After a long day of sky-clearing, as despite her boasts she sometimes had to do more than three tiny clouds, Rainbow Dash was asleep in Twilight’s bedroom. It would have been nice if she had at least made it to a bed before passing out on the floor, but Twilight wasn’t going to wake her up just to tell her to move a couple metres, mostly because of the likely consequences.

Twilight planned to make her love confession tomorrow, and she knew exactly what was going to happen: she would say really weird, awkward things about liking her for a few minutes, kiss her, and then be pushed away so hard her head would hit the metal side rail of the bench, causing her to fall unconscious and lose memory of the confession. The next day, she would try again, only to be told she had done this before and, for forcing her into a kiss, Rainbow had pushed her such that her head contacted a piece of metal at reasonable speed. The plan still had a few wrinkles to iron.

The next morning, Rainbow was still asleep when Twilight got out of bed. Could she really take the risk of doing morning things and letting Rainbow get away? Could she take the risk of knocking her out, possibly causing her to miss work and letting Ponyville be destroyed by a tornado? She decided she would have to take the more minor risk, but as she was in the shower, Rainbow woke up. She then got on the lower bunk, pulled a blanket over her head, and spent half an hour like that, during which Twilight made it back. When she finally uncovered her head and opened her eyes, she saw Twilight looking at her.

“You’re awake!”

“How long have you been—”

“Do you have anything important to do today?”

“Not really, I—”

“Well, I do, so can I have you?”

“Sure.”

Rainbow did her morning business and came back. She saw Twilight drawing from the bottomless well of frustration that was typing with hooves.

“Twilight?”

“Yes?”

“When is the important thing happening? And what is it?”

She looked away from the monitor. “After we eat lunch, and I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Is it gonna take a while?”

“You already said I can have you.”

“Fine. Do I have to stay here?”

“Um... you can leave, but if you aren’t back in two hours, I’m going to do things to you that you wouldn’t enjoy any description of.”

“What if I never come back to Ponyville?”

“You will, though. If you even leave.”

“You’re not preparing for every situation.”

“Well, I’ve never been preparing for you to leave forever.”

“The time could be now, so act fast.”

“I’ll see you in two hours.”

Twilight was getting excited, but with less than two minutes to go, Rainbow came back.

“Hi, Twilight.” She stepped closer. “What the hell are you reading?”

Twilight got off the chair. “A spell to summon ice. I can already do fire and lightning, so it’s an obvious gap.”

“Why, do you plan to murder ponies? Because last time we saved the world, we managed to keep the body count pretty low.”

“Yes. I’m going to turn evil, or at least insane.”

“Aren’t you already evil if you plan to turn evil?”

“Well, I don’t want to say I’m evil and then take months to kill anypony.”

“Okay. So what’s the thing?”

“I told you, it’s a surprise. I’ll reveal part one to you after we eat.”

After some pasta salad over which Rainbow asked Twilight dumb questions about magic and Twilight asked Rainbow dumb questions about race flying, it was almost time for the plan to really come into action.

“I guess I should save this,” Twilight said.

“You have two rotinis left, just eat them.”

“But I’m not hungry.”

“You can’t save two rotinis.”

“Why not?”

“Just eat it. It’s not like you’re wasting it.”

“But I’m not hungry.”

“It isn’t enough to be worth a container. Are you eventually going to wash something for that?”

“I make Spike wash everything.”

“Fine, save it. But you only have yourself to blame when Spike looks in the fridge and makes fun of you.”

“I’m not going to be ashamed no matter what you say.”

Twilight took the dishes and went away, leaving Rainbow to entertain herself and somehow create an awkward situation whilst being alone. When Twilight came back, she noticed how apologetic Rainbow looked to nobody.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I said I’m okay.”

“I can’t believe you keep lying to me.”

“I can’t believe you’re accusing me of lying.”

“Okay, I’ll believe whatever answer you give. You can trust me, because we’re friends, so you don’t have to lie. Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Now we can go.”

“Where are we actually going?”

“First, the park in Cornerville—”

“I don’t need another lecture about how nice trees are. Applejack’s tried it, Pinkie Pie’s tried it, a few of my friends who aren’t famous, even Fluttershy tried for a few seconds once. I don’t hate the existence of parks, it’s just that I’m Rainbow Dash and sitting around to look at some pretty plants isn’t exactly my thing. I can’t believe that was supposed to be a fun surprise.”

“I didn’t know about any of that. It doesn’t matter, though, nothing’s been ruined.”

“Oh, really.”

“Of course the park isn’t a big surprise. The big surprise is at the park. You’ll see.”

She teleported them to one of the entrances, but there was a problem: she had completely lied and now had to remake her plan on the fly. It seemed so simple: show her a pretty time, show her a tasty time, and show her that Applejack deserved to be locked in a 1.5 cubic metre room with one transparent side and gassed as she pounded on the wall and begged for mercy, and she would have herself a girlfriend.

The park itself was quite featureless. It was densely packed with one type of generic-looking spruce, there was a lake in the middle, and that was about it. The paths were meandering but felt artificial, perhaps because there was no terrain for them to conform to, as the park was almost completely flat. They sauntered a couple hundred metres to the lake in silence, then Twilight sat in front of the lake and Rainbow followed suit.

“I want to admit it before you say it. Things aren’t going as I planned.”

“What is it you wanted to show me?”

“No, I lied about that. I was just trying to save this and I hoped I would think of something.”

“Why can’t you just tell me whatever you’re hiding?”

“I have to build up to it.”

“And that involves coming here.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, since this is already a failure, where are we going next?”

“Well, I planned for us to look around for longer than... well, this....”

“Well, it isn’t happening.”

“I guess I can just tell you, then, if you really don’t like this. I’m taking you to the Cornerville Corner.”

“So after this, a semi-expensive restaurant, to build up something... are you, like, trying to date me? Do you love me, is that the secret?”

“What? No. Rainbow, that’s disgusting. Besides, you already have a girlfriend.”

“Well, she said she doesn’t mind if... actually, she might mind another romantic relationship.”

“What?”

“Yeah, we haven’t talked about that, actually. But I can fuck other ponies. She didn’t actually say it, but she implied it by—that’s a secret.”

“How did she imply it, but not say it directly?”

“Secret.”

“Like, did she have sex with somepony else and then tell you about it? Because if so, I don’t think you should—”

“I wanna fuck everypony too, so I didn’t complain.”

“But she still, like—”

“I don’t care. Don’t tell me about my own relationship.”

“Okay... um, where were we? Right, the restaurant. Are we going there now?”

“I’m not hungry. I mean, it’s been about five minutes.”

“Yeah....”

There was about ten seconds of silence.

“Just tell me.”

“No. It’s a surprise.”

“So how long are we going to sit here? Until we get hungry?”

“We can go somewhere else. It’d kind of kill the mood if we went back to the treehouse, though....”

“That’d be a big loss.”

She teleported them back to the treehouse, except she forgot the transcriber. The transcriber waited a few minutes, but then decided she was truly forgotten and flew back herself, which was pretty annoying to do.

“So then she said ‘I thought it was a caterpillar!’,” Rainbow said.

Twilight laughed to the point of crying, and after a minute had settled down enough to give a response. “Wow. That is the fucking craziest thing.”

“I’m glad somepony who wasn’t there agrees. It’s only been a week, so we’re still bugging her about it.”

“That’s too good.”

They talked for hours about nothing, surprising considering that Rainbow was generally bored by philosophy and quantum mechanics. But unless they were murdered or they vowed to eat until they vomited whenever possible, eventually they had to get hungry.

“You know what else technically isn’t empty?” Rainbow said. “My stomach.”

“You don’t have to be insecure about it. You can just say you’re hungry.”

“What?”

“It’s okay to be hungry.”

“How am I ‘insecure about it’?”

“Come on, you know what you did.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re so immature. Just admit you got caught.”

“I don’t even know what you’re doing right now.”

“Well, since you’re too embarrassed to admit it, I guess I’ll stop.”

“Okay....”

“I have one thing to do, then we’ll go.”

“You don’t have to be insecure about it. You can just say you’re ready.”

“What?”

The Cornerville Corner, named for being on a street corner in Cornerville, named for being in the exact centre of mainland Equestria at the time it was established, was either not casual or fine or it was both simultaneously. The walls were painted with various blues and purples in swirly and wavy patterns, although most of the area was taken by paintings of lighthouses, boats, and other things meant to make water a bit more exciting. This combined with the lack of windows and slightly dim lighting compared to other establishments made it pretentious, dark, and claustrophobic for some, pleasantly calming to others, and inarticulably “a bit off but not strictly bad, I guess” to the majority.

“Welcome to the Cornerville Corner!” the maître d’rêstaurant said in a voice which forced the two to imagine a girl in her late teens or early twenties, wearing sunglasses, ranting about one of her friends over the phone, taking a somewhat long time to say the word “Corner”. The last part happened in reality as well, but had worked its way into the mental image as if it were near the end of a dream. “Just the two of you?”

“Yes,” Twilight said.

“Right this waaay.”

They were led to a table and took seats.

“Your server will be right with yoouu.”

“Okay,” they simultaneously said in their own creepily friendly voices they never used outside of restaurants.

Twilight opened her menu, as did Rainbow after a few tries. The menu had 112 items, most of them various sandwiches, but also including many salads, as well some items from a strange genre of salad in which the dressing was very thin and accounted for as much of the dish’s weight as the solid ingredients, necessitating it to be eaten in spoonfuls which contained a few thoroughly soaked solid pieces in a pool of the dressing.

“I want most of the things on here,” Rainbow said.

“Me t—holy crap, look at this, though. This is absolutely... oh, it has banana peppers.”

The waiter came. “Hello, my name is Doctor Jean-Paul-Philippe García Sánchez Pérez Cardoza, Viscount of Battleknife, I’ll be your server today. Any drinks?”

“Water,” Twilight said.

“Citrus bLEND™.”

“All right, I’ll get those for you.”

“So...” Twilight said, “How is your... flying?”

“You don’t have to be saying something every second.”

“We can’t go to a restaurant and not talk.”

“Sure we can. We already exhausted everything interesting back home. Well, your home.”

“It can be your home. You can stay over as often as you like.”

“It’s still not quite my home if I just come straight in to sleep and straight out. It’d be weird if I actually, like, lived with you anyway.”

“I’m not saying you should, I’m saying you can.”

“I don’t think you’re thinking through just how weird it would be. I mean, do you really want to live with me if you’re like ‘sure, I don’t care’?”

“Sure, I don’t care.”

“Well, there’s no way I’m spending my life with an attitude like that.”

The drinks were delivered. “Have you decided what you’re having?”

“I think we need a little more time,” Twilight said.

“Okay.”

Within five seconds, Twilight had made her decision. “Cumbiscuits.”

“Is that what you’re getting?”

“Yes.”

“I still have to decide between the oignon soup and the Pasta Scialo.”

“I don’t get the second one.”

“It was this thing from, like, thirty years ago. Fairly popular if you kept up with that sort of thing. Which you did, since there was almost nothing else to—”

“You aren’t that old.”

“Oh. Well, somehow I learned it.”

The waiter came and took their orders, with the exception of Twilight’s to advance to Züden and slaughter every one of the villagers.

“So how’s flying?” Twilight said.

“It’s too cold recently to do anything tiring.”

“Oh.”

“So how’s... magic?”

“It’s pretty good. There’s nothing to get frustrated with at the moment.”

Their table became silent, barring the background noise of others’ conversations and the occasional inexplicably loud clink of a utensil. They awkwardly looked at the table for minutes before Twilight began to make towel origami.

“I can’t tell what that’s supposed to be.”

“Really?” She turned it around. “Oh Jupiter, what is that? Yeah, let me try again.”

She tried again. “I still can’t tell.”

“What? Um...” she made a minuscule fold, “Here.”

“Oh, a seagull.”

“That’s not what it... you know, yeah, it kind of does.”

After a bicycle and a train also came out as seagulls, Rainbow got her Pasta Scialo and Twilight got her cumbiscuits. They began to eat.

“How’s the pasta?”

“This sauce just... transcends.”

“Er....”

“It’s like a whole new dimension of happiness. Like I’ve suddenly gained a sixth sense.”

“You’re eating cheese.”

“Hey, you don’t know what it’s like. So how’s your thing?”

“It’s pretty good. Definitely was worth leaving home for.”

“That’s good.”

And so Rainbow devoured her pasta in a state of simultaneous mindlessness and ecstasy, whilst Twilight savoured her biscuits and cream of broccoli. The pasta was much bigger, two meals’ worth of food, as shown by most ponies not finishing and taking the rest home for their entire lunch the next day, whilst Twilight’s dish left her hungry.

“That was really nice, but I’m definitely getting dessert. Like, I’m not even stuffing myself, it’s just a bit... Rainbow? Are you okay?” Her eyes were rolled up and mouth slightly open in a bit of a zombie look. “Rainbow?”

She looked down at her plate, closed her eyes, and took a moment to gather herself. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“This was good, but I’m still hungry.”

“I don’t think I could eat a grain of rice after mine.”

Soon enough, the waiter came around again.

“How was everything?”

“It was good,” they said in unison.

“Cool, yo.”

“Hey, can I get the dessert menu?”

“Of course.” He went off.

“So, Rainbow Dash....”

“Why are you talking to yourself?”

“What? I said that to you, it had your name in it.”

“That’s your name.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s your name.”

“I said Rainbow Dash.”

“Yeah.”

Now in possession of the dessert menu, Twilight had a decision to make.

“Crumble... torte... crumble... torte... help me, Rainbow.”

“You must make this decision on your own. To receive help would defeat the point.”

“Um... well, I’m sure I’ll know by the time he comes back.”

Despite saying that, she did, and shortly afterward she had a plate of blueberry crumble.

“Does it look good? I mean, I think it does, but it’s your opinion that counts.”

“It looks blue and brown. What matters is how it tastes.” After that pretentious, smug, prideful excuse for communicating in the English language, she had a bite of the crumble. “It’s really good.”

“As a purely subjective statement, that tells me nothing. I can imagine what I would be satisfied with when I—”

“Hey, that’s my job.”

“Do I constantly need to be like ‘yo, bitch, wazzup’?”

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

The exchange came to a slightly awkward end, and it took until they left the restaurant for another conversation to occur.

“Well, that was fun,” Rainbow said. “Is that the last part of your master plan?”

“Back at my place.”

Back at her place, Twilight was so excited that it was finally about to happen that she could barely contain herself. But since she could, Rainbow didn’t notice anything. Twilight led her to where the television was, not for that but for the couch facing it. She sat down and patted a spot beside her, and Rainbow took a seat.

“So... is this the last part? The epic climax of your plan?”

“Yes. There’s one more thing.”

“Then... what is it?”

The sexual assault lasted four or five seconds. Rainbow didn’t throw her legs behind Twilight’s head and reciprocate, but she didn’t make any attempt to stop it either.

“It was a date.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Well... I could use a backup girlfriend, and there is a reason I’ve been hanging out with you so much recently....”

“You love me? Just say it. Please.”

“Just so we’re clear, AJ’s the primary, but... yes.”

With the passion of a reciprocated love confession on their hooves, they didn’t do anything sexual in case Spike walked in. Next Chapter: Chapter 35: Faustmas Special Estimated time remaining: 16 Hours, 34 Minutes