The Diary of Pinkamena Diane Pie

One Saturday evening as the sun receded behind the horizon of Ponyville, the SugarCube Corner began bustling with life.  A soft yellow light accompanied by the muffled upbeat sound of polka music and the mouthwatering aroma of fresh pastries leaked from every window of its sugary walls. Inside the lively bakery, a bubblegum-pink earth pony with a frizzy, cotton-candy mane pranced frantically around the room, dousing piping hot cupcakes with silky icing, pouring punch into several paper cups, hanging up streamers and breathing life into brightly colored balloons. Occasionally, she would peek out of the window excitedly to see if her long-anticipated guests had arrived. Finally, the slowly building excitement took complete control of the filly and she began bouncing and giggling with glee.

“Oooooh, I can hardly wait, Gummy!” she shouted to her pet alligator, aptly named for his lack of teeth. “In just a few minutes, my bestest, bestest friends in all of Ponyville, no, Equestria, no, wait- in the whole universe will be right here, dancing and laughing and having fun and laughing and eating cupcakes and laughing--” she stopped herself mid-sentence, jumped, and suspended herself about three inches off the ground while she loudly gasped. “Wait!” she yelped, a look of utter terror reflecting from behind her sugar rushed eyes. "I forgot the pillows and blankets! You can’t have a slumber party without pillows and blankets! How could anypony possibly sleep without a soft, fluffy pillow to lay down on or a fuzzy blanket to wrap themselves up in like a big pony sushi roll!?" Finishing her rant, Gummy's owner turned back to face him with a dutiful look in her eyes. "I’ll be right back, Gummy. You stay here and keep those big, buggy eyeballs on the door in case anypony gets here, got it?” With that, she rushed off down the hallway, leaving the tiny purple-eyed lizard by himself.

Gummy hardly had time to blink at the door before a veritable mountain of linen launched itself down the hallway. Every mattress, every pillow, every sheet, blanket and sleeping bag in the entire building was stripped from its rightful place and haphardly tossed out into the foyer. From somewhere amidst the sea of cotton the pink furry head of the blanket thief popped out with a whole pillow lodged in its mouth. With a loud and goofy “Pleh!!!” she spit out the comfy cargo and began rolling around the floor and laughing merrily. Clearly this was one very excited pony.

"Gummy!" Laying on her back, she called out to her mini-gator who had taken refuge from the blanket cannon under the couch. "Why aren't you watching the door, you lazy lizard?" She stared down her pet and chuckled. Giving Gummy an Eskimo kiss, the mare hoisted him up onto her back and trotted to the door. "C'mon, we'll wait for our friends together!"

As soon as the words left her mouth, the sound of the doorbell made her ears twitch and her electric blue eyes sparkle with the innocent cheer of a foal on Hearth's Warming morning. She rushed to the door in a blur and tore the door wide open, revealing a popular purple alicorn princess with a streak of pink running down her flat, grape-colored mane. "Hi, Pinkie!" Twilight greeted in her usual reserved yet cheerful tone of voice.

Pinkie Pie bounced up and down, excitement surging through her. “Twilight!” she shouted ecstatically, tugging her purple friend inside the door. “My favorite princess in the whole world and one of my bestest buddies, you finally got here! I've been so excited I could hardly breathe! But you know what? I knew you wouldn't be late, and I knew you wouldn't be too busy, because even the most important princess in Equestria would never miss out on a party with her only friends!”

Twilight laughed from the armpit of her abnormally overexcited friend as she absentmindedly tried freeing her mangled wings from the party pony's tight hug. “Wow, you are excited, aren't you?" She couldn't help but sound a little parent-like, after all somepony here had to be the adult. "I'm glad I could make it too, I even postponed an important event so I could- hold on, what was that you said about friends?"

Pinkie Pie wasn't listening. She was bouncing circles around Twilight, her pet alligator hanging onto her tail as he was slammed into the pillows under her hooves repeatedly. “I mean I know that you aren't really the outgoing type and sometimes I think you don't really like to have any fun at all because you're all bookery and teachery but I know you really, really well because we've been through a whole bunch together so I know I can always invite you over to play!”

Twilight gave Pinkie Pie an amused smile as the two made there way into the foyer, one walking, the other still bouncing. The alicorn stopped however when she happened upon the atrocious state of the house. If she thought her tree house was a fire hazard, this heaping landscape of laundry was a dastardly inferno waiting to happen. She shuddered at the thought of her own home looking like this.

"Good grief, Pinkie Pie what did you do to the place?" Twilight asked in bewilderment.

"Do you like it?" Pinkie bristled with pride. "I call it, Pinkie Pie's Pillow Party Pandemonium Explodium! Yeee!!" She hopped backwards onto the sea of fluff and tossed Gummy into the air before aggressively flailing and rolling about in the blankets like a caffeinated jitterbug, emerging once again tangled up in a blanket burka that ineffectively veiled her ear to ear grin. Twilight burst into laughter at the sight. It was always a treat to see the pure inexhaustible exuberance that wound Pinkie's gears kick into overdrive. It was times like these she found it hard to believe that this pony could ever be anything but happy.

“Twilight! What should we do first? Eat cupcakes? Play a game? Dance? Eat cupcakes? OH, how about we--"

ding-dong!

"Cupcakes are ready!" Pinkie shouted, speeding towards the oven. Twilight shook her head as she watched her friend's perplexed expression at the lack of cupcakes in the appliance.

"Pinkie Pie, that was the doorb--" naturally, before Twilight could even finish her sentence, Pinkie Pie was already opening the door, letting in the next three guests of the night. The first to walk in was a snow-white unicorn wearing pale blue eye shadow on her closed eyelids. Her nose was in the air, letting diligently curled locks of purple hair run down her back. A sky-blue pegasus with a shaggy mane striped with each color of the rainbow closely followed.

“Sorry we’re late, Pinkie,” the latter said in a scratchy voice holding behind it more irritation than genuine apology. “We would've been here sooner if somepony hadn't taken so long figuring out what to wear!” She looked at the unicorn accusingly, who gasped dramatically.

“Oh, that’s okay, Rainbow Dash--” Pinkie started, but the unicorn interrupted her.

“Well, excuse me for wanting to look nice,” she snapped. “Some ponies just never understand the importance of proper attire.”

“Uh, Rarity?” a new and thickly-accented voice belonging to an orange pony who shared Pinkie's lack of wings and magic piped up. "We don’t even wear clothes most of the time. I'm pretty sure Pinkie Pie couldn't care less about your tire.”

"Attire" Rarity corrected, rolling her eyes. "I swear, with how many words I introduce to your vocabulary daily you and Rainbow Dash must have been the most difficult students to handle."

"Not really," Rainbow Dash said. "I  wasn't in class most of the time."

"Of course you weren't."

"Cupcakes!" Pinkie Pie interjected with a plate full of what were presumably pastries entirely drowned by blue frosting that slowly dripped off the edge of the saucer and onto the floor. "As the newest citizens of the Pinkie Pie Party Society you must each take one cupcake and vow never to argue, frown, grunt, growl, scowl, bicker, quarrel, debate, debacle, belittle, badger or burp. Well, burping's funny, you can burp."

"And debacle isn't a verb," Twilight added.

Rainbow Dash landed and took a cupcake from the plate Pinkie was holding. "I can already tell tonight's gonna be fun," she said with a laugh. "Aw, you guys already wrecked the place?"

"It looks so cozy," Rarity giggled at the mess, silently thankful it wasn't her own. Indeed, the whole house did look very cozy. Chairs and couches were draped

Amidst the spontaneous ruckus, Twilight, who had decided to begin placing cupcakes on plates for everypony with Fluttershy until the rest of their friends decided to pipe down a bit, noticed something amiss from the corner of her eye. Tracking the disturbance with her meticulous gaze, her glance came upon a book on the floor. A book. On the floor. How anypony could cope with themselves in an unorganized house was beyond Twilight. She trotted over to the misplaced keeper of knowledge and picked it up with her trademark levitation spell. Getting a closer look at it, she was hit with a strange sense of unease. Its tattered leather cover was a dark gray so devoid of color that it seemed to drain the vividness from everything around it, and even though she wasn't physically holding the book, it seemed to have a peculiar weight to it, as if it were weighing down on her very mind.

“H-hey, Pinkie Pie,” muttered Twilight, still not breaking her trance from the book. “What’s this? I've... I've never seen anything like it in my library...”

Being interrupted from her musical, the bubblegum mare and her friends looked over to the purple unicorn. As soon as Pinkie saw the levitating book in front of the unicorn, a certain air about her seemed to change. Her sky-blue eyes dilated to the size of pinpricks, the corners of her mouth turned upside-down and her whole body seemed to radiate utter dread. It was as if the pink in her spirit was snuffed out like a candle on a six-year old filly's birthday. She leapt frantically out of her chair and scattered towards it, tripping on the record player and stopping the music on her way. She seized the book out of the air and clutched it tightly to her chest. By now, Pinkie Pie had the full attention of Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Twilight, who were all staring at her in shock.

“Umm, uh...” stuttered Pinkie. “This... this is just, um, a-an old... cookbook! Yeah! Suuuper duper old, so, hah, b-better go put it someplace safe.” She chuckled nervously and turned around, swiftly walking down the hallway into one of the unoccupied bedrooms. The others looked at each other trying to put together everything that just happened.

“What’s up with her?” Rainbow Dash said with a hint of concern buried under her ‘cool-girl’ act.

“Oh, no. It was probably my fault,” whispered Fluttershy in distress. “I hope I didn't hurt her too much. D-do you think she’ll still want to be my friend?”

“It wasn’t yer fault, sugar-cube,” Applejack said gently. “She’s just being… Pinkie. We best just leave ‘er alone fer now.”

“Applejack’s right, girls,” Twilight said confidently. “She’ll be back to herself again as soon as she comes out of that room and before you know it it’ll be like it never happened.”

As if on queue, Pinkie burst out of the room still looking a bit shaky, but smiling once again. “It's party time!!!!” she yelled, and turned the music back on.

               Rarity hadn't moved. Amidst the dancing, talking and eating ponies, the white unicorn just sat staring intently at the door, wondering what in the world that marvelous book could possibly contain to be able to transform her giddy party friend into a nervous wreck. It certainly was no cookbook, anypony could see that. Or, maybe it was a cookbook with some very juicy secrets. All the same, what’s worth hiding is worth digging up, and that’s exactly what the curiosity-infected pony intended to do. A mischievous, albeit ladylike grin crawled across Rarity’s face as she sipped some punch from a glass. Soon enough, she would be basking in the vast riches of her sunniest friend’s darkest secrets without anypony there to stop her.