It should have been a castle.

There should have been a moat around it, full of lava and crocodiles and poison-eyed anacondas. The door should have been a portcullis and archers should have fired grenades at her from the ramparts. A giant skull should have hung in front, ready to drop snakes and itching powder on anyone who made it that close. Barely-visible lasers should have lined the entire street, and rampaging two-headed rhinos should have been released from their cages if so much as a single laser noticed her presence. Greenpeace representatives should have been asking her for money every step of the way there.

But instead Sunset Shimmer lived in a perfectly ordinary house, one story high, beige walls, with a chimney that wasn’t remotely made out of rotting flesh and a wooden door that didn’t burn her when she knocked on it. Pinkie Pie couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

There was a long series of thumping sounds, muttered curses, and noises from strange impacts before the door finally opened. Sunset stared at her blankly, red and yellow hairs frizzy and unkempt on top of her head. She wore a pair of bright red panties with a yellow sun symbol on them and a tight white t-shirt that read ‘God I wish THESE were Orbs of Forbidden Power.’ Pinkie could see the outlines of her tits and nipples pretty easily through the thin shirt, but took her arousal as a given, not even bothering to check or pay any attention to it.

Pinkie waited about half a minute before deciding Sunset clearly wasn’t going to say anything if she didn’t help out and prompt her. “Hi!”

Sunset closed the door in her face.

Pinkie frowned and kicked the door with one oversized blue boot. “That wasn’t very nice!”

“I’m not a very nice person,” said Sunset from behind the door. She sounded bone-tired. Was that a thing? Could bones get tired? Weren’t bones dead?

“But we’re friends now!”

“Well, I’m not a very nice friend.”

There was silence as Pinkie tried to think of a good counterexample for this and found alarmingly few. At last the door opened a few inches and Sunset stared at her through the crack. “Look,” she said, “if I locked this door, would you go away and leave me alone?”

“Probably not!”

“Then come in.” The door opened all the way, and Pinkie skipped inside before Sunset could maybe change her mind. The house was very nice on the inside, which disproved her last theory that maybe there was some kind of image projector around the property and it was really a secret evil dungeon laboratory on the inside that only looked like a house until you got inside. But instead the walls had curly blue wallpaper and there were a lot of things that looked like awards except Pinkie couldn’t read them to be sure because she didn’t recognize the language. It looked like it had a lot of horseshoes in it, so probably they were awards that Sunset had gotten while she was a pony in the pony world. Neat!

Pinkie continued swiveling her head in every direction, taking in every last utterly normal detail. A cellphone lay on a table in the front hallway, plugged in to a charger and bearing no obvious signs of pentagrams or apps for human sacrifice tips. Daises grew out of a vase. Some of the wallpaper was peeling. She even found a few spider webs. Unless Sunset was putting up a false front of normalcy to stymie anyone who got into her house, and the real secrets were down underground or something, she was fresh out of ideas. One more mystery solved, and not even in a fun way, oh well.

Twilight Sparkle was in the kitchen with her head buried in some kind of instruction book. Not literally buried, of course, only figuratively, except Pinkie had heard recently that literally meant figuratively now, so maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to rule it out. In any case, Twilight was fully dressed for the day ahead and looked totally at peace with the world, which, Pinkie guessed, only made sense. Twilight was, after all, What Sunset Shimmer Could Have Been, just like Sunset was pretty much What Twilight Sparkle Could Have Been, so it stood to reason that if Sunset was feeling all grumpy then Twilight totally wouldn’t be. Maybe if she annoyed Twilight about something, Sunset would feel better, but that involved annoying Twilight so she dismissed it as a bad idea.

“I found the pink one outside,” said Sunset before dropping into a lacey-backed kitchen chair. “Pinkie Pie. I don’t know why she’s here. I don’t know how she’s here.” She looked up at Pinkie Pie, looking curious but also angry that she should be curious in the first place. “How did you even know where I live?”

“A hunch!”

“Great, she doesn’t know how she’s here either.” Sunset poked at the book that Twilight was still reading. “Twilight? Hey, Twilight, Pinkie Pie’s here. Make her go away.”

Twilight finally looked up, saw Pinkie Pie, and smiled widely. She opened her arms to offer a hug, and Pinkie embraced her in a jiffy, remembering how awesome it had felt to have Sweet Leaf randomly come up and hug her the day before. Twilight felt warm and well-dressed and fun and that was all she could really ask for. She felt her hair get ruffled from behind and squeed quietly.

“Good morning!” Twilight said. “Um, don’t mind Sunset, she’s not doing so well. She hasn’t had her morning coffee, and I haven’t figured out how to make her machine work yet. Did you know it doesn’t seem to run on magic at all?”

Pinkie wasn’t sure if that was a joke, so she laughed. “Want me to help?!”

Twilight’s eyes widened impressively. “No. Unless… no. Pinkie, I learned not to trust you with coffee a long time ago. Not even with bringing it to somepony else.”

Pinkie gasped and put a hand to her chest. “That is so untrue, Twilight! Mr. Cake lets me handle the coffee machine all the time!”

“In a box, putting it away in the evenings, when there’s nothing left in it?”

“Awww, you know me too well.” Pinkie kicked at a chair, then gasped again as an idea struck her. “Hey, that’s right, you do know me too well! You’ve got years and years of Pinkie facts in you, just needing a little switching around to not be about ponies, and I’ve only known you for a few days tops! That’s not fair!”

Sunset Shimmer moaned and flattened her head against the table. “Please,” she said, “shut up. You’re clearly in a good mood and I don’t know why and it’s far too loud.”

“That’s right, I am in a good mood!” Pinkie giggled and leaned over, letting her boobies rest on Sunset’s head. “Want to know why?”

“No.”

“Well, yesterday kind of sucked, you know? I got some of my friends mad at me, and it sounds like you and Twilight went out drinking and maybe you overdid it a bit, and I’ve got these sexy new superpowers that should make my life really interesting but it still sort of sucks that I didn’t even get a choice in the matter, and I got to have some really great orgasms, and I think maybe I just lost track of the point I was trying to make.” Pinkie shrugged, and her boobs rolled around on top of Sunset a bit. “But today I thought, hey, I deserve happiness, right?”

“No.”

“…no?”

Sunset rose quickly but unsteadily to her feet, sending Pinkie flying backwards into a cupboard. “You are not helping me get my coffee, so no, you don’t deserve happiness,” she said, and pressed one hand against her forehead. “Twilight, the pink one is being very loud. Please go away and take her to school with you. I will make my own coffee.”

Pinkie gulped. She really wished she knew Sunset better so she could be sure this was just her being normal, not her still being angry at Pinkie Pie from yesterday. “Are you sure?” she asked, a little quietly. “I promise I really do know how to make coffee…”

“If I was capable of ruling this pitiful planet, I am capable of making coffee for myself.”

Twilight frowned and put a hand on Sunset’s shoulder, which didn’t seem to get noticed. “Sunset, you’re not at your best right now, and you might end up running late. I’m not even a real student, so it’s easier if you just let me…”

“A school that does not keep its hours by my convenience is not one I will regret being late for.” Sunset Shimmer groaned again, then turned around and hugged Twilight without any warning. “You’re being very sweet and thoughtful and friendly and all that. Thank you for your continued friendship. But I’m fine, really truly, so please leave before my head explodes and you are caught in the magical backlash.”

There was no arguing with her, or at least no arguing that didn’t lead to increasingly queasy-making insults and threats of dismemberment, so Pinkie finally pulled Twilight away and out of the house, stopping only to grab her schoolbag from a hook by the door. They stepped outside, and the perfectly ordinary wooden door closed on the perfectly ordinary house and its… hmm.

“Hey Twilight?” Pinkie plucked idly at her skirt as they walked, trying to make herself sound incredibly casual. “Do you think Sunset’s evil?”

Twilight only laughed. “Of course not! She’s just drunk, that’s all. Or… she was drunk last night? Sorry, our closest cultural counterpart to your alcohol in Equestria is salt, but I don’t think the terminology carries over very well, so I’m still learning.” She put one hand behind her head and scratched herself, looking up at the sky. “She took me to something called a… rave? There were a lot of glowing things, and I think we may have been too young to be there, but I showed the guardsman my ID as a foreign dignitary and besides I don’t think he knew what to do about my wings and our horns, so we ended up getting in.”

Pinkie tried to picture Twilight Sparkle, immigrant supreme, at a rave. It just didn’t work. Of course, she’d never herself been to a rave—oh, but maybe Twilight could take her? No, that sounded like a bad idea—and yet being Canterlot High’s semi-official mistress of all ceremonies meant that she’d learned a lot about every kind of party she could find anything out about, and raves easily fell into that list. You couldn’t party down when you were trying to figure out how glowsticks worked, or, heehee, maybe you could, but not in the normal way.

Anyway. “No,” she said, “I mean, like, overall.” She stretched out her hands in front of her and wiggled her fingers in a brave attempt to illustrate the entire universe. “Is she still evil, even after we did that big rainbowy thing on her? Am I going to wake up one day and find out whoops, she’s made me her slave or chattel? That would really suck, because I’m not sure I even know what a chattel is, but I don’t think I’d like to be one. But she says a lot of mean things, and you know who else said mean things? Sunset Shimmer.” She blinked. “Before the rainbow, I mean.”

“Oh!” Twilight looked curiously at a tree as they walked past it. “No, I wouldn’t worry about that. The Elements of Harmony are incredibly powerful… if they could turn Discord into stone, I’m sure they can make Sunset Shimmer be a proper friend for us.” Pinkie decided that ‘Discord’ sounded like a fascinating story, but probably also a really long one, to be asked about later when they maybe weren’t just going to school and under a time limit. Maybe she could have a slumber party later and everyone could tell ghost stories, except for Twilight, who instead would tell stories about her real life as a pony because it was probably every bit as weird and magical as some silly old ghost story could ever be. Or maybe she could just throw a listening-to-Twilight party. Or maybe they could just hang out.

“That’s why I came to visit you!” she said, suddenly remembering what Twilight had just said. “At Sunset’s house, I mean. Would you let me borrow your magic thing for a little while, the one that lets you make that giant rainbow of awesomeness?”

Twilight stopped walking and looked at her very oddly. It was similar to the look everyone’d given her when she’d gone around asking if people thought the gym was big enough to set off fireworks in. “First answer,” said Twilight after a few seconds, “no, that’s not possible. Second… why?”

Pinkie’s face fell. “Oh, it’s not a big deal. It’s only that you saw how Applejack and Rarity are mad at me right now, and I thought maybe if you let me use your magic stuff, I can throw rainbows at them until we’re all friends again, just like we did with Sunset!”

For a moment, one of Twilight’s eyes twitched worryingly. Then her face softened and she wrapped Pinkie in another hug, which took her completely by surprise. She tried not to put her hands on Twilight’s super-sensitive spot, and ended up petting her wings instead, which still felt weird and cool but probably weren’t major pressure points at least as far as she knew about.

“Oh, Pinkie, Pinkie.” Twilight’s voice was hushed and sad, and Pinkie could feel one of Twilight’s hands tracing down her back, mirroring her own petting motions and stopping high up enough to remain appropriate. “Pinkie, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize… well. Even if it were possible, I wouldn’t let you do that.”

“Awww.” Pinkie hummed into Twilight’s neck, guessing they weren’t going to stop hugging anytime soon, which was fine enough. “Why not?”

“Because in Equestria, my pony friends and I fought a lot of evil. You probably don’t want to know how much, really. And I’ve learned that evil is taking somepony’s choices away from them. That’s what all the worst enemies we’ve fought wanted to do, physically or mentally… or both.” She shuddered for a moment, so slightly Pinkie wondered if she’d even noticed she’d done it. “That’s evil, and that’s exactly what the Elements of Harmony do.

“Every time we have to use them, it’s because there’s nothing else that will work. And every time we do use them, it’s this incredible rush, and then that night we all sit alone in the dark and feel horrible about ourselves, which I suppose is how we know we’re still on the right side. Um, but my point is, I can’t let you use them on our friends. I’m sorry that Applejack and Rarity are mad at you too, but they have every right to feel that way, so if you want to change their minds, you can’t do it through magic.”

Pinkie suspected that sometime during that speech, the question of who was hugging who had been flipped around, so she squeezed Twilight an extra bit for good measure. She tilted her head back a little, and grinned to herself as she noticed Twilight blush just the tiniest bit when they met eyes. “That’s okay,” she said. “You’re still the smartest pony or girl around, so you can just help me figure out what to do without using magic instead!”

“Oh! Um.” Twilight looked hurriedly away, and then broke the hug, walking off towards school instead. Pinkie trotted after her, surprised by how fast she could move but then supposing that she was pretty tall, and tall people of course tended to have long legs, so really it was perfectly natural. “I don’t know if I’d be your best bet,” Twilight said. “I mean, your whole issue is about sex and the social norms peculiar to this world, or at least this specific cultural area, and neither of those subjects…”

She stopped short, but Pinkie had caught on. “Neither of them?” she asked, and Twilight looked quickly down at the ground. “But just the other day… waaaaaait. You mean that was…?” Twilight, whose face was red, nodded just the tiniest bit imaginable. “Oh, awesome!” Pinkie hopped up and down, startling several pigeons and almost stepping in some poor lady’s flowerbed. “That’s so cool! But really? Not even as a pony?”

Twilight shook her head, still walking quickly. “It’s different as a pony, anyway. All our sex organs are basically sheathed until we need them, so I don’t think it’s on our minds as much as it seems to be here, even though we’re usually naked. Foals could go years without anyone exactly knowing if they were colts or fillies, themselves included, if it weren’t for the eyelashes.” Her face took on some extra redness. “On a related subject, remind me never to tell you anything about a pair of sisters named Flim and Flam I once thought that I knew.”

“You can count on me!” said Pinkie with an eager chirp. They were getting closer to the school now, buildings looking more familiar, though she had to admit she had no idea what time it was. She’d owned a watch once, really she had, but then the gerbils had happened.

They didn’t say anything for a while, and that was okay too. Pinkie got to think about Sunday and how special she got to feel for Twilight letting her be her first time, even if it had been in the name of science. Yay, science! And if that really had been her first time, then with some more practice… well, okay, best not to think about that. Today was Fluttershy day, and therefore she was saving herself, no rampant fantasizing or fooling around or even ruminating allowed. If Fluttershy would have her—and it had sure sounded like she would in that bathroom—then she wanted to be in peak condition, not a drop of milk missing, for them to learn about together. But that was all in the future, with hours of classes to go first.

In the meantime, she was walking—maybe a little faster than walking usually went, but not as fast as if they were jogging, so walking would have to do—to school with Twilight Sparkle, and that was pretty great. Since she’d drifted apart a bit from Rainbow Dash, she hadn’t really had someone to just do stuff with, it was either her by herself doing homework or her in a big room full of people having a party. Even when she tried to hang out with just one of her friends it usually ended up turning into a party, even if she couldn’t say exactly how. But here was Twilight, and she’d only sort of needed to kidnap her from somebody else’s house to get her, and they could talk about stuff because talking was cool sometimes too.

And the weather was just fine. Blue sky, sun still rising so everything felt kind of warm but still brisk enough to wake her up properly for school, and okay, it turned out weather was actually pretty boring to think about and so was not talking, so she said “I think me and Fluttershy might screw today!” instead and Twilight started coughing.

“Fluttershy and I,” Twilight said after a moment.

Pinkie Pie looked up at her in awe. “You too?!”

“No! I meant… you know, I think you knew perfectly well what I meant, and you’re just having fun at my expense.” Pinkie only smiled, determined not to let her know one way or the other. “Anyhow, congratulations! That is a congratulations sort of thing, right?”

“Oh, totally!” Pinkie stepped onto the very edge of the sidewalk, trying to keep her balance while still walking steadily forwards. “I mean, have you seen her? Like really seen her? I’ve been dreaming about this since before dreams were invented!”

Twilight grinned sheepishly. “I guess she does have a certain charm… or two. But are you sure she likes you? I mean, in that way? She’s not named Shy for nothing, you know.”

“I know! But I think she went and noticed some of my dreaming, and kinda likes the idea. Besides, she’s always been a little… you know, um. Fluttershy, but not exactly hootershy?” Twilight only looked baffled, so she plowed on ahead. “Anyway, I’ve got a good feeling about it! If not today, sometime soon. Yesterday, I…” She stopped, not sure if Fluttershy would appreciate that particular detail getting spread around. “I got a hunch!” she said as an alternative. Life would be pretty great if everything she did appeared to be based on hunches with no clearly defined origins.

“Well, I hope your hunch is right,” said Twilight, and patted Pinkie’s butt gently through her skirt, causing a squeak. “It sounds like Fluttershy’s a very lucky girl.”

Pinkie Pie put a hand over mouth in feigned shock. “Twilight, are you calling me sexy?!” Please do, please do, she didn’t say out loud.

“No! I mean, sure, yes, especially if she likes magic breasts… thanks for that note you passed me about that in math class yesterday, by the way.” Twilight muttered something about needing to perform enormous amounts of cross-referencing. “But really, you’re very friendly and helpful and full of interesting ideas, and I think those are all qualities that would be good for Fluttershy.”

“And the sex appeal too?” Being subtle was boring. They turned a corner, and the school was in view, near enough that Pinkie could see other students filtering in through the front doors, so either they were early or they were only a little late.

“Well, okay, yes.” Twilight looked down at the ground again and nearly hit her head against a stop sign. “I did have a lot of fun, you know, once I figured out what we were actually doing. And if you ever want to go again…”

For a moment Pinkie did consider going again, right there, and just being late and collapsing the uncertainty wave or however that stuff worked, but then she remembered her resolution the day before. Pinkie Pie didn’t break promises, even to herself! “Thanks!” she said, and laughed gaily. “But that probably wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“It… wouldn’t?” Twilight looked sad, and Pinkie felt guilty until her face brightened again. “Oh! You mean because of Fluttershy? No, you’re right, I was being silly.”

“Huh? No, or maybe, I dunno!” That was definitely a bridge she could try to cross a bit later on in the hike. Fucking Fluttershy was a necessary prerequisite of fucking Fluttershy and maybe fucking other people at the same time, and certainly Fluttershy would have to be okay with all that, and Twilight was right that she was quite shy in general. Way too many assumptions. “But I was talking about you and Flaaaaaaaash!” She considered returning Twilight’s ass pat from earlier, but decided it would be just the teensiest bit inappropriate.

“Flash Sentry?” The blush had returned to Twilight in full force.

“Right! Either you like him a whole bunch, or I need to get my eyes and ears seriously checked from last semester.” Then she did give Twilight a quick pat, and giggled at the resulting squeal. “If you two have something special, I don’t want to get in the way just so that you and me can have some bouncy bouncy sessions, you know? Hearts before tarts, but, uh, why don’t we pretend I said that in a way that didn’t totally imply I’m a tart.”

“Never a tart, Pinkie.” They reached Canterlot High at last, and stood facing each other by the doorway, not quite ready to go inside. “No, but thank you. He’s really nice, and if we could have something… well, I’d like that.”

“High five!” Pinkie shot her open palm in the air, and Twilight returned it with a smile on her face. She leaned in for a whisper, taking care to raise her eyebrows as far up as they could possibly go. “But hey, if we do both end up striking out completely, my pussy’s always open.”

Twilight struck herself in the forehead, and Pinkie watched her in mild alarm as she began rummaging through bag pack while muttering to herself. “Here!” she said at last. “I almost forgot, but Rarity took me shopping, and I ended up kind of getting you a present.”

Pinkie’s eyes entered the range of saucer size comparisons. A present? What kind of present did Twilight Sparkle give people? Books? Or... quill pens? She’d have loved something about Equestria, since that was all so interesting-sounding, but Twilight was hardly going to find anything like that while going shopping in the regular world. Maybe Twilight would have found a new kind of balloon, and Pinkie would need to find a way to pretend like she was really surprised even though she’d been tracking its development on the computer for months and months already. Whatever it was, she hoped it was as much fun as the guessing!

Twilight reached into her bag one final time and pulled out a pair of white panties, which, it turned out, had a familiar-looking pink six-pointed star on them. Pinkie laughed and brought her voice into its sultry range. “Panties with your symbol on them? Gee, don’t you think you’re being a little bit forward?”

Twilight chuckled. “Oh, well, the cutie mark is just incidental. I ended up getting a lot of new clothes with Rarity, so I don’t need these anymore… I realize that’s not much of a gift, especially when I put it that way, but I washed them, I promise, and I cast some of my magic on them too.”

Pinkie cocked an eyebrow. Magic panties? Well, that was a new one.

“You told me… uh, the other day, how yours were kind of ruined,” Twilight went on. “So I did some research, which might I tell you is really difficult in a world that doesn’t seem to have any normal magic, and I ended up with these. They’re eternally clean. You can get anything on them… water, mud, cake frosting, uh, other substances, and they’ll just soak it right up and stay every bit as clean as a daisy. No smell, either. I noticed you’d been, well, leaking, so…”

Pinkie Pie cut her off with a big kiss, mostly from gratitude but admittedly a little bit to get her to shut up while there were still lots of other students around them. Twilight stood still for a second, likely startled, and then kissed back, her tongue creeping ever so briefly into Pinkie’s mouth before receding as they pulled away.

“For Flash,” said Pinkie, and winked. She grabbed the magic panties from Twilight’s weak grip and shoved them into her bag… she could always put them on later in a slightly less public setting.

Before she could say anything more, Twilight scooped her up in both arms and gave her an even bigger kiss, chapped lips and all, and Pinkie could only melt into her arms and lips and give back as good as she got. Their tongues did find each other this time, for several seconds, more than a little needily, and Pinkie was just starting to wonder if she should maybe do something with her hands when Twilight put her back down.

“For Fluttershy.”

“Right.” Pinkie Pie laughed at the absurdity of it all. “Although I gotta say, I might not end up telling her about that right away.”

“Heh, you know, I might not tell Flash either.” Twilight tucked her right arm back around Pinkie’s shoulders. “Come on, tart; let’s make sure your tardiness doesn’t land you back in milk kindergarten.”

Author's Notes:

somewhere in the process of trying to write silly meaningless smut, everybody started developing subplots