It was Nightmare Night, and Pinkie Pie had two baskets. One of them had brownies in it. The other one, which had brownies in it at one time, was currently empty.

This mystery would require all of her cognitive powers to unravel.

She munched on a brownie, and frowned as she did it. It was hard to frown. The brownie was really good.

---

"Now, Rarity, I said I wouldn't put you under, and I meant it," Minuette growled. Silver tools, caught in the grip of her magic, flashed in the lamplight as they wriggled inside Rarity's mouth. "But so help me, I will pump every tank of nitrous oxide I own directly into your lungs if you don't stop squirming."

"Gahahahahaha, hla hla hla, nla––"

"Yeah, and that's another thing. If you must yell inarticulately at me, at least make sounds that don't require your tongue." Minuette snorted. "You keep poking my tools."

"Hagahahgggahaha."

"Yeah, that's better. More of that, if you don't mind." Minuette squinted, peering deeper into Rarity's mouth. In her peripheral vision, she glimpsed a fat drop of saliva sliding down the corner of her mouth. "Hey, drool patrol."

"On it!" Spike chirped. He dabbed Rarity's lips with a wad of pristine white tissue. "How's that?"

"Awesome, kid. We'll make an orthodontist out of you yet." Minuette's horn flashed; another tool from her surgical tray, a pick, floated into Rarity's mouth, gently wedging itself into her gumline. She prodded, and wiggled the pick's tip against a hard little nub stuck behind Rarity's molar. "One sec. Think I got it... annnnd..."

"NGYAAAAAAAH!"

"Got'cha, you slippery little so and so!" Grinning behind her surgical mask, Minuette pulled away from Rarity, victoriously twirling the array of tools that had previously been probing her mouth. "Another dazzling display of dentistry from the most overqualified, and also only, dentist in the Ponyville town limits. Can I get a hoofbump? Rarity?"

"Oh, keep your extremity of pain as far away from my pony-pedi as equinely possible, you, you sawbones!" Rarity's magic flashed, and the chair reclined into an approximation of a chaise lounge. She sprawled, melodrama incarnate.

"Ah, that's gratitude for you," Minuette sighed. She looked at Spike. "How about you? Got one in ya, for old time's sake?"

Spike, giggling, knocked his fist against Minuette's hoof. "Thanks for having me on the team, doc."

"Glad to have you around; I'm short-staffed this morning. My assistant's out sick." Post-Nightmare Night Periodontal Disease could strike anypony, and seemed to target ponies who worked in dental offices just for the irony of it all. "How'd that even get in your tooth, Rarity?"

Rarity glared at Minuette through her tears, and flopped onto her side, baring her back to the dragon and the dentist.

Minuette shrugged. "Spike?"

"Ah... it's my fault, really." Spike rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "See, I was over at Carousel Boutique, helping Rarity out with this awesome evening gown – she'd been working on it all night last night, missed Nightmare Night because of it––"

"Rub it in, why don't you, Spike?!"

"Well, that's why I brought the candy, Rarity," Spike protested, wringing his hands together. "I didn't want you to feel left out, so I thought I'd share my haul with you."

Rarity flopped her head around. "You might've warned me about the razors and the broken glass!"

Minuette held the bloodstained shard of glass she'd pulled from Rarity's molar up to the light. "Funny; I always thought that was an urban myth. Should probably tell the authorities about this... and prepare for an influx of patients over the next couple of days, provided any of them survive."

"No, no need for that," Spike said. "They're, uh. The razors and the glass are..."

"They're his," Rarity said, seething. "Almond clusters with glass where the almonds ought to be. Crisp wafers and caramel, topped with shaving razors. And, so I'm told, brownies with some foul substance baked into them, though there's nary a trace of those to be found. All courtesy of Pinkie Pie."

"Pinkie baked special brownies?" Minuette shook her head. "Wait, no, I can actually kinda picture that – Pinkie baked murder-candy?"

"Not for everypony – not like she was givin' 'em to fillies, or anything." Spike fidgeted and looked down at his toes, tightly crossing his legs together. "Pinkie made 'em for me; nopony else was supposed to eat 'em."

"And yet, Spike. And yet!"

Minuette raised an eyebrow at Spike.

Spike shrugged. "They add texture."

"Well, ours is not to judge," Minuette sighed. She dropped the glass shard onto her surgical tray – she'd find a jar for it later for her "weird stuff I've pulled from patients' mouths" shelf at home – and floated a notepad and pencil over. "Rarity, I'm gonna write you up a prescription for some antiseptic mouthwash – some antibiotics, too, as a precaution. Keep the area clean, and avoid solid foods; we'll check back in a week from now, okay?"

"A whole week without solid foods?" Rarity moaned and slid from her chair, now a puddle of melodrama incarnate. "Au revoir, Waldhoof salad, thou most tasty of appetizers."

Spike helped Rarity to all fours, beaming. "Don't sweat it, Rarity. I'll treat you to hay shakes – three meals a day of 'em!"

"Need I remind you of how we landed ourselves in this mess, Spike? I'll treat myself, thank you very much." Rarity sniffed, held her nose high, and trotted toward the exit. "My gratitude, Minuette."

"Always a pleasure, Rarity." A thought struck her, and she blurted, "Spike, stick around for a sec?"

Spike did, as Rarity excused herself to Minuette's waiting room. Alone with him, Minuette said, "That thing, about the, uh, special brownies... Pinkie didn't give those to you, too, did she?"

"Huh? Oh!" Spike shook his head vigorously. "No, nuh-uh. Not even a one. I mean, I saw 'em in her egg basket, when she was giving me the – what'd you call 'em? Murder-candy?"

"Murder-candy, yes."

"But she wouldn't let me have the brownies. Said to ask her again in ten years." Spike huffed. "It's not fair."

"Yeah, it's a real travesty." Minuette bit her lip. "Think she still has any?"

"Ah, I dunno. I dunno what happened to 'em, come to think of it. I tried to sneak some out of her basket, at the end of the night, but they were all gone." Spike tapped his chin. "Maybe she ate 'em herself?"

I'd think they'd be redundant to somepony like her, Minuette thought.

She hid a giggle behind a hoof, and sighed. "Ah, worth a shot. Anyway, thanks Spike. And, uh, this probably goes without saying, but toss those drooly tissues before you leave, okay?"

Spike's face burned. He threw the tissues stained with Rarity's spit into the wastebin, and hastily tore out of the room.

---

When Pinkie had taken a bite out of one of the brownies, she'd expected it to take her someplace filled with lollipops and gumdrops, with diamonds in the sky, and rocking horse people eating marshmallow pies. And, well...

It was good – Pinkie made it, after all – but it wasn't quite that good.

This raised quite a few questions about her expectations. About how the night had unfolded. About her decision to store regular brownies, and special brownies, in identical baskets that could easily be confused with one another. About juggling between the two baskets throughout the night. About how effectively she could be counted on to keep track of which basket was which, and what held what.

The more Pinkie thought about it, the sillier she felt.

She took another bite from the brownie. Still nothing. She decided to experiment, and fed one to Gummy. He fell onto his side and didn't move for awhile. The experiment was inconclusive.

"This must be how Twilight feels all the time."

Pinkie folded her forelegs and rested her chin on them. She thought. She thought. She thought.

Her ears pricked up and her eyes widened.

"Oh. My. Garmonbozia."

---

Raven had known Princess Celestia for some time now, and thought she knew the inscrutable monarch better than the average pony. That understanding was seriously strained as she watched the Princess carefully for some sign of a reaction. A change in her posture, her body language, a subtle shift in her expression...

None of that. The Princess remained in the same position she'd been in ever since entering Princess Luna's tower: her hoof firmly plastered against her forehead, and her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Anyone else would think her annoyed.

But, surely, she was more than just annoyed by the sight of her sister sprawled out, unresponsive and twitching, on the floor of her bedchamber, at the center of a pile of candy.

"The chambermaid just found her like this. She doesn't know how long she's been in this condition." Raven waited, hesitated, before continuing. "I summoned the court physician before going to you, Your Majesty, but he seems to be making his rounds in the city, and we're having difficulty tracking him down. As serious as Post-Nightmare Night Periodontal Disease may be, the poisoning of Princess Luna––"

"She hasn't been poisoned," Princess Celestia said, in monotone. "I appreciate your sense of urgency, Raven, but my sister is quite alright."

Raven watched, intrigued and disgusted, as Princess Luna's tongue lolled out of her mouth. It, like her gangly legs, twitched and spasmed periodically.

"...Are you certain, Princess?"

"Yes. I am. Doctor Cross Stitch may take his time. We needn't trouble him."

"But your sister... she look as though she's been poisoned."

"Hardly. She's simply..." Princess Celestia glanced at Raven from beneath her hoof. "How do the young folk put it these days? When a pony's been intoxicated by delirium-inducing, hallucinogenic substances? 'Turnt?'"

"High," Raven said quickly. "'Turnt' is for drunkenness. As in, 'Lemonheart became turnt off her six glasses of Chevalier Blanc at the Nightmare Night banquet, and woke up beside the Saddle Arabian delegate's daughter.'"

Celestia's eyes flew open.

Raven's face reddened. "Probably the wrong moment to bring that up."

"High, then," Celestia said testily, returning her gaze to Princess Luna. "Mildly so, by her standards."

"This is... mild?"

"I daresay that this is the kindest Phoenix Dust has ever been to my dearest sister."

Raven stared at the Princess, her jaw slowly going slack. She glanced backward, out the open door, then sidled closer to Celestia, dropping her voice low. "Did she... eat... Philomena?"

Princess Celestia stared so intensely at Raven that she felt herself liable to combust and shrivel to ash herself. "I worry, that's all," Raven squeaked.

Celestia glanced quickly at Luna, her lips twitching with an enigmatic smile.

"A long, long time ago, Star Swirl the Bearded's pet phoenix, Ceres – an ancestor of Philomena – passed away, and declined to resurrect herself. Star Swirl kept her ashes in an urn, which, one night, went missing. At the time, Luna was going through a prolonged period of rebellion – not her first, nor, sadly, her most destructive – and after another night where I failed to convince her to eat her alfalfa, she produced the urn, seemingly from the ether, and poured all of its contents into her mouth.

"'Doth this thy standard for nourishment meet?' she screamed at me, in between mouthfuls of dead, powdered bird. I failed to stop her, then this and that happened... to make a long story short, that's how Northern Equestria was made."

Celestia's face and tone did not change one iota during the entire story.

Raven could not say the same for her own expression. She swallowed hard. "So... this, then..."

"Is a relatively mild reaction. Presumably, she only consumed a small amount of the stuff – enough to knock her proverbial socks off, not enough to transform her into a demon of malevolent gales and bitter, merciless cold." Celestia floated a candy from the pile surrounding Luna, unwrapped it, and tossed it into her mouth. "She'll have a dry mouth and a nasty hangover, and that'll be the end of it."

Raven watched Celestia chew one candy, then another, and then another, all while staring stone-faced at the semi-conscious Luna. "How do you suppose the Phoenix Dust got into her system?"

Celestia unwrapped several chocolates at once, liquified them with a beam of golden-hot sunlight, drank the gooey stream from the air without besmirching her glorious lips with a single particle of brown, then shrugged. "We won't know until Luna wakes, and subsequently sobers."

A licorice whip in a yellow aura squiggled through the air, toward Celestia's mouth.

Raven bit her lip. "I don't know if Princess Luna would appreciate you doing that, Your Majesty."

"What's hers is mine. That's how sisterhood works. Feudalism, too." Celestia bit the licorice whip in half, then dangled the other end in front of Raven's mouth. "I won't tell if you won't."

Raven felt her mouth water. With a lack of reluctance that surprised even her, she leaned forward, and nommed the licorice out of the air. Side by side with Celestia, she chewed, and watched Luna's tongue flop like a fish out of water.

"You should date my sister," Celestia remarked. "You'd be cute together."

Raven, shocked, spat wet chunks of licorice, pelting Luna. One landed on her tongue. She lapped it into her mouth, smacked her lips, and flopped her tail against the carpet.

"...I'll think about it," said Raven.

---

Pinkie found herself with a conundrum.

Either she accidentally gave Princess Luna a basket full of magical Phoenix Dust brownies that were supposed to take you on a trip to someplace with rocking horse people and marshmallow pies, and kept the regular old brownies for herself, or the brownies she gave Luna were regular old brownies, and the brownies she kept for herself were also, for all intents and purposes, regular old brownies, because the stories about phoenix dust being magical trip-dust were just that. Stories.

So, okay. If the former were the case, then that also presented two options: Princess Luna was unaffected by the brownies, because the stories about phoenix dust being magical trip-dust were just stories (but then, why would Philomena leave behind that extra pile of ashes when she died and resurrected in Ponyville if she didn't want Pinkie to scoop it up and mix it into a plate of hallucinogenic holiday treats?) or Princess Luna was experiencing exactly what Pinkie thought she would experience, and was losing her marbles because of it.

In which case, she might be jailed. Or exiled. Beheaded. Do they behead ponies anymore? Did they ever?

...Worth looking into.

If the latter were the case: She had brownies, and Luna had brownies, and the best case scenario was that they both ate brownies contentedly. Worst case scenario: One, or both, of them had a tummy ache from eating too many.

And regardless of the case, she still had a basket full of brownies which needed to be consumed. And it was still Nightmare Night for another thirty-seven minutes.

"Eh, whatever. Figure it out in the morning."

Pinkie popped a brownie into her mouth whole, and chewed.

Then she swallowed, sat up straight, and blinked.

"If I screwed up with the brownies... oh, shoot, I hope I didn't pass out Spike's candy, too."