Hitch was paying Izzy another visit to hang out. She had been back and forth to Maretime bay several times, but had been busy lately. All of the warning signs outside Bridlewood needed to be unicycled into something less threatening.
The entire town of Bridlewood seemed a lot more alive now. Instead of the homes being closed up, several had the windows and doors open to let the air in. He could hear music from one house, and it appeared that unicorns were big fans of disco. Hitch would have to ask if he could get a copy of whatever record that was later, Phyllis was a big fan of that old time music.
Izzy’s home was on the edge of town, and it didn’t take him long to reach it. He knocked on the door, and heard a rattling noise inside. “Coming!”
The door opened and there stood Izzy, smiling ear to ear. “Hitch! I’m so glad you stopped by for lunch.”
“Yeah, it was nice of you to invite me. Ever since Canterlogic started installing some roads between the towns, it’s gotten a lot faster for everypony to visit each other.”
Hitch walked in and saw that the tea table had been set for two, along with some sandwiches. There was also a bowl of pony hoof shaped snacks. Izzy walked over to the table with him and they both sat down.
“Want some candy? They’re made of roasted corn, but for some reason nopony seems to like them.” Izzy took a hoof full of the candy and munched it loudly. “They’re barbeque flavor.”
“Oh, thanks.” Hitch tried some of them and swallowed, “yeah I think I prefer peanuts.”
Izzy’s horn began to glow and she opened up a jar of Hellmann’s and stuck a knife in. She came out with a big glob of mayonnaise, and spread it onto her sandwich. Next she replaced the piece of bread on top.
“Mayonnaise?” Hitch asked.
“Yep! It’s my favorite, even if it’s still taboo… don’t tell anypony ok?”
Hitch nodded, and opened his sandwich to add some mustard and mayo. “Sure, but I thought unicorns were over the whole jinx thing now that magic is back?”
She nodded. “Well, yeah, but they’re not over the mayonnaise incident yet.” Izzy scratched the back of her neck.
“Huh? What did mayo ever do to unicorns?” Hitch asked.
“Well, if you really want to know, many moons ago, about 3 blocks east of here...”
A young pink filly with a vibrant blue mane trotted down the road in Bridlewood with a saddlebag full of back scratchers. Everypony that was outside was scratching themselves, some had even sat down in a circle to give each other back scratches.
Izzy went up to the circle. “Hey Gloomy, Pencil, Vixen, Blitzen! I unicycled up some more backscratchers, want some?”
“I’ve got an itch to scratch, thanks for the new batch,” Gloomy replied. She took one of the back scratchers and started furiously working it down her back. The gathered ponies got up and started getting their own, and quickly Izzy had run out.
“You got it bad huh? I tried to unicycle some more fine-toothed combs but everypony’s been hoarding them.” Izzy shrugged. “Though I did find this tree that was just the right height to rub against.”
As they raked the claws through their fur, Alphabittle approached the group. “Hey, I need everypony to gather at the tea shop.” He snatched a backscratcher from the nearest pony and sighed in relief as he started running it under his mane.
Hitch swallowed a bite of his spinach sandwich, and had a sip of some fizzy water. “Okay, so everypony had fleas or something?”
“Worse,” Izzy stated. “There’s a lot of wildlife in Bridlewood, and somepony brought back something that infected the whole town.”
Izzy smiled as she explored the tea shop. Alphabittle had a thing for games and trinkets. His dad had hoped he’d outgrow it when he got old enough to run the store on his own, but behind every counter and in every cupboard were games galore. She also found a large pile of jars full of white stuff, but before she could ask what it was, somepony cleared their throat.
She looked back to see Alphabittle locking the door to the tea shop. “Alright everypony. This lice infestation has gotten out of hand and we have only one choice left… every single one of us is going to cover ourselves in mayonnaise to suffocate the lice!”
“So awesome!” Izzy shouted. “I love mayonnaise!”
“I thought that was an old mare’s tail,” Gloomy asked. “Sounds like it’ll fail.”
He shook his head. “No time for spoken word poetry, now everypony needs to partner up and get a couple jars of mayo and we’ll be out of here in no time…”
“Oh! Oh! I pick Gloomy!” Izzy ran across the room with a few jars clutched under a leg and almost tackled her. “I’m gonna make her smile and forget all about those Edgar Allen Pone stories she loves!”
“Alright,” Alphabittle explained, pointing to various ponies. “You two, you two… yep everyone’s paired up.
Izzy had already dipped a hoof in a jar and was licking the mayonnaise off. “We won’t get anything done if you eat it all.” Gloomy had stuck her hoof in a jar but seemed a little less pleased about it. “Alpha’s got a lotta gall.”
“Don’t worry, just rub it in, like this.” Izzy upturned the jar over Gloomy’s mane, and a large blob of mayo fell into it. She immediately started rubbing it into the mane and up and down the filly’s neck.
“Gah! Gross, and it’s so cold, and it smells a week old!” She humphed and emptied her jar right on top of Izzy’s horn.
“Eww, it’s gonna get in my eyes!” Izzy closed both of them in time, as it ran down her face.
Gloomy laughed as she rubbed it over her head and face, “Looks like you’re getting a facial.” She used a hoof to scrape it away from the eyes.
Izzy completed her rhyme. “Oh don’t I feel special.”
“Wait,” Hitch interrupted. “So it was all over a bad case of lice and a little mayonnaise? That doesn’t seem so bad. We covered Sprout in peanut butter one time to get some gum out of his mane and it didn’t become taboo."
“Oh, but we haven’t gotten to the best part yet, Hitchy!” Izzy jumped up onto a nearby chair and shot a hoof into the air. “The action, the intrigue, the chase!”
He smirked, “oh really? Let’s skip to that part then.”
Izzy and Gloomy were covered from horn to hoof in mayonnaise. Between the thick white layer of beaten eggs and vinegar some small tufts of hair managed to poke through. For the most part, everypony had been very thorough.
Dozens and dozens of gallons of mayo, the entire stockpile of everypony’s favorite condiment, was now starting to get warm and smelly in the small tea shop. Around the room several dozen ponies were standing around impatiently.
“We just have to leave it in for a few hours,” Alphabittle explained.
“I’m so bored!” Izzy complained.
“Try to think exciting thoughts.”
Izzy sighed and sat down, causing a loud splashing sound from all the mayo. She looked around at everypony else and saw a green tail sticking out from underneath a booth.
“Huh?” Izzy got up and trot over to the table, looking under it. “Pencil? Why aren’t you covered in mayonnaise?”
“I hate mayonnaise! I won’t do it!” Pencil climbed into the booth and held a tea cup in her hoof menacingly. “Everypony back!”
Several lice were jumping out of her mane, abandoning ship. Alphabittle headed over with the last few jars of emulsified egg. “Now, Pencil, be a good filly and let us cover you up, or we’ll all have to do this over again.”
“Never! There has to be another way… wait I got it!” Pencil climbed up between the two booths, and bucked the window open.
“Oh no!” Izzy scrambled up to catch her, but slipped and fell, covering the cushion with mayonnaise.
“Later suckers!” Pencil leapt out the window and ran.
Alphabittle sighed, and headed over to the door. “Okay, Izzy come with me, you’re her friend and can try to calm her down. Nopony leaves or takes the mayo off until we get back!”
“Oh, an adventure! Let’s go get her!” Izzy headed to the door and followed him through.
Together they went across town to the house of the rogue filly. The front door was open, and they let themselves in. The two were dripping the mayonnaise everywhere and had left a trail of dirty white hoofprints. There was a buzzing noise from the bathroom. Alpha and Izzy headed over, and noticed a pile of long green hairs and red fur on the floor.
The buzzing stopped.
“Pencil? Are you in there?” Alpha asked. “Look, the mayo isn’t so bad, I promise.”
He pushed the door open to find a naked pink filly sitting in a pile of hair, holding up an electric razor. Her skin was slightly wrinkled, and most ponies might have found a pony who looked like a naked mole rat a bit disturbing.
But not Izzy.
“So awesome!” Izzy shouted. “I mean, you had such a pretty mane, but now you’re like that baby hamster I used to have!”
Alpha let out a long sigh and shook his head. “We were trying to avoid having to shave anypony… but I guess it is very effective.”
“Yep!” Pencil pointed a hoof at the jar of mayo that Alpha had brought over in his saddlebag. “Now get that the heck outta my house!”
“Okay.” Hitch had finished his sandwich and his drink. “It's a silly story, but I’m not really getting it yet.”
“Oh, that’s because we haven’t gotten to the part about the mayonnaise volcano!” Izzy stuffed the last of her sandwich into her mouth. “Ish pwobaby the besht pawt.”
“Mayo volcano? You really buried the lead on this story, Izzy… so what happened next?”
Hitch chuckled and put a hoof on her mouth. “Finish chewing first.”
Izzy gulped and nodded. “Oh, it was fine until the next morning, when the eggs started hatching and everypony hopped in the shower to try and get rid of the new lice…”
Izzy sat in her shower with a backscratcher in each hoof, running them up and down her flanks. “Ugh stupid nitty-things! Gloomy may have been right…”
There was a deep rumbling sound, and the shower-head started vibrating. It sent a spray of water outside of the tub, and Izzy stood up to look around. The faucet on the sink was also making a strange groaning noise.
“Huh, now that’s odd…” Izzy poked at the drain guard in her tub, watching the water swirl and go down it. She lowered her head, and shouted into the drain. “Anypony down there?”
As she listened there was only a bubbling shriek in return. A rivet snapped and her shower head fell into the tub as the water sputtered and stopped.
“Hmm…” Izzy looked up into the exposed pipe, there wasn’t any water coming out. Some frothy white foam was dripping from it.
And then a large wad of yesterday’s mayonnaise shot out of the pipe and onto Izzy. She gasped and fell backwards in the tub. The rumbling continued until the shower drain popped up, carrying hair and mayonnaise up into the tub until it was several inches deep.
“Oh no! I have to warn everypony!” Izzy crawled out of the tub and grabbed the nearest towel to try and clean herself up.
By the time she had gotten most of the sticky brown-tinged mayonnaise off, the tub and sink were both full of smelly egg condiment. She wrapped a clean towel up around her mane to help it dry.
“This is bad, so bad!” Izzy ran out of her bathroom and to the front door.
She opened it up and stepped into a scene straight out of one of those old propaganda films about the Earth ponies and Pegasi. The smell of rotten fish and egg hung in the air, everypony was screaming and fleeing from their homes.
A large white tide was spilling out of the nearest home as the sewer system of Bridlewood backed up, and attacked with a vengeance. Somehow it was like the mayonnaise had multiplied deep underground, and carried back up with it the dredged up contents of days worth of stuff better left undescribed.
Izzy ran down the road, doing her best to avoid the muddy condiment puddles on her way to the tea shop. Alpha always seemed to know what to do.
By the time she got there, she found him standing on a table in the middle of the road amidst a sea of mayo.
“Hey, Alphabittle! What can I do to help everypony?” Izzy asked.
“We need to make sure everypony is safe,” he replied.
“Help!” somepony screamed.
“Oh, I’m on it! Come on.”
Izzy ran towards the shout, and Alpha leapt off his table, clearing most of the vicious sea of white creamy doom. He slipped and got a bit of it on his legs, before scrambling after the filly to help.
The two of them went down the road, listening to the screams, until they were near the town’s water pumping, sanitation, and sewage plant. There were several warning alarms being sounded as they tried to pump and purify a town’s worth of pony-flavored mayonnaise through the system.
They looked up into the window of the house next to the plant. Hanging half-way out the top floor window was a hairless pink pony.
“Pencil?” Izzy asked.
“It’s all over the lower floor! And it’s flooding up into my bedroom! Help!” Pencil screamed in a blind irrational state.
“Stay calm,” Alphabittle said. “Izzy, we’ll need your towel.”
Izzy nodded and took it off. “Are we gonna make a kite? Oh, or maybe a hang glider, yeah I think that’d work.”
“No, we just need to catch her. Hold that end, and stand there.” Alpha took one end and gave the other to Izzy.
“Oh, like fire ponies! Got it!” Izzy held the towel tightly and looked up to the distraught pony. They adjusted their position a little bit to try and find the right spot to catch her.
“I… I can’t!” Pencil shouted down.
“Yes you can!” Izzy smiled. “You’re the best at jump rope, remember?”
The filly nodded, taking a few deep breaths. The house shook and the ground started to vibrate slightly. She looked back inside her room, and noticed the mayonnaise had almost reached her hoof. Both eyes shot wide as the cursed substance touched her.
“Allons-y!” Pencil shouted, leaping out the window without looking.
Izzy and Alphabittle caught her, but her momentum bounced her off and carried her nearly to the fence of the water treatment plant. She landed on her hooves and skidded to a stop right before a puddle of mayonnaise.
“Whew…” Pencil wiped a hoof across her brow. “I almost shaved all my hair and fur off for nothing.”
Izzy and Alphabittle walked up beside her, and Izzy gave her a hug. “You know you and Gloomy were right, the lice came back.”
“Yeah, I guess the mayo was a bad idea after all,” Alpha agreed.
There was a sudden siren like the old air raid alerts for Pegasi invasions that sounded from the water treatment facility. Several rivets started shooting through the air with sharp whizzing sounds. Steam rose from one of the larger boilers, and several large sheet metal tanks began to moan like the ghosts of ponies tortured in Tartarus.
“Oh, what do you think that means?” Izzy asked.
Alpha gulped and felt a pit sinking in his stomach. “Uh, fillies, I think we’d better run.”
Pencil and Izzy nodded.
As they turned to leave, the ground itself began to split open in wide cracks, thick mayonnaise rising up between it. Before they could process this, there was a loud explosion and a wave of air knocked them all to the ground.
The world went gray, and Izzy heard a ringing in her ears. She reached over to Pencil, who appeared to be talking, but Izzy couldn’t hear what she was saying. Alpha stepped forward to shield them, and Izzy watched in slow motion as a huge wave of Hellmann’s mayonnaise swept over them.
There was screaming as they were carried off into the town center before the erupting mayonnaise from the processing plant finally relented, depositing three unicorns coated entirely in mayo near the entrance to the tea shop.
Pencil stopped gagging just long enough to say “I hate bucking mayonnaise.”
By this point in the story Izzy had arranged several plates, cups, and utensils to help show Hitch what the town had looked like. Her tea table was now covered in mayo, including some small pony figures that she’d carved.
“Wow. That does sound a little traumatic,” Hitch replied. “I can see why nopony wants to think about, or eat, mayonnaise anymore.”
“Yeah, they’re a little silly if you ask me. But what can you do?” Izzy shrugged.
Hitch raised an eyebrow, “So how did you get rid of the lice?”
“Oh, we had to shave every single pony bald! And after all that hard work with the mayo. Plus, it took weeks to clean up the mess.”
He chuckled. “An entire town full of bald unicorns? That must have been a sight to behold.”
“Yeah. You ever try to tell two ponies apart when they’re both pink and wrinkly?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Hitch replied. “So why don’t you hate mayonnaise too?”
“Are you kidding? That was the most fun I’ve ever had almost getting drowned by a mayonnaise volcano!” She laughed and began stacking up her dishes to take them to the kitchen.
“Wow, Izzy. I wish I could see the joy and wonder in things like you do.”