Timed Ramblings

by Midnight herald


Pie-Hard

“Alright, Twilight, you can take off the blindfold now.” Twilight sighed in relief and let her magic pull aside the thick cloth. She blinked in the mid-day sun and looked around in complete confusion.

“Pinkie, we’re in your room. I’ve been here hundreds of times before this. Why did I need a blindfold for this?”

Pinkie just smiled in the way she got when she was trying to be mysterious or a gypsy or whatever was going on in that pink head of hers. “It’s not just my room, Twi-Twi,” she explained. “It’s also my mission headquarters.”

Twilight decided it would be easiest to play along with whatever mad scheme this was. She’d learned that after the last twelve or so times. “Okay, Pinkie, I’ll bite. what’s your mission?”

Pinkie shushed her violently and zipped around the room, pulling down the blinds, locking the door, and covering the mirror with a fuzzy purple towel before coming to rest by Twilight’s side.

“FIrst, you hafta promise me that nothing I say leaves this room, got it?”

“I promise, Pinkie,” Twilight intoned, holding up her right hoof. PInkie hit her with a meaningful glare, huffing her mane out of her eyes, staring. “Alright, alright! Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye, if you don’t explain this right now so help me, I’ll...” Twilight trailed off as the various threats she could use all collided with each other into some odd mass of generalized angst and confusion with a side-order of unhelpful irritation.

Pinkie pulled out a heavy binder from underneath her bed and methodically opened up the five different padlocks that held it shut. “I’ve been talking to the Princesses, and since you’re a fully coronated Princess yourself and all, your security clearance got bumped up. They gave me the green-light to show you this.”

Twilight spluttered for a moment. “Security clearance? But... the Princesses trust me. I’ve been cleared for level 5 since I finished sixth grade. They don’t keep state secrets from me. I’m Celestia’s student!”

Pinkie rubbed her withers comfortingly, waiting for her attack to settle back down. “This is level 7 stuff, Twi,” she explained. Twilight could only remember one time before this when Pinkie had seemed so serious, so focused. She shuddered at the memory, of sending countless copies of her wackiest, most lovable friend to an uncertain fate while the rest stared intently at the slow drips of paint that kept them alive.

“I didn’t know we had a level 7 in Equestria,” she mused, pulling the book toward her. A single mouthwritten page sat clipped in to the huge binder, and she peered over to read it, to understand exactly why this paper was important, and most importantly, why Pinkie knew about it and she didn’t. She read over the paper with her heart pounding in her throat. Then she read it again, and another three times, and it still made no sense. She looked up, her face slack with confusion, looked up to the pony who could answer her thousands of flittering, biting questions.

“Pinkie, this is a recipe.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Pinkie, since when is a recipe for pie a level 7 State secret?”

Pinkie leaned closer and whispered urgently. “This is the most dangerous pie in all of Equestria. It’s the Big One. If we dropped it, entire nations could crumble.”

“Wha...?” Twilight searched around for any sign of Princess Luna anywhere. The had to be a dream; there was no other way anything so surreal could be happening.

“Twilight, you saw what those pies did in Appleloosa, remember?” Twilight nodded. “Well, this pie is almost two hundred more times as powerful as your average war-pastry. It’s a huge responsibility, and must be handled carefully. DO you understand that now?”

“You lost me at ‘battle pastry’”, Twilight admitted, shuffling her wings awkwardly.

“Earth ponies don’t have shiny spells or fancy wings to fight with, Twilight,” Pinkie lectured, giving a motherly frown. “So Chancellor Puddinghead devised a way of self-defense that involves, well, assaulting your aggressors with baked goods. Or baked bads, if you’re going undercover. The idea behind it is pretty simple. Your attacker will stop to eat the pie or scone, and then you have the advantage.” Twilight blinked.
TIME------

“Seriously, Twilight? What did you think I was throwing all those cakes at Spike for when he went all greedy and huge on us? Why do you think I was investigating Applejack for treason after the thing with the muffins?”

Twilight shrugged. “I just thought you were being weird, I guess.”

“Sometimes, I wonder what they’re teaching in history classes these days,” Pinkie sighed. “Getting back on track here, though,” she continued, back to her business-like demeanor. “This pie is the Pie to end all Pies. A weapon of mass distraction. Granny Pie and I discovered it on accident, and the whole farm was out of comission for nearly a month. And Princess Celestia just thought you should know that we have it, in case there’s ever something really bad that you need to fix.”

Twilight’s head was swimming with all this new information. She rubbed her forehead to clear the nascent headache and gave Pinkie a thin, shaky laugh. “Thank you for trusting me with this, Pinkie,” she sighed, stretching her wings and heading for the stairway. “I promise I’ll keep this secret, for you and for Equestria, but first I think I need to go lie down.”