Pinkie Pie was no stranger to party preparation. Indeed, Pinkie wasn’t a stranger to anyone. Strange, maybe, but that was only until you got to know her. And then she was still strange, but in an endearing sort of way. However, none of that applied, because this particular example began in reference to an event, rather than a person, and continuing as if that weren’t the case would be a bit of a non sequitur. No, in this case, the subject at hand was not any particular pony, but rather the practice of party preparation, and of that one could say participating in and planning parties preoccupied profound proportions of Pinkie Pie’s…

Pinkie Pie stopped and tapped her chin, perturbed by this sudden puzzle, as well as the epiphany that the prologue of a story could only permit so many digressions before the whole production just became preposterous. The latter concern she dismissed, however, in favor of pursuing a patch for the pause in her internal palaver.

“Hey, Dashie?” she called, looking up to where Rainbow Dash lay on a cloud just above the treetop. “What’s a word for ‘time’ that starts with P?  Or ‘energy’ I guess would work, too.”

“What?  Why?”  Dash looked down over the edge of her cloud. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because I don’t have a dictionary, Twilight’s busy over there, and Sweetie Belle isn’t here.”

Dash blinked and tilted her head to the side. “What does Sweetie Belle have to do with anything?”

“How about productivity, Pinkie?”  Twilight called from under another nearby tree, releasing a paper lantern from the grip of her magic to hang amid the branches.

“That works. Thanks Twilight!”  Pinkie Pie smiled and resumed bouncing around the tree, a colorful streamer spooling out from some unseen place in her mane and trailing behind her, winding ever-higher around the trunk.

The important thing was, preparations for Ponyville’s first Midsummer’s Night party were going very well, and almost all of her friends were there to help.

Actually, “Pinkie’s friends” would be a rather exhaustive list. So, almost all of Pinkie’s close friends were there.

Okay, that’s still a pretty long list. The close friends who considered the relationship mutual were… No, wait. The close friends who considered the relationship mutual and also lived in ponyville…

Oh, and who also went on adventures with… her…

In consideration of prior notes regarding excessive digressions: Twilight, Rarity, Spike, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash were there.

Rarity hung streamers just like Pinkie Pie, though perhaps without quite as much exuberance, and with Spike trailing along behind, toting her supply of the colorful paper ribbons. Twilight walked below the trees, hanging paper lanterns among the branches with her magic, while Fluttershy flew above, doing the same by hoof.

Applejack would have been there, but she was at home helping make refreshments for that evening instead.

As for Rainbow Dash, her contributions weren’t quite as direct as the others’.

“You do intend to contribute, right, Rainbow Dash?” Twilight called up to the cloud Dash rested upon just above the treetops.

Dash rolled her eyes, and then rolled back over on her cloud to face the skies. “I am contributing. Any clouds roll in from the forest and I am on them in one second flat. A little raincloud there? Bam!” She made a chopping motion with her front hoof in one direction. “A bank of fog over there? Bam!” The same motion in the other direction from her other front hoof. “I am a cloud ninja.”

“I’m sure you are, Dash,” Twilight said, floating another lantern up to rest on a branch. “But the sky doesn’t need to be clear until the stars start coming out, while we still have a lot of decorations to go up before the party can start, so if you wouldn’t mind…”

Rarity nudged Twilight and lowered the streamer she was hanging. “You need to wave a better carrot, dear,” she said quietly, and then raised her voice loud enough for the others to hear. “Really, Rainbow Dash, you're so ‘off your game’ today that you have to wait and pounce the clouds? Whatever happened to ‘ten seconds flat’?”

Dash rolled back to glare down at Rarity, then groaned and pushed herself to her hooves. “Okay, fine, if you’re gonna play it that way…” She paused, though, and looked over her shoulder towards the Everfree Forest with a frown. “Though seriously, let me go tell Thunderlane to get a weather team on standby, first. The weather over the forest is looking really nasty, and we’re gonna have to move fast if it spills over.”

“Go ahead, then. I’d hate for us to have to redo all of this work just because a surprise storm blew the decorations down.” Rarity turned back to the trees as Dash flew off, hesitating with her horn lit up. “I think yellow this time. Spike?”

“Right here, Rarity.” Spike returned the streamer he’d been feeding her to the basket he carried and pulled out one of the appropriate color. “Looking good, but you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“But I doubt I’d tire of hearing it,” she said as she gave him a smile and took the new streamer in her magic.

The four mares (and one dragon) returned their focus to their tasks, with Rainbow Dash soon rejoining them. And not only them — other ponies from around Ponyville were spread throughout the town square. Some hung more decorations, some set up tables for refreshments, others readied a stage set up at one end of the square with a sound system.

The citizens of Ponyville were always open to any excuse to have some sort of party, but there was even more excitement about this one than usual. After all, it wasn’t every day that you had a totally new event to celebrate — barring the “events” that Pinkie Pie invented sometimes when she couldn’t think of a better reason for a party.

To be entirely accurate, though, the event wasn’t new, per se. As Twilight had been only too happy to explain at length, the celebration of Midsummer’s Night dated back centuries, and though it was now sponsored by Luna’s Court, it actually predated the Equestrian Diarchy entirely. The holiday originated in the ancient unicorn kingdom, as a celebration of…

Pinkie allowed her mental image of Twilight giving her another lecture trail off as something much more interesting suddenly caught her attention. Floating back to the ground from mid-jump, she stopped what she was doing and focused on picking as many details out as possible.

“Ear twitch, hoof tingle, a slight itch in my left cutie mark… And that means…” Pinkie gasped. “A new pony arriving! And I might just have time to put together a little party for them!” She then stopped and tapped a hoof to her chin. “But we’re already putting together a party. Huh. Maybe if I threw them a party at the party, but sub-parties might be pushing the limits of party capacity.”

Pinkie mused on this for a moment, but then shook her head. If a new pony was arriving, then time was of the essence! It wouldn’t do to let their visitor and potential new best (though not quite as best as her sisters or fellow Elements) friend arrived unwelcomed just because she was getting hung up on what kind of party to throw — that part could come later. For now, she had a pony to meet.

Pinkie dashed up the road, then paused and doubled back. “Hey! I’ll be right back! Pinkie Sense emergency!” she called to her friends before running off again.  Above their heads, dark storm clouds were spreading across the sky from the Everfree Forest, but Pinkie didn’t even notice them in her rush to meet somepony new.

In no time at all (literally, she was there instantly — even Pinkie wasn’t sure how that worked) she was hidden in a cluster of bushes alongside the road her Pinkie Sense had drawn her towards. She managed to pass the time for some of the wait by digging through the party supply box she had hidden there prior (in case of greeting- or party-related emergencies) and debating what kind of greeting, exactly, to give this new pony, but another twitch of Pinkie Sense told her she was quickly running out of time. She decided to rely on her old staple: grabbing whatever her hooves could snag without looking at the last second, jumping out, and improvising from there.

She paused, however, at the sight of what crested the hill on its approach to the town.

The skies darkened above her, and a sudden chill wind sent shivers up her spine, made all the worse by the distant rumble of thunder. That same wind spread the figure’s dark cloak wide, revealing a dark and subdued coat, as well as batlike wings, and — Pinkie was almost certain — fangs just barely extending from either side of its mouth.

Pinkie hunkered down in the bushes and silently watched it stop and adjust the cloak to keep itself covered.

It was unmistakable. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Fluttershy had been transformed into such a creature.

A vampony.

Acacius paused in adjusting his travelling cloak as his ear twitched towards some nearby bushes. Was something…?

He stood and focused on his surroundings. As far as he could see, he was alone on the dirt road. To one side, farmland stretched off into the distance, without a pony in sight. To the other, an apple orchard extended over the next ridge, and he saw no movement among the trees other than the leaves fluttering in the wind that had picked up from the south, which was also the source of the only sound he could hear other than birdsong.

He crept over to the only possible hiding place remaining, and pushed aside the nearest branches in the little thicket of bushes at the roadside. However, all he found inside was a scattering of confetti and a few stray pieces of streamers, likely blown in there by the wind.

He stepped back onto the road with a bemused grin and shook his head. Habits were difficult to break, particularly they were developed through one's entire youth. But central Equestria was a far cry from the wilderness of the borders, but there could hardly be any need for such vigilance with Canterlot itself visible atop a distant mountain.

He finished fixing his cloak, and continued down the road towards the town of Ponyville. Soon enough, dirt gave way to cobblestone, farmland gave way to houses and shops, and the solitude of the road was replaced with the barely-organized chaos that was preparations for a major party.

The Northern skyline — insofar as a town the size of Ponyville had a skyline — was dominated by a crystalline structure that looked for all the world like a castle perched in a tree, which, he had heard, was the home of Twilight Sparkle, Equestria’s youngest princess. He supposed he ought to present himself to her sooner rather than later, but he knew any of the princesses would welcome him with open wings; it was the reaction of the common pony he was really interested in.

As so, he tossed his head and let the hood of his cloak fall away, revealing to any who looked his way the slitted eyes, tufted ear, dark colors, and (small and basically nonfunctional) fangs that would mark him as a batpony, and continued on, preparing for any amount of gawking or whispered conversations as he stepped hoof into the town market.

At least, those were the reactions he had come to expect.

What he didn’t expect was to have three mares in front of a flower shop take one glance at him, and, as one, let out a horrified gasp and faint dead away. He froze on the spot, one hoof held mid-step, terrified that somehow this would be seen as his fault, but a glance around revealed nothing but shaking heads, rolling eyes, and more exasperated disgust than the hate and fear he had been expecting — and all of it directed at the mares on the ground rather than him.

One orange-maned mare with a basket of carrots on her back even stopped above the trio and smacked her forehead with a hoof. “Seriously, girls?” she asked aloud before turning and giving Acacius a wave and a (clearly somewhat forced) smile.

He awkwardly returned the wave with a smile of his own before pressing on through the marketplace. He smiled and waved at the occasional pretty mare, but for the most part, just acted like any other pony. For its size, Ponyville actually seemed to be a fairly cosmopolitan place. All three of the most-recognized pony races were present in good numbers, though like most farming towns, earth ponies predominated, but he also noticed a donkey couple and, he was sure, a zebra in the crowd — he’d have to find her later and strike up a conversation.

Through it all, though, he barely earned a second glance, aside from the appraising looks he got from a mare or two. Then again, between the giant crystal treehouse-castle, the scorched crater at one end of the plaza, and what he’d heard about Ponyville in general, he began to wonder if, perhaps, a mere stray batpony simply didn’t register to the local populace as “unusual” anymore.