Pinkie was just putting another batch of turnovers in the oven when a voice behind her said "Boo."
Alertness Pinkie instantly shrieked. Somepony's behind us! Somepony said Boo! Danger danger danger!
Threat Analysis Pinkie took a moment to study the situation. You silly billy, it's just Discord trying to scare us. Don't be such a scaredy pony!
Hey, that's my job! Alertness Pinkie said, offended. Don't call me a scaredy pony!
Pinkie patted Alertness Pinkie on her head. Threat Analysis Pinkie doesn't mean to be a condescending jerk, that's just who she is, she reassured the Extra. Everypinkie's really grateful to you for the job you do! Why don't you go on in and have a dream of a cupcake? I can handle Discord just peachy!
Okay, but Threat Analysis Pinkie needs to stop being such a meanie pants! Just because I get scared when things aren't really dangerous, that's no reason to be mean to me! It's just my job!
Fine, I won't be mean to you, Threat Analysis Pinkie sighed. But you're always setting off false alarms.
But that's my job!
Pinkie ignored the interplay between her Extras, allowing them to fade to the background. "Hiiii, Discord!" she caroled, straightening up as she closed the oven. "Are you here for a cupcake?"
"Oh, no no no no." He handed Pinkie a bouquet of pink flowers � they looked like a cross between tulips and closed rosebuds. "I'm here to give you something!"
Pinkie took the bouquet with glee. Somewhere in the background Alertness Pinkie was wailing about how this might be a trick, but Threat Analysis Pinkie and Pinkie herself concurred that if Discord wasn't really reformed and was doing something meany-weany, there wasn't much Pinkie could do about it, whereas if he really was reformed because of his new friendship with Fluttershy, then being all suspicious of him and stuff would make him feel bad and that was mean to do to a new friend. Also, there might be cotton candy involved, judging from the color of the flowers. "Flowers? Whee! I like flowers! I like balloons better, and also cotton candy, and cupcakes, and waffles, but flowers are nice too!"
"Oh but Pinkie, these are special flowers. Give them a sniff!"
Pinkie gave him a Look. "These aren't some kind of prank flower, are they?"
"You wound me, Pinkie. I have nothing but the most positive of intentions in giving you these flowers! Go on, sniff them."
Pinkie shrugged, and did as he suggested. The flower buds sprung open, which Pinkie had expected, so she managed to push them away from her face in time that the frosted cupcakes which sprang up from inside them didn't mash themselves into her fur. Pinkie's eyes went wide. "Cupcakes!" Despite a thin wail from Alertness Pinkie, she nommed the first cupcake, stuffing it into her mouth. "With cotton candy filling!"
Pinkie tossed the bouquet in the air, leapt over the counter, and hugged Discord. "Cotton candy filling cupcakes! Thank you thank you thank you!" She then leapt back off him in time to grab the bouquet of cupcake flowers before it could hit the ground. "These are AWESOME!"
"You have no idea how much good it does this old draconequus' heart to hear that," Discord said melodramatically, pressing his paw and talon together against his heart, or where his heart probably might possibly be. "Why, the last time I brought a mare a bouquet, she flung it at my feet and cruelly rejected me." He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief that hadn't been there a second ago. "Why, if everypony was as accepting as you, Pinkie, perhaps I would never have been set on my fateful descent into evil and madness. Perhaps all I ever needed was the love and acceptance of a kind mare, to see the good intentions within my chaotic heart."
"What was the punchline?"
"Pardon?"
"To the bouquet you gave her. Did it squirt water or what?"
"Pinkie, how could you think there was a punchline to such a heartfelt gift?" He swooned onto a fainting couch, managing somehow to be even more melodramatic and less convincing than Rarity. "Why, she was a beautiful mare, and I have always had an eye for beauty! I intended only to give her a gift to demonstrate my everlasting love and affection, and instead she scorned me!"
"It did squirt water, didn't it."
"Of course not! How jejune. As if I would taint such a gift with a ridiculously predictable prank! It's not my fault ponies are all allergic to Poison Joke."
Pinkie giggled. Discord, encouraged by her reaction, chuckled. "You should have seen her face. It was priceless!"
"And for everything else, there's PonyCard!" Pinkie shouted cheerfully.
"Oh, are you doing commercial spots too?"
"No, I'm just making random pop culture references! What do you mean, 'too?'"
"Ah. Some carriage insurance company wants me to be their spokesbeing for their advertisements. Apparently they feel that having the avatar of chaos and disharmony warn ponies about the chaotic nature of life and the likelihood of random, unpredictable mayhem is likely to inspire them to buy carriage insurance, or something."
Pinkie shrugged. "It might! I know the Cakes bought extra insurance when they heard about Princess Celestia and Fluttershy trying to reform you, and Financial Security's commissioned an office party for the end of the week to congratulate his employees on how well they're selling policies lately!"
"Is he an earth pony with a cutie mark of a cage around a bag of bits?"
"Yep, that's the one!"
"That explains it, then."
"Explains what?"
Discord leaned his elbows on the counter, a chocolate milkshake with a mountain of whipped cream on top and a lengthy bendy straw that did loop the loops appearing next to him. "Aside from ponies who know you six personally, like those charmingly chaotic little fillies who are always running around trying to get their cutie marks, exactly three ponies in Ponyville have been willing to speak to me aside from 'Go away' or 'Please, take what you want, just don't hurt me'. Well, two ponies and a zebra. The zebra is polite to me because her people believe in being polite to dangerous spirits; I half expect her to address me with 'Greetings and defiance' one of these days, although that doesn't rhyme so probably not. The earth pony with the hourglass cutie mark is obsessed with time machines and is convinced that I have one... which I do, but that isn't the point. But I never knew why it was that the earth pony whose cutie mark is about locking up money was bothering to say hello to me, and even asking me if I was planning on making my home in Ponyville long-term. You say he's an insurance salespony?"
Pinkie nodded. "Financial Security's a really nice insurance agent! Most other insurers aren't even willing to underwrite anything in Ponyville because of all the weird stuff that happens around here, but he says that's just a great opportunity and he wants to make sure his neighbors don't go without insurance!"
Discord sighed. His milkshake rotated upside down and floated up to him, and he took a deep drink from the bendy straw while Pinkie was talking. "I might have known the only ponies willing to give me the time of day are the ones who think they can get something from me. Though at least old Finny isn't pestering me for anything personally. I suppose I can't hold it against him that he makes his money off the fear of chaos. That is the point to selling insurance, after all."
"So are you gonna do it?"
"Do what?"
"The advertisements, silly!"
"What? No. Probably not. I recognize that I can't expect the level of respect from ponies that I got when I ruled Equestria with a jello fist in a teacup glove, now that I've reformed, but stooping to the level of doing endorsements seems particularly pathetic."
"So what are you up to?"
"Up to? You make it sound as if you think I have some nefarious plot in mind."
"No, silly! I mean what's up? What's happening? What's doing? What's going on?"
"Oh. Well, you see, I've come to apologize. To you."
Pinkie put on a stern face. "What did you do?" she asked in her best scolding-a-foal voice.
"No, no, nothing you don't already know about. I've simply come to apologize for the dreadful way I treated you when I first broke free of my stone encasement. "
Pinkie blinked. Reformed or not, the last thing she'd expected from Discord was for him to apologize for anything he'd done before he'd been reformed. He had never shown any sign that he understood that what he'd done in the past was wrong, merely that he shouldn't do it again if he wanted to have ponies be his friends.
"You're apologizing for that?" she asked.
"Why, yes, I am. Are you surprised?" He grinned.
"Surprised? I'm shocked! I'm stunned! I'm amazed! I'm... eh, no, actually, not that surprised."
"No? I must be losing my touch," Discord said, and sighed deeply. "I suppose the ravages of time must wear the edges off of us all, even the immortals."
"But that's a good thing, right? Because if you still had a sharp edge, it would probably mean some part of you was still a rock!" She tapped his talon. "Besides, these still look plenty sharp to me!"
"Well, yes, but you have a hoof. In the country of the hooved, the one-taloned creature is still the sharpest thing around." He was suddenly wearing a tuxedo and mirrorshades, adjusting his bow tie and smirking.
Pinkie ignored this. "I dunno, Princess Celestia's horn is puh-ritt-ty pointy!"
"Oh, please, she can't even pop a balloon with that." Discord, no longer tuxedoed, waved his paw dismissively.
"But why would anypony ever want to pop a balloon?" She gasped. "Does that mean there are balloon murderers among us? Oh, say it isn't so!"
"It isn't so."
"Whew! What a relief!"
"Actually, Pinkie, I just said that because you asked me to. The truth is, there are balloon poppers everywhere!"
Pinkie shrieked and leapt onto Discord, clinging to his neck. "Nooooo!"
Discord pried her loose. "Entertaining as this banter is, I really have come with a purpose." The tuxedo was back, minus mirrorshades, with a balloon corsage shaped like a pink flower tucked in a pocket on his chest. "My dear, may I take you to dinner as an apology for my dreadful behavior?"
Pinkie scrutinized him. "This isn't a date date like a romance thing, right? This is just a friends go out to dinner thing?"
He smirked at her. "I expect anyone with romantic intentions toward me to take me out, Pinkie. After all, I'm the unique one."
"Okay then! The bakery closes at 5!"
"Then shall I be here at 6?"
"Sounds good!"
"In that case, I'll take my leave of you now," he said, bowed, and vanished.
Pinkie put her forehoof to her chin and turned in the direction of the imaginary camera she pretended was filming her life. "Now the real question I had was, should I expect him to show up ridiculously early, or ridiculously late? Or! Maybe he'd realize that the most totally unexpectable thing for him to do would be to arrive on time! I realized then that I needed to be prepared for anything."
Logistics Pinkie piped up from inside, Do you think we need to dress fancy?
"No," Pinkie decided. "If Discord takes us to a fancy restaurant we can ask him for fancy clothes, and then he'll give me something funny to wear, and then I'll laugh at it and surprise him because he thought I'd get mad, and that will be super funny!"
Okie dokie lokie! Then� all we need is to get all the baking done before Discord shows up early, and then if he shows up late we can always spend the time doing something else!
Secretary Pinkie nodded. Right, I have more invitation hoof-engravings to prepare! We haven't got any generics for a 2000th birthday or a Happy Two and a Half Year Anniversary Of Coming Home from the Moon!
That one doesn't need a generic, Logistics Pinkie pointed out. We can keep it Princess Luna specific.
But what if some other pony gets sent to the moon and then comes home? We gotta be prepared!
As the Extras argued in the background, Pinkie stepped up her baking, multiplying her recipes by a factor of six with the help of Math Pinkie. There weren't really enough ovens to support the higher production, but if she swapped trays really really fast, she could probably get them all in and baked before Discord showed up.
***
As she had predicted, Discord showed up early. It wasn't even 5 yet. The Cakes were in the storefront, Mrs. Cake on register and Mr. Cake boxing up merchandise for dinnertime deliveries. Pinkie was in the back, finishing clean-up for the day; nothing new would be baked today. She figured out that Discord had arrived by the short, terrified shrieks from the storefront. Pinkie came bouncing out.
"...not as if I asked you to bake your foals into a pie!" Discord was saying. "I was just asking if � oh, hello, Pinkie! Would you believe your employers didn't even want to tell me if you were here or not?"
Pinkie looked at the Cakes, their rigid bodies, their chattering teeth and bloodless faces under their coats. "It's okay, Mr. and Mrs. Cake! He's reformed!" She looked up at Discord. "Tell them you're reformed."
"I'm reformed!" Discord sang out, arms spread wide. "I have been humbly corrected from my mad, bad ways by the Magic of Friendship!"
"See? He's reformed!" The Cakes did not look convinced. "Discord, can you Pinkie Promise them that you're not going to do anything to hurt them or mess up the bakery?"
"I am deeply wounded by the degree of mistrust I encounter from the ponies in this town," Discord sniffed. "Why, it's as if they don't believe me when I tell them I'm reformed!"
"Well, they'll definitely know you're reformed if you make a Pinkie Promise!" Pinkie said. "Because everypony knows that if somepony breaks a Pinkie Promise, they'll lose their friends! FOREVER!"
"Oh, very well," Discord said huffily. He opened his chest and removed a beating heart, which he drew an X on with a marker. "Cross my heart, hope to fly"�the heart now had wings on it and was fluttering around, chirping � "stick a cupcake in my eye." A cupcake appeared in his paw, and he placed it near his eye, the one with the larger pupil. The pupil shot forward, turning into a wooden cuckoo which was coming out of his eye like a cuckoo clock. It chirped "Pieces of eight!" and devoured the cupcake in a single improbable bite, then went back into his eye. He grabbed the heart and stuck it back in his chest, which he slammed shut as if it were a door.
"See? Nothing to be scared of!" Pinkie assured her employers, and bounced over to Discord. "So you came early! Aha! I won the bet!"
"Who were you betting with?" Discord asked.
"Myself!" Pinkie beamed at him. "I bet that you would show up early, late, or on time, and you came early! So I WIN!"
Discord raised an eyebrow. "I believe the technical term for that is 'hedging your bets.' Don't you consider that a bit... well, rather like cheating?"
"Nooo.... How is that cheating?"
"Well, your bet covered most of the possibilities, so there would be only a miniscule chance of losing. One would think you'd prefer a bet with richer stakes."
"What possibilities did I miss?" Pinkie asked plaintively.
"I might have chosen not to show up at all. Or I might have arrived before I asked you if you'd come."
"That counts as early!"
"No, it doesn't. Blatantly violating causality is many things, most of them fun, but it's by no means merely 'early.'"
Pinkie looked back at the Cakes, who were still semi-frozen, shaking, and then at the few patrons sitting in the booths, who looked equally frightened. "Huh, I'll have to remember that. Well, you promised me dinner, mister! Mr. and Mrs. Cake, Discord said he would take me out to dinner after work to apologize, and I know it's early and I wouldn't usually get off for another ten minutes, but if I start ten minutes early tomorrow can I leave early today? I'm almost done with cleanup!"
"Go," Mrs. Cake said, forcing a smile onto her face that looked more like a death rictus. "Go have fun, Pinkie!"
"Take the time!" Mr. Cake said shrilly. "You don't need to come in early tomorrow! Just go have your dinner with your, uh, dinner guest!"
"Technically I believe I am the host, since I invited her," Discord said, causing Mr. Cake to start quaking in earnest again.
"Okay! But you better take me someplace that isn't here, because I eat here for free all the time, so that wouldn't be much of a taking me out present!" Pinkie said. It was important to get Discord out of here so he'd stop scaring the Cakes and the customers, but it was also important that she shouldn't acknowledge that he was terrifying everypony, because it was mean to rub his nose in how scared everypony still was of him if he had really reformed.
"As you wish, mademoiselle," Discord said, suddenly dressed in an old-timey court outfit with a blue beret and tunic and funny puffy pants. He removed the beret, bowed to her while making a sweeping gesture with the paw holding the beret, and when he stood up they were somewhere else, in the lobby of a restaurant. It was made of dark wooden planks with pictures of crabs and lobsters and fish all over the place, and smelled a little bit like the ocean and a lot like food. There was a mare behind a podium-like stand, her purple and yellow mane done up in a beehive.
"Oh, hi there, hons!" the mare said. "Welcome to Something Different!" She came out from behind the stand. Pinkie's eyes went wide. Was she wearing roller skates? "Two for dinner? Do you have a reservation?"
"Oh, no, I've dined here before," Discord said. "I have no reservations about bringing my friend here." He grinned.
The mare rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "You kidder," she said. "You two want a booth or a table?"
"Table. Your booths aren't, shall we say, ideally suited to my stature. And if I recall correctly, your boss frowns on me randomly altering his furniture."
"You've been here before?" Pinkie asked.
"I have indeed," Discord said.
Pinkie looked into the dining room. "Do all the waitresses here have roller skates?"
"Uh-huh. Every one of us," the mare said. "Follow me, hons."
Must be Baltimare, Navigation Pinkie said. Ocean smell, beehive hairdos, 'hons'... don't they have a roller skating thing too?
Uh-huh! Sports Pinkie said. Earth mares roller derby, best sport ever! Plus the Preakness, plus a hoofball team named after a scary old poem by Edgar Allen Pony, plus a pegasus hoopball team named after turtles.
Really? Pinkie herself thought at her Extras. Were they inspired by Rainbow Dash having a turtle for a pet? I know she's awesome but is she really so famous they'd name a hoopball team after her? We gotta tell her!
Naah, she already knows, and it was their name before she got Tank. But maybe that's why Tank wanted to be her pet so bad! Because he heard about the Flying Terps, and he wanted to be one!
Just in case this goes ridiculously wrong, Navigation Pinkie said, I think I've figured out how to get to the Baltimare train station from here.
The hostess mare led them to a table, gave them a pair of menus, and skated away after informing them that their server would be with them shortly. Discord pulled Pinkie's chair out for her, and pushed it in once she was seated. Pinkie looked up at him, puzzled. "You have manners?"
"Of course I do! Never let it be said that I am an ill-mannered Lord of Chaos."
"But... manners are a bunch of arbitrary and orderly rules made up to let other ponies know that even if you were born in a barn you weren't raised in one. Aren't they kind of opposite-y to Chaos?"
Discord smiled broadly. "Etiquette consists of completely arbitrary and meaningless made-up rules that have been known to change without warning, and if they're not followed to a T, ponies become irate and oppositional toward those they might otherwise have called friends, for no other reason aside from a minor violation of protocol. Rules of etiquette may stand in opposition to Chaos, but they're wonderful tools for Disharmony. Besides, nopony expects me to have good manners."
Pinkie nodded. "Right, so of course you do because nopony would expect it!"
She picked up her menu and perused it. "Huh... rose and forsythia salad, mushroom risotto, beer-battered fried eggplant, spaghetti with alfredo sauce, and Manehattan clam chowder? That's kinda eclectic."
"Come back tomorrow, they'll have something else." Discord removed the back of his menu and folded it out so he could see both sides. Pinkie tried the same thing, but her menu didn't fold that way. "That's why they're called 'Something Different.' They change the menu every day and they don't stick to any one cuisine or style. Also their prices are quite affordable, which from all I've seen is very different from your average city restaurant."
"Funny, I never thought of you as somepony who has to care about bits!"
"Well, since Celestia won't allow me to make my own, I suppose I must." He fluffed his menu again. "I recommend the clam chowder. You won't get clams in Ponyville, after all."
"Huh." Pinkie had known, intellectually, that port cities supported too many sailors and too many non-ponies to stick to strictly vegetarian food like inland locations such as Ponyville did, and it wasn't even the first time she'd seen animal meat on a menu � there were restaurants in Canterlot that specifically catered to omnivores like griffins. After all, how could Manehattan clam chowder even be a thing if they didn't eat clams in Manehattan? "Is it okay for ponies to eat clams, or will I get a huuuge tummy ache? Because I like to try new things, but I'm not a big fan of tummy aches."
Discord looked down at her over the top of his menu. "If anything on the menu gave ponies tummy aches, the chefs and the waitresses would have been the first to know. They get all their meals free here, and they're all ponies." His eyes went wide suddenly as he thought of something. He leaned down. "But don't tell Fluttershy we went to a place that serves clams and other seafood," he said plaintively. "It can be our little secret, okay?"
"My lips are sealed," Pinkie said. "Except not really because how could I eat anything if they really were? I've had my lips sealed a few times, and one time, Trixie took my mouth and threw it in a trash can! That was really annoying. But at least there wasn't a lot of trash in the can so I didn't end up accidentally eating the trash, because that would have been gross. But it wasn't really her fault, because she got corrupted by this super-evil magic amulet."
"Yes, I've noticed ponies always have an excuse like that," Discord said. "'It wasn't my fault, it was the amulet's.' 'It wasn't my fault, it was dark magic.' 'It wasn't my fault, it was nightmare creatures from the moon.' What ever happened to personal responsibility? You'll never see me saying 'It wasn't my fault'. Unless it actually wasn't."
"That's good!" Pinkie said. "Personal responsibility is important if you're reforming! But you weren't really all that evil, anyway. You were a big meanie pants but sometimes kind of fun. Just you aren't careful about your fun being fun for everypony! Fun isn't really fun if ponies don't like it."
"That's where we differ, my dear," Discord said. "Fun is always fun regardless of who is a big stick in the mud who doesn't like it. However," here he sighed dramatically, "I have pledged to try to consider the feelings of boring, party pooping ponies when arranging my fun, since Fluttershy has been good enough to be considerate of my feelings for the first time in probably about two thousand years or so."
Another mare with a beehive manedo came skating up to them. "Hey there hons, can I get you something to drink?"
"Do you have fizzy pink lemonade?" Pinkie asked. "Because I love fizzy pink lemonade!"
"We sure do," the waitress said. "And for you, hon?"
"Pour me a cola. Then pour a chocolate milk into it. Stir, add some seltzer for extra frizz, and put in a thimbleful of cherry syrup. Then I want an anchovy � just one anchovy, mind you � floating on top."
"Hmm. I'll have to check with the kitchen and see if we've got anchovies still � we had anchovy pizza last week, but it was pretty popular, so we might not have the anchovies left."
"If you can't get me an anchovy, I'll take a sprinkling of Old Bay."
"That we can do, hon. I'll have them bring out some bread while I'm mixing up the drinks."
"After I'm done with my fizzy lemonade, can I have what he's having?"
"If you still want that when you're done your fizzy lemonade, just let me know and I'll bring it right out." The waitress skated off.
"They know you here," Pinkie said. "Don't they." She lowered her head and gazed at Discord over the top of her menu, eyeballs up at the top of their sockets because she still had to look up to see him, and besides, the eyeballs-up glower was intimidating looking. At least Maud had always told her so. "I am intimidated by your glower," Maud would say, and Pinkamena would say, "You should be," in her best intimidating voice, and then Maud would agree to help her. Though probably not actually because she'd really been intimidated by Pinkamena.
Discord was obviously not even going to pretend to be intimidated. "Oh, I'm a regular here. How could I possibly pass up the chaotic unpredictability of having someone else come up with a different meal to feed me every time I show up? Of course, I can come up with any number of recipes on my own and snap them into existence, but no matter how hard I try to let the magic just do as it wills, somehow my own thoughts and desires always end up sneaking in there, so it's never quite unpredictable enough."
"You said only three ponies were willing to talk to you, and one of them is really a zebra."
"In Ponyville, I said. They're much more cosmopolitan in Baltimare."
"Also you made Ponyville the Chaos Capital of Equestria. Did you even go to Baltimare?"
Discord shrugged. "I made it rain bananas, but aside from that, I was a little busy. Manehattan's skyscrapers weren't going to wrestle each other without help!" He leaned forward. "They don't even have skyscrapers here. It's a rule, no building is allowed to be more than ten stories tall."
"Really? I always thought Baltimare would be more city-like."
"Well, in comparison to Ponyville, absolutely. But the pegasus population is mostly transient � sailors, you know � so they're not looking for tall apartment buildings to live in, they're looking for streets that are easy to navigate without bumping into buildings. And unlike Manehattan and Fillydelphia and Canterlot, the baseline population here's mostly earth pony. Farming, fishing and heavy industry. There are a lot of unicorns coming in for new jobs in the biomancy sector, but�"
"The bio-what?"
"Biomancy. Life magic. Medical research, basically. John Trotkins Hospital and University, and all that. Have you ever been to Baltimare before?"
"One time I went to see the Preakness with Applejack when we were fillies 'cause Big Mac took us 'cause their cousin Dutch Apple was racing. He lost, though." The bread arrived. Half of it was cheesy biscuits, and half of it was pumpernickel raisin slices. Pinkie took one of each. "Sounds like you come here a lot, though!"
Discord shrugged. "Equestria's a much bigger place than Ponyville and Canterlot, and I don't intend to confine myself to a single tiny spot of it. And cities are fun. Much more chaotic than the countryside. Especially cities that aren't Canterlot, which has to make the top ten list of most boring cities in, well, anywhere."
Pinkie nodded. "It's all the stuffy nobles. You can't really have a lot of great fun if you're spending all your time so dressed up you can barely move! The Grand Galloping Gala was so boring before ponies loosened up after we got there!"
"I know," Discord smirked. "I was there."
"Well, yeah, but you were a statue."
"I could hear everything, though. I must thank you and your friends for the entertainment; it was so rare to encounter any really good chaos anywhere near Canterlot Gardens. In fact, I probably have the six of you to thank for my initial freedom; it was those charming little fillies that gave me the last push to get loose, but without all the chaos you created at the Gala, I doubt three fighting foals would have given me enough juice to get loose."
Pinkie giggled. "You made a rhyme!"
"Well, it isn't a crime," Discord said. "At least, unlike zebras, I don't do it all the time."
"What are you going to get?" Pinkie flapped her menu.
"Everything." Discord grinned.
Pinkie leaned forward, widening her eyes. "Everything?"
"Everything."
"Then can I get everything too?"
"Can you put the food you don't eat in temporal stasis so it will be every bit as delicious later on when you're feeling peckish and want a midnight snack?"
Pinkie thought about that one hard. "Wellllll... if I stick them in my mane they won't go bad... but they will get cold... and I can't put the soup there, it might spill... sooo, I guess not?"
"So then two questions remain: will you be able to eat everything if you order everything, and how do you feel about wasting Princess Celestia's bits on food you won't eat?"
That brought Pinkie up short. "Princess Celestia gave you bits to take me out and apologize to me?"
"No, of course not, don't be silly!" Discord waved a paw dismissively. "Princess Celestia gives me bits to bribe me into using my magic to do incredibly, painfully tedious things." He sighed and made sad puppy eyes. "She has me finding open dimensional gates and weakened borders, and closing them. Can you imagine anything more dull? At least if I was opening them, something interesting might come through."
Pinkie's face scrunched. I don't like the sound of that, Navigator Pinkie said. "Are you getting rid of all the holes?"
"Oh, heavens, no. Our world's natural state is to be riddled with dimensional gates... most of them to the realm of chaos, and heavens, I'm certainly not going to close them." He smirked at her. "Your mane is perfectly safe, my dear."
"Whew! If I couldn't store an emergency flugelhorn, who knows what would happen if parasprites showed up out of nowhere again!"
"Parasprites? Ha, they'd be no tribble at all," Discord said, or something that sounded like that, making another dismissive gesture.
"Not with my trusty flugelhorn, they wouldn't be!" Pinkie frowned. "But isn't using your magic for Princess Celestia the exact reason she had Fluttershy reform you so we could let you go? So don't you owe it to her to do that work even if it's boring?"
"And how exactly would I buy lunch if I was working for mere gratitude?"
"With a snappy snap!" Pinkie demonstrated by snapping her hoof. Discord stared.
"Well, color me impressed," he said, gaze fixed on the hoof she'd just snapped.
"What? You do it all the time," Pinkie said.
"Yes, but I have fingers. You're a pony."
At this point, the drinks arrived, and the waitress took their orders. Pinkie went with the clam chowder and the salad, just in case the clam chowder wasn't tasty, because she'd never actually eaten forsythia before. Discord, as promised, ordered everything. The waitress seemed wholly unfazed by this.