Prequel to Fluttershy-Point... er, no, not really
"Oh no!" Twilight Sparkle gasped.
She zoomed across the length of the Starswirl the Bearded Wing, knocking Spike and Pinkie Pie to the floor amidst her panic. Blurring past a gigantic hourglass, Twilight scurried immediately up to a window and examined her haggard reflection. A unicorn with a singed mane, scarred cheek, and surly eyepatch stared back at her, clad from neck to tail in a torn black jumpsuit meant for stealth, but destined to be the signature of her doom.
"Look!" Twilight stammered. "I look just like future Twilight! The last sign has come true!"
For the life of her, Pinkie Pie couldn't figure out what the juxtaposition of past Twilight and future Twilight had to do with her close friend finding out about her next birthday present. "And that's bad, right?" she chirped.
"Come on!" Twilight breathlessly gargled, the hysteria in her voice rising with each ray of golden sunlight shining in through the windows that flanked the lofty Canterlot chamber. "It's almost Tuesday morning! The disaster could happen at any moment!"
Spike's rotund form waddled uselessly in the center of the dusty archive full of countless ancient scrolls and tomes. "But how do we find the time stopping spell?" He was too busy juggling a cone of ice cream to offer more than a redundant statement. "There must be a million scrolls here!"
Twilight's voice came out in ridiculous punctuation, parallel to the enormous beads of sweat fountaining from her forehead. "I. Don't. Know!"
All thinking as one—or at least thirty-three percent of one—everypony fanned out and proceeded to ransack the furthest ends of the library. Twilight darted from bookcase to bookcase, her good eye scanning every document for Starswirl's signature. Spike sat on his purple tail, thumbing through dozens of thick books. The distant horizon lit up from beyond the window as another Equestrian dawn threatened to be born.
Pinkie Pie sprawled her jumpsuited self atop a bookcase, carefully rummaging through several dense journals full of magical runes, time-forgotten incantations, and complex mathematical formulae. Her blue eyes perused page after page of bewildering dissertations on magical phenomena and astrophysical sorcery. No matter how desperately Pinkie searched, how swiftly she made her way through the mounds upon mounds of text, she couldn't find a single paragraph that detailed Twilight Sparkle's next birthday gift.
"I don't get it," she muttered to herself, scratching her flank with a rear leg to get at an itch beneath her jumpsuit. "But hey!" she grinned with glistening, pearly gates. "If we can stop time, then maybe we can make it Twilight's birthday forever!" Something deep inside Pinkie's brain moistened itself at the concept of a Möbius strip made out of marble cake icing and resonating with sprinkles. Her eyes glistened, for she could already see the twisted loop glazed over with vanilla frosting. "Could I even find enough candles?" she cooed in an otherworldly voice, leaning back precariously until gravity took its cruel revenge out on her. "Waaaie!"
Pinkie fell off the bookcase and landed hard on the floor. Typically, her fluffy mane would have cushioned the fall, but at the moment it was hidden deep beneath the tight hood of her clandestine jumpsuit. What resulted was the gleeful earth pony's skull contacting the floor with the subtlety of a gamma ray burst. She sat on her haunches, reeling dizzily as she slapped her left ear, expecting a thin trickle of brain fluid to leak out the right.
"Unnngh... Meandering octopus Euphrates upon the tiger sound," she spat. Pinkie shook the aphasia out of her aching head, stood up, and gawked suddenly at the giant hourglass that stood in the center of the room. In the epileptic light show that had spawned from her wicked concussion, the large glossy object of time-keeping glittered before her with otherworldly irradiation. "Oooooh. I don't know why, but my gooey parts are rolling around in bubble wrap just looking at you!" Dizzily, she stumbled forward and planted her smile against the hourglass, drooling on its polished surface. "Mmmmm... All that sand looks really crunchy..."
A whimpering, anxious Twilight zoomed back and forth past Pinkie.
"Hey Twilight!" Pinkie belched, her eyes still spinning as she nuzzled the container like a kitten in heat. "Maybe the time stoppy thingy is inside here?" The world around her did the tango and she was desperate to find her dancing partner. "Also, I think my head is mad at me for landing on it so hard—Whoah!"
Suddenly, the bottom half of the hourglass gave way. The bulbous ends of the magical artifact spun wildly around each other, and within the center of its brass axis a nebulous portal formed. Pinkie Pie got a good glimpse at this, probably because she was being shoveled down the multicolored event horizon of the chronological vortex at the speed of light. The universe around her bent into a kaleidoscopic band of paradoxical vomit beyond the edges of her twitching eyesight.
"Gaaaaaah!" half of her shrieked and the other half of her laughed at the first fifty percent for doing so. Her jumpsuit peeled off her pink body. Next came the molecules, ripping away from her corporeal form in layer after layer of pastel sentience. Whatever piece of Pinkie Pie remained, it was polite enough to hear a desperate voice shrieking from beyond the cyclonic maelstrom of astronomical distraction.
"You! Young hero! I entreat thee!"
"Huh?" Pinkie Pie blinked, floating lazily through a microcosmic domain of galactic swirls and other anamolous constellations bathed in nonexistent colors."Who's talking? And why does he sound like Liam Neighson?"
"Behold!" With a brilliant flash of spectral madness, an equine form materialized before her. Bathed in the dust of stars, an elder stallion stood with long gray whiskers and sunken eyes hidden beneath a thick green hood. "I am Starswirl the Bearded, the doomed Pariah of the multi-verse, and I have summoned you here for a matter of great importance!"
"Ooooooh..." Pinkie Pie drooled. She was floating upside down at this point, so that when she looked at the dangling image of Starswirl's horn, her inner schoolfilly produced a flighty giggle from the deepest corners of her lungs. "I loved you in 'Phantom Marenace!'"
"I know that you have come here to stop time," he exclaimed, his eyes twitching from a million eons of being audience to uncountable horrors. "But I must ask for your priceless assistance in stopping anti-time!"
"Hey, do you know where I can get a really special birthday present for my friend Twilight?"
"This is no occasion for shopping!" Starswirl exclaimed. In a blink, the two of them were standing on a floating chunk of cosmic rock while hundreds of thousands of colorfully inked globes were shattered across the galactic expanse beyond. "The Marenitor and Anti-Marenitor are engaged in a climactic battle over the fabric of reality as we speak! It is my solemn obligation to assist the benevolent Marenitor, and to such a divine purpose I have summoned the five key essences of you from different points in time and space!"
"Huh?" Pinkie blinked.
"Five of me?" her voice said just a few feet away.
Pinkie looked over to see herself wearing a robe and a hat made of chocolate pudding. "Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie!"
"Hi! I'm also Pinkie Pie!"
"Hi!" Mare Do Well waved, suddenly beside the previous two. "I'm also Pinkie Pie, or at least my alternate ego is!"
"Heehee!" Pinkie giggled. "I miss waffles..."
"Breakfast is pointless," Pinkamena grumbled, sitting in a plaid shirt beside the other three. She smoked a cigarette that lit up her buzzed mane, flesh tunneled earlobes, and bored eyes. "Everything is pointless."
"Cool!" Pinkie beamed. "I like your tattoos! Skulls are cute cuz they're always smiling! Heehee." She turned and looked at the fifth doppelganger. "Hi, I'm Pinkie—"
"INSERT FELICITOUS SALUTATIONS HERE," crackled the voice of a robotic pink horse with glowing eyes.
"Waaaaaie—!" Pinkie gulped and faced Starswirl again, shivering. "So... uhh... Can we go buy Twilight's Birthday gift now?"
"We have far more important things to deal with at the moment!" the gray-maned pariah shouted. His horn glowed, and a levitating disc above the six mares projected images of multiple Equestrias. Each footage displayed walls of blinding white light barreling over the landscapes, consuming hundreds of millions of shrieking, panicking ponies as they galloped in futility to outrun pure nonexistence. "The Anti-Marenitor of planet Qwhinny is transforming all of the known multi-verse into one singular anomaly of infinitesimal Anti-Pink! The Marenitor, eternal steward of Pink Matter, is battling her with all the energy left at her disposal! But she is weak, and she is in dire need of help if the fundamental laws of all reality is to be preserved!"
"Mmmmm..." Pinkie drooled. "I love strawberry preserves!"
"Heehee!" The one in the chocolate hat chimed in, "So do I!"
Pinkamena exhaled tobacco smoke. "Strawberries are the poisonous manna of the system of societal oppression."
"Please!" Starswirl floated towards them, his frown gleaming pale beneath his green hood. "You must pay attention! Since the dawn of time, the elements of Pink Matter have been stored in a singular host whose genes would sleep for generations on end until the time came to give birth to a savior whose innate connection to the fabric of reality could serve as a silver bullet in defeating the Anti-Marenitor!" He pointed at the quintet of pink-shaded ponies. "One of you five is destined to be the Haybinger, the key to galactic salvation! My task is one of self-retribution, in that I must determine which of you Pinkies is the heroine destined to stop the spread of annihilation across the timelines! For that purpose, I have invited Pinkie Pie of Equestria Prime..."
"Heehee! That makes me P-Squared!"
"...Pinkamena Diane Pie of Equestria Two..."
"We are all born alone and we die alone."
"...Chancellor Puddinghat of Ancient Equestria Zero..."
"Oh, like the Sarsaparilla? The royal doctor keeps telling me I should switch beverages on account of 'dying beetles' or something..."
"...Mare Do Well of Equestria Three..."
"With great pink comes great responsibility."
"...and the Pinkenator, cyborg Pinkie of Equestria-Z."
"ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: OBLIGATORY EXPOSITION."
"Do you understand what this means?!" Starswirl asked the group.
"Yes," Pinkamena flicked her cigarette and groaned. "I hate all Caps."
Mare Do Well glared at her through her mask. "Why do I get the feeling you hate everything?"
"Only a smart pony would."
"Oh! Oh!" Pinkie jumped up and down, waving her hoof. "I love Alex Trebuck! Heehee!"
"Unnngh..."
Starswirl stole their attention once more. "With the five of you together, fighting as one, you and you alone can drive back the forces of the Anti-Pink and restore balance to the Multi-Verse!" He lowered his head and spoke in a mournful voice. "Alas, it was I who started this chaos to begin with. I was once a brazen scientist of Planet Oats, whose arrogance and hubris sewed the seeds of the universe's destruction. I built a portal that would allow me to witness the dawn of time." His eyes glittered with unfathomable horror and emotion. "There, in the foundations of everything, I saw a gigantic hoof extending outwards from the nether, offering the secrets of stellar light and cosmic substance to the untapped fields of creation—"
"Look, can we just get this over with?" Pinkamena grumbled, fiddling with the cuffs of her shirt. "There's a Tori Haymos concert tomorrow night and I gotta gallop all the way to Mareami before the gates open."
"What's that doohickey in your hooves?" Puddinghat pointed at the Pariah.
"This..." Starswirl held a black remote with a huge red button in the center. "...is the Pinkability Matrix. I stole it from the inner core of the Anti-Marenitor's Chaos Engines. With it, we hold sway over the holes that have recently been punched into the timestream."
"It's so shiny! Twilight would love it!" Pinkie gasped wide. "Do you do gift wrapping?!"
Mare Do Well shook her head. "Such a brazen device must not be taken lightly!"
"WARNING: EXISTENCE OF DEUS EX MACHINA IS HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE."
"Call it what you wish!" Starswirl said to the Pinkenator. "But it is our only means of stopping the spread of evil and destruction between now and the end of time!" He took a deep breath and spoke boldly across the starscape. "Now listen carefully. You five must travel to the blighted planet of Qwhinny and focus this device on the remaining weapons of the Anti-Marenitor, or else—"
"I gotta know if this thing's wireless!" Pinkie Pie swiftly Dhalsim'd the black remote out of Starswirl's grasp from afar. "Twilight Sparkle loves alternative rock!" She fiddled with the red button, licking the edge of her lips. "Come onnnnnnnnn, Radiohay!"
"You fool!" Starswirl exclaimed as a wall of solid whiteness overtook him, shattering his voice into a million indiscernible fragments of echoing sound. "Not yet! You have no idea what effect you might have on time and spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace—" The octaves of his scream dissipated along a gigantic glowing corridor of stretched reality.
"Hmmm..." Pinkie's face scrunched up. "Doesn't sound a bit like Trot Yorke."
"They sucked after Hay to the Thief," Pinkamena grumbled.
"INNOCUOUS REFERENCES."
"What evil lurks in the heart of space-time?" Mare Do Well uttered, staring warily at the passing anomalies.
"I have no clue!" Puddinghat leaned over Pinkie and pointed at the shimmering apex of their extra-dimensional descent. "But look at the shinies!"
Pinkie Pie looked, and what she saw tore at the layers of her soul. Universes were born and destroyed in a blink. A giant shimmering equine figure with her mane shaped in cornrows was constantly spewing streams of Pink Matter against the Anti-Pink fountains of a parallel horse with a metal mask and ivory jaws. Beyond them, the multi-verse spiraled in strobing bands of cryptic purpose. Life and death blended together to form a bright silver light, a singularity of eternal luminescence that challenged the very concept of self and identity. There, upon the sandy shores of infinity, every thought bloomed a world and every counter-thought subsequently destroyed it, so that a sphere of neutral and philosophically paradoxical deathlife pulsed like a black hole of impenetrable comprehension. Pinkie almost found herself sailing towards this wondrous scene of orgasmic, existential discovery. Instead, she took a left.
Opening a door, she and the four other pinkies stepped onto a rubble-strewn street in the middle of some random universe's Maretropolis. Random citizens galloped past them in horror as the three mares, one superhero, and one robot huddled together.
"So where did that door come from?" Mare Do Well asked.
"I dunno!" Pinkie Pie scratched her head and made a face as she turned the black remote over in her hooves. "I pressed the button hoping that a gift for Twilight would come out!"
"The most perfect birthday gift is a tombstone," Pinkamena said. "It would prepare Twilight for the inevitable." She gave a bored glance towards the burning skyscrapers above. "This place smells like the crematorium where dad and I took grandma when I was little."
"What?!" Puddinghat frowned at Pinkamena. "You're joking! Dad told me that we were going out to buy cat litter!"
"Trouble is ahoof," Mare Do Well said, eyeing the fiery lengths of the urbanscape. "I sense a great peril is consuming this city..."
"I know, right?!" Pinkie made a face. "If I don't get a birthday gift for Twilight, she might get mad at me and not let me throw her a party!"
"So?" Puddinghat pointed. "Hit the button again!"
Pinkie gasped. "I never thought of that!" She smacked her forehead against the black remote's red switch. "How's that?"
With a bright flash of light, a bowl of petunias landed on the Pinkanetor's metal skull.
"ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: BLATANT CROSSOVER. CREDIBILITY LOST."
"I don't think Twilight's going to like wilted petunias," Puddinghat said.
"Me neither. Uhmmm... Oh, I know!" Pinkie smacked the Pinkability Matrix once more. "How's that?"
Suddenly, the fires around the city shrunk and extinguished themselves. Citizens galloped in reverse. Stagecoaches and wagons tumbled backwards until they stood upright. The smoke disappeared, and a bright blue sky hung overhead.
"Time has reversed!" Mare Do Well exclaimed.
"Yeah," Pinkamena grumbled. "Think you can change it back?"
"No, but I can hit my head again!" Pinkie slapped the Matrix again with her brow.
Time stopped reversing. In a bright golden flash, the huge scaly foot of a demonic draconequus appeared. The beast stood in the center of downtown, its huge weight bending the asphalt all around himself. Letting loose a bestial roar, Discord leered down at the shrieking citizenry with blood red eyes and a devilish grin. "Your pitiful existence has come to an end!" the monstrosity roared and proceeded to sunder several buildings with his massive limbs.
"Great Caesar's ghost!" Mare Do Well gasped.
"Waaaie!" Puddinghat shrieked. "This is terrible!"
"I know!" Pinkie panicked, clutching the black remote to her chest. "I'm never going to find a birthday gift at this rate!" She flinched as several chunks of shattered skyscrapers were tossed past the five mares.
"UNACCEPTABLE DISTRACTIONS."
"Robo Pinkie is right!" Puddinghat panted. "Discord is making it hard to do all the button clicking!"
"Bra ha ha ha!" The giant serpentine being shoved down another skyscraper and roared at the moon. "Embrace meaninglessness and anguish!"
"I dunno," Pinkamena droned, lightning another cigarette. "I kind of like him."
"Well, that's all the incentive I need to dispense justice!" Mare Do Well growled. As a fountain of fiery breath billowed down at the group, the purple-caped pony dodged the blast, leapt up several window ledges, scaled a skyscraper, and galloped across the rooftop before tossing herself like a missile at Discord's forehead. "Have at thee!"
Discord backhanded her in a blink.
"Daaah!" Mare Do Well flew into a rooftop's water tower, filling the air with gushing liquid and exploding splinters. Discord hissed and shoved his claws into the falling building to grab her. Dodging expertly, Mare Do Well galloped out of the debris, hookshotted her way up to Discord's snout, and began exchanging blows with his eyebrows.
Just then, the bright and unmistakable shape of Sugarcube Corner flickered into being. It materialized in mid-air, hung for a few seconds of anti-gravity, then plunged towards the concrete floor of the sundered city's downtown.
"Heeeeey! Cool!" Puddinghat grinned wide. "Where'd that come from?"
"I just hit the button again!" Pinkie replied.
"You did?"
"Yeah. But I think it's stuck." Licking her lips, Pinkie slapped the button several times. As a result, multiple identical Sugarcube Corners appeared overhead, fell, and formed a pile of bright-pink bakeries in the center of the intersection. "I can't get it to stop!"
"Be gone, detestable pest!" Discord was swinging at Mare Do Well above, punching gigantic holes in multiple skyscrapers and reducing them to rubble. "I shall suck the entrails from your putrid shell!"
"Yeesh. Why's he so grumpy?" Pinkie Pie remarked, nudging the remote so that a dozen more crashing Sugarcube Corners spawned overhead. "Last time I saw him, he struck me as the kind of guy to sign autographs, not growl and spit!"
"CHRONOLOGICAL DISCONNECT!"
"The Patheticanator's right," Pinkamena grumbled, flicking ashes from her cigarette. "What, with all the time crap looping around, I think we invited some form of—I dunno—Proto-Discord. Meh. I suck at plot." She fidgeted. "That didn't mean what it sounded like..."
"Well then..." Puddinghat pointed at all the Sugarcube Corners lying in a giant pastel pile. "I think I got a stroke of brilliance!"
"Heeheeheee... She said stroke."
"FAILED ATTEMPT AT INNUENDO."
Half-an-hour later, Mare Do Well was still hopping from rooftop to rooftop, dodging the raging Discord's angry swipes while launching vicious pinkarangs at his pulsing forehead. He finally flung a savage fist, smashed a building underneath her, and clutched her in an iron grip.
"I shall teach you the meaning of the word 'eviscerate!'" he growled.
Just then, as Mare Do Well grunted and struggled in his grip, Discord heard an amplified voice behind him.
"Not so fast!"
Spinning around, Discord's red eyes blinked in surprise.
A giant golem stood across the rubble-strewn city from him. With four legs and a hulking torso crafted out of hundreds of congealed Sugarcube Corners, the four Pinkies' hastily assembled robot reared its forelimbs and dragged a hoof threateningly across the asphalt.
"It's time to get serious!" Pinkie exclaimed, grinning wickedly and gripping her controls from a Sugarcube Corner cockpit located in the base of the huge golem's skull. "Ready, everypony?!"
"Ready as I'll ever be!" Puddinghat squawked from her cockpit.
"Where're the ash trays?" Pinkamena muttered from hers.
"I AM INTERFACED!" The Pinkenator exclaimed, her metal limbs wired to several cords that carried her glowing pink essence throughout the heart of the giant Sugarcubetron. "NEW MISSION ACQUIRED: PRELIMINARY BOSS FIGHT."
"Buh?" Discord managed.
"Charge!" Pinkie yelled, shoving forward at her controls.
Puddinghat and Pinkamena thrusted their joysticks back and forth. In mechanical precision, the giant equine made out of Sugarcube Corners galloped thunderously across the burning city. A burning mane billowed behind the majestic golem's thrusting neck. Eyes of red hot energy projected a menacing spotlight on Discord's face as it charged forward at murderous speed.
Discord grunted and tossed a gasping Mare Do Well to the side. He snapped his talons and produced a pair of giant katanas in his grasp. With a banzai scream, Discord scurried forward, meeting the golem's rampaging gallop.
The center of the crumbling Maretropolis resonated with apocalyptic cacophony. Windows shattered and traffic signs collapsed. Citizens ran for cover in subways as shards of glass and metal debris fell from all angles. The very surface of the streets bent and melted from the trampling giants' limbs. Then, in the center of their dual charge, there was a momentary lapse in noise... for the giant golem had galloped straight past Discord.
Discord skidded to a stop, staring behind him while gripping his swords. "Ehh?"
The gigantic Sugarcubetron ended its charge by sliding into a gigantic department store building. Viciously, the forward limbs gripped the structure, lifted it off its foundation, and shook the thing high in the burning air. Rubble, cash registers, and shrieking ponies in blue aprons fell out by the bucketloads.
"I know you have a cool gift for Twilight in there somewhere, Wal-Mare!" Pinkie's voice shouted through the amplifiers attached to the golem's muzzle. "Stop hiding behind your excessive discounts and minimum wage salaries for minorities and show me something that'll make Ponyville's librarian smile!"
"Ooooh!" Puddinghat pointed out her cockpit. "I think I saw a cute blouse fall out of the gardening section!"
"Unacceptable!" Pinkie shrieked. "I'm not settling for a cheap import from Chyneigh!"
"Uhhhh..." Pinkamena squinted at the rear-view mirror of her Sugarcubetron seat. "As much as I like to challenge the broken system of unimpeded capitalism, aren't we forgetting something?"
"Huh?" Pinkie blinked. She gasped. "Oh shoot! I left my membership card at home!" Just then, a pair of talons ripped through her cockpit and grabbed her by the neck. "Meep!" She dropped the Pinkability Matrix as Discord yanked her out of the Sugarcubetron and held her in his vicious grip. "Celestia! He smells like a birdcage!"
"Grrrrr..." Discord's crimson eyes narrowed. Flicking his other hand out, he summoned a portal with chaos energy. "Through time and space, I banish your insufferable form!" He tossed her into the glowing anomaly. "Begone!"
"Aaackies!" Pinkie's voice stretched ahead of her as she found her body funneling down the wormhole and into the mysterious realm on the other end.
Somewhere, in a gloomy city that slept beneath a perpetual cloud of dim fog, a single equine figure stood atop a roof of ancient masonry. He wore a pale, grinning mask and a jaunty hat as he stared out at the multiple streets laced with barb wire and monitoring equipment. Beyond the immediate stretch of decrepit apartment flats, a clock tower loomed, and beyond that was an ornate bridge stretching over a murky river.
The masked vigilante chanted, "Remember. Remember. The fifth of Neighvember. The gunpowder treason and plot—"
Just then, a portal opened up above him and Pinkie flew out like a screaming tomahawk missile. "Gaaaaaaah!"
"Ooof!" his mask flew off as he plummeted off the rooftop and crumpled into a heap on the streets below. His body refused to move.
"Nnnngh... Owie..." Pinkie sat up, rubbing her fluffy head. She blinked and peered over the edge at the vigilante's stone cold figure. "Uhm? Hello? Yoohoo! You okay?" There was nothing but silence. She sweated slightly as a nervous gulp possessed her throat. "Did I just kill Hugo Whinny?" More silence. "Uhhhhhhh..." She looked every which way. Finally, she brightened at the sight of a colorful building below.
Descending from the neighboring rooftop, Pinkie trotted across the street, stepped gingerly over the dead figure, opened the shop’s door, and walked inside under the ringing of a bell.
"Hello," spoke a clerk from behind the counter of a costume shop. "How can I help you, miss?"
"Yeah, uh..." Pinkie Pie chuckled nervously and scratched the back of her head as a guilty bulb of sweat jogged down her pink temple. "So, like, is this city in need of a superhero?"
"Uhhhhh..." The clerk nervously looked at row after row of security cameras, the image of a balding stallion at a switchboard, and huge posters of fascist propaganda. "Maaaaaaaybe..."
"Well, you got any thing in purple?"
Gulping, the clerk ducked out past a curtain. She came back minutes later and slapped forth a broad hat, cowl, cape, and mask: all in bright violet hues. "How's that?"
Pinkie grinned like a transcendent figure emerging form a burning asylum. "Victorious!"
"Omigosh! Omigosh! Omigosh!" Puddinghat stammered from her cockpit. "We just lost Pinkie!"
"Pinkie was living in the bars of her own prison her entire life," Pinkamena muttered.
"WATCHMARES IS SUPERIOR."
"For the love of Celestia, what are we gonna do?! Oh hey!" Puddinghat suddenly brightened as the Pinkability Matrix rattled to a stop in her cockpit. "It's no longer stuck! Whoah!"
She was shrieking, for Discord had risen up behind the golem and was forcing it into a vicious armbar. "I shall murder you until you are dead! Like a corpse! A corpse that is dead!"
"Works for me," Pinkamena droned.
Mare Do Well galloped up to the edge of a building and shouted to the ponies within the Sugarcubetron. "Quick! Attack his lower body! It's his weakness!"
"AFFIRMATIVE." The Pinkenator's metal head spun as it siphoned electrical energy into the arteries of the multiple Sugarcube Corners. "TARGETING GROIN OF CHAOS!"
The huge golem bucked Discord between the legs. Somewhat enraged, the draconequus responded with a German Suplex. The Sugarcubetron swiped Discord's legs out from underneath, ran up a building, and plunged down with an atomic elbow. Discord countered with a sharpshooter, and it was around this time that Pinkamena got bored.
"Yeah, screw this." She slapped a lever on the right of her cockpit.
The multiple roofs of Sugarcube Corners opened wide, and a phalanx of candle-shaped missiles popped out of the wood-carved cupcakes. With shrieking sound effects, the polynumerous projectiles rocketed towards Discord's skull and shattered into flying clouds of shrapnel and fiberglass.
"Oww!" Discord shrieked and raked his claws across the sudden rash formed over his brow. "Now that's just stupid!" He shoved the golem thunderously to the street and summoned a huge portal over his horns. "Try that in the wasteland of tomorrow, wretched infidels!"
"INCOMING PLOT CONTRIVANCE!"
"Hey!" Puddinghat struggled to shout, entangled in the electrical entrails of her broken cockpit. "No fair! He was sandbagging the whole time we wrestled!"
"Friends! Look out!" Mare Do Well shouted. With a heroic charge, she leapt off the nearest buildingtop and flung herself into the portal just as Discord flung it. She shrieked as her whole body caught fire and was absorbed violently into the wormhole.
The concussive blast of the impacting portal caused the Sugarcubetron to explode. However, thanks to the superheroine's intervention, the three remaining Pinkies rolled to a harmless stop on the side of the street. They gawked as Discord strolled off to cause more mayhem across the Maretropolis.
"Well, that was predictable." Pinkamena knocked a few bits of debris off her plaid shirt.
Shivering, Puddinghat clutched the black remote to her chest. "But where did Mare Do Well go?"
Across a charred landscape, legions of ponies clung to bits of debris and shattered buildings. They reloaded laser rifles and launched defensive volleys at a marching line of demons, trolls, and ogres. As the relentless forces of Tartarus closed in on the Equestrian resistance’s home base, a blond stallion galloped through the trenches, flanked by battle-hardened earth ponies in rusted armor.
The stallion opened the tent flap of a M*A*S*H unit and approached a series of doctors huddled around a dimly-lit medical bed. "How is she?"
"John Canter! Finally!" One of the physicians struggled to speak over the sound of explosions and distant laser cannons. "We have her in stable condition! But if she's supposed to be our prophesied heroine, I fear that she is in no condition to assist us in defeating the ranks of the Morning Star's demonic horde!"
"Can you save her?" He asked.
"We can do more than that!" The doctor yanked a tarp off a table fitted with various bits of cybernetic implants and metal pony parts. "We can rebuild her to be the perfect fighting tool for New Equestria!"
"Will she be able to speak to us?"
"Yes," the doctor nodded as the tent shook from a nearby mortar blast. "Though, I fear it will be in all-caps."
"I SENSE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT," the Pinkenator said with a spasming twitch.
"Shhh!" Puddinghat hissed, then turned to face the huge congregation of pony delegates seated beyond the stage’s podium. "Ladies and gentlecolts of the United Neightions, I appeal to you in our time of great struggle!" The Chancellor paced before a giant flag of Equestria while Pinkamena and the Pinkenator stood stock-still beside her. "The Maretropolis burns! The wielder of chaos runs rampant in our streets! The sky rains fire upon our fellow citizens!"
The leaders of the free world stood, their muzzles twisted in looks of pain, sorrow, and fear. They glanced forlornly at huge monitors featuring live broadcasts of Discord setting fire to half the continent. Widows and widowers sobbed openly in their seats. Even the armed guards were shedding tears as the world shook with a muffled tumult beyond the walls of the meeting hall.
"This is the time that tickles ponies' souls!" Puddinghat said, her voice resonating with each firm glare of her blue eyes. "We risk liberty, health, and freedom upon the hinge of this one defining moment in our combined legacies! Time and meaning has ceased to hold definition, and the very fabric of reality teeters upon the brink!"
Pinkamena rolled her eyes and inhaled her cigarette while the ceiling shook and rained dust down from above.
"So, with the fate of the multi-verse at stake, and existence itself threatening to buckle at any moment..." Chancellor Puddinghat paced back to the podium and slammed her hoof down. "I ask each and everyone of you to look into your hearts and see if you have the strength to assist us!" She took a deep breath and leaned forward. "What... is the perfect birthday gift to give Twilight?!"
The delegates blinked. Everypony in the audience exchanged pale-faced glances.
"Because, like, I was thinking about a bow for her hair—something bright and pink, y'know?" Puddinghat juggled the black remote in her grasp. "But then I realized that she wears her mane straight, and if Rarity saw me fiddle with Twilight’s hair, she'd get all freaked out and say that it was a crime in fashion sense, and I know how much Twilight hates it when friends argue, and that would just snowball into the worst birthday ever. So, like, what about a new bookmark? Heeheehee—Twilight's a movie buff! Maybe we can find one with Joseph Gallop Levitt—" The remote fell out of her grasp. "Whoops!"
The Pinkability Matrix fell hard onto the stage floor and sparked.
Portals opened up all throughout the United Neightions hall. Out of nowhere, dinosaurs, winged primates, zombies, and metamorphosizing robots descended upon the masses. The ponies shrieked and scurried every which way while soldiers poured in and launched rockets and cannonfire at the rampaging monstrocities.
"Hmmm..." Pinkamena grind her cigarette into the podium. "Still better than the last Republicanter National Convention."
"Oh no!" Puddinghat knelt low and cradled the sparkling remote. "I think we broke the time-space-button thingy!"
"Jee," Pinkamena droned as chaos, explosions, and screaming filled the chamber behind her. "What a shame."
"Oh, whew!" Puddinghat exhaled with relief. "It's just the batteries that got busted! We need to find some replacements somewhere!"
"Uhhhh..." Pinkamena turned around and watched as giant tentacles reached out of portals and flung shrieking guard ponies around. "You think anyplace is open at this hour?"
At that very moment, a black cat hopped out of the portal with a machete in its mouth. The feline decapitated two zombies and flung the blade through an exploding android. Spinning, the cat gasped and scampered up to the stage before shouting at the three mares. "Finally! I have found you! Where's Pinkie and Mare Do Well?"
"I'm guessing they got bored," Puddinghat said.
"BASE UNDERSTATEMENT."
"Never mind!" The cat hissed, its whiskers flaring. "It is I! Starswirl the Bearded! I've assumed this form so that I might reach you in this time period and salvage the situation! It's not too late to stop the Anti-Marenitor! All we need to do is find the moon prism and focus a beam of light on the event horizon of the Anti-Pink Matter and—"
Just then, a shrieking pterodactyl swooped down, grabbed the cat in its talons, and flew towards the far end of the meeting hall, where it eventually met four converging bazooka rockets.
As the explosions settled, Puddinghat turned and looked at the other two.
"So where's the nearest supermarket?"
"Kind of late for yogurt, don't you think?"
"No, for batteries, buzzhead!"
"Hey, just because I wear a nonconformist manestyle—"
"Has anypony ever told you that you look like Sinead O'Canter?"
"Just about as many ponies who've told me I sound like Jodie Fostrot."
"Heeheehee... Ohhhhhh I could do this all day."
"INTOLERANCE LEVELS RISING." The Pinkenator's head extended upwards like a an adamantium giraffe while its eyes strobed intensely. "MUST DISPENSE WITH CLUTTER." Its skull spun and fired optic lasers in every direction. "BEHOLD! BEHOLD! BEHOLD!" All around the stage, dinosaurs and winged monkeys and zombies dropped like flies, their torsos melting inside out from the heated projectiles.
"Good idea," Puddinghat grinned and bounced down the rubble-strewn meeting hall. "You distract all the explodey stuff while Pinkamena and I buy batteries!"
"All we're doing is enslaving ourselves to the capitalist agenda."
"Yeah, and we'll do that too!"
The Pinkenator was barely paying attention. Single-hoofedly, the living laser turret laid waste to half of the time-displaced invasion forces, until a giant robot flew in out of nowhere with a heavy fist. "Jazz!"
"OOF!" Robo-Pinkie flew incidentally into a nearby portal.
"So, ladies and gentlecolts," spoke Eclipse Shine, the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson to Twilight Sparkle. The glowing alicorn stood with his black and crimson mane before a thick group of scientists in the center of a Neo Canterlot amphitheatre. "This ray gun shall allow me to convert metallic substances into their organic equivalent! Observe as I focus it on this die-cast collectible cog from a store-bought Collector's Edition of Gears of Mare Three!"
Just as he flung the switch of a giant pulsing apparatus, a portal opened and the Pinkenator flew out, landing in the way of the electrified contraption's nozzle.
"AAAAUGGH!!01100010011001010110110001101100011001010110100101110011011000100110010101110011011101000111000001110010011010010110111001100011011001010111001101110011"
The audience gasped as a bright pulse of light absorbed the android. Backtrotting, Eclipse Shine coughed from the ensuing smoke and squinted. "Zounds! What is the meaning of this?!"
"Hey!" Pinkie Pie stood in the center of a ring of ashes, gasping wide. "I'm back to fluff and blood again! Heehee! Isn't that great?!" She turned and grinned at the group of Neo Canterlot geniuses. "Say, do we still have to fight the forces of Tartarus?!"
"Uhhh..." Eclipse gulped. "No, ma'am. The Morning Star's demonic hordes were defeated eons ago!"
"Wooohooo!" Pinkie Pie bounced in place, giggling like a schoolfilly. "That's so super awesomely terrific! Let's celebrate with some tubs of orange sherbet!"
Eclipse bit his lip and fidgeted. "Uhm... I also regret to inform you that the ingredients to orange sherbet have been lost for centuries." He looked sad. "And besides, we live in a technological utopia where ice cream is strictly banned."
Pinkie Pie blinked steadily. With a whoopie cushion noise, her hair deflated into a jaded fountain of flat strands. "Meh," she grunted in indifference. "The system sucks. Shoulda known: we all live a lie." Pinkamena Diane Pie marched sullenly into the crowd. "Can I bum a smoke off of any of you...?"
Pinkamena stood in the purchasing lane, flanked by gossip magazines, candy bars and tiny nick-nacks. A cigarette butt burned at the end of her hoof. Beside her, Chancellor Puddinghat stood quietly with a packet full of double-a batteries in her grasp. Gentle 80s muzak wafted out of the crackling speakers of the supermarket overhead. Bright lights flickered occasionally as an elder sales clerk struggled to swipe the preceding customer's bundle of paper towels over a scanner for the umpteenth time in a row.
Puddinghat's bloodshot eyes blinked. Her nostrils flared as she shifted her weight from one pair of hooves to the other. Beside her, Pinkamena stared in a trance at anorexic photos of Kolt Kardashian and Paris Hiltrot. The ballad skipped momentarily through the speakers above as the lights flickered again. Lethargically, both Pinkies glanced out the row of sliding glass doors along the front of the supermarket.
Outside in the streets of the Maretropolis, Citizens ran screaming from ten-legged dragons while flaming spiders descended from burning lengths of silk. Portals opened and crimson biplanes flew out, shooting lasers at robot cowboys riding woolly mammoths. Skyscrapers crumbled as giant chickens with rocket launcher eyes wrestled with one another.
The lights flickered again. Several beeping noises emanated from the point of sales as the clerk swung the same roll of paper towels over the scanner again and again and again. Adjusting her bifocals, the old mare sighed and reached for a nearby intercom. "I'll need to call for managerial assistance."
The sleeping customer was drooling at this point.
The mare's voice crackled over the intercom, interrupting the skipping 80s ballad: "Supervisor assistance to Register Four. Supervisor assistance to Register Four, please. Thank you."
As soon as she hung up, a wall exploded behind a dairy section from a blue portal opening. Several helmeted ponies with iron crosses spilled out, firing lugers at a swarm of attacking ninja pegasi while their battle rampaged across the cereal aisle.
"So, uhm..." Puddinghat squirmed where she stood in the checkout line. "How's the weather where you're from?"
"Dismal," Pikamena grunted, gazing across more paparazzi regalia. "Nature casts its facade over everypony as a bitter preview to the infinitesimal nature of mortal life."
"Oh really?" Puddinghat murmured. She looked off as two mutant gorillas wrestled through the frozen dinner section. "That's interesting..."
"You're simply programmed to say that." Pinkamena took a drag of her cigarette, exhaled a cloudy ring, and muttered, "Everypony that pretends to be happy is just a part of the machine. To cling to joy is to hug the last bitter breaths before death takes us to the true encompassing of our futile existences. We were dead long before we were born and we shall remain dead long after. Life, in essence, is brutal happenstance, an accidental cluster of complex chemicals with the pretentious assumption that it has any greater worth than an inert rock or clump of dirt. Any god, religion, politic, or philosophy you might subscribe to is just a distraction from the fact that there is no point. We are all comprised of dead matter, and soon even our words will crumble into ash and dust."
"You don't say..." Puddinghat fiddled with a plastic-wrapped hoof filer while a tyrannosaur loomed overhead, swinging a screaming octopus in its jaws. "That must be bad for the sinuses."
"Every time we breathe, it is only poisoning ourselves in anticipation of life's one sweet release." She puffed on the cigarette. "That's why I smoke. I am embracing my own fate. It's an affirmative statement, in its purest, fatalist form."
"Yeah. Uh huh." Puddinghat smiled. "Would you like to get some ice cream while we wait for the supervisor to ring the customer through ahead of us?"
"Everything is pointless, even ice cream," Pinkamena grumbled. "Besides, orange sherbet hasn't existed for centuries."
"Nuh uh!" The Chancellor pointed down the nearest aisle. "I just saw some! It's on sale: two bits per tub!"
Pinkamena dropped the cigarette. She stared blankly into space. Her left eye twitched. Suddenly, her entire body jolted upwards in a bounce. A bright blue sheen erupted in her eyes and her buzzed mane turned a neon shade of pastel pink. "I love sherbet!" Pinkamena grinned a crescent moon. "It's so super duper terrifically special! Heeeheeehee! I can't wait to feel it melting all over my tongue again! Woooohooo!"
"Well, go on ahead! I'll wait for ya!" Puddinghat ducked a screaming, flaming goose and grabbed the packaged hoof filer off the shelf. "I think I just found what I was looking for!" She turned and spoke to the elder clerk. "By the way, do you accept MasterColt?"
"Twilight Sparkle's gonna love this!" Puddinghat exclaimed as she carried the metal filer through the burning, crater-strewn streets of the city. "She's always doing so much late-night pacing, and this is exactly what she'll need to get her hoofsies all smoothe again!"
"Mmmmhmmm!" Pinkamena bounced behind her, her plaid shirt stained with orange sherbet as she dug her muzzle happily into a tub of the bright, creamy dessert. "You should get her some ice cream too, girlfriennnnnd! Heeheehee!"
"Still, though..." Puddinghat made a face as she and Pinkamena stood atop the smoking husk of a bullet-riddled robot sperm whale. "I feel as if I'm forgetting something..." She looked at the metal filer in one hoof, and the black remote in the other. Seething, she flung her hat off and banged her head several times against a stop sign. "Dummy! Dummy! Dummy! Dummy!"
Pinkamena choked on some sherbet, gulped, and shrieked, "What is it?!"
"I forgot the batteries!" Puddinghat whimpered. An F-16 tailspun overhead while a brave stallion parachuted out. She grinned as the resulting explosion lit up her pink figure. "I know!" She held the remote out. "It should have just enough juice to summon another door..."
She flicked the button. The Pinkability Matrix sparked one last time. A giant corn silo fell like a missile from the sky and embedded deep into the street’s asphalt. A wooden door to the farm building squeaked open.
A tall, gray stallion with bloodshot eyes spun around and looked out, waving a flashlight. "Oh, thank heavens!" he exclaimed breathlessly. "Pinkamena! It's me, Clyde! I've been looking all over for you—"
"Uh huh." Puddinghat reached in. "Can I borrow that?" She grabbed the flashlight and slammed the door shut. "Thankies!"
"No! Wait!" Clyde shouted. He was sealed within the wooden silo, which was subsequently punted into the horizon as Discord towered over the street once again.
"You!" he hissed down at the two mares, dropped the smoking locomotives in his grasp, and lifted the two up high in the air. "How many times must I banish you?!"
"Uhhh..." Puddinghat wheezed, smiling nervously as she struggled to hold onto both the flashlight and the black remote. "C-Can I take the physical challenge?"
"Your inane and overused jokes have no effect on me, insect!"
"Hey!" Pinkamena frowned with an orange, creamy mustache. "You let go of her, you big meanie-head!"
"Such talk for a pony with no mane!" Discord opened a portal and flung the plaid-shirted equine through it. "Let's see you summon a breath to chortle in a land of endless ice and cold!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiieeee!"
Chancellor Puddinghat gasped. "Pinkamena! Noooo!"
"Our crops are failing, and the pegasi and unicorns are threatening war!" an emaciated farmer pony in sackcloth whimpered as she stood at the far end of a fire-lit cabin. Outside the stained windows, harsh blizzards pelted the frozen landscape. "What are we going to do, Smart Cookie?"
"Reckon I don't know." A blonde mare sighed as she leaned against the fireplace. "Things were so much easier when Chancellor Blue Harvest was still alive..."
Prophetically, a portal opened and Pinkamena fell... directly down the chimney. "Ow! Ow! Hot hot hot!" She rolled out of the flames, tossing her plaid shirt off and stomping it to ashes with her hooves. "Whew! Heehee! That was fun!"
"Who in the hay are you?!" Smart Cookie remarked with a green-eyed squint.
"I'm lost! Pinkamena blinked. "Hey, why do you ponies look so miserable?"
The shivering farmer stammered, "We're suffering from a horrible famine, and winter has come!" She gulped. "It's the worst cold snap in recorded history!"
"And we can't get anythang done until we find ourselves a new chancellor," Smart Cookie added.
"Hmmm... You don't say...?" Pinkamena stroked her chin in thought, then smiled. "Sounds like a fun job! Heehee! Is the pay good?!"
"And as for you!" Discord turned and growled at the Chancellor in his other hand. "I have the perfect place to send you! A place of endless anguish and suffering! A place where unbaptized souls scream in eternal torment for want of a single drop of water and—"
"Did a bunch of bullies pop your balloon when you were just a kid?"
"Huh?! No! I am Discord, Chaotic Consumer of the Nine Worlds! I have no need for balloons!"
"Because that's dirty cruel!" Puddinghat made a sympathetic pouty face. "No wonder you're so mean and grumpy all the time! If I had ponies march up and pop my balloon, I'd be frustrated too! Of course, I'd run crying to my mom, but that's only because she was there for me—"
"Silence! Be quiet, impudent equine!" Discord thrashed and angsted. "I shall entertain the topic of maternal ennui and balloon popping no longer!" He summoned another portal and flung Puddinghat through it like a fastball. "Into the blazes with you!"
"So, Dad, level with me."
"Sure thing."
"Why forty days and forty nights? I mean, for the love of you, ten days of nonstop rain is overkill enough!"
"Well you see, Lucy, my chosen people had this thing for scores of years and some-such..."
"Ah."
"And besides, back in the day, I was just kind of pulling numbers out of my hat. I mean, heh, the only reason Methuselah lived for so long was because I fell asleep at the sickle."
"Ohhhh. And here I thought you were just giving him the same treatment you gave Enoch, the lucky bastard."
"Heheh. Like me to buy you another drink?"
"Nah, I'm abstaining until the next wave of souls falls down from an Alice Cooper concert."
"You know, he's part of my flock now."
"Get out of town! I swear to you, does anyone pay me his dues anymore?!"
"Gaaaaaaaaaaaah! Ooof!"
"Whoah! Whoah! Whoah!"
"Since when did you dabble in portals, Lucy?"
"Wasn't my doing. Must be your other son."
"Yeeshie Weeshie... Where am I?"
"I think you're a little bit too young for this establishment, young filly."
"Actually, I'm kind of lost. Do either of you two know how to replace a remote's batteries?"
"Here, my child. Allow me."
"Pfft. Show off."
"What? Your brother's not the only expert on good samaritanism."
"'He leadeth me besides still Radio Shacks. He restoreth my dvd player.'"
"Okay, that's pushing it."
"Wow, Mister! Heehee! You've got big hands!"
"All the more to hold the whole world with. Ahhh... There we go! Good as new!"
"Thankies! I've been trying to change the batteries in this thing for—like—forever! And when I say forever, I really mean about twenty pages of absurdist randomosity!"
"You've got yourself a winner there, Dad."
"Hmmm. Apparently. Are you lost, child?"
"Well, as much as I'd like to share a bottle of sarsaparilla and smell burning sulfur for a spell, I kinda have to get back to this burning Maretropolis where there's a giant dragon-lizard-dude thingy of chaos..."
"Say no more, my child. I shall send thee forthwith!"
"Heehee! Thanks a bunch!"
"On you go!"
"Weeeeeeee—"
"Heh, well that was sure random. Falling ponies from the sky, huh? That's not what John prophesied."
"Is this the result of you dabbling in a horse tranquilizer market with the youth upstairs?"
"Pfft. Hardly. Besides, I got an even better question for ya."
"Shoot."
"What's with your hands? I mean, like, seriously. Did you fall in love with Brendan Fraser movies over the last twenty years?"
"To be honest, I couldn't answer that, Lucy."
"You know, I really can't blame you. Personally, I've been utterly confused since the last scene divider."
"Into the blazes with you!" Discord had shouted. After flinging Chancellor Puddinghat through the portal, he spun around only to be struck in the face with Chancellor Puddinghat flying out another. "Ooof!"
"Hi! I'm back!" She grinned into his eyes as she straddled his face.
"Impossible!"
"No, improbable! I-I mean impinkable! I-I-I mean... I've got the Pinkability Matrix working again!" The Chancellor fumbled for the red button of her remote. "If you just gimme a second, I can send you back to the timeline you came from—"
"Nnnngh—No!" Discord grasped her once again in his giant paw. His flaming eyes narrowed on her as he sneered, "Why would I wish to go back to the realms of chaos before the foundations of the Earth?!" He grinned wickedly. "I am a GOD here!"
"Say, that reminds me," Puddinghat wheezed. "I just came from a bar where there was a big bearded guy who sounded like the lead character from Encineigh Man..."
"No more talking! Nnngh! I swear! You are worst pony! I am going to tear you fluffy limb from fluffy limb—"
"Heehee! You've got cute eyes!"
Discord froze in place. The optics in question blinked. "Huh?"
"They look just like deviled eggs! Mmmm! Scrumptious! Heehee! You make me think about early morning breakfast on the rock farm!"
"I... I am Discord, Supreme Wielder of Chaos," the draconequus grunted, although the menace in his voice was slightly drained. "I know nothing of this... ‘breakfast.’"
Puddinghat gasped wide. "You mean you've never had blueberry muffins?! Buttered biscuits?! Hash browns?! Steaming grits?! Waffles and jam?! Pancakes and maple syrup?!"
"Hash... browns..." Discord squinted, as if in a trance. Slowly, he shrank, literally decreasing in size as the growling tone evacuated his calming throat. "Maple syrup..." He gulped. "M-Marshmallow cereal?"
"So you do know about breakfast?"
"I... m-may have heard mortals speak of it while I genocidally incinerated the millions of them," Discord murmured as he placed Pinkie down and stood a short ten meters above her in the street. "Also something about sliced bananas and... orange juice?"
"Mmmm—I love orange juice!" Pinkie bounced around her. "It's the best thing ever! Especially on a warm summer morning and you down a whole glass of it and it sends a delicious chill up your spine! Brrrrrr! Heeheehee! Oh, it's so wonderful to be alive..."
"Yes..." Discord blinked, gazing at his reflection in a broken sheet of glass with a new sense of awe. "So... Wonderful..." He blinked as his gray muzzle turned a curious, rosy shade. "Do... Do you really think my eyes look cute?"
"Yes! And they haven't even begun to dazzle until they've filled themselves up with some good 'ol fashion breakfast pastry baking!" She tugged on Discord's talons and pulled him across the burning downtown. "Here! Come with!"
"Wh-Where are you taking me?"
"Heehee! Time to get some oven mitts on ya!"
"And you sprinkle the cinnamon over the top of them until they sparkle with a pretty shine!"
"This is utterly fascinating!" Discord said with a grin, spreading sugary dust over several half-baked muffins on a counter. The two stood in a partially caved-in kitchen with the flaming Maretropolis in the background. "I never realized it before, but making delicious edibles is joyous! I can't believe I spent so many years disemboweling the bodies of the innocent and inventing new forms of the plague! It's just all so... boring by comparison!"
"Heehee! I know! This is fun, right?" Puddinghat tugged and tugged until she finally pried the spatula out of the dead body of a crushed cook and hoofed it his way. "Why spend all your time destroying sad things when you can create happy things?"
"Miss Pie, I absolutely must know more about this... fun!"
"Maybe after taste-testing, I can show you how to pull practical jokes!"
"Practical... jokes...?"
Outside the edge of the city, the sky was still on fire. However, most of the thunder and chaos had ended. Slowly, a bunker door slid open, and one of several ponies poked their heads out, jittery with fear.
"Is it over?" a pony stammered, trotting out onto the debris-littered street. "Have we survived armageddon?"
Suddenly, a bucket of glue poured onto the stallion from the left while a pillow-full of feathers littered him from the right.
"Run! Hurry!" Puddinghat shouted at the top of her lungs. "It's the Chicken-ing! Don't become one of them!"
"Aaaaah! Save me, Goddess!" the stallion flailed and tripped over himself, covered from head to hoof in downy strands. "Gaaaaaugh! I dun wanna die!" He slammed into a telephone pole and fell unconscious.
"Snkkkt—Hahh hahh hahh!" Discord hovered on tiny wings, hugging himself in midair.
Puddinghat bounced giddily around him. "Heeheehee!"
Discord wiped a tear loose from his eye. "This pranking is outrageous! I loved the look on his face when he felt as if he was afflicted by a poultry pox!"
"Heehee! Yeah! This one time I convinced Dashie that her hoof was bigger than her face because she had contracted haypes! Heeeheeehee! She couldn't sit on her flank for a week after all the impulsive shots she went to the doctor to take!"
"Haaugh haaugh haaugh!"
“Next time, let’s use chocolate rain instead of glue and cotton candy instead of feathers!” Pinkie Pie gleamed. “We’ll tell them that they’ve turned into ceiling insulation!”
“Oh, what a joyous idea! Absolutely marvelous! I must try that sometime! Hahhh hahhh hahh!”
"Heehee—Hey! You've got a nice voice!"
"Hahaha—Ahem. I do?"
"Yeah! You sound like that one dude on Star Trot! Ooooh! I bet you'd make a good singer! Come with me!"
"Where to?"
"To balladly go where no draconeconeconeconequus has gone before!"
Puddinghat's hooves slammed over piano keys within a dilapidated nightclub full of dismantled zombie monkeys. She gestured towards the serpentine figure on the stage. "Take it away!"
Discord finished wailing into the microphone. "How wonderfulllll liiiiife isssss—Now you're in the worllllld!"
The Chancellor struck a final note, spun on her stool, and hopped down before the stage to clap her hooves loudly. "Woohoo! Way to go! Move over, Nicolt Kidmare!"
Discord wiped his sweating brow from a long session of karaoke. "You really think I have a smidgeon of talent?"
"Well, you're no Ky Burtrot, but at least you sing like you mean it!"
"There are so many songs that I can throw my lungs at!" Discord planted his rosy dimples together. "It's like a whole new world!"
Puddinghat frowned. "Don't you start...."
"Snkttt—Hah hah hah!"
"Heehee! Hey, do you like orange sherbet?"
"Do I?! Show me!"
Discord and Chancellor Puddinghat sat on the rooftop of the Maretropolis’ one remaining skyscraper. Their limbs dangled over the edge as they slurped at their orange push-pops and stared, enchanted, at the burning skyline full of flames and scorch marks. A lingering winged monkey or two were gobbled up by a dragon before the beast retreated through one of the many blue portals.
"And then I said, 'Ribbed for her pleasure? More like robbed for his plunder!'" Puddinghat giggled into her push-pop.
"Hahahaha! Oh, this 'humor' is so amazing!" Discord grinned wide. "I've been doing it all wrong, Miss Pie! Chaos is but a gag in the comedy routine of life! What's the point in making a destructive piece of art if everyone's too busy being dead to appreciate it!"
"Totally!" Puddinghat licked at the last of her sherbet. "Just what you said! Also, explosions!"
"I can't wait to turn over a new leaf and show the world the brand new Discord!"
"Yeah, well, that's just the thing." Puddinghat pouted. "Swirlstar the Goateed gave me and the other timeline Pinkies this big, long speech about some nasty do-badder named the Anti-Marenitor. And if she's as evil as I think she is, soon we're not gonna have a world to do fun things with—Or an entire universe! That's like... fifty-two worlds at least!"
"Hmmm... What an enormous buzzkill," Discord remarked. "Just a day or two ago, I would have seen such a powerful being as a companion in arms. Now, I can only perceive her as a certifiable nemesis. Not to mention a big grump."
"Heehee! I know, right?"
"Tell you what, Pinkie." Discord gulped the last of his push-pop whole and extended a talon to her with a grin. "Let's cut a deal, shall we? You hoof me the Pinkability matrix, and I go and teach this Miss Anti-Moron a thing or two about what it means to be a true god of chaos."
"Jee... I dunno..."
"In other words, I'll make sure her plans of universe-destroying goes 'finito,'" Discord added with a snapping talon and a wink. "Besides, it's the least I can do for the first mortal in eternity to have poetically complimented my eyes."
Puddinghat grinned wide. "Well, that sounds like a good deal to me!" She tossed him the black remote. "Still..." She sighed.
"Hmm? What troubles you, my fine, fluffy friend?"
"I was hoping all this time to get a swell birthday present for Twilight." Puddinghat sniffled. "I promised her that I foresaw a really special one in her future."
"Heheh... Miss Pie..." Discord wrapped an arm around her in a platonic side-hug. "If I may be so bold to suggest, the best birthday gift—or offering of any sort—that you can give Miss Sparkle is your friendship. Brighten her days with your presence. Heaven knows, you've certainly transformed mine."
"Hey..." Pinkie's bright eyes moistened slightly. "That was really sweety-weetie of you! Thanks!"
"Don't mention it. And, who knows, maybe you'll fetch her a new bicycle while you're at it. Or—heck—a book on bicycle riding, since that seems to be more of her forte."
"Heehee.. Yeah..."
"Whelp, time's-a-waisting." Discord slapped his talon over the button and opened a glowing portal to Canterlot Castle. "Ain't no probability device that I can't wrap a claw around. Looks like our escapade has come to an end."
"Will I ever see you again?" Puddinghat remarked. She briefly went cross-eyed. "Oh... Wait... uhm..."
"I'm sure of it." He grabbed her by the tail and flung her swiftly through the portal. "Go forth to the emerald fields of Equestria and bring them ponydom’s finest creation!"
"Whoahhhh—" She flew into the portal as the bright light disappeared.
Discord smiled after her. "Bring them pink."
"—Whoahhh—Ooof!" Chancellor Puddinghat landed in a crouch, her body fluctuating with chronaton lightning bolts. The robe and hat of regal earth ponydom dissolved from her limbs, and she stood in her naked pink glory in the center of the Starswirl the Bearded Wing. "Weee! Let's do that again!" She hopped in place several times, then paused to blink. "Oh. Right. What was I doing?"
From the center of the ancient library, there was a bright flash. She trotted slowly around a bookcase and peered forth. Her past self was being flung into a vortex in the center of the large hourglass. All that was left behind was a black outfit the size of a pony.
"Hey! A jumpsuit!" Puddinghat grinned and slid into the article in question. "Heehee! I love jumping!" As she slid her forelimbs through the sleeves, she bumped into another bookcase and a scroll landed on her head. "Owie!" She knelt down and picked the item up in her garbed hooves. "Hmmm... A one-time use time travelling spell..."
For the briefest of moments, a sparkling shine twinkled in her eyes.
"Yes! Finally, a cool birthday present! Thanks, Discord!" Pinkie bounced happily across the room as the morning light poured brightly through the windows. "Twilight, Twilight! I found something!"
