Chapter Four: The Young Lovers
They were all gathered around a great big wagon wheel of a table, nursing tall mugs of cider. Pinkie sat in between Cheese Sandwich and Rainbow Dash, near the edge of the table.
“We’re gonna find out who tried to kill you in an avalanche and bring them to justice!” Cheese yelled.
“I don’t know who we’ll report them to, but YEAH!” Pinkie replied.
“So,” Cheese said, “We’re gonna INVESTIGATE!”
“Yeah!” Pinkie crowed.
“We’re gonna… uh…” Cheese started.
“Actually, how do we start investigating?” Pinkie asked.
Cheese and Pinkie both deflated, like a pair of writers that had started a project and couldn’t even start the first sentence. There was an audible hissing sound as Pinkie’s mane went lank and flat.
“Oh no,” Rainbow Dash whispered under her breath.
“Honestly, good question,” Portabella said.
“If you need someone to check financial records, I could help,” Sans Smirk said, a light smile on his face. “Pinkie, have you ever sold Party Cannon ammunition to anyone?”
“Well, I nearly sold the Party Cannon to a mobster once, but Maud got it back,” Pinkie said. “So, that won’t help…”
“We could just talk to the ski patroller that found it,” Rainbow Dash said.
“There’s one option I think we’re not considering,” Tomato Sandwich said. “This… is Cavallocade, after all.”
Everyone turned to look at each other.
“We could check in with the Auralcle,” Portabella said, pretty off-hoofedly, as if that was something you could just do on a lazy saturday.
“Oh yeah, the auralcle!” Cheese said, looking down towards one of his saddlebags. “Hold on, hold on…”
He buried his snout in one of them.
“She does this bit all the time,” he whispered to Pinkie. “Loves it.”
Pinkie smiled and nodded.
“An oracle?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“No, an auralcle,” Portabella said. “It’s a creature buried deep under one of the mountains. It’s all spiralling cartilage around ears and a hundred mouths from just as many creatures. It hears the past and present, futures and times that may have yet been. Any secret it has heard from an infinite of infinities, it can speak back.
“How do you even remember all that?” Rainbow Dash asked, before turning around to see Cheese Sandwich holding up a series of giant cue cards.
“Of course,” she sighed. “So how do we get there?”
“Well,” Portabella said, “There’s this lake of glowing runoff from the creature above Cavallocade-”
(She pointed at it. They were currently underneath a massive tentacle.)
“And we need to find an iceberg solid enough to get us across it,” Portabella said. “The blood or whatever it is will melt most boats, so what we need is-”
“Why can’t Giovanni and I just fly us over?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Actually, why not just… ask the Badalisc?” Pinkie asked. “If its whole thing is revealing secrets, why can’t we get it to tell us the secret of who tried to kill me and Cheese?”
There was a deep silence. Everyone stared at her.
“Pinkie,” Portabella said. “You can’t just… go and ask the Badalisc. There’s so much ceremony, and its den is a secret place few dare to-”
Pinkie raised an eyebrow. “It’s up mount Frostenhorn, past the ruins of the old mining town, turn left at the crooked tree.”
For the second time, everyone stared at her.
“...How do you know that?” Portabella asked.
“I read a travel guide when I was researching Cavallocade,” Pinkie said, off-hoofedly.
“Wait, was it bound in something leathery that seemed to swim under the touch?” Cheese asked.
“Yes!”
“Pinkie, that wasn’t a travel guide, that was the neighcronomicon!” Cheese yelled.
“She what?!” Portabella gasped.“How did you not go insane?! Or develop, uh…”
Cheese held up another cue card.
“Exopsychosis?” Portabella said, stumbling over the word. “Wait. Why do you even have that cue card?”
“I didn’t organize my emergency cue card stash very well,” Cheese said sheepishly.
“Ohhh,” Pinkie said. “I thought it was a cookbook!! Cause I thought it said omnomnomicon!”
She paused. “Also wait, you have an emergency cue card stash too?!”
“You could’ve found out about it from there, too,” Cheese Sandwich admitted. “And yeah, I do.”
“Sweet!” Pinkie said.
“...Wait, was it really a cookbook?” Cheese asked.
Pinkie Pie reached into her saddlebags, producing a thick, heavy volume that smelled faintly of mushrooms. The word ‘Omnomnomicon’ was clearly printed in gold at the top.
“Huh. Well, look at me, being wrong,” Cheese said.
"Why does a cookbook have a guide on how to get to a Badalisc?” Giovanni asked, cocking his head to the side.
“Well,” Cheese said, “According to…”
He coughed. Made a strange noise at the back of his throat.
“Ooh!” Pinkie said. “I’m looking forward to this, it was so interesting and I really want to hear Cheese’s take on it!”
“Sans,” he wheezed between attempts to clear his throat, “Can you pull up some dramatic background music?”
“Sure!” Sans said, reaching into his saddlebag and retrieving a gramophone
“...you ponies are all nutcases, you know that, right?” Giovanni sighed.
“Hey, you gotta adapt to the business,” Sans said, shrugging before cranking the gramophone. Deep, bassy music began to issue forth.
“...Ooh, are you doing a dramatic voice?” PInkie asked. “You can just do your spaghetti appleloosan voice to go with this. You don’t have to hurt yourself!”
“Very well then. Thanks, Pinkie!” Cheese said, in an accent that wouldn’t sound out of place at the Apple Family Reunion, even as the gramophone kept playing. “Some will call this a legend, but my nonna was there as it happened.”
“Many moons ago, there was a chef whose restaurant fell on hard times. His traditional Cavallocade food failed to impress the locals, and somepony had spread a rumor that he filled his homemade sweets with razorblades. His life was a downhill slope that seemed to have no bottom.
So one day, after deafening silence in his restaurant, he made the journey up to the Badalisc to ask for the secrets of creating…”
Cheese took a deep breath.
”the perfect butternut squash bisque.”
He was silent.
“...And?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“And what?” Cheese asked.
“And what happened?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Did he pay a terrible price, did he learn too much and go insane, did he go insane and turn into some kind of fungal crab thing like Captain Dyer in Daring Do and The Mountains of Madness?”
“What?” Cheese asked, and blinked. “No, he got the perfect bisque recipe, defeated the pony that slandered him in a swordfish duel, and resurrected his career. Then he just wrote down his journey in the cookbook.”
“...Oh,” Rainbow Dash said, fluttering downwards slightly. “I mean, I guess I’m not mad that it turned out okay, but with all that buildup, that just...”
“Yeah, it was a pretty short story,” Pinkie said, one hoof off to the side in a half shrug. “Actually, you just gave me an idea, Dashie!”
“...What was that?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“It’s simple,” she said. “How about you head off to visit the auralcle, then Cheese and I head off to the Badalisc?”
“How did I give you that idea?” Rainbow dash asked.
“I have no idea!” Pinkie said.
“It does sound like a good idea,” Giovanni said. “But… there’s one issue.”
“What’s that?” Cheese asked.
Giovanni reached onto the sleeve of his winter coat, revealing a shining watch. “You’re both scheduled for some party planning tomorrow, and it’s almost the end of the day. We’re probably not getting anything done in the next couple hours.”
“Oh yeah,” Pinkie said. “We don’t have much longer till the festival. Skiing was fun and all-”
“Pinkie, we almost died,” Tomato Sandwich said.
“The parts where we weren’t nearly dying were pretty fun,” Pinkie pointed out.
Tomato Sandwich shrugged, conceding the point.
“-but anyway, Cheese and I do have a job to do,” Pinkie said. “So… call off the investigation till tomorrow? You can go skiing, Cheese and I can handle our jobs…”
“Sounds about right,” Cheese Sandwich said. Everypony else nodded.
“What now, though?”
“For now…” Pinkie said. She looked over to Cheese Sandwich and winked.
“Let’s PARTY!” Cheese crowed out, as Pinkie whipped pulled a massive barrel of cider and a pair of sunglasses from nowhere.
“Sounds like my kinda night!” Cheese yelled.
And with that, the entire population of the Mascar-Pony broke into song and dance. Music blared from hidden speakers.
A colt sat on the chandelier, which rocked back and forth.
“You don’t wanna fall out of the chandelier again, do you?” Rainbow Dash called up to him.
“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, OLD LADY!” the colt yelled.
“...Who are you calling old?” Rainbow Dash asked, chuckling a little. “I’m-”
Somepony turned up the volume.
“Ooh!’ Pinkie cried out. “This is my jam!”
She paused.
“Well, that and blackberry,” she mused before darting out on the bar’s floor.
She weaved to and fro with the music’s soft beats. She bounced on three legs, one foreleg held forward….
Then tapped the floor with both forelegs, raising her left foreleg and pointing it forward as she bounced on three legs. She craned her neck forwards, twisting her head on it to and fro like a snake to a charmer’s flute.
That, Cheese said, is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“She can really go, huh?!” Cheese asked, watching Pinkie Pie contort herself.
Rainbow Dash chuckled a little. “Just go dance with her, dude!”
She flicked her right ear and forehoof to the side dismissively.
***
Cheese barely needed any prompting from the mare that Wings Magazine called “The most promising new Wonderbolts captain.”
He rocketed out onto the floor like cake from a Party Cannon, and effortlessly slipped into Pinkie’s rhythm. Mirroring her movements, before finding his own rhythm - tapping so furiously with his hooves that he practically seemed to float, and Pinkie Pie adding balletic twirls. And he found himself twirling too, and Pinkie was actually floating above the floor, and all of a sudden they matched, they were two sides of the same Bit, and-
***
And that didn’t happen. What happened was that a little spike of fear ran up and down his body, and he found himself looking at Rainbow Dash.
“You sure?” Cheese asked. “I thought Pinkie and you might…”
Rainbow Dash chuckled a little, taking a big gulp of cider.
“Nah,” Rainbow Dash said.
“You sure?” Cheese Sandwich asked. “She was really happy about throwing your birth-aversary bash. I really thought you two might’ve had something.”
“Maybe we could’ve, but…” Rainbow Dash let her voice trail off, punctuating herself with a sigh. “We’ve grown apart in a few ways. I mean, I’m the best, don’t get me wrong. I was great even when I was on my flanks on a cloud in Ponyville!”
She looked down at her cider, then towards Giovanni.
“That’s when Pinkie and I could play pranks, do whatever we wanted, run races, go skiing or bungee-jumping. A town weatherpony that can clear the sky in ten seconds flat can do that, but… the captain of the wonderbolts can’t,” Rainbow Dash said. “And Pinkie… it’s not like she hasn’t changed, it’s more that I’ve moved away from there. Out of both of us, you’re the…. The closest one to what she is right now.”
They watched her dance.
“And I think you like that,” Rainbow Dash said. “Go ahead. You’re so on the same wave that it’s crazy.”
She nudged him forward with her left wing, the feathers lightly tapping against his spine.
“Ah, what the Tartarus,” Cheese Sandwich said, picking up his own mug of cider and downing the whole thing in a gulp so massive that Rainbow Dash wondered how it wasn’t dripping down his yellow shirt. “Worth a shot.”
Portabella and Giovanni were just up from the table to let Cheese past so he could gingerly trot out onto the dance floor when it happened.
Pinkie froze. The music seemed to go quiet.
And then-
Pinkie’s tail twitched. And it was like her whole body thrummed. What she did next wasn’t weaving, it was throwing herself.
Her knee pinched. Her tale twitched. Her ears flopped. She found herself jumping into the air and flipping, her eyes fluttering. By the time she opened her eyes, she’d landed on her hind legs, shifting her flank onto the dance floor, and spun around on her madly twitching tail. It was as if every part of her body had decided to dance in its own unique way.
But Cheese never did get to dance with her.
“Those were some incredible moves,” Cheese would tell her later that night.
And Pinkie would say something that really, really should have stuck with him.
“Cheese,” Pinkie said, “That wasn’t dancing.”
“Are you sure?” Cheese would say. “That was pretty close to the beat.”
“...That,” Pinkie said, “Was a real doozy a-comin’ there. I don’t know why, but my Pinkie Sense was going loco in the coco!”
The Next Morning
This being Pinkie and Cheese, they totally forgot once they got deep underway on party planning.
So there they were, sitting in a charming little coffeehouse not far from the Mascar-Pony, comfortably situated at an intersection in the middle of town, giving a view up Mount Cavallocade.
The Town Lift stood outside, chairs of ponies drifting above the street and over a bridge that straddled Cavallocade’s main drag.
Pinkie held a large book, balanced precariously on one foreleg. The two of them sat in a charming little coffeehouse
“Okay, so hearthswarming decorations are good, we can use existing stocks like the trim, garlands, and ornaments,” Pinkie said.
“You’re sure?” Cheese asked.
“Positive,” Pinkie said. “Are there, any specific badalisc-like decorations?”
“Well,” Cheese said thoughtfully, “We have some Badalisc garlands. I have a photo, hold on…”
He reached into one of his saddlebags, tossing out a giant cue card.
“You are bucking kidding me,” Pinkie said, staring at the photo.
It was a brown, furry garland with googly eyes sewn onto one end, a red piece of yarn stretching beneath them with triangles of felt sewn under it. The overall impression was a furry tube with a head.
“Badalisc Garland!” Cheese said, proudly.
Pinkie Pie reached into her saddlebags, producing her copy of the Omnomnomicon. She licked one foreleg, and hoofed through it to find…
A picture of a badalisc. Looking almost identical to the photo on one of Cheese’s cue cards.
Pinkie reached into burst into laughter, falling onto her back and rolling on the cobblestones. She was profoundly grateful for the way her fur insulated her from the frozen temperature of th-
Why is my tail twitching?
CLANG
A flowerpot fell to the street, shattering just next to her head. Dirt spilled out, covering the ice-cold cobblestones.
The two of them abruptly stopped laughing.
“Sweet Celestia,” Cheese Sandwich breathed, his eyes wide.
“I know!” Pinkie said, staring intently at the shattered remains that lay far too close to her head. “Who keeps living flowers out in Cavallocade when it’s this cold?!”
“Plenty of ponies, actually!” Cheese said.
“It’s a really nice flower, too,” Pinkie said, looking down at the flower that (against all odds) stood upright in the dirt. It was iridescent, with its petals seeming to change color from purple to blue to pink (or perhaps it was all at once?) when you stopped looking at it. The veins of the flower whorled around circular spots like eyes.
Before Pinkie Pie’s eyes, one of them seemed to blink at her.
“Would this be a good decoration?” Pinkie asked, her tail beginning to twitch. As she stared at Cheese, at the strange flower, she didn’t notice.
“Hmmm. The Badalisc is all about secrets, people say eyeflowers watch you…” Cheese said. “Sure, why not?! We haven’t done it in awhile.”
Just then, another flower pot shattered next to Pinkie Pie.
“What if we use these in the decorations?” Pinkie asked.
“Maybe, maybe,” Cheese said, rubbing one hoof under his chin. “We can’t just use someone else’s flowers. Let’s go to the florist’s, then!”
“Alright!” Pinkie said.
“And on the way, I can take us to the town square,” Cheese said. “Traditionally, that’s…”
“Where the Badalisc comes down from the mountain?” Pinkie asked.
“Yes,” Cheese said. “We all gather there, the Salt Licker and these pantomime characters capture it and drag it off… but not before it tells out everyone’s secrets.”
“Still not sure how I feel about that,” Pinkie said. “There’s some things I might like to keep hidden.”
Cheese started trotting off in the direction of what Pinkie presumed to be the florist’s. She followed.
Something clanged to the ground behind her. But that didn’t matter to her in the least.
MEANWHILE
The Thin Stallion - Victory - was not screeching. They were not frothing at the mouth, spilling out oaths from their unknown homeland. They were not grabbing the “rifle” from the cart that trailed behind them.
Somehow, that unsettled the maroon mare.
He’d done all of those things during the last few attempts on Pinkie.
“Four-year-olds,” he hissed. “I am dealing with four year olds. I tried to get this done. And you two want her knocked out by flower pots? Dom kops. Everyone knows she has a Pinkie Sense that tells her when she’s in danger. Especially WHEN FLOWER POTS FALL ON HER!”
The maroon mare looked at the Thin Stallion, then back to the thin stallion at her side. Then over to Fields.
“Well… we don’t want to kill her, right?” the maroon mare asked. “Just… knock her out, let me do…”
A wave of cold rage flowed through her as she snarled out two words:
“My thing… and then we’ve won.”
“And how’s that going?” Lily Fields hissed. “Look at them. They’re bonding even more! I bet if you dropped another one, you’d practically have them fall in love right then and there.”
“You don’t think they’re….”
“What?” Pinkie asked. “Those ponies who tried to drop an avalanche on me? Naaaah. This is foals play riiiiiiiight here.”
“What makes you say that?” Cheese asked.
“Well it’s just…” Pinkie said. “Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Applejack, Twilight, Fluttershy, even Starlight, and Spike, we all went through so much. That’s public record. They’d… have to know what I went through, right?”
Another flowerpoint clanged to the cobblestone behind her.
“Right? They thought that would hurt you? You were kind of a goddess that one time,” Cheese said, raising one eyebrow. And internally, he facehoofed.
Because that sounded uncomfortably like the present tense. And they’d agreed that they weren’t going to-
“You think I’m a goddess?” Pinkie asked.
MEANWHILE
Lily Fields screamed incoherently.
I’ve made a huge mistake, Cheese thought, wondering what was up with that sound of distant, incoherent screaming. Gotta think this through.
“Well, you had Discord’s power to reshape reality, if that story you told me back in Manehattan is true,” he said. “And I think that’s more power than being able to move the sun and moon, so… then yes, I do think you’d count as a goddess.”
Pinkie stopped mid-bounce and just sort of hung in midair.
Oh no, what’d I say… Cheese thought.
“That’s… pretty cool!” Pinkie said, resuming her bounce.
“You know, I awhile back with Twilight during one of her group read-ins, and…” Pinkie said.
“You go to Twilight’s read-ins?” Cheese asked.
“Yeah!” Pinkie said. “Sometimes it’s just… nice, y’know?”
Cheese nodded. He didn’t really know, but it felt right to just go with it.
“And anyway,” Pinkie said, “I heard creatures would worship beings like that! And that’s just weird to think about. People worshipping Celestia, when me and my friends used to send her mail every week!”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that,” Cheese said. And then, unbidden:
“I’d worship you,” he heard himself say. “I mean, I think I already did.”
***
Pinkie stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Well, I did think about how you inspired me for awhile, so that counts as worship,” Cheese thought.
“Awwww….” Pinkie cooed, drawing Cheese into a hug. “Cheese, that’s the nicest thing anypony’s ever said about me! if you gained the powers of Discord for thirty eight seconds and became a god, I’d worship you too!”
Cheese was motionless in Pinkie’s hug.
“...Should you, uh…” Pinkie started. “Be doing something?”
Cheese didn’t say anything.
Several seconds passed.
“Because normally, this is the point where my friends eyes start bulging or apparently I’m hugging them for too long…” Pinkie said.
Still nothing.
Yet another flowerpot fell onto Pinkie Pie. It just bounced off her mane as if it was made of rubber.
Both of them ignored it. Someone screamed in frustration off in the distance.
Pinkie scratched her chin with one forehoof., completely failing to notice the shards of ceramic nearby.
“That’s one of the nicest things anyone said about me, too,” Cheese said. He paused. “Do we still think that we might lose each other’s spark if we say we love each other?”
“...I don’t know,” Pinkie said.
“Maybe we can put it on a trial basis,” Cheese said.
“And maybe if so, we can try and keep it secret!” Pinkie said. “Having a secret relationship sounds fun!”
“And then we can surprise our friends!” Cheese added. “This is a great idea, Pinkie!”
“Let me guess,” Rainbow Dash said, fluttering up to them both, “Somehow, you’re still just friends at the end of this.”
She probably didn’t hear any of that, Pinkie thought.
In fact, Rainbow Dash totally did hear all of that.
She sighed.
“Off to go skiing?” Cheese asked, slightly muffled by the fur of Pinkie’s barrel.
“...Yes,” Rainbow Dash said, after an uncomfortable pause.
“So,” Rainbow Dash said. “How’s the party planning going?”
“It’s pretty great!” Pinkie said. “Cheese told me all about Badalisc garlands, and we were thinking about going to see a florist…”
“Well, we also need to talk to the actors that’ll be playing the Old Stallion, the Fool, and the Salt Licker,” Cheese said. “So I think we… have some time to kill."
“What about the, uh,” Rainbow dash said, a smirk creeping up her face, “young lovers?”
Cheese and Pinkie’s eyes went wide.
“Oh yeah,” Pinkie said. She reached into her saddlebags, pulling out a clipboard. “First off is the Old Stallion.”
“Oh yeah,” Cheese said. “Obvious option for that is Old Stallion Livio. He always played that role!”
“Didn’t he die and somehow have a foal?” Pinkie asked.
“...Yeah,” Cheese said, very pointedly looking at the cobblestones. “Let’s, uh… go talk to him and not think about it too hard.”
***
Pinkie rapped on the door with one hoof. The knocker was a kind of brass gargoyle head covered in verdigris. It seemed to give under her hoof, ever so slightly. As if it wasn’t metal at all.
“What the…” Cheese asked.
A low droning noise issued forth. Before Cheese’s horrified eyes, the knocker split to reveal a set of teeth. The noise that issued forth was something that could not have come from a mortal throat. It was a kind of un-sound, something that felt like a living being that somehow worked its way into the hollows in your body, between your joints and just twisted.
Cheese forced himself to look. A pair of eyes stared out at him, pupilless and unblinking-
“BaaaaHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!”
Pinkie was laughing.
“That’s so cool!” Pinkie gasped. “How did you do that?! Can you teach me, i have so many prank ideas now!”
Against all odds, Pinkie was the strangest thing on that street. Or at least, one of the strangest. There were still the tentacles coursing above, the thestrals, the robed ponies whose hoods seemed to leak tears or confetti of inky blackness, or other ponies whose limbs seemed to bulge and contract, swinging at odd angles under their robes.
And yet nopony could say that they’d ever seen a pink earth pony mare - any pony, if they were being honest - be confronted with the strange dream-logic of Cavallocade and respond with laughter.
The door knocker blinked. Stared for a moment.
“Oh! Cheese Sandwich! Good to see ya, lad.”
The door swung open to reveal a pony who seemed perfectly ordinary in… numerous respects. They had a mane that had once been a bright vibrant color and was now streaked through with colorless gray, a pale mustache that transitioned into a scraggly beard that its wearer had tried valiantly to force into something approaching neatness.
He seemed like any older stallion you might meet in any town in Equestria, except for the fact that he was translucent. And floating.
“You must be Old Stallion Livio!” Pinkie said. “Can you tell me how you did that?! I think I might’ve tried something like that before!”
“Tried something like what?” asked the ghostly stallion - Old Stallion Livio. “How in Celestia’s name would you even-”
“Never mind that,” Cheese interrupted. “Look, we’re here to ask if you want to be the Wise Old Stallion?”
“Oh, that’s what you’re here for!” Old Stallion Livio said. “I thought you were missionaries! Or you were here to ask about my car’s extended warranty, whatever that is. Or you were going to ask me about cheating.”
“What cheating?” Cheese asked.
“Yeah!” Pinkie added. “I never thought your wife cheated on you!”
This was a lie. Pinkie had totally been wondering if Old Stallion Livio’s wife had cheated on him before he came back from the dead.
“I mean, I get that you’d ask questions, I do have a colt,” Old Stallion Livio said. “But they keep asking if I cheated on my wife!”
Pinkie and Cheese shared a Look. Pinkie in particular cocked her head like a dog, narrowing one eye, in an expression that just screamed ‘maybe we don’t deal with this.’
“I mean honestly, how would that even b-”
“Wise Old Stallion, yes or no?” Cheese interrupted.
“Sure, why not?” Old Stallion Livio asked. “Probably gonna be doing it forever, what with-”
He floated to the right.
“Y’know.”
Cheese desperately tried (and failed) not to think too hard about that one.
“Do you need a script?” Pinkie asked, reaching into her saddlebags. “We have it planned out, and-”
“Nah,” Old Stallion Livio said, waving a hoof dismissively. “I know that like the back of my hooves. I’ll be fine. Odd-shaped room, spare room, right?”
Pinkie and Cheese each craned their necks into their saddlebags, coming out with identical clipboards. Sure enough, he was right - the script’s instructions listed the Odd-Shaped Room’s spare room as the rehearsal location.
“Great!” Cheese said. “Now all we need is the Salt Licker, the Young Lovers-”
“I thought you already had that planned out,” Old Stallion Livio interrupted.
“We did?” Pinkie asked.
“Well, come on, it’s obvious,” Old Stallion Livio said. “There’s only one couple that should be doing that.”
Silence.
“...Mom and dad?” Cheese asked.
“Really?” Old Stallion Livio asked. “I would’ve thought it’d be you.”
He’s onto us! Pinkie thought, staring at Cheese Sandwich wide-eyed.
“No, we’re not… dating,” Pinkie said, stammering. “We, uh, we just… at the moment, we’re really good friends, and uh…”
Old Stallion Livio smirked. “Whatever you say. Love is so confusing nowadays.”
With that, he floated away, up out of the doorframe and into what Pinkie presumed to be a bedroom.
Pinkie and Cheese looked at each other.
“That was… strange,” Pinkie said.
Cheese just shrugged. “Ah, it’s about normal for Cavallocade.”
Pinkie Pie raised a skeptical eyebrow that threatened to hide itself beneath the cotton-candy mass of her pink mane.
“But okay,” Cheese admitted, “that was strange by Cavallocade standards too.”
He reached into one of his saddlebags, pulling out a clipboard. He held it to one hoof, pulling a small pencil from a clasp and scratching something on a sheet of paper.
“Next up is the Salt Licker,” Cheese said. “The Licker for short.”
“Who else?” Pinkie asked. “I kind of forgot to read the list.”
Cheese raised an eyebrow. “Really?! You?! But when we make novelties at the factory, you end up doing most of the accounting!”
“I got, uh…” Pinkie said. “Distracted.”
“Well, you know what they say,” Cheese said. “It’s part of being old.”
“But we’re not that old! We’re only-” Pinkie started.
“Yyyep,” Cheese said, continuing on, “that’s what they say. Memory’s the first thing to go.”
He paused.
“Followed by the memory.”
Pinkie guffawed uproariously.
***
Meanwhile
“It should be you!”
V, the thin stallion, gawped. “Me?! Do reconnaissance? On her?! Are you-”
He crossed and uncrossed his forelegs in front of himself frantically. “No. No no no, a hundred times no, hell no, fo-”
“One of us needs to have an in when we act on phase four of the plan,” Lily Fields said. “And you’ll be perfect.”
“Oh,” said the patchy maroon colored mare. “So now we have four phases?”
It might’ve seemed more imposing and fierce from anypony else. But as it was, her voice was too high pitched to truly make it sound anything but gently snarky.
The stallion next to her - also patchy and maroon - made a grumbling noise.
The first time V had seen them, he’d wondered if they were siblings. There was something familiar about the mare, but he could never quite put his finger - his hoof, right, his hoof - on it. This other stallion had also never given V his name.
“Look,” V said, rearing up and holding his forelegs in a conciliatory gesture, “I don’t know if you know this, Lily, but I hate her. I hate her so feverishly. You all think your grudges against her are worth anything, she destroyed my life. Left it in broken splinters in the kitchen floor. I will not be able to control myself, especially if you’re expecting me to be The Licker.”
“That’s what she did to me, too!” Party Popper spoke up.
“Really,” V sneered. “Did she leave you alone with no family or friends to go back to? Did she leave you A BROKEN SHELL OF A MA-”
“Yes,” Party Popper said.
Oh.
V involuntarily stumbled back. He didn’t know what expression had spread across his face, but he felt his eyes widening, his jaw going slack.
“Me too,” the maroon stallion said. V was surprised, to say the least. The maroon stallion was an enigma, even among this strange crew of ponies that had rescued him from the Crystalline Tundra. He rarely spoke, he had never given a name, and mostly communicated through monosyllabic grunting.
Everyone turned to Lily Fields.
She shook her head sadly. “Awful. Just awful. My childhood was never the same afterwards. I could never look anypony else in the eye ever again, it was so terrible.”
The four ponies stood in silence.
“Look,” Party Popper said, “I can go with you to see about getting you the position. I can even do it. Plus, we need intel on her. Maybe I can do the job and you watch me. I know how she acts.”
“That… could be doable,” V conceded.
Pinkie and Cheese had moved on to the main drag of Cavallocade. It didn’t seem to have a name - everyone just called it Main Street. This actually seemed pretty normal to Pinkie, cause nocreature ever called the main drag of Ponyville anything but main street.
What was stranger was that all the signs for main street had read… something once upon a time, and then somepony had scratched out the names.
Pinkie pulled a clipboard from Cheese out of one of her saddlebags, staring down the length of the main drag up towards another mountain. The railroad tracks crossed a bridge between two white faces of snow, through which Pinkie could see a long, bare valley. It looked to be barely explored - a few roads seemed barely discernible up through the hills and past the bridge, a few houses as well, but it was hard to tell what (if anything) was over that way.
Cheese saw her staring. “Yep, that’s where the Badalisc is,” he said, laughing a little and pointing. “Can’t believe I’m actually planning on heading up there to see the Badalisc before the festival!”
“Why?” Pinkie asked. “Is it sacred?”
Cheese scratched his chin with one hoof, deep in thought. “No, he comes down sometimes outside of the festival, but we all just sorta agreed it’d be rude to go up to his house unannounced.”
Pinkie nodded. This did make some sense.
“So the Badalisc garlands can go here, and here,” Pinkie said, pointing to a couple lampposts. She looked down at the “Are the breezie-lights a part of tradition, or…”
“No,” Cheese said, “They’re sort of a recent thing - the elder party planners of Cavallocade decided it should be happier.”
“Was it not happy before?” Pinkie asked.
“Sometimes it wasn’t,” Cheese sighed. “It’s not easy to take something that just reveals everypony’s secrets and say ‘Oh, no, it’s actually great that town gossip is that my Nonna has been there since before the town was founded!’ But end of the day, it’s about coming together.”
“Well,” Pinkie said, “For both of us, it sure is working. Cheese, it’s…”
She stopped.
What am I thinking?!
It was like she’d flung herself off a rope swing, and was now careening through midair. And ow, all she had to do was stop her fall, midair, and-
Wait a minute, how did I do that?
That’d all made sense at the time, back however many years ago that was. But-
Have to think about how to finish that sentence, but also how can I just float in midair-
Pinkie’s mind ricocheted between these two subjects with no stop in sight.
“Pinkie?” Cheese asked. “You’ve been kind of quiet for a few seconds. I’m kind of concerned…”
Then she looked into his beautiful green eyes and it all made sense.
“Cheese,” Pinkie Pie said, “These last few months with you have been some of the best of my life.”
Cheese blinked at her. “Pinkie, you’ve only been here about three days.”
“Huh,” Pinkie said. “Feels way longer.”
“Yeah,” Cheese said, nodding. “I’ve been feeling some of that too. I’ve felt… like time has just stopped for me.”
The two of them drew closer.
“I don’t know if I want it to start back up,” Pinkie Pie said, looking into Cheese’s deep emerald eyes.
“Hey,” Cheese said, “Remember how you said you were a goddess that one time?”
Pinkie giggled. “Do I?!”
“If you could do that again,” Cheese said, “Would you? Just… stop time so it was us, together?”
Pinkie’s eyes widened. Would I do that?
There was a unique feeling Pinkie had as she’d been with Cheese all these days. She felt… light. This wasn’t quite the right word, she knew that, but she also didn’t know the right word, so she felt like she deserved some leeway there.
There’d been so many times she had struggled to understand or be understood.
I know I’m different, Pinkie thought. I know I don’t always… get what other ponies are thinking.
But with Cheese, there wasn’t any need to really flex those muscles. Sure, Pinkie loved her friends, especially Rainbow Dash, but there was always that feeling she was just missing something. But with Rainbow Dash, she could simply… be the Pinkieist Pinkamena Diane Pie to ever Pinkie. With no issue.
There were a couple responses that bounced around in Pinkie’s mind. And as she opened her mouth to-
“Excuse me,” someone said, and Pinkie felt a stare raking over her like a chill wind. That voice…
Something was strange about it. It was cold and high pitched and raspy and gravelly all at once. Like no voice she’d ever heard. And whoever owned it… they were angry.
What was I doing? Was I going to say something? Was I going to… kiss Cheese?!
That last part seemed so distant. Almost… ridiculous now?\
Also, her tail was twitching. Shaking like a leaf, even.
“What’s this now?” Cheese asked, faraway annoyance in his voice.
Is that at me? Pinkie asked.
“I’m… sorry to interrupt,” the voice repeated. Pinkie narrowed her eyes, staring at the voice’s owner. The owner was a tall and thin unicorn stallion, with olive-green fur and a mussed brown mane. He had pale orange eyes.
The mare next to him was…
Odd. She was bundled up for the cold, more than anypony Pinkie had often seen (ponies had fur for a reason!) and it looked like some color, something reddish or pinkish (‘Wait what?’ Pinkie thought.) had rubbed against it. She wore a faded blue scarf over her mouth.
“We heard you were looking for actors for the festival of the Badalisc,” the stallion said. His voice was… odd. It was an accent that reminded her of Horsetralia or Scootaloo’s parents.
“Okey-doki-loki,” Pinkie said, narrowing her eyes. Something about them put her off, ever so slightly. If you were, months later, to ask what was going through her head as her Pinkie Sense overclocked,, she would say she simply had a bad feeling about all of it. Her tail twitched madly, sweeping through nearby snow like a broom.
But here’s what was actually happening: She was looking at their stances, analyzing the mysterious stallion’s voice, pinking up on a hundred small details in a way that might impress Sherclop Pones or Shadow Spade.
And she was not liking what she saw.
One-two-threedy, no-indeedy, Pinke thought, clearly agreeing with me, the narrator.
Wait what the-
“So,” Pinkie said, eyes still narrowed, voice lowered almost as much as she could (which wasn’t very much, but she still made the effort). “What roles are you auditioning for? The young lovers?”
Whatever Pinkie expected, their reactions were not it. The thin stallion gawped at her, his face a death-mask of absolute horror, one eye shrinking to the size of a pinprick and the other threatening to migrate from his face to greener pastures. He broke into a hoarse, rattling coughing fit.
The parka-wearing mare behind him stumbled back, their flanks sinking into a pile of slightly dirtied snow.
what?!
“...Apparently not,” Pinkie said, looking the two of them over.
“Pinkie,” Cheese whispered, “What’s up with you? They haven’t-”
“Isn’t your cheesy sense going nuts?!” Pinkie hissed back to him. “Look at them! They’re so sus!”
“They are,” Cheese whispered back, “But they haven’t done anything yet!”
“They’re hiding something though,” Pinkie said. “I can feel it.”
Cheese nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I see it too.”
“She’s just… here to see me off,” the thin stallion said.
“Also, he pre-” the mare started.
The thin stallion made a growling noise, his eyes raking her over. A strange pinkish color seemed to leach itself into his eyes.
Then he shrugged.
“Well, Party Popper there is right,” he conceded. “As it is… I do prefer… males. We just… neither of us can see anything happening between the two of us, so that’s why we were so shocked.”
“I see…” Cheese said. Pinkie looked at his flank, and promptly began to stare at it for a little too long. Those LEGS! Those well-toned LEGS! I’m kinda jealous of those. Maybe if I went to exercise classes with Rarity… or didn’t eat so many cupcakes… or pies… or cupcake pies…
His tail was twitching too, but lighter.
Whatever the thin stallion was saying or thinking, clearly this wasn’t suggesting imminent danger.
“If it’s not the young lovers, what role do you want?” Cheese asked.
“Maybe the… town salt licker?” the thin stallion said, blinking and sounding uncertain. “Yes, the licker. That I can do. But it’s been way too long since I acted professionally...!”
.”You’re an actor?” Pinkie asked, curious.
“I dabbled a bit back in college,” the thin stallion said. “I never took it anywhere, though.” A strange, misty look came into his eyes. “I met my wife-”
(in his strange accent, it sounded like ‘Waff’)
“-while performing, you know,” he said.
And that, that sounded genuinely earnest to Pinkie. Whatever he was, he seemed like he’d be a decent actor.
“Plus,” he said, “I spent a lot of time as the Licker already, so you know I have experience!”
He laughed a little.
“I don’t know if that’s how that works,” Cheese said.
“I have self control, don’t worry your curly little heads,” the thin stallion said. “My days of being uncontrollably lickered up are behind me now.”
“We’ll put you on the list,” Pinkie said, “See if anyone else steps forward.”
She pulled a clipboard out of her saddle bags, hooking it with that massive front curl of her mane.
“Hold on,” the parka-wearing pony next to him said. “If he can get put on the list…”
She held a hoof to her face, clearly making a show of how contemplative she was being. “Can I be the old wise woman?”
Cheese paled. “No, YOU FOOL!”
“Wait, wha-” the strange mare asked, before Cheese grabbed her with both hooves.
“My nonna always has the role!” Cheese whispered, starting to shake her in his forelegs. “Did you hear what she’ll do to you if you usurp her role? Did you hear the horrors she’s capable of?! She’ll make you wish you listened to her…”
“W-what?!” the strange mare stammered, in a strangely familiar voice. “What’ll she do?!”
Cheese stopped shaking her, leaving her suspended about two feet off the ground.
“I… don’t really know,” he admitted. “I didn’t listen. That’s why I was asking.”
“O… kay,” the strange mare said.
“Well, we can still put you on the list if we need an understudy,” Pinkie Pie said. “What’re your names? Just say them out loud and write them down.”
“I’m… Party Popper,” the mare said, mouthwriting her name in on the clipboard.
The stallion was impassive.
“Uh… mister?” Pinkie asked.
“Well,” he said. “It’s just… i’m not sure what to go with here.”
“What do you mean?” Cheese asked.
“See, the issue is that I am known by many names,” the thin stallion said, “I am old, ancient beyond reckoning-”
“Even though you’re not even forty,” the strangely familiar mare next to him interrupted.
“Bright…!” the thin stallion sighed. “I mean, ja, but how long have I been younger than forty?”
The strangely familiar mare sighed.
“Oooh! Oooh!” Pinkie said. “Less than forty ye-”
“I’ve been in my mid-twenties,” the thin stallion said.
“Wait,” Cheese Sandwich interrupted, “How on Equestria are you in your mid-twenties?”
The shadows continued deepening. A kind of strange unlight, a magenta color that shouldn’t have been there crept into the edges of his black pupils, as if the colors of his irises had been poorly painted on and were leeching out from their bounds. His horn flared, crackling and jumping like a campfire.
“For fifteen years,” the thin stallion said.
(“How is that even possible?” Cheese wondered.
“His age was reset or something,” the mare next to him said off hoofedly.)
“I am old beyond my years. I have seen countless battles, watched the unseeing eye of the space between spaces turn its sightless gaze upon me and judge me as lacking,” the thin stallion said. “I have lived and died many times. Gone by many names. But there are some who call me…”
His voice trailed off.
“...Vic?” he asked, uncertainly.
What an odd name, Pinkie thought. Sounds like it’s short for something? She blinked. “You seem… kind of uncertain.”
“Well, it’s just… I didn’t expect to be in this situation,” ‘Vic’ said. “I spent so many times hearing about the oh-so-famous Pinkie Pie, and…”
He narrowed his eyes. “Here I am.”
What Pinkie Pie felt in that moment was not a twitching tail. It was as if her body was the string of a violin and she had been plucked, her entire body spasming in the space of three seconds.
“How about we, uh,” Pinkie said, “Give you a spare script for Badalisc day!”
She forced a smile. Her Pinkie Sense had hit her like a freight train, and one of her forehooves felt like it had gone partly to sleep. It felt strange to stand up.”And then we’ll be on our way.”
“Where can I… get in contact with you?”
“Rehearsal schedule is spare room the Odd-Shaped Room tomorrow,” Cheese said.
***
Cheese Sandwich was, relatively speaking, more grounded than Pinkie Pie. Even though they wouldn’t say it in front of Ponyville’s pink premier party pony, a lot of ponyville residents might yet agree. Pinkie was often on adventures, or teaching strange creatures that had been thought of as half-mythical at the School of Friendship, or plumbing the depths of Equestrian history.
(Though in all honesty, it was more that Twilight would plumb those depths and Pinkie was just sort of there, doing her own thing or passively absorbing it)
“Those two,” Cheese said, “Were weird.”
“Oh, extremely!” Pinkie agreed, bouncing along next to him.
“And we’re just going to… let them work with us?” Cheese asked. “You felt it, and I felt it. They were hiding something!”
“They were,” Pinkie said. “But that stallion… he seemed like he really did want to play the Town Drunk.”
“It’s just…” Cheese said. “What if they’re those people that tried to kill us with an avalanche? Something about them is driving my Cheesy Sense nuts.”
Pinkie nodded slowly. “True, very true. Pinkie Sense isn’t having a good time of it. How about we just keep them at foreleg’s length?”
Cheese shrugged. “Fine by me.”
“Well then,” Pinkie said, “If we’ve got most of the preparations set out, we can go find the Badalisc!”
She jumped up into the air, one foreleg outstre-
“Hold up there, eager mcbeaver,” Cheese said. “Heading up Mount Frostenhorn isn’t easy. There’s some people that’ll take us up there on old mining lines, but…”
He shrugged, his forelegs in a ‘W’ shape. Pinkie just sort of floated there as he did.
“We’ll need jackets, climbing equipment, hats, winter socks, supplies for a fire, shovels…” Cheese said.
“Are we gonna need to buy any of that, or…” Pinkie asked.
“Nah, Nonna keeps a lot of them in the Mascar-pony,” Cheese explained. “You’d be amazed how many ponies forget how cold it can be up here.”
“Some ponies, huh?” Pinkie said. “Just because they have fur, they think they’ll be warm…”
“Pardon me,” said ‘Vic’ the thin stallion.
Pinkie Pie gasped.
“Might we… be able to help. I’m a bit of an outdoorsma… outdoorspony myself. I should be able to help out… and push comes to shove, you’ll have another set of hands to carry for you.”
He smiled.
It was just a little too wide, but it never reached his eyes. Vic maintained the same blank stare.
Cheese felt chills running along his spine. Maybe this was Cheesy Sense in action - Pinkie had never mentioned getting chills - but it wasn’t right.
He looked to Pinkie. She looked skeptical, one eye narrowed and one hoof under her chin.
“Nah, we’re good,” Pinkie said. “Cheese, I think I forgot money for a new coat.Can we go back to the hotel and get one? I think Rarity has a new boutique in town we can stop by, it’ll be great to do something nice for one of my best friends!”
There were a number of things that raced through Cheese’s mind. He had just told her they didn’t need money, and Rarity…. She didn’t have a boutique in town, did she?
I mean, she might, it’s not like I spend that much time h-
His tail started twitching.
What’s this now?
“Yeah, Rarity’s!” Cheese said. “Great to see her branching out. I love how she’s trying to be more asymmetrical, it really… stands out!”
(Cheese didn’t know very much about fashion, but credit where credit was due - he was trying.)
He placed a foreleg over Pinkie’s neck. He was wondering if he’d need to guide her, but just in the moment that his foreleg touched the voluminous mass of magenta that was her mane, she was already trotting along, passing down a sidestreet that was decorated with a massive signpost of an eye.
It was in the shadow of a massive tentacle from the beast that sat atop Cavallocade. The strange protrusions on the undersides of its tentacles appeared to have crawled onto the walls of the buildings that formed the alleyway, spreading across like roots of trees. Purple and orange leaves appeared to be growing from the sides, making the alleyway look a little bit like a tunnel made from trees.
Translucent crystalline orbs, each rounded like fruits, bloomed from some of the vines, from the great tentacle above them.
And before Pinkie knew it, they were speedtrotting down through the alleyway like schoolfoals trying to avoid getting caught by the hall monitor…
…then Cheese felt leaves brushing against his mane and realized the two of them were galloping.
The walls of the alleyway rushed away beside them. Leaves brushed against Cheese’s coat, and all of a sudden, he knew where they were.
Cheese recognized this place:
Whispervine alley, he thought. One day, this had been a fairly normal section of Old Cavallocade, And the next, the jungle had grown.
There’d been some debate about the dead beast above Cavallocade, about just what it was that caused jungle to grow from it. Perhaps it had been a dormant infection, perhaps it had eaten some of the plants… who could say.
This section of Cavallocade, for whatever reason, was not cold - it was a jungle that had sprouted up on a few disused blocks, hugging storefronts and infesting the architecture of Cavallocade. Orange, pink, and red mushrooms sprouted between the purple foliage.
Something made hooting noises from in between the overgrowth.
“Pinkie, what’s-” Cheese started.
Pinkie shoved one foreleg up towards his snout. Her eyes were wide and pleadi-
Okay, that was how Cheese normally thought of her eyes, but they were even wider now. And there was something in there that he’d never seen:
Fear.
There was the snap of a twig.
And suddenly, Pinkie dove. With the strength of a hoofball player, something that Cheese would never have expected of her, she tackled him, throwing the two of them tail over teakettle down a sloped expanse of grass that had had exploded out from between cobblestones.
They rolled between two trees that had erupted through the cobbles, into a hollow made by the roots.
When they came to, Cheese was lying on his back on a patch of grass between the trees. And Pinkie was standing over him, each hoof planted firmly within inches of his legs.
For a moment, they were both still. Cheese was staring into Pinkie’s wide, blue pleading eyes, pools of soft, inviting blue that made him think of the cool spot under bedsheets on a hot summer night.
And Pinkie was staring into Cheese’s deep, warm, green soulful emerald eyes. He looked… happy. Like there was nowhere he’d rather be than lying there, staring into her eyes, even though she’d just tackled him and thrown him downhill.
I’d be happy with that, Pinkie thought, nodding to herself slightly. She drew closer, closer, and-
“SSSSH!” someone hissed. There was a light slap of a hoof against a head.
“Oh, right,” Pinkie whispered, tapping her head with her forehoof. “We’re in danger!”
“From what?” Cheese asked.
“You’re making noise too!” the mysterious mare - Party Popper - hissed back.
Aw, buckdammit, Pinkie thought.
Pinkie’s eyes darted around as she zeroed in on the noise. Her ears were perked up, and she looked left, then right.
“Pinkie,” Cheese whispered. “What’s…”
The words died in his throat. Pinkie stared at him, eyes pleading again, and Cheese was silent.
“Come on,” Vic called out, his voice shifting into an accent like nothing she’d ever heard. It was like the words were being painfully dragged from his throat, inch by inch. “Don’t you recognize some frrrrrrriendly faces, Pinkie?! Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah,” Party Popper said, her voice rising and falling in pitch. “We just want to talk about our roles.”
Pinkie could hear the smile in their voices. But it was.. It was all twisted. Like a balloon animal, but someone had gotten even that simplistic anatomy wrong.
“They… sound? …Friendly?” Cheese asked. In absolutely no syllable of that sentence did he sound even close to certain.
Those two ponies should have felt friendly.
But…
His Cheesy Sense was acting up just like Pinkie’s. And as he looked into Pinkie’s eyes he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he trusted her.
“I shouldn't have given them the script,” Pinkie whispered. “My Pinkie sense…. Vic, the actor? He seemed sincere about some things, but my Pinkie sense was going nuts as I looked at him. I’m telling you, something is weird about hi-”
“I heeeeeeeeeeear you,” Party Popper called out, punctuating her call with a fake laugh.
This all should have been crazy to Cheese Sandwich. He went on adventures, sure, but harmless ones. He wandered Equestria, he threw parties, but his life was never threatened - unlike Pinkie Pie, anyway.
Cheese stole a glance between the trees. Pinkie followed, her eyes wide as she reared up and perched her head directly on top of Cheese’s.
This should be kinda nice, Cheese mused.
If the inexplicable sense of foreboding they were getting from Vic and Party Popper hadn’t killed his enthusiasm for how often he’d bumped up against Pinkie’s fluffy pink fur, the next sight did.
Vic swung around a corner.
A grin like an open wound bisected his face. It was a little too wide, more than Cheese would ascribe to genuine happiness. In the low, pinkish light beneath the tentacle, his teeth looked sharp. He seemed to be composed of nothing but sharp angles, each of them cutting across the street and its purple foliage like a machete.
He’s not a pony, Cheese thought, someone took a pony and put something else in there.
One foreleg cut across the weed-choked cobblestones.
His mind raced.
What’d happened?! What did we do to deserve this?! What do they think we did?!
Party Popper slunk along behind Vic
…and nothing was wrong with her at all. Next to Vic, whatever he was, she looked completely normal save for the color of her fur. It seemed to have faded, mottling into an offbeat pinkish-gray. The first word that came to Cheese’s mind when he saw it was “sickly.”
The scarf over her mouth had fallen, to reveal that same terrible open-wound smile. The color around her mouth flecked from that unhealthy pinkish gray to a bright magenta.
Almost like clown makeup, Cheese thought, and he was about to giggle involuntarily when he saw the look on Pinkie Pie’s face.
She was staring, openmouthed, eyes wide, at Party Popper’s ill-colored fur. Her huge blue eyes tracked the strange pony, and a frown spread across her face.
“No,” Pinkie said. “No, no, no. It couldn’t be.”
“What?” Cheese asked.
Pinkie shook her head, forcing a smile that strained the corners of her mouth. “Nothing, nothing at all, Cheesy! We need an escape route.”
I’ll have to ask her about that, Cheese thought.
“Okay,” he said, taking a breath.
Pinkie sat intently, hindlegs splayed out, forelegs planted on the ground in front of her. She looked strangely doglike.
“Okay, nobody lives here,” Cheese said, “But most of the doors here still work. That house that used to be blue, down the street?”
He pointed to an old Victhorsian-era house that had been overtaken by green-purple vines, each of them studded with red flowers that looked like eyes.
“It gets used as a town park that has couches inside,” Cheese said. “We can get to the Mascar-Pony through there.”
It all sounded strange to Pinkie. How did they get to the Mascar-Pony from there? How would the house help? There was an open space down the street, and it wouldn’t be hard for Vic and Party Popper to see them.
But…
Pinkie looked in Cheese’s eyes and everything made sense to her. Yes. Yes, they could do this. That would make sense. And Cheese was somepony that would never betray her trust, and because of that this would absolutely work.
Pinkie looked down at the Victhorsian house, then down to a fragment of cobblestone.
“I have an idea,” she said, scooping the fragment of rock into her right forehoof. She tossed it up…
And, with both forelegs, bucked it in the direction of Vic and Party Popper.
“Gogogogogogogo!” Pinkie hissed, and the two of them galloped towards the overgrown Victhorsian house.
“I heard a noise,” Party Popper said.
“Mompie!” Vic hissed. “That was a rock hitting a tree. Obviously they’re-”
Pinkie looked back.
“FOLLOW THEM!” he bellowed, the voice sounding deeper than his thin body should have allowed.
She regretted it instantly. For a moment, she almost wished the rock had hit Vic in the head and cut into his brow. Because he was staring at her with eyes that were… Oh, that face!
His eyebrows were narrowed, and his face had creased and folded into a mask of unyielding rage. But Celestia, those eyes. They were flat, hard pinpricks of orange set into a face that looked like a wax bust of a pony that had started melting.
Pinkie flinched even as she ran, and with a burst of speed she didn’t know she was capable of, she rushed for the house….
There was a sense of impact then something giving way, and Pinkie found herself lying on the floor of the house. Inside the entryway. There was a broken window behind her.
“...you do not do things by halves!” Cheese breathed, gingerly climbing through the window.
“...I jumped through a window?” Pinkie asked.
Cheese blinked. That was confirmation enough.
“Right,” Cheese said, “Now, first thing? We get to the roof.”
“No, first we try and block them off,” Pinkie said, trotting up to a nearby bookshelf. The wood had warped into a kind of purplish color, and mushrooms burst from between mildewed pages. “Here, help me block off the window.”
Cheese nodded. That felt right. He followed her, pushing the bookcase with his muzzle. Meanwhile, Pinkie let it fall towards her back as she held both forelegs behind her
“I… felt it too,” Cheese said through gritted teeth. “Not towards him, but the other one. Party Popper. They…. They made my skin crawl.”
“The Pinkie Sense is not infallible,” Pinkie said, “But… they followed us here, and my tail is shaking like it’s Running of The Leaves. And she has a… a smell. A kind of smelly smell. That smells… smelly…”
She sniffed the air.
“Chocolate-raspberry cherry with chocolate shavings and buttercream icing,” she whispered.
“The Party Cannon ammo,” Cheese breathed. “The… from that day you-”
THOOM
A flash of pink. The door buckled. The entire house seemed to shake.
“Come on, bru,” Vic called, his tone sickly sweet. “We just want to talk. Come on out and talk, before… an accident happens.”
“Get it to the window!” Pinkie screamed. “The window, the window!”
“Don’t worry, though,” Party Popper said. “No matter what happens, we’ll be able to pick up the pieces.”
“AAAAH!” Pinkie screamed.
In that moment, the bookcase was forgotten as the two of them stared at each other in horror.
That had sounded… exactly like her voice. Absolutely pitch-perfect.
“Pinkie, what the buck?!” Cheese yelled. “How can she-”
“I don’t know!” Pinkie yelled.
“”Cheese,” Vic said. “It’s Cheese Sandwich, ja? I heard a lot about you. You don’t deserve what we could do to her. And you don’t know her. You don’t know just how badly she can hurt people.”
Pinkie could hear an awful, sickly-sweet kind of joy in his voice.
“You can walk away. If anything, we’re doing you a favor,” Vic said. “Go ahead. You’ll be safe.”
Cheese looked at Pinkie.
She looked back with those blue eyes, a smile still on her face somehow despite the two ponies pursuing them.
I’m staying, he realized.
No matter what, I’m staying.
“Like Tartarus I will,” he said.
“Excellent,” Party Popper said. “Now we don’t have to worry.”
That imitation of Pinkie’s voice again. Cheese shivered under his fur, despite the warm temps of whispervine alley.
There was a wet, resounding boom, and a window exploded inward, a massive, heavy cake sailing through and splashing against a nearby wall. No, more than a window - a massive hole had been punched through the house’s wall, just big enough for Pinkie Pie to squeeze through if she wanted.
“POUND CAKE, BABY! Something you never figured you could use as ammo,” Party Popper crowed, a laugh ripping itself from deep within her.
Her head wormed its way through the hole in the glass.
“You want to know, don’t you?!” Party Popper cackled, pushing her head through the window. Her smile seemed to fill the hole she’d made, and in the low light her teeth seemed as jagged as shards of glass. “You.. heh… hahahahah… you wanna know what you did to us? You wanna-”
She stopped, staring at Cheese with pale blue eyes.
The exact same shade as… Cheese breathed.
“Where is she?” Party Popper asked, sounding genuinely confused. “Wh-”
THUD
Somehow, Cheese Sandwich knew exactly what was about to happen. He scrabbled backwards, legs barely finding purchase against the wet swollen hardwood, his flank slamming into a wall.
The bookcase!
Pinkie stood behind it, hindlegs outstretched backwards. She’d hammered into the bookcase they’d forgotten, catapulting it towards the other wall with the power and precision of a champion applebucker,
Party Popper’s mouth formed a small ‘O’ of quiet recognition before the bookcase tumbled down…
Right towards her head.
“GO!” Pinkie screamed, and the two of them pelted for a set of stairs.
Then there was another thud. The sound of more breaking glass. And yet another dull thump. Somewhere, a cat caterwauled. Vic made a surprisingly familiar scream.
“I CAN’T SEE MY EYES!” Party Popper screamed.
“Eh, she’ll be fine,” Pinkie said, skidding on a mildewed carpet as she rushed for another set of stairs. “I’ve seen Rainbow Dash take worse falls.”
“Why are you just STANDING THERE?!” Party Popper yelled. Her head, thankfully, had not been crushed by the bookcase.
What had happened, however, was slightly less painful. The bookcase had slammed down on her head, dragging her forward and knocking her skull against the floor. Her butt and legs stuck out and up through the window, like a foal that had gotten stuck in the laundry chute again.
“I, uh… “ Vic said, his horn glowing. “I’m trying to figure out how to get you out.”
It was silent between them.
“Why?” Party Popper asked. “I thought you hated me.”
“I…” Vic sighed. “I don’t want to leave you like that. It looks like it hurts. I’m trying to get the perfect angle to…”
He gritted his teeth. Squinted.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “There we go, there we go…”
The bookcase glowed pink. Ever so slightly, Party Popper felt the weight on her neck lessening.
Finally, once the weight was all gone, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Oh, thank Celestia,” she wheezed. “Oh, oh wow. That hurt. So bad. You gonna… uh… chase them?”
“We lost the trail, anyway,” Vic said. “And I need to make sure you’re okay.”
The two of them were silent for a few seconds, Party Popper still lying with her head on the floor, her legs still poking out from the window.
“So, first step. You gonna… do something about that?” Vic asked.
“No, I kind of… don’t wanna move,” Party Popper said. “That hurt. Like, a lot. When’d she learn to buck that hard?”
“Dunno,” Vic said. “From what I know, she barely had any training from Celestia.”
“...She had training from Celestia?” Party Popper asked, surprised. “I thought that was just Princess Twilight!”
“Princess what?!” Vic asked. He was staring at Party Popper - well, he was staring at her butt. He was staring at her butt as if it had grown a second head from the cutie mark she kept under all those clothes.
“I…” Party Popper sighed. “No. Nevermind.”
She shivered. And remembered the instruction she’d gotten from Lily Fields.
If you hint at anything about Princess Twilight, about Tirek, anything at all, I will find a unicorn that can finish the job she started on you, Fieldshad hissed. I mean it. I can think of so many ways to make your life worse.
Revenge against Twilight was a fool’s game. But against Pinkie? That’d seemed more achievable.
“Look,” she said. “We’ve got more important things. Like who’s going to be in the horseapples with Fields, and how we keep her from-”
Vic’s voice trailed off. His head snapped around to see Lily Fields, standing just behind him, perched on a tower of vines that might have once been a lamppost.
Standing just underneath her, underneath the possible lamppost, was the quiet maroon stallion. He stared at them both.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Fields said. “Give me some ideas. I need inspiration for what we can do to her to make up for your mistakes.”