//------------------------------// // Secrets and Pies // Story: A Dream // by totallynotabrony //------------------------------// Rainbow was listlessly making stylish cloud hairdos for herself as I walked by.  To my surprise, she was actually pretty good at it.  Apparently crafting was all she had to fall back on since her husband had disavowed her for being a bitch, her friends had shunned her for being a bitch, and the Wonderbolts had ceased to exist because of that bitch Gabby. There was also the matter of Rainbow’s best friend Pinkie dying and her love-like-a-sister friend Fluttershy getting turned into a stationary nuclear power plant. So I guess surprisingly stylish cloud manes were all Rainbow had left and it warmed my heart to see her so torn down.  I think by this point you know my opinion of Rainbow. “‘Sup bitch,” I said. She didn’t reply.  That kind of threw me for a loop.  Rainbow not even reacting to me anymore? I went on by and headed for the pub.  I’d called a meeting. Only Twilight and Applejack showed up.  They were the only two who could, and I hadn’t invited Rainbow.  Twilight had also brought along Pinkie’s skull. “All right gang, we have a problem,” I began. “My whole family is dead!” Twilight shouted. “You say that like it’s my problem and also like I didn’t save you from the same fate,” I said. “You can save them!  You and Sunset have been working with necromancy-” “Let me stop you right there,” I said.  I turned to the terminal I had installed in the corner of the room.  “Tin Mare, what did we detect in the air after the explosion?” “Salt,” Tin Mare replied. “The bomb must have been packed with it,” I said.  “Salt is bad for ghosts.” “My family aren’t ghosts!” “Well, they’re dead, so...yes they are.  And then they got salted.  Ghosts don’t like salt, so we’re not getting them back.  Gabby must have known that we would try.” I turned back to the others.  “But Twilight’s dead family isn’t why we’re here.  We have a problem.” “Aside from Gabby?” Applejack asked. “I can’t find Cheerilee.” “Um...how is that related?” Twilight asked. “Well, aside from being a valuable asset in the fight against everything, I’m trying to be a nice guy and apologize for all the shit I’ve done so many times to her so she will actually help us in said fight against everything.” I couldn’t remember if Applejack was read in to the whole Cheerilee-is-a-vampire thing, so I just talked around it. I went on.  “I mean, I hope she isn’t dead or something like Celestia.  I’m really getting tired of updating the killed-by-Gabby list.  Tin Mare, what’s the latest status of the killed-by-Gabby list?” “KBG is current as of five minutes ago.  Gabby killed Sapphire Shores.” “Why?  Also, KBG is weird.  Call it the KGB from now on, even though that isn’t the acronym.” “Sapphire Shores was preventing Gabby from reaching number one on the pop chart.” “Wait, Gabby has a pop music career now?” “She is the best at everything.” I frowned.  “But wait, if she was the best at everything, then why did she need to kill Sapphire Shores?” “‘The best’ is an overgeneralization.  As it happens, she was in fact second best at pop music.  However, now that Sapphire Shores is dead, she’s the best after all.” “That makes sense.  Thanks, Tin Mare.” “Hella.” I turned back to the others.  Twilight said, “Wait, go back, Celestia’s dead?” “Oh yeah.  I didn’t make a big deal out of it because it happened months ago and I only just found out.  Gabby killed her, of course.  She was kind of a dick about it, too, killing Celestia on vacation.” “Celestia’s dead!?” “Calm down.  Freaking out now isn’t going to bring her back.” “Valiant, you need to do something!  I hate to say this about my family, bless their souls-” “Can’t.  They got salted.” “-but Celestia is the most important pony ever, of all time, in the universe!  We need her!  Bring her back to life!” “One, that happened months ago and I don’t even know where the body is.  Two, I’ve got a plan that will fix everything.  It’ll be like a reset.  Tin Mare, a little help with the explanation?” “Hella.  What Valiant is trying to say is that it will be as if a copy was made of the entire universal existence of every living being and physical location and then applied in place of the current, flawed one.” “That doesn’t help,” said Applejack. “Don’t worry about it, I’m still working on the plan,” I told her. “But you need to bring Celestia back,” said Twilight. I pointed a hoof at her.  “Look, it ain’t happening.  Not only for reasons, but because it would be pointless because something better is coming along.” “There is nothing better than Celestia!” “I don’t know, pie is pretty good,” said Pinkie, speaking up for the first time. “I mean, your pies are good.  Maybe even better than mine,” said Applejack, “But I think maybe Princess Celestia was better.” “Absolutely,” said Twilight.  “Everypony loved Princess Celestia.  Everypony but Rainbow Dash loved your pies.” “Wait, what!?” shouted Pinkie.  “She always said she liked them!” “She lied,” I observed. “Has she been lying about anything else?” “It’s Rainbow Dash,” I pointed out. “Well, we should’ve seen that one coming,” muttered Applejack. “Somepony take me outside so I can give her a piece of my mind,” Pinkie demanded. I got up, went into the other room, handed Pinkie’s skull to Guinness, and said, “Go take this to Rainbow so Pinkie can yell at her about not liking pie.” Guinness didn’t question it. I came back into the room.  “Hey, speaking of pie, is Soarin’ still around?  Dude liked pie.” “Soarin’ is still head of the Royal Guard,” said Tin Mare. “Cool.  I mean, he’s better at his job than Shining was, but even he couldn’t protect Celestia.” “I’m still right here!” Twilight protested. “Would you rather I lie to you about the harsh state of the world?” I asked. “You lie all the time!” “And I keep telling you, I’m trying to be a nice guy.  Now, would you rather I lie to you about the harsh state of the world?” Twilight gritted her teeth and let out a long breath, glaring at me.  “No.” “Okay.”  I turned to Applejack and put my hoof on her shoulder.  “I’m truly sorry to inform you that Gabby killed your dog Winona.  You have my deepest condolences.” Applejack’s face looked like it aged twenty years in two seconds.  “W-why?” “For being the best dog she could be.  I’m sorry for your loss.” “Hang on,” said Twilight.  “Why didn’t you give any sympathy for Celestia or my family?” “I think we both agree that Celestia had done enough living.  A couple thousand years and she was still enjoying herself.  Also, you and I just barely survived what killed your family, so at the time I thought it was more important to focus on that.” Twilight stood up.  “You know what?  Forget you, Valiant.  If you aren’t going to help bring back Celestia and my family, I’m just going to do it myself.”  She stormed out. Applejack facehoofed.  “This is going to end badly, isn’t it?” “Probably.” I walked out into the street.  Pinkie was still yelling at Rainbow, who looked...sad, mostly.  This was a perfect time to declare “not my monkeys, not my circus” and I left them be. I passed by the farmers’ market train and bought some grapes and then went back to my place.  In a dark room, I checked over both shoulders before slowly opening a secured lockbox. Inside were a few things that would help me put my plan into action.  Since the plan involved making things right again, I figured it was somewhat justified in breaking a few things to achieve that. I’d taken the medallion given to Discord by Tirek, originally given to Tirek by his brother Scorpan.  I’d also gotten my hands on the Crystal Heart. All the Crystal Ponies were earth ponies, which meant the Crystal Heart was probably powered by earth pony magic and maybe even grown by rock farmers like Pinkie’s family.  Limestone Pie, the crack fiend, had had no trouble stealing the Crystal Heart for me.  All in all, I considered receiving stolen goods a much lesser crime than stealing the one magical artifact that kept an entire kingdom from freezing over.  Eh, it wasn’t like there were Crystal Ponies around to care.  Plus, crack wasn’t illegal, so paying Limestone with it wasn’t a crime either. There were a couple of other magical artifacts there.  Some small, some big.  I was carefully building spells with Sunset’s help to daisy chain all of them together to feed into a repository.  All this magic would power my endgame plan. I closed the door and went back into the living room.  I stopped to polish a few snow globes.  These were the ones that I hadn’t gotten around to transferring to the display in the library just yet. Actually, I might as well do that now.  Maybe I could see what academic insanity Twilight was up to this time. I went over to the library.  There were suspiciously arcane lights coming from the basement, so I went down to have a look. The place was a little bit of a mess.  Academic texts lay everywhere, apparently from Twilight hurriedly working up some magic.  I saw some leftover fast food wrappers, probably dropped there from Spike. The replacement ponies were still partially chained to the wall.  Celebrity, Bakey Pie, and Shovelshy were currently out and about, filling in for their indisposed counterparts. Twilight was in the center of the room, carefully marking a summoning circle on the floor.  She was sweating and had a crazed look in her eye. “Twilight, if you really think this is a good idea…” I began. “What, you don’t think I can’t handle necromancy?” Twilight spat.  She got a little aggressive with the chalk. “No, I just think you could be doing better, more productive sins against nature.” “Valiant, I really don’t appreciate you comparing science to-” I laughed. “What’s so funny?” “Oh, wook at da widdle unicorn who thinks she’s doing science.  Bitch, you don’t even know.” She made the last chalk mark, slammed the spellbook closed, and said, “Watch me.” “You know I have my tape recorder right here?”  I showed it to her.  “This conversation is a matter of record.  I’ll give you a chance to rescind what you just said.  I know I’ve been needling you pretty hard on this, so I can understand your emotions aren’t quite in place.  Because I’m a nice guy, I want to give you fair warning before I make you eat those words.” Twilight glared at me and fired up the spell. As the magenta magic swirled around the room, I said, “So what’s it supposed to do?” “The spell will reach out into the cosmos and retrieve a lost soul.  Since we don’t have Celestia’s body, I couldn’t easily just identify her.  Moreover, we don’t have any vessel to contain her essence.” “So we’re going to get a ghost, no physical parts.” “Right.” I looked at her.  Twilight glanced at me.  “What?” “I didn’t say anything.” “You think I can’t handle a ghost?” I held up the tape recorder.  “The record will show that I did not, in fact, say anything.  But no, I don’t think you can.” Twilight was about to reply, when the magic began to swirl faster and change color.  It rotated through a few colors of the rainbow, beginning to slow down like it was Wheel of Fortune or something.  I tried to predict what color it would land on. It was teal. The runes on the floor began to glow.  Twilight took a step forward, gazing intently as the spell coalesced and began to draw towards the center of the circle.  It all sucked in like an implosion and then popped back into being as a floating ball of light. “P-princess Celestia?” Twilight asked. “No, I’m Starlight Glimmer,” said the ghost. I laughed. “I was looking for Princess Celestia…” Twilight said dumbly as I kept laughing. “Wait, aren’t you Twilight Sparkle?” said Starlight.  Her voice turned.  “You cost me my village!” The ghostly sphere of soul began to advance menacingly, as menacingly as a spot of light can. I was still laughing, and I kept on laughing as I grabbed an empty glass jar off the table, scooped the ball of light into it, sealed the lid and poured on top a handful of salt from the fast food packets. “Oh man,” I said.  “I didn’t think this was going to go well, but damn Twilight.” “I’ll-I’ll try again!” she said.  “It was my first time ever using this spell!  Plus, maybe now we can reform Starlight.  I was hoping to perhaps get a chance, but Cordoba killed her.  Now I can try it postmortem!” “What, so we don’t have to live good lives to go to heaven now?  We can have it done after we’re dead?”  I tousled her mane.  “Endless entertainment, Sparkle, endless entertainment.” I turned to go upstairs and stopped short.  “Wait…” I looked at the wall.  Reading Rainbow was gone. Hurrying outside, I saw Rainbow Dash down in the street.  There was a bulge in her abdomen and she looked like she was in pain. “What happened to you?” I asked. “She ate me so my sharp edges would give her internal bleeding so she would die,” said Pinkie from inside Rainbow. I blinked.  “What?  You...” “I finally did it,” said Rainbow through her clenched teeth.  “You’re just in time, Valiant.  I want you to watch me die.” I shook my head.  “What the hell?” “You heard me.  Nopony likes me and I have nothing to look forward to.  No family, no friends, no job.  So I’m killing myself.  But you know me, it’s got to be the best suicide you’ve ever seen.” “Uh-uh, nope, that’s weird.” “If I had a better way, I would have done it,” said Rainbow.  It looked like her stomach was turning purple. “Well, you should have picked a quicker method, because I’m taking you to the hospital.  You’re a bitch, but people will see me saving you and think I’m a nice guy.” “If you try to save me, I’ll tell Gabby about your little plan,” she said. “What!?  How did you know?” “I kinda sorta told her what she was messing up by being like this,” said Pinkie. “Yeah, and if you save me I’ll tell Gabby what you’re up to,” said Rainbow. “You would ruin my plan and let Gabby take over the universe just to spite me?” “Yeah.” “God, you’re a bitch.”  I shook my head.  Rainbow continued to moan.  It was super uncomfortable. “Screw this,” I said.  I pulled out my Desert Eagle. “If you kill me, ponies will know you’re not a nice guy,” said Rainbow. She had me.  I couldn’t help her or she’d destroy the universe.  I couldn’t shorten this cringey moment  or I’d be a bad guy. “Well, I’m just going to walk away, then,” I said. “Valiant!  Don’t leave me in here!” said Pinkie.  “Somepony has to get me out after she dies.” Rainbow smirked through the pain.  “That’s right, Valiant.  Sit down right here and watch me die.” “Jesus Christ,” I muttered.  Speaking of which, I should get Bible to come over here and give her last rites. Nah, Rainbow would refuse and I didn’t care which direction she went when she died.  However long that would take. “Pinkie, what’s it like in there?  How much longer does she have?” “I don’t know, maybe ten minutes.” “Why do you even want to die?” I said to Rainbow. “I told you already.  What do I have left?” she said.  “You know, Valiant, you caused most of this.  You made me kill myself.  I want that on your conscience.” “It already was, actually.  And I wouldn't have done it if you weren’t such a bitch.  In fact, when you’re dead, I’ll be happy.” “All the more reason to make you sit here and watch as long as I can.” “This is so messed up,” I grumbled.  “At least let me drink.” I pulled out my tequila, but Rainbow snatched it and downed the bottle before I could wrestle it back. “Ahhh.”  She smirked.  “Well, that took care of the pain.  Settle in, Valiant.  You’ll be here for a while.” I crossed my hooves and brooded. God, what a bitch.