Psychedelica – Pastel Ponies
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
As inspired by stuff best kept away from children
Chapter Six – The Trickster's Brigade

“If you don't mind me asking, what's on your agenda for today?” asked Twilight as we set about doing the dishes.

“Well, I was planning on going through my stuff and finally taking inventory,” I replied with a shrug. “I've been avoiding it for a while, quite a bit of it was junked during the vacuuming process back at my apartment.”

Blushing, Twilight's ears went back as she sputtered, “R-right, Princess Celestia's portal. It was a bit rough, wasn't it?”

Grinning, I gave her a little jab with my horn and said, “Hey now, I'll have none of that. I'd say it was a pretty fair trade, all in all. I lost a lot of shit, that's true, but it's pretty important to note that I didn't die.”

After another poke, Twilight relented and let loose a smile to end all smiles.

It was so bright I was nearly blinded.

“Anyway,” I continued, pushing past the purple unicorn brusquely and pretending as though I didn't know I'd made her day, “I figured I'd sort through my shit, find out what's intact and what's broken. You wanna tag along? Who knows, there might be a couple of odds and ends that you've never seen before.”

Cut to a few minutes later and the two of us stood looming over a large, disorganized pile of garbage.

“Talk about your fixer-upper,” I sighed, thumbing through a few things without thumbs.

“I'd apologize again, but you'd just chastise me for it,” commented Twilight.

With my grin intact, I smirked, “You're damn right I would.”

We spent a few minutes digging around through my things. Surprisingly, my XBOX 360 was undamaged, as were my copies of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Borderlands hadn’t fared quite as well, but hey, there are always losses in war.

At least I still had some gaming in store in my near future.

“What's this?” asked Twilight as she came upon a familiar book.

Turning, my eyes fell upon a host of old memories.

Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery.

“Heh, that's... actually kind of fitting, this horn I've got. Man, what would the Colonel think of me now? I mean, all on his own he was still the greatest prankster alive, but I can only imagine the kind of show he could have put on with actual magic.”

“What?” asked the unicorn, understandably confused.

Smiling nostalgically, I replied, “Nothing, just reminiscing about an old friend, a mentor.”

Perking up instantaneously, she inquired, “Mentor?”

“Yeah, the best,” I responded, noticing her excitement. “Guessing you had one too?”

“Still do,” she corrected. “In fact, you've already met her.”

“Princess Celestia?”

“What makes you think it's her?”

“Pfft, please, it's obvious. She spoke to you like you were her daughter. The dark one didn't say much and... well... I kind of have it out for the candy-colored one. She was annoying.”

“You mean Cadance?”

“I... guess,” I said, scratching my head. “I don't have a lot of information to go on when it comes to names I've only ever heard in passing applying to ponies I've only met once.”

“Hmm,” she pondered aloud, “while that's a good point, I think you've got the wrong idea about her, Cadance is a wonderful pony. She's married to my brother, Shining Armor, and was even my foalsitter while growing up!”

Hmm indeed. I'd heard several stories about her before (those specific stories even), but still...

“Well, fine,” I relented, shaking my head, “maybe I judged too soon and too harshly. Still, she seemed like an airhead. It's up to her if she'd like that opinion changed. Bad first impressions are hard to quash.”

To her credit, Twilight simply rolled her eyes and ignored me.

I guess Cadance really did mean a lot to her.

“So,” she started back up, looking at me with expectant eyes, “Who is this Colonel? I've heard him mentioned a few times now. Anything I should know?”

“Only that he's the greatest pan-dimensional prankster in the history of everything!” exclaimed a hyperactive voice as a pink blur materialized before us.

“Pinkie Pie!” shouted Twilight as she skidded back a few feet in shock. “Have you ever heard of knocking?!”

Nonplussed, the pink pony smiled and said, “Knocking's so boring, I'd rather surprise everypony!”

“Clearly,” I remarked, bemused by Pinkie's characteristic entrance (no matter how impossible it seemed).

Uh, wait a minute, what did she say?

Snapping back into reality, I took an appraising look at the earth pony and asked, “Pan-dimensional? And anyway, how do you know who the Colonel is? Heck, going off of that, how do you know he's a prankster, let alone the best there is?”

I'd met several of Twilight's friends over the past month or so, but still, Pinkie Pie managed to get my goat every time. Flawlessly. She seemed to completely ignore the laws of physics and her knowledge of things that should be well beyond her was, to put it simply, extensive. It was as though she'd made a hobby out of breaking through the barriers between dimensions or something.

“Are you kidding?” she asked, looking as shocked as my purple friend was. “He's only the most decorated member of the Trickster's Brigade that there ever was and ever will be!”

The Trickster's Brigade?

“You'll... have to explain this in greater detail,” I stated, this tidbit of information a new one to me. “I fear I'm out of the loop.”

Jumping back into the conversation, Twilight blinked a couple times and said, “Ditto.”

Tilting her head, Pinkie Pie expounded, “Think of them... of us... as pranksters who go beyond their realms to enjoy a good laugh. The Colonel was the best, probably the nicest too. Some of our group enjoy their fun a bit too much and don't care if somepony gets hurt so long as it's still funny.”

“Sounds like you're talking about Discord,” said Twilight and I unanimously.

With an embarrassed expression, the pink pony ducked her head and admitted, “Well... he was the leader of the brigade back in his day. Or so I've heard anyway.”

Wide-eyed, Twilight yelled, “Pinkie, you're a member of a group that Discord once lead?!”

Admittedly, I was a bit frightened myself. Judging by what I'd heard, the King of Chaos wasn't a very great example to follow.

“No, no, you've got it all wrong!” Pinkie defended, flailing her hooves around hysterically. “Things have changed!”

Looking more stern than I'd ever seen her, the lavender unicorn demanded, “Explain. Now.”

Backpedaling out of this one would be tricky...

...or so I thought.

“You don't understand, Twilight,” she protested, losing none of her energetic momentum. “Discord was their leader, but he's not anymore. He's a statue, remember? Now I'm their leader!”

With all of the seriousness in the world, Pinkie Pie placed her hooves on Twilight's shoulders and asked her, “You trust me, don't you?”

Pinkie's blue eyes were big enough to drown in and I'm pretty sure that the two of us did.

All of the fire and brimstone I'd seen in the unicorn's eyes a moment ago vanished without a trace.

And I understood why.

Pinkie's at least ten different kinds of crazy, which is really something coming from a crazy guy, but she's also something else. She's Twilight's friend.

Friends trust each other.

Relaxing into a smile that relayed to me exactly how highly Twilight placed things such as the simple trust shared between two friends, she relented and said, “Okay, Pinkie, yes, I trust you. It's just... a lot to take in. Who is in this group with you? Are they dangerous? You said that some of them enjoy their fun in the more dangerous manner that Discord did, right?”

“They did, for a while, but I put my hoof down and made sure to put an end to that,” said the pink pony triumphantly, the Equestrian Kingdom's Commanding Officer of Comedy. “A prank is a prank, but I won't stand to see anypony get hurt. I want everypony to smile, not just a few while at the cost of others!”

With a firm nod, Pinkie proudly puffed out her chest and added, “Anypony not willing to abide by that rule is not allowed to be a member of my brigade. I promise.”

“I take it you've kicked a few out already then?” I asked.

Kicking at a pebble on the floor, she sighed and said, “More than a few, sadly, but it had to be done. They were just meanies in the end, not real pranksters. I saw their true colors and sent 'em packing!”

“Atta girl,” I retorted, patting her on the shoulder. “I wouldn't expect any less out of you, Pinkie Pie.”

“Neither would I,” Twilight interjected, nuzzling her friend with a soft and genuine smile. “So, what about this Colonel you've both mentioned? Who is he and, if Pinkie has seen him before, does that mean I will too? If so, I would very much like to meet him. You seem to think quite highly of him.”

“He was my comedic mentor,” I expounded wistfully, thinking back on my days under his tutelage. “He taught me everything that I know about sleight-of-hand magic and the fundamentals of comedy. He'd walk into a room and, just like that, everything would revolve around him. And not because he strove to be the center of attention or anything. No, he was just that magnetic. Wherever he went, fun would follow in his wake. Good, clean fun. He was... he was the best.”

“It sounds like you haven't seen or heard from him in a while,” the purple pony prodded.

“Actually, yeah, I haven't seen him in a long, long time,” I confirmed with a snort of disdain. “He just sort of disappeared on me. That's... actually part of the problem I was, you know, dealing with before.”

Pinkie's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and in a microsecond I was being tackled to the floor and hugged.

“No, you've got it all wrong!” she shouted, her energetic volume now even more noticeable due to our close proximity. “The Colonel would never abandon one of his apprentices!”

“H-hey, that was then and this is now!” I yelped. “Get offa me, I'm fine now, I swear!”

“Do you Pinkie Promise?”

With a sigh, I tugged one of my forelegs free and proceeded to set my vow in stone, “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

“Good,” she said with a grin, finally getting up and freeing me from the floor. “I'll hold you to that promise, you know.”

Brushing myself off, I smiled back at her and smirked, “I expect you to. Now, what's this about the Colonel? It's true that I thought he'd gone and ditched me, but it seems you've heard otherwise? Is he here or something? What's he been up to?”

Scrunching up her face even tighter than before, as if either contemplating the infinite complexity of the universe or simply having taken a healthy swig of lemon juice, Pinkie Pie eventually replied, “He's off in search of The Ultimate Prank.”

“The what now?” I asked, a bit overwhelmed by the strange simplicity of her answer.

“The Ultimate Prank,” the baker repeated, channeling Twilight as her description began to sound more and more as though it had been recorded in some big book somewhere. “A quest, kind of. They say that Discord once pulled it off, or something like it, but the Colonel saw it as a hollow shadow of what it could have been had it left everypony smiling. Instead, only Discord smiled in the end, and they say that even his smile turned sour soon after. The Great Sham, they called it.”

“I've heard of that,” commented Twilight as something seemed to dawn on her. “I read about it as a schoolfilly. It was that event that began his rule over Equestria, wasn't it?”

With a stern expression, Pinkie nodded.

“Nopony but him smiled for over a thousand years. Nopony.”

A chill raced down my spine.

“Sounds like just the sort of thing that would have left a knot in the old man's gut,” I said quietly.

“The Colonel?” asked the party-planner.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, it did. He and Discord were apparently friends... but not after that. The Colonel never forgave him. They became bitter enemies.”

“Really? I've never known him to hold a grudge, but then again, I've never known anyone to conquer a kingdom and rule it through a combination of tyranny and insanity before either.”

Catching a glimpse of a bird out through an open window, I watched as flew up into the clear, blue sky.

Birds...

He'd always loved my name. Said it was pure.

“So, he's out there then, searching for The Ultimate Prank?” I asked, tears welling up in my eyes. “Do you... do you think he'll pull it off?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she responded playfully, looking out the window along with me. “Do you?”

Setting my jaw as firmly as I could, I took a step forward and answered, “Absolutely.”

“Then he will,” Pinkie stated, watching the same bird as I was, “because he's the Colonel. He's the essence of comedy itself. And if there's one thing that matters in comedy, just one, it's that an audience has to go into a performance believing that it's going to be funny. If you go in ready to hate it, it doesn't matter how good it is, you'll hate it. But if you go in ready to have a great time and share a good laugh with those around you, you'll leave with a smile on your face.”

“If you believe he'll succeed, he'll succeed. My Pinkie Sense tells me so.”

Pinkie Sense? What's tha~

“Fortune telling again?” piqued Twilight, raising an eyebrow up to Dwayne Johnson levels as she vaguely answered my unspoken question. “So, how many shakes and shivers did that one take?”

“Too many to list right now,” assured the pink pony with a wink.

Another question popped up in my mind, a question that had once sent me down the darkest path in my life.

This time though, this time it was the light at the end of that path.

I knew the answer, but well, tongues and mouths do their own things sometimes.

“Do you think he still... you know... thinks about me?”

Without looking away from the open window, Pinkie Pie smiled wide enough to engulf the sun and replied, “He's played a million pranks, told more jokes than jokes themselves exist, and above all else, shown more love for his audiences and his act itself than any other performer in creation. Something tells me, even while he's out there searching, he's got some of that love to spare for you.”

I cried.

We hugged.

...

...

...

Colonel? If you're out there somewhere, I learned a little something about trust today, something that I think I'm going to write to the Princess about. I lost faith in you when you disappeared, I gave up, but... I think I'm getting better. You're not here with me right now, and that really sucks, but you didn't leave because of me. You left to chase your dream. Well, I hope you find it and I hope it's hilarious.

Knock 'em dead, Colonel.

Yours truly,
- Jeremy Robin

To be continued in Chapter Seven – Brothers...