Bits and pieces

by Cackling Moron


#3

Rarity, cunning and savvy businesspony that she was, had wisely acquired a little pied à terre (sabot à terre?) in Canterlot, feeling that it was the sort of place that paid to have somewhere always available to stay if you just-so needed to be there.

Smart lady. Canny lady.

Sweetie Belle had managed to wheedle the usage of it out of her sister for their trip up for Cozy’s party and for a few days beyond, on the condition that it be left in exactly the condition in which it had been found. If, the next time Rarity should so happen to come up and stay, she discovered that it was not left in exactly the condition in which it was found, well...

She had been very clear on the severe, gruesome consequences. She was generous, yes, but she was not without limits, and she herself had been a teenage girl once and so had some idea of what they were capable of.

(Most of the really gruesome gruesomeness had just been for colour, really.)

The girls had made a mess, obviously, but they’d made it in the way that most teenagers would, convinced that cleaning it up wouldn’t be that big of a deal and wouldn’t take very long anyway so why even worry about it. They had very much made themselves at home.

Presently, as evening was making its slow and steady progress into night, the girls were settled or sprawled across the outrageously luxuriant sofa, engaged in the consumption of snacks and the viewing of films. The quality of these films was subjective. Sweetie Belle had been very clear that the film now finishing, which she’d picked, was a very good one. One of the best of recent years she’d go so far as to say. Scootaloo for one disagreed.

“That was terrible,” she said.

Sweetie Bell was mortally offended by what was plainly a false and hurtful statement.

“You pick the next one, then!”

“I will!” Scootaloo declared, slithering off the sofa and moving over to The Pile of films they’d been steadily working their way through. Once there she started digging. A few seconds after she started digging Sweetie slithered off after her to vet Scootaloo’s selections over her shoulder. Bickering followed.

That left Applebloom and Cozy sat on the sofa.

“Well I liked it,” Applebloom said, looking to Cozy for her take.

“Hmm,” said Cozy, clearly not paying attention at all, her eyes fixed on a point some thirty or so feet beyond the wall of the room. Applebloom nudged Cozy, which woke her up to the fact she was being spoken to.

“Something’ botherin’ you?” Applebloom asked.

“Just thinking,” said Cozy.

“‘bout what?”

Cozy briefly weighed up her options on what to say here and, after a second or so, decided that honesty was the best policy. If nothing else her hesitation had made it unlikely anything less than honesty would work. But mostly, you know, it was good to be honest.

“...dad, I guess.”

Did sound pretty lame now she said it out loud, but none of the others thought so. Applebloom immediately shifted about on the sofa the better to look at Cozy face-on and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle paused their heated discussion on the merits of romance versus action to come over and lend moral support and a sympathetic ear.

Cozy felt very much put on the spot. Supported and loved, yes, but also put on the spot.

“Just kind of worried about him,” she said, shrugging helplessly.

“Something wrong with him?” Scootaloo asked.

“No. Yes. Maybe. No, I don’t think so.”

This was not a clear answer.

“...right.”

Cozy squirmed some more. A benefit of having been unmoored and unattached had been that she’d never had to worry about explaining these sorts of knotty feelings to anyone, and also hadn’t had anyone to form knotty feelings about in the first place. She wouldn’t go back, obviously, but it was still a struggle sometimes.

“I think he’s miserable,” she said, with some effort.

You only work that out now?” Scootaloo muttered to Sweetie, who stifled a giggle. Cozy let it slide.

“How’d you figure?” Applebloom asked.

“He tells me for one, but it’s that he then just doesn’t do anything about it. He never changes what he does. All he does is eat, sleep and work. That’s it!”

Didn’t even smoke anymore to break up the monotony, or at least nowhere near as much as he used to. Just drank tea to punctuate his routine. Gallons of the stuff. He didn’t even seem to like it all that much, just did it out of habit. Like most of what he did - done because he did and had always done it, not because he actually felt much desire to. 

That was, as they say, the problem.

And why did he have all those other teas in the cupboard if he only ever drank the cheap awful stuff? Where had it even come from, she’d never seen him go and get it? And now it just sat there anyway! It made no sense.

“I just worry about him. I want him to be happy too, right? But he just makes it so hard! Still sleeping in the bath, still getting up and doing those toys every single day - even weekends!”

This was true. When he wasn’t looking after Cozy in some fashion that was basically what he did from waking until evening. The house was full of the damn things.

“How do those work, by the way?” Scootaloo asked. She had always been a little curious.

“The toys? I don’t know. Well, I do a bit, but not really,” Cozy said, distracted by the question. This wasn’t the point of what she was trying to say. “Clockwork and magic. But not, like, the normal kind of magic. I don’t know. It’s all old stuff, all stuff from where he came from, which he hates,” she said, trying to get back onto the topic, such as it was, but then something in what she’d said tripped her up.

Paul didn’t hate the sort of magic he worked with, per se, it was clearly just something he’d become intimately familiar with over his many years and which, as a result, had more than a few uncomfortable memories for him and also often found unstimulating. But it was all he knew and all he knew how to work with, and since all he did was work that was what he was stuck using, over and over again.

Maybe that was the problem? Lack of variety? Paul had shown the same level of interest in learning some of the local magical techniques as he had in learning the names of her friends - which is to say, none. But maybe he was missing something that he could use? Something that’d make his toys and things impossible to misuse, maybe? 

Maybe different magic…

Hmm.

Wasn’t there that big glowy crystal heart thing up North? Something to do with love?

Yeah, that was right. Love magic. Big on that, up North. Had that other princess and that was her whole deal. Cozy had quite let this slip her mind and it chose this moment, for whatever reason, to come wafting back in.

It wasn’t something she’d really thought much about before - having given it a brief glossing over before dismissing it as broadly useless, at least to her at the time - but it had to be fairly benign stuff, if not actively benevolent, right? It had to be inherently (or as close to inherently as could be conceived) good magic, right? Or at least close enough to make no odds? 

She wasn’t an expert but it had to be worth a shot.

It was love! How could anything suffused with love ever backfire or be used for something nefarious or brutal? Right? Right? Even he couldn’t argue against that! How could he? He didn’t know anything about it!

But he would! Once she brought it to him and showed it to him and explained it to him!

And it’d give him something to do. And maybe get him out the house. And also show him that she could at least try to give back to him as much as he constantly felt he needed to give to her.

Yes!

“I’ve got it!” She said out loud, sitting bolt upright.

“That’s great! Got what?” Applebloom asked.

“Love magic!”

“...love magic?”

“Yes! I just quickly go up North, catch the train, grab something about it - some book or something, or a brief lesson or whatever, enough that I can give him something useful - come back, wrap it up or figure out how to make it a present for him, hand it over, pow. Me giving back to him!”

“Um…” 

“He might not be able to teach me anything but I can teach him something! And it’ll be practical so he can use it! He likes that sort of thing. Something he can figure out and grumble over. Give him something new to do! Maybe he’ll even have to go and ask someone else about it! Get him out the house! It’s brilliant. It’s perfect! And I’ll be back before he even knows!”

The others shared looks. The worried kind.

“Uh, are you sure that’s a good idea, Cozy?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Of course!

The idea was, fairly obviously, not a good one. This should probably go without saying but it bears making very clear. It might have been so not good, in fact, that it was actually bad. Certainly, it didn’t really have any chance of succeeding for a number of reasons, and this was something Cozy herself would have realised pretty quickly had she just sat down to think it through. Even for a second! 

There wasn’t much danger of that happening though, unfortunately.

This was because Cozy had gone so long without planning anything, without there being some scheme or other, without there being steps to follow for some payoff, that her mind had immediately latched onto this meagre morsel and was utterly refusing to let go, so happy to at last have something to work with. 

It was hard to go from the sort of person who meticulously plans - and very nearly executes! - a cunning scheme that managed to either fool, take out, subdue or otherwise negate some of the sharpest, most powerful ponies of the planet to the sort of person who...doesn’t do that. Particularly for one as young as her. Felt like life had taken a downgrade, no matter how much you know that isn’t the case.

Even after a good few years now of not scheming, planning or plotting the framework was still in her mind, hungry, and apparently it hadn’t taken much to get it chugging back into life again. Just the proper motivation - a good deed, in this case - and click, all creaking back into motion.

This idea was perfect! And she could make it work! Easily. Work of a moment. A mere trifle!

And all with the purpose of giving her dad something good, in the hopes of maybe making him happy, or at the least showing what esteem she held him in. If anything it would have been the bad thing not to do the plan!

Of course, that was all inside. On the outside, in ponies other than Cozy, doubt was prevalent.

“Are you sure this is gonna work?” Applebloom asked.

Why was everyone always trying to poke holes in perfection?

“I told you, it’s flawless! Now, I told him I’d be here for two days at least, maybe three, and that’s plenty of time. Two days should be enough, really, so the third day is just a buffer, I’ll be back way before then,” she said, mostly muttering, mostly to herself and mostly while pacing a short circuit across the carpet.

Doubts continued to fester in the others.

“Have you ever been to the Crystal Empire?” Scootaloo asked.

“I’ve read about it,” Cozy said, waving this irritating question aside with the swish of a hoof as she continued to pace a groove in the floor.

“That’s not really-”

But alas, too late. The die was cast inside her head. The plan had basically already succeeded, all that needed to happen was going through the motions, the tedious business of actually executing the plan despite it being so self-evidently perfect that it really should execute itself.

Cozy was already getting herself ready to go.

“I’ll be back! Two days! Three, tops! If dad shows up - when dad shows up, I know he’ll probably come here all worried like because I’ve forgotten my hat or whatever - just say I’m in the bathroom or something. If he asks when I’m planning on coming home say soon.”

“He’s scary though…” Sweetie Belle said, fidgeting, saying what the others were thinking but hadn’t wished to say out loud. Cozy just rolled her eyes as she checked to see if she had enough to cover the cost of an impromptu train journey.

She did.

“Oh he’s not, he’s fine. Just tell him the bathroom thing, he’ll grunt and he’ll go away. It’ll be fine! I’ll be back soon anyway. Two days, tops! Watch me!” She said.

“This is-”

“Thanks guys!”

And like that she was out the door. The others moved to watch her go but by the time they got there Cozy had already disappeared from view. This left the three of them standing in the open doorway, feeling as though someone had just laid a turd across their collective heads

“This is going to go wrong, isn’t it?” Scootaloo asked.

“Yep,” said Applebloom.

“Are we going to get in trouble for it?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Probably,” said Applebloom. Scootaloo screwed her eyes shut and rubbed her face.

“Urgh…” she groaned.

“I think she’s gone weird since living with Mr Paul,” said Sweetie Belle, again voicing a shared opinion.

They all nodded. He was indeed a bad influence.