//------------------------------//
// 197: The Sweetest Prize 
// Story: Thirty-Minute Pony Stories 
// by Silvernis 
//------------------------------//


197: THE SWEETEST PRIZE




The Cakes were, as usual, the crowd favorites. They had won the Ponyville Bake-Off six years running, and if the not-very-subtle hints their assistant had been dropping were to be believed, they were cooking up something “extra super-duper incrediliciously amazing” that would surely bag them yet another blue ribbon.

Bon Bon was, as usual, preparing to go down fighting. Everypony knew that she was a much better confectioner than baker, but that never stopped her from making a valiant, albeit futile effort. (It helped that the mayor was unapologetically partial to her caramel cookies.)

The Apples were, as usual, sticking with their established strategy: apple overload. As Granny Smith would declaim to anypony within range, the small mountain of pies, tarts, and dumplings her family always showed up with might not be city-slickin’ fancy, but ya could practically taste the honest care baked in ’em.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders were, as usual, trying their hooves at something that would almost assuredly reveal their cutie marks. (Or not.) The going rumor was that Rarity had drawn the short straw and had surrendered her kitchen to the fillies. She seemed to have developed a peculiar habit of insisting that she’d been planning to remodel the kitchen anyway.

Colgate was, as usual, prepping her office for the post-bake-off rush. Every year, she warned everypony not to overdo things at that dreadful sugar-fest (or to at least brush, for Celestia’s sake), and every year, nopony listened. Two weeks after the bake-off, her waiting room would inevitably be packed with miserable cavity cases — and her cash box would inevitably be packed with bits.