"It's not just a trick," Trixie said. "She can really do it."
Sweetie Belle poured cold cereal into each of four bowls. She reached into the refrigerator, pulled out a glass pitcher of milk, and carefully poured milk into the first bowl.
From inside the bowl, flames shot into the air. "Whoops!" Sweetie said. "I guess I did it wrong." She looked at the streaks of soot on the pitcher, and the scorched hairs on her foreleg.
Sweetie rummaged in a kitchen drawer, and pulled out a funnel with a very long spout. She stood a few feet away from the next bowl, and raised the spout at an angle, placing the tip directly over the dry cereal. When she carefully poured milk into the funnel's top, the flames missed her completely.
"That's better!" Sweetie said triumphantly.
Sweetie prepared the next two bowls the same way. "Four milky cees!" she shouted. "Hot from the kitchen!"
Scootaloo trotted into the room, carrying a large tray on her back. Sweetie used her horn's magic to levitate all four bowls onto the tray.
Scootaloo returned to the front room.
Twilight and Trixie followed Scootaloo. Scootaloo deftly placed her body next to a table, and slid the tray onto the table's center. The four colorful changelings sitting around the table oohed and aahed.
"So scrumptious!"
"I can FEEL the LOVE."
"Even if the last course maybe DID have anything lethal to changelings, the charcoal in this dessert should absorb the poison nicely."
"Yes!" said the fourth changeling, clapping her forehooves together. "No wonder this restaurant has such perfect marks from the health department! No changelings have died from eating here yet!"
With clinks of silverwear and crunches of whatever that burned stuff was that they were eating, the changelings enjoyed their meal.
Twilight spotted Rarity sitting in a dark corner. Twilight walked over to join her friend.
Rarity said sadly, "Hello, Twilight."
"Rarity! I'm so happy to see Carousel Boutique even more successful than before!"
Rarity sighed. "Yes. How delightful."
"You must be SO PROUD."
Rarity said unconvincingly, "Yes."
Trixie snorted. "If the food here is so wonderful, why hasn't anypony offered to feed TRIXIE? Trixie has eaten at the best places all over Equestria. You should BEG to have Trixie try your cuisine."
Rarity said, "Please don't eat any of that food. We would have to feed you a charcoal special, to absorb the toxins from whatever you ate BEFORE the charcoal special. Also, Canterlot and Manehattan might be very nice places, but eating out of the garbage cans behind a restaurant doesn't really count."
Trixie snorted. "That's not a nice way to talk about your sister's cooking. Also, some of those alleys have EXCELLENT food."
Rarity pleaded, "Lives are at stake! So please be careful."
Twilight shook her head. "I don't get it. How is this even happening?"
Rarity glanced towards the kitchen. "Didn't you ever wonder why Sweetie Belle kept trying to cook for me, even though she's so terrible at it?"
Twilight didn't answer.
"Sweetie LOVES to cook. She loves to cook so much, she's almost willing to eat her own food."
In the kitchen, a small explosion sounded. Black smoke drifted out into the front room. Scootaloo ran towards the kitchen holding a bucket of wet sand.
Twilight noticed dozens of similar buckets against the wall. "Are those all...?"
"Yes," Rarity confirmed. "It's safer to have them ready in advance."
Scootaloo came back out of the kitchen, balancing a platter of something made mostly of thin layers of ash. On top of the ash, a thick, orange-colored sauce steamed.
"What is that?" Twilight asked.
Rarity sighed. "Does it matter? Whatever it was, Sweetie Belle cooked it with love. That's all our changeling customers care about."
A table of colorful changelings cooed and aahed over their lasagna, or discarded library book, or whatever they were splitting six ways.
Twilight asked, "Rarity, what is this doing to your clothing business?"
"In ONE way, it's very convenient. Whenever I need to fit a dress to a body type, there's always a changeling eager to transform into whatever kind of model I need. They just want to help out, they say."
"Hmm. I guess that doesn't sound so bad."
Rarity shook her head. "It's very considerate of them. But with all the changelings crowding in, it's hard to have a discreet fitting for a real pony. And when a pony just wants to look at a dress, there's always somecreature standing in front of it."
"I guess that WOULD be kind of a problem."
"What's worse is, a lot of changelings try to take up less room in the shop by 'trying to fit in.' Last week, I almost sold the same changeling six times. She had turned herself into different articles of couture. One customer took her home before she woke up from her nap and startled that pony silly. Let me tell you, I think that customer is NOT coming back anytime soon.
"But what can I do? Sweetie's dream has finally come true. How can I stand in her way?"
***
Sweetie Belle and a teenage colt her own age sat outside on the grass, looking at the stars.
"It's so wonderful!" Sweetie Belle said. "In just a few more months, I should have enough money saved up to open my own restaurant in a different building! Then I can get out of my sister's hair and stop getting in the way of her dress sales!"
"Yeah," Button Mash said. "That's nice. Do you want to play videogames this weekend? Or maybe do something else, just for fun?"
"I would LOVE to. Let's see...Friday and Saturday are peak days for dinner business. I already have a lot of breakfast and lunch reservations for Saturday and Sunday. Then there's the prep work, some cleaning, next week's supply orders, some more prep work...I think I have an hour free Sunday night. That is, if everything goes according to plan."
"Everything NEVER goes according to plan. Not LAST weekend, not the weekend before, not the month before that. Why do you keep talking like something's going to change?"
"Button, my love, at least we can do homework together on the weeknights."
Button snorted. "No, I can do homework on the weeknights, and YOU can copy off me. Because that's what you've been doing, when you can spare a few minutes from working at your restaurant. And I don't like it. Did I tell you, my mom got a letter from Cheerilee? Our teacher said it looked like I might have been copying off somepony else in my class."
"No!" Sweetie said. "I'll go tell Cheerilee she's wrong! It's all my fault!"
"Yeah, you do that. But if you keep going on like this, either you're going to get kicked out of school, or you're going to drop out. And somepony who loves you won't let you do either of those things." Button stomped his hoof. "Maybe I can't stop you from ruining your last few teenage years. But at least I don't have to watch you do it. And I don't have to help you lie to yourself about what a mess you're making of your life." He sniffled. "Don't you see what you're doing? After you graduate, you'll still be just as good a cook as you are now. Maybe even better."
Sweetie shook her head. "I'm a terrible cook. But with the changelings, that doesn't matter. I just take my love for cooking, and I think about how much I love it, and I think about how much I love you...and somehow, everything I cook turns out ok. No, not ok...they absolutely love it. Do you understand how much that means to me?"
"I guess I don't. That's why I'm not your special somepony anymore." Button stood up and walked away.
Behind Sweetie Belle, a tree turned back into a changeling. Sweetie Belle heard a small sound, and turned around. "Gaah!" she shouted.
"Sorry," the changeling said. "It's just...you and Button. Your love always smells so wonderful. Or at least it used to. Now I don't know."
Sweetie Belle insisted, "We can still make it work! I know we can!"
"Oh, I'm sure he really loves you. That's why he dumped you. He doesn't know any other way to get through to you."
"Well...you're just a changeling! What do YOU know about love anyway? I still love him, and he still loves me, and everything's going to be just perfect!"
Sweetie Belle stomped away in a huff.
***
In the Carousel Boutique's front room, two changelings groaned and pressed their forelegs over their stomachs. Scootaloo dumped a bucket of wet sand on top of them.
"What's that supposed to do?" Sweetie Belle shouted.
"Well, nothing else was working! Even the double charcoal special isn't helping!"
One of the changelings moaned, "Everyling told me this was the best restaurant in Equestria. They said, sure it seems weird to eat food, but you'll love it."
The other changeling wailed, "I want to go to a hospital. But I don't think I can even crawl out of this horrible, horrible place."
The first changeling made retching sounds, and spewed chunky greenish-black fluid all over the floor. The second changeling joined in.
"Now I feel a little better. I think I might live."
"Me too." More retching sounds followed. "I had no idea my stomach could make me so sick if I put food in it."
Rarity held a forehoof over her own mouth and backed away from the mess and its horrible stench. She hoped the smell wouldn't force her to make any contributions of her own.
***
Rarity had removed all the dresses and displays from her boutique's front room. In the middle of the room, Applejack jammed the tip of a crowbar beneath the end of a floorboard, and pried the board up. "Don't you worry. Seems like every year or two, we have to rebuild the whole barn. Just redoing one floor ought to be easy."
Rarity held a scented handkerchief over her nose and mouth. "I can only HOPE that will be enough to get rid of this dreadful smell. Who even KNEW changeling vomit could smell so terrible? How can the changelings who live together in an enormous hive even STAND it?"
Applejack started working the crowbar between two more boards. "To be fair, regular changeling vomit don't have any of Sweetie Belle's cookin' in it."
"That's true. You're a very sensible creature, Applejack."
"Thank you. How's Sweetie Belle doin' on her catch-up schoolwork, Ah wonder?"
Sweetie Belle called out from the kitchen, "Sweetie Belle is doing just FINE on her catch-up work, thank you very much. But there's ONE class where I'll ask Cheerilee to give me some kind of life experience extra credit, instead of doing all the regular assignments."
Applejack raised one eyebrow. "I hope you've learned by now where lookin' for SHORTCUTS can get you. In a heap of trouble!"
"That's not fair! I've studied SO many cookbooks, and practiced SO much! I should have a whole cooking degree by now!"
Rarity asked, "This ONE class you mentioned...would that be home economics?"
"Not ALL of home ec. I don't mind learning about sewing, and cleaning, and even floor repair. But do you really want me doing a whole class' worth of make-up schoolwork in your kitchen? When I've FINALLY gotten the smell out from running my restaurant?"
Applejack sighed. "Ah guess you didn't take a shortcut at all. Ah know you worked your little heart out for months."
"That's so true," Rarity agreed. "I'll ask Cheerilee to give you pass/fail credit for all your hard work learning to cook."
In the kitchen, Sweetie Belle perked up. "I have an idea!"
Applejack and Rarity gave each other worried looks.
"I've hardly ever tried cooking over a campfire! And if I practice out by the Everfree Forest, I can't even make our kitchen stink, or set Ponyville on fire!"
Applejack said, "Fires can spread, Sweetie. You don't know where it might end up."
Rarity added, "If the wind takes the wrong path, the smell might drive a lot of dangerous Everfree creatures straight into Ponyville. As your sister, I can't let you take that risk."
"Ah don't reckon Mayor Mare would want us to take that risk either."
Sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by piles of homework, Sweetie Belle made a decision. She would study hard to catch up on her studies, and graduate from school, and go to the Changeling Hive, and become the most successful chef ever!
Or maybe the Dragonlands. Surely dragons wouldn't mind if their food was already on fire, or burned to a crisp? They breathed fire an awful lot, didn't they?
If that didn't work...maybe the Diamond Dogs? If they were used to eating literal dog food, surely their standards couldn't be TOO high?
Sweetie was sure she could make her plan work, if she only tried hard enough.