“Personal Trinity”

Twilight had just finished reading a particularly confusing passage for the fifth time, and she felt she was now able to summon fatal amperages of electricity at will. All she needed was a good way to test it. As she thought about this, Spike came into the room.

“Hi, Twilight.”

“You have outlived your usefulness!”

“Okay.” He dropped the sheets on the floor and turned around.

“Spike? Spike, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

Twilight followed him down every flight of stairs in the house, saying his name every few seconds, until he finally turned to face her when he made it to the front door.

“I had just finished reading about a lightning spell and I want to test it.”

“So it doesn’t bother you that you’ve done literally nothing somepony would consider work since you’ve moved in here.”

“Oh yeah? When was the last time you prepared any food?”

“This morning when I made you the sunflower sandwich.”

Twilight took a moment to consider her next move. “I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t like you anymore.”

“You were going to go outside?”

“Yes.”

Spike got out of the way and she opened the door. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. It shouldn’t be too long.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

She went a couple kilometres to a grass field it was clear no one cared about. There was a road in the distance and some trees the other way, but she was in the centre of one square kilometre of nothing. She cast the spell, and after a flash of white discharge bolts, a hoof-sized area of grass was on fire. “Okay, good,” she said. “Now where’s the water bucket?” She looked to her right, then her left, then turned around. “Crap.”

She teleported back to the bedroom in the treehouse and didn’t see the bucket.

“Spiiiiike!”

“I’m behind you.”

She turned around. “Do you know where I put a bucket of water?”

“Look to your left.”

She did. “Oh, okay.”

She went back to the test site. The heat of her hooves made her immediately jump, as the fire was now twenty metres in radius. She teleported outside the fire department ten kilometres north of Ponyville, a place she had gone to many times just in case she needed to judge the teleportation correctly for an emergency, as was a common thing to do. A white stallion opened one of the front windows.

“There’s a wildfire south of Ponyville.”

In regions without motor vehicles such as Equestria, fire departments were normal houses with a bunch of unicorns who knew water spells playing card games. “Guys, we’ve got something south of Ponyville!”

Ten unicorns, incidentally all male, teleported to an intersection in the centre of Ponyville.

“I see the fire,” one of them said in a quite casual tone. “It’s the moving orange thing in the distance against a cyan backdrop.”

They teleported to the test site and, working from the outside in, all took out a wedge of the fire without any drama, and appeared back in the department exactly as they were.

“We put it out,” the same unicorn that answered Twilight said in a very normal tone, as if he was hoofing her scissors.

“Okay. Thank you.”

Twilight went back to the treehouse. She had previously decided that if the first test worked, she would then try an area four or five times the size.

“Spiiiiike!”

He came down. “Yeah?”

“Get me ‘Outdoor Wilderness Camping’.”

He ran off, and in a couple minutes came back with the book. “Here.”

“Thanks.” In the table of contents, she found there was a section called “How to Make Safe Campfires”. “That’s what I was looking for....”

“Pinkie Pie Gets Meta”

SUGARCUBE CORNER

20XX-XX-X1, 08:X2

“Hmm,” Pinkie Pie said, standing behind the familiar acrylic counter, “You know, I just realised why we haven’t got any business today: we’re not open yet.”

It was true: she had been standing there for two hours for no good reason.

“And to think I could’ve spent all that time trying to figure out how to stop talking to myself.”

Unfortunately, it was too late to do anything before opening time, as it was just X8 minutes before the X:X0 opening they had on Saturday.

“Is that voice that comes from the ceiling sometimes trying to have a conversation with me?”

Even worse than being two hours early to work, she was also under the impression that there was a disembodied voice in the ceiling trying to talk with her.

“Yeah, that’s what I just said! And you’re real, I can hear you right now! Are you trying to deny your own existence?!”

Cup Cake came into the room. “Pinkie?” she said. “Who are you talking to?”

“There’s a voice coming from the ceiling that keeps telling me things I already know.”

“What are you talking about? A voice? From the ceiling?”

“Yeah!”

“I don’t—”

“Shh.”

The voice, which only ever referred to itself in the third person, spoke up again and talked about how it was saying something.

“See?” Pinkie said. “Didn’t you hear that?”

“No... look, I don’t have time for an elaborate awkwardly-executed joke, so I’ll just go back to the kitchen now.”

“It’s real!”

Cup Cake turned around and left. Next Chapter: Chapter 25: Spike Discovers Twilight’s Porn Stash Estimated time remaining: 17 Hours, 12 Minutes