/x/x/x/
Ringing in the ears is never a pleasant sensation. It’s even less pleasant when your eyes sting from particles of plaster and you have what feels like 200 kilograms of rubble pushing down on your body.
Mrs Cake reached a hoof up to rub her eyes. She got a layer of dust off and was able to open one eye first: it was not solid white, but there were enough specks in the air to obscure the ceiling, as if a snow storm had brewed inside the kitchen. That means there were enough in the air to inhibit normal breathing.
She coughed several times. Not the shallow kind of coughing you do when you’re trying to dislodge phlegm from the throat, but the kind of hacking cough you do when you breathe in smoke. It was painful to the mare to expand and contract her chest in quick succession while under so much pressure.
The baker attempted to pry the rubble away so she could breathe more easily, but was shocked when she discovered the rubble was actually flesh. She snapped her eyes opened and gasped, causing her brain to scream in pain as she winced as shakily exhaled. Opening one eye slightly, she examined the blockage: it was her husband.
Mrs Cake glanced to her right side, and saw bits of the roof on the linoleum floor, but not much else. With a hoof, she brushed it all to the side. It took considerably more effort than it would normally take, for obvious reasons, but the earth pony’s waning strength was not noted by her mind. Instead, she began to focus on a different task.
Rolling over, she deposited her husband’s body onto the floor. She set him face-up, and moved herself over his body. Unbeknownst to the mare, her left foreleg was covered in blood, not of her own. Attempting to make speech, she only let out a weak K sound before devolving into another hacking fit.
After recovering, she let out a shaky ‘Car, Carrot?’ but no response was received. She took his shoulders in hoof, and shook gently, but the body was limp. Again, ‘Carrot?’, she asked. Again, silence was her only answer. His coat was covered in the white dust on the face and the outer part of the legs. Suddenly, one spot on his face became wet.
“No...”
Cup Cake moved her hooves to the yellow stallion’s chest, and began to do compressions. “Don’t you dare,” she said before inhaling. Resisting the very strong urge to cough, she opened her husband’s mouth, and exhaled into it, before resuming the compressions.
Pulling away, she allowed herself to cough out the invading dust. Her mouth was incredibly dry, caked with white powder, and it was more painful to breathe in than before. But what hurt worse than her mouth and chest was her heart.
“Please, no!” she cried, voice breaking. ‘Please, wa-’ She stopped, coughing, before resuming. “Wake up!”
Still no response. She leaned over and attempted to give him air again, but no response was given. She looked into his eyes, still open, but seeing nothing. Refusing to accept this, she resumed compressions at an even quicker rate, shaking her head back and forth in denial. More vibrant yellow spots began to show through the ghostly-pale dust.
“Celestia damn you, Carrot Cake,” in a near-whisper she said, “Don’t leave me like this!” After coughing as she concluded the command, she breathed in again and tried exhaling into him a third time, to no avail. The compressions slowed, before finally stopping. The urge to keep coughing won over, and she did so, letting tears fly in random directions, wettening more dust around them.
She let the hacking fit subside, before moving her hooves to Carrot’s eyes, and closing them. She set her hooves down on either side of his head, feeling her resolve weaken, and her muscles grow limp. “You promised me...” she whispered. “We’d be together ‘til I died.” She locked her eyelids together, attempting to restrain them.
“Why did you lie to me...”
She felt her body hit the ground, and roll to the side. Then, nothing for a spell. After what could have either been a moment or an eternity, she heard steadily louder clopping, before feeling herself be picked up.
“Don’t worry, Mrs Cake.” an echoey disembodied voice said. “I gotcha.”
The mare’s eyes opened a crack, and a blurry pink filled her vision. Then, she passed out.
/x/x/x/
Pinkie Pie set the older mare onto the ground before heading back in. She held her breath before heading in to get her other employer, knowing the dust would impede her ability to rescue the Cakes. She nudged her muzzle underneath his back, and was met with warm, viscous liquid.
She pushed her head underneath, before pulling her neck up to move Mr Cake over onto her back. The bit of the young mare’s mane that always hung in her eyesight was not the normal shade of magenta, but red. She refused to think of this, instead focusing on getting him out of the wreckage.
It took some effort, but it was no problem no transport the body out of the bakery. Moving boulders as a very young filly had given her a muscular foundation to build candy chub over. However, she was definitely winded afterwards, causing her to breathe heavily for a few moments, and since there was dust lingering in the air, she coughed twice.
She looked up to see a pegasus stallion- Thunderlane- pick up Mrs Cake. To her side, she could see Blossomforth wanting to support Mr Cake, and she turned her body over. When ownership was finished transferring, she could see the two pegasi exchanging nods before flying off in the direction of Ponyville General Hospital.
Pinkie trusted that Nurse Redheart would be able to help them in whatever way she could. In the meantime, she started walking back to Roseluck, whom was currently holding the twins. However, she was stopped by a small crowd.
“Pinkie, are you all right?” a stallion asked.
“You’re covered in blood!” a mare exclaimed.
“I’m fine,” she stated, waving them off. “It’s theirs, not mine...”
Blood. From a burn, caused by that explosion. From the ovens... Pinkie tried not to think about that. She could distinctly remember turning them off. But... her memory could be failing her due to the force of habit.
“Where’s Pumpkin and Pound?”
“I have them right here, Pinkie.” Roseluck assured her. “But you should come inside and lay down for a minute. You look a bit shaken up.”
Pinkie looked up to see that the twins were, indeed, still with the cream mare. She gave a slight smile and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll sit a second, but I need to go to the hospital and check on the Cakes ASAP.”
Pinkie followed the red-maned mare into her abode, and was welcomed with the faint but lovely scent of calla lilies. The walls were painted a simple beige, but pots of flowers sat on shelves every so often, offering splashes of color here and there. She looked up to see that the twins, who had never been in this house before, were not-so-silently looking around and reaching towards the flowers.
“Hey Rose, would you mind feeding them some of that applesauce while I wash out the blood?”
She smiled and nodded. “Of course, Pinkie.” she said. “Go on and use the kitchen sink over there.” she pulled off the Snugli and set it on the floor, allowing the twins to crawl out. She went about acquiring spoons and such as Pinkie started to scrub out the red in the sink. She tried not to think about the reason why Mr Cake was bleeding, instead focusing on what was outside. A massive crowd was gathered in Ponyville Square: it was a swarming mass of ‘What happened?’s and ‘Are they all right?’s.
Once the job was finished, she could see that Blossomforth and Thunderlane had returned, but joined by Flitter and Cloudchaser. Pinkie turned to her neighbor and said, “Hey Rose, Blossom and Thunder are back. I gotta go see if Mr and Mrs Cake are all right. I’ll be back right afterwards to take the twins back, okay?”
“Actually Pinkie, I wouldn’t mind watching them for a while longer.” she replied, before spooning more applesauce into the baby’s mouths. “Plus, they seem to be enjoying this.”
The emerald orbs were full of compassion, and the mare looked way happier than Pinkie normally saw her to be. Pinkie smiled a bit before responding. “Well, they do look like they’re having fun... all right, but I’ll be back before night falls, I promise.”
Roseluck nodded and returned her attention to the twins. She started playing the choo-choo-train game that you play with baby’s food, before Pinkie headed out the door. She pushed through the crowd, throwing out ‘Excuse me’s and ‘Pardon me’s before the crowd slowly started to make more room for her, until she reached her destination.
“Thunder, Blossom, how are they?”
Her question caused the crowd to slowly stop talking, and ‘Shush!’s were exchanged, until everypony became silent. She noticed the somber expressions on the pegasus’ faces. Thunderlane looked up and opened his mouth, as if to say something, but he closed it, nodding his head. He looked to Blossomforth, and she sighed.
“Mrs Cake’s not looking so good, Pinkie.”
The earth pony looked down at the ground, upset to hear any bad news. A pit formed in her stomach, as she had a hunch that the worst was yet to come. “Okay, but...” she started. “What about...” she hesitated for a moment, before pushing on. “What about Mr Cake?”
Behind the main two, Pinkie could see Flitter start to cry, as Cloudchaser wrapped a foreleg around her. Blossomforth looked to Thunderlane. The pit in Pinkie’s stomach felt increasingly heavier as the moment drew out.
Finally, the stallion took in a breath. “He’s gone.”
The pit dropped into a chasm. The crowd seemed to shrink and grow farther away, and it felt to Pinkie that she was growing smaller. It just couldn’t be true, could it? She asked the question that you ask, not because you don’t know the answer, but because you wish that it doesn’t mean what you know it means.
“What do you mean... gone?”
He looked Pinkie in the eye, then looked away before answering her, as it was too much to say right to her face. He could see the moisture start to gather, the hope that it was a cruel practical joke, a faint, dying ember in the cold fireplace of loss. “Carrot isn’t with us anymore.” he said. He exhaled, and looked directly at Pinkie this time.
“He’s dead.”
Five bodies came in proximity to her, two above and three on the ground. Five hooves rested on her back, letting her know that she had at least somepony who would be there for her. But that didn’t matter: those two words crushed any hope inside her soul that things would be all right. Pinkie felt completely and utterly alone.
She collapsed and started sobbing.
/x/x/x/