At the front of the room, a life-size photograph of Pinkie Pie stood in a thick, basalt-colored matte frame. It resembled a gravestone.
The resemblance was appropriate. Maud, a gray pony wearing a dull blue-green dress, hadn't seen her sister in years. She didn't expect to see the laughing pink pony ever again.
For in this world, laughter was all too often fatal.
Maud went forward to stand next to the photograph. In a monotone, she said, "Good morning, class."
"Good morning, Maud!" ponies chorused from an assortment of chairs.
"Today," the teacher said, "We will be doing a comedy workshop. As usual."
A filly smiled, but her mother sitting next to her noticed, and whacked her flank. The foal blinked back tears and pouted. "That's better," the mother whispered.
Maud pulled a rubber chicken out from behind the photograph. She waved it around in the air, slapping it against her own face. Thwack!
"Ouch," she said without expression. "That hurt."
A couple foals giggled. Maud said, "I can see we'll be needing to do some work." She took a deep breath.
"Imagine," she said, "that you've been living on a rock farm all your life. You might like rocks, or you might not. You can imagine it either way.
"Imagine that your father, Igneous Rock Pie, and your mother, Cloudy Quartz, love you very much. But they are sober, serious ponies. If they see somepony giggling and chortling, they worry something might be wrong with that creature.
"They believe a pony who laughs too easily might get distracted while turning over a rock or rolling a boulder, and smash a hoof, or run the boulder into another rock and damage both stones in the collision.
"Can you imagine two very serious ponies like that?"
Maud looked out at her audience. She seemed to like what she saw. Or maybe she didn't? Nopony could read her expressions. Pinkie Pie had been able to, but Pinkie no longer lived in Ponyville.
Maud nodded. "So when you feel happy, you pull that feeling down deep into yourself. Imagine your smile flowing down from your face, through your body.
"Instead of showing on your face, or spilling from your lips, your joy comes together and collects within your chest, inside your heart, like a nice, toasty ball of warmth. You can feel your happiness in its hiding place, like a lantern with its storm shield on, but it never shows on your outsides. It never appears as a smile, or as a laugh, because it's tucked away inside you, where it's warm and safe and can't hurt you.
"Because your mother and father and sisters know you're safe, they feel happy too. Knowing they're happy and unworried makes you feel even better, and feeling better helps you perfect and calm the spiritual protection of your friendship and love inside your chest. So you and your family will be sober and calm and full of love for each other, forever."
Maud saw tears on the faces of a few of her listeners. Happy tears, she thought. But if they were crying for the plight of Pinkie, that was ok too.
"Of course," Maud said, "in an emergency you can think about sad things, instead of happy ones. I even knew somepony who used to think about angry things all the time...until finally, after many years, the anger burned her out and consumed her. But in the long run, the Heart Lantern of Love Perfectly Shielded is the best way to live, day in and day out."
Somewhere outside the room, a large, deep-toned bell rang.
A large orange stallion ran inside. "Chucklings!" he said, panting from his run. "The chucklings are coming. We need to--"
A loud 'splutch' noise interrupted his little speech. The stallion slumped to the floor. Behind him, a shiny-carapaced creature buzzed its pale blue wings. "It's howdy doody doodle time!" the creature said through its fangs. In a flash of green light, the chuckling transformed into a whitefaced clown, with a big red nose, curly blue poofy hair, and enormous floppy shoes.
The creature said in a very silly voice, waggling its tongue, "A yaah a yeah ayy pppbbbbbbbbbth!" The little pony nearest the entrance, a brown foal wearing a propellor-topped cap, collapsed in helpless laugher. The clownform chuckling pounced, grasping the foal with both forelimbs, and tugged its victim back towards the doorway. "Ah hahaha! We will feed upon your laughter until it kills you!" the creature gloated. "But at least you'll die with a smile on your face!"
An adult picked up a chair by its backrest, pointing the legs toward the invader. She ran toward the foalnapper, thrusting her piece of furniture forward suddenly, forcing a chair leg into and through the chuckling's eye, deep into its skull. She waggled the chair fiercely, stirring the chuckling's brains.
The chuckling fell forward, covering the foal with its own body. The chair warrior nodded with satisfaction, her mouth perfectly straight. The foal not only lived, but had gained a hiding place and shield.
"I'm going out," Maud said. "I'll be taking a look around." She walked calmly to the doorway, and stepped outside. She looked back for a moment to say, "You might as well shut and bar the door behind me."
The chair warrior behind Maud trotted around the chuckling-and-foal heap, to apply Maud's good advice.
Maud trotted through the town, with chucklings laughing and giggling and clowning on every side.
Maud ran to a pile of stones, next to which she balanced her body on both forelegs, and used her hindlegs to kick stones rapid-fire. In the village streets around her, atop nearby buildings, and in the buzz-filled air, chucklings' bodies made soft, liquid thuds, as rocks drove through their carapaces. Singly and in groups, shiny-carapaced monsters fell to the ground, the falls' impacts finishing what the kicked stones had started.
In the streets and fields beyond Maud, other ponies also fought, using bows and spears and pitchforks and other tools to fend off chucklings. Sometimes, here and there, a background pony even brought a monster's career of destruction and ponynapping to a final end.
Maud spun around, inspecting the village's condition in every direction. The town's ponies had trained hard, and were fighting well. She suspected they might even win.
Maud heard a louder, deeper buzzing. She ran, tracking the sound to its source. There, she saw a tall pink pony smiling at her. "I'm here to find my friend Twilight Sparkle," said the winged pony, whose forehead bore a long, straight unicorn horn. "I need to take her to safety. Do you know where she is?"
"Ha!" Maud said with her usual straight face. "Don't you already know where she is?"
"No," the true or false alicorn replied. "If I already knew, why would I be asking you?"
"Tell me," Maud asked, "How many eyes does the ladybug have, and where does she keep them?"
The alicorn's eyes narrowed. "In its head?"
Maud kicked a pair of pebbles, which flew towards the confused visitor and through both her eyes, penetrating her skull. The alicorn collapsed.
"No," Maud said. "The bug doesn't keep its eyes anywhere anymore, because it's dead." Maud spat on the ground. "And I just put its eyes out."
Maud walked slowly forward, put one hoof on the visitor's body, and pushed down hard. Her hoof went into the royal visitor's flank, from which red liquid oozed.
"Oops," Maud said. For a moment, she frowned.
A bright green glow surrounded both Maud and her quarry. What had appeared to be an alicorn princess was now an especially large chuckling, wearing a tarnished crown with bluish gems.
Maud grasped the crown with her mouth, flung it up into the air, and stepped forward to let the crown land on her own head, where it rested. "Chucklings!" she shouted. "I have won the crown through trial by combat! Behold your new queen!"
All around, invaders turned to watch her with looks of surprise and confusion.
"As your new queen, I have an order for you! Die laughing!"
In every direction, chucklings gathered in groups of two and three. They told each other jokes, played sometimes lethal pranks with planks and rocks, and generally kicked and beat each other senseless.
Maud took a walk to Town Hall, where she climbed stairs to a lookout at the tower's very top. She watched as her enemies fell to the self-massacre ordered by their new queen. When the last chuckling in town had stopped twitching, Maud did something she hadn't done in many years.
She let her inner ball of warmth spread out through her whole body...and smiled.
