Pinkie Pie Discovers the Hazards of Trying to Use Archaeomagnetism in a Sentence

Pinkie Pie was brought into the throne room under guard, escorted straight from her cell in the dungeon. Princess Celestia, her royal jailor, sat imposingly on her seat of power. Little effort was made on her part to mask her emotions, which were at the same time frigid and fiery.

Twilight stood equidistant between the two, slightly on the raised dais but not on the same level as Celestia. Pinkie held her head high, unflinching.

"Pinkamena Diane Pie, you stand accused of spreading malicious lies and disturbing the sanctity of the Equestrian Scholarly Society." Princess Celestia began, her voice carrying strongly around the room.

"If you are ready to end your stay in the dungeon, I present to you the opportunity to formally apologize for your misdeeds and recant your findings. Should you do so, you will be let off with a stern warning. Your official record will not be marred. What say you?"

All eyes turned to the pinkest creature in the room and she took two meaningful steps forward and bowed.

"I apologize for the entirely incorrect findings presented previously."

Twilight's shoulders sagged slightly in relief, she was certain coming in that her friend was going to try to fight this.

"The results were incorrect in the worst possible way, and I ask for your most graceful forgiveness."

The room seemed to breathe for the first time since Pinkie was brought in, guards relaxed their posture and the ethereal waves of Celestia's mane slowed.

Twilight's pupils shrank to pin-pricks as Pinkie stood up suddenly, defiantly. From within the bouncy mane came a clipboard with math scrawled across the paper.

"I found the mistake, actually. I corrected the calculations and can now confidently state the correct results."

The princess's eyes narrowed.

Twilight and Pinkie paced nervously in the hallway outside of the presentation space. In a few minutes, they would enter and present their findings. And finally, Pinkie would reveal the mysterious subject of their research.

Sure, Twilight had presented scholarly papers previously, but the pre-presentation nerves never seemed to get any easier. Pinkie, usually unflappable, was showing signs of strain as well. The growing pile of bubblegum wrappers in the corner were a testament to her stress.

Minutes later, the door opened and they were ushered inside. Twilight took a few deep calming breaths and entered as confidently as she could.

Pinkie blew a massive bubble with her wad of gum, tied the end with a string like a balloon, and handed it to the usher to watch for her.

The room was divided into two parts. One part had a large chalkboard and a podium to hold notes. The other contained a few tables, currently occupied by several smart looking ponies. They were the review board for the Equestrian Scholarly Society.

Twilight gave their introduction as Pinkie filled the chalkboard with notable equations and their results. Everything was going smoothly until Pinkie wrote the title for their research.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop, the scholars of the review board looked on aghast and traded worried glances with each other.

"By tracking and cross-dating past changes in the location of the magnetic field, we have reconstructed a series of magnetic polar positions extending back more than 2,000 years. This series of dated positions is known as the 'archaeomagnetic reference curve.'"

Twilight resisted the urge to turn around and see what the fuss was about, trying to maintain a professional image. But when two members of the board fled the room in a panic, she faltered and could not resist looking back at the chalkboard.

The title should have read, "Archaeomagnetic Dating of Select Relics and Materials."

Instead, it said something else entirely. Twilight's face went slack and her jaw dropped. Her wings itched to spring open and fly her away from the scene, her fight-or-flight instincts kicking in on overdrive.

"On the use of Archaeomagnetism to Determine the Age of Princess Celestia."

"As you can see here, she's even OLDER than we originally thought!"

Twilight crouched low, wings spreading preemptively to flee, as her gaze flicked between Pinkie and the Princess.

Celestia's irises seemed to glow and her mane rippled, flames erupting and fading in several places. She reared up on her hind legs, as if to smite the pink pony for her transgressions. But when her front hooves came down with a crack, it was in the opposite direction.

"Luuuunaaaaaa!" she cried in anguish and despair, dashing out of the throne room with otherworldly quickness. Several guards gave chase, intent on supporting their princess at her side in this trying time.

"Pinkie!" Twilight shouted, running up to her. "Why! Why did you do that! Why double down? Do you have any idea how much ice-cream she's going to need now? The castle hasn't yet restocked from your first trial!"

She paced in an anxious circle around her friend, who had yet to move since the princess fled.

"And once she comes out of it, do you have any idea how much danger you'll be in? Or everyone else? If she decides that this heresy could have spread in Ponyville before this, she's likely to banish the whole town to the moon!"

Finally, Pinkie met her eye and spoke. "No, she won't."

Twilight looked at her, incredulously.

"You have to trust me, Twi. I've got this, it's all going according to plan. You'll see."

Pinkie was glad this meeting was not taking place in the dungeons. It just didn't have the right ambience for something like this, the vibes were all off. While she hadn't been returned to her cell since the Princess ran off, she was kept under constant guard.

Now, she was seated in a dark room somewhere deep in the castle. A lone lantern illuminated the space and its other occupants.

Sitting orthogonally around a table were Twilight, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Pinkie herself.

Pinkie and Celestia held a silent stalemate with their stares across the table. Luna was the image of a perfect poker face, while Twilight was openly fretting and rubbing her hooves along the grooves of the wooden table.

It was Luna that broke the silence. "Shall we get down to business, then?"

"What are your demands?" Celestia spat, her foul mood on full display.

"Let's not think of them as 'demands'." Pinkie lilted. "Think of this as negotiating. We're negotiating, you and I. We both have something the other wants."

"What do you want? Money? A royal title? Access to the royal coffers for your party planning hobby? Spit it out."

Pinkie sucked in a breath at the last option, but held strong with her resolve.

"What I want?"

Everyone leaned in to listen.

"What I want..."

She made a show of thinking, as if it was a difficult decision. As if she hadn't known exactly what she wanted from the start of all of this.

"What I want, Princess Celestia, is to throw you a birthday party."

You could hear a pin drop on carpet for a solid five seconds.

"What?" sounded from three different sources at approximately the same time.

"You heard me."

Again, Luna was the first to speak up.

"Would you please care to explain?"

Pinkie grinned and spread her hooves across the table, as if they were about to conspire about killing supermare.

"I want to throw Princess Celestia a birthday party. In all known history, dating back as far as we can, there is no mention or trace of there ever being a birthday party held for her. And before you say 'Summer Sun Celebration', that's different. That's about the solstice or the defeat of Nightmare Moon or something. No hard feelings by the way, Princess Luna, we love you."

Luna blushed and her feathers ruffled.

"Digging further, I found no mention of her having a birthday in general. Nopony knows how old she is, what day she was born, if she even was born. Given what we've seen of Twilight and Princess Cadence, I can assume she was in fact born as a pony before she became all alicorn-y.

That leads me to two conclusions. Either the information was lost to time, the only ponies who might know being Princesses Celestia and Luna. And the odds of either of them divulging that information were slim to none and none's outta town. OR the information was suppressed intentionally over a millennium, slowly erased from history by a guiding hand."

Celestia looked shocked and appalled, the color somehow draining further from her pure white coat. Luna, on the other hoof, seemed to be on the verge of laughing. She had tried to keep a stony façade for her sister, but the situation was too absurd at this point.

"Oh Tia, you thought yourself so clever. But even the town baker can oust your scheming," she teased. Turning to address the room, she elaborated.

"In all the years I have known her, she has never been able to age gracefully. Despite being immortal, she fears the ever-turning wheels of time as much as anypony. Why, even nearly fifteen-hundred years ago, I used to tease her about finding gray hairs in her mane. There never was, but she didn't know that. Once I even considered dying it while she slept as a prank."

Celestia's turned from stark white to a rather warm pink, her cheeks coloring like a sunset.

"She gets so terribly dramatic about it. Why do you think the Blueblood line has to refer to her as 'Aunt' when they've always seen her as more of a grandmother?" Luna grinned like a fox. "I can tell you how old she is, little one. Even better, I know when her birthday is."

"LUNA DON'T YOU DARE," Celestia exclaimed, nearly launching herself around the table to silence her heathenish sister.

"I jest I jest. Still yourself, sister. It's your secret to reveal, unless you give me permission to do so for you."

Celestia flumped her upper half onto the table in a very unprincesslike display and groaned. Her majestic mane drooped limply atop her head, hiding her face. Twilight took the moment to interject.

"Pinkie, was that what this was all about? You really just want to throw her a party?"

"Yepperooni!" Pinkie nodded enthusiastically. "She hasn't had a proper party in thousands of years, and that's just sad. Like I could understand not doing it while Princess Luna was all banished and stuff.

But now she's got her back! And she's got Princess Cadence and Shining Armor and Flurry Heart and you! You can all celebrate it with her now!"

Pinkie turned to the puddle of sad princess leaking off the table. She reached out and tenderly took a massive hoof in her own.

"You're not alone anymore, Princess. And I'm sure your family would love to celebrate this with you, if you let them."

A single magenta-colored eye peaked from behind the veil of her mane.

"You... you wouldn't make a big national holiday of it, would you?"

"Pfft of course not! I am a consummate professional party planner. It'd be a rookie mistake to assume every party needs to be a big event in the center of town with fireworks and streamers. Great parties are catered to each individual pony, silly.

For you, I was thinking a day without princess-y duties, spent with the ponies you care about. Sure there would be some balloons and party games, but it'd be completely private. Noone else has to know."

Celestia regarded her critically, disbelievingly.

"And there'd be lots of cake!"

Her eye brightened and some of the magical effect returned to her mane. She cast a glance at Luna and cautiously nodded her consent.

Luna grinned widely. "Well done, Miss Pie. Sometime we shall have to play games of strategy together. I fear you would be a worthy opponent. You'll be delighted to know that her birthday already has no princess duties scheduled for the day.

Twilight cocked her head to the side in thought as Pinkie listened intently.

"For you see, she declared a special day to be held on her birthday that would excuse her from responsibilities for the day, but without giving away the reasoning underneath."

"What day? Nightmare Night? Hearts and Hooves Day?" Twilight nearly stood up out of her chair, balancing most of her weight on her front hooves on the table.

Luna all but squealed. "Nay! Tis Tax Filing Day!"

Twilight's front legs slipped from beneath her in stupefaction.

Pinkie cheered in victory. Mission accomplished.