//-----------------------------
// Story: Five Minutes
// Chapter: Chapter 1
// Author: Shrinky Fröd
//-----------------------------

Twilight groaned as she climbed down the stairs from her bedroom, shaking her head.  Her mouth felt like cotton, her eyes itched, and her nose was still filled with the potent scents from last night.

“I told you so,” Spike glared up at her, his little dragon arms crossed across his chest.

“Not now, Spike,” Twilight muttered, yawning widely.  “I need you to take a letter to the Princess.”

“Now?”  He asked her incredulously.  “But Twilight, you’re still –“

“’Cuddle Barn?’”  Twilight asked crisply.

“On it,” he blushed, pulling out a scroll and quill as Twilight began to dictate.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I am writing you this morning not about a lesson in friendship, but about a lesson in the limits of scientific exploration.  I have learned that there are things nopony was meant to know, and that the pathways leading to these things are often littered with temptations that are difficult to ignore.  And yet, they must be ignored, because sometimes the things we learn in the end expose truths that can destroy the unprepared mind….

~~~One Day Earlier…~~~

Twilight Sparkle pored over the results of her latest tests carefully, looking for any signs of an anomaly.

“So, how’d it go?”  Vinyl Scratch asked, her goggles up on top of her head as she read over Twilight’s shoulder.  Twilight frowned for a minute, inspecting a stretch of the paper that had spooled out of the machine, analyzing the frequency pattern carefully.

“Perfect!”  The purple unicorn announced brightly once she was satisfied.  “The Mind Melder is a complete success, thanks to your contributions!”

“Cool,” the pony DJ grinned, glancing at where Spike was sitting, with a far-too-large metal dish over his head, attached by wires to a matching, pony-sized dish that had been on Twilight’s cranium mere minutes before.  “So… what’s it like inside dragon-boy’s skull?”

Twilight thought back to the brief time she’d spent in what could best be described as ‘Raritopia,’ trying to come up with a delicate way to phrase it.

“Very focused on a particular pony,” she decided.

“Cool.  Uhm… he gonna be okay?”  Vinyl asked, glancing over her shoulder.  “He’s looking a little… twitchy,” she offered.

Twilight looked over at her number-one assistant, who was indeed twitching in place, his claws fully extended, his tail flicking back and forth erratically.  Her horn glowed as she cast a quick diagnostic spell; she was sure he'd be fine, but it wouldn't hurt to check.  Satisfied with the results, she gave a quick nod.

“Oh, he’ll be fine, he's just still coming out of it.  The neurophysiologies of ponies and dragons aren’t quite compatible, and I built it for ponies.”

“So… why’d you test it on him?”  Vinyl asked, scratching her spiky hair with a hoof.

“Because he’s my number-one assistant!”  Twilight said cheerfully, trotting over to pull the helmet off of Spike, undoing the temporary leather straps she’d used to restrain him.  “Besides, he volunteered.  Who else could I responsibly test it on?”

Spike practically oozed out of the chair once the restraints were off.

“Hmm… I guess the finer points of motor control are still kicking in,” Twilight mused.  “Don't worry!  He’ll be fine in a couple minutes.”

“If you say so,” Vinyl murmured, poking Spike with a hoof cautiously.  “After all, you’re the expert.”

“Oh, I’d hardly call myself an expert.  Thaumechanical neurophysiological entanglement is an entirely new field!  Which, I suppose, makes me the de facto expert in it, but it’s a little premature when I’ve only just proven that it’s even possible today.”

“Wait… I thought you told me you’d been working on this for a few months now?”  Vinyl frowned, looking at Spike with entirely new concern.

“Oh, I have.  The first time we both needed to restart our brains afterwards.  Complete failure.”

“O…kay.”  Vinyl Scratch decided that, perhaps, it was best not to ask about taking the second ride in the machine after all.  Owlowicious flew down from his perch in the rafters of the basement, landing on the chair Spike had just vacated.  The owl twisted its head almost upside down, looking at the dragon in the face.

“Hoo?”  He hooted.  Spike blinked blearily, opening his eyes to the sight of Owlowlicious’ upside down head.

“AUGH!”  He shouted, scrambling off the floor and up onto Twilight’s back.  “Don’t do that!”  He added as his fellow assistant righted his head.  “Gives me the creeps,” he muttered.

“See?  All better!”  Twilight said cheerfully.  “Come on, Spike, let’s go get some lunch.  Thanks for your help, Vinyl Scratch.  Will you be available later to help with the big experiment?”

“Uhm… sure!  As… long as I’m not one of the test subjects,” she added quickly.

“Oh, no, I’ve already got the perfect subject in mind,” Twilight reassured her.  The white unicorn pushed her goggles back into place.

“Then DJ P0N-3 is at your service!”  She grinned.

“Great!  We’ll bring you back some lunch,” Twilight promised, starting up the stairs while the DJ pony checked her equipment.

“So, did it work?”  Spike asked as they walked out into the streets of Ponyville.

“The perfect test!”  Twilight said confidently.  “Now it’s time for the big event!  By the way, Spike… what was it like?”

“It was… weird,” Spike admitted.  “But it wasn’t, at the same time!  It was just like normal, except I knew that you were looking around and I could always feel about where you were.  So, uhm… how much do you remember?”  He asked her nervously.

Twilight giggled and shook her head.

“Enough that I think we really need to have a discussion about what schoolmares get up to, ‘Sheriff Spike,’” she said knowingly.  Spike promptly turned several shades redder, sinking down on Twilight’s back until his head was completely hidden behind her mane.

“Aheh… uhm… big event!”  He exclaimed, picking up another subject as quickly as possible.  “Who’re you going to test it on next?”

“We’re going to go meet her right now for lunch,” Twilight told him, trotting towards her destination cheerfully.

“Oh, cool, so where are we….”  Spike poked his head out so he could see where they were going, his eyes getting wide as he saw the familiar confectionary-inspired form of….

 Sugarcube Corner.

“Twilight?  Please tell me we’re meeting Rainbow Dash for lunch.”

“Nope!”

“Fluttershy?”  He asked more nervously.

“No….”

“Rarity?“  He suggested, his tone more panicked than hopeful this time.  “We could find out if –“

“No, Spike!  The Mind Melder is only to be used for the furtherance of Science!  And there’s only one pony in Ponyville whose mind needs to be explored in such depth!”

Spike leaped off of Twilight’s back, running back towards the library screaming.  

“Doomed!  We’re all doomed, I tell you!  Eaaaahahahahaha!”

Twilight rolled her eyes and walked into Sugar Cube Corner, paying no attention as the door swung shut behind her.

“Hi, Twilight!”  Pinkie called out from the kitchen.  “What brings you here?”

“Doomed! ”  Came one last echoing cry from Spike as Twilight shoved the door the rest of the way closed with a hoof.

“Oh, I was just coming by to pick up lunch for myself and Vinyl Scratch… say, Pinkie, are you busy this afternoon?”  She asked craftily.

“Nopey-dopey!”  Pinkie grinned as she bounced out with a fresh tray of cupcakes balanced perfectly on her head, somehow not tipping or falling despite bouncing up and down with her.  Twilight’s eye twitched faintly at the display, minor as it was, of Pinkie’s bizarre abilities.  “Are you okay, Twilight?”

“Just fine,” the purple unicorn said, perhaps a little tightly.  “So, what’s good today, Pinkie?”

“Well, I just finished making up these for my lunch.  How about we split them?”  She offered with a grin, grabbing the edge of the tray in her teeth and giving it a little flip to distribute the cupcakes onto a plate.

“You’re sure?  I mean, I wouldn’t want you to go hungry,” Twilight pointed out.  Of course, with what she’d seen Pinkie do in the past, that could well mean the entire town would have to go hungry to make it happen.  How one pony could put down so many pastries was perhaps the least of the mysteries she hoped to solve today.

“Of course I’m sure, silly!”  Pinkie giggled.  “Come on, let’s go!  I haven’t seen Vinyl Scratch in forever!”

That word, albeit with less threatening emphasis than the last time Twilight had heard it from her, brought up all sorts of memories.  Pinkie, exploding out of a bowl of sponges she couldn’t possibly fit into.  Pinkie, somehow knowing to pop out of an apple cart and shake her head at her.  Pinkie, disappearing back into the sponge bowl.  Pinkie’s reflection talking to her, and without Pinkie there to cast it!

Those were mysteries she hoped to solve, and ones well worth looking into.

Twilight lifted the plate telekinetically, turning to follow Pinkie out of the store.  As she opened the door, Spike streaked through the square.

“Doomed!”

“What’s up with Spike?”  Pinkie asked, not in the least perturbed by the purple and green Cassandra making a nuisance of himself in the market.

“Oh, he’s just being a little silly about my latest experiment,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes.  “I don’t suppose you’d like to help me out with it, Pinkie?”

“Sure!  What is it?”  Pinkie asked enthusiastically.  “A new way to make cupcake batter?”

“No, Pinkie.”

“Ooh, ooh, quantum cupcakes with more sugar inside them than can physically fit?”

“Pinkie –“

“A gateway to places beyond time and space that’ll unleash overly amorous tentacle-y beasties on all of Ponyville?  Oh, that’d be the best!”

“Pin-  What?!?”  Twilight asked, turning to look at her bouncing friend, who had somehow found the time to dress up in a white blouse, blue skirt, and matching scarf while she wasn’t looking.  “Pinkie, stop doing that!”

“Gomen,” Pinkie pouted.

“What?”  Twilight blinked, but Pinkie was already skipping along towards the library, her outfit nowhere to be seen.

“So, what is it?”  She asked.  Twilight hurried to catch up.

“Well, I’ve worked on a machine that would let me go into another pony’s mind,” she explained.

“Wow!  Into my mind?  I don’t think I’ve even been there before!”  Pinkie said excitedly.  “Can we try it out Twilight, huh, can we?”  Twilight smiled privately to herself.  Hook, line, and sinker.

“Sure thing, it’s down in the basement where we did those experiments about your Pinkie Sense.”

“Okie dokie lokie!  Hey….”  Pinkie seemed to catch onto something.  “This isn’t about my Pinkie Sense, is it?  I thought you believed in it now!”

“I do, Pinkie,” Twilight promised her.  “But just because I believe in something doesn’t mean I’m still not curious about how it works.  I believe in comets and stars, but it's still fascinating to study them.  And with all those other weird things you do… well, it’s in the interests of science that I find out what’s going on inside that cotton-candy cranium of yours!”

“Okie dokie lokie!”  Pinkie said cheerfully, reassured.  She pranced into the library, holding the door open for Twilight to carry the cupcakes in.  Mere minutes later, the door to the library had been closed and latched, the sign in the window announcing “Closed for Experimentation.”

~~~===~~~

“Hey, thanks for the cupcakes, Pinkie Pie, they really hit the spot,” DJ P0N-3 said, wiping a bit of frosting from one of her goggles.  “You sure you want to let Twilight hook you up in that thing?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”  Pinkie giggled as the metal manacles closed around her hooves, locking her in place.  “It sounds like fun!”

“I don’t know, it didn’t –“

“Well, look at the time,” Twilight interrupted, hopping into the chair herself.  “We really ought to get this experiment under way, don’t you think, Scratch?”

“Hey, hey – it’s DJ P0N-3 when I’ve got the goggles on,” the white unicorn corrected her, taking the hint to not bring up Spike’s little ‘restart.’  It was safe.  Twilight wouldn’t risk one of her friends getting brain-fried, and Pinkie was a pony, right?  Not a dragon, like Spike, and Twilight had said that the machine was built to work best with ponies.  Spike had been fine despite that, and Pinkie would be too.

Everything was going to be just fine. 

All the same, maybe it would be best to arrange a few gigs in Manehattan after this, just in case….

“Now, I only want to go in for five minutes,” Twilight explained.  “Do you have anything suitable for music?”

“Ooh, music?  Will there be dancing?”  Pinkie asked from her perch under the silver helmet and electrodes hooked up through her frizzy mane.

“Nah,” DJ P0N-3 chuckled.  “Just the music.  Twilight figured out earlier that the trick is having some rockin’ beats to trance out to!  And I’ve got just the thing for your turntable timer,” she added, levitating a record out of her selection and setting it on the player.  As the needle landed, the music started, a booming, descending sound, and then the electronica behind it, a throbbing bass beat blending with the rest and lulling Twilight and Pinkie into a hypnotic state as the machine’s lights began to blink in rhythm with it.  All that was left was the button to initiate the transfer.  Twilight, her head bobbing along with the music, closed her eyes.

“Punch it.”

The DJ unicorn’s horn glowed, and the button depressed.  There was a crackle of pink and purple energy along the wires, and the real world snapped out of view, leaving Twilight spiraling down into the realm of Pinkie’s mind as the music throbbed around them.  

A landscape began to take form; grass made out of dyed coconut, gumdrop hills, licorice trees standing tall above everything else, and the sun, bouncing in time with the pulsing beat, was more like a giant glowing vanilla lemon drop than anything else.  Squirrels and bunnies were dancing around, and the wind blew great clouds of confetti off the dandelions instead of fluff-carried seeds.

“So this is Pinkie’s brain,” Twilight murmured.  “Somehow, I’m not entirely surprised.”  Suddenly, Pinkie’s voice boomed out from nowhere and everywhere at once, kept strangely low-pitched, but perfectly in time with the music.

Give no mind to things you’ve tried, I’m the one that can satisfy you! 

Wait… lyrics?  Where were the lyrics coming from?  And why were they echoing inside of Pinkie’s head… in… Pinkie’s… voice?

“Oh horse apples,” Twilight thought to herself, only now pausing to consider just what might happen with Ponyville’s most prolific songsmith given music to work with inside her subconscious mind.  The purple unicorn tried to pull back, hoping to abort the trip until she could recalculate for the new variables, but it was too late.

A great, flowing river of sarsaparilla syrup, thick and sweet, welled up from somewhere inside Pinkie’s brain, splashing around the hillsides.  Twilight was swept up in it, along with the assorted wildlife, and carried deeper into Pinkie’s mind.  The river flowed towards a red cave, and Twilight realized that it was Gummy’s mouth, the size of a house and swallowing everything that the river brought it!  

She started swimming upstream as fast as she could, but she wasn’t making any headway against the current.  Desperate, she tried to magic herself out of the river, but her horn just fizzled and popped.

“Great, my magic doesn’t work in Pinkie’s head,” she grumbled to herself as Gummy swallowed her, leaving her falling into blackness.

Pinkie’s face came up at her from the void.  Her blue eyes turned to green, and started spiraling the same way they had during her ‘Evil Enchantress’ song.  Twilight felt utterly helpless, drawn into those eyes as though she was being hypnotized... after being hypnotized already!  Pudgy pink hooves came up, gripping her face and drawing her into a kiss.  Pinkie’s lips tasted like bubblegum, her tongue like velvet against Twilight’s lips, and the poor unicorn felt no alternative but to kiss back.  The two swirled around, the trance deepening as they fell further into the mind-meld.

Parties, streamers, and balloons were everywhere, exploding around them like fireworks.  Twilight shook her head, coming out of the ‘trance’ that Pinkie had put her into.  She felt hot, helpless, like she had a fever burning through her entire body at Pinkie’s heated kisses.  She pushed herself back; she needed to be able to think, she needed to be objective… she needed a moment to breathe!

“Pinkie?  Where are we?”  She asked, looking all around her as they tumbled.

“The mysterious fantasies of the mind!”  Pinkie announced, prancing on thin air.  “Whose power rises from the dark depths of the unconscious psychic!”  Twilight tried to follow her, finally grabbing Pinkie’s tail in her mouth and letting herself be dragged along.  Her tail tasted like cotton candy in here, instead of just looking like it!

“What in the name of all things candy-coated are you talking about, Pinkie?”  She demanded, dragging herself up closer to Pinkie and clinging to her hindquarters.

“Give your hooves some idle time, let’s expose what’s on our minds!”  Pinkie sang, peeling the top of her head open and bucking Twilight up into the air.  The unicorn somersaulted helplessly, and then fell inside.  As the top of Pinkie’s skull closed over her, she found herself staring up at… Pinkie, pinning Twilight down, and licking at her chest.  As Twilight looked down, her eyes grew wider and wider.  Pinkie was licking at Twilight’s exposed heart, though it seemed to be made out of purple candy rather than anything else!

“Pinkie!”  Twilight screamed.  Pinkie giggled, batting her eyes up at her.  The music kept pulsing outside… how long had she already been in here?  She couldn’t remember.  She’d been spun around and tipped over so many times that she had no clue what was going on.  And why had Pinkie kissed her, of all things?

“Remember, Twilight, you’re inside Pinkie’s subconscious, and you know how random her conscious mind is!”  She reminded herself.  “Don’t expect any sort of logic or meaning behind what she gets up to in here….”

Pinkie suddenly leaned up with a playful growling sound in the back of her throat.

“Press your lips up to mine baby,” she sang with the music, pressing another kiss against Twilight’s lips.  “Let your feelings take control!  As you crawl into my head now, I feel the fever take hold!”

“Fev-mmph?!?”  The words started pulsing and pounding above them again, Pinkie’s mental stand-in just a little busy otherwise.

1, 2, 3 ... give in to my fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set me free! 

The raw passion behind Pinkie’s kiss was almost frightening.  It absorbed all of Twilight’s attention, even knowing that it wasn’t actually physically happening.  The words reverberating through all of existence were swallowing her will.  Were these Pinkie’s fantasies?  Did she have a crush on Twilight?  It would explain some of what she’d seen so far, though it didn’t do anything to explain Pinkie’s bizarre abilities.

Twilight wrestled herself free.  She had to get control again!  This wasn’t going at all how she’d planned.  Pulling herself out from under Pinkie, she started running.  She was supposed to go into Pinkie’s mind and figure out what it was that let her break the laws of physics!  She wasn’t supposed to go into Pinkie’s mind and be smothered with kisses and sarsaparilla.

She especially wasn’t supposed to go into Pinkie’s mind and have her heart turned into a candied treat!  She glanced down at her chest as she ran, making sure that everything was intact.  When she looked up, there was Pinkie again.

“Yipe!”  She leaped upwards and, somehow, kept going without any attention to gravity.  She flew upwards, noticing a familiar ivory-colored tower in the clouds above her… she’d never bothered to look for her own mind while she was exploring Spike’s mindscape, but she hoped that was it.  

1, 2, 3 ... give in to your fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set you free!

Hang on a minute.  Her fantasies?  Her fantasies didn’t have anything to do with Pinkie Pie!

She reached the ivory tower, climbing inside the window, her hooves scrambling at the masonry.  She thought she was about to fall, when a helpful hoof reached out and took hers, pulling her inside.  The music outside changed, becoming more soothing and calming.

“Hey, thanks, I….”  She looked up at Pinkie Pie, her expression drooping.

“How did you get up here before I did?”

“I bounced,” Pinkie offered helpfully.

“Are you gonna kiss me again?”

“Maaaaaaybe,” Pinkie giggled.

“Pinkie, you’re a great, a wonderful friend, but why the kissing and stuff all of a sudden?”  Twilight asked, while Pinkie seemed to be at least trying to contain herself.  “You… it’s in your subconscious mind, you can’t control it, that’s it, right?”  Pinkie shook her head, giggling again.

“No, silly!” Pinkie giggled.  “Of course I can control it!  It’s just fun, and Pinkie is all about fun, remember?  Besides, why do you mind?  You’re the one who wanted to look inside my head so bad you built a giant machine to break the laws of neurology!  If anypony has a crush here, it’s you!”

“I’m trying to figure out how it is you do all that crazy stuff that you do!  It doesn’t mean I have a crush on you, or that I’m obsessed about you, or… Pinkie, are you paying any attention… to what… I’m….”  Twilight trailed off as she looked around at what Pinkie was.  In her very nice, very orderly mind, the walls were decorated with assorted diagrams (mostly hoof-drawn) of Pinkie.  Most of them were spattered with notes, like the one that hypothesized she kept the vast amount of calories she consumed in a literal hollow leg.

Finally, Pinkie’s gaze settled on the central fixture of the room; a life-sized bronze statue of her holding a magnet with eyes, both of them looking quizzically at each other.  Engraved into the base were the words ‘how do they work?’

“Okay, maybe just a little obsessed,” Twilight muttered sullenly.  “But I don’t have a crush on you!”

“It’s okay, Twilight!”  Pinkie giggled.  “It’s like I said, it’s all about fun!  Did it make you feel good?”

“Pinkie, you were licking my heart,” Twilight replied as evenly as she could given the words that were coming out of her mouth.

“It tasted like grapes!”

“Be that as it may, I would like to keep my heart inside my chest for the foreseeable future.”

“Okie dokie lokie!”

“Thank you.”

“But I was asking about the kissing,” Pinkie pointed out helpfully.

“Well… I… it didn’t make me feel bad, but….”  How had it made her feel?  Awkward, embarrassed... warm, she remembered that.  “Maybe if I’d known it was going to happen….”

Pinkie pouted prettily, then giggled and pressed up against Twilight.

“Well, you know it’s coming now,” she grinned, giving Twilight another, somewhat less manic kiss as another musical theme started.

“It’s just a little –“

“Pinkie!”  Twilight interrupted, a sound like a needle scratching across a record coming out of nowhere.  “We’re already in the middle of one musical interlude!  We can’t just break into another!”

“Oh, all right,” Pinkie groused as the throbbing beat from before started up again.  “So, was that better?”

“I uhm… guess so?”  Twilight blushed.

“Great!  Once we’re back in our real bodies, I can show you even more ways we can play!  First, we just need to jump out the window!”

“Wait, what?”

Rather than explaining, Pinkie grabbed hold of Twilight, diving out the window with the screaming, flailing, panicking unicorn.  Some part of Twilight’s mind knew that she couldn’t be in any danger.  This wasn’t the real world.  She’d flown up into the tower in the first place!

And yet, at the same time, the dream-ground was approaching so very, very quickly, and the dream-winds were very convincing!

1, 2, 3 ... give in to my fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set me free!
1, 2, 3 ... give in to your fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set you free! 

They plunged through cotton-candy clouds, finally hitting the top of a licorice tree.  The massive, coiled trunk bent down like a catapult before it launched them back up into the air.

1, 2, 3 ... give in to my fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set me free!
1, 2, 3 ... give in to your fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set you free! 

A gumdrop hill was the next thing to catch them.  As they sank into its gooey center, Twilight noticed Gummy chewing his way through the body of it.  The ‘hill’ bounced back up, shooting them straight into the air again, this time towards a swirling vortex of pink, purple, and green.

1, 2, 3 ... give in to my fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set me free!
1, 2, 3 ... give in to your fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set you free! 

As they came closer and closer, Twilight saw the very solid wooden interior of her tree-library basement taking form on the other side.  She squeezed her eyes shut, not sure if she should be expecting an impact or not.

1, 2, 3 ... Give in to my fantasies!  4 and 5 Minutes that will set me free!
1, 2, 3 ... Give in to your fantasies!  4 and 5 minutes that will set us free! 

As the music came to a stop, Twilight’s eyes snapped open, and she found herself staring into Pinkie’s eyes.

“Ack!”  She gasped intelligently, trying to fall back, but instead finding herself still restrained in her chair.  Pinkie giggled, and licked Twilight’s nose.

“Hi!”

“Pinkie, how did you get out?”  Twilight asked her.

“Same way I did last time, silly!”  Pinkie grinned.  “I just pulled my cute li’l hoovesies free!”  Twilight looked around, noticing that DJ P0N-3 was packing up.

“Gotta get to the club to set up, Twilight!  Thanks for asking me over, hope you found what you were looking for!”

“Uhm… hey!  C-can you unlock the cuffs first?”  She asked the white unicorn, worried about being left locked up until Spike came back who-knew-when.

Alone.  With Pinkie Pie.

“Don’t worry, I gave Pinkie the key,” she called down.  “Oh, and thanks for the cupcakes!”  She added, just before the door upstairs closed.

“Pinkie?  Why don’t you unlock the restraints?”  Twilight asked her nervously.  Pinkie giggled, and tucked the key into her frizzy hair.

“I will!”  She promised.  “But first… well, I did promise to show you some of those other games ….”  Twilight swallowed hard, smiling shyly.

“Aheh… uhm… shouldn’t I be loose for new games?”  She suggested.

“Not for this game,” Pinkie winked, hopping up and bouncing over to the light switch.  “But don’t worry.  If you really want to stop, you just have to say ‘rutabaga!’”  With that, she flipped off the lights, plunging the basement into darkness.

~~~Today~~~

…As I’m sure you can understand, I would rather not dwell on exactly what happened inside the non-Eucoltean (and exceedingly sugary) confines of Pinkie Pie’s mindscape.  I am incredibly grateful that I took the precaution of having Vinyl Scratch limit my time; had I waited longer, I am sure that my mind would have shattered under the weight of the revelations.  Even as things stand, I will be haunted by the memories of things nopony should ever see.  Science is a harsh mistress, and she carries a sharp crop.  Despite such setbacks I remain,

Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle

P.S.:  I have learned about a new form of friendship, ’friends with benefits.’  I am aware that this is outside of the original scope of my studies, but given their vague nature, will include it in my future research until receiving further instructions.

Spike stared at Twilight, and then turned back to the letter he had just finished writing for her.

“You want to send this to the Princess?”  He asked her dubiously.

“It’s very important that she knows about my findings, Spike,” Twilight told him confidently, turning around to start back up the stairs, now carrying a tray with two plates of pancakes and two glasses of orange juice.  “There are limits to science, and not merely in what it can explain in its current state!”

“Hey, where are you going?”  The little dragon asked as he coiled up the scroll and took a deep breath, preparing to send it off through flame-mail.

“To continue my studies, of course!”  Twilight called down to him.

“Oooh!  Strawberry syrup, my favorite!”  Pinkie’s voice squealed from the bedroom.  Spike shook his head, roasting the scroll with a breath and sending it off to the Princess.

“I think I’m going to go work downstairs today,” he muttered, setting about any of his chores that would take him away from the increasingly giggly noises in Twilight’s quarters.