Rainbow Dash was stupid.
Rainbow Dash was trapped in a bucket of ice cream.
These two facts were probably related, but she didn’t think a frozen dairy entrapment episode was the best time to start trying to connect all the dots in her life. The only dot she felt like connecting was herself to anywhere besides that bucket of ice cream.
Of course, Rainbow Dash loved ice cream. In almost any other circumstance, she would have felt totally happy throwing herself whole-body into things she loved—flying, a nap, hay fries, being better than Applejack at something, ice cream. The list went on. But she found that ice cream could get surprisingly chilly after being stuck in a bucket of it for half an hour. She also found that Pinkie Pie was surprisingly warm and soft when you glued yourself to her for a day. Or got glued to her. Glued by her. Or whatever.
Dash poked her head up just enough to lift the ice cream lid and check the situation.
And the situation was:
Lame. Very very lame. And cold. And sticky. And creamy. And surprisingly soft and warm. But mostly lame.
The way was not clear. No way was clear. Ponies were everywhere, and Dash couldn't see any chance to escape unnoticed. Cookies ‘n Cream’s Cookies and Creams, the market’s premiere outdoor cookies and ice cream stall, run by none other than Cookies ‘n Cream, was getting hit by the lunch rush. Like the avalanche-stampeded, ponies lined up crush-style around the block, dear Celestia why do I work in food service? kind of getting hit by the lunch rush.
This was fortunate for Cookies ‘n Cream, as Dash had heard some rumors that Cookies and Creams hadn’t been doing so hot recently and might close down. This was unfortunate for Rainbow Dash, as she was currently hidden inside a bucket of Cookies and Creams’ most popular ice cream flavor—cookies ‘n cream with extra cream. This brought Dash’s problems full circle.
Rainbow Dash was stupid.
She had always assumed she was at least as naturally good at being smart as she was naturally good at everything else. But recent events had necessitated a serious reevaluation of that assumption. Because getting glued to Pinkie Pie and trapped in a bucket of Cookies and Creams’ cookies ‘n cream with extra cream during the lunch rush just didn’t scream ‘situation a smart pony finds herself in on a Tuesday afternoon.’ Sure, that’d be fine for a late Friday night, or even a relaxing Sunday evening, but definitely not a Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re screwed,” Rainbow Dash concluded.
Pinkie Pie’s only response was to shove another hoof-full of cookies ‘n cream with extra cream into her mouth, which freaked Rainbow right out of the barn stall.
Not Pinkie stuffing her face with cookies ‘n cream with extra cream. Pinkie was always stuffing her face with whatever happened to be lying around. Luckily, this time whatever was lying around happened to be delicious ice cream. Last time it had been centipedes. Rainbow Dash still shuddered at the memory of that misadventure.
Normally, when Pinkie was stuffing her face, she’d be laughing and babbling and dancing and baking muffins and throwing parties, even that time with the centipedes. But now, Pinkie wasn’t doing anything except moping and binge eating. And that freaked Rainbow right out of the barn stall.
There was something very wrong about seeing a frown on Pinkie Pie’s face. A frowning Pinkie Pie was as wrong as a Rainbow Dash with her wings tied down. A thought that made Rainbow gag.
What made that frown even worse was the possibility that maybe sorta just kinda-maybe Rainbow Dash had been the pony to put it there.
And maybe that had something to do with Rainbow Dash being stupid. And maybe the possibility of cheering Pinkie up had something to do with Rainbow’s ill-considered choice of diving into a bucket of Pinkie Pie’s favorite ice cream flavor. And maybe it had something to do with Rainbow feeling like such a jerk even though she definitely hadn’t done anything wrong. Pinkie Pie was the one who’d super-glued them together. Without even asking permission first! And some ponies said Rainbow Dash had no manners!
Really, though, the time for connecting the dots was some other time. Right now was time for figuring out how to get the heck out of that ice cream bucket.
Pinkie Pie swallowed another sticky slobber slop sorbet, and Dash whispered, “Could you stop that? You’re making way too much noise.”
“I’m stress eating!” Pinkie wailed, distressingly shrill.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what Rarity does,” Pinkie said between globbering gelato gulps. “She says ice cream soothes a wounded soul after being repudiated by a faithless inamorata.”
“What’ed by a faithless what’a?” Dash asked, popping her head up for another survey of the situation.
“I think it means something like when a pear morgue stops returning your calls.”
“A pear morgue?”
“Yup!” Pinkie sounded like she was brightening to the topic of Rarity’s romantic lexiconical woes. “That’s part of why Applejack and her are going to the Bluestone Cafe today. To cheer her up.”
“I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about.” But the Bluestone Cafe was just beside Cookies ‘n Cream’s Cookies and Creams. If Applejack and Rarity really were nearby, that might be useful. And at least Pinkie Pie was starting to act a little less mopey. Maybe the ice cream was finally working its sweet dental-dread magic.
“Plus, Rarity seems like a pretty put-together pony,” Pinkie prattled on, oblivious, “like, she’s really got this whole dating thing down to a t-n-t, and if eating too many sweets helps her find true love—I mean I eat way more sugar than she does, so what does that say about the odds for us? And you can’t argue with that figure. I mean, have you seen her flanks?”
“Oh, hey! There she is.” Rainbow Dash spotted Rarity sitting at a table with Applejack at the Bluestone.
“We should go say hi!” Pinkie cheered, like that wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever come up with. Well, second worst.
Pinkie was already halfway to leaping out with a flash of confetti in one hoof, a trumpet in the other, and a too-cool-for-school pegasus glued to her chest when Dash tackled her. The result was an even more awkward and confused tangle of hooves and tails and cookie chunks at the slippery sloppery bottom of the half-empty bucket. Dash’s head ended up pressed somewhere around Pinkie’s neck.
Dash couldn't help but marvel for about the hundredth time that day at just how warm Pinkie was. Like a freshly machine-dried blanket. And soft, too. And snuggable. And when Dash was pressed up against her like this, she could feel Pinkie’s heartbeat. Wild and excited, just like the life of the pony it sustained.
And jeez, it just made Dash feel so weird. Like she was at the tippy-top of a loop de loop, and her stomach was squip-squeezed two-thirds of the way up her throat, and any second she could free fall backwards rump-first out of the sky and be happy about it. But all that was more confusing messy feeling stuff she could figure out some other time. Now was time for asking, “Pinkie, are you crazy?”
“Yes!” Pinkie Pie answered happily.
“Okay, yeah, I knew that, but could you maybe be just a little less crazy, just for today? Like by realizing that we definitely can’t let Applejack or Rarity see us?” Dash dragged herself back to the top of the bucket. “And stop licking me!”
“But you’ve got cookie in your hair and it’s yummy,” Pinkie said, voice muffled, muzzle buried in Dash’s dripping mane.
“We’re surrounded by cookie!” Dash nearly shouted. “There’s cookie everywhere. We’re in a literal bucket of cookie. You could eat cookie anywhere but off me.”
“But yours is the yummiest.” Undeterred, Pinkie kept gobbling away, now at the ice cream on Dash’s feathers. “And why can’t we let Applejack or Rarity see us?”
Rainbow Dash decided to ignore Pinkie’s mouthy ministrations. And maybe it felt kind of nice, sort of, but not really. Kind of like being groomed. “Because we can’t let them see us like this.”
“Like what?”
Dash just rolled her eyes, which she felt was a perfectly adequate response before remembering that Pinkie couldn’t see her do it. “Glued together and covered in cookies ‘n cream with extra cream!”
“Why not?”
Dash noticed that Pinkie had stopped eating, and Pinkie’s voice had gotten quieter. “Because they might think… things,” Dash said.
“Because they might think that you liked me?” Pinkie asked, surprisingly matter-of-fact.
“Well, yeah,” Dash answered, and tried to shake the feeling that she was messing this all up even worse somehow by saying so.
“And it would be really horrible if ponies thought that about us? Like, hobgoblins haunted horror house hillbillies kind of horrible?”
“Yes,” Dash said. And it would be. Obviously. That was the whole point of this, right? Why else would Rainbow Dash have shoved herself and Pinkie Pie into the trapped tight confines of a bucket of Pinkie’s favorite ice cream?
Pinkie stayed quiet.
Rainbow Dash waited, and checked outside again, and felt a cold dribble ice cream trickle down her forehead. And Pinkie still didn’t say anything. Dash hated silence. She super hated silence around Pinkie. It felt heavy and gross, like a gloppy gloopy bucket of half-melted ice cream and sexually repressed ponies. Dash cleared her throat and said, “You know, you can eat cookie out of my mane if it, like, makes you feel better or whatever. I don’t actually care.”
Pinkie didn’t eat anymore ice cream, but she did say, “You wouldn’t say mean things to Applejack or Rarity if you knew they felt bad about something, even if it was about something really super silly.”
“Uh, I guess.” More annoying ice cream was slipping down Dash's head. “I mean, if it was something really silly, I might joke with them a little bit.”
“Not if you knew it made them feel really poopy.”
“Whatever, sure.”
“And you’d always help them, no matter what,” Pinkie continued, sounding a bit like a school teacher chastising a misbehaving student. “Even if it was silly too, you’d never say no.”
Dash was starting to feel a bit like a little kid, too. And the ice cream was getting into her eyes. “Well, yeah, duh, because they’re my friends. What’s your point?”
“Why do you think Applejack and Rarity are going to make fun of you if you go over there and ask them for help?”
Dash frowned. And sticky melty ice cream kept slipping down her head. “They... wouldn’t, I guess.”
“Then why won’t you go over there and ask them for help?”
“I don’t know. I—ugh!” Dash opened her mouth and a wallop of ice cream slipped into her mouth. “I can’t even talk with all this ice cream all over me!”
Pinkie stretched up from underneath her, up to her face, and then over. Then she smiled right in Dash’s face, a classic big goofy Pinkie Pie grin, and licked the cookies ‘n cream with extra cream off Rainbow Dash’s forehead, and Dash blushed and felt stupid.
“We’re your friends,” Pinkie said.
“I know that.” Dash looked out over at where Applejack and Rarity were sitting together at a white cloth-covered table, and watching them she realized she did know they would never make fun of her for anything, and that’d she’d known that for a long time, especially not just for hanging out with Pinkie Pie. “But it’s not even about what they would say. It’s what they would think, and then what they wouldn't say. Or what they'd say. Or it’s not even about them. It’s just me, or it isn’t. Or something. I don’t know, okay? It doesn’t even matter, because we can’t get to them anyway, because we’re stuck in a stupid ice cream bucket in a stupid ice cream stall!” Dash checked again, and they were still surrounded on all sides by shopping ponies. “See? We’d need some kind of huge distraction.”
“Oh, like the fireworks!” Pinkie said, her face brightening. “They should go off any minute.”
Before Rainbow Dash even had a chance to ask what Pinkie was talking about, something exploded over the market. Fireworks flashed and thundered overhead, and the next time Dash looked, every single head in the crowd was pointed up.
Without thinking, Dash leaped out of the bucket, dragging a giggling Pinkie along with her. She didn’t have time to think. Any second, the fireworks would stop or ponies would look back down, and Dash’s only chance at escape would be gone. She rocketed across the market, hooves barely touching the ground, silent as she could be while still lugging Pinkie around, weaving between groups of ponies jaw-dropped ogling the sky. Moving on reaction and instinct, she sprinted straight for the only other safe spot she saw.
Rainbow Dash raced into the outdoor seating section of the Bluestone Cafe, and threw herself and Pinkie both under Applejack and Rarity's covered dining table.