//------------------------------// // An Important Cake Delivery // Story: To Serve Bronies // by Fuzzy Necromancer //------------------------------// Pinkie Pie zip lined past the checkered spire of carousel boutique, with the wheels whizzing above her and the wind whipping in her cheeks. She clutched the rolls of wax paper tighter and tilted them so they vibrated in tune with the zip line's buzz. The buzzing sounded like a duet of bees. Pinkie Pie tried to stay friendly with the bees, even though she didn't grow any zap apples. Taupe roofs and tall trees whipped past her. She didn't see anypony out, or any donkeys, gryphons, or cows. Some of the farmponies like Applejack and Caramel might be waking up now, but this was mostly the time when ungulates turned over in their sleep and night creatures like Owlowiscious went to bed, unless they went to stable or roost instead of bed. Everything was still and quiet with everyone asleep, except for crepuscular creatures like raccoons and stream serpents. Still, the quiet stillness pervaded, with stars almost gone, candles blown out, and only the soft swirly gumdrop-purple-pink light of pre-pre-dawn suffusing the moist morning air. Pinkie Pie passed one-hundred and thirteen trees before she arrived at the magic kindergarten. She let go just in time to land on the big pile of pillows she'd set up in front of every zip line station in Ponyville last week, which wasn't that hard since Ponyville only had six zip line stations, and she'd set up all of them during a game of truth or dare at Lemon Hearts's slumber party. She bounced and giggled as feathers flew around her and the sky spun. "Lemon Hearts is such a cool pony and I should really do this more because I wasn't even sleepy then, and I'm wide awake now without even being a raccoon!" she said. Pinkie Pie staggered out of her improvised pillow fort to see Spike arguing with an attic. "Please come down? It's not a trap." Spike pointed to the giant paper-cutter beneath him, with a big "NOT A TRAP" sign pointing to it. The sign had the loopy-swoopy but still legible cursive script that marked Spike's penmanship and the paint on it was still drying. The paper cutter had lots of maple syrup on it and the slicing part was raised up with a long grass-colored string on its top that Spike was innocently holding the other end of. The attic didn't respond. "I've got some nice gems for you here! Humans like shiny things. You could buy, like, a hundred my little pony deevy deez with this diamond, and a bunch of piercings, and your favorite energy drinks from Hot Topic!" Spike whined. "Come on, you can't turn down this star sapphire! I spent ages digging for Rarity to get it." "Hi Spike!" Pinkie Pie waved. He was being so silly. What would an attic do with gemstones? If she wanted to bribe an attic she'd offer it a snazzy new paint job and a comfy outbuilding. She picked up her sugarcube corner packages and hopped over to Spike. "If you come down I'll be your best friend!" Spike wailed. The attic spat out a book that almost hit him. Spike stared at it, then glared at the attic with the hurt fury of a dozen Gildas. Hot tears streamed down his eyes. He breathed in deep and screamed at the schoolhouse, his long tongue flapping about like an inflatable snake on the end of a rocking chair during a stiff wind. Pinkie Pie ran over and yanked him up in a tight hug. "Oh don't cry Spike! I'm sure that mean old attic wasn't aiming for you. I brought cake!" Spike blinked back the tears and wriggled out of Pinkie's hooves. "What are you talking about?" "Hot from the oven, with seven different grades of gemstone, honey-wheat, and a limestone-buttercream frosting, because you don't like the whipped cream kind, and I'm sure I can sort out everything so nobody has to throw books or bribe roofing structures," Pinkie Pie said. She yanked the ceramic cover off the portable cake-carrier, pulled a diamond-tipped cake knife out of the sheath in her flesh-tone pantyhose pockets, chopped off a really big piece, and stuffed it into Spike's mouth. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she showed him a really wide smile to try to remind him that she liked him a lot and he was her friend and everything was going to turn out okay so, really, there was no reason why he shouldn't cheer up again and stop feeling sad. Spike's face lit up for a brief moment as he chewed through the gems, but he still looked more sour than a sour patch sour candy. He glared at the house and looked down at the sticky gem-covered paper-cutter. "Please, please come down and get on the paper cutter like my friend Spike wants you to," Pinkie hollered, "and I'll give you some joists and some glow-in-the-dark paint and then we can all sort this out and have a making-peace-between-my-favorite-dragon-and-an-inanimate-object party!" "What?" Spike and the attic said. "Well, it looks kinda greenish-white, but when you blow out all the candles and cover up the windows, or when the sun goes down, it glows a really bright whitish-green!" Pinkie explained. She should have told them about how glow-in-the-dark paint worked first, because Twilight had told her some really interesting things about photons and demiphotons and why light travels faster at a higher density with more particle formations than wave behavior in a low-level magical field. "I'm an animate object, or more like an animate person, only I won't stay that way for long if this backstabbing psychopathic dragon executes his little scheme," a human in spikey black clothes shouted. It rubbed its puffy eyes and spat at Spike. "What are you talking about? I'll prove it's perfectly safe," Pinkie Pie said. She hopped on the sticky maple syrup and rolled around, licking it off the cold metal surface. Spike waved his arms and tried to say something just as she jumped off. She felt a little cool breeze and slight tug on her tail. "Now you can try!" Pinkie Pie said. Roosters crowed in the distance. Somepony screamed at them to shut the bucking blueberry muffins up. The human looked at a distant milk-carrier, glanced at all the other houses, and shivered. Maybe she was afraid of milk? Or maybe she didn't like working windows, and that's why she was hiding up in a dingy old attic. There probably wasn't any candy in the attic, but some ponies used their attics to store dandelion wine and sweet melonberry preserves. It looked down at her like Twilight Sparkle during winter wrapup, trying to figure out if the cave she was ringing a bell in front of held baby bunnies or venomous vipers. "Do you Pinkie Promise you won't eat me?" the human said. "Or try to cut me up for somepony else to eat, or pickle my hands for later consumption, or slowly siphon out my blood and grind my bones as a filler in smoothies and marinate me in the juices of my own left kidney before sautéing me alive?" Pinkie Pie frowned. She wasn't a bale of hay or a fancy cake or a demon from the second circle of tartarus, so why would she think somepony was going to eat her? Anyway cakes and hay bales didn't have kidneys or blood, and demons from the second circle had tentacles instead of hands. Still, if this was somebody new, then this was an opportunity to make a good friend for life, and that might be a little easier if she reassured her. "I Pinkie Promise not to cook, sautee, bake, pickle, sugar-coat, honey-glaze, blend, frappe, caramelize, or otherwise prepare you for culinary consumption, or to snap your leg like a hay fry and feast on your tender flesh, or carve you open with a carving knife to chew up your innards, or drink your blood, binge on your bones, devour your skin, gobble you up in one bite like a delicious gumdrop, or otherwise seek to put your yummy in anypony's tummy, so help me Celestia. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye." Pinkie Pie said. She performed every step, pushing away the memory of a broken wheel and a sudden stop. She focused on the interesting new human in front of her instead, and gave her a big friendly grin, then pulled out her party cannon and fired a spray of rainbow confetti and chocolate bonbons at her. The human flinched, but then relaxed when she saw the chocolate and confetti falling. She gave a very tight, very watery smile. Pinkie Pie encouraged her with a big grin. "Can you also promise to take me straight to Sugarcube Corner without stopping to talk with anypony else on the way, or like, sneak me in there using your reality-bending fourth wall powers?" "I'll take you straight there," Pinkie Pie said. She didn't know why this human was obsessed with walls and buildings, but it might be a particular quirk of her upbringing, and she liked being furtive and sneaky. She pulled on her nightvision goggles and black stealth suit. It might make the human happy to be alongside somepony wearing black like her, because almost nopony wore black in ponyville. It wasn't very popular in Cloudsdale or Canterlot either. Almost everything in Equestria had a pinkishly-inclined pastel color scheme. "Hey!" Spike said, waking out of his gem-induced reverie. "That's my two-legged deer. I mean, I've got it for now, and I'm going to give it away to Twilight and Rarity!" Pinkie Pie frowned. "I thought you said that you just wanted to be her friend?" "Uh, I do! Totally!" Spike said, sweating and backing up. "Aaand then I can introduce her to Twilight and Rarity, and she can be lu-, I mean, have lunch at their houses." "Oh Spike, she can't have lunch at two different houses at once! Unless she wants to have two lunches in one day, which might be fun, but I think that's usually lunch and break, or lunch and an extra-big snack. I could really go for some corn cakes right about now. Do you like the cake?" Spike wavered and stammered. Pinkie Pie handed him the wax paper, spices, and the other cooking items he ordered, burying him under a small pile of culinary impliments. "Catch me!" the human screamed, jumping out straight at her. Pinkie Pie reached up her hooves, but instead the human landed on the pile of accoutrements, prompting a squeal of agony from Spike. "Oh my gosh, Spike, are you okay?" Pinkie Pie gasped. The human sprang to her feet and turned around, staring at the baby dragon with horror. "Spike? Spike! Speak to me!" "Aah, oh, oh Celestia the paaaain!" Spike wailed, clutching his left arm. "I think my arm is broken! You better hurry me along to the ice knives and savory sauce warehouse to get a first aid kit!" Pinkie Pie leaned closer as Spike clutched his other arm. "It's okay, I've got one here," the human said, swinging a first aid box right at his face. Spike coughed up a ball of sticky green flame, but she patted it out before it burned much of her jacket. Then she jumped on Pinkie Pie's back. "Hi ho Pinkie, away!" She bellowed, waving her arm in the air and laughing like Oatmeal. "I mean, please, go now!"