It was what for many might have been one of the most beautiful days in living memory. Every last colorful equine in the glorious realm of the sun goddess enjoyed a gorgeous spring afternoon, their many lives happily bound together in eternal harmony. Even nature itself seemed to blossom during this most wondrous of days, perhaps delighted by the frequent laughter that could be heard out of each of the occasional patches of civilization, imbedded into an idyllic if not paradisiac landscape.
But never mind all of that.
"Ugh. Why are we doing this, exactly?"
Twilight pouted. "Rainboooow! I told you. It's a social interaction game. It will help us to get to know one another, learn new things, and deepen our mutual friendship!"
At the sound of the word 'friendship', Liara burst out into a barely contempt stream of giggles. Twilight cast her a somewhat displeased look, but she had since come to terms with the fact that the mercurial magician had a somewhat unpredictable temper, not unlike a certain pink bundle of endless laughter which current bounced up and down somewhere to her right.
"Yes, friendship," she said in a sourly tone. "Aaanyway. Does anypony here have any objections to the established rules?"
Rainbow was about to say something else, but Twilight solved the problem by lighting up her horn, performing a highly complicated short range teleportation spell, and reappearing in front of the pegasus, all within the span of less than a second. Without giving her any chance to react, Twilight locked their lips together in a short but passionate kiss, before playfully biting her into the lower lip.
"Mmhhhuhhhmmm..."
"Nopony? Great. Well then, we can start." A bunch of notes from a nearby bookshelf floated towards her in a purple glow. Very purple. "First order of business... player list!"
"Uh, Twilight?" Cold gave her an amused look. "I think we know everypony who's here..."
"Ahem. Player list left parenthesis by order of signing right parenthesis colon... wait no colon. I mean, yes colon, but I didn't mean to spell that out. Anyway. Twilight, Liara, Rarity, Colgate, Cold Autumn, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applebloom, Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash, Sweetie Belle, and Lyra. Welcome to Pony Mafia!"
Silence.
"Twilight, silly, we are always ponies. Do you want to add 'pony-' before everything we do? Like if I make sweets, is it pony-baking? Or if you and Rainbow Dash make out--"
"No, it's pony mafia because we're being ponies in the game. Every game of mafia needs to have, a, uh..." A book floated towards her from the small round table "... uhm ..." flapflapflap "... flavor ..." the book floated back towards the table, "and each player needs to have a flavor name which is a character in the flavor chosen by the moderator... or, in this case, by myself. And we're playing as ourselves!"
"Awesome. Does this mean I can get myself as a flavor name?"
"Uhm..." ... ... ... flapflap ... flapflapflapflap ... ... ... ... ... flap ... ... "Yes!" This time, she kept the book close to her. "Anyway. Our moderator is Applejack, who due to her element doesn't feel comfortable playing. Take it away."
"Right." In a leisurely stroll, Applejack walked towards the center of the room. "Well then, Twilight gave me all of the the instruction thingies for this here silly lil' game. If y'all all come up and take on of these here cards, y'all find yer role on the backside."
Scene skipped to balance out pacing.
"Dandy. So, Colgate here who is Lyra is an innocent... uh, pony, so she's all friendly harmony aligned and, uh, apples. If y'all wanna vote, just speak the name of whoever ya wanna vote for into this here magic thingy. Oh, and the evil roles between y'all have evil flavor names, so three of you guys aren't really plain', but I can't tell y'all who it is, because I'm not sure but Twilight said so. Day one is starin' right about now..." Twilight threw her an inflictive look "... which is at exactly twelve past ten, and will last 'till ten days from now on. That's all, so y'all can get goin'."