//------------------------------// // I'm Not A Normal Earth Pony // Story: Plan D // by Kai the Brony //------------------------------// Chapter 3 Apple Bloom woke with the sunrise as she always did. The train was still chugging along, but Canterlot was closer than ever before. At most it would be another hour before they arrived. The clock on the wall spelled out 6:30 AM. Apple Bloom would have to trust it because there was no rooster crowing to be her clock. Every morning without fail the rooster crowed at the sun, greeting the new day. Apple Bloom had only missed it once. Without the familiar, regular sounds the world felt chaotic and unstable. She watched the sun come up over the mountains for perhaps half an hour before waking up her friends. She climbed down her ladder and up Scootaloo’s stealthily as a cat. She extended her neck and- ever so carefully- plucked one of her friend’s down feathers. Scootaloo woke with a start. “Ow!” She lashed out with her hooves, groggily aiming to hit whomever had disturbed her sleep. She stopped as soon as she heard Apple Bloom whisper “Watch it!” The pegasus glared at her friend. “Why’d you do that?” “Shhh!” Apple Bloom clapped a hoof over Scootaloo’s mouth. “Waking up Sweetie Belle. Come on.” Scootaloo rolled her eyes and followed Apple Bloom down the ladder. “What does this have to do with my feathers?” “You’ll see.” Apple Bloom giggled and waved the feather around. “You’ll see.” She crept over to Sweetie Belle’s  bed. “Hide over there.” She gestured towards the pile of suitcases. “Whatever.” Scootaloo mumbled. At least it was dark down there. Maybe she could go back to sleep. Apple Bloom nudged Sweetie Belle roughly. “Sweetie Belle! You’ve gotta get up! It’s about Scootaloo!” Sweetie Belle sat up, bumped her head on the bunk above her, and yawned. “What about her?” Apple Bloom made a great show of being panicked. “Well, you see, I got up this morning because I always do, you know how it is, and I looked over at Scootaloo’s bunk and this is all I found!” She waved the feather around wildly, accidentally dropping it on Sweetie Belle’s nose. Sweetie Belle sneezed. “What? Slow down, all I heard was a big long blur.” Apple Bloom sighed and complied with her friend’s request. Sweetie Belle gasped. “What! Where could she go? I thought she liked being around us. Why would she leave?” Her eyes were wide in panic. A sort of echoing growl came from inside the pile of suitcases. Sweetie Belle squealed. “A monster ate her! And now it’s going to eat us! Rarity!” She huddled inside her blankets. Rarity slept blissfully on, her ears plugged with cotton. Apple Bloom couldn’t take it any more. She burst out in a mad fit of the giggles. Sweetie Belle was bewildered. “Why are you laughing? This is serious!” “Ha ha,” Apple Bloom rolled on the rug. “I got you so good! She’s hiding under the suitcases. Sounds like she fell asleep again to me.” Grmph! Sweetie Belle gave an angry grunt, but gradually began to smile, and then to giggle, and then she laughed outright. She couldn’t be mad at her friends for long. It went against her nature. The girls woke Scootaloo up again and shook Rarity out of her slumber. After stretching and bumping her horn against the bunk above her she brought the girls to order. She tidied her rich purple mane and meticulously curled it before walking out the door, the fillies at her tail, saddle bags strapped to their backs. A bellhop carried their luggage, straining under the weight. He was an extremely bulkily built stallion, with a picture of a weight on his flank. His veins bulged beneath his albino skin, yet he seemed eager to do his job. “Now, darling, are you sure you have a good grip on all that?” Rarity asked, seeing him stagger beneath the weight of the luggage. “YEAH!” He cheered. The fillies shrank back a little and Rarity winced at the volume of the sound. “Yes, well, I suppose that is a good thing.” She flipped her mane casually to hide her nervousness. “Could you lead the way to Canterlot? I need to keep an eye on these three to make sure nopony wanders off.” “YEAH!” He cheered once again. “Marvelous. Come along, girls. This will be like a sandwich. Our bellhop will lead us, you three will be in the middle, and I’ll take the rear. Doesn’t that sound like fun?” “SANDWICH!” The stallion cheered for a third time. They made a surprisingly quick trip to their hotel, only half an hour of walking, stopping once for breakfast at a small cafe. The stallion waited patiently outside the cafe, saying that he had already eaten a hearty breakfast earlier that morning. The cafe food was a vast improvement over the train fare by any standard. The hotel room was nothing short of a luxury suite. Two doors lead to two bedrooms, one large and one small. A kitchenette was set next to the door, though the hotel was a bed-and-breakfast, and a sort of living room composed of plush carpet, a squashy couch, and an overstuffed arm chair. A balcony overlooking the palace completed the picture. The stallion carefully dropped their luggage in the smaller room. Rarity gave him a generous tip for his efforts and he left to take care of the next passenger. Rarity smiled at the fillies. “Well, now that we’re here we can start unpacking. Let’s take a look in your room, shall we?” She lead the Crusaders into the larger room. “Woah!” Scootaloo looked around the room, amazement sparkling in her eyes. “This is awesome!” Her excitement was understandable. While the room was arranged the same way Rarity’s was, it had much larger features. The bed in the middle of the room was likely the largest one she had ever seen. Large, fluffy pillows were topped with little pieces of chocolate. A brightly colored blanket was spread out over the bed and a curtained window overlooked the Canterlot streets. The bathroom was generously sized, with big fluffy towels hung from the racks. “Well, I’m glad you like it.” Rarity took in the room, making careful note that their chest of drawers was big enough to hold their things. “When the duchess offered to provide a place for me to stay while I worked on her dress, I never expected that she would give us rooms here!” She helped them unstrap their saddle bags. “I’ll give you a map of Canterlot once you’re done settling in so you can find your way around.” “Okay.” Sweetie Belle readily agreed to the terms and conditions. Rarity walked out to prepare her own room. The three fillies sat all in the same attentive position, one ear twitched upwards in a listening stance. The instant they heard Rarity close her door they shoved their possessions hastily in the drawers. Sweetie Belle giggled. “Rarity would kill me if she saw me making such mess.” “Applejack wouldn’t unless we had company.” Apple Bloom laughed a little. “That’s when I’d be in trouble.” “Meh,” Scootaloo shrugged. “My mom doesn’t really care. It annoys her, but she doesn’t do anything about it either.” She looked inside the drawer. “A teddy bear? Seriously? Who brought that?” “I did.” Sweetie Belle grabbed the bear. “And his name is Mr. Fuzzles, so don’t hurt his feelings.” She defended the toy’s honor with vigor. Scootaloo tried not to snicker. “Mr. Fuzzles? What kind of a name is that?” “I think it’s a fine name.” Apple Bloom rose to her friend’s defense. “Don’t think I didn’t see that blankie in your saddle pack.” Scootaloo’s orange cheeks flushed pink. “How did you-” “It fell out of the drawer when you were stuffing your things in. You need to be more careful if you’re trying to keep a secret.” “Oh.” Scootaloo shuffled uncomfortably. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for a distraction. Truth be told she felt a little bit bad about insulting Sweetie Belle. Not that she’d ever admit it. Movement out the window caught her eye. “Hey, what’s that?” She scampered over to the window. “What?” She turned back to her friends. “You might want to see this.” Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom ambled over. “What the heck?” “That aint even possible!” “I know, right?” Pinkie Pie sat on a cloud outside their window. “Hey girls!” She grinned at them, seeming to be unaware of the unusualness of an Earth Pony on a cloud. “What’s going on in there?” Apple Bloom poked her head out the window to see a twenty-nine story drop below. “Okay, what’s going on?” Pinkie giggled. “Silly! I just asked you that. You’ve got to tell me first.” Apple Bloom sighed. “We’re visiting Canterlot with Rarity.” She frowned as a thought hit her. “How’d you get on that cloud?” “Now that I know what you’re doing, I’ll tell you what I’m doing.” She waved her hooves in a carefree manner. “I have no idea!” The three fillies blinked in unison. “Seriously?” Apple Bloom gave the impossible pony a look of disbelief. “You just woke up and you’re floating around on a cloud?” “Yup!” “Absolutely no idea how you got there?” “Absolutely!” Pinkie thought for a second. “Actually, I think Rainbow Dash might be pranking me and a freak wind blew me over here.” Scootaloo stared for another moment, still confused by Pinkie’s presence. “You forgot one detail.” She flapped her wings together. “How the hay have you not fallen twenty-nine stories? Aren’t you even a little nervous?” Pinkie considered this. “Nah. I don’t bother with physics after I failed that class. If I ever fell that far, I’m sure I’d be fine.” “Okaaay,” Sweetie Belle stretched the word out like taffy. “I guess I get it. She’s just being Pinkie Pie.” “You guessed it!” The other two fillies did not understand, but accepted the answer. “You wanna come in or something?” Apple Bloom gave Pinkie a look of concern. “Whether you’re worried or not, I still don’t think a cloud is the safest place for an earth pony.” Pinkie shrugged. “I’m not a normal earth pony.” A gust of wind nudged her cloud. “Whoops! Looks like I have to go now.” She laughed and began to sing a little as the wind sent her to her next destination. I’m just a little pink rain cloud, Hovering over the small ponies Everyone knows that a pink cloud Pours chocolate milk, but no whipped cream. After a moment of baffled silence Apple Bloom spoke up. “Well that was... strange.” “I don’t think I’ll ever understand her.” Scootaloo walked back to the bed and jumped onto it with a satisfying floomf! noise. “So, do you guys want to get Rarity so we can look around?” Sweetie Belle shrugged. “Sure. Maybe I can find a place to practice the spell.” She walked into Rarity’s room and returned with a neatly folded sheet of paper with colorful landmarks painted on the outline of a city. Apple Bloom eagerly grabbed the map from her friend’s hooves. “I love maps! Let me see.” Maps are remarkable things. No matter where you are going, or where you come from, they give you a path to wherever you could possibly imagine on the face of the earth. On the one hand it is a sheet of paper, nothing remarkable. But on the other, it is a guide. The remarkableness and value of the map were lost on the Crusaders. To them it was just a picture leading to their cutie marks. Canterlot was just a quarter of a mile down. They could probably dig the hole by the end of the week! “No, not down. That means south.” Apple Bloom corrected Scootaloo. “Oh.” Scootaloo felt like a fool. “I knew that.” Sweetie Belle scribbled a note on a scrap of paper and put it in a place it would be seen. “What’s up?” Scootaloo asked. “Shhh!” Sweetie Belle clapped a hoof over her friend’s mouth. “Rarity’s sleeping,” She whispered. “I left her a note since I figured we’d be leaving right away.” “Good plan.” Scootaloo nodded. “Cutie Mark Crusaders: GO!” The three whispered as loudly as they dared, shared a hoof tap, and crept out the door as stealthy as a cat.