A grey unicorn stallion with a black mane and green eyes approached a large, foreboding mansion. A crash of thunder came from the overcast sky, and he hurried on, not wanting to get caught in the rain. One could catch a glimpse of his cutie mark underneath his crisp suit as he walked past large, skeletal trees. It was a ring of golden keys.
The ring of keys on his mark matched the ones he levitated out of his inner jacket. He unlocked the large iron gate that stood before him, leaving it open as he continued through the grounds, knowing the ponies following had no such keys.
He readied a large rawhide bone for the guard dogs, who looked totally normal, aside from their bright red noses. They snarled and snapped, almost ripping his suit sleeve. He quickly tossed the bone to appease them, unlocking the front doors of the mansion as he did so.
He hurried through, not wanting to be around those beasts any longer. The mansion, grim on the outside, was warm and well-lit within. And deeper in, in another room, he could hear cheery party music playing. He went towards it.
He came to the Library, where a pink unicorn with purple, poofy hair was singing and dancing to the happy tune as she polished glasses and poured soda. A phonograph played next to platters of sugary desserts. The stallion used his magic to lift the needle off of the phonograph. At the stop in music, the mare whirled around.
"Is everything ready, Sugar Belle?" "Yes, Key Keeper, sir," she replied. "Good. And you remember your instructions?" Sugar Belle nodded. "Excellent. Ah, out guests will arrive any time now, so please, no more music." Another nod, a reluctant one, from Sugar Belle.
Key Keeper left, and headed towards the kitchen. Inside, an earth pony mare with an off-white coat and blue mane was slicing something on a cutting board. "Everything alright, Miss Pommel?" The mare turned around, answering, "Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes." Key Keeper nodded and left, leaving Pommel to go back to chopping.
The doorbell rang through the house, and Key Keeper hurried to the door. The bell continued to clang loudly. Unlocking and opening the door, he found a light blue pegasus with a rainbow mane shuffling impatiently, glaring suspiciously at the chained dogs. "Thank Celestia!," she cried. "Those dogs were growling at me the whole time- I thought they were gonna eat me!"
"No need to worry, ma'am," replied Key Keeper curtly, "They are specially bred. They will only attack those who 'smell' untrustworthy. I presume you are Rainbow Dash?" The mare huffed. "Yeah, that's me. What's this whole party about, anyway?" She flew upside down, following Key Keeper. "And with all this secrecy, couldn't we use sueda…sa-da…"
"Pseudonyms." "Yeah, those."
Key Keeper smiled. "This matter is about unveiling secrets. Why add more?" Rainbow looked uncomfortable, but switched her attention to the room Key had led her to. Books were shelved on every wall, from floor to ceiling. There were even shelves carved into the doors. "That's a lot of books," she stated redundantly.
Key gestured to the mare preparing glasses. "Rainbow Dash, this is Sugar Belle. Feel free to help yourself to some drinks or snacks." And with that, he closed the doors and left. Rainbow turned to Sugar Belle and smiled. "What have you got?"
Once again, the bell rang. Key trotted towards, it, once again unlocking and opening it. Standing outside was a pony- it was impossible to see their features, for they were covered in a faded yellow raincoat, with the hood up, and wore worn, brown rain boots. "Do come in, madam," said Key with a bow, "You are expected."
The pony stepped in and threw back their hood, revealing themselves to have an orange coat, golden mane, and emerald eyes. She whipped her ponytail out from where it was tucked into her coat. She began to unceremoniously kick off her boots. "Hoo! I was expecting it to rain that whole time I was walking, but I guess not!"
Key wrinkled his nose slightly, levitating the muddy boots off of the Hall floor and placing them in the closet. "You are Applejack, I presume?" He lifted the raincoat off of her shoulders with his magic, placing it in the closet as well. She held on to her worn hat as he tried to take it, though.
She nodded. "Yep. The letter," she reached into the pocket of the raincoat before he could close the door, "made this sound pretty important." Key nodded, biting his tongue at the crumpled mess of a letter she had produced.
"Indeed. We'll get to that shortly, but first, we must wait for the other guests." And so he led her to the library. "So who are you?" "I'm Key Keeper, ma'am. The butler." "And what does that mean?" "I keep everything in his household neat and tidy. Organized."
They came through the door, squashing Rainbow with the door. Key Keeper gestured to Sugar Belle again, saying, "Applejack, this is Sugar Belle, and," he pointed to the annoyed mare, "that is Rainbow Dash." When he looked back, Applejack was glaring at Sugar Belle, who was very focused on mixing sodas and perfectly organizing snacks.
But once he blinked, Applejack was smiling again as Sugar Belle offered her, and the escaped Rainbow, a fluffy, sugary pastry. Key Keeper left the room, closing the doors behind him, and reading the key ring, this time ready at the door for his next guest.
Twilight was walking quickly along the road, making notes in her small black journal about ideas for experiments, and how this current, gloomy weather could be used to her advantage. Sometimes she wished she had wings- she could travel faster (she was still testing whether the time to energy saved ratio made teleportation worth it), and perhaps collect cloud samples easily.
But she could never trade unicorn magic for pegasus flight- in the end, all of the studies and books and samples and lectures- it all came down to magic. Being an alicorn- why, it was heretical to think it! As much as it would help, she hadn't discovered anything to make her worthy of Princesshood. Not yet, anyway.
Twilight slowed down as she heard grunting. As she came over the hill, she found a large, pink, glittery wagon stuck in a large mud puddle. From the front, she could hear grunting, and as she passed the puddle, she saw it was a pink earth pony, trying to pull the wagon out.
Twilight could she that all this was doing was digging the wagon deeper into the muddy ground. Sighing, she lifted the wagon out of the mud using her telekinesis. "Honestly," she huffed to the earth pony, "did you think sheer force would free it?" The pony shrugged. "Eh, it worked on the last 7.3 puddles."
Twilight blinked. "How can there be 0.3…" she shook her head. "Anyway, here's your wagon." She strapped it back to the brightly pastel pony. "I have to go, I'm late for a dinner date." "Hey, me too!," squeaked the earth pony. "It was something about finances and pain and a spooky mansion…"
Twilight gave the pony (who was now trotting beside her) a look. "That sounds like my dinner party…if you only skimmed the letter…and exaggerated about the mansion." Her companion shrugged. "I guess I did skim it, but I'm not kidding about the mansion." She pointed a hoof to the mansion on a hill they were quickly coming closer too, and lightning struck to light it as a scary violin chord was played.
She looked back to comment something along the lines of, Yeah, that is a spooky mansion, and saw the wagon-hauling pony with a violin in her hooves. "You like the music? I mean, I have to say, the special effects are great today." She sat on her haunches and looked up to the sky, shouting "You go, Nature!" She smiled at Twilight, "I'm Pinkie Pie, by the way. Nice to meet you, Twilight!," and shook her hoof violently. She then skipped and bounced on ahead, humming a happy tune.
Twilight stood stunned for awhile, before running off after Pinkie, shouting interrogations on how she knew her name, and lectures on how lightning was the product of weather pegasi, not whatever that 'Nature' was.
"Allow me to introduce Mrs. Rarity Dapperpaws," called Key Keeper. The ponies in the Library turned to look. Rainbow and Applejack had been holding a drinking contest, chugging down glasses of apple cider, while poor Sugar Belle was rushing to pour enough glasses to keep up with the thirsty mares.
The unicorn who had entered had a white coat and purple mane. She wore an elaborate purple dress with gold trimmings, with gold shoes set with amethyst to match. She levitated her lavender parasol to Key Keeper. "Thank you, and could you put this in a closet, darling? I brought it to be practical, but I suppose it wasn't needed."
Rainbow and Applejack had to suppress a laugh when she mentioned practicality. Rarity came over to Sugar Belle, "What is available to drink?" Sugar Belle pointed out different soda bottles. "I have cream soda, chocolate soda, orange soda, grape soda, lemon soda…" Rarity wrinkled her nose. "Anything that isn't soda?" "Well, we have apple cider…"
She turned to find Rainbow Dash draining the rest of the gallon, with Applejack reluctantly forking the bits over to her. "Had. We had apple cider," Sugar Belle corrected herself. Rarity scrunched her nose, holding her hoof to her chin in thought. "Could I just get a glass of ice water?" "Okay!," chirped Sugar Belle, grabbing a glass and leaving the room to find a faucet.
Rarity put on a dazzling smile at turned to her companions. "Who might you two be?" Simple introductions were given amongst the three. Rainbow blinked and squinted at her. "Haven't I seen you before?," she asked. "Well…"
The doorbell timidly rang. In fact, the guests had to confer among each other that it had rang, it was so quiet. Key Keeper approached the door slowly- it had begun to rain, and he didn't want to get water to the Hall floor if there wasn't even a guest there.
But he still unlocked and opened it, and found that there was a pony waiting there. She was a light yellow pegasus with a pink mane. Her left wing was bandaged, but that was her only covering besides a light raincoat. She was currently petting the guard dogs, who were panting happily at the attention, wagging their tails.
She stopped and leaped back when she saw a pony at the door, mumbled "Sorry," and began to rub her hooves together worriedly. Key opened the door wider, and she rushed in and began to remove her raincoat. He shut the door on the whimpering sounds the dogs were beginning to make. "I'm F-fluttershy," said the pegasus as she put her coat into the closet. "I know, ma'am.," stated Key Keeper. Fluttershy squeaked at the polite title.
He led her to the Library, and once again made the introductions, leaving to wait by the door. Fluttershy approached Sugar Belle. "Um, can I get a d-drink?" Sugar Belle handed the nervous mare an orange soda. "T-Thank you," she squeaked, and quickly dashed over to huddle in the corner, slowly sipping her drink.
Rarity turned to her original companions, only to find them locked in some conversation about destroying old buildings, and the best methods of doing so. Not knowing anything about manual labor, she went over to the wallflower of a pegasus, who seemed to make herself smaller at her approach.
"-and there has never been a pony having a sixth sense recorded in science or history, so your "Pinkie Sense" is simply illogical," ranted Twilight. Pinkie was bouncing along the road as she talked, still humming, and still hauling the wagon behind her. "Why did you even bring a wagon, anyway?," asked Twilight.
Pinkie snorted. "Because it's a party, silly! And for a party, I need to bring my party supply wagon!," she cheered. Zipping around, she went behind the wagon and gave it a kick, then went inside to show Twilight the supplies as it rolled on. "I've got card games, board games, records of music, balloons, confetti, and my prized sugar-loaded snacks!"
Twilight huffed a piece of confetti off of her nose. "I don't think a dinner party has any of those things." "Well good! I didn't want to bring the same stuff as our host." Twilight opened her mouth, trying to figure out how to respond to that, when Pinkie gasped and dashed out of the wagon, pushing it until it came to a halt.
Turning to look, she saw that they had already arrived at the doors of the mansion. Pinkie waved something at the wagon, causing it to beep and Twilight to jump, and then ran to the doorbell. She tugged the rope a few times before suddenly pulling it rapidly to play a song.
A frazzled Key Keeper opened the door and held her hoof a few measures in. "Please…don't," he said wearily. Pinkie smiled at him and hopped in, chattering to him about the supplies she had brought. Twilight cautiously followed. Key Keeper gestured to take her book and pen, but she waved him off. With a small burst of magic, the items were sent to her small pocket dimension.
Key Keeper brought the two of them to the Library. "Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle," he announced, "Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy." The six ponies are waved to each other- all but Twilight, who was too busy scanning through the books.
As she took a few from the shelves, a loud gong sounded through the house. Fluttershy jumped, accidentally splashing her drink on Rarity, who screeched at having liquid touch her dress. "Ah. Dinner," said Key Keeper, walking out of the room as though nothing had happened.
Fluttershy turned to Rarity, handing her some napkins. "S-sorry. I'm a little c-clumsy. And easily s-startled." Rarity accepted the napkins, though she still looked upset. She followed Key Keeper as she tried to clean her dress, and chagrined Fluttershy coming next. The rest of the ponies all filed out to door, hungry and ready for dinner.
All but Twilight, who was busy reading a book and a free desk. Key Keeper came back in and began to levitate her towards the kitchen, her muzzle still buried in the book.