It’s been three days and Twilight still isn’t back yet. I was pretty hard on her, but then I can’t expect her to solve all her problems in under a week. It’s kind of mean to notice I guess, but so far with Twilight gone, Ponyville seems wholly unchanged, meaning Twilight really wasn’t that important. I didn’t want her to feel useless, I wanted her to realize she was just getting away with doing absolutely nothing for years on end, something impossible for most normal people to do if they want to live their lives.

I guess I took ‘tough love’ and made it ‘aggressive love’ though. I mean, yelling at her like that in front of everyone? I could have just taken her to her basement alone and talked about it but I just... exploded. I’m not quite sorry because I did mean all that I said, but... Maybe I’m sorry about my method of delivery. But she’s so difficult to talk to sometimes and get her to think about things. Well, at least she could be a lot worse, so I’m glad that she’s trying to fix this...

Assuming she is trying to fix this and isn’t planning on hurling herself off a building... Goddamnit, why didn’t I think of that?

Well, whatever happens, if she does do something, I’m pretty sure Celestia would find out pretty quickly and let me know. Probably before using my arms as kindling. And I guess if Twi killed herself I’d kind of deserve that.

But it was for her own good! There are very important lessons she still needs to learn and if she doesn’t, who knows what would have happened if she was moved to a place like Chickago? Sure I was really harsh, but other ways of getting her attention didn’t work. She needed something to throw her completely out of her comfort zone rather than trying to explain another perspective or beat the crap out of her...

I’m just gonna keep walking on the dark-grey morality line until the day I die, aren’t I?

I look around, realizing that the others have left. Oh well. Might as well find something to do. Let’s see, it’s Winter, raining, and there doesn’t seem to be much going on. “Ah, there you are! I’ve been looking for you!”

I turn and see Discord. “Hey there. Whatcha need?”

“I just came up with a brilliant plan should be a lot of fun, and won’t get me- us in trouble at all!”

“I’ve got bells on, man. What’s your trick?”

With a snap of his talon-fingers, Discord is in a light blue shirt with khaki pants and a big, brownish-black beard. One more snap and he’s holding a carton of some kind in his paw. “I give you, Nice Cream, a special frozen dessert you give to someone with a bug up their butt! One lick of this stuff and it’ll turn a jerk into a happy, friendly person! A little trick I thought would be interesting to try out. Of course finding someone to test it on is hard in this town. I was wondering if it might also get Twilight Sparkle to loosen up a bit. Say, where is she anyway?”

“She’s out of town trying to, uh... loosen up.”

“Well darn, who do we test it on?”

I shrug. “Diamond Tiara? She’s not as bad as she used to be but she’s still kind of a rich bitch.”

“That’s that little pink filly right? The ‘daddy’s little princess’ one?”

“Yeah, that’s her. Wanna use her?”

“Sure! She hasn’t really done anything that I could see, but something about her gets to me. She also looks kind of familiar somehow... oh well, let’s see what happens!”

Twelve minutes later and Discord and I are watching as Diamond and her gray tagalong are going around apologizing to everyone for every negative thing they ever thought about them. The visit with the Crusaders would be taking about an hour if the apologies weren’t strung together in one huge sentence of horrible nasty insults precedented by a billion words for ‘sorry’ like they swallowed a thesaurus each. Maybe they’re smarter than they let on.

The Crusaders seem beside themselves, unsure of what to do except wait for the torrential confessions and apologies are over, but I finally realize how much hell these three kids have been put through by their classmates. I mean, geez!

“AndI’msorryIblackmailedyouwhenIwaseditorinchiefandwhenIsaidyourfloatwasstupidandwhenItoldeveryoneatschoolyou-”

Scootaloo stands up, hooves coming off her ears and shoved into Diamond’s mouth “Shut up already!”

A muffled ‘okay’ comes from Tiara, but the gray one is still talking and so it takes Applebloom and Sweetie together to get her quiet. “Wow, I never thought that Diamond Tiara apologizing would be so annoying!”

“I can’t believe she’s even doing this.”

“Annoying or not, at least she isn’t picking on us anymore.”

“Whaddya think happened to ‘em?”

“Maybe they got a labotononomy or something.”

“Lobotomy.”

Well, I call this a total success, so Discord and I leave to find other people to make nice. One of the Pinkies shows up. “Heya! Whatcha doin’?”

“We made some special ice cream that makes people friendly.”

“Oooooooooh, can I try some?”

I look at Discord. “The way she already is, I don’t think it would do anything. I’d say it’s safe, how about you?”

Discord looks at the tub of Nice Cream and back to Pinkie. “I’m not sure. But what the heck?”

“Yay! Ice cream!” I give a scoop to Pinkie and she swallows it whole like everything else she eats. Does she even use her teeth? She’s also got a funny look on her face and her mane becomes kind of squarish and pointy. That must be one bad brain freeze-

“Ugh! This is the worst ice cream I’ve ever tasted!”

“Really? Sorry, Diamond Tiara thought it was great...”

“Probably because she doesn’t have any good taste. What did you put in this garbage? Garbage?”

“Uh... no. Discord just magick’d it up.”

“Magic it back then, who wants to try anything you made? Ugh, I can still taste it!”

“You seemed to like my snow cones.”

“Maybe I was just humoring you, stupid!”

Wh- what? I look at Discord. “What did you do?”

He shrugs. “Nothing I’m aware of. However, this seems like a friendship problem, so I’ll leave it to you. Tell me how it goes!” With that, he poofs away in a smoke cloud that smells like cotton candy.

Pinkie’s frown gets bigger. “Uh, that smells disgusting!”

“Pinkie Pie, you love cotton candy...”

“I don’t love anything! What are you still here for, a handout? Get a job you lazy monkey!”

“What?”

“Are you stupid and deaf? Beat it, loser!” Pinkie’s pointy, angular mane doesn’t even wobble or bounce as she stomps off. What just happened?

Oh no, the Nice Cream... it doesn’t make people nice in general, it flips their personality so that a jerk would be friendly, which means we just turned Pinkie Pie into Meanie Pie. And it doesn’t wear off until she digests the ice cream she ate. But that shouldn’t take long, Pinkie’s metabolism is higher than a hippie at Woodstock, so this will be over quickly... right?

Six overturned wagons, uncountable spilled cups of hot cocoa, and a now-candyless baby later, and Meanie Pie’s rampage of absolute-dickery continues unabated. Heck, she even whispered something to one of the other Pinkies that made the poor mare break down and cry like her eyes were a pair of fountains! She hasn’t stopped crying the whole time, and won’t even look at me!

Worse, Meanie Pie is making a slow, but steady arc towards the school, and will coincide with school getting out if I can’t find a way to distract or stall her at least ten, fifteen minutes.

And I have an idea. The ice cream just has to pass through her system quicker. Now the tricky parts are where do I get some prune juice right now and how am I going to get her to drink it?

Wait... I do know how to handle this, just gotta channel my own inner jerkass... “Hey Pinkie, you know what I hate? You! Yeah, whatcha gonna do about it?”

The pointy-maned Pinkie stops and turns. “What was that?”

“I said you suck harder than Vacuum Cleaner Kirby and are too much of a little bitch to do anything about it!”

Meanie goes total rage mode with now-firey eyes and literal steam coming out of her ears. And I think she might also be foaming at the mouth. Yikes. She charges at me and I barely manage to avoid a tackle. I look around, realizing I hadn’t quite thought of where to lead her...

But I gotta keep this up somehow. Wait... I can go intangible! Sparking up, I stand up from where I dodged. “That’s your best? I’ve seen a turtle walk faster with a limp!”

Meanie is beyond intelligible speech and is just screaming obscenities and a few words I assume are pony curse words.

I need more ammo, need to really get her steaming. Metaphorically. She’s literally steaming already. Wait... I do have more ammo.

“Come on, Pinkie, you don’t have any good retorts? All you can do is just scream? What a baby!”

Pinkie stomps the ground and grits her teeth. “Baby? You’re an idiot!”

“That’s the best you got? You couldn’t count to four without looking at your hooves!”

“That’s pretty funny coming from someone who looks like a demented monkey!”

A chorus of scared but interested “Oooooooooh”s come from a gathering crowd. Time to bring out the big guns. “I’ve been meaning to ask: Is that your face or did you block a kick?”

“There’s a train leaving in a few minutes, why don’t you be under it?”

“The closest thing you’ll ever get to a brainstorm is a light drizzle.”

“You couldn’t pour water out of a bucket with a hole in the bottom!”

“You’re so pathetic, if you had a dog it would probably rather play fetch by itself.”

“You smell so bad, skunks stay away from you!”

“I bet the only reason you aren’t in Hell is because Satan thinks it’s bad enough down there without you.”

“Huh? Who’s that?”

“You’re so stupid you forgot to reply with an insult so you lost!”

Meanie goes wide-eyed as she realizes her mistake. “I... I mean... you’re... you’re a, a...”

“Yes?”

“You’re a... you have a fat head!”

I roll my eyes. “Serrrrved! You lose, bitch.”

“No! I... I... I... Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!” Meanie goes to tackle me again but phases through me and slams her head into a house. It makes a nice hole in said wall, but Meanie doesn’t look too balanced anymore. I pick her up by the spiky-ish tail and hold her at arm’s length so her wildly swinging hooves can’t reach me. I ask for some rope and, when handed that and offered assistance, tie Meanie to a pole until she calms down.

After a while she falls asleep, tired of struggling and screaming. By the time she wakes up, her mane is back to ‘normal’. “Oh, I had the worst dream! I...” She looks down and realizes she’s still tied to the post. “Oh. Uh-oh...”

Sighing, I untie her and carry her to Sugarcube Corner. Mrs. Cake greets me. “Hello! Oh, has that one finally calmed down? Thank goodness, the mess she made of the kitchen... it was awful. Anyway, just take her to her room with the others.”

I carry the very saddened and apologetic Pinkie up to her room, where the other two are. One’s taking a nap, and the upset one is still crying, and gorging on ice cream. From a familiar-looking carton. Oh shit... Next Chapter: Chapter 193 Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 37 Minutes