//------------------------------// // Chapter 11 // Story: Down With the Pastryarchy // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Each minute that passed was almost painful torture. Pinkie Pie was glazing her lemon zinger cake; a complicated job that for most, wasn’t complicated at all, but the pink pony’s methods were exquisite. She poked a long wooden kebab stick down into the cracks and crevices found upon the surface of the lemon zinger cake, so that the sweet, sticky glaze could penetrate to the very deepest depths, leading to random mouthfuls of moist, gooey sweetness. These nooks and crannies were worth exploring with one’s tongue and when Twilight thought about doing so, she became rather flustered, all things considered. Thoughts of tongue-probing into moist, sticky places were far too lewd to bear. “Ya know, Pinkie Pie’s really leveled off once she started gettin’ laid all regular like,” Applejack remarked. “All that manic energy from celibacy built up and turned into craziness. I must confess, she was unbearable to live with.” Then, mere seconds after her second statement, she seemed to freeze. Twilight’s thoughts took off, all of them at once, very much like a flock of startled birds. A great many things happened inside of her head, each of them competing, struggling, trying to rise to the top of the mental heap. Applejack was cringing now, doing her best to avoid Twilight’s gaze. Bundt sat in the middle, her eyes darting back and forth between the two friends and her mouth hanging open from confusion in the cutest way possible. “Dagnabbit, I’ve got so used to just sayin’ whate’er just so happens to be on my mind,” the apple farmer muttered. She sighed, a forlorn sound, and did her best to avoid looking at Twilight. “Is that”—Twilight licked her lips, which were now as dry as the Las Pegasus sands—“is that what is wrong with me?” When Applejack did not respond, Twilight plowed onward and poured her heart out to her friend. “I’m still adjusting to having a body again. I was gone for so long that when I came back to it, I really noticed how different it was. I wasn’t a unicorn with wings… I was something else. There is so much about it that doesn’t make sense to me, Applejack.” “Twi…” Applejack took a deep breath and seemed to commit herself to answering, but was beaten to the punch by Bundt, who said: “If I don’t get a bit of coochy-smooching on a regular basis, I lose my mind and act a fool.” The mere act of breathing almost caused Twilight to choke and she sputtered while stars danced in her vision. Applejack heaved a sigh, this one more resigned. The flock of birds that was Twilight’s thoughts crapped everywhere all at once, leaving her mind a dirty place indeed. One thought stood out among the others, and that was the embarrassing discovery made when exploring her inner pegasus: she had clucked during that dreadful moment, because she was somehow a hen deep down inside. “Twi, I pushed you hard in the right direction, but I wanted you to make the discovery yourself.” Applejack’s eyes were locked upon Pinkie Pie who was still glazing her lemon zinger cake. “We all suspected it. I mean, Cadance and I, in those letters we exchanged, I brought up how much Princess Celestia has changed since she, uh, well, you know… since she started getting serviced on a regular basis. It is a topic of much discussion among us earth ponies, on account of how we know.” “It sure is,” Bundt agreed, her head bobbing. “Princess Celestia is like a totally different mare now than how she was when I was a filly. I met her once, with Miss Blintz. Just a few months ago, actually. She really annoyed Miss Blintz because she was more focused on my big belly than anything that Miss Blintz had to say. She’s a really nice princess. She made me feel special.” A tiny, curling tendril of chaos encircled Twilight’s heart… She began to wonder if her so-called depression was more than just mere depression. Twilight focused on breathing and remaining calm, just as Cadance had taught her. More and more she realised, this body was a stranger to her; the changes were far more profound than mere wings. Lifting one hoof, she flipped it over and began to examine her frog, feeling more and more as though she was a stranger inhabiting this body that wasn’t entirely hers. Perhaps that was the point: this body wasn’t hers—an alicorn was the ultimate public servant with three tribes inhabiting one body. But she had neglected one third of herself, or perhaps one fourth of herself, depending upon the view of whether or not an alicorn was a fourth, separate tribe unto itself. The pull of memory took her to dark places—Skyreach being one of them. How long had she roamed those halls? She had been there when the facility was new, when it was just being constructed, and she had been there during its reawakening upon Spear Breaker’s arrival. Not wanting to remember, Twilight jerked her mind into the present and blinked away the ink threatening to overtake her eyes. She had re-lived those mistakes enough already. “Please, finish up, ponies. Fifteen minutes until judgment.” The announcer sounded like a colt who had just been violently mugged and left for dead by puberty. His voice cracked with almost every word and he was tragically ill-suited for public address. It was jarring enough to pull Twilight from her thoughts and cause her to become thoroughly distracted. “My name is DJ Double Dip and I’ve been asked to take over announcing duties. Hello, ladies!” Tilting and turning her head, Twilight glared in annoyance at the nearest loudspeaker. “Oh, poor Double…” Warm, sincere concern could be seen on Bundt’s face and her ears rose and fell with each breath she took. “That poor colt seems to think he has a voice that makes mares melt. He wants to be a DJ and a porn narrator—” Applejack butted in to say, “Porn has narration?” “No,” Bundt replied, “but Double seems to believe that porn needs narration. Nopony can seem to change his mind. I only hired him because he’s so good at setting up sound systems. He’s gifted at that. I think I made a mistake though, because now he seems to think he has porn industry cred.” Twilight longed to say something about the lives of common ponies, but held her tongue. Pinkie Pie’s kitchen cubicle was somehow immaculately clean. There were dirty dishes waiting to be carted away, sure, but the countertop had not a speck of flour and nothing was a sticky mess. At the moment, the pink pony was gabbing away at a trolley-mounted camera that had stopped in front of her cubicle. There was a real tension in the air now, something palpable. Dreams were about to be realised or crushed. Many would not qualify. Those who did qualify might not make it to the third day. Twilight, looking down from the catwalk, could not help but think that this bake-off was a reflection of Equestria at large: so much talent, so much promise, but only a few would rise to the top. Not everypony could be a winner, and she understood the need to weed out mediocrity so that the truly exceptional could shine. What of those who failed to make the cut? Here, the losers went home sad; in Equestria, they were condemned to poverty or worse. Twilight felt the pressure—it pressed in from all sides and made it difficult to breathe, a curious psychosomatic reaction. The fear, the suffering, the worry, the distress, all of it became a physical sensation that pressed tight upon her, bearing her down. She had felt this before, but never quite like this. Her connection to other ponies had changed, or it had grown stronger perhaps. Cadance spoke sometimes of the difficulty of being an empath and it was only now that Twilight truly began to understand. One question rose in Twilight’s mind: which part of her gave her this connection to others? A griffon approached, a griffon with a curious prosthetic theatrical mustache. Gustave le Grand was followed by a gaggle of judges, and they stopped just a few cubicles away from Pinkie’s. Twilight had mixed feelings about celebrity judges, fearing they had celebrity biases and exotic tastes, but she also understood that they were imminently qualified to judge food. She had met Gustave le Grand several times now and she was always amused by his antics. He was close now, just five cubicles away from Pinkie’s. “Gustave le Grand!” Pinkie Pie said while rising into a bipedal stance. “We meet again!” The griffon remained entirely professional and remained reserved in the face of Pinkie Pie’s theatrics. A dozen judges and critics crowded behind him while he examined Pinkie Pie’s lemon zinger cake. The griffon tilted his head to one side, then the other, then back again. Reaching up with his talons, he scratched his neck while clearing his throat. “A lemon cake?” The griffon blinked. “A rather humble lemon cake, yez? Eet eez… quite plain looking. Not much for prezentation.” “Not just any lemon cake, but the best lemon cake you will ever eat,” Pinkie replied, bubbling over with her own natural confidence. “It doesn’t need to look snazzy, my lemon zinger cake is perfectly capable of speaking for itself.” “Zat eez a bold claim, Mizz Pie.” “Have some.” Pinkie Pie, still standing on her hind legs, gestured at the cake on the counter with her right front hoof. “Eet eez quite ztrange that a Pie would zerve me cake,” Gustave said to Pinkie while stroking his false-mustache. “I hold no bigotry towards my baked goods,” Pinkie replied, and this got the gaggle of judges giggling. “The Royal Pony Sisters though…” Her words faded into a soft chuckle that made her jiggle beneath her white jacket. “Arroz Amandine!” Gustave snapped his talons. “Begin zee inzpection.” A stern, hard-faced unicorn mare brandishing a sharp knife emerged from the gaggle and she moved forward to do Gustave’s bidding. Lowering her head, she examined the cake from countertop level, turned the plate around a few times to see it from different angles, and then leaning in a little closer, she sniffed. “Es solo una tarta de limón,” the hard-faced mare said while making a few quick cuts with her knife. When cut open, the cake bled out gooey glaze and the mare jerked her head back in surprise. “¡Este pastel sangra!” “Could we speak something other than burro!” one of the judges snapped. “This is the Great Equestrian Bake-Off. Not the burro bake-off. I didn’t come here to sample refried beans and peasant corn tortillas.” Up on the catwalk, Twilight wore an an annoyed scowl. Ignoring her fellow judge, Arroz Amandine sniffed the cake again, examined a sliced off sliver, and gave the cake itself a squeeze. More gooey lemon ooze dribbled out and she scraped some up upon her knife to have a better look at it. Twilight understood that the unicorn mare was taking a sort of scientific approach, and wondered what the mare might have learned from her thorough examination. What data was she gathering? The mare popped a sliver into her mouth and Twilight, tense with anticipation, watched as the mare succumbed to bliss. Her knees wobbled and her front legs actually banged together. Ears went limp, eyes closed, and the stiffness of her spine took a well deserved vacation. When she swallowed, her whole body shiver-shuddered. “You swallowed,” an earth pony mare said to Arroz Amandine. “We’re supposed to spit, you know that. We have thousands of entries to sample.” “You try spitting this out.” Arroz Amandine, no longer a hard-faced mare, but more of a melted-butter mare, jammed a sliver of cake into the mouth of the mare who chastised her. The effect was immediate and spectacular: she melted. Pinkie Pie, looking rather pleased with herself, bounced in place, her padded frame wiggling with her every movement. She watched as more of the judges sampled her cake and Twilight, watching from the catwalk, noted that nopony spat out their tiny bite of cake. She took this as a good sign, but like Pinkie, tensed up when Gustave le Grand shoved everypony aside to try a bite himself. “My cake has a lot to say today,” said Pinkie Pie while the griffon popped a sliver of cake into his beak. The griffon, like the rest of the judges, shared a similar reaction. He stood with his eyes closed, his claws clicking upon the floor, and his tail formed a curious question mark behind him. Arroz Amandine, after glancing around with shifty eyes, ate another sliver when she thought nopony was looking. But Twilight saw it though, and she took it as a promising sign that Pinkie would qualify. A humble lemon cake prepared to perfection was a pretty good opener, and Twilight wondered what else Pinkie Pie had planned to wow the judges. When Gustave recovered from the delicious sliver of cake, a silent conversation seemed to take place with the judges. Each of them looked at one another, nodded, and when all of them seemed to reach some sort of agreement, the ridiculously mustached griffon turned to face Pinkie Pie. “Plain prezentation,” he said while pulling out a blue token from a pocket of his chef’s whites. “But extraordinary cake. Fifty pointz for Pinkie Pie.” Almost frantic with tension, Twilight tugged on Applejack’s leg and squeezed her friend’s fetlock in her own. “Is that good or bad? It’s just fifty points. Did Pinkie qualify? Is everything okay?” “If you get points, you qualify.” Applejack turned to look Twilight in the eye. “You start with either twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred points. Pinkie done got herself a middle-of-the-road opener, which ain’t bad. I’m pretty certain that she knew that she’d qualify with that there cake of hers and I reckon she has a plan to make up for more points later. There’s another contest planned for today, but near as I can tell, nopony knows what it is just yet.” “So Pinkie Pie… she took a safe bet?” “Yeah, Twi. Exactly.” “Smart.” “Pinkie is smarter than ponies give her credit for.” Applejack pulled her leg free from Twilight’s iron grip. “Now… ‘bout that leftover cake, Twilight.” “Yeah?” “I’ll flip you for it,” Applejack offered, followed by a quick flick of her orange tongue over her lips, “but if’n you land on your head it ain’t my fault.”