
And thanks to you once more for taking the time to read this.