//------------------------------//
// Pucker Up 
// Story: Joker's Wild 
// by Damaged 
//------------------------------//

Fighting down the bubbling laughter that didn't want to stop, I schooled my expression into as serious a big grin as I could manage. "That is,"—I couldn't keep a little titter from my lips—"really strong. It makes you actually feel happy. Is it really just a poison, or is it affecting something else?"

"That's what we need to find out. But first a viable cutting is needed; I am not going back to where I got this from." Joker was smiling just as wide as I was, but I could feel a serious tone underpinning his words. "Being a vine, we take lots of little lengths. I tasted the soil up there, it is moist loam, and a little acidic."

I blinked at the information, and filed it away as important; I had to assume everything Joker was saying was important in some way or another. "So we need to make some soil acidic for it? How much?"

"Good questions. It didn't taste too strong, so we could add a little special moss to the mix, or even use some vinegar. It was a tropical jungle around the plant, so warm and wet." A pair of cutters—floating in Joker's magical aura—hovered towards the vine he was manipulating.

"You have a greenhouse, Ah saw that when we were walking up to your house. That will keep any frost off it, too." I watched as small lengths were cut from the vine. "Does it need anything else?"

Joker finished cutting up the thinnest vine, stacked the small cuttings to one side and set his cutters down. "Happiness, near as I can tell. The vine is a little like a changeling: it feeds off emotions. Lucky I have an apprentice to regale with my jokes, right?" 

I couldn't help it, I giggled at the prospect of having Joker telling bad jokes to get me to laugh and feed the vines, and to my surprise the cuttings he had just made seemed to squirm a little. "Wow!"

"Quite reactive to laughter." Joker tickled a vine with the tip of one hoof, and it curled up and tried to latch on. "I particularly want a seed pod, they seemed to have the most potent effect. Let's get these planted, and you can see what other things you can identify."

Walking out to the greenhouse behind Joker's house, I noticed Zecora carefully walking around the plants that were in the open, gingerly taking a leaf here, or a seed pod there. I glanced to Joker.

Joker raised an eyebrow at me.

I pointed to Zecora, who was walking along a row, carefully plucking just a single leaf from each of the plants. "You let ponies come and pick what they need?" 

"I don't let just anypony do this. I trust Zecora more than most." Joker walked up to the greenhouse, and his horn glowed vivid blue. "There are rules in here: nopony but you or me may come in, don't touch anything unless you know exactly how to harvest from it, don't inhale anything, and avoid leaning into the garden beds." At my nod, he led the way.

Inside the glass-walled building was warmer than the spring air outside. Plants of all kinds grew in here, and I could start to spot why Joker had been so emphatic about his rules. "Sleep well, fever-few, is that…?" I pointed a hoof at a ball of what looked like goop, keeping my limb from straying anywhere near the actual gardens.

"A changeling pod. Despite their appearance, they are plants. Changelings cultivate them, and they grow within the changelings' mucous. King Thorax told me I could have this one, so long as I never shared a cutting of it." Joker turned and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. "You have a question."

"Why do you have it? What is it good for?" I watched the thing pulse and tremble, the goo containing nothing.

Joker's face brightened from its serious aspect. "It is a filter. All kinds of feelings go into the plant, and it expels good feelings into the goop. Happiness and love are waste products. I don't feed it enough, but maybe together we could get a more substantial crop." His sudden, wistful sigh caught me off guard.

"What's wrong?" I turned all my attention to Joker, ignoring the changeling pod.

"All of this—this apprentice thing—comes down to one thing: will you have a bad reaction to the poison joke?" Joker was staring into my eyes, and I couldn't help but feel a little self-conscious at his blue-eyed stare. "You really like the plants, don't you, Bloom?"

My brain had to connect the nickname with me before I realized he was after a response. "I do, but there is more than that. I like helping ponies, and that means potions, poultices, philters,"—I couldn't help but giggle at the look Joker gave me—"and more… I was on an alliteration roll." My explanation got a chuckle from Joker. "The point is, growin' plants, even dangerous ones, helps everypony. And as I said, I like plants."

Joker turned back to his garden, and with his head turned away I heard him mutter something softly under his breath, "Please." An empty row in the lines of plants was his clear target, and I watched as he used his magic to start turning the soil over. "As I said, the soil where it was growing was acidic, which means some peat would help." He nodded to a bag to the side.

I walked to the bag and looked inside. The coarse sack had a rich smelling moss inside. Grabbing up the bag in my mouth, I heaved it up onto my back. Stepping closer, I saw Joker's look of astonishment. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I am just not used to working with an earth pony." Joker used his magic to reach into the bag and pull some rich mixture out. Packing it down onto the garden bed, I was not surprised when he took a nibble of the stuff, screwed his face up, but nodded at his work. "Did you hear the joke about Doctor Caballeron?"

I blinked in surprise. "The-The stallion Daring Do always had to deal with?" He nodded. "Nope. I read the books'n all, but I don't remember any jokes about him."

"Good thing it wasn't, Daring probably hasn't told anypony else." Plucking one little vine out at a time, Joker started off licking the tip of the first, and pierced the special soil mix with the little twig. 

"Hold on. Are you saying you know Daring Do? She is a made-up character!" I narrowed my eyes. "Is that the joke?"

Joker set the second little twig into the ground. "Daring Do is as real as you or I, where do you think I find some of these things?" He waved a hoof in the air, sketching a circle. "Anyway, where was I…? Oh yes, Caballeron. What is the best way to get away from Caballeron?"

I thought back to the books, and all the ways Daring Do had beaten him. "Was it throwing four shiny things at him?"

"A good one, but no. The trick to escaping him is his henchponies. After telling them where the treasure is buried, you point to a pile of shovels, and tell them to take their pick." Joker set another of the little vines in the dirt.

"Pick…Shovels…" I started giggling, my lips curling up into a smile. "That isn't very-very funny." I stumbled over my words as I struggled not to lose my composure. A moment later my laughter pealed out in the greenhouse, and I told myself it was probably some left over dust from the giggle vine.

Joker quickly planted the rest of the vine cuttings, and in the midst of my laughter I spotted them all squirming, and could visibly see little roots sprouting from the end of each. The sight sobered me. "Wow…"

Joker heaved a sigh. "I think a joke a day should do the trick. I would tell them to myself, but I have heard all the good ones already."

I tried to cover my mouth with a hoof, but I was giggling past it already. "Stop!" I tried to make the word sound important, like I meant it.

"Stop telling jokes? But that would,"—Joker pointed to the timber that was bordering the garden bed—"be terrible!"

"No!" I shook my head and backed up a step. "Not puns!" My grin was just as big as Joker's. "Please don't tell me you are branching out to puns!"

Joker froze for a moment, then I was grabbed up by his forehooves and spun around. "That was terrible, and great! Please never leaf!" Twirling around, he laughed as loudly as I did, and I couldn't believe how silly the situation was.

Giggling and spinning, we each gave the occasional pun to keep the laughs going. A soft knocking on the door of the greenhouse caused both of us to stop almost dead in our tracks. Lifting his hoof up to indicate silence, Joker crept to the door and opened it a sliver. "Yeeeeesssss?" His drawn out question rode up the scale, then back down again.

"Though things appear to be alright, your laughing gave me quite the fright." Zecora's tone spoke more of curiosity than real concern now, and I realized I had never heard her quite so interested in finding something out in the five years she had been teaching me.

"We were planting giggle vine." Joker sounded so casual about the action that moments ago had been an almost reverent ceremony. "I guess we wanted to give them some fertilizer. How are they doing, Bloom?"

Again, I took a moment to remember that it was Joker's nickname for me, before I looked at the garden bed. The change was amazing. Not only had the little vine plants taken root, but I could see leaves growing on them, as well as some that had nearly tripled in length. "Uh… they are doing well." I fished for an explanation, but nothing really came to mind. "I don't think anything will stem the tide of their growth."

I blinked rapidly at the silly pun. It was so completely unlike me, but considering Joker's infectious nature I smiled more.

Joker, on the other hoof, started giggling like a loon again. "S-S-Sorry Zecora, I need a moment." He closed the door in Zecora's face, and turned to me. "What put that-that seed of a pun-in your head?"

Clamping my mouth closed, I lifted both forehooves up to try desperately to keep from laughing. Staring at each other for several moments, I finally got my mouth under control. I lifted back my hooves, and gave a slow sigh. "I don't know, but it's starting to bear fruit."

Joker's eyes widened in shock, and together we fell to the ground and started rolling around with laughter. This time the knocking at the door was more insistent, and the tone of it wouldn't let us ignore it. Together, we both struggled to our hooves and while Joker walked to the door, I straightened up the bag of peat.

When Joker opened the door to find Zecora, he just held up his hoof in gentle reproof. "Please, don't even think of working a plant pun into a rhyme. I don't think either of us could survive that."

Zecora didn't look annoyed, but gestured back towards Joker's house. "Come inside you loon, you missed lunch, it's after—" Zecora seemed frozen in place, her rhyme not finished. She was looking over Joker's shoulder, right at the changeling pod. "A cocoon?"

"It's a plant." I trotted forward, giving both Joker and Zecora the impetus to move away from the doorway. "Oh, what's for lunch?" I fell in beside Zecora and Joker, and together we walked towards the house.

"I might have some apples, and there is always some porridge on." Joker almost seemed to prance. "This would be about the earliest a poison joke effect would start." He looked at me meaningfully.

"I don't feel any different. Hungry though." I just shrugged. "Maybe I am immune?" I froze at the sight of a cockatrice at the back door of Joker's house. Eyes wide in terror, I started to yell. 

The scream died in my throat when Joker walked right up to the wicked beast, and tickled its comb. "How are you today, Hazel?" The cockatrice clucked a few times, weaving around Joker's legs with its long tail. "Haven't you eaten yet? There should be plenty of snails in the garden."

"My fault that may be, at my presence they did flee." Zecora took the chance to inspect one of the more wild creatures of the Everfree Forest. Reaching out a hoof to touch the former chicken, Zecora almost made contact when Joker knocked her leg to the side.

"Hazel gets a little upset when anypony but me touches her." Wrapping the cockatrice in his magic, Joker lifted her carefully to the side. For her part, the hen glared at him and gave a few scolding clucks, but nopony was turned to stone. "And if she gets upset, I get statues."

With the path clear, we all headed for the back door. On my way inside, I felt something brush my leg and looked down. Panic and terror froze me in place.

"Well that is odd. Hazel seems to like you, Bloom." Though his words were meant to comfort, I was too busy trying to deal with having a cockatrice tail wrapped around one of my legs. "Go on, give her a pet. The worst that happens is I brew some stone-b-gone."

The cockatrice clucked up at me, just like one of the chickens back on our apple farm. "D-Don't turn me to stone, please?" Reaching a hoof down, I stroked the monster's crest, and was surprised at how soft it was. The flesh on top of the cockatrice's head felt just like a regular chicken's, but their feathers seemed even softer. "Wow. You feel amazing." My hoof continued, stroking down to the animal's back, and over the minuscule, leathery wings.

I looked directly into the cockatrice's eyes, but no magic blasted me. "You just wanted some scratching?" It clucked at me, as if my question had an obvious answer. "I bet Zecora stirred up a snail or two in the gar… den." Before I finished the word, the cockatrice was off, clucking for all it was worth. "Hungry, too."

"Lunch!" Joker's cry was followed by an apple flying towards me. 

Grabbing it in one hoof, I bit into one of the Apple Family's finest. And gagged. "What is this?!" My mouth puckered up, and my tongue recoiled in abject horror at what I was tasting. Spitting the apple out, a yellow lump lay on the floor.

"Huh." Joker tilted his head to the side, though I barely noticed it. "Here, have another apple."

This time I barely made the catch, but hoping that the taste of apple would rid me of whatever gag Joker was playing, I bit into it. Bitterness intensified, and my face seemed to screw up as all I could taste was the most horrible flavor imaginable. "Why do you keep giving me lemons?!" I spat the yellow lump of nastiness beside the first.

"I'm not." Joker looked to be having a great time now. "Bloom, I think we just found your joke."