The instant Pinkie Pie woke up, she knew something was wrong. It wasn’t a big wrong something, she realized after a moment of careful consideration. There weren’t enough sirens going off, for one, and the clouds outside were neither candy-scented nor swollen with chocolate milk. It wasn’t a tiny wrong something either, another moment revealed. Those were the absolute worst kinds of wrong somethings, the kind that you only noticed long enough to put a sour spin on your morning or evening or after-midnight-noon.
No, this was more like a medium wrong something. Small enough to go unrighted if she let the slippery thought of it slide right out of her mind, but big enough that it rubbed against her brain anyway and made a normal start to the day impossible. Pinkie let out a big sigh and furrowed her brow. She couldn’t just lie here thinking about it. She had to investigate.
At first glance, everything around her seemed normal enough. Her bedroom was still messy, her eyes were still blinky, her mane still smelled like vanilla icing and bubble gum. She had woken up with her head at the wrong end of her bed, of course, but that wasn’t wrong enough to make her tummy feel all flip-floppy. Come to think of it, that was hardly out of the ordinary at all.
So it wasn’t anything in her immediate area. Maybe the something was outside her room. Bolstered by the new idea, she arched her back and turned her upside-down gaze on the window across from her bed, but the sky outside was a beautiful, innocent blue, and the Ponyville town square was just as squareish and townish as ever. Another sigh pushed its way out of her chest, and she flopped back against the bed, her belly letting out another uncomfortable twinge. What could it be?
It occurred to her soon after that she might’ve given up on the bedroom too soon, so she narrowed her search down to just what she could reach from her spot on top of the covers. She explored the mattress with her forehooves and, finding nothing out of the ordinary, moved them up to her face, poking and prodding until she was sure that all the parts attached to it were in their proper places. From there, she moved down to her chest and forelegs, then a bit farther down to the sides of her belly, then—with a bit of effort—all the way down to her cutie marks and the very bottoms of her hind legs. Absolutely nothing was wrong. Defeated for the moment, Pinkie let her hooves fall back onto her chest again, before absentmindedly letting them slide back past her ribs, over the front of her belly, and all the way down to her…
Oh.
Oh, no.
Pinkie’s eyes went wide, and her mouth formed a perfect “O” as the shock of finding nothingness where there most definitely should’ve been somethingness jolted up her spine. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be gone. She had just gotten it two days before! But no matter how vigorously she worked her hooves, the space beneath them still remained unfilled by her newest and most prized possession.
The party pony pushed out the breath she’d been holding in, just in time for her heart to begin filling with dread. She had to look. She had to make sure her hooves weren’t somehow playing tricks on her, that it really truly positively was gone. She swallowed hard, counted to five, added two more numbers just to make sure…
And then, with her lips quivering and her stomach pricking like a cactus in a balloon factory, Pinkie lifted her head up and looked down.
She did not like what she found.
• • •
“You woke up this morning and your what was missing?”
“I already told you what, Twilight!” Pinkie shouted back, oblivious both to Twilight’s dazed confusion and to the fact that the library clock said it was barely half past six. “I woke up this morning and I felt funny, not like ha-ha funny but like weird-weird funny, so I tried to look around and figure out what the weird-funny-wrong thing was, but I couldn’t find it so I looked outside and it wasn’t out there, and then I looked back inside and started poking all around my face like this just to make sure extra sure and then-”
“I got that part,” Twilight shouted over her hyperactive friend, the task made somewhat more difficult by the force with which Pinkie was demonstratively squeezing her cheeks together. “You already told me that. At least six times.”
“…and I don’t know where it is and I just got it and I was really super-duper excited and now I don’t know where it could be!” Pinkie finished with a despondent groan, her mane even frizzier than normal from all the emotional anguish coursing through it. Taking advantage of the most likely very brief respite, Twilight closed her eyes and counted quickly to ten, then looked up and gave Pinkie her very best approximation of a completely understanding smile.
“When were you going to tell us you got a…one of those?” she asked through her teeth.
“Well, I was gonna show you all tonight at my Party for Pinkie’s Phenomenal-”
“Oh, wow, wouldn’t that have been…interesting,” Twilight interrupted, her brain already slipping back into that silly little habit it had of completely shutting down whenever her view of the world around her was irrevocably shifted. “And now you…can’t find it?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
This time, she went ahead and counted to fifteen. “I wasn’t aware they had a tendency of just…falling off,” Twilight said. Stars above, she was blushing just thinking about this. She’d heard of some the more rebellious students at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns doing this sort of thing before, but Pinkie Pie? One of the kindest, sweetest, sugariest ponies she’d ever met? It was completely unlike her. Completely unlike anypony in this town.
“…and that’s why you’ve gotta help me find it, Twilight!”
And in a manner completely unlike herself, Twilight Sparkle let her mouth react before her brain could. “Whoa whoa-whoa-whoa, w-wait a second, I, uh…I-I don’t think I’m really qualified in this particular field…”
Pinkie threw a hoof around Twilight’s shoulder and blew out a dismissive noise through her lips. “Oh, come on, Twilight, you’re the smartest pony ever! I bet you already look exactly where to look!”
Despite her friend’s enthusiastic assurances, Twilight still couldn’t help but cringe. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to help Pinkie out, but with something like this…it wasn’t so much the pony she’d be searching with as much as it was the item they’d be searching for. In all honesty, the things just gave her the willies. Who in Equestria would want a big, sharp, pointy object stuck inside them like that? Another shudder crawled down her back, but once it passed, the bookish mare grit her teeth together and took a long, deep breath. Like it or not, Pinkie needed help, and it looked like she was the mare that was going to give it. Besides, all Pinkie probably wanted was somepony to point her in the right direction. It wasn’t like she’d actually have to touch it or anything.
“Well, I suppose the best way to figure out where you lost something would be to retrace your steps from the day you lost it,” Twilight said slowly, her voice gaining in strength as her razor-sharp analytical mind went to work. “What’s the first thing you remember doing yesterday?”
For another blissful moment, Pinkie fell silent, biting her lip in concentration. “Um…let’s see. I woke up, got out of bed…ooh, I took a bath too! I think I played with it a little in there, so maybe it fell off then…”
Oh, Celestia, what have I done?
“No, wait, I definitely had it after that, because it kept getting caught on the towel…” Just as Twilight’s face began to turn gray, Pinkie’s lit up with a sudden burst of recollection. “Oh, now I remember! I went out for a walk around Sweet Apple Acres!”
“Okay…” Twilight muttered before getting a grip on herself again. “Okay, great! That’s a great place to start looking.”
“Yeah, I definitely remember that, ‘cause apparently it’s always a bit sore down there right after they put it in for the first time, so I thought the fresh air might help with th-”
“All righty then, we’re leaving!” Twilight said cheerfully and loudly. Very, very loudly. “We’re leaving now. To go over to Sweet Apple Acres. To find your…”
It’s going to be a long day, Twilight realized with a groan. “Let’s just go,” she grumbled, her head hung low as Pinkie bounced obliviously behind her out of the library and into the street. Maybe Applejack would be a bit more help. She could always be counted on to have a level head.
• • •
“What in the name of all creation-”
“Applejack, I know this is a lot to take in right now…” Twilight began to say.
“Well, ain’t that a mighty fine understatement,” Applejack retorted.
“…and I know this is all probably coming as a bit of a shock to you…”
“And another one on top’a that.”
“…and I know you probably think one of us, both of us, or all the ponies in this town are crazy…”
“Landsake, did I buy the first two and get the third one free?”
“Okay, look, I’ve already covered the ‘PFF existential crisis’ part of the program here, so as far as I’m concerned, we can just take that for granted and move on from there,” Twilight spat back, waiting to make sure Applejack had fallen silent before looking back over at Pinkie Pie. “Did you find it yet?” she shouted through the rows of heavily laden apple trees.
“Not yet!” came her exuberant reply.
“Well, keep looking!” Twilight ordered, her mind already far beyond the point where she might’ve thought to keep her tone more like that of a friend and less like that of a prisoner of war. For a long moment after that, none of the three ponies in the orchard said a word.
“Why would she even want one?” Applejack said after a few minutes, once she had finally worked up the curiosity to ask.
“I don’t know,” Twilight answered, her frustration quickly giving way to exasperation. “I don’t know anything. I don’t even know if I’m awake. Am I dreaming, Applejack? Is this all just some strange, psychologically inexplicable dream I can’t kick myself out of?”
Left devoid of any rational answers to that remark, Applejack could only shrug and continue watching Pinkie as she combed through one row of apple trees after another. “Maybe we’re overreactin’, sugarcube,” she eventually mused. “I mean, sure, it’s a fair shock to hear about it like this, but…well, it’s her body. I reckon as long as she ain’t gettin’ hurt, she can do with it whatever she darn well pleases.”
Removed as she was from her immediate anxiety over the situation, Twilight found herself agreeing with Applejack’s perspective. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted. “But I just…I still don’t like it! What if other ponies think badly of her because of this? What if this changes her into somepony’s she not?”
“Now, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Applejack said with an air of finality. “There ain’t nothin’ different about her now, and there won’t be tomorrow or any day after that. No matter what she does or doesn’t have attached to her, she’ll still be the same Pinkie Pie we all know and…”
“Okay, I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Pinkie announced, from a distance that a pony only slightly more introverted than Twilight might’ve considered well within their personal space.
“How long have you been standing there?” Twilight asked breathlessly, once her heart rate was back down below that of a hummingbird.
“Twelve and a half seconds, but that’s not important. The bad news is, I didn’t find it.”
Twilight’s heart sank. All that stuff about her faith in Pinkie’s strength of character aside, she really, really didn’t want to be talking about this anymore. “Well, that’s a shame…”
“But the good news is, I just remembered that after I finished walking around the orchard, I ran over to Fluttershy’s house and spent the rest of the morning inside her henhouse!”
To say the silence hang heavy around them would’ve been an insult to both unwieldy metaphors and heavy things in general. “What were you doing in Fluttershy’s henhouse?” Twilight yelled after Pinkie as she hopped off.
“Making omelettes!” Pinkie yelled right back, continuing on down the road without noticing that the other two members of her party was still standing dumbstruck a hundred yards behind her.
“Is that a euphemism, or…” Applejack muttered.
“I don’t even want to know,” Twilight replied calmly and quietly. “Let’s just catch up and follow her before either of us tries to think about it.”
Applejack saw no reason to do anything but, and did her best to occupy her mind with other thoughts during the trek. In retrospect, she later thought, some things were easier said than done.
And as it turned out, another thing that fell into that category was explaining to Fluttershy why Pinkie Pie was digging around in her henhouse.
• • •
“She lost her what?”
For the nth time that day, Twilight slapped her hoof against her forehead. Was it too much to ask that one other pony she roped into this have a different reaction to the whole thing?
“Don’t worry about it, Fluttershy,” Applejack said wearily. “We’ll just let her take a look around for a spell, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“Or maybe she’ll find it around here somewhere,” Twilight said, her voice heavy with that special kind of optimism reserved for mediocre soccer coaches and terminal cancer patients. “And then we won’t ever have to think about it again.”
“Or about why she felt the need to go prancin’ around with it inside a henhouse,” Applejack added.
“Aaaaaand I’m thinking about it again.”
“Misery loves company, sugarcube.”
“No, I-I mean…” Fluttershy stammered over Twilight’s ensuing groan, her cheeks flushing red as her lip found its way back between her teeth for a moment. “What is that? That thing Pinkie lost? I’ve never heard of anypony with something like that before.”
Twilight and Applejack had already been at a loss for words for most of the morning, but Fluttershy’s question turned that shortage into a full-scale drought. “Gah…” Applejack struggled to spit out. “I, uh…ahem…reckon Twilight knows a lot more about ‘em than I do.”
“Bu…what?” Twilight hissed.
“Y’know, seeing as she lives in a…library an’ all,” Applejack went on in a faltering, distant voice that was never once directed specifically at anypony present. “With books and things.”
“Not those kinds of books!”
Applejack threw a ferocious glare in Twilight’s direction and dropped her voice into the same frantic whisper. “Well, you certainly knew about this whole business a long time before I did!”
“Seventeen minutes is not a long time! And you’re one to talk, with all the circus acts you run around with every other weekend! I suppose none of those rodeo ponies ever jumped into the ring with one of those things swinging around beneath them?”
“Are you tryin’ to insinuate somethin’, sugarcube?”
“Not any more than you are!”
“Uh, Twilight?” Fluttershy cut in, meekly raising a hoof to silence both of her fuming friends. “I can still hear you. And I, um…still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re up, slugger,” Applejack mumbled before looking pointedly away. Twilight shot her a filthy look and, left with no less awkward choice, acquiesced.
“Well, it’s…you see, Fluttershy, sometimes…hardly ever, really, but some ponies like to, for one reason or…I mean, you or I might never want to, but everypony’s special in their own, uh…special way. So they might want to do something like…for example, uh…”
“Oh, Twilight,” Fluttershy giggled, a knowing smile on her lips. “You could’ve just told me you don’t know what it is either.”
“I do too know what it is!”
“Aw, shoot, I think she’s blushing!” Applejack snickered, earning herself an even dozen good-natured PFF smacks on the head. Twilight made a mental note to administer all of those later once her face didn’t feel like the surface of the sun.
Thankfully—or perhaps to make matters worse—Pinkie chose that precise moment to loudly announce that she hadn’t found anything in the henhouse either. “B-but,” Twilight stuttered. “Y-you said it’d be there! You spent hours in there! You were making omelettes, for Celestia’s sake!”
(“Oh, consarnit it all,” Applejack groaned as she pressed a hoof over her eyes.)
“Well, I guess I still had it when I was done,” Pinkie said with a shrug, her trademark bounce unrestrained by the grinding noise coming from Twilight’s teeth. “Time to go see Rarity again!”
“Wait, you…what do you mean, again?” Twilight called after her, this time loud enough to get her to stop for a moment. “When did you go to Carousel Boutique?”
“Yesterday, silly,” Pinkie replied. “That’s where I went after Fluttershy’s. To Rarity’s house. Some of my party clothes didn’t fit quite right anymore, so she helped me loosen them up a little.”
“So she already knows this thing exists?” Twilight said, her tone quiet and tinged with what, in a different situation, might have been mistaken for bloodlust.
“Of course! That’s what she was helping me with! Do you have any idea how much those things stick out under fabric?”
Twilight sputtered, and spittle sprayed the ground. “But we’ve been wandering around all day looking for something that Rarity’s already seen!” she finally shouted. “We could’ve been done hours ago!”
Pinkie considered that for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, yeah,” she muttered to herself before giving a helpless shrug. “Well, you told me to retrace my steps. You didn’t say I could skip some.”
“You…skip…I…”
Something critical broke inside Twilight’s brain, and her shout quickly became a screech. “Do you ever think more than ten seconds ahead, Pinkie?”
Pinkie raised an eyebrow, and squished her lips together into a strange half-smirk. “No,” she replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Ten long seconds passed, and not a single cell in Twilight’s body so much as synthesized a protein. “You know, you-” Applejack began.
“Really should’ve seen that coming, yeah,” Twilight finished in an undertone. “Let’s just go already.”
“But it’s the middle of the afternoon,” Fluttershy objected. “Rarity’s shop is still open. What if she’s busy?”
“Then I guess she’ll have to go back to servicing her customers without this thing,” Twilight said with very little sympathy. “Besides, it’s not like it’s some great mystery what’s going to happen. I could explain and justify this all I want, but we all know that the second I’m done talking, the first thing that’ll come out of her mouth is…”
• • •
“…what?”
“That’s kinda spooky, Twi,” Applejack commented as Rarity’s interjection rang out through her empty shop.
“I’m a mare of many talents,” Twilight intoned in response. “Do you have it here or not, Rarity?”
“I most certainly do not!” the offended unicorn declared. “And frankly, I’m not sure why Pinkie Pie thought I’d be of any use in the whole matter either. Designing a new wardrobe around such a thing might’ve been one thing, but altering a dress…for one thing, the balance would’ve been all wrong, and don’t get me started on how difficult it would be to make a clean cut through satin…”
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” Twilight muttered, once again pulling out her mental drawing board.
“Are you sure it didn’t fall off somewhere in here?” Fluttershy asked. “Did you check the dressing rooms?”
“I’m sure Pinkie appreciates your concern, darling, but I would think such an item would not have gone unnoticed this long,” Rarity said, her tone wry but still a good deal more gentle than before. “Then again, my expertise in this area is…limited, to say the least.”
“That’s a surprise…” Twilight couldn’t help but murmur, a choice she immediately regretted for more than one reason.
“And what precisely do you mean by that?” Rarity asked her, her eyes so cold she could’ve frozen ice on her cheekbones.
“Nothing! I mean…I just thought, it’s technically something related to fashion. Sort of. Not really. At all.” I knew I should’ve stayed in bed today. “You’re the only one of us who’s even seen her with it,” Twilight finally said. “That’s all.”
Rarity still didn’t look completely convinced, but at least Twilight no longer had to wish for one of the sweaters hanging from the discount rack. “Be that as it may,” she said, “I would thank you not to assume I have made any common practice of familiarizing myself with such…eclectic enhancements.”
“Is that what they call ‘em these days?” Applejack muttered under her breath. Twilight might have found it funny if she weren’t so exhausted. Or so frustrated. Or so completely convinced that the only reason Pinkie was coming over to join them now was to report that their trip to Rarity’s was another bust.
“Looks like our trip to Rarity’s was another bust,” Pinkie said just a few moments later. At least this time, she had the decency to look a bit pained when the rest of her party lent their voices to a collective agonized groan.
“Are you sure there’s nowhere we haven’t looked, Pinkie?” Twilight asked, her better judgment once again outweighed by her desire to help. As aggravating, confusing, and occasionally disturbing as she may have been today, Pinkie was still her friend, and to her credit she really did look genuinely disappointed at their lack of success.
“Super-duper sure,” Pinkie said dejectedly. “We already went to Applejack’s farm, Fluttershy’s house, and Rarity’s shop, and the only thing I did after that was…”
Twilight had seen a lot of different emotions displayed on Pinkie’s exorbitantly expressive face since they first met, but the one that flared into sight was one of the rarest of all: that of poorly concealed self-consciousness. “I went back to Sugarcube Corner,” she finished quickly. “That’s it.”
Twilight was only silent long enough to meet eyes with Applejack. “That’s it?” she repeated skeptically.
“Yep. Totally it. Nothing else to talk about, soooo I’ll just…go look around at home, I guess. Thanks for all the help.”
Pinkie’s ear-to-ear grin fooled absolutely no one, least of all the thoroughly unamused cowpony with her teeth clamped around her pink friend’s tail. “Pinkie Pie, what else did you do yesterday?” Twilight asked again.
“Nopony! I-I mean, nothing! Nothing at, uh…um…”
“What do you mean, nopony?” Fluttershy said curiously. Rarity stared. Twilight and Applejack glared.
And in a narratively convenient twist of irony, Pinkamena Diane Pie went pink.
• • •
“So lemme see if I’ve got this straight,” Rainbow Dash said, once her friends were done explaining themselves up in the relative privacy of Pinkie Pie’s bedroom. “Pinkie told you that she invited me over to her place once Sugarcube Corner was closed.”
“Right,” Twilight confirmed.
“Because, in her own words, she wanted to show me her new ‘plaything’.”
“Mm-hmm,” Applejack hummed.
“And once I got there and saw said plaything, certain other activities that I really don’t feel like elaborating about occurred.”
“Yes…” said Rarity.
“Which then, according to what you think, led to me swallowing said plaything at some point during said activities.”
Fluttershy was too busy blanching to speak up, and the rest of her friends mutely followed her lead.
“Without noticing,” Rainbow finished in a deadpan.
Twilight rubbed the back of her neck and bit her lip. “Well, to hear Pinkie tell it, there was a lot of chocolate syrup involved…”
Now Rainbow Dash was biting her lip too.
“And whipped cream.”
And grinding a forehoof against the bridge of her nose.
“And, for reasons I’m perfectly happy to never even try to imagine, a four-foot-tall red velvet cake with vanilla frosting and a hollow center.”
And blowing out a half-sigh, half-growl as she whirled around to face her newly revealed marefriend. “What part of ‘tell nopony, nowhere, no how, not ever’ didn’t get through?”
“Oops,” Pinkie mumbled sheepishly.
“Okay, fine, it was a stretch,” Twilight admitted, feeling Rainbow’s eyes on her while the rest of her group made sure their eyes were being felt by something else in the room. “But we’ve been wandering around Ponyville all day with absolutely no clue of what happened to the stupid thing…”
“And so your last resort was to poke your hoof down my throat until something poked back?”
“Oh, Rainbow, you make it sound so crass,” Rarity objected in place of Twilight, who was now quite occupied with wishing she’d been lobotomized as a small foal.
“So, ‘yes’. Is what you meant to say.”
Nopony felt a verbal reply was needed, so nopony gave one. Rainbow let her gaze drift from one friend, to the next, to the next, and then finally let out a heavy sigh. She got to Pinkie Pie just in time to see her burst into tears.
“I’m never gonna find it!” she sobbed, throwing herself onto her bed and burying her face in her pillow. “Never, never, never!”
With little else to do but stand there and watch her cry, the rest of Pinkie Pie’s friends went ahead and did just that, their silence only broken once Twilight could no longer bear to ignore the proverbial massive manticore in the room.
“So. You and Pinkie Pie,” she said nonchalantly.
“Yep,” answered Dash with equal indifference.
“That’s new.”
“You got a problem with it?”
“No, no problem, just…didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well, there was a reason for that.”
“What possible reason could you…” Twilight began to sputter, only to be shut up quickly by Rainbow’s pointed glance. “Point taken,” she said a bit more calmly, silently resolving to pay closer attention to who went home with who after Pinkie Pie’s next party.
Another silence came and went, as they are wont to do when things get, as the French would say, “très, très maladroit”. “Well, sorry for wasting your time, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said once she felt it had gone on longer than anypony could continue to bear. “I guess we’ll never know whatever really happened to that sunforsake-”
“Omigosh, omigosh, here it is!”
“-nd you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Hardly daring to look and yet finding it patently impossible not to, Twilight turned and looked towards Pinkie Pie, who was holding the focal point of their fruitless day-long search gleefully between her forehooves. “It was in the sheets the whole time!” she went on. “It must’ve gotten stuck or something when I was sleeping. I can’t believe I really found it! Isn’t this great, Twilight?”
Now everyone was looking at Twilight. Twilight didn’t seem to be noticing.
“Uh…you okay, Twilight?”
Twilight didn’t seem to be awake anymore, actually, and stayed that way for far longer than a complete cerebral meltdown had any right to. It wasn’t until a full minute later that, with no absolutely no warning whatsoever, an oddly unhinged giggle slipped out of her throat. Soon after, another one followed, then another, until with her chest still shaking and her lips still bent into a demented grin, she turned on her heel, walked over to and down the stairs, and left the building without saying a word. The sentiment of her departure was all too clear to the rest of the group, and one of them in particular reckoned she felt about the same way.
“I need cider,” Applejack said matter-of-factly, already halfway to the steps by the time the words left her mouth. Rarity was quick to second the notion and Fluttershy was quick to go wherever she felt her moral support was needed, so it was only a matter of seconds before only Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash remained in the room.
“Was it something I said?” Pinkie wondered aloud.
It took Rainbow Dash a good bit of time to process what had just happened, but once she did, all she could do was just shake her head and sigh. “You seriously led them all over town looking for that stupid thing?”
“It’s not stupid, Dashie!” Pinkie argued as she carefully slid her so-called “plaything” back into place. “It’s a method of self-expression!”
“Which, as I told you last night, is astupid reason to get something like that,” Rainbow replied in a low tone. “And, oddly enough, is a really stupid reason to waste our friends’ entire day.”
Pinkie’s brow narrowed into a playful glare, but once she noticed Rainbow heading toward the balcony door, it quickly became a real one. “Well, what else was I supposed to do?” she shouted after her pegasus marefriend just before she took flight. “What about the next time this happens, huh?”
Rainbow Dash was already in the air by the time Pinkie’s last question reached her ears, and at first she had no intention of answering it. Before she made it ten feet, though, her second thoughts had become her first ones, and she swooped back down to meet Pinkie’s incensed gaze. She’s so cute when she’s ticked off, a part of her couldn’t help but think, but a much bigger part knew that no matter how adorable Pinkie’s anger might be, she most likely deserved it at this point. So instead of flying back into Sugarcube Corner and going to find the honey, Rainbow Dash just sighed one last time and gave her an answer.
“Next time, Pinkie?” she said. “Find your own damn belly button ring.”
And all Pinkie heard after that was the sound of retreating wings.
