//------------------------------// // The Pink Terror // Story: A Pony Named Dave // by Gremlin Grenade //------------------------------// So, there I was, standing outside the office of a pony that I had really no reason to trust, just scratching my head wondering why I was there. I mean, I was there because I also had no reason not to trust this guy, and I really had nothing better to do, but that fire that was in my stomach when we first met wasn’t really there anymore. The place was easy enough to find. Office buildings aren’t exactly common in a small town like Ponyville, but there are a few, mostly for those working for the Ponyville branch of some business, or for pencil-pushers who want to start their own. Each of the doors had a number and the name of the company that owned it in the window. Each one, that is, except the one that just had a big piece of paper slapped on the window, with the words Ponyville Inquirer scribbled on the front. Wonderful. Not that this guy would give me the chance to change my mind. I waited for maybe a few minutes tops, and I was about to head out, before he opened the door and pulled me inside. To be honest, a few minutes is actually not much time for him to notice me, and I’m surprised he did at all, seeing as the window has a sheet of paper plastered over it and I wasn’t sure enough to actually ring the doorbell. “Were you followed?” What kind of question is that? Followed by whom? I scratched my head another time before I just decided to play along. “Uh… no, no I don’t think so.” As soon as I was in there, the smell was the first thing that got to me. If I thought Newscoop himself smelled strange, I was not prepared to get a whiff of his office. Not that it smelled bad, just strange. And, to be fair, it wasn’t much worse than my apartment, either. Yes, there are apartments in a small town like Ponyville. I didn’t really know this either when I first got here, but it seems folks are in a much more educational mood when they find out you can’t really afford a mortgage. “Good. We can’t afford a leak this early on.” Oh, great. This guy really is as crazy as I feared. What could I possibly leak? What does that even mean? I’ve already told everypony about how I feel about this whole thing; did he really think I’d hand out the card to his office or something? He motioned to one of the desks in the room. “Alright, this is your desk; let’s not waste any time.” “Woah, hold up. You never said anything about working here.” I backed away for a moment, reaching my back hoof towards the door. “Look, do you want to get the truth out or not? That’s gonna take some paperwork.” “I’ve already got a job, I’m not gonna be your desk jockey. “ He didn’t seem too happy at that. Newscoop paced the room a couple times, stroking his chin with a hoof, before turning back to me. “Hmmm.. . well, I think you can still be of some help.” Oh, thanks. Glad to know that my opinion is still valuable to you, even though I’m not dedicating my entire life to this cause of yours. This guy’s really full of assumptions, let me tell ya. “Look, I thought we were just going to talk about what I already knew, I’m not some kind of investigative journalist or something!” He just eyed me for a minute before speaking, and for a second there I thought he was gonna do something, like hurt me or something. “Alright, shoot.” Now, this is the part where I should have been blabbering off like a madpony. I mean I talk about this all the time, sometimes to the point where whoever’s listening would just start ignoring me. “Uh, actually what I already told you is about the most of it.” I could mouth off to my co-workers about this for hours, so why didn’t I have anything to say to this guy? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that their offices didn’t smell like week-old sardines. He stopped for a minute, silently eyeing me, before he made his reply. “Oh really? Because I thought you were going to say something about how the mares in question have some sort of government support, and how they’re treated so well so that they’re figureheads for the town, even though they never did anything. I thought you may also say a thing or two about how they’re taking work away from the guard, and getting away with unlawful and dangerous activity on a frequent basis due to their celebrity status.” Oh yeah. That too. “In any case, we need to find out exactly what these mares were doing on these specific nights if we’re going to expose them.” He started pacing the room again, muttering to himself while switching his eyes from the floor to me and back to the floor again. I can tell you, between the smell and this here pony, I really wanted to get out of there. “Well, what do you suppose we do?” I interjected, hoping we could resolve this as soon as possible, “We can’t just ask them.” It’s when I said that that he stopped and turned back to me. “Maybe… maybe we can.” What? He can’t be serious. “You can’t be serious.” “I am. I know it sounds unorthodox, but tell me what they say, we might be able to glean a little from their stories. Maybe they won’t match up or something.” I wasn’t sure this even qualified as a plan, but I was looking for any excuse to get out of there. A pony with cahonies would have left a while ago, just through being fed up with this guy, but a mix of modesty and weakness meant I needed a good excuse to just bail like that. “Sure, I’ll go ask them.” I gave him a nervous nod and a sort of wave/point gesture as I headed out the door. The air outside smelled as sweet as a freshly baked pie compared to Newscoop’s office, and I gave a nice full whiff before moving on. Kind of made me crave a freshly baked pie. On that impulse, I headed to Sugar Cube corner, Ponyville’s residential bakery. I decided to myself to talk to these mares if I came across them, but I wasn’t going to seek them out. It’s not like I owed Newscoop that much, in fact I didn’t really owe him anything. The bell hanging above the door let out a gentle ring as I entered, and I could hear one of the owners calling out from the kitchen in back. “We’ll have somepony serve you in just a moment!” “Uh, thank you,” I tried to call back. It didn’t take long before a bright pink blur flew up to the counter, practically pulsating with sugar-induced energy. “Hi, Dave! Whatcanigetcha?” Ah, crap, I forgot she worked here. “Hi, Pinkie,” I feebly replied. Okay, now let me put this particular mare into perspective for you. Pinkie Pie was friendly to the extreme; she was always joking, and she usually went out of her hyperactive way to make her friends happy. Now, that’s all good and fun, but the thing about Pinkie Pie was that she was friends with every pony in Ponyville. I mean, Ponyville isn’t a large town by anypony’s standards; in fact, if somepony had never seen a small town in their life and they wanted you to show them a picture of exactly what to expect, you couldn’t go wrong with this quaint little town. But, that said, there’s still a population of, like, 2,000 ponies. Pinkie Pie knows all of them. Every single one. By name. She knows what you look like. She knows what you sound like. She knows where you work, and probably what your cutie mark is. If she hasn’t met you before, she will go out of her way to throw you a party. It’s unsettling. “So, what can I do for my most-special-bestest-buddy in the whole world? Well, except all my other super-bestest-buddies of course!” She let out a little giggle-snort before leaning into my face, and I can swear that the size of her eyes doubled. “Well, I’d like a pie, and uh-“ “Cherry or apple?” “Apple. But anyways, Pinkie, I’ve got a question for you, if you’ve got a sec.” I bashfully looked away from her eyes as I spoke. What was I doing? It was just a simple question, but I knew it was the first step into a whole mess that I really didn’t want to get into. “Surey-durey! I’m always happy to help out my friends!” I swear, her smile was so wide it almost looked like she was trying to eat me or something. “Uh, yeah… anyways, I was wondering where you were last year at the summer sun festival? You know, when Princess Celestia was supposed to show up but her sister did instead, except she was all evil?” “Omigosh! I remember that night because I was like ‘Imsoexcitedareyouexcitedbecauseimexcitediveneverbeensoexcitedexceptthatonetimethatisawyou-‘ uh, I was talking to Twilight, when I say you I mean her not you, ‘andiwaslike HUUUUUUUUUH!’ It was the greatest!” Okay, what? What is she even talking about? I shook my head to return my focus to the matter at hand. “Anyway, when Nightmare Moon showed up and everypony just ran for it, where did you go?” “Oh me? I went to see my friend Twilight! And then all of us went into the Everfree forest! It was really scary, but kind of fun too! We laughed at some trees and fixed Steven Magnet’s moustache, and Fluttershy even got to make friends with a Manticore! And then Twilight learned all about friendship and we got these neat necklaces! Wanna see?” “Uh, no, thanks.” I paused for a moment, futilely trying to decipher the random bunch of information I was just given, before speaking again, “Now, when you say, ‘all of us,’ who do you mean, exactly?” I knew most of the mares involved, and that there were six of them, but I didn’t have all of their names yet. “Oh, that’s just Twilight, Fluttershy, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and me! Why do you ask?” She tilted her head in curiosity, though her smile didn’t shrink an inch. “Oh, no reason. I was just, uh, curious.” I know, I’m a pretty crappy liar. Still, she seemed to buy it. “Okay, see ya’ later, Dave!” I walked out of the store with a pie on my back as I tried to piece together Pinkie’s story. I honestly had no idea if she just confirmed or refuted what the town believed; in fact, I’m not sure what her story was at all. Something about yelling at trees, and fixing a manticore or something. Did that even have to do with the conversation we were having? Well in any case, I decided to go over my mental list of which of her friends I knew already. Twilight Sparkle was the town librarian, and Applejack was one of the Apples, which ran the huge apple farm outside of town. I think that Rarity is that mare who runs the boutique, and I believe I heard something about Rainbow Dash being a pegasus that spends a lot of time in Ponyville. I hadn’t the most remote idea who Fluttershy was, though, so I’d have to ask somepony else sooner or later. But first, it was time for some pie.