"You shop already?"

Spike and Twilight were busy decorating the foyer, stringing up garlands and wreaths as well as setting up tables and chairs for the party tomorrow night.

Twilight looked over her shoulder. "Of course! I always find time to buy my friends presents, no matter how busy I am!"

"You sure?" Spike looked skeptical. "I bet if you were really busy, you'd have at least a little trouble."

"Pfft," said Twilight. "Tell me that next year." and as they continued their decoration, added: "Do you have another red ribbon?"

"Yep!" said Spike, tossing a roll to the hovering Twilight. "We're all out now, though."

Twilight beamed. "Perfect! This was the last one."

Spike adjusted a chair. "Well, you don't say. Looks like that's the last of the chairs, too--is that all?"

They looked around the festively decorated foyer. It looked the very picture of holiday cheer and warmth.

"We will need a tree," Twilight said, "but Applejack's coming by tomorrow morning for that. For right now, I'd like to test out a really fun spell I found."

Spike put on his football helmet and pillows. "Uh, what kind of spell?"

"Relax, Spike, it's just a simple decoration spell." She lit up her horn, and a grey cloud appeared on the ceiling far above. Snow fell from it, drifting lazily down to the floor, where it disappeared.

Twilight clapped her hooves. "Aha! Looks like it works. How do you like it, Spike?"

Spike took off his protective gear. "I'm not gonna lie, Twilight, this is really cool. But," he frowned. "What if it gets in somepony's drink?"

"That's what's so ingenious about this particular spell, Spike--the snowflakes disappear before they touch anything," explained Twilight, whose eyes lit up at the prospect. "This is one of the ancient epicurean sorcerer Snow Flake's spells, and although I don't agree with many of his life choices, I respect his eye for detail."

"Huh." Spike walked over to a falling snowflake and stretched out his hand. When it reached his hand, it vanished in a small, gentle glow. "Neat."

Twilight was about to launch into a frankly fascinating lecture on Snow Flake and the Epicureans of old, when she was interrupted by Spike's massive yawn.

"Sorry," Spike mumbled. "Shifting all those chairs took a lot out of me."

"Oh, that's alright," said Twilight, a little disappointed. "We should probably get some sleep anyways--it's a big day tomorrow, right?"

"Sure thing," said Spike, yawning again, his eyes drooping. "G'night, Twilight!" He left, muttering something to himself.

Twilight stifled a yawn and made to follow him, but then suddenly remembered. "Oh...Ember's present! Maybe I should do some tests on it now, before I forget..."

Rerouting herself to the kitchen, she started speculating, coming up with a plan for identifying the unknown substance.

And just like that, Captain Feathersword was no more than a gravestone and the fond memories of his friends.

Everyone else had already left the service, but Greg, Murray, Jeff, and Anthony all still stood around the rectangle of shifted dirt that marked the Captain's final resting place.

A marble headstone stood tall and proud, its epigraph recording for all time who lay there:

HERE LIES CAPTAIN FEATHERSWORD
A GOOD FRIEND
A FRIENDLY PIRATE
A PIRATE FOR GOOD

IF ONLY WE COULD SEE MORE SPIRIT LIKE HIS

Greg looked around at his friends. "It's what he would have wanted," he said softly.

Murray nodded assent, still wiping his eyes with his handkerchief.

Jeff's eyes were starting to close, but loyal to his friend's memory, he dutifully kept them open.

Anthony stood, his hands clasped in front of him. "Yes," he responded. "He would have wanted this."

Silence fell for a few minutes.

Finally Anthony turned around. "Come on, fellas," he said. "One thing he wouldn't want is for us to feel too sad for him. He may be gone, but he'd want us to live just as well as before."

The other three nodded, and began to follow him.

Only to be interrupted.

A deep, droning, whirring noise, punctuated by rapid, almost tinnitus-like clicking, suddenly came from behind them.

Whirling around, the four friends witnessed a strange sight.

There, just beside the grave, hovering in the middle of the air, a point of light hung, emitting the strange noise. As they watched, it split into eight different points, forming a massive octehedron. Glowing a glaring white, the strange shape slowly descended until it touched the ground.

The light receded, leaving a sleek red sports car with colorful wheels.

The Wiggles stared. "Is..." Greg started. "Is that...?"

The door to the car opened upward like a DeLorean, and out stepped a tall, scruffy man wearing a faded yellow trench coat and wide sunglasses. He walked purposefully towards them.

Upon reaching the four, the new arrival looked them over critically, and finally spoke, in a cheery Australian accent worn down by years of toil. "You the Wiggles?" he asked.

"Yeah...who's asking?" said Anthony. Him and his three friends stood ready to fight if need be, wary of this new development.

"Oh good," said the sunglasses-wearing man. "I was afraid I'd missed a year. As for who I am..."

He took off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of deep-set, knowing brown eyes. "I've come from the future to help prevent a terrible catastrophe. My name is Sam, Sam Moran--and I'm the last Wiggle."

Twilight, magic laden with various chemical apparatuses and incomprehensibly complicated devices, walked determinedly towards the pantry, muttering to herself.

"I know Ember wouldn't send me something dangerous..." She stopped short for a minute, then resumed her walking. "Scratch that, I know she wouldn't send me anything too dangerous...but why send me something unlabled? Too many risks are involved."

Opening the door, she started setting up the devices on the counter. "Maybe she was sending a letter with an explanation in it, and it just got lost in the mail. That'd be understandable, Ponyville mail isn't the most reliable." She stuck her tongue out a little, carefully adjusting the nozzle of a titration buret. "But then again, Ember's not too keen on writing. ...Does she even know how to read?"

Twilight froze solid. Does she even know how to read?

Finally, she shivered. "Oooh, I don't even want to think about that...but it would explain why there wasn't a label."

But as she continued her adjustments, that thought kept circling through her head, and she could already tell that she'd be having nightmares that night. Let's just hope Princess Luna won't laugh at me too much...

Her preparations complete for a veritable smorgasbord of magical, chemical, and physical testing, she walked around the corner to the shelf.

The drink was glowing a dark pink.

By itself, a pink drink was not terribly concerning to Twilight, whose experience as a friend of Pinkie Pie's had desensitized her to such flagrant subversion of evolutionary instinct.

However, a pink drink that is also glowing is a bad sign in any book.

Pulling it down off the shelf with her magic and setting it down on the counter, she peered closely at it.

"That's funny," she mused to herself, "It looks brighter than it was a second ago."

She started pouring it in small amounts through her various contraptions. It didn't react to any of her alloys or oxidize from any of her oxidants. It didn't diffuse when poured through her magic strength filter, although the readings went off the charts. It didn't even dilute--the small drop Twilight placed in water merely turned the water the same shade of glowing pink.

She was concentrating so much, she didn't even notice when Spike walked by and greeted her with a "Good morning! I've got some shopping to do today, so I'll be out!"

Even more befuddled than before, Twilight took a drop and worked through her spell identification algorithm. The results were more strangeness: not only did no organized spell exist, but the drink literally flowed with raw, almost living magic.

"What was Ember thinking? This thing just builds up more magic every time I look at it. If it keeps going..." Her eyes grew wide.

"Oh no," she realized. "It'd incinerate the castle! I've got to get this thing out of here!" She poured all the drops back into the bottle, picked it up, and prepared to teleport.

As the last pieces of the complex spell fell into place, Twilight noticed a slip of paper under the counter. 'WARNING: DO NOT HANDLE WITH MAGIC,' it said.

In what seemed like slow motion, Twilight finally realized why the drink seemed to glow brighter every second.

Combined with the fact that a teleportation spell is one of the most magic-heavy spells in the book.

Too late, Twilight realized.

And with a soft 'pouf' that completely ruined the mood, she was gone.

The Epicureans were an ancient group of ponies purely devoted to the pursuit and experience of pleasure. However, the modern definitions of the word have somewhat tarnished their reputations. Rather than exemplifying the selfish, obsessive nature that many authors and historical writers have popularized, the original Epicureans were dedicated to living modestly, increasing their knowledge, and limiting their own desires. Of course, this dedication to modesty came with some restrictions on the study of magic--those in the school of Epicureanism were strictly forbidden to use magic in any way physically helpful to themselves. Relieved of such strenuous yet personally beneficial magical studies as the other scholars of the time, they rather turned their thoughts towards aesthetic spells, spells useless enough to warrant their study yet enjoyable to watch or experience. Some of the most widely used spells in history have come from these groups of Epicureans, especially from the reclusive Snow Flake.

--Ancient Philosophy for Foals by Clear Sight, Revised by Twilight Sparkle.

Author's Note

I don't write these because I know they're any good--they're not.
I don't write these cause I want attention like the whiny narcissist I am--even though I definitely am one.

I write these because they freaking make me happy at the fact that a human being can unironically enjoy something so stupid.

Even if the only human being that does is me.
See you next week