Today was a special day.

Twilight Sparkle looked over the edge of the hot air balloon basket.

She was sent by the princess Celestia, her mentor in life and magic, to do her first serious task. It didn’t mean that she was never tasked with anything serious before - although her definition of serious might have been a little skewed after living in the royal castle for several years.

But in such a place nothing that was truly considered serious could be assigned to an overly eager teenager, despite being princess’s personal student. You wouldn’t want to allow kid deal with foreign ambassadors or distribute country's tax money. Even if you do, that and many other things were simply prohibited for anyone without royal blood or administrative position.

Well, Twilight didn’t mind too much. She was happy to keep learning, even if only theory. It was slightly weird that princess, aside from other things, also seemed to be trying to teach her how to, essentially, rule the country, but maybe she just wanted to preserve her ages-worth of experience. Twilight never said no to a new knowledge anyway.

“Twilight! Are we there yet?”

Young voice interrupted her train of thoughts, and reminded her that her little brother couldn’t actually reach the edges of the basket - so he had to sit, bored, the entire journey.

“Not at all, Spike! I can already see it.” She answered, feeling a bit guilty about his situation. However, royal guard behind her directly warned her in the beginning of the journey to not lift her brother up under no condition. After all, one strong gush of wind was enough to lose balance - and Spike might receive a quick and bone-breaking trip to the ground.

Things might have been different if any of them had wings, but they didn’t, so sticking to the rules was the safest option, and frankly, Twilight’s favorite.

“Twilight.” Spike’s voice did not sound amused at all.

“We could see town from the balcony from the very beginning. Telling me that you can see it now does not help at all.”

He was right, in a way.

Their trip, although considered small journey, was just one train stop away from home, or twenty minutes of straight flight on the balloon.

Which is in no way lowered its importance, of course.

“I mean, we leaving the forest already. I think we will land very soon.”

Twilight prepared mentally to go over all possible things she might need to fulfill her mission.

Checklist... Check.

Pencil... Check.

The copy of world-ending prophesy she found in the old book that mysteriously appeared in her room this morning... Check.

All done.

It might be important to note that the mission she had here had nothing to do with the prophesy, and she has been very disappointed in the princess for ignoring or deflecting any attempts at conversation about it.

That said, this book did appear mysteriously just before she was sent here and although it was placed in a way that might have made other person not notice anything strange about it, Twilight could easily spot it right away. Twilight knew her books. And maybe, just maybe, she might have had OCD. Anyway, this one was placed there intentionally.

Bearing all things in mind, she just might have formed a theory that princess wanted to send her away to safety, while she would herself deal with the problem in secret. Twilight didn’t know why she would give her the book though. That, or she expected her to deal with it somehow. But that wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

Place where they were heading to was called Humanville. It might not sound very original, but it was simple and rolled off the tongue well. Twilight could really see it all the way from her room in the castle, mostly because castle was built on top of the highest mountain in the vicinity. Together with the city. It was quite an impressive architectural wonder.

Basket touched the ground, shaking Twilight out of her thoughts again, and she cleared her head and hopped out. She stretched her stiff legs while casually looking around.

“Earth... I had missed you.” Depressingly mouthed Spike behind her, jokingly patting the ground with clawed hand.

“Right. Mr. Guard, you can return for now. We will stay until the end of the celebration.” Said Twilight to the guard in the basket and received nod in response.

Honestly, it felt like guards had some hidden rule that they were prohibited from talking too much. If Twilight didn’t have her older brother serving with them, she might have actually believed so.

“Anyway, back to the business. Princess expects me to oversee this year’s Summer Sun Celebration in this little town. Doesn’t seem like a very hard task. Let’s check out those who are responsible for preparations.”

She fished out a piece of paper with a series of names written on it.

“First... Pinkie Pie.”

“Yes?”

Twilight jumped back from the sudden sound. While she was looking into the list, girl with a curly hair, dressed in bright the three-colored dress somehow managed to sneak right before her. Twilight could swear she didn’t hear any footsteps.

“Ugh. You scared me.” Complained Twilight, holding onto her racing heart.

“Sorry. I just wanted to surprise you! Anyway, what are you doing?” Answered girl in a cheery tone.

Although Twilight wasn’t agreeing with her methods, she decided to let it go. Girl seemed so happy, scolding her felt like kicking a puppy.

“Um. Well, we were planning on finding certain people.”

“Oh!” Girl seemed to like the idea. “And who are you searching for?”

“First, Pinkie Pie.”

“Yes?”

“No, I mean, we searching... Wait. Why did you say “yes” just now?”

Girl seemed amused by Twilight’s confusion.

“Because I thought you we talking to me, silly!”

“You mean...” Twilight felt a bit like like an idiot. “You are Pinkie Pie?”

“Yep.” Followed cheery response.

Twilight held her head.

“I can’t believe you just showed up when I said your name.”

“Well, many people told that to me.” Pinkie made a confused face. “I have no idea why.”

“Don’t you have stuff to ask her?” Suddenly interrupted Spike. “I know you girls love to talk and stuff, but c’mon. We standing in the middle of the street, under the sun. In the middle of summer.” He pointed at her accusatory.

“If you keen on continuing, I’ll be off for the ice-cream.”

Twilight nervously chuckled. “Excuse my little brother. Even though he has draconic blood, he still hates hot weather.”

“Don’t worry! I don’t like hot weather too! I thought today was going to be cloudy, but it seems like weather workers are slacking off today again.” Pinkie answered with an almost apologetic expression.

Naturally, Twilight had to answer to that. “Why are you acting sorry? It’s not your fault, after all.”

Pinkie shamefully looked away. “Maybe not, but I don’t like how it portraits our town to the newcomer.”

“Wait, how did you know that I was new to town?” Curiously asked Twilight.

Pinkie seemed to lit up with pride.

“Obviously, because I know everyone in here! I know their names, I know where they live, I know when their birthday is, I know what they like, and when they wake up and go to sleep, I know...”

As much as impressive it was, Twilight couldn’t help but find it just a tiny bit creepy. Thankfully, she wasn’t exposed to the wonders of the internet, or otherwise, “creepy” would have instead turned into “Ad provider”.

When Pinkie finally finished showing her incredible intelligence gathering abilities, Twilight decided to applaud and change direction of the dialog into the safer path.

“Yeah, anyway, I was searching for you, to...” She looked at the paper again. “... To check how goes preparation on baking... Stuff.” She finished, looking unimpressed in the description’s detailing.

“Well, yeah. I volunteered to be responsible for the baking most delicious cakes for the celebration Humestria has ever seen! I hope princess tries one. I heard she is a big fan of baked goods!”

'Well, you can see that from her figure, no matter how much she tries to hide it.' Flew though the Twilight’s mind, before she suppressed the disrespectful thought.

“Yeah, well... So how it’s going?”

“Just fine! I got a new bag of flour yesterday, and I’m already nearly out. You just have to try something tomorrow; I really went all out...”

When Twilight was finally done with checking for preparations, exhausted by going all over the town and meeting all sorts of people, she took her ice-cream cone from Spike and pushed open the door to the house that was reserved for her.

She was greeted by an unnatural darkness.

Before she managed to fully process what was going on, lights blinded her and confetti exploded into her face.

Ice-cream ball landed on the floor with the wet *splat *.

“Hey, Twilight! Welcome to Humanville! What do you think about my surprise party?” Shouted Pinkie Pie, standing in the crowd in the party-decorated room.

Holding her heart, Twilight only managed to squeeze a weak smile.

“I think that you should open a haunted house, Pinkie. You’ll do great.”

Author's Note

A little change of Pov, before we talk to characters on the opposite side.
Need to show you that things not quite as they go in canon here. Slightly different details, slightly different personalities.

After all, Alt. Reality tag and stuff.

I have literally fallen asleep writing this. Not because i was bored, but because it was friday evening.