//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 - Gummy's Big Race // Story: Gummy Pie // by DigitalChaos //------------------------------// "Ah think that right now, ya'll should be gettin' to bed," a deep voice said from behind Spike and the Crusaders. They all jumped and turned around to see Big Mac chuckling. The Crusaders exchanged glances, remembering the princess prank from earlier that week, and Big Mac's reaction. They would've laughed if Big Mac wasn't right there, and if the situation had been less traumatizing. They quickly regained their composure and tried to act natural. For Gummy, that included dancing and humming to himself, only because he wasn't sure what normal ponies did when sitting idly. "Oh, hi, Big Mac," Scootaloo grumbled. She had been just a scared as the rest of them, and was annoyed that everyone saw it. "Eeyup. Who's the new colt in your club?" Big Mac asked the Crusaders. Applejack had explained the situation to him, but didn't go into detail. She had been in a hurry, and all she'd said was to keep a close eye on him and how the other Crusaders and Spike acted around him. Big Mac wasn't sure why, but he assumed it was just better to listen to his sister and practically stalk and spy on the young colt. "My name's Lime Pie. I'm Pinkie Pie's cousin visiting from Manehattan!" Gummy fell down from the ceiling and held his hoof out to Big Mac, beaming at him. He knew he had to make a good impression on the rest of the Apple family, and displaying some of his disregard for physics wasn't too bad of an idea. "Howdy. Ah'm Big Macintosh, Apple Bloom and Applejack's older brother." Big Mac took Gummy's hoof and shook it. "Speaking of Lime visiting Ponyville, how long are you staying?" Sweetie Belle asked, turning to Gummy. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom exchanged glances Gummy couldn't decipher, then looked to him. "I dunno, I'll have to ask Twilight," he replied, barely even thinking. "Huh? Why do you have to ask Twilight?" Scootaloo had voiced what everyone was thinking. They all looked at Gummy in confusion, except Spike, who just shook his head in disappointment. "I said Pinkie," Gummy lied. "He did," Spike chimed in. Striding over next to Gummy, Spike continued "I mean, it's not like he isn't Pinkie's cousin or something. It's not like you've known him for a very long time and just have never had the chance to talk him." "Uh, yeah, what he said!" Gummy agreed. Having been raised by Pinkie, he couldn't quite tell that what Spike said wasn't the right thing to say at all. Big Mac looked completely confused at this point. The other Crusaders believed Spike completely, being young fillies. They all nodded in understanding. "Eeee... suuurrre..." Big Mac mumbled, while Apple Bloom gave him a worried look at the lack of his signature word. "Um, ya'll should probably be headin' on to bed now." "Good night, Big Mac!" Apple Bloom said as she walked up to the stairs with the other Crusaders and Spike. "Eeyup," he replied, distracted by his thoughts. He wasn't sure what to make of Gummy. He acted oddly, and Spike acted oddly around him too. Big Mac couldn't place what was wrong with Gummy. At first, he had thought Gummy reminded him of when he was a colt, with his height and the strength of the hoofshake they'd shared. After speaking to him for a few seconds, he'd noticed a kind of... nervousness, and slight insanity. After the thought of Gummy possibly being a bit crazy, Big Mac realized something. "He's related to Pinkie Pie! Ah should've thought of that first. If them two are related, I can't rightly expect anythin' normal from him! Ah guess that's why AJ wanted me to keep an eye on him, to make sure he don't cause as many crazy problems as Pinkie does. He sure is as crazy as her. There are some crazy ponies in this town." He chuckled. "Now Ah gotta go have tea with Smarty Pants." ----- The Cutie Mark Crusaders and Spike all hurried up to their rooms. They were all exhausted from the party, and didn't feel like trying to stay up late. "Good night, Crusaders," Gummy said to the other Crusaders. They nodded in response. After going up the stairs to the spare room he was sharing with Spike, Gummy took off his suit and threw it into a corner of the room. There were two mattresses against one wall, and two blankets next to them. Gummy looked over to Spike, pointed at the mattresses and raised his eyebrows. Spike didn't seem to understand what he was asking. "Can you help move these to opposite sides of the room, or should I do it?" Gummy clarified. Spike puffed out his chest. "Of course I can help!" After a few moments, Spike was doing a feeble job at pulling a mattress to his side of the room with his hands, while Gummy was doing it effortlessly with his mouth. He grabbed his blanket and had already set his glasses down next to his makeshift bed, when Spike saw he was already done. "How is that even possible? I'm a dragon and you're a pony, and dragons are much stronger!" Spike complained. Grinning, Gummy replied, "Former alligator. Really fast, really strong, with especially strong jaws. Not to mention, awesome eyes! Plus, you're a baby dragon." "Yeah, yeah, I get it now," Spike muttered. "Speaking of being an alligator, do you know who your mom is?" The question was sort of out of the blue and random, but Gummy wasn't one to question randomness. "Nope, not really. I always thought of Pinkie as my mom, because she's awesome and has always taken care of me. Plus, I act a lot like her and stuff." "Oh, okay." Spike seemed to be in deep thought, and the answer seemed to have cheered Spike up slightly somehow. Gummy was happy he'd said it. He certainly wasn't Pinkie Pie, but making people happy still made him happy. Cucumbers also made him happy. The rest of the time they worked in silence. Gummy dragged Spike's mattress over to the opposite side of the room, while Spike got the blanket ready. After saying good night, they went to their separate beds and lay down. Gummy didn't go to sleep, though. He lay looking at the ceiling, thinking about all the things he'd done since he'd been turned into a pony. He'd gone to school, been scolded by Twilight, escaped Applejack by jumping out of a window, met four friends his age, and had even been able to attend his own party. Then there was the fact of being turned into a pony itself. He was finally able to leave buildings on his own, make decisions, voice his opinion, and speak to others. His favorite thing was finally being able to talk, after more than a solid year of silence. Having a personality similar to Pinkie's, that was torture. He didn't know if he could go back to it. He didn't want to go back to it. But he had to. Finally, his thoughts stopped. He drifted off into sleep. ----- "Wake up! Or we won't be able to do anythin' fun today!" Apple Bloom yelled while her and the other Crusaders jumped on Spike. He didn't seem to be waking up. They had tried tons of things; yelling at him, setting Winona on his face, kicking him, even throwing some of Gummy's cucumbers at him. They had cut their options into pieces, and decided that jumping on Spike was their last resort. They asked themselves 'Would it be wrong? Would it be right?' because they knew Spike had been exhausted last night. Then they decided it was a really good idea, and all pounced on him. Still, he didn't seem to be moving. "We should probably just wake up Lime," Scootaloo said, sighing. Spike heard this in his subconscious, and jumped to his feet in an instant. "I'm awake!" "Great! You can help us get Lime up, in case he's worse than you at waking up." Scootaloo shot Spike a look. "Hey! I was really tired from yesterday," Spike argued in his defense. Suddenly, Spike remembered why he was so quick to wake up. Gummy didn't have his glasses on. He needed to take them off to go to sleep so they didn't get broken if he moved. A sensible pony in Gummy's situation might have prepared, or remembered to keep their eyes closed when they woke up. Knowing Gummy, he probably didn't prepare, and would be in the fillies' faces talking about cucumbers, with his eyes wide open, seconds after being woken up. Just as he saw the three fillies getting ready to wake his friend, Spike jumped in front of them. In a hushed tone so as not to wake Gummy, Spike said, "Oh, uh, you can't wake Lime yet! He, uhhhh... doesn't like being woken up? He'll probably be up on his own in a few minutes." "Uh, you sure 'bout that, Spike? He looks plum tuckered, Ah think we should wake him. To be sure he gets up." Apple Bloom peered around Spike at Gummy. "No, no, I'm sure he'll get up on time. Just... go downstairs and have breakfast without us, I'll wait for him." Spike seemed pained by the thought of delaying anything to do with food or eating for even a few seconds. "Okay!" the other Crusaders chanted at once, walking out of the room. Gummy shifted slightly and mumbled something about 'a very adventurous and Dashie-level awesome donut' named Craig, which made Spike wince. He was just glad the girls hadn't woken his new friend. After the three fillies were safely downstairs, Spike hurried over to where Gummy was asleep, and nudged him. As Spike guessed, Gummy jumped up and was in Spike's face, his tangled spiky hair almost touching Spike's face."Is it time for breakfast? Cool! What are we having? Are we having cereal? I usually have cereal, and Pinkie takes the heads off of suckers and puts them in, and it tastes sooooo good, and so if that's we're having then that's AWESOME, but if it's not that's cool too. I just hope we aren't having donuts, because I don't really like eating donuts because--" "Dude. Calm down." Spike had taken a step back at Gummy's amount of Pinkie-ness at that moment. Somewhere during his monologue, he also seemed to have put on his mustache. "Put your glasses on. And yes, we are having breakfast, and no, I don't know what." "Right. Sorry." Gummy remembered how other ponies usually reacted to Pinkie, and went to his usual hyper, but non-rambling state. He grabbed his glasses. "One minute." He hopped over to the nearest mirror in the room, spiked up his hair how it usually was, and straightened out his glasses. He did a double check for any hair out of place and to make sure his glasses were clean. He knew it wasn't the most masculine thing to do, but it had to be done if he didn't want to look like an idiot. He heard Spike stifling a laugh from behind him, and turned. "What's wrong, Spike?" Gummy asked, knowing fully well what was wrong. He just wanted to hear Spike try and say it to him. He stood up tall in front of Spike and looked down at him in the eye. "Uh, nothing. I was just thinking about how... awesome cucumbers are." Spike knew it was a terrible lie that made no sense, but Gummy bought it. "They are awesome, I understand completely. Now let's get downstairs." The two boys hurried down the stairs to find Big Mac, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle already eating at the table. They were having pancakes for breakfast. "Cool, pancakes. Who made them?" Gummy expected it to have been a team effort from the other Crusaders, but got an answer that was unexpected. "Big Macintosh. He said Applejack taught him to cook," Apple Bloom informed Gummy. "Eeyup." Big Mac didn't even slow eating his food to look up at Gummy or at the mention of his name, and still looked down at his food. For some reason, Gummy got the feeling Big Mac hadn't been taught by Applejack how to cook, and had taught himself. He pictured Big Mac teaching himself how to make tea and biscuits in a pink apron and an alicorn costume. But that was just his theory, one that Gummy didn't want to think about any longer than he had to. He grabbed some food and quickly glanced over the table to find an empty seat. He was slightly embarrassed to find that Scootaloo and Apple Bloom had noticeably taken less care on how they looked that morning than he did. Gummy sat down between Spike and Sweetie Belle and across from Scootaloo. They all ate their breakfast, which was surprisingly good, and debated on what they should do today. "Maybe we should get farming cutie marks. Farming lemons," Sweetie Belle suggested, wanting to go for a safer idea. "That wouldn't be cool enough... what if they were combustible lemons?" Scootaloo offered. "Ah think it's a good idea, but don't it take a long time for fruit to grow?" Apple Bloom pointed out. "You're a farmer, can't you just make it grow faster?" Scootaloo argued, giving Apple Bloom an annoyed look. "It don't really work like that, you see--" "Okay, so that's out." Sweetie Belle knew this would turn into another heated argument between the two. "Lime, what do you think we should do?" Gummy just sat back and watched the whole time. He had been around them for nearly a week now, but he wasn't totally accustomed to how quickly everything could devolve into an argument, no matter how simple the matter was. He usually just waited it out. "Hmm... we could try doing a race, and get racing cutie marks? And Spike could race too even though he can't get a cutie mark, so that we're all having fun." It seemed like a safe enough idea, there's not much that can go wrong with a race. Gummy looked around at everyone else at the table to see if they approved. The other Crusaders approved, but Spike didn't. "I can't really race well, since I'm a dragon and have short legs and all. But I can keep track to see who wins in case it looks like a tie. I'll have to borrow Scootaloo's scooter though." Spike looked to Scootaloo, who nodded in agreement. "Ya'll can have this race you're talkin' 'bout, but since AJ's gone, Ah'm gonna need some help on the farm today. Ya have to help after this race." The younger ones there all groaned, but agreed. They shoveled the rest of their breakfast down and hurried outside. Spike rolled up to the starting line in Scootaloo's scooter, looking happy he didn't have to walk anywhere for a while. He was having a little bit of trouble steering it since Scootaloo's wings are what usually direct it, but he still managed to get around. "On your mark... get set... GO!" Spike barked, and all the Crusaders took off at once. Spike sped along on the scooter, keeping up with who was in the lead. The race started off equally, with all the Crusaders at about the same speed. Not far in, Sweetie Belle unsurprisingly started to fall back a bit. She took it well, and still kept her best up. Spike yelled words of encouragement at her which helped her only slightly. After the others were out of sight, along with Spike who had to keep up, she trotted at her own pace to the finish line. The rest of them kept pounding up the winding path through Sweet Apple Acres, leaving large quantities of dust in their path. One of them would get ahead, and the other two would catch up within seconds. It went on like this for a while, until Apple Bloom tripped on a rock and fell down. The other Crusaders stopped and turned to see if she was okay. She got up, and looked herself over for any cuts or bruises. She deemed herself okay, and nodded for the race to keep going. She ran as hard as she could, but couldn't recover from the fall, and soon fell back. After a few moments, the other Crusaders were out of sight. In the end, it came to Scootaloo and Gummy racing. They were almost equal racers, and neither of them were making any progress. Gummy squinted to see ahead when the dust cleared for a second, and saw the finish line ahead. He knew he had to find a way to pull ahead without cheating, or else it would end in a tie. He pushed his legs as hard as he could, and got in front of Scootaloo. He had the advantages of height and strength, and put every ounce of strength he had into each kick of his leg. This depleted his energy faster than he expected, and Scootaloo started to catch up again. At the last second, Gummy concentrated all his energy into his back legs. He paused for a fraction of a second, and jumped over the line. Scootaloo seemed to have the same idea. Gummy lay on the ground for a second, eyes closed. He opened them slowly, to see he had passed the finish line and Scootaloo hadn't. He turned to her and said, "Good job, Scoots! That sure was close!" She didn't respond. Her eyes just kept widening and widening. Spike rolled up on the scooter to the equally confused pair. "Good job, Lime! You wo--" He stopped himself short, his eyes widening. "Uh, dude, your glasses... the ground..." Gummy's eyes also widened in response. He looked on the ground to see that to see the glasses Vinyl had given him in front of him. "Oh, ponyfeathers." What kind of idiot had he been, pulling a stunt like jumping? To win a race? He slipped on the blue shades, and gave Scootaloo a nervous smile. "Y-your eyes... look exactly like Gummy's... who wasn't at the party... and Applejack asked us if they was anything weird... just what the buck is going on here?" Scootaloo spoke quietly until the last phrase. Gummy flinched at the fact he'd made her angry enough to swear. Gummy looked to Spike for help. "Just tell her," Spike replied. "Err... well, Twilight was doing a spell, and Pinkie and I got in the way, and now I'm a pony. And yes, I am Gummy." He decided it was best to put it simply. He kept his voice quiet to make sure the other Crusaders, who were still on their way, didn't hear it. "B-but...you said you were from Manehattan... Pinkie threw you a... and Sweetie has a... and Twilight was there... and Spike knows... wait." Scootaloo stood up in realization. "Who else knows? You're living on Applejack and Big Mac's property, do they know? Rarity gave you that suit as a present, does she know?! Does Rainbow Dash know?! Or are you just lying to everypony?!" Scootaloo was now in Gummy's face, wings flared, but still trying to keep her voice at a normal volume. "Um, well... no. Only Fluttershy, Twilight, Pinkie, and Spike know. You can't tell anyone else, especially not the Crusaders or Applejack. As soon as Twilight can figure out a counter spell, I'll be back to a brainless, silent alligator, and out of everyone's lives forever. Done causing problems." Gummy had a hurt look on his face. His spiky hair looked like it had been popped by a pin, and straightened. I really am just a problem, aren't I? All I've done is cause problems for everypony. Twilight has to waste her important time trying to figure out a counter spell for me. Pinkie has to take care of me. Rarity felt the need to waste her time, material and fabric on me. Fluttershy is probably traumatized by the fact an animal can be turned into a pony. Applejack is worried for the safety of her friends, and wants to know why I'm lying. Rainbow Dash is probably confused about all her friends' behavior, and why they act strangely about me. I'm lying completely to Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. And I'm nothing more than a useless pet, what right do I have to do this to everypony? "No, I didn't mean it like that--" Scootaloo was cut off by the sound Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle trotting up. She sighed and turned to her other friends. She tucked in her wings so they wouldn't notice her anger. "Hey guys." "Heya, Scoots. Who won the race?" Apple Bloom trotted up, looking like she hadn't done anything but sit around, and hadn't just run a race. Sweetie Belle was just the opposite, and looked like she had been forced to run in place for a week straight trying to catch a cucumber on a string. "Lime did!" Spike answered for Scootaloo. "You should've seen him! They were almost tied, then he did and amazing jump right over the finish line, landing on the ground in front of it! Scootaloo was right behind him." "That sounds awesome!" Sweetie Belle cheered. Apple Bloom displayed a similar look of amazement and appreciation on her face. This didn't cheer Gummy up much, but it was enough for him to give him a small smile and his hair to spike itself back up. "It does, but we should probably get to seein' what Big Mac wants us to do." Apple Bloom pointed out. All the Crusaders and Spike set off to the barn to find him. ----- Big Mac had been bucking the trees when he saw Scootaloo, Gummy and Spike speeding to the finish line. He chuckled at their antics. He was slightly disappointed that Apple Bloom wasn't up there with them, but was interested in how the race would end anyway. He walked over to the edge of the trees to the path to watch the end of the race. The two Crusaders ran faster up the path than Spike was going on Scootaloo's scooter. Big Mac wished that Smarty Pants could be here to see the end of the race. It was truly amazing. They were both pounding down the path faster than Pinkie had rolled through town that one day. At the finish, they both jumped for the finish line. Due to Gummy's strength, he made it over the finish line, while Scootaloo didn't. Big Mac noticed that Gummy's glasses had been knocked off, but couldn't see his eyes from his angle. What happened next made very little sense to Big Mac. He saw Scootaloo's eyes widen in confusion as Gummy turned to her. Spike arrived on the scooter, but stopped short, and told Gummy something. Big Mac was too far to hear what the were saying, and if he got any closer, they'd notice he'd been watching them. Gummy slipped on his glasses. Scootaloo continued to stare at him, and they seemed to be having a conversation. Scootaloo stood up, a look of anger on her face, and her wings flared. She started walking toward Gummy and got in his face. She yelled something at him, that seemed to hurt him a lot. The next things that happened made the least sense to Big Mac. Gummy said something that made Scootaloo take a step back and a look of regret cloud her face. Gummy's hair became flat against his head. Scootaloo said something to him, but was cut off by the other Crusaders. They spoke for a minute, and cheered Gummy up. They headed back toward the barn, so Big Mac did the same, except at a faster pace. As he was galloping, Big Mac thought more and more about how odd Gummy was and began wondering what the real reason was Applejack wanted him to watch him.