“Alright. Carefully… that does it. Now for the next one.” Lyra watched from a few steps behind, doing her best to help guide Fluttershy slowly up the stairs. “I think I can see the top. Curve a little more to the left. You’re doing fine.”

In truth, Lyra couldn’t see the top of the stairs. After only a few steps, the darkness had engulfed them like a thick fog, leaving only a small bubble in which Lyra had any vision. The steps seemed to be endless, constantly curving upwards to impossible heights. Although, Lyra knew they had likely only gone up a half dozen or so—Fluttershy really was being more careful than necessary. Never the less, Lyra kept craning her neck to check further ahead and kept finding nothing but blackness and the occasional bull-horned cupcake. She wanted to sigh—it had to be getting close to sunset and her party’s start—but she knew Fluttershy was in a delicate state of mind and didn’t need to be rushed. Also, an ill-timed sigh might alert Fluttershy to the fact that they were potentially traveling up an eternal staircase, and no good could have come from that.

Then, a stench invaded Lyra’s nose, forcing her to gag.

“Ugh, what is that?” Lyra said, waving a hoof ineffectively in front of her face. “Whatever it is, it smells nasty.”

“Like rotten eggs,” Fluttershy commented.

“Probably not a good smell to be coming from a bakery… or anywhere, for that matter.”

As they continued to carefully climb the steps, the darkness began to change from a pitch black to a deep red. The horrible smell lessened—either that or Lyra’s nostrils had finally given up in protest—and soon, the stairway leveled off into a circular room.

Lyra blinked. While she had never seen Pinkie’s bedroom before, she knew that the remodeling done to it for the haunted house must have been extensive. The walls and floor were covered in irregularly cut plates of black, polished stone. A red light shone from behind the cracks in the plates, illuminating the room in a sinister glow. All decorations and furniture were missing save for a large ebony desk and an executive-style swivel chair behind it.

Lyra held her breath as the swivel chair slowly spun around to face them.

“Ah, if it isn’t my special guest, Lyra,” Pinkie said, as the chair came to a stop. She wore the same black coat, black cape, and white, ruffled shirt from her portrait, but had added a pair of red bull-horns to her ensemble. Unlike the cupcakes, these horns were full-sized and likely weren’t made from soft rubber. She grinned wickedly. “You’ve kept me waiting, but no matter, for I—”

“Pinkie?” Fluttershy asked as she took a step forward.

Pinkie blinked, then her eyes widened. “Fluttershy? What are you—oooohhh! So that’s why my mane kept randomly changing how it was parted. That must have been my Pinkie Sense for ‘Fluttershy is trapped in your haunted house.’ I’ll have to remember that one.”

“Oh, Pinkie!” Fluttershy smiled and raised a hoof to her headband. “It’s just been awful. I came back to get my box and—”

After the headband had cleared her eyes, Fluttershy stared at Pinkie for a few seconds, and then promptly collapsed onto her side. Pinkie leapt over her desk while Lyra rushed to Fluttershy’s side.

“Is she okay?” Pinkie asked.

“Uh…” Lyra bent down and gently opened one of Fluttershy’s eyelids. Medical knowledge of fainting and its related traumas was not something Lyra understood. She wasn’t sure what to check for—or even why she had made the attempt to check in the first place—but judging by Fluttershy’s soft snores and the smile on her lips, the unconscious pegasus was likely in a better, less frightening place.

Having finished her examination, Lyra stood up and said, “I’m not a doctor, but I think she’s sleeping.”

“Aww, poor Fluttershy,” Pinkie said. She took off her cape and draped it over Fluttershy. Next she bundled her shirt and coat together and carefully slid them beneath Fluttershy’s head. Fluttershy wrapped her forelegs around her makeshift pillow, pulled it tight, and mumbled something softly.

Pinkie smiled and gently patted Fluttershy’s mane. “Thanks for finding her. I’ll be sure she gets home where it’s nice and safe with no scary monsters at all. But first, we have a haunted house to finish.”

With a sudden burst of speed, Pinkie bounded back across the room, once again jumped over her desk, and landed perfectly in her chair. Her momentum sent the chair into a spin, causing Pinkie to erupt into a fit of giggles.

Lyra walked forward until she stood on the other side of the desk. As she stared across the polished, dark wood that nearly came up to her chin, she couldn’t help but gulp. She wondered if this was how ponies with corporate jobs felt when they were sent to meet the ‘big boss.’ Although, she was sure that, most of the time, the boss wasn’t shouting “Whee!” as they spun in their chair.

Pinkie finally seemed to remember where she was and stopped herself by grabbing her desk with her forelegs. She scooched the chair forward and sat up straight. “Right, sorry.” She giggled again. “I got carried away.”

“Not a problem,” Lyra said. She glanced around the room, but couldn’t find any clocks or windows. “Pinkie? Do you think we can hurry? I’m pretty sure I need to get back home soon.”

“Oh! Sure, sure.” Pinkie waved a hoof. “Just let me get back into character.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then smiled her wicked grin. “You’ve kept me waiting, Lyra, but no matter, for I am a patient host. Now then, I believe we had a deal?”

Lyra’s heart beat faster as Pinkie ducked down behind her desk. There was the sound of a drawer opening and closing, then Pinkie rose and placed a plastic bowl atop the desk.

There, in such a plain-looking vessel, was the final step of Lyra’s journey: candy. Sweet, glorious candy of all shapes and sizes. She didn’t even care that she was getting a little misty-eyed. She had endured so much to reach this point. When her confidence had faltered, she pressed on. When small children had accosted her, she escaped relatively unscathed. When her fears had become too much, she confronted them and came out with a new outlook on life. And now, her quest at its end, Lyra would claim her well-earned reward and return home victorious. Holding her breath, she used her magic to lift the bowl from the desk.

Then, Pinkie placed a hoof on the candy and pushed the bowl back down. “Of course, candy is one thing,” she said, sounding as if she were talking about watching paint dry. “But you were so much help to us today, maybe you deserve something else instead? Something better?”

Lyra rolled her eyes. She tugged at the bowl, but Pinkie’s hoof had it firmly held in place. “Come off it, Pinkie. I get the costume and know you’re trying to tempt me with something else, and let me tell you, it won’t work. I need this candy, and there’s nothing you can offer me with that would get me to change my mind.”

The corner of Pinkie’s mouth quirked up, letting Lyra know she may have spoken too soon. After lifting her hoof and watching Lyra for a moment to make sure she wouldn’t attempt to steal the candy, Pinkie once again ducked behind her desk. This time, instead of a drawer opening, there was the sound of metal scraping, followed by a muffled grunt. Slowly, Pinkie rose back up, lifting with her teeth a large object that reminded Lyra of a black cloth-covered birdcage. Pinkie placed her front hooves on the desk in order to steady herself as she lifted the cage higher and higher. With a final grunt of effort, Pinkie heaved the cage on top of the desk and dropped into her chair.

“That…” Pinkie said, panting heavily, “was a lot... heavier... than I thought it’d be.” She sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Now where were we? Oh yeah! The complex moral choice. I love this part.” She cleared her throat and sat back in her chair, calm and collected. The sweat, still damp on her forehead, ruined the effect somewhat. “I seem to recall a certain party. You may remember it, Lyra. Your ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party?”

Pinkie waited, slowly tapping the tips of her hooves together as Lyra thought back to that day.

Her welcoming party had been so many years ago, but Lyra didn’t think anything particularly noteworthy had happened during it. She remembered the great feeling of being so welcomed, even though she barely knew anypony at all. She remembered eating too much cake and feeling sick afterwards. But she didn’t remember anything specific that had anything to do with the birdcage in front of her.

“I seem to recall,” Pinkie continued in a playful tone, “a certain conversation we had. One where we talked about silly things that happened to us as fillies. You told me about this mythological creature you’ve been searching for…”

Lyra’s ears dropped and she suspected her face had gone ghostly pale. Now she remembered what Pinkie was getting at. Lyra tried to speak, but found her mouth had gone dry. “Y-... th-that…” she managed to croak out, then tried thinking about lemons to get her saliva working again. “That was the sugar talking! I ate way too much cake that day and never should have told you about her. It’s bad enough that Bon Bon thinks I’m crazy, but I’d be the laughing stock of the entire town in anypony else found out! You promised not to tell!”

Pinkie closed her eyes and raised a hoof. “Oh, don’t worry, Lyra. I haven’t told anypony.”

The way Pinkie cracked open her eyes and grinned told Lyra that the word ‘yet’ had been silently added to the last sentence.

Lyra’s mind spun. Was keeping the secret Pinkie’s counter-offer? Lyra didn’t want to believe that Pinkie could be so cruelly manipulative. But then why the birdcage? Surely Pinkie couldn’t have caught the…

Could she have?

“You’re bluffing,” Lyra said calmly.

The sly look on Pinkie’s face faltered only slightly before it recovered. “Oh, am I?” Pinkie asked innocently.

“Of course you are. I know it took me longer to get through this haunted house than most ponies will take tomorrow night, but there is no way that birdcage contains anything other than air... or maybe a bird. I don’t know. But what I’m trying to say is that there’s no way you had time to capture the—”

The cloth covering the cage whipped through the air as Pinkie pulled if off in a flourish. The creature inside definitely wasn’t a bird. Lyra couldn’t take her eyes off the cage. For so much of her life she had searched. Even when others had laughed and called her crazy, she still believed. And how could she not believe? After what this creature had done to her, she had vowed to never end her hunt until she had her revenge.

“You,” Lyra said, her voice dripping with venom.

Pinkie blinked. She had been prattling on about choices or something, but Lyra didn’t care about what. Right now, Lyra was more concerned about keeping herself from laughing maniacally. This creature had eluded her so many times. But now? Now it was trapped in its one weakness: an ordinary bird cage with a twist lock.

Lyra shook her head slowly. “After all this time. Finally, you have no escape. I had often asked myself what I would say to you if I ever got this chance, but there’s no words that can undo the past. So, now you’re going to pay for the mistake you’ve made.” Lyra pointed her hoof at the trapped Tooth Fairy. “You owe me a bit!”

The tiny, copper-colored pony inside the cage rolled her eyes and sighed in her high-pitched voice. Her dragonfly wings beat to life as she lifted herself to hover in the center of the cage. Once airborne, the pony’s golden mane and tail billowed and flowed as if she were underwater.

“Oh great,” the Tooth Fairy said, “it’s you again.”

“You owe me a bit!” Lyra repeated.

“Yes, yes, I heard you the first time, but the answer is still ‘no.’ You were paid your allotted sum of money for your tooth as per my realms agreement with your ruler. No amount of begging, demanding, or stalking is going to get you any more.”

Lyra gritted her teeth, but her biting retort got cut off as Pinkie clapped her hooves to get their attention.

“Whoa, hold on,” Pinkie said. “That’s why you were searching for the Tooth Fairy? To get money out of her? That doesn’t seem very nice.”

Lyra gasped and took a step back. “That’s not it at all! Don’t go taking this winged-rat’s side until you hear the whole story.”

After making a show of clearing her throat so that everypony—and every fairy—knew that what she was about to say was serious, Lyra began, “Now, I know how this is supposed to work: baby tooth placed under a pillow equal a free bit when you wake up. Parents tell their foals the story about the Tooth Fairy all the time. Now sure, maybe I was skeptical after I lost my first tooth, but once the cash started rolling in, I wasn’t going to question the arrangement. That is, until I lost my final baby tooth! When I woke up, the tooth was gone, and there wasn’t a bit in its place. So you see, obviously a mistake was made—maybe intentionally, maybe accidentally, but that’s irrelevant. The simple fact is that she owes me a bit I have yet to receive.”

The Tooth Fairy huffed. “As I have explained to you previously, you probably shifted in your sleep and knocked the coin onto the floor. What happens to the coin after delivery is not my concern.”

“Yeah,” Pinkie said, nodding. “That used to happen sometimes with me and my sisters. We always found the bit beside our beds.”

Lyra groaned and held a hoof to her forehead. “I knew this would happen. I finally accuse you with a witness nearby and you start coming up with logical-sounding excuses. However, we all know that if I had knocked the bit onto the floor, then it was only because you failed to use your calming-sleep dust on me.”

The Tooth Fairy fell slightly before her wings started buzzing again. “My what?”

“Oh ho… surprised I knew about that?” Lyra turned and began pacing. A little more pressure and the truth would finally be revealed. “I see how it is. You wrong a foal here or there and say to yourself, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not like any of them will become obsessed with uncovering my seedy tooth-collecting operation. They’ll forget about the missing bit in a couple of days.’”

Lyra quickly faced the Tooth Fairy and stood proud. “Well, the jokes on you. Because I was an obsessive, little filly that refused to forget. It took time, but I eventually discovered nearly every detail about your sinister objectives. For starters, I know how you use mind-control dust to make parents think that they were the ones leaving behind the bits. That way, if anypony got too close to the truth, they would find overwhelming evidence to point otherwise. I also know that you use our teeth to power the magic of your kingdom. How, I’m not exactly sure, but I’m getting there. I should also point out that unicorn teeth would contain far more magic than other teeth, so you should have been paying us more to keep us quiet. But I digress.”

Lyra smiled and shook her head. This was all too easy. “So, I guess the question is: what now? What do I want to keep my silence? Well, I’m a reasonable pony. All I ask is to be paid what’s owed.” She bit her lip. Now that her moment of triumph had finally come, did she really want to settle for a single bit? “Plus interest.”

“Oh ho, this ought to be good,” the Tooth Fairy said, crossing her forelegs. “And just how much is this interest? Hmm?”

A sense of panic came over Lyra. She knew that she shouldn’t have deviated from the plan. Now she would have to improvise, and, unfortunately, that improvisation would need to involve a lot of math. “Uh… w-well I...I think a fair sum would be… maybe a five—no, ten percent interest taken… um, monthly? Or, n-no, annually. That would be easier to figure out. So… so that would be…” Lyra tried to work out the math problem in her head but got hopelessly lost once she realized she would need to use the dreaded decimal point. “Eight hundred bits?”

The Tooth Fairy erupted into a laughing fit, her flight jerking about erratically. Lyra looked between the hysterical fairy and a confused-looking Pinkie. She then slouched down and suddenly wished she were a lot smaller.

“Alright, so math isn’t my strong point,” Lyra admitted. “Just give me a bit and we’ll call it even.”

After regaining control, the Tooth Fairy wiped off her eyes and sighed. She looked down at Lyra with a smile and said, “No.”

“No?” Lyra said, taking a step back. “W-well, then you’ll force me to—”

“To what?” the Tooth Fairy asked as she recrossed her forelegs. “Threaten to expose my existence? Go right ahead.”

“What? But… but I have pictures! Photographic proof! Everypony will know the truth!”

“Yes. You showed me them the last time you bothered me. Very nice splotches of light in an otherwise black picture, by the way. So, I’ll tell you now what I told you then. Go ahead. Expose me. Gather up all your evidence and go to the authorities, or the royal guard, or even one of your Princesses. Tell them all that the big, mean Tooth Fairy isn’t giving you another bit just because you lost your last one.” The Tooth Fairy tapped her lips and looked away. “Really, I wonder why you haven’t already. After all, last time you seemed quite adamant about following through on your threat. Could it be…” She turned an eye on Lyra. “...that maybe you would then have to explain to those same authorities why you were hiding in foals rooms with a camera?”

Lyra stomped a hoof and growled. “Hey! I’ll have you know that every single one of those foals was either related to me or the child of a close friend of the family, and I am absolutely certain that each and every one of their parents would have given me their heart-felt permission to hide in their kid’s closet with a camera and wait for you to show up, had I figured out a way to ask for it that didn’t make me sound creepy and/or delusional.”

Pinkie stood up on her chair and slammed her front hooves onto the desk. “Alright, you two, stop being meanies this instant. This was supposed to be fun, Lyra, and you’re both—”

“Fun?” Lyra said with as much contempt as she could muster. She added a sneer to her lips for extra emphasis. “I don’t see what’s fun about talking to the fairy who ruined my life!”

The room suddenly became very quiet. Even the buzzing of the tooth fairies wings stopped as she sat down in her cage. Pinkie looked between the Tooth Fairy and Lyra, then slumped back into her chair. She opened her mouth to say something, stopped, then softly asked, “How did the Tooth Fairy ruin your life?”

Lyra took a deep breath and blinked. How had the Tooth Fairy ruined her life? The only reason she had said that was because it would sound overly dramatic and help gain sympathy points for her cause. She hadn’t actually expected to be called out on it. In truth, ‘ruined’ was perhaps too strong a word for the embarrassment she had experienced. However, with the touch of worry on Pinkie’s face, now would be the perfect time for a sob story in order to win the argument.

“How did the Tooth Fairy ruin my life?” Lyra asked. She let her lower lip quiver slightly and sniffed. “I’ll tell you how…

“Back when I was a filly, there was this doll that all the cool kids on the playground had. I tried to get them to like me, but they would always laugh at whatever toy I showed them. I knew that if I was ever going to become their friend, I would need to get that doll.

“I broke open my piggy bank, Mr. Snortles, but I didn’t have enough. Even after searching through couch cushions, checking storm drains with a magnet on a string, and doing some chores for the elderly ponies near my home, I was still one bit short. I tried to beg my parents for an advance in my allowance, but they wouldn’t listen. They gave me a speech about how if I would save my money instead of constantly spending it on candy or comic books, then I would be able to afford the things that I really needed in life.

“With not enough money and the weekend nearly over, I knew I would spend another week being uncool if I didn’t act fast. Luckily, my last baby tooth was loose, so I knew of one surefire way to get the bit I needed: I wiggled that tooth with my tongue like no filly had ever wiggled before.

“I went to bed, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow would be a better day. That night, my dreams were some of the most vivid in my life. I sat atop a throne high in the sky, my doll held close, and all across the fields below, ponies cheered. I waved down to them, smiling as they called out to me, asking to be my friend. Then, just after dawn, I awoke and immediately lifted my pillow.”

Lyra turned down her head and waited a few seconds for dramatic effect. “Imagine the heartache I felt,” she said, speaking slightly above a whisper, “when I found my tooth gone—stolen!—with no bit in its place. That week, I felt terrible and didn’t even try to talk with the cool kids. When I finally got my next allowance, I rushed out and bought the doll. I thought maybe there was still time. Maybe now they would finally accept me. But I was too late. The fad had changed and a new toy was popular. I was laughed away for the final time. After all, what would a lame, behind-the-trends pony like me be doing trying to be friends with them?”

There. With a story like that, nopony could deny that Lyra had been wronged. The Tooth Fairy, worthy foe that she was, would not be able to worm her way out of this one. Lyra risked a glance at Pinkie, then quickly looked away as if she were too ashamed to make eye contact. Just like Lyra had hoped for, Pinkie’s eyes were misty and her lips quivering. A little more pressure and Lyra would be walking out of here with the money she was owed and the free candy.

Then, Lyra’s body froze as the Tooth Fairy opened her mouth and ruined everything.

“That’s it?” the Tooth Fairy asked. Lyra could hear the smugness in her voice. “That’s the reason you’ve been hounding me all this time? Because you couldn’t impress a bunch of stuck-up children who laughed at you?”

Taking another glance, Lyra could see the beginnings of uncertainty on Pinkie’s face. In a matter of seconds, Pinkie would again be questioning Lyra’s motives and taking the Tooth Fairy’s side. Well, Lyra had one final trick in her saddlebags.

“That’s not it at all!” Lyra shouted, drawing attention back to herself. She needed a counter argument; something that was all raw emotion with none of that pesky logic to get in the way. Feeling all fired up, she didn’t even try to control her speech and instead just let her brain say whatever it wanted. This would be the rant to end all rants.

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like living in Canterlot. All the pressures of trying to fit in, to not be an outcast. Those ponies. Sure, they excluded whoever they wanted for reasons only they knew—or maybe for no reason at all—but they were the in-crowd. They were the ponies who would control the trends, set the fashions, be the ones who got chosen first for everything. Not just at school but throughout life as well. That was my chance to be a part of that world. To be somepony special instead of the weird filly that sat by herself at lunch. But you took that away from me!

“Don’t you get it? I would have been popular. And that popularity would have instantly gone to my head until I surrounded myself with ponies that only cared about what I could do for them instead of for who I was. I would have used them in return, leveraging their influence to convince my parents to get me anything I wanted, becoming spoiled and uncaring to the point that I’d judge other ponies based on their clothes and styled manes before anything else. I would have dated the hoofball captain for a few months before he dumped me for a prettier cheerleader. Eventually, the hollowness of my life would have become too much and I’d collapse into an unstable mess, trying desperately to find something, anything, to fill the endless void where my heart used to be. The ponies I once called friends would move on, leaving me to fend for myself, thereby shattering my perception of reality as I realized that everything that could have ever been important to me was now lost forever.”

Lyra took a deep breath and continued.

“Instead, I was forced to hang out with the less-popular kids! I timidly approached them, sacred that they’d reject me like the cool kids did, but they welcomed me to play with them, no questions asked. We grew up together, experiencing what life had to offer. Our laughter was genuine as we learned what it truly meant to be friends, to have someone who understood you and was there for you when you needed them to be. I came to appreciate myself despite my faults, and that appreciation extended to others. It’s because of those bonds we shared that I came to be the caring and fun-loving pony that I am today.”

Her rant finished, Lyra panted, feeling drained. It wasn’t often that she let her brain go on full autopilot, but when she did, the speeches it produced would always fill those listening with a sense of awe. Also, in rare circumstances, it had been known to cause crushing hopelessness or outright terror, but usually it was awe.

With some effort, Lyra lifted her head to check on her audience. What she found was Pinkie and the Tooth Fairy staring at her like she had just grown a second head.

Not the reaction she was hoping for.

Figuring that she must have said something weird or started speaking in a made-up language, Lyra replayed her rant in her mind, actually paying attention to it this time. Once she finished, she clicked her tongue and said, “Wow… you know, when I vocalize it like that, it makes me realize that maybe my life hasn’t turned out so bad, and that it’s kind of scary how one little change could have potentially led me to ruin. I also realize that maybe harboring plans for revenge all these years has been a colossal waste of my time.” She quickly shook her head and pointed at the Tooth Fairy. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that you shorted me one bit.”

The Tooth Fairy took to the air. “You little money-grubbing weasel!”

“Cheapskate crook!”

“Loud-mouthed ignoramus!”

“Bug-winged cheat!”

Whatever insult the Tooth Fairy was going to throw next got cut off by Pinkie yelling, “Enough!”

“She started it!” Lyra quickly added before the Tooth Fairy could claim the same.

After giving a disapproving glare, Pinkie cleared her throat. “It is now time for you to face your complex moral choice, Lyra. Do you choose the candy that you have searched so hard for? Or do you choose the Tooth Fairy and get back your lost bit?”

“Hey!” The Tooth Fairy flittered to the side of the cage closest to Pinkie and slipped her head in between the bars. “That was not part of our agreement, Pinkie.”

Pinkie then put on the largest pair of puppy-dog eyes that Lyra had ever seen. The shear pleading force was enough that Lyra had to turn away lest she got caught in it. But it was too late. Even with her eyes closed, Lyra could still the power of the gaze washing over her, urging her to give in to Pinkie’s demands just to get her to stop making that face. If Pinkie decided to say, “Pretty please with sugar on top,” Lyra was sure that her brain would suffer a cuteness overload and reduce her into a gibbering mess.

Thankfully, the Tooth Fairy broke first.

“Alright! I give. Enough. Enough, I say!”

Lyra reopened her eyes to find a smile on Pinkie’s face and the Tooth Fairy hovering with her forelegs crossed.

“If she chooses me,” the Tooth Fairy said, “then I will give her one bit. But either way this ends!” She pressed up against the bars and pointed at Lyra. “Should you choose the candy instead, then you will forsake this ridiculous vendetta against me. Which means no more stalking me, no more getting in the way of me doing my job, and no more setting up deliberately over-elaborate devices by which you hope to entrap me!”

Pinkie nodded sagely. “Yes, I agree. If you pick the candy, then you’ll stop being mean to the Tooth Fairy. Now, choose your complex moral choice!”

Lyra grimaced. The choice had been clear before, but now, the stakes had suddenly gotten higher. Although, she could think of one argument that might get Pinkie to sweeten the deal. Both figuratively and literally.

“You know, Pinkie,” Lyra began, “I think that—”

Pinkie made a shushing noise. “No thinking! Complex moral choice. Er… I mean, yes thinking, but no talking… complex moral choice.”

“But, Pinkie—”

“Complex moral choice!”

“You really like saying that, don’t you?”

Pinkie giggled. “I know! It sounds so sinister and spooky. I can’t wait for tomorrow night. I have sooo many choices to offer. Do you choose a candied apple or a slice of pumpkin pie? Gum drops or just gum? This whole chocolate cake or the mystery prize behind door number three? I even have special choices set up for my bestest friends!” She blinked, looked down at Lyra, and cleared her throat. “Lyra? Complex. Moral. Choice.” She punctuated each word with a tap on the desk.

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Lyra said, “You keep asking me to choose between them, but from where I’m standing, there’s only choice.” She pointed at the Tooth Fairy. “You.” She sighed. “I just hope you realize what a lucky flying rat you are.”

“Then that means…?” Pinkie asked, a smile slowly spreading on her face.

“Yeah,” Lyra said half-heartedly. “I pick the candy.”

With a smile in full force, Pinkie leaned down and twisted opened the lock to the birdcage. The Tooth Fairy instantly rushed out and flew up towards the ceiling where she was both out of reach and could look down on them. Lyra flinched under the disapproving glare of the Tooth Fairy.

“Uh, heh heh. No hard feelings?” Lyra asked.

The Tooth Fairy continued to stare for a few seconds, then stuck out her tongue and vanished in a puff of glittery dust.

Lyra gritted her teeth and felt her forehead heating up, but then her building anger escaped as she let out her breath. She knew when she was defeated, and getting upset over it wouldn’t change anything. Besides, if Lyra had learned one thing today, it was that she did an absolutely horrible job when it came to holding grudges.

A click sounded from nearby and the room illuminated. Now that she could see properly, Lyra noticed that the walls only appeared to be covered in stones because of the wallpaper patterns. The floor, however, actually was covered in real stones. A benefit of having family in the rock business, Lyra supposed.

Pinkie stepped away from a wall switch. With a flick of her head, she sent her fake horns tumbling through the air to land on her chair. “I’m proud of you, Lyra,” she said as she came around the side of the desk. “You made the right choice.”

“Yeah, I know… but how did you do it? The Tooth Fairy, I mean. I’ve been after her most of my adult life, and the best I could manage was to catch her long enough for her to insult me. How could you have possibly managed to catch her in the short time since I saw you last?”

“Oh, that’s easy. She owed me a favor.”

Pinkie must have seen the confusion on Lyra’s face since she laughed and waved a hoof nonchalantly. “Twinklehooves and I go way back. It’s a long story from when I was a filly. It all started because of a case of mistaken identity and then a crazy adventure sprang up from there. In the end, I accidentally saved the Kingdom of the Fairies from plaque pirates, so Twinklehooves said she would do anything in her power to repay me. I’m just glad you agreed to test my haunted house today, because I had no idea when I was ever going to be able to use a favor from the Tooth Fairy. Although, I probably should have asked you why you were after the Tooth Fairy before I brought her here.”

Lyra broke eye contact. “Yeah, that, uh… that must have been awkward, having me go off on a friend like that.” She laughed weakly. “Still, it could have gone a lot worse. I could have chosen her.”

“I know, but I didn’t think you would. After all, you said it yourself. You’re a caring and fun-loving pony, Lyra. You mentioned you were doing this for Bon Bon, and I knew you would want to make her happy. Because let’s face it…” Pinkie switched to a hissing whisper before continuing. “Bon Bon is scary when she’s upset!”

“I know!” Lyra said, dropping her voice to match Pinkie’s. She looked over her shoulders to make sure nopony else could be listening in on their conspiratorial whispers. “Like, how once she starts getting angry, she’ll look at you with a slight frown.”

“And how she taps her hoof while asking you to explain yourself.”

“And then when she sighs and shakes her head.”

“And says how disappointed in you she is.”

Lyra shivered, having experienced that last part several times herself. She then shook her head and got right up to Pinkie’s ear to whisper the next bit. She wasn’t going to take any chances with this next part. “No. That’s bad, but the absolute worst is when she’s so upset that she doesn’t say anything at all. All she does is stand there, but you can’t help but feel like a filly caught by her parents with her hoof in a cookie jar. And the jar is broken. Also, the kitchen’s on fire.”

Upon learning about the absolute worst thing ever, Pinkie’s ears drooped and her face paled. She searched Lyra’s eyes as if hoping for a sign that Lyra had only been kidding. But alas, there was none.

Lyra was pretty sure she would have earned a ‘there, there’ pat on the shoulder had Twilight not chosen that moment to teleport into the room.

After taking a moment to orientate herself, Twilight wasted little time with pulling out her notepad and going into full researcher mode. “Sorry, girls, I hope I’m not interrupting anything. It’s just that I haven’t sensed any movement from the fear-o-meter for a while, so I wanted to check if you were done.”

“Yeah, we were just chatting,” Pinkie said.

“Great. I’ve been going—oh! I nearly forgot.” Twilight turned her head towards Pinkie. “Rarity came by earlier with an eggbeater and a set of roller skates. In have them in a box outside. She said you needed them for some reason?”

Pinkie stared blankly with her brow scrunched up for a couple of seconds before her eyes widened. “Wait, wait, wait… an eggbeater and roller skates is a Code Twelve! I asked for a Code Three. Or… maybe that was a Code Three and I really needed a Code Twenty-Eight. Hmm. I really should have written all this down.”

“Pinkie,” Twilight said flatly, “you did write this down. You gave all of us a copy and told us it was really important to keep it close at hoof until we finished the haunted house.”

“Whoops, silly me,” Pinkie said with a giggle. “I guess I should have kept a copy for myself then.”

Twilight turned back toward Lyra with a smile on her face. She rolled her eyes, opened her notepad, and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. “As I was saying, I’ve been going over the data I’ve collected so far, and, I got to tell you, some of this just does not make any sense.” She turned around the notepad to reveal a neatly drawn graph.

“This graph shows your fear levels starting with when you opened the front door. Notice the dips and spikes? Most of them align to the times and locations I would expect. Kind of. Well… some of them align at least. Anyway, things went acceptably well until a few minutes after you had entered the break room. As you can see here”—Twilight flipped the page pointed to a spot midway along the continued graph—”the fear-o-meter suddenly stopped collecting any data at all. I thought there might have been some sort of magical interference going on with my spell, so I increased its strength to try and reconnect it. Then this happened.” She moved her hoof slightly to the right towards a section of the graph were it looked like a pencil had torn a jagged line upwards across the rest of the page and then snapped when it had reached the end. “The sudden spike in fear levels was highly unexpected, to say the least. As you can guess, well, this is the point where I canceled the empathic link and went to get some aspirin.”

Twilight lowered her notepad and smiled at Lyra. “So, as you can see, my data is incomplete, and I would really appreciate it if you could provide some much needed context so that I can attempt to make sense of it.”

Lyra thought for a bit to try to come up with a good summary of her experience with the haunted house. However, she hadn’t gotten far when she noticed that Twilight’s gaze had moved upwards to where the fear-o-meter should have been. Twilight flicked her head towards Pinkie, then began glancing about the room until her eyes finally fell upon the sleeping form of Fluttershy and, more importantly, the headband she still partially wore.

“Oh,” Twilight said as she checked her graph once more. “That explains a lot, actually. Huh. I guess we can move on to general feedback then. So…” She bit her lip and shifted her weight from one side to the other. “What did you think?”

With how much this information would mean to Twilight, Lyra couldn’t help but make a show of her answer. Slowly, Lyra tapped her lips while repeating “What do I think?” quietly to herself. Finally, when she figured Twilight was about ready to burst from anticipation, she lowered her hoof and said, “I think… that it was awesome!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! The outside decorations are amazing, so everypony knows the inside must be great too. And let me tell you, it is! The buffet was a ton of fun. I really liked the atmosphere and the fake out with the pie. But when the skeletons started moving? Oh geez, I completely lost it. It must have taken hundreds of enchantments to get everything moving the right way. It think it’s going to be a big hit tomorrow. I really want to see what happens when a whole crowd come in.”

Lyra looked up as she thought back on her experiences. It amazed her that, now that she wasn’t actively trying to hate it, she found she had actually really enjoyed herself. “And then the stairs. Really creepy decor, but I kinda feel they lack the oomph that the previous room had.”

Still scribbling on her notepad, Twilight nodded and said, “I know, but don’t worry. It should be better when Rarity is here to do the lighting and sound effects. And you should see what Applejack can do in the buffet. She really knows how to direct the skeletons to maximize their performance. She says it’s a lot like herding.”

“Alright, that’s good. I guess I can’t really say much about the break room, since it’s not supposed to be scary. I mean, it’s relaxing, I guess. Just, you know, any readings you got from the fear-o-meter in their probably weren’t accurate.” Lyra cleared her throat. “Let’s just say that room is probably going to cause some paranoia. Oh! But the maze! That was my favorite part. It was scary enough as is, but I can’t wait to see what will happen once Rainbow Dash is involved.

“And finally, I really enjoyed Pinkie’s performance with her trying to lure me away from my candy. I think that my reward will be all that much sweeter knowing that I was able to overcome temptation and do the right thing. All and all, I’d have to say this place easily makes my top five list of best haunted houses ever.”

Twilight finished writing and glanced up. “Thank you, Lyra, this is great news. I’m going to need to question you about some specifics, but I really think we’re on the right track and will be ready in time. Although... I do notice you didn’t comment on one part.” She gulped and laughed weakly.

Lyra mentally sighed in relief, this would be easier to say since Twilight appeared to be expecting it. “That illusion in the hallway? Well, I think one word sums it up best.” She switched to a voice that she would use on a misbehaving puppy. “No. No. Bad, Twilight. You do not make me think I’m falling to my doom. That’s bad. That’s baaaad. No treatsies for you.”

Except for a slight wince at the beginning, Twilight took her scolding well. “A little much, huh?” she said, then pressed her lips into a line and nodded. “I was afraid of that. Sorry. Applejack and I were debating on whether to include that one, so I thought I’d show it to you. I’ll be sure to remove it from the rotation.”

Lyra smiled to show there was no hard feelings and said, “Or maybe just tweak it a bit? I admit I have no idea how complex the spell for that illusion is or if it’s even possible to change it without starting over, but I’d be willing to help test it to get it right.”

“Thanks. I’d love to get more feedback.” Twilight looked at Pinkie, who appeared to be attempting to lift Fluttershy onto her back without waking her. “We were going to be breaking for a light dinner in a half hour—and I guess taking Fluttershy home—but you’re more than welcome to join our other test groups tonight if you’d like.”

Lyra liked the sound of that. She felt proud knowing that at least some of the screams from tomorrow night could be because of her help. “Well, maybe later I could—wait. Did you say dinner? Oh no! What time is it? Has the sun set?”

Twilight looked around, perhaps mistakenly trying to find a window or clock like Lyra had, then said, “I’m not sure the exact time, but the sun was about on the horizon when I came in.”

Lyra placed a hoof to her chest and let out her held breath. “Then I still have some time left. I’m sorry, Twilight. I’d love to stay and test, and report, and whatever, but I really need to get home. Like, five minutes ago. I promise I’ll stop by your library first thing in the morning and help with whatever you need to make this the best haunted house ever. But for now? I have a party to save.”