Chapter Text
In an effort to get to know her new friends, Twilight Sparkle had made the questionable decision to spend a day with each of them, just a normal day to see how they lived.
The point of the exercise hadn’t quite gotten across to Pinkie Pie—that, or maybe none of Pinkie’s days actually qualify as “normal”—because Pinkie drags her from place to place, enthusiastically explaining each pony’s name and role, their preferences and relationships and quirky things about them and then moving on to the next with barely a pause for breath.
The day is predictably overwhelming. A pony less trained in quick study would not be able to keep up with a small fraction of Pinkie’s explanations; as it is, Twilight manages to take in about sixty percent of the first dozen or so “introductions” and an ever-diminishing portion of each subsequent one until, by noon, she’s worn down to a quickly jotted name and one (hopefully) useful piece of information about them.
“Is this… how you spend… every day?” she gasps out when they break for a quick lunch.
“Silly! If I did this every day, I’d never have any time for fun on my own!”
“Then… what is… the point here?”
“To make sure that everypony is enjoying themselves, of course!” Pinkie’s expression changes rapidly as she rattles on: “See, if anypony needed help and nopony paid attention, they’d be stressed instead of happy, right? So every week I check in on everypony and make sure that they have whatever they need. Since I know everypony in town, I know what each pony can do, and since I know what each pony can do, if one of them needs help then I know who to ask! Because it would break my heart if there was an easy solution to the problem and it didn’t happen just because they didn’t know who to go to for help!”
“That’s… surprisingly logical,” Twilight admits. In fact, the more she talks with Pinkie, the more she finds that there’s an underlying rationality to her behavior—well, most of the time. Some of the weirdness they’ve been through today seems beyond explanation, but, on the whole, she’d expected Pinkie to be far more scatterbrained than she turns out to be.
And a bit more self-centered, to be honest; she’d expected Pinkie to be focused mostly on her own enjoyment, but it turns out that she takes her role quite seriously. Even if that means running off to arrange a welcoming party for a newcomer before even getting to know her.
Then Pinkie turns to Twilight and takes a deep breath. “So what is it that you need, Twilight? Are you settling in okay? Is there anything else that you need to know? Does Spike need any special dragon supplies? What could I do to make things easier for you?”
“Honestly, I can’t think of anything just yet,” Twilight says. Then she chuckles. “But when I do, I’ll know just who to ask.”