Pinkie Pie loved her new home, but it wasn't quite up to her standards just yet. The building wasn't properly decorated, and what little paint there was on the aging Sugarcube Corner was peeling and cracking. Gramps Pischinger hadn't really had the energy in his last years to keep up with the upkeep, and his daughter Grammy's eyesight was going. It was really a good thing that Missus Cake and her new husband had shown up when they did.
Pinkie loved the hay out of helping old Graham Cracker with the endless round of baking and cleaning and shop upkeep, but it used to really ate into her party-planning self-training regimen. Her shiny new cutie mark meant that Pinkie really was the best at what she did, but she knew that there was still plenty of room for improvement. Daddy Pie always said that self-improvement was a life-long commitment to the earth-pony way, and dang it, she was going to live up to the family traditions in one way or another!
It did mean that she hadn't been able to start in on a number of re-decoration projects she had planned. Or, rather, she hadn't had the time before poor, widowed Grammy's daughter Missus Cake finally showed up, a fresh new Mr. Cake in tow. Pinkie Pie never was cross with anypony, ever, but she had thought about it a bit in the months before Missus Cake appeared.
Grammy had been so sad after Gramps died. Pinkie hadn't liked that one bit. Wakes were her very least favorite type of party, even though she'd done her best to make sure that ponies celebrated the eldest Cake's life properly. It was only proper, she knew.
After a day or two of observing the youngest Cake and her skittish husband, though, Pinkie decided she'd forgive the young lovebirds their prolonged absence. They put up a good front, but the two weren't doing all that great, either. Neither of them said anything, and both tried to hide it, but Pinkie could recognize the signs.
Rock Valley had contributed more than its share of volunteers for the EUP over the centuries. It was a very traditional place, and there wasn't an awful lot to keep the young and restless down on the farm. Not before they got out and got a look at some of the worst parts of Creation. Most of them came on home after they'd done their tours, the ones that survived. Rock Valley was full of prematurely aged veteran ponies, and you could see the occasional eye-patch or prosthetic down at the stone-seed store and the co-op. Pinkie's father, and two uncles were veterans; Uncle Gneiss had a glass eye he liked to take out at family gatherings to make the fillies giggle.
Pinkie's own sister Maud was halfway through her tour right now. Pinkie kept up a rigorous correspondence with her absent sister, and knew she was safe and sound. There weren't any hot wars right now on the outworlds, so Maud said.
And Pinkie knew that Maud would never lie to her. Maud was the most honest pony Pinkie knew.
So Pinkie knew what veterans looked like when they came back from the service a little chewed up. Inside or out. And Mr. Cake had it bad. Pinkie had never seen a veteran with quite the sort of shakes that Mr. Cake had to suppress now and again. She was extra, extra careful around Mr. Cake, and made sure not to experiment with her explosives or her plans for a party cannon where it might startle the easily-startled Mr. Cake.
Missus Cake was a slightly different case, and Pinkie mis-stepped a couple times around the portly baker-pony before she figured out where the soft spots in the soil were. Pinkie wasn't sure where the Cakes had done their tour, but it must have been a real doozie.
But Pinkie had been able to get everypony to ignore all the black dogs nosing around, and found a way to bond with Missus Cake. (Mr. Cake was easy, but then, stallions were always easy. Be quiet when he needed quiet, tell him tongue-twisters when he needed distracting, and don't prank him when he's got that wild look in his eyes. Easy-peasy!)
Missus Cake was a little harder, but all it really took was baking. Lots and lots of baking. And it just so happened, they lived over a bakery! Life was always giving Pinkie help like that, it's why she knew life wasn't all bad, even when the bags of flour and other inanimate objects started giving her unhelpful advice like 'she'll never like you', or 'those foals are plotting to ostracize you because you're too loud'. Life would always give you something to fill back up on, when it felt like you were just… deflating. And with Missus Cake?
Cake.
Lots and lots of cakes, more sugar than Pinkie's mother had ever allowed in the house. Pinkie and Maud's rock-candy experiments had always foundered on the limited supplies of sugar Cloudy Quartz had been willing to keep on hoof. Pinkie knew that the world was better with sugar, and on this subject, she and Missus Cake were in perfect accord.
One might say that their entire relationship had been founded over a common belief in the saving grace of processed sugar. If anything, Missus Cake was even more fanatical on the subject than Pinkie herself. One of the first things Missus Cake had done, after settling in at Sugarcube Corner, was to triple the sugar orders.
Then she doubled it again, the second month she made the orders. Pinkie was totally fine with this.
No pony who loved sweet pastries as much as Missus Cake could be that bad, Pinkie felt. And so, she pestered the new member of the household until she gave up all of her sweet, sweet baking secrets. Her hidden baking knowledge.
And, weirdly enough, most of Missus Cake's actual secret baking secrets were about… how to fake it without powdered sugar. So many of her tricks were in using substitutes like those Pinkie's own mother had preferred – only now, Missus Cake 'juiced' the concoctions with the real stuff, after laying down the already sweet-sweet recipes with their substitutes.
And somehow the end result was just wonderful. Pinkie's hooves barely touched the ground after a couple servings of Missus Cake's Double Sugar Red Velvet Mini-Cakes, or the Meringue Surprises. All Missus Cake would say was something about making up for lost time, and Pinkie was always willing to take a non-answer for an answer.
After all, it got her access to the best pastries on two worlds! Wait, she wasn't supposed to know that. Best pastries in Equestria!
Anyways, Pinkie and Missus Cake got along now, after a rough early start.
And so, when Pinkie replaced the old wainscoting in the dining room one afternoon a few months after the Cakes moved home, Missus Cake didn't yell and fume at her mother's hyper lodger. She just let Pinkie hammer happily away while the daughter of the household divided her attention between the register and the pastries baking in the ovens in the back. Grammy was upstairs 'resting her eyes', and Mr. Cake was downstairs in the secret basement the Cakes didn't know Pinkie knew they'd re-opened and begun filling with strange memorabilia and well-worn weaponry. Mr. Cake liked to occasionally go down there and polish his knives and axes. Pinkie thought he was starting a bit of a collection, like Uncle Sandstone's. Mr. Cake had ordered a few things through the local delivery service since they'd gotten there.
Pinkie was pretty sure it wasn't anything to be worried about. Some veterans needed a lot of sharp, well-maintained weapons in their closets if they wanted to sleep at night. Uncle Sandstone had been like that. He had the most amazing closets. He had given Pinkie a lot of neat ideas that she had used while drawing up her party munition designs. Including some really clever stuff she hadn't gotten around to just yet.
Missus Cake was looking a little down in the dumps, possibly because of the Apple siblings having just visited to drop off a load of baking apples for the bakery. They seemed like perfectly nice earth ponies, if a bit funny-sounding, but they always seemed to bring down Missus Cake after they left. The baker was always careful to be extra cheerful while they were actually in the shop, though.
Pinkie started singing a carpentry song to try and cheer up the Missus. She didn't like it when the blue-furred baker got all black-dogged. It made Pinkie remember the bad old days, a bit.
But that was before her cutie mark! Everything was going to be alright from here on out! It was going to be alright if she had to countermine under those grouchy saddy miseries and blast them at the Moon!
She even got Missus Cake to start singing with her. Pinkie was the best at getting ponies to harmonize. The wainscoting project went by like lightning, and pretty soon she was brooming up the sawdust and getting out the paints and brushes.
That was when he came into Sugarcube Corner. Pinkie liked pretty much everypony who hadn't broke a Pinkie promise in her presence, and since she'd only just started getting ponies to buy into her formula for promising, there were pretty much nopony right now in her black books.
She'd bought a black book just in case, anyways. With her second paycheque from Graham Cracker, because frankly, party supplies still and always came first.
But this stallion – he was bad news, she knew as soon as she cocked an ear his stuffy way. Canterlot accent, dusty scent she could smell right over the sawdust and the turpentine and whatever dodgy stuff Mr. Quills put in these paints she'd bought from him. And dang it, she was going to find a better supplier for her paints, because her party schedule was too full up for the foreseeable future to get sick on nasty paint fumes.
Pinkie could foresee a very long time into the future. It was one of her inheritance from her Granny Pie. Which was part of the reason why she knew Mr. Snooty Canterlot Dust-bunny Bureaucrat was bad news.
He made her want to mis-spell silly words, and paint outside of the lines.
And he made Missus Cake pucker right up, the older mare was barely able to keep her retail smile in place as the bureaucrat introduced himself.
"Well, it is very nice to meet you, Mr. Palimpsest, but this is a bakery, and a place of business. Unless you have an order, I'm not sure what I can do for you."
"Oh, poppycock! You know very well who I am, Agent Cake. And I know very well who you are. And I won't be put off by letter anymore. I've got questions, and I'm positive you've got answers."
"That is very unlikely by my measure, Mr. Palimpsest, and even if it were in the slightest sense true, you would be violating about a dozen regulations and royal statutes by approaching me at all, let alone in public, at my mother's place of business, of all places. Pinkie! Go find Mr. Cake, and help him with whatever he's doing down there."
"Awww," whined Pinkie, and went slouching through the back and down the set of stairs into the basement she wasn't supposed to know was down there. Missus Cake occasionally forgot what Pinkie was supposed to know and what she wasn't supposed to know, and Pinkie exploited this gap as far as it would go.
It wasn't as if Pinkie couldn't hear every word spoken in the dining room from the basement, anyways. Pinkie's hearing was another inheritance from Granny Pie, and ponies consistently underestimated just how sharp her ears were.
If she could see you, she could hear you. And if she couldn't see you, she still probably could make out at least half of the words you used. Especially if you shouted them like the two upstairs in the now 'closed' dining room.
Tambelon? Pinkie thought she'd heard that name before, but it was a long time ago, possibly from one of her uncles or aunts about far-away goings-on. These matters were more the subject of conversation in dull, boring Rock Valley - with their veterans and their foals out-world carrying spears for the Princess and all – than in most pony towns and villages, but it wasn't the constant subject of chatter, either.
Speaking of boring conversations, Pinkie was quickly growing tired of eavesdropping on the two arguing overhead. It was a lot of nonsense about archives, and texts, and missing books, or manuscripts, or scrolls, or something like that. Not a matter for a party pony to concern herself with, really.
Pinkie occupied herself in coaxing the skittish Mr. Cake out of the bolt-hole he'd built under the stairs, and getting him to show her how to sharpen his new axe.
Pinkie was sure that she could find some sort of party use for battle-axes. She'd found the use in field artillery, after all.
The weaponry lessons took less time than Pinkie had anticipated, and Mr. Cake's killing tools were in perfect shape before the ponies overhead were done with their boring conversation. Missus Cake was still yelling at the bureaucrat, and Pinkie suspected that even Mr. Cake could hear the commotion, because the most amazing series of expressions crossed his usually timid face.
Pinkie grew a little worried for the silly Canterlot pony, and started distracting Mr. Cake with dumb questions about his lack of armor. He sniffed, corrected Pinkie by telling her that the proper term was 'barding', and began to wax nostalgic about his lost 'chamfron'. She asked if that was something like a pickelhaube, and that worked marvels as far as getting that murderous look off of his muzzle.
Pinkie didn't want to be an accessory to murder just yet. It definitely wasn't on her bucket list, and she'd prefer to not have to learn how deep you had to dig an anonymous grave to keep the timberwolves away from the body.
Luckily, Mr. Cake was an utter bore on the subject of 'barding', and could go on for hours on the details. He insisted that properly maintained equipment was the difference between life and being 'ghoul chow', whatever that was.
Pinkie liked the expression on the ghost-filly's voice when Mr. Cake said things like that. It made her feel less weird about sharing her home with a spirit.
Oh, listen to that, Missus Cake finally threw out the disrespectful 'archivist'. Pinkie would have to look up in her reference books what exactly that was. She might have to go back to the tree-library and take out another couple books, and return the ones she still had out. The old librarian might be a bit of a problem – she didn't share Pinkie's opinion that books were only to be returned when you needed to exchange them for other books.
You know, like a ransom. Or maybe a prisoner exchange?
And here the Missus came down the stairs, interrupting Mr. Cake in the midst of a fifteen-minute disquisition on the proper care and maintenance of light caparisons. Which Pinkie thought was a kind of buff coat, but she wasn't exactly sure. Mr. Cake had a deep and abiding contempt for all the terms Pinkie's uncles and neighbors had brought home with them from the service.
Pinkie was beginning to suspect that the Cakes had done their tours somewhere extra, super special. Somewhere which might not even have been in the EUP. Did the Long Patrol use these strange names for everything?
Missus Cake looked at Mr. Cake as he ran out of steam, staring at her, clearly waiting to see what his wife would say.
"Pinkie", he said. "Maybe you ought to go upstairs and look in on the ovens, see if anything needs pulled out."
"No, Carrot," said Missus Cake, "I want to talk to Pinkie now. Pinkie, dear, how much of that did you hear?"
"Oh, not much, really, Missus Cake. Mr. Cake was showing me how to sharpen tools! And telling me how little I knew about 'barding', which I gather isn't at all like armor? And I wasn't interested in all of that silly business about annals and mercenary companies and strange ponies named Sawbones or Foo-follie, and really, what business is it of mine if your reserve status is somehow going to force you to do this or that. You can totally challenge that with your legionary representative, by the way! My Uncle Gneiss used to have all sorts of grief from the Veterans Affairs pests, who kept trying to invoice him for his glass eye, if you can believe that! As if a dull little piece of ensorcelled dragon-glass was something precious or anything like that!"
"Pinkie!" The elder baker was looking pretty serious, and Pinkie shrunk down on her legs, trying to look innocent. "You clearly heard everything. Look, you can't talk about these things, I sent you down here for a very good reason, and shut the shop up to keep the townsfolk out of our business. These are serious matters, and that fool shouldn't have been airing the Princess's business all over Tartarus's half acre like he did. He broke about a dozen laws just now. Mr. Palimpsest is in a great deal of trouble if I report him."
Missus Cake sighed, thinking. "The problem is that I'm in just as much trouble if I report his fool flank for this. And it wouldn't fix how he broke confidence in your hearing. Or get you out of a lot of trouble. Especially if you ever decide to go into the service."
"Oh, I'll never sign up, Missus Cake! Everypony agrees I'd made a terrible soldier! The sergeants would break their vinewood staffs over my tough hide, they all say! And I'm seeing more than enough of Equestria here, where I am. Why would I join the army to go see the world? I'm seeing all of the world I'll ever need right here! And I can feel it in my bones, Missus Cake – I'll go even further than here, before I'm done. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades."
I got out my shades from my mane, and tried to look cool.
But it made it impossible to see, down there in the basement, so I had to put them away, and when I did, Missus Cake was still staring at me, irate. Or worried. I was still trying to figure out her expressions, to be honest.
"This isn't something that can be laughed off, filly. These are the sort of secrets which can get ponies killed. More than I'd like to think about." Then Missus Cake got that thousand-yard stare again, and was someplace else for a bit. The little ghost filly was leaning up against the blue mare like she was trying to comfort her, but Pinkie didn't think Missus Cake felt it. Or, at least, she didn't think so. Missus Cake occasionally looked at the ghost filly as if she'd heard her, but she never really talked to the phantom.
"Anyways! Secrets! Nopony's supposed to talk about this stuff, and Mr. Palimpsest - my Harmonic Convergence, what a pompous name! - just seriously broke that rule. He's lucky if he isn't due for a couple weeks in one of the Agency's darker holes, if he's talking to other ponies like that about this."
Missus Cake spun around, and crouched to stare Pinkie down. Pinkie's smile just widened at the extra attention. It was nice, having ponies give you their undivided attention like that.
"You absolutely, positively, cannot talk about anything you heard, Pinkie. This is ponies-go-into-oubliettes serious stuff. This is wars-start-over-lesser-things important. You understand?"
"Abso-tooti-lootly, Missus Cake! When you spread a friend's secrets around, you just might lose that friend. And the Princess has an awful, awful lot of friends, doesn't she? She has so many more friends to lose if her secret stuff is shared around! Sharing may be caring, but not if you do it without permission. Sharing without permission is stealing!"
Pinkie took a deep breath, and broke out her big guns. But not the real big guns, because the prototype party cannon made Mr. Cake really nervous.
"Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a trenchknife in my eye, I swear nopony, not even a fly, will find out from me you used to be a spy! Or anything else about that letter you have hidden in the shaft of Mr. Cake's infantry lance, that Mr. Palimpsest was trying to get you to hoof over to him!" And didn't that set the griffon among the cockatrices!
But Pinkie got Missus Cake calmed down after a while, after she'd pinkie-promised for the baker's-dozenth-time that she'd keep Missus Cake's secrets. Even the ones Missus Cake didn't want to admit were secrets, like the white-furred, bat-winged phantom filly who followed her everywhere, and kept bad things from happening to the still kinda distracted mare. Pinkie wondered if every pony had a guardian angel like the ghost filly, and Pinkie just couldn't see the other ones?
Mr. Cake went upstairs to re-open the dining room and keep Sugarcube Corner from missing the supper rush, while Missus Cake and Pinkie went around and around about all the things Pinkie knew that she shouldn't have known. Pinkie obliged the Missus by dutifully trying her best to forget this secret and that, but it was kind of hard when she kept forgetting the list of the things she had agreed to forget, and finally, they agreed that Pinkie would just not talk about any of it.
Especially the little ghost filly, who was looking a bit sulky about being ignored. Pinkie would have to play extra, extra hard with the ghost after Missus Cake got bored with yelling at her.
Eventually, the ghost and Pinkie left Missus Cake staring at the rolled-up letter Pinkie wasn't supposed to know was hidden in the shaft of Mr. Cake's infantry lance, and they went off to play hide and go seek in the back-alleys.
The ghost filly knew all of the neatest shortcuts in town. Most of which were through really neat holes Pinkie had never noticed before.
Granny Pie was right. Giggling at the ghosties was the best.