//------------------------------// // High Stakes and Pancakes // Story: A Ballad of Eeyup and Nope // by ambion //------------------------------// “Rainbow Dash, you get your hooves outta our laundry this instant!” “No!” The pegasus shouted back in stern defiance. A heap of various cloth filled her hooves, threatening with every whip and flap in the wind to fly away into the distance. Her head and neck were craned back just to fit it all, and Dash had no way to see where she was going. Just so long as that involved up and away, the rest didn't matter so much. Her wings flapped erratically under the precarious load. “Get down here right this instant!” Applejack shouted, stomping her hoof on the dry dirt. “I said n—” something small, frilly and polka-dotted leapt free of the heap and slapped itself across Dash’s face. With her hooves still full, she had to bite down and forcibly shoved the offending piece back into the folds. “I said no! I’m not letting you humiliate Big Macintosh!” Then she looked at what she’d actually just been putting her mouth to, glanced to Applejack, then connecting the two, looked anywhere but. “So there!” she added, but with less certainty than moments before. “For the last time Rainbow Dash, our bet ain’t no concern of yours! Get that through your bird brain, you featherhead!” Her eyes narrowed, and there was a sensation like rattlesnake tails. “Don’t make me get my rope.” The pegasus dropped the clothes she’d pilfered—everything she could find in the time it took Applejack’s bewilderment at her sudden speedy arrival to turn to anger—and crammed it into the bough of the tallest apple tree she could find. See her applebuck these apples! Dash’s chest rose and fell. She ran her tongue, tasting only faintly of cloth, over dry lips. Her eyes wide and heart pounding, she looked back to the doorstep house. Applejack wasn’t there, or anywhere else to be seen for that matter. “Heh,” Dash said, denying her own anxiousness. “Looks like she gave up.” The hissing cord that struck from below and snagged her leg suggested otherwise. The rope yanked Rainbow Dash’s shoulder socket like a suddenly loosed anchor. Rainbow Dash yelped as she plummeted, helpless against the force of the draw. It wasn’t just gravity, it was gravity that had caught you rifling through its undergarments. “I. Don’t. Think so!” Dash cried, punctuating each statement with a resounding flap of her wings. The rope twanged with tension, Dash slowed from plummet to a tremendous crawl. This was one catch of the day that was getting away, if she had any say! Which she had just done! She pulled and pulled, but pull as she might she could only halt her descent.  Her wings churned air, her hair stood on end, the rope dug into her foreleg... “The rope!” Dash shouted. It’d caught around a branch, turning the whole tree into a pulley that worked against her, inadvertently choosing the pony who tended them, cared for them and watched over their well being over the one who had slept with them. “Traitorous tree, after all the naps we shared? Let me go!” She pawed at the lasso, scraping it from her hoof. With a sudden, final bite of rope-burn it slid free and recoiled down through the leaves. “Darn it Rainbow, you’re getting on my nerves!” Her back to the sunlight, Rainbow Dash pressed herself belly down into the nest of clean clothes and towels like a lizard. Applejack, she well knew, was good with that rope. She tossed a wooly sock to the open air; it met with the crack of twine and a sudden yoink, all with the speed that would have made a striking cobra stop and blink. Correction—Applejack was scary good with that rope.   Dash’s logic stood, if somewhat wild eyed and drunkenly, thusly: if she took all of the Apples’ clothes, Big Mac couldn’t be made to wear any of them. If Big Mac couldn’t be humiliated, he couldn’t really lose. It was very important to Dash that Applejack not win. It was a strange feeling, one that came from deep within the pegasus. Whenever she thought of Applejack it was there and the cool, collected pegasus would find herself all blustery. Applejack smirking, Applejack making a difficult trick look easy as pie, that’s when it was strongest within her. Here, frantically holding to cover and pinned down, Dash finally put a name to this feeling welling up within her, the one that made everything about Applejack so special and wonderful and dear to her. Rivalry. It was a good thing. Rainbow Dash peeked through the leaves. Applejack, grumbling under her breath, was gathering windfall apples to herself. Not so far above, Dash spotted a fat little cloud, hanging heavy and alone. A wild Everfree cloud, the sort that was moody at the best of times. A smirk very much like Applejack’s own made itself at home on Dash’s mouth. She bunched up the muscles in her legs and wings, tight as they would go. You’re on, Applejack. Then, like a sudden storm, Rainbow Dash sprung forwards. How does one describe Big Mac’s expression here, when he came upon the scene? Often as not, one might say ‘like he’d seen a ghost,’ but really, what does that entail? Ghosts, by definition, aren’t known for their liveliness. Do we describe the extent of his stun by the way his jaw slackened, the iconic straw of hay falling like a star? Do we describe it by his thoughts, of which he had none? Eeyup and Nope had sit down and shut up, huddled together silently at the furthest back of his mind. Perhaps we can't describe it directly. Just perhaps, it’s a face best described by proxy, by using Granny Smith’s. Herself, having stepped outside for a better view of the spectacle, turned from the action to her grandson. Her grin beamed like the illegitimate love child of a radiant dawn and a very wrinkled raisin. Her eyes lit up and, hooting with unrestrained mirth, she gave the young ‘un a solid wallop on the side. Big Mac blinked, the gears of his mind grinding slowly back into motion. He opened his mouth. He closed his mouth. There was a wet, sparking explosion, and a curse. Rainbow Dash was flitting about the edge of the trees, tearing cotton-candy chunks from a dark cloud and hurling them at Applejack like a deranged thunder spirit. Applejack for her part had put together a quick barricade with a turned over wheelbarrow and the plough. She’d improvised a shovel into a rudimentary mangonel and returned fire with the windfalls. They were both giggling wildly. The occasional undergarment wafted peacefully in the breeze. “Does me good to see her have a bit of fun,” said Granny Smith contentedly. Big Mac’s usual easy confidence had fled. “Should...should I do something?” On the other hoof, she was as resolute and calm as he’d ever seen her. “Nope,” she said happily, her lips smacking together like a high-hoof on the last syllable. Quite like a tornado, the havoc invariably drew his eyes back. Dash was strutting her aerial triumph; she’d caught one of the apples and made a big show of taking a bite from it. A second apple plunged through the heart of her latest depth charge cloud which exploded in her face, zapping Rainbow Dash and drenching her at the same time. More clothes than he even knew the family had fluttered like butterflies about the farmyard. “What about...?” “Ain’t your problem, m’boy.” She waved him over, beckoning the stallion to follow. “Come on, Big Mac, I’ll fix you a snack o’ something.” Eeyup and Nope being drowned out by a healthy dose of confusion, he complied, and with the closing of the door left the world and its crazy mares for a time. “Come on then, sit yourself down.” Sprightly she might not have been, but Granny could have navigated her kitchen limited to any two senses a pony cared to name. “Pass me the milk there,” she said. While her hooves got to mixing, she turned to her reflection in the window, seemingly dedicating the entirety of her concentration on tongueing a bit of something free from her teeth. The whisk whisked with absolute precision regardless. “You look ruffled. Your contest with Lil’ Applejack got the best of you?” Big Mac didn’t answer immediately. He filled his lungs, held it a peaceful moment, and then loosed the breath. “No,” he said, without the word stretching and striving away from him at all. “Still in it.” Eggs tumbled into the mixing bowl. For a very long time, Big Mac had been convinced his Granny could crack eggs just by giving them a stern look. He’d believed this for such a long time in fact, that it encompassed his entire life up to and including this moment. He felt she had a similar manner about getting inside a pony’s head as well. “That’s good,” she said. “We don’t give in easy, even on the silly things.” The whisk halted and she turned a smile on her grandson. “Especially the silly things,” she said, and off again the whisk went. Gleaming red apples were diced and flung into the batter, then the whole of it went into the frying pan with a satisfying sizzle and spit of oil. Granny Smith turned back to fishing the bit of something from her false teeth. “Oive aahhh..”she held up a hoof and settled the dentures back into place, testing them with a few clacks and clicks. “I’ve a feeling that this thing the girls got going is something ‘bout you.” The smell of pancakes wrapped around him like warm, gooey blankets. “Very well could be,” he said. He considered what he knew of Rainbow Dash, and sighed. “Yeah. I’m sure it is.” Granny nodded and hummed. “Alright then. Set an extra plate while you’re at it.” “Granny?” he asked, but added the plate as asked.  Spatula in mouth, she flipped the first pancake like a pro wrestler going for the finishing move. There was a splat, and a renewed vigour to the sizzling. “Well o’ course I’m going to feed the girl,” she said. “Hardly the first pony to run off with...well, the first mare, ‘ceptin’ that one time, but...” She hooted her distinct laughter. “Nevermind all that. You got the plates down? That’s my boy.” The first golden-brown pancake slid onto a waiting plate. Granny Smith poured in the next lot of batter, again to the satisfying hiss and sizzle. “So, how’s your day been?” The stallion sat back in his seat, letting the scent filling the air hold him. “Been hectic, so far.” For a second or two, only the frying pancake was to be heard. Granny Smith turned it over like a new leaf, rolling her false teeth side to side, as she did when thinking. “I was in the town this morning, not long after you headed off that way yourself,” she began. Something in her voice, perhaps the softness of it, made Big Mac listen all the more attentively. “You been to the bakery lately? Carrot and Cup make it so invitin’. Fine a place as any to sit down and talk. Why, I was chattin up a storm, I was. That girl they got, you know the one, she had to wrassle my teeth off one of the foals!” the old mare chuckled. “Weren’t too long ago you and Applejack were like that; this put me right in mind of that. “Didn’t have these back then of course,” she said, gesturing to the dentures, shrugging and smiling, “but that don’t matter. Why, I must’a been there an hour, and I was certainly gigglin’ all the way home. You know, I even forgot what I’d gone in there to get in the first place! Something silly or other, it don’t matter.” Flip. Hiss. Sizzle. Granny Smith’s wrinkles jockeyed for position as she smiled. “I know you, Big Macintosh, and you ain’t dumb. You’ll figure it out.” The second pancake joined the first, twinned specimens of the spirit of good home cooking. “Get some juice out too, they’ll be thirsty girls.” The stallion obliged and flicked open the icebox. “Apple or orange?” The spatula slapped down on the counter, making Big Mac jump in place. “What do you take me for, you whippersnapper? In this house we have standards!” “Apple it is,” he said, setting out the cups. Granny and him shared a chuckle as the next dollop of batter was poured into the pan. “Woah Applejack, your house smells awesome!” Dash's cracking voice resounded through the house. “You have no idea the treat you are in for if that smell is what I think it is. Come on with that towel already, you’re drippin’ on my floor!” Well, Big Macintosh had wanted to get a chance to catch up with the errant pegasus sometime this afternoon, hadn’t he? But to actually hear her hooves, and Applejack’s as well, stomping along the hall, to this very table... Big Macintosh readied himself to face his fate, gulping back his doubt. And the first bite of his pancakes, in one solemn forkful. He looked to Granny, wide eyed with the flavour. She winked at him, and nodded back towards the door. The syrup of courage slathered itself across the fried apple-filled batter of his soul. He could face this. He cleared his throat. “In here.” he called out. “We’re waitin’ for you.”