Her head hurt. That's what she noticed first. It smarted like she had been just bucked by the strongest applebucker this side of Canterlot. And furthermore, she found herself unable to distinguish anything but the feeling of cold steel against her outstretched body.
Steel. That didn't make sense. There wasn't a whole lot of steel around Ponyville, and to be lying on a large slab of the stuff didn't mesh well with the pegasus' train of thought. Not that it was anywhere near coherent anyway, a new rush of pain flowing into her senses reminded her that she had been knocked out. When and why, the pegasus had trouble remembering. She was outside, taking a nap, snaking on some apples, when suddenly... she was jumped! Somepony jumped her! Her! Rainbow Dash! And somehow, she had ended up here.
Wherever here was.
As the rainbow hair slid drearily to the side, Dash tried to focus on what she could determine. One, she was somewhere unfamiliar. That much was for certain, the pegasus damning the impossibility that the steel she lay on was somehow staying cold even though her own body heat should have made it far more bearable by this point. It didn't. Raising her head, the pony tried to bring a hoof up to move, only to find her hooves restrained.
Restrained by knots. On ropes. Blinking hard, the pegasus allowed herself the sudden realization that ponies normally weren't outstretched the way she felt until forced into such a position, and she guessed that the constricting feeling she felt along her hooves was likely the strain of the ropes. Stretching her wings, she at least took solace in the freedom of her blue feathers, the strong appendages flapping hugely as she attempted to fight the rope, the threads of rope cracking and constricting tighter around her hooves as she pushed off. Flapping harder, the pegasus could feel her belly lift just slightly off the steel slab, before suddenly collapsing back down on the cool surface, her wings refusing to continue a losing battle.
A shiver ran up her spine as Dash peered into the darkness around her. To be honest, she usually told everypony that pegasi don't feel cold. However, anypony who spoke to Fluttershy would quickly learn that they more have a resistance to cold, such as wind or ambient weather. Surfaces, though? Those were still cold. And as Dash was quickly becoming aware of, completely and utterly uncomfortable and extremely unsettling. She couldn't even turn her head right to nurse the throbbing pain at the back of her skull where she believed she was hit. Just what happened?
Suddenly, the sound of hooves on a surface. Wood. Oh thank Celestia there was wood, like she wasn't in some steel cell. Opening her mouth, Rainbow went to scream, only to find herself cut short, a bright, eerie white light bursting through a doorway, streaming down into the cellar. Gasping as she turned her head away from the eyesore, as quickly as it came it disappeared, Rainbow blinking her eyes repeatedly as they returned to darkness. "Who-what?" she startled, her voice rasping unexpectedly.
A pitter-patter of hooves. Light and bouncy, neither one carrying much weight with it. She could hear something else. Was it... humming? "Hey!" Rainbow Dash choked out, swallowing some saliva to better speak. "Who're you?" she challenged the darkness and the pony it hid. "What am I doing here! I haven't done anything!"
The steps halted nearby. Dash peered into the chasm that surrounded her, the deep expanse betraying none of the secrets it held for her. Growling, the pegasus raised what she could of her hoof and slammed it on the table, causing little more than a dull thunk. "I SWEAR, WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE I AM GONNA BUCK YOU UP!"
"....Oh Dashie~!" a voice responded. A bubbly, happy, sickeningly sweet voice that could only belong to one pony in all of Ponyville. In all of Equestria. In all the universe only one being could speak with such unmitigated cheer.
"P-Pinkie!?"
"Hi Dashie!" Pinkie Pie responded from the darkness, the sound of a cloak whipping about. Dash ignored the other sounds as she started to struggle against her bonds in earnest.
"Pinkie Pie! You gotta help me, I gotta get outta here!" Dash hissed, trying to keep her voice down. She didn't know what kind of situation she was in, but she didn't want to press her luck that somehow, Pinkie Pie was there! "Can you find a light, or, something! Open the door-"
Click.
"Not a problem!" There, standing below a single cone of light above her, stood the pink mare Dash had come to know as one of Ponyville's premiere pranksters, party pony, and master pastry chef. And now, adorned on an apron Dash had never seen before, were a collective of sinister looking tools of wood and iron. "I can't exactly work in the dark! I mean, I wish I could, but then I would need eyes like a cat! And then I'd have to purr and meow, or maybe I could just get away with scratching things."
Dash stared in stark silence as the chrome objects adorned on Pinkie's clothing reflected and shimmered in the sharp light. She attempted to blink away the image, but there the pink mare stood, adorned in dangerous tools that she had never seen before. "P-P-Pinkie, what... what is all that stuff?"
Looking herself over, the Earth pony actually seemed contemplative over the getup, but she soon dismissed Dash's words and approached the table. "Oh, well this is my super-duper, ultra-secret Cupcake-kit!" Dash felt her stomach make a cartwheel. None of that stuff looked anything like what could be used for cupcakes. Scythes, giant cleavers, even a knife that looked like a crescent moon. Dash didn't want to even think what that could do to a pony.
"So you're making c-cupcakes huh? Not a whole, big cake? Well that's c-cool I guess," Dash chuckled, her uneasiness apparent as she stared into the bright blue orbs of her friend as they loomed closer and closer. "Hey Pinkie Pie, can you get me off of this thing?" she tried, voice full of fear and hope.
There was a flash of emotions on Pinkie's face, but she soon settled on one that only served to fuel her fear. It was one of reluctant sadness. "I'm sorry Rainbow, but this is the way it has to be. I promised I wouldn't! Pinkie promised!" Slamming her flank into the ground, the mare soon picked up a large pair of scissors as she looked about her friend. "You're just gonna have to sit there, Dashie. Nothing I can do."
"What do you mean there isn't anything you can do!?" Dash raised her voice, her eyes darting to and fro as she looked at the bonds that held her. "You have scissors right there! In your hooves." Pinkie got closer to her friend, an apologetic look on her face. "You just need to cut right through that rope! Right there, Pinkie Pie! Come on! Please, Pinkie," Rainbow's voice started to shudder into sobs as the sharp metal got ever closer to head, rose colored eyes meeting those brilliant blues. "Please Pinkie I'm sorry about lying about the bear I'm sorry about that time with Gilda just don'tcomenearmewiththosethingsohCelestiaplease-"
Snip.
Rainbow stopped breathing. There was a long silence as the scissors pulled away from Dash, a hoof pushing itself underneath Dash's face as Pinkie gathered what she cut. Opening her eye, the pegasus could see Pinkie pushing a number of her rainbow hairs off the steel table into a small tray and carrying them happily over to a nearby counter in some dark corner of the cellar. Breathing a hefty sigh of relief, the pegasus let her mind stop spinning before she noticing Pinkie on a return trip. "Cutting my hair!? Pinkie, you don't need to tie me down for a lock of my hair!"
"Oh, that's not why you're tied down, silly-filly!" Pinkie smiled, which did not serve to relax Dash in the slightest. "I just need specific pieces of a pony to really know how to make the best cupcake out of them. I'm going to make the most amazing Rainbow cupcakes!"
"R-rainbow.... cupcakes!?" Dash breathed, hardly believing her ears. Was Pinkie... was Pinkie going to make her into cupcakes? How do you make cupcakes out of ponies without alerting others to the... well, meat content? Her stomach turned a cartwheel at the very thought. Sweating bullets, which she quickly noted seemed to warm her face on the cool steel surface, Dash was willing to try anything to get out of this scenario. "Ah, well, Pinkie, that's really cool and all, but you've have rainbow before! Remember? Spicy, nopony would like it. You shouldn't even begin to think of making a cupcake out of m-"
"I'm not making that kind of rainbow cupcake! I'm making one specifically with you in mind, Rainbow Dash!" Cheering, the pink pony carried herself in a way that seemed oblivious to the absolute fear she was putting her friend through. "Although maybe a Rainbow Dash cupcake could be spicy. A Spicy cupcake! Oh, Rainbow Dash, you're so smart! Stay right there, I'll be right back!"
"Wha- no-wait!" Before she could even finish her surprised garble, the mare had disappeared up the stairs, her apron discarded on the floor, falling heavily on the horrible instruments that it beheld. Dash could see them all plain as day, and slowly began to see how each and every one of them could be used against her. The hammer on her hooves, the scalpel on her ears. That moon thingy... oh dear Luna the moon thing was terrifying. It looked like it could hook and tear anything. And she had shears. Why would a pony who cooked have shears!?
Reluctant to realize the fact she had basically been calling for Pinkie to stay, given her current position, the pegasus worked on freeing herself as best she could. Dash tried screaming, but it was quickly apparent by the lack of hooves on the wood flooring above that anypony would hear her forlorn cries for freedom, and only wished she was back outside, wings in the air, enjoying the summer's breeze once more.
-----
The bulb had burned out. That's all Rainbow knew about five minutes after Pinkie left. She had mustered her courage up to try and make out the objects outside the cone of light that once shown like a beacon of hope, but all it had accomplished was a loud buzzing noise that bored into Dash's brain before it popped and fizzled, much to the pegasus' chagrin. Returning to the darkness from which she had become familiar with before Pinkie...
Pinkie Pie.
What was with that pony? Maybe she was... just being Pinkie Pie. That had to be it. She wasn't meaning to be menacing or malicious when she was shoving shears into her face and cutting a piece of her mane off.
She was just being Pinkie Pie.
Dash audibly gulped, feeling the lump of air travel slowly along her gullet against the cold, unfeeling steel table. She didn't know how far that excuse could even last. Likely as far as those tools Pinkie was carrying on her. As her mind slowly lulled itself to numbness in the dark prison, her ear twitched. Hoofbeats. Looking up despite the fact she couldn't see, Dash debated calling for help another time, but the beat of the floorboards soon quelled any such hope. They were bounces, light and fluffy.
The door opened, casting blinding light upon Dash's face as the pink mare bounced down the stairs, her puffy mane silhouetted by the fleeting light as it shut slowly behind her. "Dashie~ I'm back!" the pink mare cheered, the sound of dull metal hitting the floor. "I hope you don't mind, but I didn't want to go alllll the way to Cloudsdale to get some rainbow, so I went to your house and picked some out of your little river! Oo! I wonder if it tastes different than the stuff I had before!"
"It doesn't," Dash huffed, the cold of the table making the cyan pony more irritable than fearful of the pink mare. "Pinkie, let me go! I won't even tell anypony you did this!" It was a lie, of course. The moment she was free of these bonds she was gonna high tail it to Twilight's. She was a smart pony, she'd listen to her. She'd always been a bit reluctant to take the party pony at face value - Celestia only knew she was right to!
There was a silence in the dark as Dash could only guess Pinkie had learned of the bulb's fate. "Ooooh, that's no fun. The light's died." Dash shivered at the word. "Well, okie-dokey. I guess I gotta go get a new bulb," Pinkie said, the pegasus practically feeling the frown on the pink mare's face as she turned toward the stairs. Suddenly, there was a crack of glass shattering. Dash flailed her limbs in surprise, her legs thumping loudly against the... hollow table? Kicking what she could of her leg, a deeply hollow sound issued from the table she laid on.
"Pinkie...!" she choked out in the dark. The hoof steps stopped on the stairs as Dash assumed Pinkie Pie had stopped to hear her out, for what good it would do she wasn't sure. "D-Don't leave me again! I don't... want to be alone!" the pegasus pleaded. To be fair she didn't want to be stuck in the same position as before, but with what sounded like glass breaking on the floor, she had a much better chance of surviving in the dark than watching Pinkie get ever closer with those tools of hers.
And Rainbow Dash didn't want to watch that.
However, that same voice, that silly, happy voice cooed down at her, "Oh Rainbow, don't worry, I wouldn't leave you alone by your little-whittle self!" That didn't exactly comfort Dash knowing that she had just left her alone not moments before.
"What about before? I was alone down here for close to an hour... or longer, I don't know!"
"Well I left, yeah. But I didn't leave you alone!" A pit formed in Dash's stomach. Somepony was... here? This entire time!? And if they hadn't said a word... than what kind of pony were they?
There was a snapping sound. Dash screamed as the basement was suddenly filled with light - at least part of it. The rest of it was obscured by a green toothless alligator which hung from a newly replaced bulb, hanging uselessly from it as the glass enclosure slowly started to heat up. "I left you here with Gummy! What a good alligator, he even changed the lightbulb for you!
Rainbow's mind broke at the very prospect of how the alligator had accomplished the task of changing a lightbulb. A suspended lightbulb that a pony had to get up to their hind legs to reach the string and pull it. "O-oh. Gummy." Dash stammered, her eyes unmoving from the flailing alligator. "Great. Good job... Gummy."
"Isn't he the greatest!" Pinkie said, happily clambering down the stairs. She took care not to step in the remains of the last bulb, which had been the source of the crashing glass from earlier, Dash noticed. Perhaps it was Gummy who had also - Rainbow's mind forcefully stopped that train of thought. "Good Gummy! Best friend." Even the pegasus had to admit, that animal had its merits.
Her eyes tracking the miniature river creature, it wasn't long before the reptile let go of its ambient prey and fell unto Pinkie Pie's buoyant mane, safely tumbling off of it to the floor, where it busied itself with the glass shards that littered the ground that somehow managed to avoid the hoofs of the energetic pony known as Pinkie Pie. It was at this point that Rainbow noticed the smock had returned, her eyes dancing over the utensils that glittered on its forefront. Ice cream scoops... a pot? Tweezers?
Why in Equestria would a baker's assistant have tweezers on a smock. That made even less sense than shears. Oh sweet Celestia the shears. Discarded on the ground nearby, the cyan mare couldn't help but stare at the offending tool with immeasurable fear, reminded of how close it had come to her face. How close it was to her muzzle, to her neck... Dash hadn't even noticed how close Pinkie had gotten to her until the mare clouded up her entire vision. "P-Pinkie-"
"Hold still now, Dash!" Pinkie warned, her eye getting absurdly close to Dash's own. Whipping the tweezers out, the baker held them in her mouth as she suddenly shoved the instrument into the pegasus' mouth. "Thishill owmry cakph ah sehkent!" Pinkie said through her clenched teeth, Rainbow suddenly feeling her own tongue being yanked out of her mouth.
"HIIINKKIIIEEE!"
"One ehhcy reeicy sehkent!" Pinkie grimaced as she brought a small swab over the cyan mare's tongue, dabbing it a couple times before releasing Dash's tongue. Fleeing with the swab, Pinkie hopped over to her table in the darkness, leaving a flabbergasted Rainbow Dash to reflect on just what happened.
There was a silence that reigned after that. A certain unknowing, not-wishing-to-know din of nothingness that threatened to tear Dash's mind apart. Just what was going on? Why was Pinkie torturing her like this? Why was she so pinkie keen on invading her personal space for... such weirdness!? How did the lightbulb change? Why was the steel so cold!?
Hoofbeats.
Dash's eyes trained toward the doorway. It was still closed. She spun her head over to Pinkie Pie. She seemed disinterested, even. Rainbow looked up, her voice starting to erupt in her throat as she scream- the door opened suddenly, cutting her voice off.
"Y'all down here, Pinkie Pie?"
Applejack!
"Yeppers!" Pinkie Pie shouted, not tearing from her work. Dash looked confused as the trustworthy Earth pony started making her way down the steps, the pegasus having no words that could make sense.
Hey Applejack, Pinkie here is trying to kill me! Make me into cupcakes! That rascal! How about you untie me and we go report her to the proper authorities. Think Celestia will send her to the moon?
Somehow that didn't quite add up in her head. What surprised her even more was the paltry glance Applejack gave her. "Nahw, what're y'all doin' down here?" Staring down at the bucket of rainbow at her feet, the hardworking Earth pony gave the dull steel a disinterested kick.
Pinkie Pie looked up, turning about as she stared at the two ponies. On her head was a crazy looking instrument, with a magnifying glass attached to a metal arm supersizing her blue eyes. "I'm making rainbow cupcakes! Whaddya think the bucket's for!?"
"Rainbow cupcakes. Like, spicy instead ah sugar?" Pinkie Pie nodded ferociously at Applejack's question. Dash couldn't believer her ears. She was tied up here! Why were they talking like she wasn't being held here- it took a moment for the pegasus realized she had a voice of her own.
"AJ! Please, you gotta help me! Untie me-"
"In a minute, sugarcube," Applejack chided, bringing the pegasus to a dead halt. In a minute!? "Well Pinkie, Ah'm not one ta get in the way of another pony's work," she mentioned, bringing a hoof up to her chin.
"Applejack! She's trying to turn me into some kind of cupcake!"
The orange mare stopped tapping her chin to look at Rainbow Dash. "Beg pardon?" Even Pinkie Pie looked up from her work doing... something or other.
Dash continued, her eyes closed as she relived every moment of agony thus far. "She came at me with shears! Starting cutting my hair, and then she left me here, all tied up! I don't even know how did it, but she just took a sample of my... my tongue or something!"
Applejack raised an eyebrow, shaking her head at the story the pegasus had cooked up. "Ah think you got bucked one a little too hard t'day, Dash," Applejack muttered, a tinge of guilt in her voice. "How you think Pinkie tied you up?"
"How do I think- She knocked me unconscious and drug me here!"
There was a silence from the two fillies in attendance as they stared at the cyan pony. Pinkie was the first to break the silence with a sharp laugh. "Oh Dash, you're so silly!"
"Silly!? You tied me up and came at me with shears-"
There was a cough. Rainbow Dash looked fiercely over to Applejack as the mare tried to wrap her head around what Dash was trying to relate to her. "So you're sayin'... That Pinkie Pie; Bubbly, happy Pinkie Pie, knocked you unconscious, and them somehow managed to... drag you here, in broad daylight, to the center of Ponyville, tie you up... and then try and cook you up in some sorta cupcake."
The pale expression on the pegasus' face held no emotion. "Ah... yes?"
"Sugarcube, Ah'm the one who knocked you clean out and tied ya up," Applejack related, a hint of laughter in her voice.
"WHAT," Dash screeched, "YOU MEAN YOU DID ALL THAT." Pinkie laughed in the corner, her muzzle back in the darkness where she continued her mysterious work.
Applejack chuckled as she shook her head. "It's a lot easier than you think, sugarcube. Ah hogtied you up real nice and pulled you here on mah cart. Real easy like, Ah reckon." Trotting over to the table, Dash noticed the glass on the floor had been swept up. Her eyes dashed across the floor looking for the culprit, before noticing Gummy in the corner, some small broom in its mouth as he rolled along the floor. "Nopony questioned it. Not even fer a second."
"W-what for? We're you two planning this? Are you in this together? Is this some Earth pony thing-"
Pinkie looked up from the table, giggling at the accusations. "Oh Dashie, nothing like that! Applejack just asked to tie you to my refrigerator for eating all her apples off the tree!"
The pegasus completely blanked. Refrigerator? The steel table she laid upon was cold to the touch, and as if on cue the metallic hunk whirred to life as it started its newest cooling cycle. "The... apples..."
Applejack gave Rainbow Dash a condescending look as she shook her mane. "Ah told you Ah'd buck you one good if Ah caught you sneakin' apples off our farm so close to applebuckin' season! That's our livlihood yer eatin' into and Ah got a farm to protect. Even from mah closest friends." Prodding the pegasus on the nose, Applejack leaned in close. She seemed serious at first, but her hard features soon softened into an apologetic smile. "When Ah snuck up on ya, I hadn't expect you to wheel about when Ah went ta buck ya. Ah had meant to hit ya broadside but ya turned into it last second. Hadn't meant to knock you clean out, but Ah thought Ah'd have some fun with you once Twilight made sure you were okay."
"Twilight was in on it too!?" Dash groaned, her face slamming against the cool lid of the fridge. "I thought she couldn't helped me blow this thing sky high!"
"Sorry to disappoint, sugarcube!" Applejack teased, reaching over and untying the pegasus with her mouth. The knots came apart easily enough, just quick pulls on the rope that quickly became familiar as Applejack suddenly found herself with her lasso again. Stretching her wings, Rainbow Dash made as if to take off in a huff before stopping short.
"So, wait. What was Pinkie up to, anyway?"
The pink mare in question looked up from the table, a small piece of paper stuck, sticking out of her mane. "Who, me?" She asked, looking about.
"Yer the only Pinkie we know. What was that about comin' at Dash with shears and all that?" Applejack voiced, suddenly curious in the pink mare's activities while she was gone.
"Oh!" Pinkie called, trotting past the two mares as she picked up the bucket in her mouth. Bouncing up the stairs, Pinkie's tail swished back and forth as she spoke through her teeth. "Cawh ah shee!"
Turning to Rainbow Dash, Applejack shrugged her shoulders as she slowly took after the pink Earth pony. Dash's dumbfounded look gave way to one of mild curiosity, but she slowly turned and looked over towards the green animal in the corner. "I don't know what you're up to, Gummy, but I'm watching you." Raising a hoof up to her eyes, the mare pointed towards the alligator, then back to her, then back to Gummy. Flapping her wings, the pegasus felt elated in her flight as she retreated up the stairs, leaving the unfocused alligator alone in the cellar.
-----
"It's a super secret formula for special cupcakes made for a singular pony!" Pinkie cheered, poking her head out from behind the counter. Dash had calmed down some from her earlier ordeal, glad to see Pinkie Pie in her usual apron, adorned with measuring cups and other, non-lethal culinary objects. "By taking a little bit of somepony and boiling it, and swabbing it with the pony's own taste, I can make a special cupcake that that pony will be sure to love!"
"So like... you put my hair and my spit in a cupcake and I'll like it?" Dash deadpanned, casting an unhappy glance over to Applejack, who had finished fishing out an icepack for her friend. Placing it gingerly upon the side of Dash's head, the Earth pony smiled as Dash happily accepted the cooling pack, much to the irony of the farm worker. "I don't think I'd even come close to liking that."
"No, Rainbow Dash, it only develops the formula. The cupcake is completely different!" she stressed, her eyebrows furrowing into extreme baker mode.
"So why didja go and get a bucket of Rainbow's rainbow if it ain't got nothin' ta do with the 'formula'?" Applejack asked, the question weighing on her mind. Pinkie raised a hoof as if to answer, but quickly dropped it as if she had only just thought of it. "Dunno! I guess I got distracted! Spicy cupcakes, I mean, who wouldn't be!?"
"I can name a town or two..." Dash delivered, her eyes half-mooned as she sniffed the air. "Hey, what's that smell? Is that my tailored cupcake?" She asked, suddenly completely interested in the cupcake that only took her unabashed agony to create. "It smells great!"
"It smells... brash," Applejack mentioned, thinking it over. "Sure as sugar fits you, Dash."
"Quiet AJ!" Dash shot back, her hooves on the counter as she picked herself up. Applejack took note of the pegasus' outstretched wings and swishing tail and chuckled to herself, turning towards the exit. Rainbow Dash noticed the orange pony's departure and called after her, "Hey AJ, where you goin'? Don't you want some of these cupcakes?"
"Nah, they're all yours, Rainbow!" Applejack called back, sidestepping Gummy as the alligator appeared on the main floor, its unfocused eyes paying equal attention to the floor and the wall at the same time. "You gotta keep a leash on that little rascal, Pinkie, somepony's liable to trip over 'em! Bye girls!"
"See ya AJ!" Pinkie Pie waved a mitted hoof while Dash silently waved goodbye to her friend. Yeah, she kicked her, but it was an accident, Dash admitted. Besides, it wasn't very cool of her just to snack on AJ's livelihood like that, so she might as well have deserved it. However, her thoughts were drawn away as Pinkie Pie revealed the specialty cupcakes, placing them on the counter to cool. The cupcakes were to be expected - a rainbow colored affair that Pinkie herself had dyed to perfection, and Pinkie had mixed just a dash of the rainbow in the frosting to give it a kick. Dash found she hadn't minded that much, as diluted Rainbow with tons of sugar wasn't so bad! Sweet and Spicy.
The girls enjoyed the rest of the afternoon, snacking on cupcakes as customers slowly trotted in and out on the slow day. However, before long Pinkie had to close up shop, and Dash made her goodbyes. The two friends, something that Dash had almost been convinced she would never refer to her relationship with Pinkie as again, parted on great terms, Dash commenting on, "The greatest cupcakes I've ever had!"
As she walked away, Dash felt an unsettling feeling. As if somepony was watching her. Looking about, she could see Pinkie Pie toiling away as she closed up Sugar Cube Corner, and smiled warmly. No need to be so paranoid after all. Stretching her wings, the pegasus took flight into the skies of Ponyville.
-----
From atop his perch on the roof of the sugary building, a green shape stared off into the distance, following the trail of rainbow streaks across the sky. Focused purple eyes glared at the passing pegasus as it sucked on its toothless mouth.
"Soon...."