Twilight arrived at the Aloe and Lotus Spa just in time to find an alarmingly straight-haired Pinkie Pie, with a comatose Rarity draped across her back, pounding on the 'ring for service' bell with one hoof and shouting angrily into the back of the spa. "C'MON, WHAT'S THE HOLDUP? WE HAVE A SPA-RELATED EMERGENCY OUT HERE!! Oh hello Twilight," she said, un-Pinkylike stress and exasperation in her voice. "Rarity's had herself a bit of an experience, so I brought her here for a Black Friday Special."

It was telling that Twilight didn't even pause to exclaim A Black Friday Special? She simply replied "make it a double," and joined Pinky at the counter. The purple unicorn set her gift from Pinkie Pie--- a coupon for a day at the spa--- by the register and rested her frazzled head on the cool tile counter and waited wearily for either her service or unconsciousness.

Pinkamena sized up Twilight appraisingly. "Uh huh, so you've been picking up on it too," she said cryptically. "What happened?"

Twilight didn't even question. "giant ego-tripping bald monkey appeared in the library and wanted to bump uglies with me," she said. The pink pony, she noted, didn't even blink. She nodded at Rarity. "And her?"

Pinkamena thought. "Ever read 'the Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar Allan Pony?"

"Yeah. Somepony almost bricked Rarity into a wall?"

"Rarity almost bricked Sweetie Belle into a wall," Pinkamena said. "She sorta had a little fainty spell when she snapped out of it." She gave Twilight a frighteningly sober look. "She's gonna remember that." Pinky looked around.

"Let me go see what the hold up is," Twilight said. She walked around the counter and back through the swinging doors.

And then walked back out. And then back out through the front door. And then back IN the front door, trailing a garden hose behind her, and disappeared back through the swinging doors. There was the loud FSSSSSSHHHHHH of a garden hose at full blast and two feminine screeches. Twilight reappeared and threw the slack of the hose behind the counter before rejoining her friends; shortly thereafter two drenched fillies--- one pink-and-teal, the other teal-and-pink-- came staggering out to the counter, their faces frozen in shock, and refusing to meet each other's eyes. "W-we apologize," Aloe said, her voice shaky. "We do not-- do not know what 'appened..." She and her sister shared a quick, horrified glance, then hastily looked away. "'Ow can we 'elp you...?.... aheh..."

Pinkamena looked at Twilight. "What..."

"In the back room swapping spit," Twilight said. "I hosed 'em down before they did anything too emotionally scarring. That'll be two, no THREE Black Friday Specials, please..."

Aloe and Lotus both blanched. A Black Friday Special was high-priced special reserve, and only used for the direst circumstances. The last time it had been used was when it had gotten its name--- when Snips and Snails had somehow managed, right on the eve of an important fashion show, to detonate a barrel of tar in the Carousel Boutique showroom.... It had taken all of Aloe and Lotus' most potent arts to get Rarity out of the fetal position and breathing normally.

"Better make it an open group rating," Pinkamena said, her eyes heavy-lidded. "The others will probably be joining us soon."Twilight looked at her, mystified.

Just as Aloe and Lotus were about to bustle into the back to set things up, the front door was kicked open with a bang. Rainbow Dash flew in, slammed the door and leaned against it. Her expression of terror was priceless. "HIDE ME!" she shrieked. The rest of them gaped at her as she ran into the middle of the room, dancing on her hooftips and desperately looking around for a better hiding place.

"Okay, I'll ask. What?" Pinkamena said.

Rainbow Dash rushed over and put her nose an inch from Pinkamena's. "Sick weird perverts are after me!"

"....Aaaand so I repeat. What?"

Rainbow's voice dropped to a squeaky rasp. "I was just taking a nap in the park, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I feel HOOVES on my flank," she said. "I wake up, and it's Lyra and BonBon, rubbing my flanks and making eyes at me while I was asleep." She shuddered in revulsion at the memory. "I jump up and wanna know what the HAY is going on, and they start going on about how I need to 'come out of the closet' and how everyone knows I'm a filly fooler, and ain't they JUST the ones to show me the ropes---" Rainbow Dash stopped and ground her teeth together, flailing her forehooves at the air. "Where do they get off--- Is THAT how it works? I just HAVE to be a...a... because I don't dress all frilly froo froo and I like sports? Is that it?? I'm STRAIGHT, darn it, just like ninety nine percent of the rest of the world! Go find somebody else to be your fetish, ya---"

She stopped, panting. "Anyhow I told 'em off. But they weren't taking no for an answer! They start cooing about how I'm in denial and pawing at me"--- she paused to gag--- "and then it got worse!"

"...Worse?" Twilight asked, dreading.

"You know that colt with the tennis racket?" She said. "Big beard, hairy chest? Turns out he's gay."

".....What." This from every female in the room still conscious.

"Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on laughing gas," Rainbow asserted. "He comes over and gets involved. Starts talking about how maybe I'm not comfortable with my sexual identity yet and maybe I'm fishing the wrong side of the stream.... Turns out he thinks I'm a colt in drag."

"....WHAT?" It was getting repetitious, but it was begging to be said.

"A colt in drag!" Rainbow said again.

Twilight looked Rainbow over in bafflement. "But you're not.... I mean you don't even wear---"

"I don't know how he thought I was pulling it off, and I don't WANNA know. He started going on about how a 'tender young colt like me' needed a 'gentle, experienced hoof..." She paused to make gagging motions, pretending to stick her hoof down her throat. "And then Lyra and BonBon started getting all huffy and arguing and--"

"Well what did you do?"

Rainbow was rapidly winding up into hysterics. "I bolted! But wherever I've gone all day there's been some filly-fooler trying to hoof me up... I saw you guys go in here and decided it had to be safer than out there." She turned to Twilight, frantic. "Help me! I don't like it when fillies try to touch me in my bathing suit places!"

There was a knock at the door. "Hide me! I'll pay anything!" the technicolor Pegasus screamed. She slapped a tattered coupon down by the register and dove behind the counter.

The door opened. In staggered, of all ponies, Applejack. Her hooves were tangled and her face was a vivid green. "Oh sweet Celestia, Luna, and Discord," she swore, gagging. Before anyone could react, she dashed across the waiting area, tossed her hat aside and puked in the aquarium.

Aloe and Lotus' outraged shrieks were paid no heed. The two beauticians dashed in to try and rescue their tropical fish from a horrific fate while the others dashed in to catch Applejack as she slumped to the ground. "Applejack-- what happened?" Twilight cried, cradling Applejack's head.

       The farmpony groggily looked up at them. "Guh-Granny Smith," she said weakly.

"Oh no, is Granny Smith all right?"

"Oh sweet mercy," Applejack groaned. "She ain't RIGHT, that's fer sure..." She looked up at Pinkie. "She showed me th' family movies."

"What family movies?" Twilight said. "She has hundreds."

"Not lahk this." Applejack sat up and shook her head carefully. Pinkamena, with surprising gentleness, set her hat back on her head. "Ah come in today from the fields and she starts goin' off on a bender.... about how Big MacIntosh and I are neglectin' our daughter Applebloom."

"What." Twilight's voice was as flat as a mesa.

The farmpony just nodded. "Ah thought she'd just took a little turn, but then she pulls out a film projector and a film of when Applebloom was born..."

"Oh, footage of you with Applebloom when she was a baby...?"

Applejack's eyes burned. "NO, Twilight," she stressed. "Of when Applebloom was BORN. Live. Full color. Action shots."

There was a long, awful silence. "Omigawsh, they do that? Ewwwww!" Rainbow exclaimed from her place behind the counter.

"--An', an' ah don't know how... but it was me! My coat, my cutie mark.... " She turned green again. " Looked lahk someone pulling a greased badger through a cat door...." There was a chorus of 'ewwwwwwws' from around the room. "Never gonna let no stallion TOUCH me, never never never never," Applejack moaned, burying her face in her hooves.

Twilight tried to get her brain on an even keel again. " Bu bu buh... where'd she--- you and Big Mac???"

"She had footage. Of the conception." Applejack's voice was the rasp of death.

         Silence fell as images flashed across a half-dozen filly brains. Their expressions of horror could only be compared to Rarity's when she had returned to her ravaged store after the parasprite attack and discovered that parasprites were not, in fact, housebroken. "Oh, good night," Twilight choked.

"With your BROTHER? EEEUEUEUUWWWW!!!" Rainbow dash gagged and fell out of sight behind the countertop.

The cacophony of revulsion that went up was deafening. "Brain Bleach, Brain Bleach!" Twilight whimpered, banging the counter with her forehead.

There was a strangely low-angled knock at the door. With some trepidation, Lotus opened it. In came none other than Angel, towing mightily on the handle of a little red wagon. Curled up in the wagon in a pink and yellow ball was Fluttershy. She was quivering like a leaf and saying over and over again, "Don't look in the toolshed, don't look in the toolshed, don't look in the toolshed...."

Lotus and Aloe helped the rabbit tow the wagon the rest of the way into the spa. "Black Friday?" Aloe asked. Angel nodded. He held out a carefully folded coupon in one paw. Aloe took it and put it by the others. "Verra good, we haf it covered, Angel," Lotus said. He gave them a salute and hopped his way out the door.

"Well, if we didn't need it before we need it now," Pinkamena said. She handed Aloe and Lotus two more slips of paper. "fire up the jacuzzi ladies."

In a short space, the fillies were all up to their necks in the spa's oversize jacuzzi. Dozens of aromatherapy candles and incense burners were smoking away around the room. The tub was surrounded by dozens of half-devoured boxes of chocolates and pints of quadruple fudge ice cream, at least four or five plush comfort dolls, and the gallon jug of "tonic water" had made two full laps round the room as the girls alternated between tearful hysterics and glaze-eyed recitations of the things they'd seen or even found themselves doing. Rainbow Dash had still been too squicked out to join them in the hot tub; Aloe and Lotus insightfully had wheeled out a massage table and their swarthiest and most muscular masseuse, Hans, to tend to the gender-identity-violated pegasus. She was face down in a bucket of hot fudge as Hans vigorously pummeled her lats.

"What could be causing all this?" Applejack lamented, taking a swig off the bottle. "We've had strange things happen in town before but nothing like... like THIS." She shuddered as a particularly vivid memory of Granny's "little chat" with her resurfaced. Then she recalled the panicked stories from the CMC the night before about "evil skinny ghost ponies" and shuddered more. What if it hadn't just been overactive imaginations like she'd supposed.....

Rainbow Dash's head surfaced from the bucket of fudge. "Did ya hafta tell us about that thing with your brother, AJ?" She complained. She stuck her head back into the bucket, muffling her voice. "Doggone it, now I'll never be able to look at that hot red flank again without seeing--- uh, did I say that out loud?"

Applejack paused in mid swig and shot the pegasus a suspicious look. "Whut was that?"

"Nuthin,' " the fudge bucket muttered.

Applejack gave her the stinkeye. "Hmph. Shoulda known you weren't just snitchin' apples and takin' naps in my trees all this time," she said. "You been gogglin' at my brother--"

Rainbow Dash pulled her head back out and licked chocolate off her face. "Aw, c'mon, AJ, can you blame me? With those broad shoulders and those thick, rippling muscles and that tight firm plot you just wanna reach out and---" the grinning pegasus made grabbing motions with her hooves.

"ARRRGH!" The orange earthpony slugged back the bottle.

"Oh. Sorry AJ."

"Oh yeah. She's hetero," Pinkamena said, eyeing Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash's burning face disappeared back into the hot fudge container. There was strained laughter all around.

"Girls, could we please focus on the situation?" Twilight said, fanning her flushed face.

"Um, could we go back over that part about "rippling muscles" first, maybe?" A meek little voice said. Fluttershy had an abnormally wide smile as she tapped her hooves together."Hee...."

"I-- no!" Twilight snapped. "We are under some sort of ATTACK, here! Horrible, sick, twisted things keep happening to everyone... and then the next minute un-happen. Only to start all over again...." she shook her head. "What could be causing this? Who? Why?"

Pinkamena surfaced in the middle of the Jacuzzi. "That's why I got you all here together," she said.

Twilight frowned. "You didn't get us here, Pinky, we all came here together by accident."

"Yeah, except I sorta retroactively gave you all special coupons," Pinkie said. She held up a now-soggy strip of paper.

"Special coupons? What kind of special coupons?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"The kind with a posthypnotic subliminal suggestion for you to come here and only here when everything went crazy this week." Pinkamena shrugged. Twilight and the others stared at the wet paper clinging to Pinkie Pie's hoof. The ink on it was starting to run, but it still had a very odd, blurry, fuzzy-hard-to-focus effect.... "I borrowed a few sheets of hypnotic paper from Doctor Whooves and hitched a ride with him to about eight days ago, then made the coupons and dropped them in your mailboxes." she dropped her hoof back in the water. "When narrative causality is shot to heck, it's amazing what you can get away with offscreen," she deadpanned.

"A-and how do we know it's safe here?" Fluttershy suddenly quavered. The others looked VERY uneasy.

"Before I jumped in the Jacuzzi I buried copies of Twain's 'Rules for Writing' and a bunch of English grammar textbooks around the outside of the Spa,"  Pinkamena said. "They'll repel the Enemy like salt on a slug."

"So you do know what is happening," Twilight said. "So what is it? Is it Discord?"

Pinkamena snorted. "Puh-leeze. You see any chocolate rain or tapdancing buffalos?"

"She's right," Rarity sniffled. "Discord was a brute, but... I think this sort of cruelty is beyond even him."

"And it seems to be getting worse," Twilight added. "The non-events keep getting more horrible with each occurrence. And lasting longer... and more ponies remembering." She looked panicked. "What if it's spreading? What if it gets all the way to Canterlot-- and the Princesses?"

"It probably already has," Pinkamena said. "If I don't miss my guess...."

"An'.... y'know somefin?"

"Wha."

"I STILL fink da nighshalasferfr."

"Whuzzat??" Luna looked over her soup-bowl sized cocktail at the mirrored Nightmare Moon.

"I shaid. Da Nigh'. shoul LASHT.  FEREVER."

"OH." There was a pause. "But dunnit?"

"Huh?"

"Yeah. Da worl' is ROUND, remember?" Luna risked a tumble off her barstool and gestured clumsily with her hooves, tracing a globe in the air. "Sho... sho wennit's DAY on ONE side, itsh always night onna udder. Jush goes aroun anna roun....Da Nigh DOES lash forever."

Nightmare Moon blinked owlishly. "Y...yeah. HAH! You're RIGHT! Sho TAKE THAT, Shelesshia! IIiii....WIN!!" She threw her spectral hooves up in the air in victory. And promptly fell backwards off her seat. There was a painfully loud crash; Nightmare Moon's empty helmet briefly bounced back into view, then dropped out of sight with a clang. "Ow."

".... I'm awlright...."

"'Ey Nighty."

"Wah?"

"You forget about my sishter's wingwong yet?"

"...Ah, DAMMIT!"

Luna cackled and took a sip of her margarita.

"Goahedden laff," Nightmare Moon growled. "You got more problemz than I do." A hoof appeared and pointed behind Luna.

Luna turned and stared. There now seemed to be a dozen other Lunas sitting about, explicitly male, female, or.... other... and seemed to be engaged in a variety of ...revolting acts, right in public. With colts, fillies, various members of the Elements of harmony, even with badly distorted versions of her own sister. Luna felt her gut lurch and turned back to the mirror. "Well don't get to high an mighty, Nitey nite," Luna said. "Look again. You gotcher own problems."

Nightmare Moon, sans helmet, sat up and looked drunkenly behind her into the mirror version of the tavern. True to form, there were several Nightmare Moons all about, doing various disgusting things with various disgusting things. Nightmare Moon gagged. "Ohmyguh-- is that a changeling??" she boggled.

Luna lay her head down on the bar and wept. "There'z nod enuff booze inna world, iz there..."

Pinkamena shook her head. "Before we go any further, you have to understand something. I'm not Pinkie Pie. well, not your Pinkie Pie. Or, at least not the side of her you know---" she shook her head again. "Forget that, just take it I'm.... Pinkamena. And I know what's going on, I've seen it from the inside AND the outside before, and trust me, I'm the only one that can help you."

"So what IS this "Enemy?" Rarity asked.

"Can't tell you right now..... narrative causality," she said, holding a hoof to her lips. "We need the narrative suspense to work in our favor. But I do know where to find them, where to go next."

"Alright then,so we know where he is?" Rainbow Dash said, getting to her feet and jumping off the massage table. She gave Hans a peck on the cheek. "Thanks, Big Guy, you're a peach. Alright, let's go kick some evil BUTT!"

"Alright.... Pinkamina... where do we go next?"

"Think about it , Twilight. Where's the center of EVERYTHING in Equestria? Where all the power is, where all the important stories start out, where the two biggest Deus Ex Machinas hang out...?"

The other ponies gasped. "Canterlot Castle!"

"Well duh," Pinkie said. "C'mon, we gotta train to catch!" With that she jumped out of the hot tub and galloped for the door, trailing water behind her. The others scrambled to their hooves and, with much splashing and shouting, leapt from the jacuzzi and galloped after her.