Thweet Geniuth
Chapter 15 What The Hay Was That?!
“Well, it appears that I am doing battle with a candy prodigy,” said Grand Chef Éclair. “Young Peppermint has joined the exclusive club of Chefs who have beaten me at a segment of the Challenge. I believe she is the eighth. None of them have defeated me at the Challenge, of course, and I have no worries that will change.”
To the audience, it appeared that the Grand Chef was taking defeat well, and was even being almost gracious. Oates knew better. It took all his self-control not to flinch as he interviewed the Grand Chef. Oates half expected to have his microphone bitten in half, perhaps losing a hoof in the process. “Grand Chef, does this change your plans for the rest of the Challenge?”
“Not at all. My plans remain unaltered. Of course, my plans are very simple. I plan to soundly trounce the child.”
#
“Chef Peppermint, you’ve won the first round, how do you feel?” asked Oates.
Twist was so happy she didn’t bother correcting him. “I feel really good, Mithter Oates. I’m proud and excited and… and… and wordths fail! But I have thsugar thsticks to temper, if you’ll excuse me…”
“Thank you, Peppermint. Good luck, Chef.”
#
Quiz’s magic blackboard continued to flash, “Twist. Twist. Twist.”
“Gee, Quiz, you’re even soft spoken in print,” groused Scootaloo. “For Twist you’d think you could make it a little cooler! All caps, bold face, you know, stuff like that. Where are the exclamation marks?”
“Oh,” said Quiz. She began to edit her display. “I fear I am not very good at expressing excitement.”
This got an eye roll from Sweetie Belle.
“Oh, I know!” cried Dinky. “Quiz, can you do glitter?”
“What? Oh, dear… I might be able to modify the spell design… it would require a shiny display rather than matte finish…”
“Girls, We think adding exclamation marks are already asking quite enough of Quizzical,” said Princess Luna.
#
“What the Hay was that?!” yelled Merry. “Seriously, guys, what the Hay just happened!”
“Twist made tastier candies than the Grand Chef.”
“Shut up, Smarty! You know that wasn’t what I meant.”
“You told us we could judge her candy fairly,” said Almond.
“I did, but when I said that it was with the reasonable assumption that the Grand Chef would win!”
“We can still change focus, Merry,” said Curtains. “We have the makings of quite an underdog story here. Everypony loves a good underdog story.”
“Yeah,” muttered Merry. Curtains was right, and it went against her every instinct as a producer not to run with this. But she had her orders. “But no. We are going to stick with the plan, guys, and I really need you to cooperate with me.”
“Just relax, Merry, no pony has ever beat the Grand Chef at two segments of the Challenge.”
“That’s right; we’ll get her in the next round.”
“We won’t cheat for you, Merry.”
“You won’t have to, Almond. But Twist won’t win the next round.”
“Is that something else you’ve arranged, Merry?” asked Doc.
Merry didn’t want to answer that.
“Um… Merry?” interrupted Scooter. He sounded like a pony with bad news he did not want to deliver. “The Grand Chef wants to see you in his dressing room.”
“Oh.” Head and tail low, Merry began the long walk back to the Grand Chef’s inner sanctum.
#
The fillies were so excited they could not sit still, so Princess Luna suggested that they go to the concession stand. She told her guards, “Escort the children and see they get whatever they desire, it shall be Our treat. We will need you to take at least ten minutes.”
Quiz got up to join them, but then Luna said, “Stay, Quizzical.” This soft phrase drew Quiz back and all but pinned her to her seat.
“Quizzical, Dear,” began Luna, “You are aware, are you not, that my sister and I have the final review of all new spell work?”
“Yes, Princess.”
“Then please imagine, at some distant date, my own dear student’s work arrives on my desk out of the blue, and I had never heard a word about it before? How do you think that would make me feel?”
“Um… you would commend your student’s good manners for courteously not bothering you?”
“Nice try, Quizzical. No, I would be mortified that I had failed to be diligent on behalf of my dear student.”
“You are very busy, Princess,” said Quiz. “You have many responsibilities. You tend to the Moon, the night sky, the dreams of all Equestria, the day to day governing of the nation…”
“You,” added Luna.
“Me?”
“You. You are also one of my responsibilities. You are the first and only student I have chosen to mentor. I am new to this, but I believe I made a good choice. At any rate, my minimum responsibilities include observing your work.”
“My spell was not created as part of my work, Princess, but as a personal project…”
“That is picking nits, Quizzical. Do not do that with me.”
“Yes, Princess.”
“Not only did you not bring your spell to my attention, you swore Twilight Sparkle to silence. That is not helpful, Quizzical. I want you to help me to help you.”
“Yes Princess.”
“Luckily, I received a letter from the mother of our dear friend, young Pip Squeak. She was very touched by the kindness you showed her little colt. She also mentioned a wonderful spell you used to entertain him; she spoke of it as if she took it for granted that I knew what she was talking about.”
“I see. I apologize if you feel I have been hiding my work from you. I did not wish to bother you.”
Luna sighed. “Of course you didn’t. Well, now that I know about it, I have expedited the review process for the magic blackboard spell.”
“That hardly seems necessary, and does not seem fair to other unicorns with spells in the queue…”
“Are you arguing with me, Quizzical?”
“No, Princess.”
“Good. You do not want to do that. Now, can you, as you told Dinky, make the image all sparkly?”
“I suppose, if anypony really wanted that,” said Quiz. “It would involve changing the background… here, let me show you.”
Quiz called up a small version of the spell. The two of them discussed it until intermission was over.
#
Moonrise Ray had been sitting with her parents in the Grand Chef’s gallery. She’d wanted to sit on Twist’s side, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it. “All the important ponies sit in front of the Grand Chef’s kitchen, to see and be seen by other important ponies,” Ray’s mother had told her.
But Twist had won the first round, and Ray couldn’t contain herself any longer. She begged and pleaded until her parents gave in and let her move to the Challenger’s Gallery. Ray would get to sit near Princess Luna, so it seemed like a pretty good place to be noticed. Also, sitting next to the Princess was probably as safe a place as you could find anywhere in Manehattan.
“Hi, I’m Ray,” she said to the fillies. “I like your friend Twist. Can I sit with you?”
“Sure,” said Dinky, and the others agreed. “Twist can always use another fan.”
Princess Luna wasn’t sure if she recognized Ray, but she recognized the toy ursa the filly carried immediately. “We remember you. We met at the fair. Welcome, please join us, little one.”
“You remember me?” Ray looked like she’d been sent to heaven.
“We do our best to remember all our citizens.”
#
Cooking shows weren’t normally Sporky’s thing, but he’d won a free ticket to the Grand Chef’s Challenge by being ‘employee of the week’ more times than any other pony on staff at the Manehattan Fair, so here he was. Five minutes into the show Sporky was so blown away by how awesome it was that he wondered why he’d never done this before.
During the first intermission he noticed a little filly move from the Grand Chef’s side to the Challenger’s Gallery and he thought, Yeah, that’s a pretty good idea. That’s just what would make this whole night perfect! And he got up and moved. If anypony wanted him to stay in the assigned seat on his ticket stub they could come and get him.
Sporky took the seat directly behind Scotaloo’s. “Hey, Scoot, are you a friend of this Peppermint filly’s? Because she really kicks some serious tail!”
“That’s not her name, Spork, and you better not get us started on that!” exclaimed Scootaloo. She gave her friend a ‘bro-wing.’ “But, yeah, Twist and I hang out sometimes, she’s a good egg. Hay, if I had known you were over there with the Grand Chef snobs I would have gone and gotten you. Glad to see you found your way to the cool side of the stadium.”
“Well, I’m here now. So this side just got,” Sporky paused to consider his words, “a little bit cooler.”
It was just a small shift; only two ponies. But it was a beginning.
#
“The Second Segment of the Challenge, worth another twenty-five percent of the total score, is about to begin,” came the announcement over the Coliseum loud speakers. “All ponies please return to their seats.”
Veterans of the Challenge knew that this was not just a guideline. The Grand Chef hated to have ponies milling about when he was ready to cook. If they spied anypony not immediately moving to their seat they would tap the offender on the shoulder and say, “Hay, Newbie, you need to get seated!”
The Coliseum was soon filled with relatively quiet ponies.
#
Merry took her place in the corner of the Coliseum, where she could observe everything. She was still a little unsteady, but she felt she had composed herself enough to appear in public. This was not the first time she had been called on the carpet by the Grand Chef twice in one show. In fact, the record was four times. The Grand Chef insisted on booking the finest competition, and when these high caliber chefs did well against him he was always upset and needed to vent.
But this had been the worst.
For one thing, no chef who had ever beaten him had been a little filly. But that wasn’t the worst of it. What made this particularly bad was that Merry had made promises and she hadn’t kept them. Twist was supposed to look like a lonely loser who didn’t deserve to even be in Confectionery Coliseum. Instead, Twist had won round one, Twist had deserved to win round one, and worst of all, and Twist had appeared to deserve to win round one. Merry’s best efforts had been for naught. She would have liked to blame her undoing all on Quizzical Greystone, but Merry was enough of a realist not to do that. The truth was Twist was good. If the Grand Chef wanted to beat her he would have to actually beat her.
Now, the Grand Chef was losing the crowd’s support, and this was the life’s blood of the Grand Chef’s ego. It was Merry’s job to stop this before it became a hemorrhage.
Round two should do it. Merry wasn’t proud of this, because it was cheating, but she had arranged it.
Scooter hovered near by, pacing uncomfortably. He was too worried about Merry to stray far, but too mindful of her pride to actually ask her how she felt. Scooter was a good kid, and Merry wished she had a way to really reward him for his loyalty. She summoned up a smile, to let him know that she was fine.
#
“Okay, we are ready to begin round two,” said Smarty. “Chefs, are you ready?” When he had a nod from both Twist and Grand Chef Éclair, Smarty continued. “As you know, in this round, you each have half an hour to prepare candies highlighting the secret ingredient.” Smarty waved an envelope. “When I open and read the secret ingredient that will be your signal to begin. So, without further ado…” Smarty broke the seal, and opened the envelope. “The secret ingredient is… vanilla!”