Fluttershy Saves The World in 7 Days

by Miller Minus


Day 4

Angel stood at the edge of the Ponyville Market without a clue of what to do. In front of him was a sea of legs, turning and churning, pausing and continuing, moving in every direction at once. The ponies of Ponyville towered overhead, smiling and chatting and paying no attention to little creatures that might be nearby.

He clutched his five cue cards, the only things he had with him. He stared at the drawing of groceries on top and gulped. His prize was in the center of these legs—a small stand of fruits, veggies and bread—whole foods, none of that processed crap Bumper Cars subsisted on. Every so often, Angel spotted the stallion manning his post, looking bored, blowing his blond mane out of his eyes.

But he’d never get through—best case, he’d be kicked back to where he started, bruised. Angel turned and started to step away, but then saw Fluttershy through the window of his mind, pacing, panting, whimpering, and he turned back around. He gulped and took a step forward, certain he was about to die.

“Hoo!”

Angel’s breath leaped out of him. He stumbled into the ground and clutched at his tail instinctively, dropping his cards. Almost hyperventilating, he gathered himself and stared back at the owl standing before him. Angel baring his little bunny teeth.

“Hoo,” Owliscious stated, hopping twice to Angel’s left.

Angel dusted himself off and pointed to his chest with one paw.

“Hoo?” Owliscious went on, hopping twice to Angel’s right.

Angel scoffed, jabbing his chest with both paws. Didn’t the owl know who he was?

Owliscious shook his head, waving his wings in front of Angel’s face, and making him want to body-check the crazy bird.

“Hoo.”

Owliscious hopped to Angel’s left.

“Hoo?”

Owliscious hopped to Angel’s right.

Angel snapped to attention. The blasted thing had a plan. He wasn’t asking Angel who he was, he was giving him instructions.

When I do this. “Hoo.” You jump left.

And this, “Hoo?” means right.

Owliscious ran through the instructions one more time, and Angel hopped left and right alongside him. When finished, Angel started clapping and hopping on either foot. He even shook the owl’s wing.

But Owliscious waved him back to attention again, paying him a serious look. Next, he strode away towards the crowd for two paces, shouted, “HOO!” and then stopped in his tracks. His head rotated back towards Angel to make sure he was watching.

Angel nodded. Left, right, and STOP! Were his commands. Piece of cake.

“Hoo-hoo!”

Owliscious took off, and began circling the crowd.

Angel gathered up his cue cards and stuffed them under his shoulder. He slid up to the crowd of legs with one eye closed, like he was approaching the edge of a diving board. He waited for an opening and jumped inside.

“Hoo.”

Angel darted left, dodging a stomping hoof, and then prepared to move left again.

“Hoo?”

Without looking, Angel jumped right, almost dropping the cards. A beet-red leg barely grazed him, and he kept running.

“Hoo. Hoo? Hoo. Hoo. Hoo?”

Zig-zagging through the legs, Angel gradually shut his eyes and leapt on command, feeling the breeze of passing legs, but never the warm, firm strike of a kick. He opened his eyes again and saw the stand, just two hops away, and he coiled like a spring.

HOO!

Angel halted. A bicycle whizzed past his nose. When it was gone, he dive-rolled forward out of the crowd, flattening into a sprawl. He clutched at his ears, head, body, arms and finally his little feet, finding that they were all still together, unbruised. He laughed hysterically.

Owliscious circled overhead until Angel gave him a thumbs-up, and then he flew away.

No matter. Angel could handle the rest on his own.

After brushing the dirt from his snow-white fur, Angel shook out the thrill from his body. He gathered up his cue cards and scaled the market stand to meet the bored stallion working the stall. He was brown, with a stubble, and a tweed flat cap. He sucked on his corn pipe lethargically. Behind him, in a steel-framed cage, a small brown bunny with a lazy eye blissfully ate a meal. Angel waved a paw at the brown bunny, who did a double-take when he saw Angel, then let his mouth fall open, bits of carrot falling out.

The brown bunny shook his head. Angel nodded back, grinning. The brown bunny shook his head faster, grabbing the cage and rattling it.

“Quiet back there, Mortimer!” the stallion yelled, casting a side-eye at his pet. “What do you want, rabbit?”

Angel fanned out his cue cards in front of him, the words facing him, the drawings facing the stallion. He selected one and placed it on the counter, pushing it forward.

Groceries

“You got any money?” inquired the marketpony.

Angel placed the cards down neatly, then pantomimed pulling empty pockets out of his hips, still smiling.

“Wait, I know you…” the stallion intoned. “Yeah… the little wuss’s rabbit, right? What, she gets her animals to do her errands for her? Sheesh.”

Angel’s eye twitched, but his smile didn’t waver.

“Listen, rabbit, no coin means no sale. Maybe ask Miss Scaredy-pants to give you some allowance, heh! Only fair, right, Mortimer?”

With an agreeable shrug, Angel turned to leave. Mortimer stopped rattling and wiped his brow. But at the last second, Angel held up his paw and turned back, wagging it at the stallion. Mortimer got louder, whining like a dog.

“…What?”

One at a time, Angel placed the eye, the pony shaking her head, the boxing ponies, and the colourful tent in front of the stallion.

He peered down at the cards, uninterested. That was, until Angel flipped them over.

eye no a bout a fair

Under his brown fur, the stallion’s skin went white. His corn pipe fell out of his mouth. “What the—? How in the world did you—?”

Mortimer stopped rattling his cage, suddenly looking like he wanted to make as little noise as possible. Angel walked to his groceries card and tapped it twice, politely.

“This… this doesn’t matter!” the stallion maintained, messing the cards up. “It’s not like you could communicate it to my wife anyways, ya dumb little rodent.”

Angel raised an eyebrow, and pushed away all but one of the cards with a swift kick. Next to that one card—the one labelled a fair, he played his trump card with a confident flourish: A stunningly accurate depiction of the stallion himself.

“Yep,” he said. “That’d do it.”

As the grocer collected the fruits and vegetables, stuffing them in a bag about twice Angel’s height (even with his ears up), Angel jumped inside the stand and leaned against Mortimer’s cage without looking at him. The brown rabbit hid under his ears, only coming out to grab a baby carrot to munch on.

“…Anything else?” the grocer seethed when he was finished.

Angel nodded, frowning. He picked up the stallion’s card, feigned putting it back into his paw, and then slammed it down again, twice as hard.

The stallion’s head dropped and he gave his counter a half-hearted kick.

“…Lead the way.”

***

That night, as they gobbled up lemon-and-lime zest salad, Fluttershy showed off the new book Twilight had mailed to her while Angel had been out shopping. Angel wondered if, when a book reached a certain size, it could still be called a book, or if it was upgraded to tome at a certain pagecount. This tome was ancient, well-traveled, with some pages sticking out, no longer glued to the spine. The title read:

The History of Pegasus Magic. Ancient Lessons Passed Down From Pegasopolis Past.

“It’s…” Fluttershy’s rubbed her shoulder. “It’s really dense. I’m not sure if I can—”

But Angel was falling asleep. When a bunny has a headache, it takes over every inch of their body, radiating pain from within, forcing them to retreat into sleep. As he drifted off, he listened as Fluttershy gathered the dishes and washed them in the sink, dried them, and put them back where they were. She gently picked Angel up by the scruff of his neck and placed him in his basket, planting a kiss on his cheek.