The Kindness of Strangers

by Wheller

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Pinkie Pie trotted along through the High Street, things were beginning to go back to normal, construction crews had arrived and everyone began to put the town back together. Pinkie was humming to herself, her straight hair flapping as she walked.

Pinkie Pie! A voice shouted at her from nowhere in particular.

"Hello Monty! How are you this morning?" Pinkie asked.

Several ponies looked at Pinkie Pie strangely, but they dismissed what seemed like an odd behaviour as "just Pinkie Pie."

Well thank you, we have a lot of work today.

"Ohh... but Monty! I was going to go hang out with my friends today! We worked all day yesterday!"

I know. But we must make sacrifices if we are going to deal with IT.

"What are you sacrificing?" Pinkie asked.

I'm only able to interact with you. That is sacrificing enough.

"But I'm the most fun Pony in town! Maybe even all of Equestria!" Pinkie said.

Pinkie Pie...

"Well, maybe that's pushing it. DJ P0N-3 throws really great parties too..."

PINKIE PIE!

"What?" Pinkie Pie asked, she looked ahead of her, and discovered that she was standing in front of Rainbow Dash who was giving her an odd look.

"OH! Hi Rainbow Dash!" Pinkie Pie said excitedly.

"Hi... Pinkie, who were you talking to?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Monty! He's my friend." Pinkie Pie said, a bright smile forming on her face.

Stop talking about me!

Pinkie spoke again before Rainbow Dash could get in anymore about who 'Monty' was.

"What are you up to Rainbow?"

Rainbow Dash looked uncomfortable at the question; she bit her lip and thought for a moment before speaking. "I was looking for you, actually. Can I... talk to you?"

"You can always talk to me Dashie!" Pinkie said. "Just as long as you don't mind walking and talking, Got a lot of work to do today."

Rainbow Dash looked slightly uncomfortable, but never the less flapped along with Pinkie Pie. "What are you doing Pinkie Pie? With this Monty character?"

"Can't tell you! It's a surprise!" Pinkie said.

Rainbow Dash sighed a little. "Do you even know what you're doing?" she asked with on a hunch.

"Nope! But that's okay! I love surprises!" Pinkie said happily.

Rainbow was now even more worried, if Pinkie was blindly taking instructions from somepony, then what she was doing had an equal chance of being totally harmless, or incredibly lethal.

"Pinkie... It's just that, I'm worried about you! I was there the last time your hair was all straight like that. You weren't exactly the sanest pony."

Pinkie Pie smiled at Rainbow. "Aww Dashie! I'm so glad that you have my best interests at heart. You're a good friend, but not to worry I am totally sane!" Pinkie's eyes became very small, and began twitching slightly.

Rainbow smiled uneasily. "You're welcome Pinkie Pie; I just want you to be careful with this Monty pony."

"Monty isn't a pony," Pinkie Pie interrupted, increasing how much worrying Rainbow Dash had been doing fivefold.

"Do you know what Monty is?" Rainbow asked on another hunch.

"Nope! That's okay though, 'cause I love surprises!" Pinkie said.

Ten fold.

"Uh, well Pinkie, I'm glad we got to talk, but I have to go... move a cloud." Rainbow said nervously.

"Okie dokie lokie! Bye Rainbow!" Pinkie said.

Dash zoomed off in a hurry, intending to get as far away from Pinkie Pie as possible.

--
After the sun had set, Rainbow Dash burst headlong into the Library, where Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Luna were waiting for her.

Dash stopped for a moment to catch her breath before speaking to the other ponies. "We have a serious problem. Pinkie Pie has completely lost it."

Applejack looked crossly at Rainbow Dash. "Well we already knew tha'! Mah guess is she fell on 'er 'ead when she was a lillun."

"No I mean it's worse than normal. She's been blindly taking orders from some... thing called Monty. She has no idea what she's doing for him, and doesn't care to ask."

"Oh my, how dreadful, and Twilight goes out of town just as we're about to have a Pinkie crisis!" Rarity said worriedly.

"'Bout that, anypony else think that Twi' goin' out on her walkabout thing is a lil' too convenient?"

"Applejack, you don't seriously believe that somepony tried to get rid of Twilight do you?" Rarity asked.

"Ah can't prove it, I'm jus' sayin' it's a lil' convenient," Applejack said.

"You... You don't think something... bad, happened to Twilight? Do you?" Fluttershy asked.

Applejack shrugged. "Twi' don't 'xactly have any worldly knowledge 'r survival skills. She's booksmart, sure, but ah dunno if she'll be fine or not."

"Hey! This is Twilight we're talking about, our friend?" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, "As long as egghead read to cut open cactuses for water, she'll be fine."

"Cacti." Fluttershy quietly corrected.

Rarity looked over at Princess Luna, who seemed lost in her thoughts, staring into space.

"My dear, you've been awfully quiet, is there something on your mind?" she asked.

Luna looked up and shrugged a little. "I don't know, I've just been thinking that a lot of convenient things happened recently. The dragon's attack, Floppy Disk dying trying to stop it, The Post Office blowing up and injuring that poor postal worker, who my sister took to the royal hospital. Pinkie Pie off doing whatever she is doing, Twilight leaving to go on her walkabout... It's like someone... or something, is trying to keep our attention occupied, and getting key players out of the way."

The Library door opened and everypony in the room turned to look at who it was.

"... And I think I know how we can find out for sure." Twilight Sparkle said from the doorway.

"Twilight! Yer all right!" Applejack called out, leaping and giving her friend a hug. "Glad yer back sugarcube, how long did ya wander around in the desert before realisin' you was bein' stupid."
"Actually Applejack, I found what I was looking for." Twilight said with a triumphant smile.

"Wait. wha...?" Applejack was dumbfounded.

"That isn't important right now. We have far more pressing matters on our hooves. First things first, we need to find why Floppy Disk came here to Ponyville in the first place, second: we need to keep Overdrive distracted while we do. I don't have time to explain, we need to do this right now."

--

Princess Luna looked up at Overdrive's cloud. He was sitting there looking east, as he had been the entire day.

"Excuse me?" she called out.

The Grey Alicorn looked over the edge, and leapt down from the cloud, landing at Luna's feet. He stared at her intensely with his glowing Red eyes for a moment, before finally uttering a single word.

"Yes?" he asked.

Luna cleared her throat. "My sister, Princess Celestia wishes to speak to you in Canterlot. She is asking that I bring you there myself."

The grey Alicorn looked at the night pony with his usual glare. Luna was unable to tell if he was angry, or simply pondering the request.

"Not interested," he said finally.

"You cannot simply ignore a summon from the ruler of this land!" Luna said frantically, she needed to get him out of Ponyville.

"Watch me," The Alicorn said; if this was any other pony, Luna would have been sure he was being smug with her.

"It's about the explosion in the Post Office. The mail mare is awake." Luna said, leaving it at that.

The Alicorn looked at her intensely. Luna did her best to keep a brave face, but she was faltering, she was afraid of this Alicorn.

"Very well, lead the way," Overdrive said, he leaped into the air. The Princess followed him, and the two flew off towards Canterlot.

Luna was very afraid; she had just lied to the most powerful creature she had ever seen.

--

Twilight Sparkle and her friends opened the door to the flat that Floppy Disk had rented only a week ago. It was sparse to say the least; the colt had brought little with him on his journey.

"I don't feel right about this," Fluttershy said. "Going through somepony's things without their permission is wrong, even if they are... dead."

Twilight looked at the timid Pegasus and smiled. "Don't worry Fluttershy; you don't have to do anything you don't want to. You can wait outside for us."

"I will wait with her; we shall keep a look out in case Princess Luna's plan does not work." Rarity said, she smiled at her pegasi friend, and the two trotted over to a nearby bench and sat down.

Applejack, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash went inside.

"What are we looking for egghead?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Every time I saw Floppy Disk, he was by himself, sitting under a tree scribbling in a journal. We need to find it. Hopefully, he wrote about why he came here." Twilight said.

"Found it!" Applejack said, dropping a small book on the bed.

Twilight used her magic to open it and flipped through a few pages an entry dated two months prior.

"'I can't stand it here any longer, everypony hates me. I thought it would be different this time, moving to another side of town. But it's always the same, everypony is the same. They act friendly and they welcome you, some even try to be your friend, and before you know it, they've turned on you and never want to speak to you again. I thought Shadowstar was different. She was different, she stuck up for me. Told other ponies off when they talked bad about me, but no, I was wrong, Shadowstar was just like them too.'" Twilight read aloud.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack looked at each other as they listened to Twilight read.

"How could anypony treat him like that?! He was the nicest colt I ever met." Rainbow Dash said.

"There's more. 'I've had it. I'm not putting up with this anymore, I'm skipping town and heading east, leaving a note saying I'm dead. That'll show them! I'll start a new life, get a new name, and then everyone I left behind will feel terrible, think they've bullied somepony to his death. I guess in a way they have. I'm just glad I don't have to be me anymore. Now that I'm going somewhere else, I can be anypony I want to be.'" Twilight finished.

"Tha's awful." Applejack said. "Nices' pony ah ever met. Every time ah passed him on the High Street, he'd say 'ello and ask if there was any'in he could do ta 'elp me with the apples."

"You think this Shadowstar pony is important?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight flipped through the journal, discovering only one other entry about Shadowstar, along with a sketch of her. "She's a unicorn." Twilight said, "But I don't see anything else important."

"What 'bout his real name?" Applejack asked.

Twilight did some more flipping. "Nope, it's obvious he wrote it in here, but he's either crossed it out or erased it completely every time it came up. I hate to say it, but I don't think we'll ever know who Floppy Disk really is."

"What was the last thing he wrote in there?" Rainbow Dash asked finally, they'd yet to uncover any useful information about Floppy, and Dash was becoming impatient.

"It's from three days ago," Twilight said. "'It happened again. One of the mares I met, Pinkie Pie (that was her name right?) and I looked into each other's eyes... for some reason we couldn't look away, she just stared and stared, and then she panicked, started screaming and ran off. Now you've done it...' He crossed out the name." Twilight said before continuing. "'... Oh Celestia, why does this keep happening to me? What's wrong with me that ponies can't even look at me without freaking out? What is so wrong with me? I don't understand... Hopefully I can patch things up with Pinkie Pie. I really like this group, I don't want to run away again, but I'm going to have to if this happens again.'"

"UH!" Rainbow Dash grunted in frustration. "That doesn't tell us anything!"

Twilight shrugged, "I had been hoping for something a little more useful. We should all go home and get some rest, I'm going to read through the entire thing and see if I can't find anything useful that way."

The ponies nodded, and they all departed for their respective homes.

Twilight spent the rest of the night reading through three years worth of Floppy's journal, what she discovered astounded her.

Comments

[Wyvern1998]

Captured the characters very well. Big improvement. Good job!

[Csquared08]

Ahhh! It looks like we're finally getting some answers.