A Pie by any Other Name

Chapters

Chapter 1: Less Isn't Any More
Chapter 2: A Turn of Events
Chapter 3: Things Yet to be Seen
Chapter 4: A Stalemate Encountered
Chapter 5: Would Still be Just as Pink
Chapter 6: A Broken Stalemate
Chapter 7: Things to Remain Unseen
Chapter 8: How to Turn Events
Chapter 9: More Isn't Any Less
Epilogue: The Short Run Up
Prologue: A Long Run Up

Chapter 1: Less Isn't Any More

The impossible odds of the eventual. The pain that persists. A visit out of the pink. An incident with a donkey's tail. Part of the job. The inherent flaws of simplicity. The deep cacky.

Twilight trotted through Ponyville with a smile on her face. It was a good day - the sun was shining and the world was at peace. So much so that she actually had the availability to not be in Canterlot for the next little while. It was nice to relax in the town that had been a home for her over the years since she had met the ponies that would change her life for the better.

Checking over her shopping list, she hummed a happy tune to herself. True, as the princess of Equestria she didn't have to do any shopping - and in fact with the variety of responsibilities she had too take over since her ascension she rarely had the opportunity - but when the stars aligned and she had a free moment to spare, Twilight enjoyed to walk out in the sun for a short while and simply enjoy picking up some sundries and other miscellaneous items.

Etching one last check mark, Twilight nodded happily, having completed her shopping list with time to spare. She levitated the scroll into her saddlebags, deciding that with the weather forecasted to be clear today she might as well just take a walk around the old place.

The town had barely changed in her absence - save for the slowly growing sprawl of the town. More an more ponies wanted to flock to the town where Twilight had gotten her earnest start. It did her heart good to see the town prosper and grow while not morphing into some parody of itself in the mean time. Ponyville could always do with more ponies - though perhaps fewer of certain sorts.

Some of the new arrivals to Ponyville simply sought an idyllic town in the middle of nowhere that was a half hour train ride from Canterlot where they could live in peace and moonlight the more risqué places that weren't in their backyard. Other ponies liked Ponyville because of the surprisingly lenient tax policy combined with the nearby source of organic apple cider.

Others were the sort that Twilight didn't particularly enjoy - hero worshippers. Some ponies, for any variety of odd reasons that Twilight never could quite grasp, thought that by moving to Ponyville they would find themselves naturally moving in the hoofsteps of Twilight Sparkle - which of course would mean they too would become royalty.

To be fair, according to the laws of probability one of these ponies might just eventually get proven right. Unfortunately for them, probability said that the next pony who would move to Ponyville and become an alicorn and then ascend to the status of royalty wasn't due for another two millennia.

Had these fortune seekers been serious about becoming royalty and had done a modicum of research into the topic, they might've found that the actual best chance at achieving this impossible dream of theirs was currently in a small village to the northeast of the Crystal Empire. According to the laws of probability, the very next pony to immigrate to that town would become the newest ruler of the long extinct Empire of Borealis and would raise it to a state of glory beyond belief.

How unfortunate that that town was currently under thirty thousand gigatons of ice and snow.

Ponyville, by contrast, had a rail line right to it. The forecast for the next miracle ascension might not be for a long time out, but probability also said that Twilight had ascended two to three years early. In short, probability could stuff it.

Twilight, however, wasn't concerned about the probabilities of an unlikely usurper. She was more concerned about if she should take the time to go by the School of Friendship. Sure, she had free license to do so and Starlight doubtlessly would be happy to see her; but did Twilight really want to make a surprise royal visit?

Honesty said no; she'd much rather just make a surprise visit and leave the whole royalty bit out of it. The problem was that any visit became a royal one with her being the princess. She really wished she could go back to the days of making a normal social call on a friend while they were at work and not have to worry about if her presence would cause said work to grind to a halt.

In the end, Twilight simply walked about Ponyville in a circuitous path that eventually led her into the Castle of Friendship. She did want to visit her friends - at least the ones that still lived in the area - before she had to go back to Canterlot, but that could wait until after work hours had come and gone and the world could get on towards leisure.

Arriving at her old home, she gave a sigh of contentment. It might've been aesthetically the inferior to a heap of rocks, but it was hers - it had even grown on her over time. Though, if there was one thing in particular she could look to changing, it would be the empty space between the flaring out of the second tier of the castle and the main doors. Perhaps a neat little banner or flag would tie it together nicely?

Entering the dusty place, Twilight locked the door behind her, giving a small sigh as she levitated her saddlebags off her back. She blinked her eyes in pain, having caught some sort of glint in them from something - likely the buckles on her saddle bags.

Filing that away to never be looked at again, she wandered through the corridors of the castle until she got to the more residential sections of the building, where she sent her saddlebags over to a table before flopping unceremoniously onto a beanbag that gave a blast of suffocatingly stale dust at her sudden introduction to its plush surface. Twilight coughed for a few moments, waving the worst of it away from her face with a hoof.

She'd have to remember next time to fluff out the beanbag before flopping into it.

A moment later she sunk deeper into the stale comfort of the old bag, heaving a sigh as she tried to rest her mind. It didn't help she had so much to think about, but she always tried to practice a bit of downtime for her brain. There was no sense in running herself ragged, but there also was no sense in not making each second as productive as it could be - the problem was finding a workable balance between those concepts of how she ought to manage her time.

As she lay there, doing her best to destress and clear her mind of the turbulent thoughts of rulership, her eyes wandered over to the mantle above the infrequently used fireplace. She gave a faint grin as her eyes passed over framed pictures that showed such wonderful memories from before she was a princess. So few survived Tirek's attack, and she was glad to have at least these.

Then her eyes fell on the newest picture and her heart lurched. She had put that frame up herself - much as the others - and yet somehow it jumped out and surprised her. It leapt out from the alleys of forgotten memories and ran a sword of emotion straight through her heart.

Twilight didn't fight the tears, letting her head fall back to the beanbag as she simply existed in her renewed pain. How had she forgotten that picture? How in the world had she managed to perform the delicate dance around all other sore memories in Ponyville and yet manage to forget the one she had framed to keep in her own second home?

She lay there for quite some time, crying what tears she had, doing her best to make it a silent cry. True, there was no pony around who might've heard her if she had wailed. She could've shouted her lungs out and the castle wouldn't have let a sound slip outside - it was a good house like that. But no, she couldn't wail as her heart melted, it wouldn't do. She had to practice composure during grief, much as Celestia had talked about over tea that one time.

She had to remain solid even when she was crumbling. Her weakest point still had to be stronger than any other pony's strongest. She was the monarch of Equestria, she had to keep up appearances even when no creature was around to see her actual appearance. It killed her inside, but she couldn't let herself fall apart in the way she wanted.

And then a knock rang through the castle.

It was an oddity of the castle that, despite no pony even being able to hear you while you were inside if you kept the windows closed, you could always hear somepony knocking at the front door. You could have been at the very top of the tower and you would've heard the knocker and known it was the front door. Twilight had always enjoyed that feature of the building.

Always; except for right then.

Pulling herself together, she slowly stood up and walked through the many halls while dabbing at her eyes with a hankie. She hated having to entertain at the best of times; but now was even worse. She wanted to curl up in a ball and simply coast until she had herself back under control, but the fates had a different idea. Some might've said a better idea, but the betterness of it was debatable.

Opening the door, Twilight locked up instantly as she was given a heavy tight, very pink hug. Twilight would've screamed or possibly might've just ran away in a different frame of mind, but the frame of mind she had had shifted from the second she had opened to the time she had been hug about seventy-eight point seven two four times.

"Twilight! I knew I saw you in town, and some other ponies said so too! I'm so happy to see you! Have you come by just to visit? Are things alright in Canterlot? How's Spike? Oh, Twilight, it's good to see you, my purple pony princess!" Pinkie yammered on. Twilight felt herself flush slightly at her alliterated title - the possessive making Twilight wish she really was possessed by the mare. Of course, she wished for other things as well, but they were many and widely varied so they didn't all bare mentioning.

"P-Pinkie..." Twilight breathed out, slowly returning the hug. "I... hi." She said lamely, patting the other mare's back tentatively. "I... could you run that by me again?" Pinkie laughed, hopping away from Twilight with a gigantic, goofy grin.

"You never change, Twilight!" Pinkie said, whether it was an imperative or a declarative wasn't entirely clear. "I just wanted to come by and say 'hi' since I knew you were in town and I was in town and being in the same town means we can say 'hi', so I did!"

"Y-yes..." Twilight stammered, nodding as she did her best to understand what Pinkie was even saying. Sometimes it was so hard to follow the mare - though at least in this case it seemed straight forward enough. "Would you like to come in?" Twilight asked on reflex, kicking herself internally even as the words came out of their own volition.

"Sure!" Pinkie chirped happily before bounding inside the castle without a second thought - likely having also skipped the first thought too. Twilight sighed inwardly, doing her best to be a good host despite having to work around her emotional hang ups. Today was not a good day to have to deal with Pinkie - not that any since the wedding were.

"So, how have you been doing?" Twilight asked, doing her best to act natural.

"Oh, I've been really busy with Lil' Cheese. Sandwich has been out on tour and its made things rather tough because there's, like, no babysitters about who can handle all her energy! I mean, right now she's with Fluttershy and Discord, but that only works out every so often!" Pinkie spewed with the greatest of ease.

Ah, yes, Lil' Cheese. Twilight smiled genuinely at the mention of the little filly. She was so much like her mother that it hurt. Twilight loved the little thing with almost as much passion as she loved Pinkie. Of course, it was more socially acceptable to dote on her adopted niece than it was to love on Pinkie, but even so.

Twilight giggled, "You remember the time Lil' Cheese decided I was the donkey for her game of pin the tail on the donkey?" Pinkie nodded vigorously.

"Oh yeah, she'll not be living that down for years!" Pinkie said with a laugh. It wasn't a malicious thought, it was just the truth. Lil' Cheese - no matter where she went in life, would always be that filly that once stuck the Princess of Equestria with a fake tail. It hurt at the time - the thin pin pricking Twilight's flank with all the force of a toddler behind it - but now it was something to laugh at.

The worst - or best - part was that Lil' Cheese had taken off her blindfold before sticking Twilight.

"You should bring her to the Council meetings more often." Twilight said with a sigh and a nod. "I know the last few times were because of the dearth of babysitters, but maybe just make it a regular thing; I'm sure the others wouldn't mind."

"Oh, I couldn't do that!" Pinkie said dramatically. "Sure, she's getting better at behaving now that she's turned one, but she's still so young and fidgety! I know I'm fidgety, but I can tone it down when I want - she's just at thirty-seven out of ten every waking second!"

"And a twenty-two when asleep." Twilight laughed. Pinkie joined in as well, dramatically falling on the floor with a whump before rocking back and worth while howling a bit too loudly. It only made Twilight laugh more.

They stayed like that for a good long while, Twilight sitting down while rubbing the tears out of her eyes and Pinkie rolling about while laughing her head off. It was good. Twilight knew she needed a good laugh, and this was it.

"There's that smile!" Pinkie said, rolling out of her laughter and back to her hooves with the greatest of ease. Twilight paused, still chuckling to herself as she tried to figure what Pinkie meant.

"What?" She said with a quizzical smile.

"You silly-willy!" Pinkie said, sitting down heavily. "I saw you. You were all bleary eyed and looked like you'd been crying. I can't have my friends feeling sad, so I did my best to get you to smile. Not just a polite smile, mind you, but a real happy smile. Like this!" She said, pulling back the corners of her mouth into an enormous grin that consumed more of her face than there had been face before. It was strange, but certainly not the strangest thing Pinkie could do.

Twilight sighed, still smiling. "Yeah..." She admitted, her eyes cast down to the floor, "I've just been feeling down. A lot of things have been going on, and some... less than happy memories have been buzzing around my head."

"Well, it's part of my job to make you as happy as possible - despite circumstances! So, what can I do to make you happy?" Pinkie asked, looking Twilight dead in the eye with the most serious expression she could manage. Twilight knew what Pinkie could do to make her happy - most of which shouldn't be said near Lil' Cheese or most anypony else - but those weren't the things Pinkie was thinking of when she asked.

In the end, the only solution to her whole problem was the complete excising of all emotion beyond platonic feelings towards Pinkie. Twilight desperately loved Pinkie, and nothing could truly stop that but... the removal of the emotion. That was it!

"That's it!" Twilight shouted in obedience to the law of narrative convenience. Pinkie was puzzled by this, not having realize which plot she was in yet - having not bothered to stop by the writers room on her way over. Twilight scampered off, leaving a minorly puzzle Pinkie who couldn't get a word in edgewise in the dust.

It was such a simple plan! Twilight could hardly believe she hadn't thought of it before! Scanning through tome after tome, she drew up the process in her mind, the whole thing coming into a clear focus. Such a simple plan lay before her. Better yet, it might just work!

True, it was - once one was to consider the implications of the plan - a rather cruel one. It meant that Twilight would not only stop loving Pinkie in the same way, but also forget that she ever had. Most memory alteration magics had the side effect that they would remold memories and experiences to fit the core idea of the spell - and so make it invulnerable to those with eidetic memories.

It wouldn't solve the problem of journals - of which Twilight was a faithful keeper - but seeing as Twilight wrote them for the purpose of having it out of her and on paper as opposed to actually reading it at some vague point in the future, she was in no danger of finding it later on and being puzzled by her own relation of how much pain love had caused her.

Who knew? If Twilight managed it just right she might even fall in love with somepony else. She didn't want to at the moment, but the thought did bring another sort of comfort as she poured over tome after tome.

"Alright alright..." She muttered, pulling out a box of arcane chalk which she used to trace out the complicated patterns of the spell. It was true that most powerful spells could be cast from the memory of the unicorn, or alicorn in this case, but seeing as memorizing a spell circle and casting usually resulted in Twilight forever knowing said spell - something for which Twilight's memory was beyond eidetic on - it was better to use the physical version this time, just to make sure she would never be suspicious about her use of a spell she didn't know and so use the counter charm to undo the effect she was working so hard at now.

That all being considered even as she drew the geometrically precise lines with the exactitude that most ponies needed protractors and compasses for, it is no wonder that Twilight got a bit distracted - lost in her world of concentric circles, complicated spell fractals, looping spirals of immense complexity, and smatterings of the dead language whose glyphs had magical properties for some unknown reason*. Spells were difficult to manage when one was concentrating solely on them, much less when considering moral, philosophical, and emotional complexities intertwined in said spells.
*Saying that it is unknown is actually a carefully constructed fiction created and sustained by mages everywhere. The fact is that any language will suffice as all languages are, in fact, innately magical. One could write the words 'Big Cock' in modern Equestrian using arcanely charged chalk, draw the proper circles, pour sufficient magic into the constructed matrix, and observe all other necessities of the spell and find themselves shortly in the presence of an exceedingly large chicken; it's just that mages prefer to think of themselves as extremely well educated, and its hard to do that when using a language that a three year-old can understand. It has to be more complicated than that, it just has to be.

Twilight nodded to herself, snapping the book shut as she closed her eyes and set it to the side while drawing in the magic that she would need; and then drew in a tad more just to make sure she had more than enough. Memory alteration could be unexpectedly taxing and drain spell matrixes of their entire reserves far faster than what might be anticipated when altering the spell to one's needs - much as Twilight did as routine. She had learned to pour thirty more thaums into her coffee maker than the manufacturer advised - thus voiding the warranty with impunity - every morning due to the extensive modifications she had made to it.

With a long exhale, she bid her memories as she knew them goodbye, and released the energy into the one use chalk around her.

The world - as one expected from such powerful spells - was filled with sparking sounds and the taste of ozone. Energy zipped about, striking the variety of pieces of metal that existed about the room, before arcing right back towards the chalk. The air popped, snapped, and crackled in a legally distinct way that put one in mind of a musician who desperately wanted to write a piece of music that already existed. The world, in general, was a mess that was revving up to explode in sparks that - if all went well - would discharge in a controlled manner.

The explosion came in a sudden, all encompassing wave of sound and energy. It was magnificent, except that Twilight didn't feel different. This might've not been of any concern, but Twilight could also still remember casting a memory alteration spell. That was what Twilight would consider in her own words as nothing less than 'disconcerting', if not a few other choice words. She cracked one of her eyes open and quickly scanned the floor with the expression of one that had just heard the dog being sick and recalled that they had fed the poor thing quite well the evening previous.

The floor, as opposed to what she had expected, was still covered in chalk even as the air around her was thick with magical twinkles that showed that... well, something had happened despite the continued presence of the arcane chalk. You didn't get points of slowly descending light like that from a party popper - you had to do real magic to get that sort of mundane effect just right.

Looking about her more thoroughly, confused as to what might've gone wrong, Twilight finally spotted the issue. There, standing in the only section of discharged chalk, was Pinkie Pie. Looking carefully at the mare, Twilight noted how still the usually energetic mare was, and then noted what part of the circle hadn't dissipated.

Twilight's understanding of the geometry of spellwork was peerless and she was essentially fluent in the ancient writing system that was used by mages everywhere, and what she had before her was something to be concerned about. By sheer happenstance, Pinkie had interrupted the show of magic by standing on top of an important ley line in the spell's prime axis, and so had absorbed not only the larger part of the magic - thus preserving most of the chalk and so nullifying the grand majority of the spell. She had used up a small portion of the spell, leaving behind what - to Twilight's quick inspection - seemed to be the guts of the spell as it were.

Usually the effect would've shot into Twilight who had positioned herself at the center of the series of circles, but many spells - this one included - had multiple secondary nexuses that could function as focus points for the spell's discharge. This would be avoided if the lines were metaphysical, but Twilight had intentionally made them physical so as to not recall them for later cross-examination.

In other words - more particularly the words of one from a different background than Twilight - Twilight was now in 'the deep cacky'.

Armed with years of knowledge on magical subjects, Twilight quickly passed about, reading off the spell she had used and comparing against the spell that remained. The portion of unused chalk accounted for about an eighth of the total circle she had drawn, but unfortunately accounted for about seventy-eight point three three percent of the spell's mechanics. Most of what had been used up was the basic logic parts of spell casting - the 'if's and 'then's that built out the fundamentals of magic causality that couldn't be skimped just because you were trying to be fancy about it - while the rest accounted for about three lines of the spells actual mechanics and the rest was... well, mostly the glue that connected the rather haphazard spell together.

Now that Twilight was looking at the spell with the intent of troubleshooting she could see at least thirty-seven redundancies in the spell that - though probably helpful - should've likely been edited out before the spell had been finished. Heck, it used Taliesin's Conjecture about seven different times through out its structure when Twilight with but a glance could tell it only needed to happen about three times - possibly four if one wanted to be extra safe.

In the short term, more redundancies were good. It made sure the spell fired off safely with plenty of shiny for the foals. The problem was that by setting seven Conjectures across the system, and by not being extremely careful where you put such a fundamental building block of magic, it made it so that this spell had no less that four separate points - that were each the size of a large wagon - onto which a pony could step that would then redirect the flow of magic at that pony instead of the central circle.

That was the problem with ancient wizards and some contemporary mages, they wanted the sparks but didn't care about it being safe for everypony else. They wanted it to go off without killing them and to make a nice show and that was enough. It then became the job of ponies like Twilight to sort out their mess and make a good spell out of a spell that was - at best - passable.

Looking up at Pinkie and retracing the lines that the mare had absorbed mentally, Twilight froze. There were several lines of the actual spell that had fired into Pinkie, but among them were not the portions of the spell that deleted and inserted the memories Twilight wanted from herself. The parts that had hit Pinkie instead were... oh my.

Twilight looked back at her book, and committed a sin.

Taking a pencil, she etched a line through the spellwork - doublechecking what she already knew to be true in the hope that she was mistaken. And then her veins ran cold.

There, on the prime axis of the spell along the line of the second and third intervals, was a word. 'Terosastines'. Now, to anypony but a mage of great learning, this was a bunch of nonsense. The main issue with Terosastines was that it was made up of Teros and Astines. The Astines was part of the spell that fired, but the Teros was among the lines that had stayed behind.

This too, on reflection, was still a bunch of nonsense to anypony without a scholarly degree in certain dead languages or two little spoken languages used by a few tribes of mole people who lived just south of - well, it doesn't matter.

The generalities of it was that when combined, the word was fairly harmless and was built as a sort of spacer word - like an elongated cousin of 'whereas' who went off to college and is an utter pain to deal with at family reunions. The greater issue at play was that Astines was not just a prick, but a malicious piece of shit that actively wanted to smash up windows and scream that it 'wasn't just a phase' before stealing the family car.

Looking at the still Pinkie, Twilight swallowed hard. Without intending it, Twilight had, in effect, fired off a spell of a completely different sort than just memory modification. Astines, the absolute pain in the donkey, had turned what otherwise would've been a harmless jumble of magical fundamentals, into a ready primed weapon.

A mind control spell.

It is to be noted that Twilight wasn't one for swearing - never having seen a good reason for it as she had so many other words to express her distaste at any given situation - but desperate times called for desperate measures.

"Shoot..."

Chapter 2: A Turn of Events

Mathematics of magic and emotion. Citrus and its uses. A wrong step in the incorrect direction. A long awaited kiss. Hello and goodbye. A monologue for two. A resolution made to be broken. The beginnings of a plan.

Twilight frantically consulted her many books on what to do. The spell that had constructed itself out of the incoherent nonsense of the misfired memory altering spell was a potent one for sure, but its counter spell could be as easy as a spark from the horn for all Twilight knew. The issue was that to find the counter spell you first needed the spell.

Most spells had premade counter spells - or in some cases a simple waveform of magic that when introduced to the fabric of the spell would cause the whole thing to resolve itself to a tidy zero whilst still technically being in place. The issue was which this spell would need.

If a spell needed a waveform and you fed it a counter charm, it might cause an instability in the matrixes of the spells, resulting in catastrophic failure; meanwhile the introduction of magic waveform to a spell that wanted a counter charm might result in an excitation of the spell, causing longer lasting and father-reaching consequences than the spell initially intended - either of which for a mental alteration spell of any sort was very bad news.

Twilight scanned page after page of spells for anything that was a convoluted as what she had just fired off. She didn't need an apple to match with her apple, but she did at least need a fruit. Apples to oranges, in this case, would work quite nicely. Unfortunately there was a distinct lack of any fruit, much less citrus. The pages turned up useless coconuts, unhelpful carrots, laughable lettuce, and a few cashews that tried their best but fell a tad short.

In sum total, though many spells - including that inventive number Starlight had tried a while back - had been designed to control ponies over the years, none had approached the impractical redundancies that were the scourge of memory alteration spells that were missing their major components. Twilight did find a variety of instructional manuscripts talking about how to reverse engineer a spell from its counter and other on the arduous journey of finding a counter to a known spell - but none of them suited her needs.

She looked up at Pinkie, tears pooling in her eyes as she found herself truly at a loss.

Twilight wanted to undo her mistake. She wanted to cast the actual spell on herself and throw herself down on her bed to sleep away any malingering memories that tried to prick their way through the spell. She wanted to escape the pain that was seeing Pinkie with somepony else.

Then it struck her.

The spell that had been cast in place of the spell she had wanted was, by fair assessment, a mind control spell of the highest order. It was so overly complicated that it likely would never truly be countered. It was so unrecognizable as a spell that few who found it would be able to decipher what it had become from the arcane signature it left. It was, in short, a perfect excuse - an opportunity. It was the lemons life had presented with a pound of sugar and a convenient jug filled with water.

Twilight's mind was suddenly less filled with concern about how to remove the effect she had brought upon Pinkie, and suddenly focused on how it might be... used? No, that was to prickly a word. Taken advantage of? Certainly not! No... no, her mind was focused on how the spell might be applied to her benefit. That was it!

Pinkie had, before being turned into an unwitting - and arguably unwilling - test subject, expressed a desire to make Twilight happy. Pinkie had, one way or another, told Twilight that she had noticed Twilight being unhappy and had wanted to fix that. Pinkie, being who she was, didn't know what the cause might have been for her friend's state, but had resolved to be the solution.

Ordinarily Twilight knew that Pinkie would never have agreed to do anything of the sort of thing that Twilight needed her to do to make the glum alicorn feel better. Now? Well, now Pinkie was under a spell that there was no known counter to. There was no way to undo the spell, but there were ways that the spell could be applied to achieve the goal Pinkie had set out to accomplish.

"Pinkie..." Twilight began, unsure how this newly concocted spell might work, "Can you hear me?" She waved a hoof in front of the mare, who remained unresponsive. Twilight pressed her lips into a frown and consulted the now defaced spell circle as it appeared in the book. The cut-off complexities of the spell provided for various unfulfilled sums. Things were disorderly to an extreme degree in the original spell - now they were an absolute mess.

Twilight pulled out her blackboard while, setting the original book away without a thought, and brought out a piece of normal chalk to etch out the remade circle. She sorted out the components that had been used - redrawing the circle to focus around the new center as opposed to the nonfunctional original center that had done - as far as Twilight could tell - nothing.

Running the numbers and reading the glyphs as best she could in the way the magic flowed, Twilight arrived at what the new spell was, and quickly turned back towards Pinkie, armed with her new knowledge and a curiosity that needed to be sated.

Lighting her horn, she shot a bolt of energy into Pinkie. The spell that had been formed, by what Twilight could figure, was a sort of unfocussed puppet spell - an admittedly well studied form of mind control magic - that lacked the strings or controls. It did, however, coincidentally have a neat slot in its matrix for a mage to insert a strand of magic into to assume control.

Usually that slot wasn't empty and instead was the part of the spell into which memories were listed that were to be altered and how to alter them, but with the fracture having worked out how it did, it became a sort of handle onto which Twilight could grasp with her magic.

Feeling the new handle in her magic, she turned it this way and that, and found Pinkie following with great ease the tugging at her very mind and - quite possibly - soul. Twilight nodded, reassessing her situation as she released her hold on Pinkie, quickly drawing on the spells of others to make her own.

Lacking a controlling mechanism that was reliable was a problem, but she could insert what essentially was a gearbox into the hole in the spell's mechanism and achieve much the same effect - turning the improvised, unfocused, puppet spell into a sort of automated version of itself. One with levers ready to be pulled, but still independent enough that Pinkie could sing a legally distinct song about a lack of tethers.

A few circles on her board, a few moments of consideration, and a consultation with a diagram of a toy hot air balloon's remote control later and Twilight had her spell matrix prepared. She quickly shoved the blackboard away and took a breath, focusing her mental energies on the task at hoof.

Drawing in the magical energies she needed, she formed a complex system in her mind, which she then moved from her mental space into a physical apparition, and then into the empty slot in Pinkie's spell matrix. A few pieces of fine tuning and a few more added words and Twilight let out a sigh, releasing her magical hold as the newly inserted magical mechanism wormed its way into the home that seemed ready made for it.

Focusing one more time, Twilight reached out and looked over Pinkie with a scanning spell. There it was, the marvelously convoluted spell. A quick identification spell later, and Twilight couldn't help but laugh. A spell that, in all honesty, was majority memory alteration with a mind control gearbox added in for good measure somehow registered in her identification spell's eye as a sort of cosmetic spell.

The thought that this spell - which effectively turned the pony subjected to it into a walking puppet that would obediently follow any command given - had the same arcane signature wafting off of it as a good illusory snout job had was, quite frankly, hilarious.

It was just the sort of joke Twilight would expect Pinkie to love.

With barely any effort, Twilight set Pinkie into motion - giving a spark of magic into the inserted magical gearbox. Pinkie wiggled from head to tail before bursting out in laughter. Twilight couldn't help but join in the face of Pinkie's infectious joy.

"I don't even know what I'm laughing at!" Pinkie howled, flicking a tear away from her eyes as she slowly calmed down. Twilight smiled at this, something in her stirring in a way that it never had before. Something in Twilight whispered just low enough that she couldn't make out what it said, but the feeling behind its metaphorical words was plain to understand.

"You said you wanted to make me happy earlier?" Twilight asked with a smile hiding the anxiety that was rapidly building up inside of her. Pinkie, having calmed down from her laughter, nodded exuberantly. Twilight took in a breath, and then metaphorically flicked a lever in Pinkie.

"Kiss me, Pinkie." She said, the air suddenly feeling a lot thicker as she stood there. Pinkie didn't move for a second, and then all at once zipped up to Twilight and delivered a deep kiss to the alicorn. Twilight was shocked - not the least because it seemed Pinkie was completely wrapped around her head - but quickly found herself melting into the kiss with a contended sigh. It felt right kissing the other mare, and it set off fireworks of joy inside Twilight's mind.

It was a simple locking of the lips, and yet it felt so amazing - Twilight could hardly believe that it was this good! Moreover, it only seemed to be getting better! Neither Pinkie nor Twilight were doing anything to make that especially true beyond snogging their hearts out, but the longer the kiss lingered the better and better it felt, the more passions it stirred up, and the deeper the desire it satisfied.

Twilight found every worry, every stress, and every anxiety suddenly so much more irrelevant as she kissed the pink mare - unconsciously letting her eyes roll back while her eyelids fluttered madly. Her heart felt as if it was racing yet standing still all at once. She felt release of something deep down - something that she had never known had been restrained. It was... well - at the risk of irritating mages everywhere - it felt magical.

They stayed like that for but a short moment, but the time seemed to stretch to an immense length. It felt as though the kiss lasted years on end, that they had grown old with their lips locked together and had lived a splendid life alone in some sequestered corner of Equestria.

Reality, in response, tapped its foot impatiently whilst looking at its watch with an expression of unparalleled condescension - waiting not so patiently for Twilight to get back with the program.

Pinkie pulled away from the kiss two seconds after starting it, giving Twilight a broad smile. Twilight, dumbstruck and blushing from the kiss she had spent many a night fantasizing about, stood there with her mouth hanging open. Pinkie, being who she was, put a hoof under Twilight's chin.

"Gee, thanks, Pinkie; that was a really great kiss!" Pinkie said out the side of her mouth in a terrible impression of Twilight while moving the loose jaw up and down in time with the words. Twilight, broken from her revelry, shook her head before focusing on Pinkie, who was giggling at the flustered librarian princess.

"Y-yes... thank you, Pinkie, that was... I... thank you!" She said finally, unsuccessfully hiding her blush. Pinkie's smile only seemed to grow.

"Glad to help make you a happier camper!" Pinkie chirped with all the jubilant energies Twilight was accustomed from the mare. "Anything else you'd need from me to be happy? Another kiss?"

"N-n-n-no! No no no no no! That's quite alright, Pinkie!" Twilight stammered, pushing Pinkie with great speed and force down and through the many halls and turns - not to mention stairs - before unceremoniously depositing her outside the castle's door. "Thank you so much, my door is always open, be sure to come by any time!" Twilight called after her before slamming the door and falling against it in a huff.

She panicked slightly before she groped about with her magic and found Pinkie still just outside. With a flick, Twilight stopped Pinkie from being perfectly obedient, but kept the 'Pinkie' lever on, along with the 'Rationalize everything that just happened' lever. Twilight took a deep breath in and out before laughing giddily to herself.

She could hardly believe herself! She had actually gone through with it! This wasn't a dream was it? Teleporting in a random book, Twilight quickly read a line, closed the book while keeping the page marked, and then reopened it to find the line quite the same and just as easy to read*. It wasn't a dream!
*Due to the constant fear of things being dreams, Luna had, at various moments, told the ponies of Equestria how to tell if they were indeed dreaming at any given point in time. Among such methods were focusing on faces for shifting details, attempting to count a group of sheep - who’d never enter the dreams of ponies who weren’t shepherds, or reading the same phrase in a book multiple times since in a dream it would change each time it was read. Quite useful suggestions if you are ever worried about the integrity of your consciousness.

Whether to her greatest joy or absolute horror, Twilight realized that - despite everything that had just happened - she was quite thoroughly awake. Pinkie was, in effect, a puppet ready to have her strings taken control of and it wasn't a dream. None of this was a dream! Twilight could just scream - though whether out of joy or fear was not so clear.

She paced about in front of the door, her mind racing in circles as she tried to make sense of it all, and there was a good bit to be made sense of.

Twilight had, with the purest intentions, thought to cure herself of her broken heart by systematically cutting out the thought of loving Pinkie from her memory and essence. "I wanted to be done with it," she muttered to herself - as was her wont - "but because of a mistake..." she trailed off, her thought scaring her thoroughly.

"Pinkie is..." She could cry and leap for joy all in one at the dawning realization. Pinkie was, because of the minor mishap with the spell, completely open to Twilight's control. Twilight could make the wonderful mare do whatever she wanted, and Pinkie would just... do it.

Nothing was off the table, at least as far as the spell was concerned. It was as if Twilight had with two spells turned Pinkie from a thoroughly independent mare into a mare who could, with but a breeze of thaumatic particles, be turned into whatever Twilight cared for.

Pinkie was still in there, she was just completely bent to the power of the spell that she had absorbed. The arcane gearbox and lever system in her mind was - for all intents and purposes - the new mind. Pinkie's brain was subjugated to the extent that it could never recover unless a powerful enough counter charm or specific waveform of magic could be found to undo it.

Twilight shook her head, clearing her thoughts only to martial them into a different order.

No, Pinkie was not at Twilight's whim - though honesty begged to differ - Twilight had just, by means of an accident, impaired Pinkie, but instead of keeping her in that state had set up a bypass in the mare's mind so that she wouldn't be a vegetable whilst Twilight sorted out the problem. That was it, yes!

Twilight was trying to sort out the problem she had created in the mare, and to do so required the utmost care. She didn't want to concern anypony - least of all Pinkie's family. The situation was well in hoof, the gearbox was a work around and was, therefore, temporary yet necessary.

One day very soon Twilight would remove that spell and the other in one fell swoop, curing Pinkie of the situation Twilight had put the mare into. She'd concoct a spell that'd undo the accidental one Pinkie had absorbed, but that might take months!

Yes, that was it, not 'one day very soon' at all, it would be months! Possibly even years if things didn't pan out according to Twilight's desires! In that time it would be impractical to keep Pinkie in the state the spell put her in - that would just be beyond cruel. No, Twilight had to put in a spell that would allow Pinkie to live a normal life in the mean time - it just made sense.

Twilight nodded to herself, "I need time, but Pinkie as a stationary pony without the ability to fend for herself just wouldn't do." She said to herself.

"But are we going to disclose to others that Pinkie isn't really Pinkie but a magical force inside Pinkie that thinks it is Pinkie but isn't really Pinkie?" She replied.

"What? No! Of course not, don't be daft!" She chided herself. "For one, that's too confusing. For second, functionally its identical! Pinkie, in all technicalities, might not currently be 'Pinkius Primus', but its sort of a sort of 'Turing's Construct' of Pinkie Pie."

"What, you're bringing up 'Turing's Construct' now?" She scoffed at herself, pointing an accusing hoof at her unreasonable self. "You know well that 'Turing's Construct' does not apply here. She is not, as it would be correctly pointed out, a construct!"

"Yes, but the mind piloting her body is!" Twilight countered. "Functionally, Pinkie Pie is comatose and we have to fix that! Until then, what is the harm in letting Pinkie walk about in a state where an accurate version of Pinkie is present who can be filled in - magically I might add - on all events from her entrance into the comatose state to her leaving of said state."

"But doesn't she deserve to know?"

"No! I mean, Yes! But no..." Twilight floundered, trying to get out an explanation, "Look, Pinkie Pie doesn't need to know though she has a right to know. Yes, its her we're talking about, so she probably could be argued to have the distinct right of knowing she is, herself, in a coma. However, we also have to consider that this might put an undo stress on her. She's working just fine, but it is a closely run thing. She could tip over at any moment!"

"Uh... we made the spell, that isn't going to happen." Twilight pointed out.

"Yes, but this is Pinkie Pie!"

"Fair point."

"Exactly!" Twilight said in exasperated and thoroughly stressed tones. "We just don't know!"

"We could guess."

"Guess at another pony's health‽ Are you insane‽"

"I don't know, you tell me." Twilight said to herself.

"No... no, what we need to do is... is..." Twilight searched desperately for what to do. "We need to not kiss Pinkie again." She said firmly. "Yes, we need to not take advantage of this situation. We need to take this very seriously and to look into how to help her as best we are able. We have, what, two weeks?"

"Two weeks and three days if we're lucky."

"Shoot, not much time..." Twilight tapped her chin with a hoof in thought as her eyes darted about the castle floor in thought. "We might just be able to stretch it a bit longer by using a time dilation spell, but that can get a bit messy."

"Best if we don't mess with time. Last time we did that we got a different hair style and an eyepatch."

"It was a pretty nice eyepatch though." Another Twilight admitted.

"SHUT UP!" The two other Twilights shouted in unison, banishing the third to the shadow realms with impunity.

"So it's a matter of working quickly. We can work hard an spend as much time on the problem - put a blackboard in the bathroom and another right by the bed." Twilight said, already mentally counting her chalkboards. "That leaves an extra two, including the one that already has the spell written on it."

"Good, good..." Twilight muttered, closing her eyes as she took a steadying breath. "I got this, I got this..." She said, returning to herself as she collected her disparate thoughts. "Time to get to work."

Chapter 3: Things Yet to be Seen

Doing one's best. Initial success and the caution to be applied upon contact with such. A horrified realization. Backsliding and backsides. Trouble with trembles. A less horrified realization. The necessity of perspective.

It had been a rough couple of days, not that Twilight had been keeping track. Her attention had been fully dedicated towards making sure she had a counter prepared for the spell by the time she had to return to Canterlot. True, she might be able to finagle time while attending the business of royalty to allow for research into the topic, but she'd feel much better having it done by the time she had to leave.

Why leave for tomorrow what could be done today?

There was a multiplicity of reasons as to why she ought to do just that. One was that Canterlot had, despite Twilight's best efforts, better source materials to work from. There were not only more books on spellcraft, but older ones counterbalanced with newer volumes of more recent revised research. A menagerie of knowledge from sources contemporary to ancient beyond reckoning. There also was an entire college, not to mention lower schools, of magic located in the city which would be more than willing to accept Twilight's problem not as the ruler trying to fix her error but as a spontaneous test of their skills.

Celestia had intentionally cultivated that atmosphere during her tenure as not only ruler of Equestria but administrator of the various schools of magic* she had set up during her reign. It had saved her skin from a variety of stupidly complicated situations and inconvenient questions. It was so regular an occurrence that a few of the schools almost set up an annual event in anticipation of these wonderful problems that Celestia would posset to their school bodies.
*Despite the verbiage used, it is to be noted that in opposition to what many might tell you, Celestia actually did retain the post of administrator of all her schools of magic. Many thought that she had passed those positions to Twilight along with the crown, but in reality - whether through a measure of foresight irregular for the solar diarch or simply because it slipped her mind - she had kept those titles away from Twilight when passing the rulership of Equestria to her former pupil. Sure, Twilight had authority over the schools, but it was in name only and legally Celestia had authority greater than even Twilight herself in this matter.

Another reason one might give for delay would be that it would clear her mind to sleep on it. Working on such a distressing issue can cause mistakes, and many times one can detach themselves from the distress of said situations by stepping back and taking a nap. Naps are, beyond a doubt, very good.

Twilight, however, had cultivated a sense of duty so unshakeable in herself that she could not be dissuaded from pressing herself as hard as she could to the problem before her until either the problem yielded or she had to revisit a friendship lesson.

She had almost fished out the friendship journal when she had a breakthrough. There, in the subtle arcs and curves of the coincidental spell, was an image very much similar to the spell that lay on the pages before her. Sure, the spell she was looking at was a bone structure modification spell, but that would account for the other day's scan!

With a barely help cry of excitement, Twilight found that the author followed standard procedure and had included the counter measure to the spell. It was all turning up roses it seemed now!

Looking over the spell structure, she committed it to memory - much as any spell - and began the testing phase. Usually a good test consisted of casting the test spell on a living creature and then casting the counter spell to see if it worked, but Twilight was in a rush.

With a breath in and out, Twilight set up a construct and then cast the accidental spell on it, watching as it wove itself around the magical mannequin. With a nod of satisfaction, Twilight then summoned up the prospective counter spell. With a quick prayer, she shot her hope into the construct and watched.

In a brilliant display of magic, the counter spell latched onto the existing magic and plucked it apart with fine tuned precision. It was amazing to watch, and better yet, was functional! Twilight could barely hold herself together for the glee she felt, watching as the counter spell tore away the last bit of the spell, releasing the construct from its hold.

With a squeak of happiness, Twilight noted down the spell and rushed out of her castle in her frazzled state.

It is at this point that another tragedy of this tale occurs, for mere moments after turning tail and charging to find Pinkie, the construct Twilight had set up flickered gently in a way that would be considered by Twilight as 'disconcerting' had she actually seen it. This brief flicker was followed by a nearly imperceptible magical tinkling - the type that you only got from really good magic - before it burst into a shower of less impressive sparks.

Rushing out into the streets of Ponyville, Twilight quickly found Pinkie. She also was quickly given the opportunity to quickly apologize to the mare while helping the energetic mare back to her hooves after having smashed her across the face with the front door of the castle.

"I'm so sorry!" She blathered, dusting Pinkie off while looking over the mare for any signs of permanent harm. "I was in such a hurry and I... oh, Pinkie! Yes! Good! I was looking for you!" Pinkie rubbed her nose with a hoof.

"Gee, Twilight, you're sounding like me!" Pinkie chuckled, nursing the booboo on her schnozz. "Whatdidyaneed?" Pinkie said with a bounce, forgetting her pain for the moment. Twilight blinked, translating the smooshed phrase into plain speech. Pinkie had a way with words, it was just unfortunate that most ponies needed directions to follow along with the vague generalities of that way.

"I... ah... come on in!" Twilight stumbled before literally stumbling into her castle. Pinkie, never one to say no to an invitation, happily bounced inside. Once inside, Twilight didn't even go through the motions of leading Pinkie upstairs, instead closing the door and flipping one of the metaphorical levers in Pinkie's brain.

Pinkie stopped on a dime, lurching forward slightly with her momentum before springing back into a stoic attention pose. Twilight nodded, thoroughly impressed by the mare's muscle control. Pinkie didn't look it, but she was a well muscled mare under that layer of... adipose tissue that gave her that soft, curvaceous form of hers.

Twilight shook her head, refocusing her mind on the task at hoof as opposed to the pony at hoof. She had to separate the idea of Pinkie from the problem Pinkie had as a result of Twilight's own actions. She couldn't ogle a friend in need; she needed to help her!

Taking a steadying breath, Twilight focused and spun the spell she needed. It came as naturally as any other spell that was lodged in her memory - which landed it somewhere between calculus and breathing. Releasing it into Pinkie, Twilight held her breath as she waited for it to take effect. She watched as a faint glow rippled across Pinkie, which looked fairly promising all things considered.

Activating an arcane scanning spell, Twilight watched as Pinkie had the spell removed from her magical signature. It did Twilight a great deal of good to watch it go, the weight of the last several days finally lifting as she watched Pinkie regaining her freedom. Better yet, Twilight had done it without any help or even telling anypony else about it! Now that was a win!

Just as she was about to dismiss her scanning spell and start to cast the counter spell to the arcane box of levers and buttons in Pinkie's brain, Twilight froze in horror. Before her eyes, she watched as the spell she hadn't intended to cast regained its strength and wrapped its cold coils around Pinkie once more.

Twilight stammered in absolute shock, turning about to charge up the stairs. Stopping at the first step further into her castle, she cast her eyes back to Pinkie who stood unnaturally still just a few steps from the front door. Pressing her lips into a fine line of cogitation, Twilight huffed to herself as the implications of somepony finding her like that came home to roost.

With a wave of magic, she wound up the spring and set Pinkie bouncing along, moving with the simple imperative to follow along with Twilight at her own pace. Nodding to herself, Twilight turned and galloped up the stairs. Ducking and weaving through the corridors, she entered the main hall once more and immediately brought out all the chalkboards, reviewing everything she knew.

Scanning over the sum total of the spell with a quick eye, Twilight came up empty hooved. With another huff, she went line by line down the spell. She checked each clause and phrase in the spell, searching for anything that might help her, when she saw it.

She slapped her face with a hoof in disgust at her own ineptitude. There it was, plain as day, and she had missed it!

There, in a corner of the spell that was cluttered by a great deal of simple terms that most every spell had to lay out, was a Perpetuating Clause - a nasty little bugger of a spell component that would, without fail, reconstruct the rest of the spell even if it was the last tiny bit of said spell to exist.

Great, just great!

And of course she wouldn't have looked over there for it! It was all the way in the back of the row along with lines of runes that directed how the magic should flow through the circle and what color of sparks should be produced upon completion! There were increasingly more times of late that Twilight just wanted to bash some sense into the overflowing heads of those ancient mages.

Of all the flimflam that recent magic had contrived for any number of reasons, R.O.C.* was not one of them that Twilight disregarded or found overly cumbersome. For shame that those ancient wizards - Star Swirl included - thought that throwing magical code throughout a circle willy-nilly with no cares for understanding it later was a good idea at any point of time! It just made Twilight sick!
*R.O.C., or Rational Order of Components, is a fairly recent concept in magic, being a system by which all new spells will order their components by certain categories around the prime axis of the spell. A very useful piece of standardization that all but the most free-spirited of mages agreed was a good idea. Ancient mages, however, would've laughed at it while sitting a common phrase of magic right next to a primary component of the spell with the most malicious form of glee. Mages: truly a terrifying bunch of creatures.

Twilight would not only have to use the counter spell which she had discovered, but would have to - with precision and attention to detail far greater than a... very precise and attentive pony - watch for where the Perpetuating Clause would flare up, and then cast a counter charm on that specific clause.

True enough, for a mage of Twilight's caliber it wouldn't be so tough. She could probably manage it after a good night's rest and a few gallons of chamomile tea. Most certainly.

Third try for sure.

It was at this point that Twilight was rudely interrupted as as an unstoppable force plowed into her backside and pushed her with an unexpected amount of insistence. Twilight tried to scramble back up to her hooves, but found herself only being pushed farther and farther along.

About the time she was halfway across the floor, a though struck her with the same force as the persistent pusher. The rhythm of the pushing, the sounds she could make out over the rattling of her own skull, and the past several minutes all taken in consideration, there was a singular answer to her quandaries that satisfied all the evidence.

A wave of magic later, and Pinkie stopped moving. Twilight sighed in relief as the progress across the floor ended, leaving her time to finally think. Twilight wasn't sure how 'follow me' had translated to 'push me bodily across the floor' but it likely had to do with what point Pinkie was trying to follow. It might've also just been a matter of a simple spell not accounting for the complexities of language.

When in doubt, blame language.

Standing up, Twilight dusted herself off before something struck her. It hadn't been on her mind as she had been pushed - the number of things that had been having been a small number consisting of an elite few thoughts - but hindsight allowed for many new and intriguing thoughts to come to the fore, such as the manner in which she had been pushed.

Namely: how Pinkie had pushed her by the rear using her head - though the chest also came into play occasionally. What's more, Twilight came to a secondary realization that made her flush slightly and caused another acceleration of heart rate.

She hadn't disliked it.

It was odd for the mare whose entire existence had been characterized by a complete lack of experimentation on the sexual front to discover something that - though it had likely happened hundreds, if not thousands, of times before - suddenly struck her not only as not bad but pleasant. The territory on which she now trod was more than a little uncharted for her. What pitfalls and soaring mountains lay ahead was a mystery to her - and for once she wasn't entirely sure she actually wanted to discover it all.

That, of course, wasn't entirely true. She really did want to find it all out.

She turned back to look at Pinkie, her mind a storm of possibilities. True, she did want Pinkie free of this spell that Twilight had accidentally cast on her, but... but a part of her wanted something different. Something new in the alicorn's experience.

She almost tried to frame a verbal order, but stopped herself when she realized that there was no use in it. She honestly should fix that, but that moment was filled with other thoughts. Other desires. It might've scared Twilight how foreign the thoughts were, but she was far too engrossed in them to particularly care.

Her heart hammered, and she felt her mouth grow dry. She wanted and needed, but her mind wasn't being particularly helpful in telling her what she needed and desired so fervently. She knew there was a need, but even as she drew closer to the realization it flittered away with a coquettish grin.

Swallowing, she turned the knobs and pressed the buttons in Pinkie's brain with ease. She then turned around, trembling immensely as she awaited whatever was to come. Not to say she didn't already know, but her mind had already sequestered that information so that the rest of the brain could enjoy the unexpectedness of the events that were about to unfold.

With a clipped yelp, she felt Pinkie push into her rear end. On reflex, she pushed back - and then found herself playing into some plan she hadn't realized she had set up for herself - and nearly jumped up when she realized that... oh my. She... she found herself sitting on... on Pinkie's face.

She shivered and trembled all at once at the scandalous and pleasurable nature of what she was doing - and Pinkie wasn't even doing anything yet! She felt such a pleasure in the simple act of sitting on her friend's face that it hardly could be believed. It felt... natural. It felt good.

Her heart hammered as she just sat there on top of Pinkie - the other mare not responding in any way. Twilight quaked, part of her wanting to giggle giddily while the other part wanted to scream - whether in agreement or horror wasn't entirely true. In short, Twilight's brain had shorted.

For all the time she had lived and experienced the world and its many pleasures, Twilight found herself at a loss to describe or to understand what she was experiencing. Her heart roared in her ears and made her cheeks feel hot as she continued to just sit and stare past the far wall as her mind shutdown for maintenance.

Suddenly, the world snapped back into clarity and Twilight launched herself off of Pinkie, whirling about to apologize, only to see Pinkie still laying there. She trembled at the sight, falling to her haunches as her mind put up the 'closed for maintenance' sign for the second time that day.

There Pinkie was, simply laying on the ground where her face would be sat on without a complaint, and it did something to Twilight's insides - and, to an extent, her outsides. She both wanted to and desperately did not want to understand it all. She wanted to leap on Pinkie and study every facet of the new range of experiences now open to her. It felt... she felt...

The brain sighed dramatically, skillfully adding the word 'indefinitely' to the sign.

Twilight shook herself back together, her heart still threatening to explode in her chest as she looked on Pinkie's prostrate form. It had felt so good but she couldn't exactly indulge in the pleasure all the time - which might actually make it all the more pleasurable in the long run. Beyond that, she also couldn't just... well, she couldn't just sit on Pinkie - it wasn't fair.

Gingerly, Twilight let herself rest on her side, using her magic to bring Pinkie back to animated life with a simple directive. Twilight calmed herself while watching the pink pony approach her and turn around to present that big ol' pink butt.

A moment later Twilight was frantically ordering Pinkie to stop. Taking heaving breaths, Twilight scrabbled to her hooves to get her head from sitting level.

"Mental note," Twilight said between breaths, "Sitting, good. Being sat on, terrifying!" She shook herself. She didn't know why she had thought being sat on by Pinkie would be a good idea on reflection. She had known that Pinkie wasn't lithe nor just a bundle of soft flesh.

She shuddered at the thought of the pressure that came crashing down on her.

Never again!

Shaking herself from head to tail, she finished calming herself down. It wasn't that it had been horrible, she might even grow to appreciate it as she had grown so quickly to appreciate being the sitter - that was if she used a pillow instead of the hard floor.

That and had a snorkel.

It was then that, with another moment of sluggish thought that was desperately waving at her through the throng of red-faced nonthoughts, that Twilight came to the startling revelation that had been attempting to make itself known since Pinkie had had her face sat on.

Twilight wanted to say that she was horrified by the realization. She wanted to say that she felt ashamed and that a mend in her ways was in the works. She wanted to assure herself that it was all just a gigantic misunderstanding and her own insatiable curiosity that would shortly be sated - heralding the return to normality as she had known it before.

She wanted to say that, or even think it, but Twilight had never made it a frequent activity to lie - to herself least of all.

With so little horror that it almost horrified her how unhorrified she was, Twilight realized that she was enjoying this. Not just the face sitting, that much had been established and was surreptitiously being filed under 'for future use' with a few other observations. No, she came to the realization that controlling Pinkie in this way - holding the other pony in her hooves and being able to shape the mare as she wished was... well, simply put, exhilarating.

She wanted to imagine that her heart would suddenly beat far faster than it had any right to and that she'd break out in a cold sweat at such a thought - but no such luck. In fact, the only thought she actually had at that moment was if she ought consider implimenting a permeant alteration to Pinkie that opened the mare to having her face sat on while she was awake and out of trance.

With great mental effort, Twilight brought herself to manually induced panic and quickly set Pinkie free of her control before rushing out the castle without another word.

What she needed, Twilight realized, was a few new eyes on the situation. That'd do it! She needed a good sit down and conversation with somepony who wasn't herself who could gently provide advice that would - despite not being given the specifics of the situation - deliver such startlingly accurate advise that Twilight would known what she ought to do.

Then again, she already knew what she ought to do, Twilight just hoped the vague advise would tend towards the shades of what she wanted to do. Sometimes when we ask for good advise from others, we aren't actually looking for that advise, rather we are looking for circuitous confirmation of what we wanted to hear - even if words had to be mangled and twisted beyond all comprehension.

That was what Twilight now found herself in need of.

Chapter 4: A Stalemate Encountered

Panic by arrangement. Criteria for targeted advice acquisition. The Fairest Sex. A surprising bit of honesty. Exactly what didn't need to be said. A changed mind. What the future holds and the past hides.

Twilight paced back in forth in the comfort of her own mind while physically sitting in front of Sugar Cube Corner where she calmly sipped at a cup of tea. True, she needed to escape Pinkie for a moment, and so one might think that the bakery at which the mare worked would be a bad option to do so. Such opinions would be correct of essentially any creature in the universe that wasn't Pinkie.

This was not to say that Pinkie did not attend her work faithfully and never showed up, therefore making the place safe from the mare. Quite the opposite really.

Pinkie was so faithful to her work - so much so that Twilight wasn't sure if the mare had days off - and Pinkie also had her array of additional senses. At any given moment the mare knew where you were - or so it would seem*. No, instead, Twilight was counting on the fact that Pinkie knew where she was, saw that it was Sugar Cube Corner, assumed that she was essentially inviting Pinkie to show up, and so wouldn't. Had she gone to the Hayburger, Pinkie would've thought that Twilight was avoiding her and so would've shown up to ask why.
*In actuality, Pinkie did know with relative accuracy where every creature who was a resident of Ponyville and its environs was at any given time. This, however was not, nor did it have to, rely on her eleventh or even seventy-seventh senses - each of which would've been sufficient to the task if she cared to apply them to the task. It just so happened that the same attention to detail that allowed the mare to remember and record all birthdays and other occasions of note also allowed her to subtlety pick up on the living schedules of every creature that crossed her path after a period of two to three weeks. Most creatures would deny it, but every one of them is oh so incredibly predictable - even if that predictability was the certain prediction that they were unpredictable, much as Pinkie was.

So Twilight sat in piece with a cup of tea while stewing. Her self-imposed, controlled panic had been restricted to a low simmer in the hopes she could flare it up for an inappropriate burst of emotion later, but even so she felt terrible. She should feel panicked and even near hysterical all on her own, but instead she had to contrive to feel that way all on her own. She wouldn't even get a thematically appropriate nightmare at this rate!

She sipped at her tea, not even frustrated enough at herself to groan theatrically in order to unintentionally gain somepony's attention in a way that would rope said pony in to a long drawn out conversation which would likely end with Twilight gallantly realizing the fool she had been and set the entire thing straight. She couldn't even manage the restrained sigh that might signal a vibrant introspection that would engender such a deep response from her neurons that she'd shortly have the same effect hit her.

Worse yet, the weather wasn't even helping. If it had been sunny, it would've been a contrast to the storm that ought to have been inside the mare. Having rain refilling her cup ad nauseam would've been appropriate too, had the weather so contrived towards her aid. Instead, she was stuck with a mildly overcast day without even a pleasant breeze in sight that might cause a relevant shudder to run down her spine.

Twilight knew that the world didn't have to bend to her emotional state - whether the true one or the one she was hoping would take her at any moment - but she was next door to the Everfree for Celestia's sake! It should occasionally shoot off a bolt of thunder for the pure show of the thing. Give the locals a reason to fear what was honestly a dangerous area that had since become little more than fodder for interesting stories around the campfire.

But no, the world was... in point of fact, just kind of bland. Unremarkable even. It didn't feature it was so unnoticed. The background, which Twilight had always seen as vastly interesting and commonly in line with what was needed of it for thematic consistency was just in the background now. It wasn't doing anything!

Her life had turned upside down, she was discovering new things about herself, she had Pinkie wrapped about her hoof, and at any moment she might do something tremendously stupid that would make her incredibly happy for the rest of her life - and here the world was just the same as it had been the day before!

Twilight would've huffed had she thought it would've engendered any sort of response. Instead she sipped at her tea in a pensive way, making sure to stoke the fires of artificial panic that waned in her belly because of disuse.

Her mind wandered to thoughts of who she should consult for the advise she wanted. She desperately needed somepony else to tell her what she wanted to do was what she ought to do while not being directly told to do so. A quick checklist easily marked off the easily swayed Pinkie and Fluttershy while also marking off Applejack for being honest.

Honesty was good, but it wouldn't help a mare who wanted a casus belli, not a heaping helping of the salt of the earth.

Rainbow was a shaky option who might, through indirect prodding and guided questions be persuaded to say what Twilight needed. She was loyal enough that she might help Twilight out by giving her the pleasant warmness of blind loyalty - but she may very well also say some sensible drivel about 'if you love 'em let 'em go', which though it had worked for her and Applejack, it wasn't at all what Twilight needed or wanted to hear.

That left Rarity.

Twilight actually sighed, planting her forehead on the table as she considered this option while weighing it against the possibility of 'rubber ducking' the situation against anything or anypony else - preferably somepony she didn't precisely know.

It wasn't that Twilight didn't like Rarity or didn't think the mare might be persuaded to give the answers Twilight wanted - it was just about the opposite of that. She likely - had Twilight been the sort to easily develop romantic attachments - would've been Twilight's second choice of love if only on a carnal level.

It might have to do with the fact that from the moment Twilight had met the mare that she had felt like the proper greeting would include a bow. It may have been because of Rarity's purported straightness that a speck of rebellious nature wanted to break like a good habit. It might have also been the fact that Twilight got the nagging feeling that Rarity secretly didn't belong to the fairer sex.

Twilight could imagine Rarity being the first mare showing up in line before the amorphous entities that decided these things, getting a few longing stares, a couple of whistles, and being told she and all who had the same genitals would be called 'the fairer sex' - only for the next mare to show up and for these amorphous entities to tell her she was also part of 'the fairer sex', only to have Rarity called back into a hushed meeting afterward to receive a chitty proclaiming her to actually be part of 'the fairest sex'.

That or she had whined for it.

Or possibly gave one of the members of the council a blowie. It really could've gone either way.

In total, Twilight just had this rising sense of disquiet whenever Rarity was around that she had accidentally been mistaken for her and had received the crown instead of the beauty who clearly was more worthy. Sure, being a looker wasn't the proper distinction that would mark out a good ruler - there was a reason that super models didn't get in government except when it was under a desk - but it certainly felt like it should count for a great deal.

Speaking of, Twilight was getting an all-natural sort of anxiety as she sat there with her face on the table. It almost was a relief to feel tense as a base, but Twilight knew it wasn't the tenseness she ought to have been feeling in the lead up to a meeting that narrative causality mandated needed to happen.

"Are you alright, darling?" Rarity's voice broke through her thoughts. Twilight gathered herself up, sitting up to give Rarity a weary smile.

"Rarity, I didn't expect to see you in Ponyville." Twilight said, a bit more than tired if any evidence was to be considered. "I thought you'd be tied up in Los Pegasus with the opening of your new location."

"Twilight dear, that was last week!" Rarity said, waving her hoof in dismissal. "If anything I'd be busy with Fillydelphia, but things have been progressing so smoothly that I decided to take a moment for myself back at home." She explained, taking the seat opposite of Twilight without a word about it. "What I'd be surprised about is that you're back in town and looking like you're barreling towards a friendship lesson. Do you happen to have the journal on you?"

"No, but I could use some advice, Rarity." Twilight said, deciding that her odds of getting what she wanted from Rarity were high enough to risk it. "I have this situation that is... sensitive, and I don't-"

"You want to be vague about some situation so that you can manipulate me into giving you an answer that better suits what you want without telling me to say this or that precisely." Rarity said with a coy smile, stunning Twilight before she had a chance to even set up her first piece in the discussion. "Darling, I may not be as well-read as you, but I have read a sufficient number of books to recognize a trope when it slaps me."

Twilight paused, thinking this over before shrugging. "I suppose you're right." She sighed.

"Now, Twilight, let's be honest with each other and just come out with it; hmm?" Rarity said with all her natural graces in full effect. The effect was readily seen in Twilight who already seemed at the point of breaking.

"I... I'm in love with Pinkie." She confessed. Rarity nodded sagely.

"I had always thought that you had a thing for somepony - Pinkie having been one that was close to the top of the list." Rarity said, no sign of impending judgement in her tone. "I honestly can say I couldn't think of a better pony for her. You're stable, caring, and one of the few who can stand her at her most energetic." Twilight stared at Rarity in befuddlement.

"Are... are you forgetting she's married? She had a foal, you've met her." Twilight pointed out. Rarity waved the words away like a foul odor.

"My dear, I know very well that she's married. I also know that in this day and age 'death do us part' has an asterisk beside it." Rarity said coldly. "Darling, sometimes mistakes are made an things need to be set right. I'd suggest asking Pinkie who she wants to be with. Let the mare decide for herself if Sandwich is worth it or not. Who knows? She might've been settling for some pony she wasn't really enthused about but that she felt was about as good as she could hope for."

"You're... speaking rather easily about a possible divorce." Twilight said, unsure how she felt about it now that it came to it. "I... well, I always thought that divorce wasn't a good option."

"Oh, and neither do I. Divorce is so messy and can make for such legal trouble. Division of goods, alimonies, and the technicalities of all the-"

"I'm not talking legally, Rarity." Twilight interrupted. "I'm talking emotionally. I'm talking about a certain filly who you seem to be ignoring. If I take Pinkie away from Cheese Sandwich, Lil' Cheese is going to be affected! I... I'm not sure if I could handle that sort of responsibility!" Twilight said in a hoarse whisper.

She could hardly believe that she was arguing against her own happiness, but there it was. She had somepony before her who was giving her the answers she wanted, but she was already fighting against it. Perhaps it was because it had been too easy, perhaps there was something in Twilight that made her reject the thought that she'd be stealing Pinkie away. Not a moment ago she would've jumped on a chance to justify taking Pinkie for herself, but now?

"Darling Darling Darling!" Rarity said with a haughty grin. "If Pinkie chooses you, then Lil' Cheese will doubtlessly follow shortly thereafter. Exchanging a father for a second mother." Rarity nodded at this, as if the thought of it was well in line with some imagined ideal. "You know, I've seen how you looked and interacted with Lil' Cheese. You love her - not in the way that would have you in jail, of course, but in the way that Pinkie already does.

"I can tell you love her like a daughter that you've never had. It's quite touching." Rarity continued, placing a hoof atop Twilight's. "I also know that you - much as most of the rest of us - have misgivings about Sandwich. I don't think anypony would blame us - the stallion is in Ponyville less time than you and he's married to a mare from here.

"You want my opinion? Save Pinkie from that stallion. He isn't worth Pinkie's time. I feel that to be the truth - and I have a suspicion that the same could be said for you." Rarity said, leaning back in her chair.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, dear," She said in a low voice, staring holes into Twilight's soul, "I think you hate the stallion. I have no confirmation of this, but I can comfort you in the knowledge that I grew to despise the stallion ever since the wedding. It almost feels as if he thinks 'marriage' and 'official groupie arrangement' are one in the same."

"But..."

"Darling, it's up to you." Rarity said before Twilight could counter anything. "I want Pinkie happy, and I want you happy. Both might be one in the same. It's up to you if you want to try your hoof at getting Pinkie for yourself or if you want to simply stand by and see what happens. Either way, it's your choice to make, Darling, and no pony is going to force you into one direction or the other."

Twilight paused, unsure what to say in response. Rarity had essentially done what Twilight had wanted, but it felt wrong. Somehow... somehow Twilight had gotten exactly what she wanted but now wasn't in the frame of mind to actually want to take advantage. She had a rationale to try and go after Pinkie now, but...

"Thank you, Rarity." She said finally, standing up. "You've given me a lot to think about." Twilight then tossed a few bits on the table for her drink and left to think about what the future held and what she wanted it to hold.

As Twilight left, Rarity sighed, swirling her dainty cup of tea in thought as she watched the mare walk away. "You were right," she muttered to herself, "you really can be so irritatingly moral at times, Twilight."

Chapter 5: Would Still be Just as Pink

Thoughts on Divorce. When opportunity knocks. Be the pony you always wanted to be. Devils: practical uses thereof. Don't keep a mare waiting.

Twilight stretched as she left her bed. For the first night in the past week, she had actually taken the opportunity to take the entire night to rest and recover. The long time of fruitless study had been frustrating, and now with a refreshed mind she stood a chance against the problem.

The issue, of course, was what the problem indeed was and how she intended to fix it.

A day before she would've said the issue was the spell she had whammed Pinkie with on accident, but now she wasn't so sure. Her chat with Rarity still tickled the back of her mind slightly. She wanted to argue that Rarity was wrong about how Twilight felt about Cheese Sandwich - and to an extent she was wrong.

Twilight didn't particularly hate Cheese Sandwich. She closely examined all thoughts and feelings related to the oft times distant stallion and found all the emotion she could precisely pinpoint towards him was a mixture of sadness, disappointment, and perhaps a vague coloring of... well, well-wishes. She loved Pinkie, and by extension, she couldn't truly hate what was ostensibly her other half.

It hurt her to no end that the only way she and Pinkie could be together would include making both her and Lil' Cheese's lives that much worse. Sure, it wasn't as if Cheese Sandwich was around all that terribly often, but he was loving when he was around. Then again, if the comments that Rarity had been making were founded in more than malice towards a pony who otherwise - as far as Twilight was concerned - did not technically deserve it, then possibly Twilight might be persuaded to see a divorce as necessary.

Twilight's view on divorce had roughly been the same as her views about whether or not the rules of hoofball ought be changed: nonexistent, precluding the arrival of an incident that sparked her into caring about the topic.

Up until yesterday she hadn't particularly cared about divorce as it had never touched her. Her parents had never been divorced, and she honestly couldn't see Shining and Cadence getting a divorce. She had known that statistically divorce was a net loss for all parties involved. It caused emotional stress, financial woes, and overall negatively affected children.

That of course wasn't true if the one spouse was abusive, at which point it was a net gain to sever the union. Twilight could also see this exception working for those who had been cheated on - the breach of trust was significant enough that Twilight could see it as a good reason. There were some others, of course, but listing all exceptions wasn't what she wanted to do.

In sum total, Twilight found now that she actually had to formulate an opinion on divorce she was of a mind that divorce was a last resort to severe issues. There'd likely be more thoughts on this in times to come - Twilight did like to think in waves, pushing deeply into a subject only to retreat and reapproach hours later - but now was time to think about if she actually wanted to take care of the little magical problem Pinkie had because of her.

Before she could get a thought in edgewise though, a knocking at the door brought her attention crashing to a halt. Setting the comb down on the sink, she trotted her way through the castle until she came to the door, her mind a blizzard of the different possibilities of who might show up at a time like this - that time being a few minutes after noon.

Opening the door, she froze, seeing Rarity and Pinkie on the other side of the door. A myriad thoughts crossed through her mind, the one in place of prominence being that Rarity had told Pinkie what Twilight had said yesterday, and was now here to ensure that something would happen.

A more horrified one asked what Twilight's plan might be if Pinkie said she loved Twilight too.

"Hiya, Twilight!" Pinkie cried, despite being a step away. "Rarity and I were in the neighborhood and got to talking and we decided to come over and ask if you were available for some fun!" She hopped at that last word - it was one of those things about Pinkie that Twilight smiled at and relied upon to tell her that Pinkie was Pinkie and hadn't been replaced by something in her skin. Of course, something in her brain would be able to avoid that suspicion, and therefore had different criteria to be spotted by.

Now totally unnecessary since she very well knew the truth on that matter.

"Uh..." Twilight said lamely, eyes darting between the two mares, "Yes! Come on in." She answered finally, a smile a tad too large and too forced across her face. Rarity, of course, would notice it while Pinkie either was oblivious or decided to let it pass, but Twilight had few options available to her in such social interactions.

Pinkie happily hopped her way inside, springing comically with each landing as she made her way inside the castle. Rarity, however, walked with the extreme poise that all had come to expect from her, and stopped next to Twilight - delivering a look that carried a meaning, though which one Twilight wasn't entirely certain. Rarity, catching Twilight's perplexed look, rolled her eyes in a most unladylike way and closed the door behind her while stepping closer to Twilight to whisper in her ear.

"I don't have a silver platter, but I suggest you make good use of this opportunity that was so kindly delivered to you." Rarity said with but a breath. Twilight locked up, unsure how to reply - or if she even should. Rarity again sighed with all the dramatics she could muster.

"Darling, anypony who has a horn, the wherewithal, and the knowledge that Pinkie isn't one for cosmetic magic would be able to tell that something is a tad amiss with our Pinkie." Rarity said, sending a chill down Twilight's spine.

"Hey, is this milk still good?" Pinkie's voice called from the other room - one where Twilight was sure there ought not be any milk. The sounds of theatrical gulping filled the air before a sigh of satisfaction followed by a burp disturbed the castle air. "Nope!"

"More so than usual." Rarity conceded. Twilight gulped, still very unsure where this might be going. "Look, Twilight dear, you told me the truth so I'll tell you the truth. Are you ready to hear it?" Twilight nodded slowly. "Either you're going to activate the spell or I am. Now, we're all friends here, but I can be a tad naughty, so you probably don't want me behind the wheel. Just a thought, Darling, you understand."

Twilight was terrified that she might just understand. "You... you haven't... h-have you?" Twilight stammered, her brain fighting desperately to catch up even as her intuition connected so rather bleak dots together. Rarity blinked a few times before giggling in a coquettish way while waving off the suspicion like a bad stench.

"No, Darling, I have not taken advantage of Pinkie yet, though such can be changed if you don't start doing what I tell you. Excuse me, I mean if you don't start doing what I suggest." Rarity said, laughing in an airy way that seemed more in place with Chrysalis or the old Starlight. It was disconcerting to say the least.

Rarity however didn't seem to appreciate Twilight's hesitance as she stopped laughing and simply glowered at Twilight. "Now would be good, Darling." She said with steel in her voice, losing all humor that it had had but a moment before. Twilight gulped, looking over to the doorway in which Pinkie had appeared, a ring of curdled milk still on the mare's lips.

The treacherous algebra of survival resolved itself quite quickly in Twilight's mind. The situation was complicated, but eliminating the variables and cancelling like terms made the equation quite simple. If Twilight didn't take control of Pinkie, Rarity would - to what ends was not entirely clear. If Twilight did take control, Rarity could only do so much. She might, by some means beyond Twilight at the moment, wrest control away from her. That was one option.

The other was that Rarity had plans that were beyond Twilight at the moment.

Resolving to take the more controlled route that offered up slightly less fear from the unknown, Twilight lit her horn and activated the switch in Pinkie's mind that made the mare little more that a glorified puppet. It made Twilight's heart flutter to see the mare like this, but there were other things in the room that were a little bit more concerning at the moment.

"Very good, Twilight, now I'm going to help you be the pony you always wanted to be but never dared to act like. Won't that just be nice?" Rarity trilled, circling about Twilight in a seductive curl - that is, if Twilight had any idea what seductive was. As far as she was concerned, Rarity was just brushing against her rather closely.

"W-what do you mean?" Twilight asked, barely able to keep herself from shaking in her nerves.

"Well, Twilight dear, let us simply say for now that we ought to move to the study." Rarity said on a whisper into Twilight's ear. Twilight shivered lightly, unsure what she ought to expect - but desperately hoping the thin whisper of a suspicion she had was right.

A short jaunt later, they entered the study - the halls of the castle being easy enough to navigate for the mare who had a memory that resembled a well sorted filling cabinet than what might be considered a 'normal' mind. Rarity hummed as she looked about the room, obviously working something out in her head as she looked about. Twilight didn't like this, and the fact that Pinkie was functionally reduced to a doll in all of this didn't help.

"That reminds me, Dear." Rarity said with a smile. "Send Pinkie to wash her mouth. She apparently found some milk that ought not to have been imbibed by any pony that was after milk and not a failed shot at cottage cheese."

"Actually, curdled milk isn't good for making cheese, it-" Twilight began, the impulse to share knowledge only beaten off by Rarity's icy stare that communicated far faster than any words that she indeed did not care about the particulars of cheesemongery. "I'll... just have her go to the bathroom and gargle some mouth wash then?" She supplied with a weak grin. Rarity nodded to this like a governess pleased by the foal who decided that perhaps making the 'choo choo' noises wasn't precisely necessary for the act of playing.

While waiting for Pinkie to get back, Twilight inwardly kicked herself for not thinking of flicking a few levers towards the purpose of having Pinkie search for an escape from the situation - though Twilight was also, surprisingly, of two minds about that topic. Pinkie's escape would mean an end of the fun - which certainly would not do. There had to be a sweet middle ground on which Twilight could find refuge.

When Pinkie returned to the room with a mouth that looked substantially fresher for the water that now dripped off her muzzle, Twilight looked with terrified expectation towards Rarity. Rarity, for her part, simply circled about Pinkie for a short moment before sashaying her graceful way over to Twilight's side.

"Isn't she gorgeous like this?" Rarity asked, nearly nibbling on Twilight's ear as she spoke. "So still, it almost makes her look... regal, perhaps." Twilight, despite herself, found herself agreeing. In this state Pinkie had a sort of glow about her that made her somehow far more regal and beautiful than Twilight could appreciate than when the mare was bouncing about the place - though the bouncing brought out other features that Twilight enjoyed in the mare.

"Touch her, Twilight." Rarity whispered again, pressing against Twilight in an encouraging way. Twilight hesitated, simply staring at the object of her love - and now, to an extent, her rising lust - her heart yearning to do what her mind rebelled against. "Go ahead, she won't mind. Just reach out at touch her cheek." Rarity coaxed.

Twilight swallowed a lump in her throat and then slowly lifted her hoof to touch the other pony.

The next moment seemed to last forever. The heat from the other mare, the sensation of her soft fur, the electric feeling of the forbidden becoming reality, and the occasional brushes of air as it past out the nostrils all played together in Twilight's overcrowded mind. It was so much - too much - all at once. The world felt as if it had transitioned into a sort of crisper form of reality.

“You can feel it, can't you?” Rarity purred in her ear, though to Twilight's mind it was almost an afterthought - a series of words that slipped into her reality without source. “I know you can, Dear. You can feel her, sense her - on a level beyond the physical you're used to. You can feel HER.”

To Twilight's surprise, she couldn't help but find herself not only understanding Rarity's words but have more words filter from her own consciousness. The contact she had had with Pinkie before - even the more intimate version she had enjoyed those two times - had somehow paled in comparison to this moment. Somehow they seemed hollow and fake in comparison to what Twilight was going through at this most intimate of moments.

“Kiss her, Darling. Press your lips against hers.” Rarity's voice sprung out from some place. Twilight couldn't think of anything better than doing just that, and so leaned forward, closing her eyes as she pressed her lips against Pinkie's.

The kiss, though more one sided than the one she had experienced those short days before, was somehow more... profound. The unyielding, unreacting form of Pinkie's features lent an air to the act that Twilight couldn't truly understand.

She had kissed things that had been as wooden in their reactions - having been a hormonal teen too at one point. It just... somehow knowing that Pinkie very well could react but wasn't because of something Twilight had done gave Twilight such a thrill that was beyond her to truly express in all its wonderful aspects.

“Feel her,” a voice echoed in past her reality consuming kiss, “taste her, know her, dominate her!” A voice encouraged, and something in Twilight rang out a harmonious cord to the insisting tones she barely heard.

Wrestling with herself, she pulled away from the kiss, panting heavily as she stared at the still statuesque Pinkie. Many ponies, Twilight reflected, may have tried to lay the moves on her. Doubtlessly several princes and noble stallions had thought themselves smooth operators plying the trade of seducers in attempts to land the biggest catch of the world. Each of them had, in their own way, thought themselves masters of their trade and doubtlessly had found success elsewhere.

But none of them - none of them - could ever compare to the simple, effortless elegance and beauty before her at that moment. Without trying - and perhaps that was indeed why it worked so much - Pinkie could simply stand completely still and seduce Twilight more effectively than any stallion or any other mare Twilight could imagine. It made a part of Twilight beg for more.

The other part, however, demanded more.

With a ravenous hunger that Twilight had never recognized in herself, the alicorn dove forward and pressed her muzzle deeply into Pinkie's neck, drawing in her scent before planting a series of kisses across her friend's neck. It was maddening, and worse still, only served to stoke Twilight's internal fire. It was as effective at quenching Twilight's growing lust as oil was at quenching a flame.

A voice clambered to get something in edgewise, but it was silenced as Twilight's consuming lust filled her mind with nothing but frenzy and desire. It consumed reason and rationale and left Twilight, for the first time in her recollection, completely at the whim of her base animal desires.

And how good it felt.

With nary a thought, Twilight tackled Pinkie to the floor, seizing one of the mare's ears in her mouth, gently grinding it between her teeth with instant but gentle pressure while her hooves found themselves roaming across every inch of the other mare without hesitation. It filled her with such a wonderful, all consuming desire that Twilight simply couldn't deny – even if she were so inclined to do so.

Moaning to herself, she released the ear and lay a long lick across Pinkie's face before drawing another draft of the mare's sweet scent. The world, though askew from what Twilight would regularly consider 'normal', felt so incredibly right as Twilight forced her will upon the unresisting mare that simply lay there to take everything Twilight gave.

Kissing Pinkie again and again, Twilight's world spiraled further and further in on itself as she found her mind a haze, her actions not her own, and her body screaming in a pleasure she couldn't understand. It was beyond anything she had ever known, and it only built higher and higher.

All at once, as she gave a fierce experimental suck at one of Pinkie's teats, Twilight's mind broke into a field of white hot ecstasy that sent her tumbling into an oblivion from which she would know nothing. Her heart pounded in her chest, her nostrils flared, and a scream she hadn't anticipated burst forth from her lungs with a ferocity unlike any.

She quaked on the floor, straddling Pinkie like a lion over a kill as she felt the world leave her. Her senses on fire with burning desire finally resolving itself in a blaze of passion. It was amazing, beyond anything Twilight could've imagine.

As the lifetime in another plain departed her, leaving her to coast back down to the world of the living and breathing, Twilight found herself in a haze of fatigue as she lay there, unable to do anything but beg the universe to send her back to that place she had been transported to.

Reality, harsh as it always is, crashed in on her and brought her to her sense as her ears reported that sound of a hoof striking against the hard floor in applause.

It sent life into her limbs and made her heart hammer wildly as she rushed to her hooves, only to find her legs treacherous members of the rebel alliance that delivered her swiftly back to the floor. Now returned to her senses, Twilight realized her position and became far more flushed than she already had been.

“Well done, Darling.” Rarity said with an encouraging voice - much to Twilight's chagrin. “I especially enjoyed the free style approach. I usually use a more targeted approach myself, but since this really constitutes your first go around, I do suppose you did a bit more than admirably.”

“W-what... what did you do to me‽” Twilight accused, unsteadily getting to her hooves. “What did you do to Rarity‽” Rarity took a step back before shaking her head as if at a stubborn foal before flipping her hair back.

“Twilight, Darling, I understand that you must be confused, but do allow me to explain before you jump to conclusions.” Rarity began, sitting down on her haunches to appear less threatening. “I am the same Rarity you have known since you first arrived at Ponyville - though with the exception that I have grown and learned many lessons along the way.

“I am the same Rarity who struggled to keep to your wishes for your dress, the same Rarity that outwitted Diamond Dogs when they captured me, and the same Rarity who stood beside you and the others when evil knocked on our doors time and again.

“I will admit that this side of me is not one that I let out for a good airing too incredibly often - especially not around you girls... Rainbow and Applejack being a possible exception, but we have an understanding.

“No, I did not do anything to you, Darling - unless, of course, you count prodding you in the direction you ought to go or perhaps being perceptive enough to help magnify your own desires.”

“The direction I ought to go‽ My own desires‽” Twilight snapped, taking a step closer to the plainly confident Rarity. “You made me take advantage of Pinkie! Of a friend!” She blustered, barely able to hold herself back from any number of offensive measure she could take at the moment.

“You were the one who did the ear nibbling and teat licking, Darling.” Rarity pointed out. “I encouraged you to enjoy yourself in a way that wasn't a problem for anypony. Honestly, Darling, this whole situation is a mess of your own contrivance - not because you caused it, but because you're the only one who considers it such.”

“You made me violate her!”

“Wrong again, Darling, wrong again.” Rarity tittered. “I encouraged you, acted as a sort of magnifying glass or shoulder devil - a space for which I note you have a distinct opening. I pushed you and pressed buttons but I did not move a single one of your hooves. I did not seize your tongue to make you lick her, I did not press you to kiss her, I did not work your lungs to draw in her scent, and I did not move your jaw to nibble on her ear.

“Twilight, that was you. I prodded and goaded, but in the end you were the one who went forward and pressed a hoof against her face and then kissed her lips deeply. This is you. You have denied it for some time, I would wager, but it is still you.” Rarity said, her voice and posture the very model of calm confidence. “You are repressed, Darling, and I merely offer you a chance to release.”

“I... I'm not a bad pony!” Twilight ventured, the exact opposite level of calm and confidence.

“I never said otherwise. I think you'll find my opinion of you is quite high, all things considered.” Rarity continued. “Darling, Pinkie deserves the world, does she not?” Rarity began, taking another route to the destination she had in mind.

Twilight, not pausing for breath or thought, nodded. “Of course. She's a wonderful, caring friend who has done so much for each of us.” She said with more confidence that any other phrase she had said since she woke up that morning.

“I heartily agree.” Rarity said with a smile. “She is such a wonderful mare. Beauty may be skin deep, but I feel she is among the number of those who's exterior beauty is a mere fraction of her internal beauty. It is a reflection of what is inside her, and a pale reflection at that.” Twilight again nodded.

Pinkie, throughout the years, had never once been nasty. She had never shown anger when it wasn't needed without apologizing instantly. She was full of a boundless love that was so indiscriminate that it touched lives of those she barely could be said to know. She was, in Twilight opinion, the best of them without whom they'd be well and truly lost.

“Twilight, dear,” Rarity said, breaking into Twilight's thoughts, “what would you call a stallion that spends more time away from home than at home?” Twilight knew instantly where this was going and reacted accordingly.

“Hardworking.” Twilight replied instantly. Rarity nodded slowly, seeming to consider this answer carefully.

“What do you call a stallion who can't hold a stable relationship with one mare and instead bounces from one to another?” Rarity pressed.

“A philanderer.” Twilight answered, her knowledge of the dictionary shining through. Rarity nodded.

“A stallion that pretends to have a solid relationship but really is bouncing from mare to mare?” Rarity asked, causing Twilight a moment of pause – warning bells ringing out in her mind.

“A cheater.” Twilight answered. “Unless he goes through the process of divorce and remarriage with each, in which case a serial monogamist.” Rarity nodded to this as with the other answers.

“Twilight,” She began.

“You have no proof, Rarity.” Twilight said simply. “You have rumors, but I'm sure there are rumors about you that you laugh at when they coincidentally bounce your direction.”

“Fair enough.” Rarity said with a bow of the head. “But sometimes rumors have bones. I fear this is one of those. I have heard far too many stories and far too much corroborating tales to think otherwise - and I recommend to retu-... rethink your position.”

“I won't judge a pony on what others have said they've done.” Twilight said, remaining steadfast in her conviction. Rarity sighed, resigning herself to her friend's wishes.

“As you will, Twilight.” Rarity conceded. “I do, however, propose that that which you have just had the pleasure to experience ought not be a 'once and done' sort of experience.” Rarity continued, a sly smirk crossing her features. Twilight flushed once more, her heart beating in her throat as she struggled to answer.

“After all, Darling,” Rarity said, rising up from her haunches, “it isn't as if you're violating her. It takes a bit more than a bit of nibbling, sniffing, and licking to violate a mare. Think it over.” She said, turning about with a gentle swish of her luscious tail. She sashayed her way across the floor to the far door with such grace and elegance and Twilight couldn't help but be distracted.

With a final turn, Rarity fixed Twilight with a knowing grin while standing just in the threshold. “Don't keep a mare waiting, Darling.” She said coyly, kissing the air at Twilight before leaving the room fully, leaving only the memory of her behind - and what a memory it was. It left the usually sexually unaware Twilight in a mild trance as she look towards where Rarity had gone in a sort of want that she wasn't used to feeling.

The world was strange and new and she had little in the way of coping mechanisms to help her handle it at all.

With a wistful sigh, Twilight turned, only to freeze. There on the ground lay Pinkie, having remained still the entire time beyond her breathing and occasional blinks. Her fur was matted here and there with the moisture that Twilight had left behind, and in general the mare had a mussed up appearance that played a riff on Twilight's soul.

It was as if every time she looked on Pinkie the mare found a new way to look absolutely stunning.

Looking over the mare, Rarity's words echoed back in her mind. “Don't keep a mare waiting, Darling.” She had thought it referred to Rarity herself, but now... now it had taken a new meaning. One far more delicious and enticing.

Perhaps one more taste of the forbidden fruit wouldn't condemn her?

Chapter 6: A Broken Stalemate

Soup and cake. A panic without a discotheque. Lil' Cheese calls for breakfast. A good cry into the fluff. Botany! The accident involving apples. The truth that does more than disappoint. Hell hath no fury. A word to the unwise. Returning the favor.

Twilight murmured to herself as she rolled over in her bed. She smiled to herself, wrapping a leg around Pinkie's warm form as she exited the soup of sleep and slowly cut into the bitter cake of wakefulness. That was a good sentence, she thought blearily. 'The soup of sleep' had the sort of... sluggish feel that she felt appropriate for the land of dreams and the like while describing wakefulness as a bitter cake was both unique enough for the purpose while conveying its meaning crisply.

It was sentences like those that she could only depend on her half-awake brain to develop.

She slowly mulled that sentence, an absent minded quill scratching it down on a stray piece of paper, only to stop partway through to reexamine the rest of the sentence that had struck her brain like an egg hitting a slowly heating skillet.

Taking a heavy chomp out of that cake, Twilight shot bolt upright and looked at Pinkie beside her. Her head swiveled to the clock on the far wall and then the window to confirm. Her heart thudded in her chest as she panicked more and more - a part of her nodding in appreciation at the proper application of natural panic.

It was the morning, she had somehow taken Pinkie away and had held her into the morning and all the while had left Pinkie as a statue-like puppet. That part was, much to Twilight chagrin, becoming less and less unconscionable, but the part that struck at her heart was the thought of a little filly being left alone without her mother.

She flopped her way out of her bed, smacking her face hard against the floor as she got caught up in the sheets and failed to escape before the critical moment of impact. Groaning against the floor but for a short moment, she flailed about and got to her hooves, only to stop even as she lit her horn to awaken Pinkie from her trance.

From somewhere in the castle she could hear the sounds of a small laugh - a laugh that usually wasn't there that made her heart soar in hope and confusion. Leaving Pinkie as she was, Twilight moved her way out the door of her bedroom and walked out into the halls, following her swiveling ears as she closed in on the sound of voices.

Minutes of walking slowly through her castle, she arrived at the kitchen door. Light poured out from under the door. Pushing it open she locked up at the sight that met her.

In the kitchen was Rarity, laughing in her wonderful way, a glob of some batter on her muzzle that matched the glob of batter that clung to Lil' Cheese's hoof. Needless to say that Lil' Cheese was laughing her heart out as well - it was rare to see her doing otherwise.

The sight released such a pressure that had taken a vice like grip on Twilight's heart that she felt her heart might burst from rapid expansion.

Rarity turned to Twilight, giving her a nod and a kiss at the air. It was as if to say 'I have you, Darling. No need to worry now.' It both set Twilight free of worry while inspiring a new one to grow. Particularly: what was Rarity's game?

At the moment it looked like it was 'who can get more batter on the other.'

Lil' Cheese was winning.

“Go back to bed, Twilight Dear, Little Cheesy and I want to surprise the two of you with breakfast in bed.” Rarity said with her little smile.

“Bwefiss!” Lil' Cheese burbled joyfully, throwing her hooves - and more batter - up in the air. Twilight found it impossible to deny such a display, and simply gave a nod before returning to her room while thinking what she'd do to make sure this didn't all just blow up in her face.

Sitting down on her bed a short moment later, she thought over her options - still completely unsure what to do. She was having a hard time reconciling how or why Pinkie would stay at the castle the entire night and end up sleeping in the same bed. She wasn't even sure if what Pinkie had had counted as sleep.

That thought brought a spark of inspiration to Twilight, an ingenious spark catching on the kindling of her mind.

A few adjustments to Pinkie's pliable mind later and Twilight felt confident that she had a good cover story to work off of. It wasn't stellar and likely wouldn't hold up under any sort of scrutiny, but it was about the only good idea she could come up with on short notice.

Pinkie stretched out as she returned to her normal self, smacking her lips happily as she entered the world of the waking.

And then she was fully awake and bouncing on the bed happily. “That was a fun slumber party!” Pinkie chirped as she bounded up and down on Twilight's plush bed. It did Twilight's heart good to see the mare in such high spirits, especially after the near explosion earlier.

“Y-yes, thanks for agreeing to it!” Twilight fumbled, unsure of herself but sure she needed to sell the story she had constructed for Pinkie to believe. “I think Rarity and Lil' Cheese will be up shortly. They want to surprise us.”

“Ooh, I can't wait to be surprised!” Pinkie said, settling down to simply bounce up and down on the mattress without actually leaving its surface. The mare was just an inexhaustible ball of energy. Twilight doubted if missing a night of sleep would even end up slowing her down - especially since it certainly seemed like the mare had had to skip due to the spell's influence and still acted like this.

“Did you rest well?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah! Slept like a snug bug it a woolen shrug wrapped in a rug!”

“In a hole it dug?”

“Ooh, I'll have to add that to the list!” Pinkie said, her exuberance unrelenting in the face of any opposition as she giggled at the silliness that was life. Her positive attitude was so infectious that Twilight couldn't help but giggle along with the mare despite herself.

Then again, perhaps an honest appraisal of the situation would be that her life was on the up and up. She had Pinkie - to an point - and got to enjoy the mare as she desired. She'd have to learn to restrain herself to a certain extent - she couldn't depend on Rarity's generosity with the mare having to jump between store locations.

Frankly it was a miracle that the fashionista had had time enough to spare to pull off the game saving play she had.

“I'm glad you're doing better.” Pinkie said with a sincere smile - not as though she knew any other types. The words caught Twilight off guard, who simply stared at the mare with her minorly wilting smile slipping from her own lips.

“What?” Twilight asked lamely, trying to decipher what Pinkie had said.

“Silly Twilight, you've been down since you got in town. Don't think that I don't remember having to make you smile earlier.” Pinkie said with the lecture qualities of a foalsitter who would still be giving the kids who tore up the house a double scoop of ice cream before bed. “You just keep on getting yourself in the dumps, but I'm glad to see you're coming up for air now and then. You need to be happy!”

Twilight sighed, nodding to herself with the haggard remains of her smile still clinging to her lips for dear life. “I suppose.” Twilight said noncommittally.

“I know so! Come on, Twilight, why aren't you happy?” Pinkie asked, scooting that much closer. Twilight, without thinking, turned Pinkie off and hugged the mare deeply in her blank state.

“Because I love you!” She wailed into Pinkie's shoulder, her emotional state deteriorating in the blink of an eye. “I want to be with you! I want to be yours and you to be mine! I love you, Pinkie, but you love somepony else and I can hurt you by making you leave them!” She pulled back, tears running down her cheeks as she looked over Pinkie gorgeous, frozen features.

“You can't understand because I can't let you know.” She said in a whisper, her eyes flicking over the face of beauty before her. “I can't let you know, Pinkie, because I know what you'd do. I know you'd be flattered at best and then move on like nothing happened, but I can't! I can't move past it, Pinkie!”

Twilight buried her face once more in the fluff of Pinkie's chest, letting her tears flow freely to relieve at least some small part of her sorrow. She knew that this sort of treatment of her friend and of her own issues was by no means healthy - if she had a therapist she was sure they'd tell her so and more.

But she didn't have a therapist, and if she did she'd get real good at ignoring them in a very short amount of time.

So she continued to cry into Pinkie, wrapping her hooves around the mare as she did. She wanted to be happy, but so much held that happiness away from her. She wished she could just pluck happiness from the world like a ripe tomato from the vine, but instead she found herself only able to pick the deathly nightshade of bitter despair and drowning sorrow*. Life could be so unfair, and Twilight seemed unable to get anything but the short straw in life.
*Had Twilight thought on that sentence at the time, there might've been gleaned a new hope in its interesting choice of metaphors. If you are not sure why, consult a botanist. They're dying for you to talk to them - they get very lonely.

Whether moments had been seconds or minutes, the moment passed and Twilight pulled away from Pinkie, gathering herself together as best she could between sniffles and snuffles. A few deep breaths, uses of a hankie, and a tactful employment of a towel on the damp chest found Twilight back in her right mind - or a vague approximation of such.

Steadying herself with one last breath, she let Pinkie come back to her animated self, who still looked quite concerned for Twilight in Pinkie's way.

"Come on, Twilly," Pinkie encouraged, "You can tell me what's got you all grumpled." Twilight, however, didn't feel like going through it the second time. She almost attempted to lie to Pinkie to get the conversation out of the way when the doors to the room burst open in a grand display of convenience for the alicorn.

"Breakfast is served!" Rarity cried, her magic cradling a platter out of the reach of Lil' Cheese's hooves. "We have pancakes, made by the two of us; applesauce, which was supposed to be a fresh apple for all of us that Lil' Cheese here generously turned into sauce for each of us; and some glasses of orange juice with a few stray pieces of apples in them." Rarity said beneficently.

"I love applesauce!" Pinkie said happily, bouncy more fiercely without actually leaving the surface of the bed. It was a physics defying display of exuberance that was simply too infectious for Twilight to not laugh at as she too gave a gentler, more law abiding bounce on the mattress.

Lil' Cheese, picking up on the energy that had begun to grow in the room that was her mother, began to bounce her way across the floor towards the bed with a delighted squeak and a cry of, "Abbusoos!"

Rarity smiled at the shenaniganry that was the room, but did not join in the bouncing, instead elected to walk with all the poise and grace she was used to. It was likely to the salvation of their breakfast.

The four of them happily dug in, Lil' Cheese and Pinkie Pie being the first to chug down their fresh made applesauce - Twilight being a close second in that department. The three of them burst out into laughter, seeing the applesauce mustache on each of the other ponies. Rarity for her part gave a delighted giggle, gently slurping at her dish of applesauce in a show of solidarity.

The breakfast was a generally pleasant affair, each of them having any number of reasons to smile, giggle, or otherwise guffaw at the others as they enjoyed their meal. It did Twilight's heart good - especially considering they were whole wheat pancakes.

Twilight was about to offer to help Rarity with the dishes when the doors to her room were thrown open violently. The entire room jumped - though in the case of Pinkie it was a half second before the doors flew open. Storming in in a fit was a pony that Twilight almost didn't recognize. His mane of frazzled brown drooped about his ears unceremoniously and his coat was a splotched mess of colors that might've been a sort of yellow tainted by any number of colors.

Lil' Cheese, barely old enough to speak much less coherently express her emotions, began to cry loudly at the disturbance, by no means enjoying the loud interlude to their otherwise pleasant meal.

"Shut the fuck up, kid!" The pony shouted, shambling over towards the bed. It was at that point that Twilight realized for certain who she was looking at, and it sent a spike of icy panic and fear through her heart.

"Cheese!" Pinkie reeled back. "Y-you don't speak to our daughter that way!" She roared, instantly rising to her hooves while her mane seemed to think a moment too long for comfort about poofing out to its regular volume.

"And why's that?" Cheese snapped back, snarling at Pinkie as he did. "I come in from a long tour and, lo and behold, my wife's not at home. I come home, waiting to see her shining face, a mug of coffee, maybe some pancakes, perhaps even a back rub and a 'how was the trip, Cheesy' but NO! And before you pity ask, it was terrible! So I have to fuckin' ask Mrs. Cake where the fuck you went off to.

"She doesn't know, fuckin' have to ask Derpy - she doesn't know! I wander all about Ponyville, ask everypony I don't know and the few I do, no pony but the last pony knows a damn thing about where the single most popular pony is! Fuckin' Twilight's!"

Twilight shrunk back at that, the reality of the comment hitting her differently than it hit the others. Not wanting to be overly involved, she scooped up Lil' Cheese to calm the filly down. She stroked her mane and planted a few kisses across the little filly's brow to comfort the fragile thing that quaked like a leaf in an autumn breeze.

"Cheese Sandwich, you stop this foul language right now!" Pinkie demanded, stopping a hoof rather ineffectually against the bed.

"Or what? You're gonna throw a party at me?" Sandwich groaned. "Please, I married you for your looks, not your threats - or brains for that matter." Pinkie gasped in shock, so taken aback that she couldn't even put it into words - which was likely a first. "Yeah, I fuckin' said it. What are you going to do? Throw a literal pity party? 'Oh boo hoo, my husband married me cuz I look like a five star hooker.' Yeah, right."

"Out..."

"And another thing, five star is generous. I've fucked dozens hotter before I knew you. I just thought you were the one that would stay hot. Thought 'Well golly gee, she's an Element of Harmony, that's gotta make her immortal or some shit but whoops-a-daisy you still look like shit like the rest after the first kid."

"Out... now..."

"What's that, Princess? Oh, I see you're holding the brat." Cheese Sandwich sneered unapologetically. "Yeah, you can have her. She might make a good hooker when she's older, but I ain't into that pedo shit."

"Cheese Sandwich." Twilight said, having grown so furious that she had wrapped around and approached calm from the other end of the spectrum. "You will leave my castle. You will leave Ponyville. If you are wise, you may even consider leaving Equestria." She said in a near whisper that carried such venom and monumental power that it could've been heard in the Crystal Empire during the height of the blizzard of the century.

"Oh yeah an-"

"You misunderstand, Cheese Sandwich." Twilight said, cutting the stallion off before he could start again. "This isn't Twilight Sparkle, Doctor of the Arcane*; Twilight Sparkle, the owner of this castle; Twilight Sparkle, the librarian of Ponyville; Twilight Sparkle, the resident of Ponyville; Twilight Sparkle, the Element of Magic; Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship; or even Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of ALL Equestria speaking to you when I tell you to leave my castle, my town, and my nation.

"No, it is none of those ponies talking to you at this moment, because - as opposed to what you might think - they are all far too unimportant to say this to you, Cheese Sandwich. The pony that has just told you in simple terms to leave is none other that Twilight Sparkle the friend of Pinkie Pie who will, at one more word from you... well, let us just say that I will close the door behind us since I obviously care more about Lil' Cheese than you do."
*Twilight indeed had completed her doctorate - and what's more - had done so during her reign in a feat of juggling of responsibilities that put even the most ambitious college student to shame. Her ArD had been completed actually only a few days before she had come to Ponyville for a visit that would somehow end up at this point.

Cheese Sandwich took a step back, taken aback at the sheer fury that emanated from Twilight Sparkle, the friend of Pinkie Pie. He almost took the step back and opened his mouth to speak once more, but his eyes darted back and forth before he charged out of the room without another word. Twilight, not being one to even look at the hall where the stallion had gone, closed the door tactfully with her magic.

As the doors closed, Pinkie crumpled to the bed, sobbing her eyes out. Twilight looked to Rarity pleadingly, who nodded and held out her hooves, taking Lil' Cheese to comfort the small filly as best she could. Twilight gave an appreciative nod, then turned, wrapping a gentle hoof around Pinkie.

Pinkie immediately whirled about and buried her face into Twilight's fluffy chest, giving Twilight a taste of her own medicine. Twilight cautiously patted the crying mare on the back, not having expected such a reaction but welcoming it thoroughly. She was glad to be there for Pinkie when she needed her most.

Looking over to Rarity, Twilight was somewhat surprised to find the mare already looking at her with a sad smile. Twilight wasn't sure what to make of it, but returned to consoling Pinkie as best she could, her mind abuzz with questions and questions about questions.

There was, however, one central thought around which all other thoughts crystalized and orbited. A question that felt so very pressing, and yet had no easy way to answer. She had suspicions, but all of them were outlandish. In the end, it simply remained at the center of her thoughts as she gave Pinkie the hug that she needed at the moment while letting the one question swirl about her mind like a pitiable leaf in a storm drain.

Why was now the point Cheese Sandwich erupted and why had it been so violent?

Chapter 7: Things to Remain Unseen

In a shadow unseen. The reward for disobedience and the punishment for following orders. A new life for those fallen from grace. A last goodbye.

The town of Ponyville is one of those in which the concept of choked alleyways or shady corners - besides those under trees or patches heather - seemed wholly unnatural and disconnected from reality. It was something that happened to other places rather than in the slow provincial town of Ponyville - even as it began to get a sort of hustle to its old fashioned bustle.

Despite this, in the dimness of the receding day, a pony had found such a shaded corner beneath the overhang of a larger building. They stood silently, looking this way and that as if scanning for another pony or some lost possession.

"You did well." A voice whispered in the shadow beside them. The pony's heart nearly burst from their chest, but in the end they regained composure like a champ.

"I did what you told me to do."

"I know." The voice in the deeper shadow acknowledged.

"I did it for you, you know? I... I knew you were serious and I had to show you I was just as serious, so I did it. Just like you told me to." The first voice said, nervousness dripping from it.

"I know." The second voice said once more, no more emotion evident than the first time. The first voice's pony tried to spy the other pony, but failed - a second of thought bringing the voice's pony to the conclusion that it should keep talking. It might be safer and end with better results.

"Are... are you going to... you know-"

"No." It answered monosyllabically.

"B-but I did it for you!" It said a little louder, though still quiet enough to stay in the shadow.

"I told you to ask for divorce. We both know you didn't do that." The second voice said calmly.

"I... I know, but there was interference. I could've died!" The first voice went on.

"Excuse me, but I thought you were the type to mean it when they say 'I'd die for a chance to be with you', Cheese Sandwich." The second voice said, ripping what mask of anonymity the first voice had to begin with.

"I... I..."

"For disobeying me, I won't choke you until you are dead."

"W-wait, you weren't exaggerating? You were going to kill me‽" Sandwich said in no little amount of shock. It was only pure self preservation of a sort of upside down kind that kept his voice to a harsh whisper.

"Of course, I'm the type of pony that means it when I say 'I will choke you until you slip past unconsciousness into death', Mr. Sandwich. I thought you knew that."

"I just figured you were super kinky."

"No, Mr. Sandwich, I was quite serious." The second voice said in flat tones. Cheese Sandwich gulped, unsure what to expect now that the threat of killing him had been made plain to be an actual one that only just wouldn't be completed... because he hadn't done what he was told?

"Wait... so I'm not going to die because of this? You said I disobeyed you and you think it a punishment to not kill me?"

"Mr. Sandwich, I fully intend to make you come around to my point of view that dying now would've been your best option." Sandwich took a step back, exposing one of his hindlegs to the dying light of twilight.

"What are you going to do to me?" Sandwich asked, shaking profusely at the thought of what could make him wish such a dire thing.

"First, tell me, have you actually ever cheated on Pinkie? Answer honestly, the result of this question might affect the state of your genitals going forward." The second voice said in darker tones than what Cheese was used to or had wanted from the voice.

"N-no."

"So I would've been the first?"

"Yes, I... I mean, no..." He answered. "I... I... I'm sorry, I lied! Please forgive me!"

"How did you lie, Mr. Sandwich? Tell me what you said that was wrong and then tell me the truth. I again implore you to understand the fate of your dick is on the line."

"Please, I... I fooled around, I-"

"Ah ah ah!" The second voice interjected. "Do it properly like I told you, Mr. Sandwich."

"I... I'm sorry that I lied when I said I hadn't had any affairs. I actually fucked at least one mare per town I entered. Most of them were the mothers that couldn't pay for their foal's parties. Some were the pony who's birthday it was - those were only the eighteenth birthdays or the super hot ones though!"

"I see, so quite a few ponies then?"

"I... I don't know the number."

"Was it more than ten?"

"I guess?"

"Come now," the second voice said in the tones of a teacher extracting a valuable nugget of learned knowledge from a student, "Surely you can count to ten? Surely you haven't forgotten every face or cutie mark you fouled with your seed."

"I... yes, more than ten."

"More than twenty?"

"I d-... I g-... yes! More than twenty!"

"My goodness." The voice said with no real inflection of surprise or mirth. "Would you say that you've likely fucked, say, a hundred mares? More, fewer?"

"W-what? I don't even remember the names of a hundred ponies!"

"Oh no, I'm not asking you to remember names," The second voice soothed, "I'm not even asking for faces, just holes or cutie marks. Surely you can remember those since they matter so much to you."

"I... fewer. I travel slow and some towns don't have any mares I want to fuck!"

"Are you sure?"

"I... I... no!" He said, a thought of his balls egging him on.

"I see." The second voice entoned.

"B-b-but you were different! I had to have you - I have to have you! Please, I'll live in your basement chained to a wall if it means you let me sleep with you even once!" The second voice huffed, as if such an offer wasn't distasteful, but merely far too little in exchange for what they'd have to offer.

"Mr. Sandwich, because of those answers, you get to keep your junk. I'm still on the fence about it, but I suppose your reward for obeying every other line of our agreement wouldn't have the same... punch if you lacked your genitals."

"Oh thank Celestia..." Sandwich said on a sigh, his stance slackening.

"Why, Mr. Sandwich, I didn't think you would particularly want the next part of the agreement so openly. I thought as a stallion shortly to be unwed you might prefer certain amount of autonomy in your life - however much remains." The second voice said with a trill.

"Wait... w-what do you mean?" The second voice just laughed gently at the question before answering with an invisible smile.

"Do you recall the second half of the agreed prize you'd gain for obedience?" The second voice asked with a playful tone that was the same sort of playful as a cat was to a mouse.

"I... uh... you said you were going to fuck me so hard that I'd never be able to be with another mare or stallion again." Cheese Sandwich said uncertainly.

"Oh my, dear Mr. Sandwich, that is so close and yet so far from the important details." The voice said with an airy laugh before a hoof lashed out and wrapped itself behind Cheese Sandwich's neck, drawing him in close to the second voice's pony. Sandwich gulped, staring into the light that dimly reflected from those steely-blue eyes.

"I told you, Mr. Sandwich, that - and I quote - 'after you cum for me, you won't find a mare or stallion or otherwise that can be my equal. How you will try, but none of them will ever match me.' Now, I can see why there might be some confusion, but allow me to clarify." The second voice's pony was illuminated suddenly by the flaring up of a horn in a light blue aura.

Cheese Sandwich suddenly locked up, his mind suddenly gone from him. He stood still, his breathing regular as he stared into nothing. The hoof around his neck let him go, and still he stood still as he awaited to be filled with words.

"Cheese Sandwich," the second voice announced in the secrecy of the shadows, "when I next say 'goodbye' a variety of things will happen. First, you will cum and have the strongest orgasm of your life. You will clean up after yourself and then leave Ponyville as quickly as you can by whatever means you can. You will not pack, you will not gather, you will leave. You will leave and never return here nor to Canterlot or anyplace you know Pinkie will be or is currently.

"From now on, when you need money, you will sell your body. Your body is your only asset and you will use it constantly because you constantly will need money. If you don't serve at least seven ponies in a week you will be forced to spend all your money in a strip club before leaving all your belongings with the establishment's lost and found. If you have to do this more than three weeks in a row you will take up a job in the strip club and be unable to cum for the two months you will work there, after which if you've been good and served fourteen ponies in a week you'll be allowed to quit.

"Each time you get to the point where you have to take a job at a strip club, you will have to increase the amount of ponies served in a week by seven. From seven to fourteen to twenty-one to twenty-eight and so on. If you reach seventy ponies needing to be served in a week you will no longer be allowed to quit work at the strip club.

"If, by chance, you end up needing to serve one hundred and forty ponies in a week, you will find a way to reach out to me and send me a little package. It will contain a picture of you fucking somepony you have never met, a letter describing why you regret cheating on Pinkie Pie, and all possessions you own at that point. From then on, you will spend only what you have to to survive and send all the rest to me.

"To conclude this whole situation, from now on your name is... Fuckable Sandwich. You will just go by 'Sandwich'. You will live this life that's before you, but you will remember who you used to be without being able to tell anypony. You will remember all these commands - though I dare say that won't stop you from testing to make sure if they are true.

"You will also be released from all other commands that I have given you besides being unable to harm anypony once I bring back your mind. All this will be true when I awaken you and return your mind to you." The second voice finally concluded.

Cheese Sandwich didn't reply, but instead another light blue glow illuminated his features briefly before he came to all at once. He staggered back, blinking a few times before staring up in horror at the shadow.

"What... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME‽" He roared, no longer caring for privacy. "You... you sick bitch!"

"Now now, Mr. Sandwich, let's not be like that." The second voice chided in mock affection.

"You're... you've got to be kidding me! You... you're making me into... and then... oh no..." Sandwich stumbled backwards, slamming against the wall of the house opposite. "You... you made me lose Pinkie..." He breathed out with a growing malice.

"No, I simply accelerated the process." The second voice corrected. "You would've found some foolish way at some point to lose her for yourself, I just made it so that she wouldn't waste her youth with you."

"You stole her from me! What, you couldn't wait to get your grubby hooves on her?" Cheese Sandwich accused with an outthrust hoof.

"No, Mr. Sandwich, I couldn't wait for somepony that actually loved HER to get their hooves on her. I couldn't wait another moment in my ever shortening life to see her be happy with somepony who would be happy with her. I love her as a friend, and as such, I am dutybound to guarantee her long-term happiness. You, sir, are not it." The second voice said with minimal venom and miniscule amounts of ice.

"But I did! I did love her!"

"You loved her body, Mr. Sandwich. That doesn't count." The second voice said in the verbal equivalent of a harsh slap across the face.* "That is what we call 'Eros' - or love in the sense of the erotic. You might be able to say you love her, but it is only because you have but one word in your mind. No, a better way to say it is to say that you lusted for her. If you loved her, you wouldn't have had so many flings that you can't be sure if it was twenty-five or two hundred and five." The voice finished, showing no more signs of anger than when it started.
*It ought be noted that, seeing as ponies have hooves, slaps across the face in Equestria have the same sort of force as a rubber mallet across the face - if not more accounting for strength of the user or slapper - and as such, the words most certainly had a great deal of heft.

"I... I..." Sandwich faltered, unsure of himself.

"Now, I'm going to give you a chance for me to not call down my wrath upon you as delineated in that little memory that I have in your head of exactly what will happen to you otherwise." The second voice said, as if extending an olive branch with thorns on it.

"What do you want?"

"Oh, nothing much," The second voice said with the nonchalance of a stallion with a raging boner approaching the bar for a drink, "I just want you to go through the life I have arranged for you to keep willingly for two months on your own. If you manage to make it for two months, you'll be allowed to live your life freely and as you wish with the exception of not being able to reach out to or contact Pinkie or Lil' Cheese or anypony that knows Pinkie or Lil' Cheese, go to any place that they are or will be, and all around disappear from their lives. I'll adjust the commands I put on you to make this true if you only agree to this right now while you have your own mind available for consultation."

"Y-you... you can't be serious."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Sandwich, but I am - and that was your last chance." The second voice said with no joy or sadness detectable in their tones.

"What? N-no, I accept! I accept!"

"I certainly hope you do, perhaps accepting your life will make it easier to live. Goodbye."

Fuckable Sandwich left Ponyville shortly thereafter, leaving only memory and a damp patch at a shadow's hooves. After this point the history becomes a tad bit muddled.

A pony by the name would be arrested ten months later in Los Pegasus in connection to an event hosted by a strip club in which prostitution was a main feature - a rumor that it had been attended by three hundred fifty ponies who were all there for the arrested pony. Another pony that went by the name would be listed later in life as 'the world's greatest whore' in a popular tabloid from Saddle Arabia. Yet another pony by the name would become the subject of a bar song by the name of 'sucked me a hundred dicks one night' and would also be speculated to be the origin for the shanty by the name of 'Fetch me a Sandwich' - in addition to a few others that bare no mentioning.

Back in Ponyville in the past before a 'Sandwich' was less often used to describe food, a shadow sighed to itself. Shadows do this on occasion, though this shadow didn't do it because it was in a crypt that a group of adventures were wandering through or because it was in a haunted house, but because there was a pony inside.

The pony in the shadow stayed there for quite some time - only leaving when shadows extended into the gloom of night. As they left, though, they thought to themselves on the pony they had changed and the life they had created for them.

While some might've felt guilty for having treated a fellow pony so, this pony felt sorry only for not having done it sooner. "Certain things," they opined internally, "must be forced into place if brighter futures are to dawn."

To be fair, quite a few ponies would say a hearty cheer in their honor had they known the part of this pony in their adventures with a particular stallion. But then again, perhaps one or two ponies - in particular certain ponies of the street and of negotiable morality would curse the pony's name that had born such a monster that would outcompete them in their choice of industry.

That's the things about these... things - sometimes the right answer wasn't right and the wrong answer wasn't entirely wrong. Morally dubious? Certainly not - some things are black and white as far as right and wrong, but other things aren't so much grayscale morality as they are... uncontested morality.

Had this pony made the right decision? Who knows. They made a decision, and that's more than some have made. Just try and remember the wise old saying as you live in this world of complexities, grayscales, and uncontested morality questions:

Life's short, do something to a bagel.

Chapter 8: How to Turn Events

Jus ultima noctis. Learn to be perfect. What she truly deserves. One more monologue for two. The final answer. The question that was too late, now perfectly on time.

Twilight sat down to another plate of food. It wasn't that she didn't like what she had before her, it was more that she had no interest in food at the moment. The feeling in the pit of her stomach that she had somehow caused all of this drove away the urge to eat. It wasn't the first time, and doubtlessly wouldn't be the last, but it was the strongest case of it yet.

She wanted to say that it would all be alright and that everypony could go back to some semblance of normal, but that hope had been dashed as soon as Pinkie had said her first words to Twilight the day after that eventful morning.

"Cheese Sandwich never came home last night." It was heartbreaking for Twilight. She had seen Cheese Sandwich, in the presence of his own daughter, cuss and swear until she had to step in to stop further harm coming to anypony - especially to the stallion. She had watched as he chose to deem his daughter's only worth to be in the young filly's looks. He degraded his relationship with Pinkie to be on par with the relationship he had had with hookers and harlots.

And Pinkie's first words were concern about him not coming home.

Twilight's mind about this was that the stallion not returning was for the best. She rather not see the stallion ever again, though mostly so she wouldn't be tempted to invoke an ancient power granted to Equestrian nobles that rarely saw the light of day - or dark of night as the case might be. The particular right of jus ultima noctis - that is to say, the right of the final night.

Back when Equestria was a foundling nation that had just set up a diarchy because neither Celestia and Luna would rule alone, certain rights were deemed necessary for the stabilization of Equestria. Most ponies nowadays assume that 'jus prima noctis' was one of them, but oddly enough - especially considering the neighbors all had it - Celestia and Luna rescinded the right. They, however, did not rescind a right that only a few neighboring powers had allotted to their monarchs.

Jus ultima noctis was the right to choose when some creature should have their final night - whether just sexually, as it were, or more... permanently. This right, rarely exercised even when it was first granted, was usually used by other rulers to extinguish the lines of heredity of rival factions and any families that might possibly oppose them in future - including siblings since blood was the most distinct threat to a throne.

The right, when it was boiled down, was the right to either castrate a creature at the ruler's leisure, or - in more delicate situations - kill a creature outright without a trial or jury at the ruler's discretion.

Twilight, though not a pony prone to violence by any stretch, was of the mind that if she saw Cheese Sandwich one more time she'd revive the old right and let her council of lords and ladies rescind that right from her afterwards. Sure, it was an emotional decision that would likely end with Twilight losing quite a few otherwise useful powers in a sort of domino effect, but Twilight needed some emotional pay off from all of this.

Ensuring she knew which night was Cheese Sandwiches last would certainly deliver such on a silver platter.

All these thoughts and more filled Twilight's mind as she considered her options in an attempt to ignore the more pressing situation that surrounded her. It was a familiar coping mechanism that had - if not helped - at least diminished the pain of the moment in the past. Yet another tendency that likely wouldn't be categorized as entirely healthy by a psychologist - but Twilight was currently saving bits hand over fist by simply acknowledging things probably weren't healthy and then doing nothing about it, and she wasn't the sort to start spending money needlessly.

Something she did think she could spare some coin for would be Pinkie. Ever since the incident the mare had been walking about Ponyville - which was bad enough for the pony that usually was bouncing anywhere she went - with a half deflated mane. Everypony in Ponyville had a decent idea what that meant, of course excluding the newcomers that had about as much experience with Pinkie as they had with a hard day's work - minimal and confusion on how they ended up mixed up in it in the first place when it did happen.

She wished there was some way she could help the now so sullen mare with her heart break, but when all was considered, Twilight was more than likely the source of it all in her mind. If she hadn't been the direct cause of Cheese Sandwich's outburst - much as she constantly feared - then she in the least gave him the straw on the camel's back that made him fall apart catastrophically.

Even if she would invoke his last night, Twilight still had enough heart to feel bad about it. Not bad enough that she wouldn't do it, but bad enough that she'd have to live with regret for the rest of her life if she did have to go through with it. The sort of horrid feeling that Cheese Sandwich would share with her, though for significantly less time.

She shook herself, finding her thoughts constantly filtering back towards ending Cheese Sandwich. She needed to get into a new headspace - one that had less to do with the death penalty or possible castration. Then again, Twilight knew for a fact that she wouldn't want to stop at castration when in came to Sandwich.

She shook her head once more. She knew what she wanted to think about, but it wasn't what she needed to think about. Some might argue that there really wasn't anything pressing to think about, but Twilight would argue that what she needed to think about was just about anything that wasn't what she wanted to think about. It was just about that simple.

The distant, yet magically near, sound of somepony knocking on her front door brought Twilight back to the here and now. She sighed at her untouched - except for vague disinterested stirring about - plate of food, coming to the conclusion that later on she'd feel hungry and that the pony at the door likely needed to be attended to sooner rather than later.

A few moments later, having navigated the halls while doing her best to not think about how best to execute a certain pony discreetly, Twilight opened the front door of her castle. "Afternoon, Twilight dear." Rarity said in a voice that betrayed the utter lack of chipper energy that characterized their entire friend group of late.

"Hi, Rarity." Twilight replied on rote recall. "Come inside?" She asked, opening the door a slight bit more. Rarity bowed her head slightly in thanks, stepping inside without another word until Twilight had firmly shut the door behind her.

"I see you're keeping yourself busy." Rarity noted, her eyes falling on the thoroughly used chalkboard in the study that could just barely be seen from the entrance.

"Oh, that's old work." Twilight said waving a hoof in dismissal. "I really haven't been up to doing anything of late for... obvious reasons." Rarity nodded in response, staring off towards the board - though Twilight could tell her friend was looking through it towards the mythical middle distance.

"It has been hard times the last few days." Rarity noted. The two of them stood in silence for a short moment, neither one of them wanting to be so rude as to ask the question both of them had. Of course, this wouldn't last to incredibly long considering the ponies involved - manners only go so far. "He hasn't been seen again, has he?" Rarity finally asked, not even turning her head.

"Not as far as I know." Twilight answered, sighing after she had said it. "I think he took me quite seriously."

"I think that that would be the first smart decision in a while from that stallion - considering what he said before he ran out." Rarity said grimly. "The stallion was a fool, and not the sort that Pinkie deserved to be saddled with." Twilight snorted at that.

"Pinkie deserves a deity for how good she is to the rest of us, and Lil' Cheese deserves a second parent who loves her for who she is without such... diabolical thoughts tainting that love." Twilight said with a shudder. Rarity nodded at the statement, remaining silent for a few choice moments.

"You know," She began, breaking the silence anew, "I always found it interesting how Celestia, of the two sisters, was the one to be deified after a sort while Luna became the princess of the ponies. Especially considering those first few times Luna tried to... interact with the ponies of Equestria."

"Celestia had a longer history with Equestria." Twilight said with a shrug, happy to have her brain engaged in something that wasn't methods of death - or killing, to be specific. "Celestia was around for over a thousand years and every day lifted the sun and moon in their proper time. Ponies saw that power which the unicorns lost now being used by a singular pony and sort of... assumed.

"Meanwhile Luna, with her personality and particular charms, seemed far nearer. She was distanced by a gulf of time like Celestia. Sure, she is... was a princess, but she acted more like... I suppose an older sister or mother than what ponies expected of a princess. She cultivated a different sort of relationship with all the ponies of Equestira." Twilight explained simply.

"I suppose so." Rarity said with an accepting nod. "By the way, Darling, did Celestia transfer the duty of raising the sun to you? I can't quite recall at the moment." Twilight rolled her eyes.

"She's given me the responsibility every other week. A sort of trial run. By next year she'll only raise the sun on special ceremonial occasions or if something happens to me." Twilight said.

"Oh, so a sort of a solar timeshare then?" Rarity asked.

"Something like that I suppose."

"And you can move the sun all by yourself? The moon too?" Rarity asked.

"Yes, quite easily now that I've had consistent practice."

"I see..." Rarity said with a nod and then chuckled. "I suppose that puts you many times on equal hoofing as Celestia." Twilight almost brought out a rebuttal when Rarity placed a gentle hoof against Twilight's lips. "You raise the sun and moon. You are the ruler of Equestria. Give it time, Twilight, and doubtlessly you will become quite the goddess in the eyes of ponies.

"And who knows," she added with a coy little smile, "perhaps one day you'll see that you are the deity that deserves to be with Pinkie." Twilight was aghast to say the least, but then it all clicked.

She... she loved Pinkie. She loved her more than life, loved her more than any single pony that she could imagine. She loved her, and loved the daughter that now stood without a father. She loved the two of them, not because they were pretty - though that certainly was true - but because... because they were Pinkie and Lil' Cheese.

"Maybe..." Twilight said after another moment's thought.

"Twilight," Rarity began with that maternal tone of hers, "so help me, if you don't ask Pinkie if she'd like to go out to dinner with you I will ask her for you." Twilight flushed slightly at the thought - though it wasn't particularly unattractive in a way. "Stop waiting, Twilight, and seize what you always wanted. Take her and give yourself to her. You deserve one another!"

Twilight blinked a few times, staring down at her hooves in thought. Some ponies certainly would agree with Rarity's assessment - and Twilight desperately wanted to be one of them. There was something so alluring about agreeing that she deserved Pinkie, but in the end she really didn't think she did.

"Pinkie deserves somepony perfect." Twilight said, lifting her eyes to meet with Rarity's. "She deserves a pony who truly loves her and would cherish her without end. She deserves a pony that means it when they say 'to death' and 'for richer or poorer' and all other parts of the vows. She deserves the very best."

"You're right, Twilight." Rarity said, her patience - if not everlasting - at least enough to impress a saint. "I wager, though, that you would keep any vow - you're the sort of pony that would. I also think that you'd love and cherish her far more than any other pony out there. I've seen how you look at her when you think no pony else is watching. You adore her, and frankly, I wouldn't even see anything wrong with a scene where you worshipped at her hooves.

"True, you are by no means perfect - everypony, not least of which being you - knows that," Rarity said, taking a step closer to press a hoof against Twilight's chest, "so work at it. Become perfect, but don't wait on it to ask her out to dinner. Become her perfect mare while the two of you live in each other's embrace. Become the perfect pair not today or tomorrow, but over the long years of eternity.

"You're an alicorn, Twilight, you'll have a long time to learn how to love her - a long time to learn to be perfect. So DO it." Rarity finished, lowering her hoof from Twilight's chest. "Think on it, Darling. I think you'll find that if you don't deserve her, that she - in the very least - deserves you." With that, Rarity turned and left Twilight without another word.

Twilight stood there for a good long time, her mind failing to process what she had heard. It wasn't that the words made no sense, but the more she thought about it the more it made sense and the less she wanted it to. Of course, that wasn't entirely true, emotions are quite complicated and Twilight's mental dissonance over her own desires only complicated the matter further.

She deeply wanted to be with Pinkie - it was likely what would be considered her heart's truest desire - but she couldn't just... be with Pinkie. Pinkie deserved so much better! She deserved the very best and Twilight was far from that!

"Become perfect..." Rarity's voice echoed in her mind.

"You don't just become perfect!" Twilight said to herself, beginning to pace back an forth.

"What, you think ponies are born perfect? Perfection isn't something you stumble into, its something you work at." Twilight scoffed at herself. "Paintings don't become perfect because some pony tripped over a bench and spilled paints just so, they had to perfect their craft!"

"Well some paintings that are 'perfect' certainly look like that..."

"That's not the point!" Twilight snapped. "Perfection is attained; it is achieved! We aren't perfect but we can become closer to it."

"What if I never deserve Pinkie? What If I'm never good enough." Twilight quavered. "What if she one day decides that she doesn't want to be with me?"

"Then you cherish what time you had! You don't not do things because you're afraid they won't work out! If you did, why are spells still made? Their the single least predictable things that can be predicted!" Twilight said in exasperation.

"But... but she's too important to just... flounce into her life! She deserves so much more than I can ever be!"

"And that is why you have to try!" Twilight countered. "You aren't perfect, but you can try your hardest to become perfect. It's just that easy. Take one step and then the next. One day you're either perfect or just closer than you were yesterday. That simple, Twilight."

"But..."

"No 'buts', Twilight! This isn't a time to second guess, it's time to act!"

"There is an issue, though." Twilight pointed out. Twilight waited for herself to say what that issue was. "Pinkie will never willingly divorce Cheese Sandwich. She's far too loyal to him, even if he isn't the same to her. She holds out hope and will continue to do so that he'll come back and apologize. We can try as hard as we want to become perfection, but she won't abandon him until he's dead."

"I suppose that is true..." Twilight acquiesced. "But then again... perhaps this is the redemptive use of that spell?" Twilight posited to herself. "I mean, I always thought the spell was a mistake but perhaps it was... a blessing in disguise? I could use it to fix the issue."

"Yeah, that would work. I could make Pinkie realize that Cheese Sandwich isn't worth her time - that she's much better off without him and with somepony else. No pony in particular, mind you, just not Cheese Sandwich." Twilight pointed out.

"It would be painful to see her have to divorce the pony she thought loved her." Twilight mused. "But... perhaps there's a silver lining to all of this? He isn't coming back after all."

"If he did it wouldn't be for long..."

"Either way, he isn't coming back. That means he essentially divorced her without the paperwork. He admitted that he didn't love her!"

"Did he?"

"YES! He told her that he didn't love her and that he liked the harlots better. It's plain as day that he considers their marriage a sham!" Twilight exclaimed as self imposed realization dawned.

"Pinkie doesn't."

"We can fix that."

"Does it need to be fixed?"

"YES!"

"If you say so..."

Getting Pinkie into the castle wasn't hard. Honestly all Twilight had to do on a good day would be to ask the air if Pinkie was listening and the mare would appear to comfort Twilight that she, indeed, was not listening to Twilight at that moment before zipping away. Today, though, was not exactly a 'good' day, to be fair.

That, however, didn't stop the fact that getting Pinkie to the castle would be a synch. It just required a bit of know-how - which Twilight had in spades.

All she needed to do was send her a letter.

Of course, this summoning ritual wasn't very fancy or particularly unique to Pinkie - the same would work for any other pony who could read and had an address - but in the end it was still effective, and that's what counts. One letter into Pinkie's mailbox - completely obviating the need for postage or the lottery that was Derpy Hooves - and within the appointed time the mare would show up.

When she did, Twilight was surprised to find her in what for other ponies would be considered a good mood - which of course meant that Pinkie was still a few notches below her usual amount of energy. Twilight couldn't fault the mare for not being at full energy, but at least she wasn't as down and out as she was before.

"Hiya, Twilight." Pinkie said at a speed far more normal than her usual. It broke Twilight's heart to see the mare like this, but at least she had the comfort that she was about to fix it. At least part of it.

"Hi, Pinkie!" Twilight said, filling the vacuum of energy in hopes that it would drag Pinkie up a few notches by osmotic pressure of energy in the environment. "Come on in!" She said, stepping aside. Pinkie smiled and walked in, making Twilight's heart drop once more. It was horrible to see the usually so bouncy mare just walking around.

"You said you wanted to have a little get together?" Pinkie prompted, looking about the castle.

"Yeah!" Twilight said, softly closing the door. "Just a little 'howdy hey' and so on. It's been a hard few days and I thought it best if we had some time to... you know, destress." Pinkie smiled at this.

"That sounds nice, Twilly. It sounds real nice." She said in a way that would be considered exuberant in others but instead just came across as dower for Pinkie.

"Yeah, just some time to help get your mind off of things and maybe get you in a better headspace." Twilight said, already igniting her horn. "I'm sure by the end of this you'll feel a lot better." With a flash of magic Pinkie found that her mind thoroughly was off the topic of the past few days - though, to be fair, this wasn't true for just the past few days.

Twilight sighed, coaxing herself in the absence of Rarity to more ahead with the plan she had concocted. She needed to do this, not just for herself but for Pinkie. She couldn't leave her friend hanging! She just couldn't!

Looking on Pinkie in her still, unthinking state, Twilight felt her heart flutter as it the first time and every time since. Unable to help herself - mostly because she knew she could help herself - Twilight leaned forward and planted a kiss on Pinkie's unresisting lips.

It felt good. Right. As natural as breathing to just lock lips with Pinkie for moments without number. She loved it - loved Pinkie and all the ways the mare made her feel. She wanted it to last forever and beyond, but knew there was work to be done.

Stepping back, she took a breath and scanned the spell with her magic once more. It was there and still as vibrant as the day it had been cast. It was powerful for an accidental spell - that much was for certain. Twilight even found herself admiring the spell work, the precise lines of runes that worked in tandem to produce an effect that the spell she had meant to cast had never intended to use them for. It was almost as if the pony that had made the spell had made the spell in such a way to produce the effect for how convenient it was.

She'd certainly have to research the pony that made it - but that was for later if ever.

Likely never.

Taking in a breath, Twilight subtly began to alter the spell and how it interacted with Pinkie's mind. Slowly and ever so carefully she adjusted thoughts, feelings, convictions, and the smallest of aspects of Pinkie - taking extreme care to not alter the larger picture, simply the smallest edges of the shading.

It felt like an eternity as she worked tirelessly, shifting things with grace and care. It was nerve-wracking work but Twilight was up to the task as she moment to moment reshaped the smallest pieces of Pinkie while balancing the rest of the mare's personality.

She worked hard, aiming for a very specific goal. She wanted Pinkie to move forward and to divorce Cheese Sandwich - leaving behind the stallion who had been a net neutral in her life. Twilight reflected that the only thing he had ever done to balance out all the negatives he had brought was by being the sire - though not father in Twilight's opinion - of the magnificent blessing that was Lil' Cheese.

Twilight shifted things about, making Pinkie open to the idea of the unfortunately necessary divorce and emotionally capable of going forward with it. She also took the time to add a little extra - namely making Pinkie open to a new relationship afterwards. She wanted to give the mare time to heal, but perhaps she could just so happen to make that time significantly shorter.

Her heart yearned to have Pinkie for her own and to be Pinkie's own. She craved to be part of the mare's life in a more prominent way. She found herself daydreaming about being called mommy by Lil' Cheese. She smiled at the thought, at the dream.

Perhaps that explained why a small string wormed its way into Pinkie's mind without Twilight's notice or direct action. It would certainly explain a lot of things, but then again, perhaps these things just happen.

Or perhaps somepony else wanted to make sure others thought that things just happened.

Sighing in satisfaction at a job well done, Twilight took one last kiss from Pinkie - contenting herself that she'd at least have that much left for her - and then stepped back, looking the mare over before releasing her from the effects of the spell.

With a shiver that ran from the tips of her ears to the very end of her tail, Pinkie came back into life, her mane and tail poofing out back to their original size while her smile returned full force. It was wonderful to see and made Twilight's heart leap for join. She had Pinkie back!

"Wowwy! I don't know what you - I mean - what just happened, but I suddenly feel a lot better!" Pinkie said with her usual speed. Twilight giggled at the return to form, relieved to have Pinkie back to her old self.

"I'm glad that you're alright, Pinkie." Twilight said, still smiling at the mare. Her smile faltered when her hindbrain nudged her forebrain about the second step in the plan. Well, the mood was good, she might as well ruin it with a dumb question. "Say, Pinkie, would you like to go out to dinner with me? I mean, I had thought about just staying home tonight, but you know..." She trailed off, unsure where to go with her sentence.

Pinkie, for her part, blinked a few times, and then beamed at Twilight. "Sure, Twilly, I'd love to!"

"I..." Twilight began, not sure what to she wanted say - though she did know what she ought to say. "I don't mean a meal, Pinkie."

"Then why would we got out to dinner? A meals a meal!" Pinkie said in confusion while stamping a hoof to empahsize the point in an almost comical way.

"I mean... I mean, not just a meal... I..." Twilight fumbled, unsure if she had the guts for this. In the end, she had to try. "I mean... would you like to go out on a date with me?" Twilight tried.

"A date?" Pinkie blinked. Twilight already began to preemptively line up curse to be used on herself in the event this went the way she thought it would from the start, but instead plowed on ahead.

"A date." Twilight repeated back to Pinkie. "I... I love you, Pinkie. I want us to be together, and I understand that it might be a bit too close to the day that... well, you know. I'm alright with waiting a bit!" Twilight said defensively, cowering behind her words as they streamed out in an unregulated flow. "I understand that you might not want to start dating right now but I just had to tell youthatIloveyoubecauseIdidn'tlasttimeanditendedupreallybadbecausethenSandwichproposedandthenthismesshappenedandI'mreallysorry!" Twilight rattled off, beating Pinkie's usual speed of speaking by a small bit.

Twilight closed her eyes and jerked her head away from Pinkie, her heart pounding violently in her chest as she awaited rejection. There was no way that this would work! Pinkie was too fresh from her treatment at Cheese Sandwich's hooves and would certainly need time to rest and heal after such a terrible ordeal!

She felt her head being moved by a hoof to face Pinkie, but she kept her eyes closed. They did, however, shoot wide open when she felt Pinkie kiss her passionately. She stared into Pinkie's now closed eyes, her brain firing off fireworks and shooting off sparks as it celebrated and also failed to keep up with the world that was whirling about her in a fierce storm of emotion and circumstance.

Things were certainly looking up!

Chapter 9: More Isn't Any Less

A perfect day. A ceremony unlike any other. The new decoration above the door. Enjoying life in an old new way. Happily Ever After and the final question.

"Are you sure?" Twilight fussed, turning this way and that. "I did ask for the option of a suit - would that still be available?"

"Yes, Your Majesty, the suit is available for your viewing, though it has yet to change since you tried it on ten minutes ago." The ever patient boutique mare said. "Your Highness, if you please, I believe the court will expect the dress. It is a play on the very dress that Cadence wore - which I hope you recall set the fashion trend as far as royal marriages are concerned."

"I know, I know..." Twilight said, looking at the folds in the dress one last time. It was by no means the sort of dress she had expected - the clean lines speaking of simplicity she had thought lost in dressmaking. It hugged where it looked the nicest and flared where it suited the best. It was a marvel of tailoring, and somehow it still felt wrong.

Perhaps because it was on her.

"Is Pinkie wearing a dress too? Is that alright? Doesn't one of us have to wear a suit and the other a dress?" Twilight continued fussing, admiring the dress as best she was able in her hyperactive state.

"Not at all, Your Majesty. Though in reflection of traditional ceremonies most couples prefer it, there have been weddings with all sorts of dress rules followed that were nonstandard. Why, the other month we served a client who had the groom in the dress and the bride in a neat suit. I understand that it was a wonderful wedding - though the invitations were fairly minimal due to its less than public nature."

"Anypony I'd know?" Twilight asked without intending to, her mouth on autopilot while her brain continued to panic.

"I doubt so, though the groom might technically be an adoptive relative of yours." The mare said, adjusting Twilight's bustle a slight bit.

"Adoptive..." Twilight's brain switched gears on a dime and quickly ran through adoptive members of her family - tracing roots and tenuous familiar connections. "Blue Blood?" She asked, recalling how the princeling had recently gotten himself a bride from some ethereal point in a ceremony that was hush hush for some reason or another.

"I couldn't say, Your Highness." The seamstress said in the way that communicated that, though Twilight hadn't heard it from her and never would, that Twilight had heard it from somewhere. Twilight was puzzled at the image of the haughty stallion in a dress, but it took all sorts.

"This isn't-?"

"No, Your Majesty, the stallion kept the dress." The mare answered.

"Good..." Twilight muttered after a moment. "The dress is marvelous, it really is," She said, switching tracks so fast it almost caused a derailment, "I just wonder if-"

"Darling, it looks positively splendid." Rarity's voice called out from the other side of the room as she entered. "Now I suggest you let the poor mare pass you off to the ponies in charge of your cosmetics so that you can march down the aisle before the day's out. Pinkie's almost ready and she keeps switching between bouncing faster than the eye can track and weeping fountains worth every second."

"She's sad? Distressed‽ Oh no, it was to soon! We have to-"

"Tears of joy, Dear, tears of joy." Rarity comforted, pushing Twilight back onto the stand with a gentle hoof before the mare could run off and stop the wedding. "Stay with the dress, the suit - though equally marvelous, even though I say so myself - doesn't, pardon the pun, suit you as well as this dress." Rarity insisted.

Twilight sighed and then gave a nod. "Right, right..." She said more to herself. "Dress it is." The seamstress, though outwardly seeming unaffected by this pronouncement, showed all the subtle signs of relief that a tailor could give that Rarity could recognize.

"Very well, Your Majesty. If you'd be so kind, my associates in makeup and hair styling will make quick work of you and have you marching down the aisle within the hour." The mare announced, sweeping a hoof to point in the proper direction. Twilight nodded and gently stepped down from the small platform to be attended upon by another dozen ponies who waited by a chair with all their tools out - looking like some mixture between a surgical team and a group of ponies in a race cart repair team.

"Thank Celestia you came," the seamstress said out the side of her mouth, stepping up beside Rarity, "had she asked to see the suit one more time I might've had to send a pony to get a new one."

"Wearing it that thin?" Rarity asked with a could grin as she watched the ponies dive in on Twilight.

"I might've torn the one you made asunder." The mare confessed. Rarity smirked, barely holding a chuckle back from escaping as she thought on the wonderful mishaps between Twilight and fashion over the years. That mare and any form of dressing up always seemed to go together with the ease of oil and water.

"Well, in the very least she isn't likely to have words about her makeup." Rarity commented with a content smile. The seamstress beside her raise an eyebrow at her. "I'll just stay here then, shall I?"

The carriage came to a halt before the Castle of Friendship with a gentle rocking motion. Pinkie and Twilight, however, were busy in the passenger compartment not paying any mind to the world about them beyond each other’s lips. The wedding - once Twilight got past her nerves - had been splendid. Everypony had been there, from Twilight's parents to Pinkie's parents; from Shining, Cadence, and Little Flurry Heart to Maud, Marble, Limestone Pie, and Lil' Cheese; in addition to Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Fluttershy.

As Twilight had always wanted for her wedding, Celestia officiated - even despite her abdication. Certain responsibilities were impossible escape it seemed, but Celestia wasn't one to mind this favor for her most faithful student.

Luna, not to be left out of the festivities, officiated the official adoption process of Lil' Cheese - which Twilight and Pinkie had agreed should be part of the ceremony. Lil' Cheese, of course, would be with them during the honeymoon - but that wasn't due to start until tomorrow. Tonight was Twilight and Pinkie's special night, and Lil' Cheese wouldn't mind some extra time spent with her new cousin and aunt and uncle.

The knock on the carriage's door was largely ineffectual considering Twilight and Pinkie were already having so much fun. The second series of knocks was equally ignored as Twilight, in a rare moment of dominance for her, slipped her tongue to join in on the fun unbidden, getting a muffled giggle from Pinkie who reciprocated the motion.

Considering two rounds of knocking on the carriage door hadn't gotten their attention, it was little wonder why hushed words and the sounds of a good number of ponies scurrying about and taking deep breaths didn't get them to pay attention as they continued to kiss back and forth - lost in their own world of unending happiness. Never had anything so fun entered either of their lives and now it was all theirs to enjoy!

Then the trumpets blew.

Both Twilight and Pinkie jumped in surprise as the carriage was bombarded with the Canterlot Promenade for Brass Choir No. Three*. It was the most effective wakeup call for two ponies who had never been so awake. The carriage door then opened to reveal an austere attendant who, by the look of things, was pleased to finally have their attention.
*A traditional song used by Celestia and Luna during the first few years of their reign that fell out of service - though it still found use at the hooves of servants everywhere that wanted to get the attention of the royals. The attention grabbing nature of the short piece that was intended to bring a rowdy court to order, as always, worked just as well on the princesses themselves.

"Your Highnesses, the castle awaits with a gift from Madam Rarity." The servant announced as he looked off into the distance while holding the door with a hoof. Twilight looked at Pinkie sheepishly and then turned back to give a nod to the servant.

"Thank you..." Twilight said, standing up while Helping Pinkie up as well. "Watch the first step, Pinkie, it can be a- w-w-woah!" Twilight stammered as she found herself being swooped off her hooves. To her amazement - and that of those assembled about them - Pinkie reared up on her hind hooves while hoisting Twilight up in her forehooves.

She didn't even stop when leaving the stepping stool, but walked about halfway down the rolled out carpet before finally stumbling and falling flat on both their faces.

"HORSERADISH!" Pinkie cursed after a moment to recover from the crash.

"W-what was... that, Pinkie?" Twilight asked, trembling lightly as she got back up to her own hooves. Pinkie gave Twilight a bright smile as she bounced back up to her hooves.

"Earth pony tradition! Carry the bride to the door on your hind legs as a show of dedication*!" Pinkie said cheerily, despite having failed. Perhaps it was just the ridiculous nature of the failure that made it alright.

*Though true that it is an Earth pony tradition, the origins are less about dedication - though perhaps the modern interpretation could be said as such. The old arrangement was that the new husband or wife could have as much of his or her father-in-law's wealth as they could carry in addition to the new spouse to their front door from the church they were married in. The tradition never truly indicated which spouse would, should, or could carry which, so long as their was a good show after the wedding.

"Why did you say 'asterisk'?" Twilight asked, befuddled.

"It's for the audience's benefit." Pinkie said, waving a hoof to shoo the question away. Twilight almost asked what that was supposed to mean when the trumpets blew once more - this time playing Triumph of the Sisters in D Major. Twilight looked about in confusion, and then found what she was supposed to be looking at - or at least what she thought she ought be looking at.

There, where she had noted a blank spot needing covered all those days ago, was a tarp covering... something. At the very top, hanging elegantly yet precariously out of a window, was Rarity, a ripcord held in her magic.

Noticing that Twilight was looking now, Rarity pulled the cord with a flourish, releasing the tarp to flutter down in the wind and reveal...

Twilight's breath caught in her throat as she looked up at it in wonder.

Above her door, gently rustling in the wind, was a wonderful banner of deep lavenders, gentle pinks, and brilliant blues. The central device of the banner, the part above all else that caught Twilight's breath as she looked on it, was a series of stars intertwined with what Twilight could only describe as... as regal balloons.

It was strange to see balloons being characterized - and successfully so - as regal things, and even stranger to realize that it somehow, beyond all belief, managed to tie the castle together in a wonderful way. It was beautiful - a true piece of Rarity's finest work. It shimmered in the evening air with the radiance of silk and generally was just magnificent.

"Wow..." was all either Pinkie or Twilight said as they stared up at it.

"Can we..." Pinkie began after a moment of dumbstruck wonder, "go inside?" Twilight came to her senses and smiled at Pinkie.

"Of course! Wouldn't do to keep my wife out in the evening air for too long." Twilight said with a broad smile. She did that more often now, Twilight reflected. Before smiles had become a rarer commodity that honestly hadn't found much place on Twilight, but recently she had so much to smile for.

The two mares entered the castle, which now that Twilight had set her sights on it as the official house of governance outside of Canterlot - useful for emergencies and such - it was far cleaner than Twilight had ever seen it. It even had guards and workers milling about inside!

All along the corridors where dim crystals had lit were now fresh, brilliant stones of pure luminosity; and where barren walls and floors had called for decorations, there were now reflections of the grand banner outside and plush carpets that made your steps not sound like somepony was banging crystal pans together.

Truly the Castle of Friendship had seen a transformation into a proper castle!

Leading Pinkie by instinct, Twilight brought the two of them to what had been her old room. It even had two guards standing to attention outside of it! Twilight couldn't help but think the ponies behind it had taken her a bit more seriously than she had perhaps intended when she had decreed the castle be make suitable for a secondary capital.

Entering the room, her smile broadened. "Rarity!" She cried out, rushing in. The unicorn in question was just throwing a delicate arrangement of rose petals onto the now much larger bed - obviously getting those last few touches just right. She turned at her name and returned the smile, only to gasp as Twilight gave her a tackling hug.

"It's wonderful, Rarity! Thank you so much!" Twilight said, happier than she had ever been since the wedding while squeezing the life out of the other mare.

"Y-your welcome, Darling, it's t-truly all my pleasure... eh, you think you might see your way clear to l-letting me breath? I'm running out of air quite rapidly." Rarity said with a wavering smile. Twilight quickly set her down with a blush.

"S-sorry, Rarity." She apologized, scooting one of her quickly deteriorating curls out of her eyes. "I... thank you, Rarity, you've been a wonderful help with everything. You've made this day the best it could've been. Thank you so much."

"Oh pish posh," Rarity shook her head and a hoof, "you two were the stars of today. Without you, my efforts would've been for nothing. At the end of the show, the audience applauds, but they applaud for the main cast, not the supporting cast." Rarity said with a dainty smile.

"But some of the most memorable scenes are built on the backs of the supporting cast." Twilight pointed out, adopting what she believed was a coquettish smile. "How about we... make one?"

"As long as you agree to stop smiling like that - you look either constipated or like you had something fly into an eye and then up your nose. It isn't very fetching, trust me." Rarity said, looking over to Pinkie. "Are you included in this, Princess-Consort Pinkie?"

"I-" Pinkie began, but Twilight lit her horn and closed the doors behind them. Of course, to the untrained eye, that was all that happened, but Twilight had more than one reason to ignite her horn. "Of course!" She said with a broad smile. "Just call me Pinkie, though. I might use the Princessy bit in formal functions or if I want a larger cake, but other than that it really isn't nice to hear my friends call me that."

"Then let's get you two out of the simply magnificent dresses and ready for a bit more... fun." Rarity said, already gently teasing loose a few of the strands that held Twilight's bustle together. Twilight couldn't help but flush slightly and deliver a shy smile while letting Rarity do the work.

Meanwhile, Pinkie simply stepped to the left and left the dress floating comically in the air beside her for a second before it crumpled into a heap that Rarity gave the proper attention to while working on Twilight's less cooperative gown. Twilight might have to ask Pinkie if it was possible for her to learn that later, but now... she felt there was something a bit more urgent needing to be attended to.

Time, of course, is immaterial. Not just on paper or screen, but in the long, grand scheme of things. Time, the concept by which we bind all things, is - at the end of the day - just a mist before our eyes.

That being the case, as the mists parted before Twilight's eyes, she found herself stepping out of the last piece of the ensemble and directly into the waiting seamstress' muzzle. Her eyes opened wide in shock, and then melted closed into bliss as she sank willingly into the kiss.

Rarity gently stowed the dresses in the large dresser before guiding Twilight with the kiss up and onto the bed, silently beckoning Pinkie up as well. Parting lips, the two of them gave a heated breath as they looked into each others eyes. The moment, as wonderful as it was already, was just beginning.

"Care to make Pinkie... pliant?" Rarity asked meekly in Twilight's ears, giving the same a gentle nibble as she leaned in closer. Twilight shuddered at the sensation, but shook her head.

"N-not yet, Rarity..." She breathed, feeling her heart pick up the pace. "Hey, Pinkie Darling, care to join in on a kiss?" She said, a dreamy smile across her features. Pinkie perked up, stowing the random sudoku book she had had out behind an ear - where it promptly dematerialized from this realm of reality - and dove forward.

Twilight and Pinkie drank in each other deeply, the kiss as passionate - if not more so - than any of those in the carriage they had shared all the way from Canterlot. Twilight, hooking a leg around Rarity, pulled her in to join the kiss, and soon the three of them were sharing in the union of lips with all the passion that they could muster.

Sparks flew - and not just the superfluous magical kind - and universes came into being as they simply sat together kissing to their hearts content. It was marvelous, and they each loved the feeling the others gave them. When tongues were briefly introduced it only became more pleasurable for all parties involved as they swapped flavors.

Pulling back, The each caught their breath, each flushed as red as a rose - though it did show more on Rarity. "That was... amazing!" Twilight panted.

"Q-quite..." Rarity said, speechless in the face of the kiss.

"Wowie zowie..." Pinkie confirmed with gusto.

"Pinkie," Twilight began, focusing on the mare, "I have a... special request." Pinkie turned, smiling broadly.

"After a kiss like that? Anything, Twilly!" Pinkie said happily. Twilight flushed once more, hiding her face for a second before taking courage and looking at... at her wife once more.

It filled her with a warmth she had never known before to be able to call anypony anything remotely close to wife. She could get used to it.

"It's a... kink, I suppose." Twilight confessed.

"Ooh, gettin' freaky on the first night, huh?" Pinkie said, her eyes going half lidded with a flutter and a sly grin. "Whacha got for me, my freaky-deaky honeybun?" Twilight blinked a few times at the comment, but shook it off, plowing onwards.

"Could you... pretend to be in a trance for me?" Twilight asked. Pinkie simply cocked her head to the side. "You know... empty, vacant.... thousand yard stare?Completely obedient..."

Pinkie blinked a few times and then went blank. Twilight paused for a moment and then waved a hoof in front of her wife's eyes, gaining no reaction. Twilight shot a glance at Rarity who shrugged at mouthed the word 'trance'. Twilight paused once more, and then was struck by dawning realization before turning back to face Pinkie.

The mare was completely still - though with a subtle vibration that was Pinkie when she tried to be still. It was a very good imitation of Pinkie's tranced out look, though it was subtly obvious that it was just an act. Twilight grinned at Pinkie, putting a hoof against the mare's cheek, admiring the love of her life.

She leaned in, gave the mare a deep kiss before shifting to one side and whispering in Pinkie's ear. "I'll make this up to you later... just please keep doing this - it's so hot." Twilight said with a shudder before drawing back and clearing her throat.

"Pinkie, please turn about, lower your head to the surface of the bed, spread your hindlegs, and flag your tail." She ordered Pinkie with an air of artificial authority. Rarity nodded with an impressed expression as Pinkie - thoroughly out of trance while acting as if she was in one - obeyed to the letter the command she had received.

"Rarity," Twilight said, looking at the mare, "would you like a taste of my wife?" She asked with a coy smile.

"Why, I would love one." Rarity said with a conspiratory smile, only to find herself being forced bodily down to the bed by her mane. "W-wah?" She let out in a most unladylike way as she felt her rear being pried up by force, leveraged by her tail.

"Well, I suppose you might get one later." Twilight said, leaning down to be eye to eye with Rarity. As Rarity opened her mouth to protest, she found a rubber ball being inserted into her mouth, held firm there by a leather band that ran about behind her head. She gave a muffled groan of protest, only to find herself subjected to more indignities as her forehooves were locked together and attached to her neck by means of yet more leather while her hindlegs were forced open by a spreader bar and set at a specific distance to her fore hooves by means of a bar that connected her hind and forelegs.

Rarity shivered under the attention that was forced on her, her eyes already rolling back in pleasure now needing to do so as Twilight stood up fully over her conquered prize. She gave Rarity a haughty smile, turning to Pinkie's offered rump. Rarity watched as Twilight closed her eyes and took a long draft of the mare's odors before giving a long, languid lick to Pinkie's twitching pussy.

"Simply delicious..." Twilight breathed before turning back to Rarity with an evil smile. "But I really ought to sit down while I eat." She said, already turning so that her flanks hovered over Rarity. The fashionista took in a startled breath, hoping Twilight had seen what she had seen before it was too late.

Then it became abundantly clear that Twilight had seen it.

Rarity felt her horn being ridden on, entering with a silky smooth motion into Twilight's quivering sex. Rarity moaned her own pleasure as she felt the delightful weight of the mare resting on her face, drawing in the scent with ecstatic glee. She felt Twilight's inner walls tighten around her horn as the mare above her began to rise up and down, leaking her luxurious juices across Rarity's face in an ever growing stream that tantalized the senses. And all this while hearing Pinkie's barely restrained moans as Twilight licked and sucked and prodded and teased away at her wife.

This... this was WONDERFUL!

Rarity moaned, so grateful that it had all worked out so well. She loved Happily Ever After's, and if this wasn't one, then there were none left. The joy of being used and taking part in such a degrading way the night that these two consummated their union, it was simply just too much and drove Rarity's heart to flutter madly in lust and appreciation.

She wasn't the only one to feel that way as Pinkie bit down on the comforter to stifle her own moans as Twilight continued to eat her out. If her mind hadn't been so clouded in the ecstasy of her wife's ministrations she might've thought that Twilight was so good that it might point to previous practice, but - as things stood - she was having too much fun to care about such trivial things as that.

Twilight for her part moaned into Pinkie as she pumped up and down on Rarity's horn, feeling the improvised dildo plumbing her depths in exquisite pleasure. She wanted to scream out, but she was enjoying the sensations and the taste that were her life at that point in time too much for anything else.

The world was filled with their three voices as they brought each other higher and higher. Rarity felt her arcane muscles swelling and straining as pressure built up while both Pinkie and Twilight felt themselves growing hotter and hotter as their body prepared less arcane climaxes in the works.

Every moment was paradise and only that much better for the company that it was shared with. However, just as it felt as if the room were to burst into screams, Twilight pushed off Rarity completely while removing her muzzle from Pinkie's wildly winking pussy. Both mares moaned in conjoined pleasure and desperation at the withheld release.

Twilight looked between them with a haggard and needy look that shone with the radiance of depravity. Pinkie quivered on the bed with her marehood exposed and sopping wet - already dripping onto the bed with barely a second from when Twilight had stopped cleaning her off. Rarity, ever the lady, now looked the harlot in her restraints that were accompanied with a whorish expression and generous splattering of Twilight's juices dripping and pooling across her face and horn.

Her tongue even idly licked at the stray rivulets that danced too close to her mouth.

Gasping in barely restrained orgasm, Twilight giggled airily at the two of them while gathering herself back together. The night was only just beginning, so it wouldn't due to end it so quickly. No, not at all.

"Pinkie, I want you... oh my," Twilight shook, barely able to keep her imagination from bringing her over the edge, "I want you to... oh... oh..." Twilight sighed out, trying and failing to think straight, "eat Rarity's pussy!" She said with less grace than she had intended, barely able to stay upright while her horn flared to life as a spell gathered force.

Pinkie, doing her best impression of a mindless servant, stood up from her depraved position and walked about on the large bed to stand behind Rarity. Lowering her head, she began to ply her understanding of how to tend to a mare orally - which was more or less only what she had gathered from having been eaten out a few moments ago.

Rarity, of course, didn't particularly mind the inexperience - after all, as with many things, Pinkie made up for lack of experience with less than tactful application of gusto. Rarity could hardly hold herself together as Pinkie began to assault her with tongue and wobbling face - essentially motorboating her ass while also kissing and licking at her already dripping marehood.

It wasn't the best Rarity ever had, but it certainly did the job it set out to do.

Twilight, however, was not idle in all of this as her spell slowly took shape. She stepped up behind her wife and slapped her across the wobbling ass in a playful way that didn't feel at all like a mallet striking the rump.

"Flag your tail, Pinkie." Twilight said calmly, though a storm of emotion - primarily lust - raged inside her in a beautiful symphony of desire. Pinkie, of course, complied like mind controlled mare she pretended to be - though in fact she actually was without her notice. Reality can be so complicated.

She didn't expect to feel something long, hard, and somewhat fleshy enter her yes yes circle.

She couldn't help but react with a pleasured, yet thoroughly confused, moan. "Oh, my dear Pinkie," Twilight said, pulling herself up Pinkie - giving the mare a wonderful feeling of exactly what was being forced deeper and deeper inside her, "I can't wait to meet Lil' Cheese's sibling. Can't you, my feisty fiesta filly?" Twilight asked, pulling her... thing out of Pinkie before thrusting it back in forcefully.

Magic: it allowed one pony to write 'Big Cock' and draw the circles to get a large chicken and another to write 'Huge Dick' with the proper circles and yet somehow not get their ever annoying neighbor who had yet to return the mower that they had ‘borrowed’ two weeks ago.

Pinkie moaned into Rarity, delighted by the sensation she had thought lost to her once divorce procedures had concluded. She'd have never told her wife, but deep down there was a part of her that missed and preferred cock to pussy - not that there was anything wrong with cats of course, she just liked the chickens. And now she was getting plenty of it!

Pinkie tried to respond, but between getting forced into Rarity's rear and dealing with her slowly reemerging climax, it came out less as, "Oh yes, Twilight, I can't wait to give you a foal!" and more of "Ub byes, Twibwight, I - OH CELESTIA - c-c-c-can't wubwubwubwubwub-wait to gib you a fbfoal!"

It was a mess that made Rarity scream out in pleasure.

It also sounded oddly a bit like the type of music that Vinyl played...

Rarity would've collapsed in screaming orgasm, but instead was suspended by the spreader bar and cuffs while having a howling chain of orgasms that rocked her world. She could also tell she wasn't alone as both Twilight and Pinkie screamed each other's name in the ecstatic glee of completion.

Rarity shook and spasmed as she came again and again all across Pinkie's muzzle - her horn also firing off a stream of goo that splattered across her own face in a whorish addition to Twilight's fluids. This was, doubtlessly, the life - being used and abused in a most delectably deplorable way.

And how had this all started again? Oh yes...

Epilogue: The Short Run Up

The past unabridged. The old pain's true form. A ravenous reluctance. A devious mind concocting innocence. A deal that you simply can't refuse. A road paved to the future.

Twilight wasn't truly happy. She walked about Ponyville with a smile, but inside that smile taunted her. It leered and sneered at her, knowing full well that it was a prop complacent in the lie. It was a lie dictated to be necessary for the day's events, but it was a lie nonetheless.

Eventually Twilight made her way home to the castle. Above the door was a space that seemed annoyingly empty. It could use a banner, or any decoration really, but it lay there bereft of anything that might tie together the castle in a pleasing way.

Twilight sighed, entering the castle and quickly deposited the few items she had bought on the counter. Her duties at Canterlot getting cleared out by her dedication had allowed this trip, and now that she was here she was encountering issues. She wasn't having second thoughts, certainly not. She was, among all ponies, the most determined about what needed to happen.

There were no two ways about it, and that was that.

Bringing out her chalkboard she fished about a draw for some chalk while bringing out a journal-like book from her saddle bags. Opening up to a particular page, she read over the spell again. It was a devilishly simple spell for creating a self-rebuilding mind control spell. It was particularly tenacious among spells of that category, requiring only its restructuring seal to remain to completely reappear.

She sketched it out on her board, drawing the lines not in the perfect circle they appeared in in her journal, but it a broken arc. She stared at it for a long moment, reading over the lines of the spell as they appeared now.

"That seems quite a bit more complicated than when you first passed it off to me to use, Dear." Rarity said from behind her, lounging - as was her wont - across the plush couch that sat in a corner of the room.

"I see you let yourself in, Rarity." Twilight said without turning as she began to sketch out the possibilities. "And it looks that way because it is. Honestly it already has enough chaff in it that I'd have been surprised if I had found this spell and was told that it isn't naturally a part of a larger spell."

"Have you chosen what spell to hide your magnum opus in?" Rarity asked, standing up from the cushioned sofa.

"Not yet, I first need to figure out what spell I would want to cast in the headspace I wish to inhabit by the end of this." Twilight muttered. "Are you sure Pinkie won't arrive early?" She asked, briefly casting a glance over her shoulder towards Rarity.

"This is Pinkie we're talking about." Rarity pointed out. "I can tell you that I don't believe that she will arrive too soon, but I can't guarantee anything." Twilight nodded sagely before returning her attention to the board.

"That just leaves tricking myself." Twilight mused as she looked over the board once more. "It already looks and reads as a cosmetic spell - perhaps I tried to give Pinkie a magical hair treatment?"

"Too forward for you, Twilight." Rarity noted. "How about a spell you wanted to cast on yourself but ended up missing and hitting her with? Would that work?"

"Possibly..." Twilight murmured, looking over the lines. "I would have to draw out the lines of course." She noted. "If I tried to hit myself with a spell and instead hit Pinkie, it could only be because she stepped on a coincidental axis of a physically drawn circle - otherwise I'll certainly smell out how fishy it is that I missed myself."

"I suppose missing yourself with a normal spell would be quite difficult." Rarity nodded. "So what sort of spell would you use on yourself if you were to do such a thing? There has to be something that you would use into which the spell can be snuck. Some relatively harmless spell that for some unknown reason contains the lines that make it into a mind control spell when it discharges incorrectly."

"That's the thing, I don't usually use spells on myself." Twilight noted. "Unless I'm testing something, but this can't be that. I can't tell myself I failed at basic experimentational safety - it just doesn't make any sense and would raise to many flags against myself. I'm smarter than that." Twilight answered, giving Rarity a look.

"I see..." Rarity mumbled, looking over the board. "How exactly were you intending on getting yourself into the right frame of mind either way?" Rarity asked, walking up beside Twilight, looking over the spell. Twilight cocked an eyebrow and turned back towards the blackboard.

"I was going to have you use a memory alteration spell on me. I thought I told you? I can't do it on myself otherwise I'd have to alter the spell fundamentally. If I cast it I'll remember how to cast it, which will make it obvious to me that I cast it on myself.

"I have to remove my memory of the memory alteration spell itself so I don't get suspicious as to why I know a memory alteration spell, but basically any memory alteration spell worth its weight in arcane infused chalk has clauses entwinned in its basic functionality that make it so you can't alter your memory about the spells casting. I'm sure I told you all of this." Twilight said, failing to see where Rarity was trying to go with all of this.

"Why not have a memory alteration spell to work as our little trojan?" Rarity said, looking over the spell. "Why not make it so you think you were trying to cast a memory alteration spell on yourself and Pinkie stepped on the circle at the wrong point and was hit by a mind controlling spell. We can even have a neat little Terosastines built off of that Astines right there. It might not make grammatical sense in the spell as of yet, and we might need to flub our way through building the rest of the spell out - unless of course we had somepony so skilled in ancient languages that they could alter sentences in spells in their sleep - but it could throw you for a loop at least until you sit on Pinkie's face." Rarity said with a sly grin.

Twilight blinked a few times, staring at the line Rarity had pointed to and slowly began to write in a following arc from it. The runes slotted into place as word after word made itself. Then the next ring formed and then the next around that. Within minutes, the broken arc that Twilight was going to fire was only distinguishable by the lines she had drawn between sentences that otherwise made arcane sense.

"My Dear Twilight," Rarity gasped theatrically, "are you really so skilled in the language used for spells? I would've never guessed!" Rarity said at the point of swooning.

"Rarity, I wrote a doctoral dissertation two weeks ago completely in the arcane language." Twilight answered. "You know I did, I had you proofread it."

"Did you dear? I thought I knew that Terosastines was a proper word in the arcane language because I studied it in one of my fashion magazines! Dearie me." Rarity mused, reading over the lines. "Also you have a Temas when you should have a Tekoy in line three on the second ring. Right after the disguised perpetuating clause, Dear."

Twilight looked at the board and, sure enough, Rarity was right. A quick scrub of a handkerchief wrapped in a light blue magical aura followed by a quick scratching in chalk later and the spell circle was once again complete. Twilight shook her head at Rarity who, by means of necessity, had learned the arcane language with her for her traditional princess doctoral dissertation*. Had it not been for the fashionista, Twilight doubted very much that she'd be a doctor right now.
*Twilight had been informed by Celestia that all princesses needed to complete a doctorate or be seen working on a doctorate to retain royal authority. This, of course, is a lie. Though both Celestia and Luna had doctorates - astral physics for the both of them in case you were wondering - it had never been a requirement as such. Celestia just knew that Twilight had always wanted a doctorate and wanted to, in her own special way, encourage her student to get one. Saying it was traditional and required just made it so Twilight wouldn't let her dreams waste away under the heat of royal responsibilities.

Lighting her horn once more, she brought out a bland, empty tome from her bags and carefully cast a complicated illusion spell. It would allow her to read it for the next day as some sort of treatise or expository text on mind altering spells. It wasn't the most complicated text, anypony reading it would find themselves struggling to make heads or tails of it - reading through it as if it were a book in a dream.

In the end, the only parts of the book that would act consistently and be easily deciphered would be the index, the spell circle, and the cover. After today, however, the book would not just have it's text disappear, but would find itself mysteriously leaving Twilight's collection.

Certain pieces, after all, had to be placed just so.

"Be sure to include in your casting of the memory alteration spell a prominent thought in my mind on the subject of memory alteration spells." Twilight said, making sure to clean off the blackboard before shoving it back in its place. "Not in the forefront of my mind, mind you, just a nagging little thought that can blossom into a solution - not sure what memory I'd want to alter though."

"How about..." Rarity tapped her chin a few times in thoughts as she came up with something probable, "you want to remove your memory of your love for Pinkie and you use the spell to achieve that affect. I can also ensure to put a little tick in your mind that will make you draw the circle just so that Pinkie walks across the point of serendipitous mind control."

"Perfect." Twilight smiled, but then paused, losing the expression as she thought on the future. "I'm going to need you to push me in the right direction, Rarity." She said after a moment, placing the tome into the first place she'd look for it later on. . "I can only do so much on my own. I'm not just talking about casting the memory alteration spell. I need you to watch me after you cast the spell and make sure I go after Pinkie."

"Darling, I'm certain you'll do that on your own initiative." Rarity comforted.

"I can't be sure. I really can be so irritatingly moral at times, Rarity." Twilight confessed with a disgusted sigh. "I can take the straight and narrow when its so narrow you can barely breathe while the wide path of ill conceived actions is just there waiting for me to use it.

"That's where I need you to come in, Rarity." Twilight said, turning to look the seamstress with a stare that spoke of so much emotion. "I need you to be there for me. I need you to nudge me. After you cast this spell on me, I will be the saintly pony I want to be. I will still be me, of course, but I won't be so... so filled with anger and hate.

"I want to just love Pinkie and Lil' Cheese, not hate Cheese Sandwich as I do. I can't... I can't love Pinkie properly without excising this hatred in me." Twilight said sullenly. "Because, despite all I've tried, my hate of Sandwich is tainting my view of Pinkie and Lil' Cheese. I... I catch myself despising Lil' Cheese at times because I see her father in her. I need to love them both, I want to love them both."

"I understand, Twilight." Rarity said, placing a hoof on her friend's shoulder. "I'll do my best to make your saintly self a debaucherous whore in private while remaining the stoic leader that all Equestria needs you to be." She said with a playful smirk.

"I'd prefer something more along the lines of ravenous and depraved slut who wishes Pinkie to be the same." Twilight said with a sigh and a gentle smile.

"Twilight, I will make you so depraved you could hardly imagine." Rarity said with all too ladylike a smile. "Also, to ease your mind before it is altered, I've also made sure that Cheese will get a tad... sloppy shall we say? Give you just the righteous cause you need to eventually step in and take what you want for Pinkie's good."

Twilight nodded solemnly, considering the vastly overly complicated spell matrix that would be the key to all her desires. "Are we doing this right?" Twilight asked, almost to herself - though it became clear as she looked up to Rarity she was still speaking to the mare. "We could just tell Pinkie what we found and I could try to... woo her?"

"Darling," Rarity began with a sigh, "if you weren't so well-read, I doubt you'd think of 'wooing' as much more than the sound of an alarm. Also, Pinkie is chronically straight and madly in love with a stallion who see her more as a happy little fuck in a backwater that he can depend on.

"Trust me, if we told Pinkie and convinced her we weren't lying, she wouldn't do much about it. By forcing Cheese's hoof and by making her receptive to you, we are doing her a great benefit. Sure, it so happens to also be greatly in your benefit as well, but when you come down to it, we are all friends and are, therefore, here to help each other. We're helping Pinkie and so helping Pinkie help you - very in line with general principles of friendship, Darling."

"I suppose..." Twilight said finally. "Just make sure of it all, alright? Make sure to be on my shoulder?" Twilight said.

"Of course, Darling. I'll be your little shoulder devil through thick and thin. Now quickly go to the front door of the castle, I need to cast the spell while you think you are entering the castle so that it seems as seamless as possible." Rarity said, already moving off to the corridor that led out.

"You really are a true friend, Rarity." Twilight said with a faint smile. "I might not... entirely like you in the future for what I just asked you to do, but rest assured that right now - in the mind that I currently am or have - I hold you in high esteem. I might even have pursued you had it no-"

"Darling, don't say that, I might alter you just a tad to make you inclined towards threesomes between Pinkie, yourself, and I in the future; because trust me, I too am... attracted." Rarity said flashing a look over her shoulder as she walked.

"I... I don't think I'd mind." Twilight said finally.

"Well then..."

Twilight blinked her eyes in pain as she walked inside her castle, having caught some sort of glint in them from something - likely the buckles on her saddle bags. True, it had been light blue and not any color that would be reflected from a buckle, but that didn't matter.

As she looked at pictures which would set her emotions on edge, Rarity was walking away from the castle.

She waved a hello at Pinkie Pie who passed her. She said something to Pinkie about Twilight being in town, to which Pinkie Pie bounced in glee and shot off towards the castle.

Rarity wore a happy smile all the way to her home, thankful to Mrs. Cake for having been able to delay Pinkie just enough for their purpose. Now the pieces would fall into place without issue and - if all went well - with minimal intervention. There would be some intervention no doubt, but the smaller the amount the better.

She opened the doors to her old home and original boutique, locked them behind her, and went down to her basement.

It wasn't a dark or dingy affair, instead pristinely clean with row on row of fabric rolls that lined the shelves. Of course, there was the matter of the stallion kept in a cage that was more suited for a large dog than a pony, but that was neither here nor there. The stallion certainly didn't seem to mind.

She kicked the cage, bringing the yellow stallion back from sleep. "Wah? Huh?" His bleary eyes focused on Rarity all at once and he pressed himself against the cage's walls. "Mistress Rarity! You've returned!" He said extatically. "Please, Mistress Rarity, please let your slave cum to you again! Please Mistress!"

"Oh my dear, I'll let you do more than that soon enough." Rarity said with a smile of menace that might've in the right frame of mind, come across as the look of a temptress. "I have a deal for you; would you like to hear it?"

"A deal?"

"Yes, a deal." Rarity purred, sitting on the floor of the basement while eyeing up her prey. "If you do what I tell you, I will choke you until you slip past unconsciousness into death," she began, already gaining a shudder of pleasure from the caged stallion, "and then... well, let's just say that after you cum for me, you won't find a mare or stallion or otherwise that can be my equal. How you will try, but none of them will ever match me." She said with a haughty trill.

The stallion salivated at the bars of the cage at the thought of what he believed she meant. "I... I'll do it! Whatever it is, whatever you want! I'll do it! Please! PLEASE!" Rarity giggled coquettishly at this - it was all she could do to suppress the urge to deliver a bone chilling laughter of victory.

Oh how fun life was going to be from now on.

~ÞE END~

Prologue: A Long Run Up

On the truth and the ultimate disappointment. Hang ups about hook ups. A matter of minutes. A reluctant acceptance completely denied.

It is and - to some degree - always has been of immense interest and equally gigantic disinterest to the public the generalities of the love lives of public figures. Some find the love and kinship of those openly visible to be so enthralling that they can scarcely talk about anything else. Others - some of whom are also part of the first group by means of a substantial amount of cognitive dissonance - find it utterly dull and of no interest to them.

Both of these groups, at various inconvenient moments throughout time, would find themselves - by means of some unknown mechanism - to occasionally talk about the subject together that one half absolutely adores so much they can hardly fathom talking about anything else while the other half detests it so much that they somehow know more about it than the first half.

Both of these groups, therefore, would find the love life of one Twilight Sparkle to be a topic of immense interest - and in fact it had become the subject of much debate and controversy. Many fictions had been spun and would be spun in the years to come about the mare who seemed most at home behind closed doors. Some said that she was a whore in secret, disguising herself as somepony else by application of magics which were well within her range of abilities and then selling herself on a street corner whenever the opportunity arose.

Another popular theory is that she kept a harem consisting of most of Ponyville and its environs - with tendrils of her perverted sex cult touching each and every settlement, village, town, and city she had set hoof in; in addition to some she hadn't even heard of. Others said it was just the Elements, Starlight, Trixie, and the lucky few who she had picked up in Canterlot before she had moved to Ponyville to diversify her collection away from the upper crust.

One tabloid ran the story that an anonymous source had confided in their most reputable of organizations the story that Twilight, in fact, was Celestia's personal slut who came at the older mare's beck and call - and in more than one way. It went on to say that Luna had gotten in on the action shortly thereafter and that she had slowly gained as much influence over the whorish mare as her older sister.

Of course, said anonymous source was an aggregation of information gathered from a variety of drunkards who had nodded along to a reporter asking leading questions with an admixture of bathroom graffiti of varying anatomical exactness - but the font of information rarely mattered when it came to publishing such wonderfully slanderous pieces that rarely found themselves exiting the gravitational influence of gossip circles.

With all these theories that were discussed behind the princess' back, the truth - it was guessed - was something much much saucier. Something truly depraved that would break the entire nation and the international community if it came out into the light of day - especially as most of the theories eventually implicated foreign dignitaries, rulers, and random bystanders.

It was, therefore, possibly the greatest let down of all the ages* that Twilight, the mare that she was, had no such skeletons in her closet and that - in actual fact - she was a virgin in more than one way. Twilight, in fact, was part of the segment of the population that found it hard to think of herself - or any other pony for that matter - in anything approaching a sexual situation. What made it all the worse for these rumors was that Twilight also counted kissing, snuggling, most sorts of touching, and even certain kinds of looks as 'sexual situations.'
*The previous title holder for the greatest disappointment provided by the truth was the truth behind the rumor that Luna's 'olde timey' sensibilities essentially made it so she would swoop down at random to fuck a pony in order to claim 'prima nocta'. The truth for that one was that Luna was and is actually asexual and so extremely unlikely to do anything of the sort.

If one was to consider this with a critical eye, it made perfect sense - the worst sort for rumor mills. Twilight had, before her introduction to the ponies who would later be known as the Elements of Harmony - and later the Council of Friendship - she had no interest in friendship. It had been speculated - and for once to a degree of accuracy that was above zero - that she had a particular mental condition that was uncommon in ponies that made making friends a matter of great difficulty.

However, despite this being the truth - and so squashing any hope for the Canterlot Harem theory - Twilight did begin to find out certain things about the magic of friendship - and, eventually, love. Namely who was the object of hers.

Twilight, of course, had been told what love was and how to pick it out of a lineup of emotions on an intellectual level - it just so happened that understanding love on anything that wasn't an emotional level was a folly on par with understanding a game of golf as a sort of expressionistic artform.

This being the case - and in consideration of her circumstances - it is easy to see why she didn't immediately profess her love when she had figured out what she was feeling was actually love. "Who?" You might ask. Why, the first pony she met in Ponyville.

Despite all evidence to the contrary - and any number of personality tests that would profess their utter lack of chemistry together - Twilight found herself irrevocably attracted to Pinkie Pie. It was an odd state of affairs for the bookworm, and caused her no end of anxiety.

Learning friendship was one thing - a rather difficult thing for Twilight - but learning love? Understandably, things got quite a bit complicated. Most ponies would've, at some tactful point, mentioned their fondness for the pony that they loved. Twilight, however, did not feel so inclined. It just didn't feel right for her.

Time passed on, and Twilight slowly built up her courage to tell Pinkie her feelings. She stewed at night about how she'd tell Pinkie and what she might do in any number of contingencies - including complete rejection, partial rejection, a quantum state of quasi-denial and pseudo-acceptance , and the complicated network of utter social ostracization in which Twilight would be forced to live under a rock in the middle of the Badlands.

Whilst drawing up schemes for irrigating the land around her rock, Twilight also considered the slim possibility of acceptance. What would she do if Pinkie Pie said the feelings were mutual and that she also loved Twilight since that first day? It felt impossible and utterly insane, but - knowing Pinkie as she did - there was an outside chance that it would happen.

The day came when Twilight felt confident, and so marched up to Pinkie to tell her the truth about her secret love. She marched up to Sugar Cube Corner, opened the door, stepped inside, drew in a breath to make her announcement, and then stopped.

Twilight's heart fell as she saw Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich hugging with Pinkie shedding what were apparently tears of joy. Twilight had failed. Pinkie was now a taken mare, to be given in marriage to Cheese Sandwich. Her heart broke. It was abundantly clear that she had missed her one and only opportunity.

It was all she could do to not break down in sobs while Pinkie and Cheese explained. It hurt her on a level she hadn't expected. It was all so much to take in. Twilight, being the mare she was and is, kept a stiff upper lip, and congratulated the new couple.

She didn't have the heart to say that they shouldn't be together - to interpose her will on Pinkie and say that she loved the mare. She couldn't just walk up and tell Pinkie that she loved her now - she was engaged! It was now all too little and far too late.

Worse yet, Twilight knew that 'far too late' had been just a matter of minutes.

The wedding was worse, having to watch as Pinkie was married off and taken by a pony that Twilight otherwise liked. Her enjoyment of Cheese Sandwich would, however, find itself greatly diminished after that day. Twilight desperately wanted to be happy for them, to be alright with the situation that had come about. She wanted to congratulate them and earnestly wish them a happy future. She wanted to be a good friend.

When she told them that she wished them a long life together as they left the ceremony, Twilight knew that she was faking it. When she said they were tears of joy, she knew she was lying. When she later told Spike that she was deep in study and just wanted to be left to her books, she knew she was just trying to block out the pain.

No books would help her, and no distraction could save her from her thoughts. Her pain permeated her being, leaving her in the dust where she crumbled away. She wanted to move on and forget, to let the newly weds have a great time together, but in the end it just wouldn't work. No matter what she did, she couldn't fix her broken heart.