Last time on Space Ninja Chef Scootaloo: Rodriguez, evil King of Doors, flaunted his erotic oaken visage before the ponies of the Carousel Boutique. With a stunning blow Rainbow Dash silenced his reign of tyranny forever, then began drawing up plans for 'Operation: Screw The Costume Party'.
Fluttershy still isn't plot relevant yet.
Applejack was no stranger to an early start. Lie-ins were about as common in Sweet Apple Acres as newborn penguins in Appleoosa, and the farm pony made it a rule to be up by dawn at the latest. After all, she reasoned, the sooner you started work for the day, the sooner you finished, and could spend the rest of your day doing more enjoyable things…like knocking Rainbow Dash out of trees, for example. Today, however, she'd gotten up earlier than usual, for one very simple reason.
She was terrified.
Yesterday, she'd learned two things: that Rarity was taking an interest in 'improving' Dash's love life, and that Pinkie Pie was sensing a phenomenal Doozie. Her grasp of maths might've been a little bit shaky, but she'd put two and two together and gotten 'trouble' for an answer. In her humble opinion, the situation could go critical at any moment, and it was time to appeal to a higher authority: Fluttershy.
Applejack and Fluttershy shared an easy, but not especially close, friendship. They had a lot in common, principally that they worked closely with the land and nature, that they got up at the crack of dawn to do so, and that they were both practical at heart (although in Fluttershy's case, that tended to go out of the window as soon as she was even remotely startled). Ironically, it was the very things that brought them together that drove them apart; farms and animals waited for nopony, and there just wasn't time to hang out together as much as they might with Dash or Rarity. There was, however, one more thing that kept them from being the closest of friends, and that was Fluttershy's lawn.
The pegasus' lawn was not actually a lawn, but rather a thirty foot radius outside her house in which most animals that stopped by to see her (which was no small number) tended to leave a nice, fresh dollop of all-natural fertiliser. You could find cat droppings in anypony's garden, but only in Fluttershy's would you run the risk of stepping ankle deep into a manticore pat. If Applejack hadn't known better, she'd have sworn the pegasus kept it that way on purpose to discourage any strangers from visiting her cottage. In a town full of earth ponies, that was certainly what it achieved.
Of course, it wasn't a problem for, say, Rainbow Dash, who had never set hoof on the lawn and never intended to. Twilight got around the issue by using teleportation for fun and profit, Pinkie Pie's sixth sense kept her hooves well away from the mucky stuff, and Rarity had developed a habit of turning up in the world's trendiest pair of thigh-high rubber boots and a hazmat suit whenever she went calling on her timid friend. AJ, on the other hoof, had no choice but to swallow her pride, hold her nose, and pray she didn't trip on any fossilised cockatrice pellets. Now, she prepared to do just that.
Upon reaching the door of Fluttershy's cottage (having narrowly avoided stepping in any of the more obvious manure hotspots), Applejack rapped three times on the door and immediately heard the sound of somepony dropping a plate and attempting to hide under the kitchen table.
“Fluttershy? It's Applejack. Ah hate to drop in unannounced, but Ah need your help with somethin',” Applejack called. After a good thirty seconds, the door opened to reveal Fluttershy in her dressing gown, Angel perched upon her back.
“Oh, I'm sorry, Applejack. I was, um, just feeding Angel, and I wasn't expecting you, so I, um, hid,” she mumbled. “Would you like to come in for some tea?”
Ten minutes later, Applejack was sharing a breakfast table with a bunny, three species of bird and a small family of hedgehogs, staring down at a cup of tea she had no desire to drink. It smelt so fiercely of mint that AJ wondered briefly if Fluttershy had served her a cup of warm mouthwash.
“H-how is it? I, um, had some herbs growing in my garden, so I've been experimenting with different recipes...” Fluttershy piped up, as AJ foolishly tried to swig from fine china and ended up getting a whole mouthful of scalding brew.
“Aw, sugarcube. It don't taste of nothing at all, leastways not that Ah can see. Ah think it might be a little delicate for an unrefined pony like m'self,” Applejack told her, although she wasn't sure if the lack of taste was down to delicate flavours or the fact that all her taste buds had just been scorched off. “Anyhow, much as Ah appreciate the drink, this ain't entirely a social call. We need to talk about Rarity.”
“Oh, dear. You two aren't arguing again, are you?” Fluttershy moaned, genuinely concerned as ever. “You should really invite her to a picnic to say sorry. She loves your apple pies, you know. She just doesn't want to buy them from you, because she thinks everypony will get the wrong idea.”
AJ frowned. The way Fluttershy said 'the wrong idea' made it seem like there was a right idea everypony should be getting instead. “No, sugarcube, we weren't fightin'. We were just sat down yesterday having some lunch and some talk, and Rarity said somethin' which ah think is sure-fire trouble for all involved, and then we had some, uh, spirited discussion about it.”
Fluttershy said nothing, but gave her a reproachful gaze. Applejack pulled down the brim of her hat.
“Come on, sugarcube. We've been through this b'fore. Ah'm Rarity's friend, and the way Ah see it, it ain't just mah right but mah responsibility to yell at her whenever she gets one of her crazy plans.”
Fluttershy continued to gaze, silently, at Applejack's quickly reddening cheeks. Applejack pulled her hat down straight over her eyes.
“Ah mean, it ain't like Ah enjoy it. Most of the time, anyhow.”
She could still sense Fluttershy's eyes on her, gazing right through an inch of tanned leather and straight into her very soul.
“It's good for her. Keeps her outta trouble. Y'all know as well as Ah do that a little tough love won't dent Rare's ego too much. Ah mean, maybe Ah coulda been a touch more polite about it, but she wouldn't have got the point,” Applejack carried on, her voice getting steadily quieter.
It may have been her imagination, but she felt that two particular spots on her hat were getting steadily hotter, as if smouldering under her friend's gaze. She got the sudden need to cool herself off somehow, and dully remembered that there was a birdbath outside that might work.
“Aw, hayseeds! Fine, Ah'll bake her a pie, but no picnic!” Applejack groaned, pulling her hat off her head and throwing it the floor. Fluttershy gave her a beatific smile, and pushed a plate of cake across the table to her.
“…Y'all went and got this while Ah had m'hat over mah eyes, didn't ya,” Applejack half-asked, half-stated, suddenly tired beyond all belief. She hadn't heard any hoofsteps or wingbeats, but then again, if quiet was what you were looking for, you could do worse than Fluttershy.
The pegasus nodded. “I, um, knew you'd agree eventually. After all, you and Rarity are best friends.”
Applejack snorted, and ate her cake in three bites. “Well, anyhow, Rare's got a Plan. That's a plan with a capital P, if y'all were wonderin'.”
“Oh, no. A-are you, um, sure, Applejack? C-capital P and everything?” Fluttershy squeaked, voice turned up at the end as if she hoped she had misheard.
“Y'all bet your bunny it's got a capital P, and it might well turn out to be a capital everythin'. She's gone plumb loco, Sugar cube.”
Fluttershy squeaked again. Angel, less than happy about being treated as a poker chip in the grand casino of life, leapt onto Fluttershy's head and began cussing the farmer out in rabbit, gesticulating for emphasis. Applejack was momentarily surprised at how many obscene implications you could make with two paws, a nose and some ears.
“U…um, what kind of plan is it?” Fluttershy asked at last, her voice climbing in pitch.
“A romantic plan,” Applejack began, watching carefully for any signs of Fluttershy toppling out of her seat. She'd been known to do the fainting goat trick when presented with bad news. “She's tryin' to sell Dash on the whole dating thing.”
Fluttershy blinked. Then she blinked again. Then, with the heartbroken expression of a pony experiencing crippling self-doubt about their intelligence, she blinked a third time.
“Well, um, that doesn't seem so bad,” she said at last, ears flat.
Applejack felt her jaw drop open in disbelief, and let it hang there.
“I mean,” Fluttershy murmured quickly, “I've been Dash's friend since we were fillies, and she's never really had a serious relationship, so, um, I think it might be good for her, maybe.”
Applejack took a very, very deep breath, and reminded herself who she was dealing with. Fluttershy, she rationalised, was just assuming that all would go well, that Rarity's plan wasn't as hare-brained as it probably was, that Rainbow Dash wouldn't be a terror and a villain under the influence of false love. She was just trying to see the best in her friends – and that was important for a pony like Fluttershy, because she had so precious few of them.
“Sugarcube, Ah hate to rain on your parade, but it ain't as simple as that. Rare's only doin' this because she thinks Dash has gone all love-struck on account of some book she read. Problem is, Dash ain't love struck, and if Rare manages to hook her into this plan she'll be gettin' pushed into something she don't actually want,” AJ explained heavily, putting her hat back on her head and tilting it over her eyes.
“Are you absolutely sure, Applejack?” Fluttershy asked. For just a fraction of a second, there was a hardness in her voice, steel beneath the silk. She was a pony who arranged choirs for songbirds and sewed quilts for the elderly, but she had faced down dragons and won.
“Y'all think Ah'd come and fuss at ya if Ah weren't?” Applejack asked wryly. “Maybe Ah'm kicking up a ruckus over nothin'. Sure hope so. But Ah'd feel a lot better about the whole thing if y'all went and had a word with Rare about it. You're just about the only one she listens to, 'Shy.”
“That's not true. She listens to you, too,” Fluttershy protested.
“Only so as she knows what to yell at me for.”
“Still, if you really annoyed her, she'd, um, probably just ignore you...” Fluttershy trailed off, her ears flattening. “W-well, I suppose I could have a chat to her about it the next time I see her.”
“Thanks, 'Shy. Shucks, Ah feel better already knowing y'all are on the case. Now, Ah should get goin'. Ah woke up early and finished all the regular farm chores, but there's a few fences that need paintin', and today looks to be a good day to get a start on 'em. Appreciate the tea and cake, by the way,” the farmer said, and stood up.
As she made her way down the garden path, Fluttershy waving from the doorstep, she felt a small twinge of guilt. Really, she should have told 'Shy that she was on Rarity's shortlist of romance possibilities, but with any luck the whole mess would be sorted out before it became an issue. After all, Fluttershy was the final authority when it came to this kind of thing; if she said stop, you stopped. No questions asked.
“Oh, my. That was interesting, wasn't it, Angel?” Fluttershy murmured as she watched the farmer walking away. “I can't imagine what kind of pony Rainbow Dash would fall in love with, can you?”
Angel twitched his whiskers in reply, and looked on smugly as Applejack, a mere orange dot in the distance, put her hoof in something squelchy.
“Somepony we know? I'm not sure... After all, Dash can be a lot of trouble, sometimes... She'd need somepony really kind, and really patient. I don't think we know anypony like that.”
Angel twitched his whiskers, and gave her a very light kick on the back of the head.
“Angel, don't be so rude. I am not an idiot,” Fluttershy pouted. “Now you apologise, or a certain bunny is going to be getting an extra bath tonight.”
Angel didn't reply. He actually quite enjoyed baths, although he made every effort to pretend to detest them. It just made his life a thousand times simpler, and kept his owner (or, as he preferred to think, landlady) happy to boot. Ponies, he thought, were such very simple creatures. One of these days, he'd have to talk some sense into them.
With one last, careful glance, Twilight Sparkle realised that she was done. With utmost care, she lowered Princess Celestia to the ground, and stretched. Across the table, Pinkie Pie grinned, a miniature black army of Canterlot's finest at her side.
“I surrender. Good game, Pinkie,” Twilight yawned.
Of course, the nitpicky part of her brain interrupted, that was slightly redundant. After all, every game with Pinkie was a good game. She was, after all, the best party pony in all Ponyville, and was an expert at any board game you cared to mention – chess included, as Twilight had found out. Privately, she found Pinkie's talent fascinating, especially the way she seemed to adjust her skill level to suit whoever she was playing. In a match against Rainbow Dash, who enjoyed winning and didn't have the patience for any board game that wasn't tiddlywinks, she'd make strategic blunder after strategic blunder, and ended up losing nine times out of ten. Put her up against, say, Applejack, who enjoyed a good old-fashioned competition, she'd play simply but effectively, and end up winning about half the time. When she played against Twilight, however, all bets were off; her defence became near-impregnable, her assaults perfectly timed, and it was often all Twilight could do to eke out a draw.
“You almost had me on turn 32. I thought Shining Armor was just going to jump behind my guards and kapowie my Luna! That would have been super, duper bad. By the way, how do you like the Commemorative Royal Canterlot set we got? Ooh, ooh, wait! I meant to ask you about that! I heard this rumour that you–”
“Ssh! I don't want that getting spread around,” Twilight interrupted. “But, yes.”
“Wowee! Really? But… how come you didn't do it?” the baker asked, eyes wide.
Twilight sighed. It was a long story. She'd been contacted by one of the palace artists, asking her if she'd agree to model for one of the pieces – the left-hoof bishop, actually, seated quietly at Celestia's side. Luna was the other grand royal piece, whilst Cadence had been cast beside her as the right-hoof bishop, with Shining Armor as her attendant knight.
“It just didn't feel right. They were trying to make me look more important than I really am. I'm just the Princess' student, not a member of the Royal Court,” Twilight said, using her magic to pick up the vizier who'd replaced her. “Besides, it wouldn't be fair for just me to get a piece. I wouldn't want to be a piece on a board that didn't have my friends on it.”
“Ooh, you should have told them that! We could all have been pawns! Spike could be the seventh one, and then the eighth could be a ginormous totem pole of all our pets! That would have been fantastic!” Pinkie shouted.
“I don't think Fluttershy would ever agree to that. It's a nice idea, though,” the unicorn said, a touch wistfully. Pinkie looked at her, the corners of her mouth dropping a little.
“Hey, Twilight? You wanna play Old Mare instead?” Pinkie asked, her voice softer than before.
“Oh? Yes, of course. You fetch the cards, and I'll shuffle them.”
Pinkie dashed off so fast her outline seemed to hover in the air for a second after she'd gone, before rushing to join her. Twilight sighed, and began to pack the chessboard away. As she did so, her mind began to relax after the hard-fought game; the sights, sounds and, most of all, the smells of Sugarcube Corner drifted back into focus. She began to feel pangs of hunger settle in her stomach. One did not simply become the student of Princess Celestia without acquiring a certain taste for cakes and pastries. Still, the gentle murmur of the crowd told her Pinkie would be back long before the queue for service dissolved.
She was still packing away the chess pieces (occasionally examining one more closely, appraising them for accuracy and wondering what she would have looked like carved in ivory wood) when there came the rattle of a plate being put on the table. She looked up and saw Mr Cake, carrying plates to the eat-in customers.
“I'm sorry, but I didn't pay for-” Twilight began, but he shook his head.
“Don't be silly! That's just a little thank-you for keeping Pinkie occupied. She was up all night last night, and we had her foal-sitting the night before. We told her she didn't have to work today, but bless her, she insisted. Still, she's too tired to be let near an oven – she gets more inventive when she's tired, and we've still got a shipment of zap apple jam lying around that she could cause havoc with,” he said with an exhausted smile.
“I see. Well, if that's the case, I'll probably take her off your hooves when we're done playing cards. Is that okay?”
He nodded, and wobbled off to deliver his goods. A little guiltily, Twilight began to eat the slice of cake he'd given her, and had just finished the last bite when Pinkie barrelled back into the room.
“They were in the trombone,” she explained, slamming a worn deck down on the table. Then she sat down, her gaze fixed on the deck as if it might jump to life at any time. Twilight smiled.
Card games were, traditionally, a unicorn pastime, for no other reason than that earth ponies and pegasi found it hard to shuffle a deck. There were a few who could do it, but it was a rare trick that took plenty of practice, and most simply chose to play games that were more hoof-friendly. Even for a lot of unicorns it took a fair amount of time to magically move the cards around.
Twilight, on the other hoof, had grown up with playing cards. An early exercise she'd been set by Princess Celestia had been to rearrange the cards individually, or, in other words, to finely control fifty-two separate objects at once. She'd spent many afternoons watching playing cards hover tantalising above her head (and, occasionally, falling). There was a certain comfort in the old familiar magic. Pinkie watched with barely disguised delight as the deck separated, exploded outwards into its individual cards, whizzed around momentarily like electrons around an atom, and then smoothly reformed.
“Wowee, Twilight. I wish I could do that! It's such a neat trick, how they go all whoosh and then fwoom fwoom fwoom and then slapaslap back together like that!” Pinkie enthused. “All I can do is a riffle shuffle.”
Twilight gave a wan smile at the 'all', and began to deal. Pinkie snatched up her cards one by one as they were dealt, and immediately began rearranging them into an order that would have made no sense to anypony but her. Each time she drew her tail would twitch, although never in a way that gave away what she'd gotten; she kept up a continuous stream of chatter about birds, clouds, yo-yos, circus clowns, deep sea jellyfish, whatever came to her mind next.
“Oh, Pinkie?” Twilight asked, lulled into a sense of relaxation by the waves of sound washing over her. “I almost forgot. I need to tell you something.”
“Ooh! Is it good news? I hope it's good news. Good news is the best news, except when there's even better news. But that goes without saying!”
“Well, it's kind of good news. Princess Celestia says we can use some of the halls in Canterlot Castle for the costume party you and Rarity were planning.”
Pinkie suddenly became very still. Quite suddenly, Twilight began to think she had made a sizeable mistake. Her suspicions were confirmed when Pinkie began to tremble. Without a moment's delay, the unicorn lunged across the table and tapped her friend on the nose.
“Honk!” she said, and breathed a sigh of relief. One of the other customers tittered.
“Twilight? That only works in the library,” Pinkie said quietly. “You're not being fair.”
The librarian groaned. She was right, of course. It wasn't fair to play the Pinkie-Shut-Up card outside the library, just as it wasn't fair to play the get-out-of-jail free card outside of Monopony.
“Do I at least get earplugs first?” she asked.
Pinkie dutifully placed a pair on the table, having pulled them seemingly from thin air. Twilight put aside the fact that she didn't know where they'd been and put them in her ears. Pinkie took a deep breath, and the unicorn prepared herself for the worst.
“...That's pretty awesome, Twilight. Hey, you wanna help me deliver the invitations?” Pinkie asked, at an annoyingly demure volume. Twilight frowned and pulled out her earplugs.
“I was actually going to ask you if you wanted any help with that myself.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Warm up your singing voice, because we've got some invites to give!” the earth pony shrieked, and without further ado shot out of the bakery.
Twilight waited until her ears had stopped ringing, and followed at a leisurely pace; soon enough, Pinkie doubled back and began to bounce in circles around her, chattering all the while about who they should track down first. Despite herself, Twilight smiled. She knew worse ways of spending her morning.