MLP: 2.0 You Can (Not) Harm Fluttershy.

Pinkie Pie used the front of her mane to wipe sweat off her forehead as she placed the ice cream cake on the counter. "A finished order! And I did it just in…"

She trailed off as she glanced at her watch. It was 4:01. "Aw, ponyfeathers! I took a minute too long! If Fluttershy was here waiting, I’d have given her overdue service!"

She blinked. "But then… why isn’t she here?"

She grabbed Gummy and put him on a tall chair behind the counter. "You’re in charge while I go find Fluttershy!" She wrapped her tail around the ice cream cake to hold it, and zipped outside in search of her friend.

Pinkie Pie’s first stop was Fluttershy’s home, a perfectly reasonable place to try. She knocked on the door gently, then heard slow hoofsteps coming ever closer until the door finally opened to reveal Fluttershy on the other side.

"Oh, hi, Fluttershy!" Pinkie chirped, and swung her tail around and manipulated its shape into that of a plate to hold the cake. "Your order’s ready!"

"Thank you, Pinkie," Fluttershy answered, and slowly accepted the order.

As Pinkie watched Fluttershy re-enter her house to place the cake onto the kitchen table, something seemed… off. "Fluttershy? Are you feeling okay?"

"…Yes, why do you ask?" Fluttershy sat down after her quiet reply.

But Pinkie wasn’t going to allow one of her friends to remain in silent sadness. She followed Fluttershy indoors and bent down to meet her eye level. "Come on, I know you’re not."

Fluttershy sighed. "You’re not going to leave until I say why, are you?"

"Of course not! You think I’d leave you like this?" Pinkie told her. She then sang beautifully: "’Cause cheerin' up my friends is just what Pinkie's here to do!"

Fluttershy paused before she began. "Twilight isn’t what you think she is."

"What, you mean a jerk?"

"Oh… then she is what you think she is."

"What’d she do this time?"

"It was a week ago…"

"Ah, you mean Nightmare Night!"

Fluttershy nodded in the affirmative before continuing: "Princess Luna wanted speaking lessons but she was yelling and I was scared and wanted to run away but Twilight… she followed me into my house and scared all the critters while marehandling me to force me outside." She paused. "And she closed my door when I tried to run back inside."

Pinkie’s eyes widened. She’d arrived and seen Twilight watching as Luna held Fluttershy, but it was only now that she understood the full context.

Pinkie had had enough. It always angered her to see someone bullying Fluttershy, but now by a "friend" of theirs? And all to teach someone how not to yell? What was wrong with her? And wouldn’t it make more sense to get lessons from someone who spoke the way the average pony did, and not someone who always practically whispered?

She would not let this go unpunished. No matter who was behind it, anyone who harmed her friends would live to regret it. She patted Fluttershy on the back. "Never you worry. I’ll make her pay."

Twilight was trotting home after her trip to the pharmacy to get some medicine for her headache. The label instructed her not to use magic within an hour of taking a pill, but she could work with that. For now, she was wondering what to do with her evening. Perhaps later she’d make a zipper appear in Spike’s mouth to prevent him from talking.

She held the handle of the door to pull it open… except that it would not open. She pulled harder, but nothing.

She stood sideways on the door, able to do so by her strong grip on the handle, trying to open it but still nothing. As she shrieked in anger like a banshee trying to get the door open, she could not be less regretful of having taken some of the pills already.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. She took several steps back, seethed through her nose with righteous fury like a bull, sans only the characteristic ring in its nose, and then charged at the door full force.

The door abruptly swung open before she could hit it, causing her to tumble forward, through the library, and finally head-on into a bookshelf.

As a long, thick lump grew out of her head, she looked up, and wondered why the bookshelf was getting bigger. Then it hit her.

Twilight only had to feebly unclose her eyelids for a miniscule amount for light to instantly flood in. She groaned weakly as she opened her eyes all the way to be greeted with an unfamiliar ceiling, not unlike the one in Ponyville General Hospital. But the more pressing issue was that her body somehow stung all over.

"Hi, Twilight!" Pinkie Pie was there with Fluttershy.

"Pinkie? Fluttershy?" Twilight adjusted herself in the bed. "What happened?"

"You mean before or after that bookshelf hit you?" asked Pinkie.

Twilight, all of a sudden, felt utterly gut-punched. "But... but how do you know?"

"Silly, who do you think was holding the door shut?"

"YOU?!" Twilight exclaimed in shock and outrage. "But why?!"

"Weeellllll, after you did the same or at least the same in principle to Fluttershy last night, I thought maybe you should have a taste of your own medicine." She giggled. "Medicine! And we're in a hospital!"

"I DID NOT CRUSH FLUTTERSHY WITH A BOOKSHELF!" Twilight screamed.

"Yeah, I didn't mean for that to happen, but hey, no biggie," Pinkie explained dismissively. "And I bet you're wondering what's with the stinging."

Twilight was. She had bandages on her head and legs, but that didn't explain the stinging.

"Papercuts," said Pinkie gleefully. "One hundred and sixty papercuts in total! Counted them myself!"

Twilight gulped. Papercuts were the bane of the common pony's existence. Even one was a long path of miserable agony until it healed, but here she was with no less than one hundred and sixty of the little bastards.

"And Twilight?" Pinkie went on. "If you ever harm Fluttershy again, I'll give you..."

She leaned in with a malicious smirk. "Canker sores."