Starlight Glimmer groaned, making sure she was loud enough for everyone to hear her epic frustration.

They'd had them. They'd seriously, totally had the Sunlight Army on the run and they would have had first pick of the pizza and Starlight would have eaten all of the Special Pie.

And then, suddenly, this. Of all the hare-brained ways to lose an advantage. Not to mention:

"So, the title of this thing just went out the window," she said to Juniper, while keeping her eyes trained on Twilight.

Juniper didn't seem to care. "Oh my gosh, this is the fluffiest pain I've ever experienced," she said, while slumped against the wall and clutching her shoulder. "Avenge me, Captain Starlight!" She grinned at Starlight with lidded eyes. "Avenge me hard."

"I don't even know if I want to anymore." Starlight rolled her eyes and huffed, keeping her Hyper Splasher trained on Twilight. "Seriously. I told you to hang back until we had the perfect shot, but nooooooo. Someone had go to get her 'perfect shot'!"

"Come on," Juniper said, her voice strained. "You expected me to leave all that perfect melancholy on the table? This is my passion! I collect scenes! I pilfer performances! You mean to tell me that if you didn't come across a cool new magic spell that was right up your alley, you wouldn't go for it? Like if you got to travel through time, or something—"

"Junie, please don't give me a reason to turn this gun on you," Starlight said, pumping water into the chamber. She sighed. "Still, deep down I knew it was going to come down to this." She looked into Twilight's eyes. "To the two of us. It always does in some way or another, doesn't it?"

Twilight glared back with dramatically defiant eyes of her own. "And it'll end the same way it always does. Especially given what you've done! Do you have any idea what General Shimmer meant to me?"

"Okay, time out," Juniper said. "If you two meant that much to each other, then why are a general and a scientist seeing live combat? Like, even I know that's a little out there."

"I..." was all Twilight could say in response.

Sunset opened her eyes. "Come on, we worked with what we had. Do you see any other members of our army in this house?"

"That seems to be the Sunlight Army's problem, not ours," Juniper said, high-fiving Starlight with her non-pillowed arm. "You didn't have to pick those ranks."

"I-I picked the ones that fit our character!" Sunset said, adding in a small voice, "And, uh, which sounded the coolest. Cut me some slack—I'm from a magical horse world that doesn't have war!"

"What, like we're some kind of bloodthirsty savages?" Juniper said, gesturing around. "Our world has more movies about war than it's had actual wars!"

"Our world doesn't have movies!" Sunset countered.

"Yeah?" Juniper grinned again, placing her hands on her hips. "Well, whose fault is that? Jump it up, pony slackers!" She looked to her squad mate. "No offense, Starlight."

Starlight shrugged. "Eh, none taken. Honestly, that was my catchphrase for years. "

Twilight cocked her head. "Wait, Sunset, you seriously don't have war in your world? I thought you were kidding when you first told me that."

"Nope. Well, not for the most part? It's... kind of a fuzzy deal." Sunset sat up, and the others sat down on the floor to meet her. "Equestria is a world where our ancestors were beset by terrible magical creatures who fed off hatred, and doled out cold weather in return."

"Everypony remembers that legend, yeah," Starlight said. "Though to be fair, they never got to the 'large-scale conflict' state? Like, not much in the way of weapons or huge clashing armies. Just a lot of mean stares and petty arguments back and forth. None of the pony races cared what happened to the other, so long as they did their jobs and got their stuff. Which still made for a lot of negativity in the air, meaning a lot of winter all around." Starlight grinned. "I guess you could have called it a cold war."

Sunset groaned, loud and long, burying her head in her hands.

"Come on," Starlight laughed, elbowing her. "You know you love it."

"I know I'm going to need therapy after that one," Sunset said. "Anyway, it did actually get really bad when they tried to find a new land to escape all the blizzards. The arguing just got worse, to the point where everypony almost got completely frozen. If some of the ponies involved hadn't learned to cast aside as many differences as they could, and look for ways to not hate one another, but care about each other instead..."

"At least two of us in this room might not exist," Starlight said, her voice somber.

"And my and Twilight's life would be way worse," Juniper said. She wrapped her arm around Starlight, pulling herself close. Twilight did the same with Sunset.

Sunset nodded. "Exactly. Every single one of us in this room right now is here because someone took a chance on understanding us. On having a conversation with us. On forgiving us. Just like Equestria's forebears took a chance on forgiving and having conversations with each other.

"And as Starlight said, that story's been passed down and taught to fillies and foals ever since. So not a lot of us are in touch with our inner aggressive selves. Like, the last 'war' I've ever heard of happening in Equestria was fought with, uh, pies."

Starlight blinked. "Pies?"

Sunset blushed. "Pinkie was involved."

Twilight blinked. "Wait, Pinkie Pies? So, the whole war was fought with Pinkie Pie clones?"

Sunset shook her head. "No, no, real pies. Pinkie herself just started the war. Though now that you bring it up, Twilight told me that Pinkie clones really did happen at one point."

"Wait," Starlight said. "So, a war was fought with pies by Pinkie Pie clones doing all the fighting by proxy between both factions?"

Juniper scratched her head. "This is starting to sound like a certain other movie."

On a hunch, Starlight looked over to Sunset, and saw her looking completely gobsmacked. "I, uh, think we should shift to a new topic track," she said, taking hold of one of Sunset's hands.

Sunset exhaled. "Thank you."

"Okay so," Juniper said, "no war, no warriors... so, what, you're all peace-loving zen-masters over there or something? World of Woosah?"

"Not quite," Sunset said. "By my memory and what Twilight's told me, the Wonderbolts are still a thing. They're stunt flyers, but they're a pretty rigid and disciplined outfit. And then there's the Royal Guard, which includes Twilight's brother, but... well, they're guard ponies. They mainly handle skittish crowds around the Princesses, and random events of interest around the country.

"They get the closest to military training that Equestria has, but..." Sunset's face scrunched. "They're also recruited in proportion to how much danger normally exists in Equestria. Meaning, if you put every guard pony from every kingdom that we had onto a single battlefield... let's just say it wouldn't look very imposing."

"Hey, look on the bright side," Starlight said, "whoever we were fighting would probably be too busy laughing to beat us anyway."

All four giggled.

"She's not wrong, though," Starlight continued leaning back on her palms. "Equestria's pretty chill, down to its rulers. Peacekeeping's the name of the game—nopony wants to take a chance on history, or even myth, repeating itself. It's not as if ponies have any fewer conflicts or disagreements between each other than any other sapient species. But rarely do those conflicts get to escalate past a certain point, because we're all taught to resolve those conflicts instead of letting them fester, and then blow up.

"So, if it looks like we don't know what we're doing when it comes to fighting organized battles, it's because we kind of don't." She rolled her eyes. "So, yeah, every once in a while, we get a Storm King. It happens."

"You still need to tell me about that one," Sunset said.

"No, I don't," Starlight scoffed. "Though Tempest was kind of hot. Anyway, we're set up to handle mythical beasties and the occasional supervillain who doesn't get the drop on us, because that's all we're used to getting. You could send an army of, I dunno, a few hundred mind-washed teenagers, through the portal and probably still stand half a chance of taking over." Starlight winked at Sunset.

"Or a few dozen cult-indoctrinated ponies?" Sunset said, with a sly grin back towards Starlight.

"Hey, we'd totally have grabbed a few territories before we got stopped!" Starlight said, laughing.

"What about a dimension-breaker?" Twilight said, blushing.

"Oh, you would have taken both our worlds down super-easily," Sunset said. "And I knew it, too. Why else do you think I asked you to become my girlfriend with two student bodies watching?"

"H-hey!" Twilight said, her cheeks tinting deep red.

All four were laughing now. Juniper raised her hand. "Oooh, ooh! What about a super-tall movie diva? Huh? What could I do?"

"You could team up with me," Starlight said. "I could totally use you in the cities, especially."

"Score!" Juniper said, embracing Starlight for the third time that night and squeezing as hard as she could.

"But as all four of us can attest," Starlight said, "any danger that pops up doesn't last long. Equestria's pretty good at making friends, even with folks that didn't start out very fond of us. We just allied ourselves with the dragons and changelings."

Sunset gasped, looking at Starlight with wide eyes. "No way. I'd heard of the trips you made to their lands, but it's actually gotten that far? That's incredible."

"It really is! That one, I'll gladly tell you all about later tonight." Starlight looked at Juniper and Twilight. "But yeah. That's how we avoid most conflicts. The rest, we talk ourselves out of. It probably sounds like a weird system, but friendship really has just... worked for us up until now. Fortunately."

"And for the few times someone pops up that we didn't plan on," Sunset said, "we have Princess Twilight. Good thing she is a princess—we're going to need the millennium-plus of protection."

"Heh. Well, we'll do our best to make her job easier," Juniper said. "Right?"

All four girls helped each other off of the floor, and leaned into a group hug. "I can get behind that," Sunset said.

The other three nodded.

"Cool," Juniper said as they parted. Anyway, this 'war' stuff was fun, but I think the novelty's worn off. Anyone else hungry?"

With a cheer, the four of them opened the pizza boxes, with the top one revealing a pizza slathered in shredded wheat. Sunset and Starlight looked at each other, their mouths shut tight to avoid drooling. They cut the pie down the middle, setting an equal number of slices for themselves, and leaving the other pie boxes for the other two girls.

"I'll admit," Juniper said between bites, "I wasn't really sold on this 'sleepover' thing at first when you all suggested it? But I think this is the most fun I've ever had."

"Glad we could help," Starlight said. "Looks like friendship won tonight, too."

As they feasted on pizza, they looked around themselves, and out to the other rooms of the house, which were utterly covered in feathers.

"Yeah, uh, about that," Juniper said. "You think friendship will help solve the mystery of how to clean this place up before my parents get home?"

Author's Notes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORrHxlCAa5Y