"Slumber 101?" Moon Dancer muttered. "I've read that."

"Oh! Eheh," Twilight chuckled, then stood up from her chair, staring across the cafe with a cheerless smile plastered across her muzzle. "Girls, will you excuse me for one teeny-tiny moment?"

"Whatever." Moondancer stabbed her fork into a carrot, but Twilight was already in motion.

She stopped at a table at the far side of the room, stomping her hoof down on Starlight Glimmer's menu and crumpling it to the table. "Listen," she murmured, staring coldly into the ex-cult leader's eyes, "don't think I didn't see you, or that I don't know what's up. Your villainy is peerless, you will have your revenge, yadda yadda. But I am right in the middle of a major friendship problem right now, so you're just going to have to wait your damned turn."

Starlight stared back innocently, then broke into a smile. "Villain? Me?"

Twilight ground her teeth. "You escaped with an unresolved plot arc. Don't play dumb, you little—"

"Ut." Starlight held up a hoof, then pointed down at the floor underhoof, where a doe-eyed puppy was glancing up at them, flagrantly unkicked. Starlight pointed to the next table over, where a tiny foal was contentedly sucking on a piece of sugar candy. Then to an empty table next to it, where a little "Back in a minute! -C." sign stood next to the royal tiara, the Alicorn Amulet, floor plans for Canterlot Castle, and Princess Celestia's diary.

Starlight looked back at Twilight and smiled. "I'm reformed now."

Twilight's mouth opened and closed.

"And I'm just here for dinner."

Twilight's eye twitched.

"So just pretend I'm not here and have a wonderful time." Starlight smiled even wider, resembling nothing so much as a landshark with a toilet-paper tube taped to its forehead.

Twilight stared for long seconds, then whirled and stomped away. "Ugh!"

Starlight picked her menu back up and read through the long list of appetizers.

A few minutes later, Princess Celestia sat back down. "Hey," she said, "where did my diary go?"

---

Starlight was reading a newspaper at the Ponyville train station when Twilight stalked over to her. "Reformed, my cute purple butt."

Starlight glanced up with a cheerful smile. "Fancy meeting you here, Princess!"

"I realized you have to be lying. See, we never blasted you with rainbows."

Starlight hurriedly set down the newspaper and held her hooves up. "Oh, no. I self-reformed."

Twilight slowly raised one eyebrow.

Starlight floated some photos out from her saddlebags. "It was the obvious choice once I studied your history." She held up a photo of a stone statue. "Discord." An emaciated figure in a dark, stygian jail. "Tirek." An irregular smudge on a snowfield. "Sombra."

"Okay," Twilight said, "I'll grant you that one. So what are you doing here?"

"Oh, just catching a train."

Twilight frowned.

---

"Oh, just sunbathing."

Twilight glanced around the empty skies at the edge of Cloudsdale and frowned a little harder.

---

"Oh, just collecting field data for my Master's in Applied Monsterology."

Twilight glanced around the deepest, darkest Everfree and frowned extra hard.

---

"ああ、私は日本語を勉強してい。"

Twilight glanced around the Imperial Dragon Palace and frowned with the force of a million normal frowns.

---

"Oh, I got lost after that left turn at Alba-clucky."

Twilight glanced around the submarine deep in the Mare-iana Trench and frowned times infinity.

---

"Oh, I just—"

Twilight's frown divided by zero and boiled over into rage. "That is IT!" she screamed, voice echoing through the inexplicably thick atmosphere of the crater-pitted wasteland of Saturn's sixth-largest moon. Her horn flared with the light of an enthusiastic supernova, tearing a hole in the fabric of spacetime.

Starlight's smile vanished. "Wait! Not a villain—"

Twilight grabbed her, magic field clamping down on her muzzle. "Save it. I figured out your plan." She leaned in, finally allowing herself a smirk of her own. "You knew you didn't have a chance of facing me directly. So you devised a plan to annoy me to death."

Starlight's eyes widened. "Mmmph!" she shouted as she was cast out of reality.

Twilight let out a long breath, then sealed up the hole. "Good riddance."

After a few hours of blissful silence, Celestia walked by, sipping from a juicebox.

"Oh, hello, Twilight. Fancy meeting you here," she said. "Hey, did Starlight ever work up the nerve to ask you for your autograph?"

Twilight froze.

"Uh," she said. "No, but she totally stole your diary."