Twilight Sparkle, Vice Chief Executive Economist of the Bank of Equestria, Grand Assistant, Regal Secretary, Official Note-Taker and Student to Princess Celestia, Chief Executive Economist of the Bank of Equestria, Grand Doer, Regal Presider, Official Note-Hearer and Mentor to Twilight Sparkle, was having a bad day.

"I am going to impale the perpetrator on my horn, Spike!" she screamed. "I am literally going to impale them!"

Twilight was the sort of Unicorn who if you asked her whether she meant literally literally or figuratively would say, "I meant the former," with a note of barely restrained scorn in her voice. Spike was more the sort of baby dragon who would answer, "Yes," which was perhaps the reason why he alone of all the denizens of Canterlot was able to get along with Twilight.

He was also at present little more than a wriggling dragon tail, the front half of him being buried in a pile of books as deep and flammable as an Olympic swimming pool filled with oil. (Twilight had overturned a fraction of her shelves in her madness, and the resulting cascade of books had left the room looking like the dungeon of a disturbed bibliophile at the height of her killing spree.)

"It's not that big a deal, Twilight," he said, his voice muffled by the twelve-volume set Canterlot, A History, textbooks ranging from accounting to a thin tome on zoological economics, and, although Twilight would never admit it, a thick, dusty book on abstract algebra hollowed out and filled with pictures of stallions cut out from the Steers catalog. It was dusty because she dipped it in a bucket of dust every night before setting it back on the shelf.

"Not that big a deal?" Twilight's purple eyelid twitched. "Not that big a deal? I! Lost! A! Book! A book, Spike! A rectangular hard-covered paper-and-ink-filled knowledge-containing book. Do you even read?"

"I couldn't be your friend if I didn't."

"I just know somepony stole it." Twilight paced back and forth, nodding to herself. "Somepony who has it out for me. It was probably Twinkleshine, that b—"

"Found it!"

"—Eautiful baby dragon!"

Twilight hastily levitated Spike out of the mountainous pile of books with her sparkly magical Unicorn horn. Spike emerged holding a thick brown book.

"Foundations of Economic Analysis," Spike read.

He handed it to the glow of her horn-magic levitation. "I didn't know you cared about this book so much."

Twilight rubbed the book against her cheek, cooing softly to it.

"All my books are precious, Spike. This one just happens to be especially special."

I'll put you under my pillow tonight, Twilight thought. I'll dream of a stable equilibrium where I never lose any books again.

"Uh…Twilight?"

"DON'T LOOK AT ME!"

Spike started to speak. Instead he convulsed and belched green flame. A neatly bounded scroll appeared out of the dissipating smoke, which Spike unfurled.

"Princess Celestia wants to speak with you," he said.

Foundations thumped on the floor.

"Jiminy dragon," Spike said to himself as the sound of Twilight's clattering hoofs faded in the distance.

He looked at the fifty square meters of book jambalaya Twilight had unleashed upon her study when she had thought her book was missing.

He shook his head. "She should've checked under 'F.'"

Twilight Sparkle's bright pink stripe running through her dark purple mane and tail, her prodigious magical powers, and her worrisome obsession with books were just a few of the things that made her an unusual pony. What did not make her unusual was the fact that she was a brightly colored magical sentient talking pony. There are no other kind of ponies in the land of Equestria—except for the mute ones and so forth, but the paradigm is one of brightly colored magical etcetera.

In fact all the animals of Equestria can talk, though not all ponies listen. But it is ponies, horses, Unicorns, Pegasi, and of course the rare Alicorns who dominate the land. Magic proved the deciding factor over the nonmagical animals. Sheer numbers allowed them to push out the sparser magical creatures like the fearsome Cragadile and the elusive Breezies.

Not all such battles were easily won for the largely peace-inclined ponies of Equestria. What use is Unicorn magic or a Pegasus's speed against the powerful and devious Draconequus who turns the rain into money or the roaming hordes of Parasprites who whisper rumors as they fly invisibly through the air, spreading misinformation and distrust that collapse markets in their wake?

Here the Alicorn's role in shaping the fate of Equestria cannot be ignored. Alicorns are easily recognized by their Pegasus wings, Unicorn horns and their unnatural height, standing two or three heads above the average pony. The Alicorn's immense magical power and physical strength are offset only by how incredibly rare they are. There have only been three Alicorns in the history of Equestria, and one of them is currently imprisoned in the moon.

The eldest Alicorn, Princess Celestia, is the ruler and guardian of equines everywhere. White as the purest snow, her gently swaying mane of soft turquoise, blue, purple, and green the unofficial flag of Equestria, tall enough to face down a karate-kicking minotaur, and wielding enough magic to imprison her sister and fellow Alicorn, Princess Luna, in the moon for a thousand years, Princess Celestia was not so much the ruler of her domain as its measuring tape.

Visitors to Canterlot, Equestria's capital and home to the Bank (for it is always called "The Bank," seeing as there is only One), always ask the same three questions, the first being, "Does the Bank give out free samples, har har?" Once the tour guide is finished contemplating a pair of lungs full of water, two further questions are asked: "What made Princess Celestia stronger than her sister, Princess Luna, imprisoned in the moon for a thousand years?" and "Why does Princess Celestia not crown herself Queen and rule from a grand throne of jewels with a scepter of Power and Fun, spreading her majesty over the land like a rainbow, lightning bolts crackling in encouraging messages across the sky with her every word, the very ground trembling beneath her feet in a relaxing sort of massage with each mighty step she takes?"

The answers the tour guides usually give are, respectively, "Bigger horn," and "Thinks 'Princess' sounds prettier than 'Queen.'" Most tourists leave satisfied, fatter and poorer than they were a week ago. But the truth, though it is rarely discerned, is that the two questions have the same answer, that is, the Bank was enough….

And will there ever be any more Alicorns? It seems unlikely. In a thousand years there have only been three. Oh, there are rumormongers who say there are more Alicorns out there, that the constant magical flux of the universe creates them, that if you stare hard and long enough at the background you will see ponies with two wings and a horn, but whatever process creates them must also swiftly destroy them, for no such Alicorns have ever been found through a controlled double-blind experiment conducted by a group of disinterested science-ponies who consider calls for meta-analysis the ultimate insult. We must declare this persistent belief a willful self-delusion and move on.

In a thousand years there have only been the Seven Colors of the Rainbow, the Five Elements of Equilibrium, the Three Alicorns and the One Bank. Now the summer solstice of the thousand-and-first year approaches. While the idea of a spell of imprisonment lasting one thousand years is right and proper and normal, who has ever heard of a spell that lasts one thousand years and one?

The Princess's spell weakens. The sun dips below the horizon of an era and also the actual horizon, though only in the latter case does it rise again after. In the reflective hours between dusk and midnight as the sun falls and the moon rises, something must fill the gap that stretches between the two heavenly bodies as obvious and invisible as the rubbery expanse of space-time. And when the reflected light of the moon shines on the Princess, what shape does her shadow take…?

"…And I was so upset I thought Twinkleshine or maybe Moondancer because I didn't go to her party had taken it but then Spike found it and I was soooo happy," Twilight took a deep breath, "and then I got your message and ran all the way over here."

"Twilight, you need to get some friends," Princess Celestia said. "A little fresh air would do you wonders."

"I gets lots of fresh air exercising in the courtyard," Twilight said. "I know I'll never be as strong as an Alicorn, but seeing as you're so powerful, I thought—I thought—"

"I was thinking more in terms of play."

"Oh," Twilight said. There didn't seem to be anything more to say.

"I have a very important mission that only you can accomplish," Princess Celestia said.

Had Twilight been a cartoon character she might have jumped twelve feet in the air, or her eyes might have enlarged to the point where their gravity became a significant factor in the calculation of the orbits of the planets, but instead she merely clapped her hoofs to her face and squealed in the way only an excited pony can.

"Really? Really really? Oh my gosh oh my gosh a mission—ahem."

Twilight composed herself. "Whom would you have me destroy, Lady?"

"I want you to manage the NGDP Targeting Festival..."

Twilight gasped.

The NGDP Targeting Festival was only the biggest and most important annual event in all of Equestria. Every year on the day of the summer solstice ponies gathered to commemorate the day Princess Celestia defeated Princess Luna and brought an end to the economic chaos that threatened to tear Equestria apart. Twilight took to managing things in much the same sense that a drug addict takes to cocaine, and being asked to manage the NGDP Targeting Festival by Princess Celestia herself was rather like a junkie being asked by Tony Montana to look after his stash for a while.

"…In Ponyville."

Twilight stared. "Ponyville?"

Princess Celestia nodded.

"Ponyville?" Twilight repeated. "Just so we're on the same page here, you want me, the second-best economist in the world, not to put too fine a point on it, to travel to Ponyville, that dumpy backwater town full of rubes? They don't even have a university!"

"It's only for a couple of days, Twilight."

Twilight's eyes widened. "A couple of days? But the solstice is two…that means I won't be here for the NGDP Targeting Festival with you."

Her mentor sighed. "Trust me, Twilight, that is for the best."

"If you say so."

"I do. And I want you to try to make friends with the other ponies there."

"You want me to study the economics of friendship? As a matter of fact, I do have some theories based on behavioral economics and time-inconsistent preferences—"

"I want you to make friends."

Twilight frowned.

"Twilight," Princess Celestia said, "there is more to life than economics."

Twilight Sparkle sometimes liked to brag (to Spike, because who else?) that she could update from zero to sixty bits of information in as little as sixty bits, but even her tightly organized and efficient brain contained a dirty and poorly maintained lavatory to where certain heretical thoughts were banished. These included evidence of the importance of friendship to a healthy and stable psychological makeup, critical remarks about the pragmatism of building a library containing literally every book ever, and bizarre impulses she felt around some of the oak-chested stallions toiling away in the apple fields all summer long, their taut skin glistening with sweat in the burning sun, sweet juice spraying over their face as their healthy cream-colored teeth bit into the soft, yielding red flesh of an apple—well, who can blame her? Now her unconscious mind created a new category, Denying the Infinite Value of Economics, labeled it for auto-delete, and promptly executed the new subroutine on all applicable files…

…And that is the story of how Twilight Sparkle's ego was saved from crumbling into pieces like a glass sculpture delicately balanced on a house of cards which themselves held up against the wind only by the passing sound waves of an economist bellowing in triumph as she successfully used a macroeconomic model to predict only five out of the last five recessions.

"I will go to Ponyville and oversee the preparations for the NGDP Targeting Festival," Twilight said. Her eyes were still glassy from the wipe.

She began to leave. "Wait," Princess Celestia said. "Be careful. And good luck."

"It's the NGDP Targeting Festival in Ponyville," Twilight said. "I'll have a miserable time trying to explain monetary theory to a bunch of hicks and then come home. What's the worst that could happen?"

Had Twilight spent less time with her books and more time out in the world, she might have known that such a line is never uttered if disaster is not imminent. On the other hand, never in the nearly 14 billion years the universe has existed had disaster ever had to contend with an imminent magical pony economist, so perhaps they evened out. Next Chapter: Diversity Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 24 Minutes