//------------------------------// // Chapter Nine: Food For Thought // Story: On Our Own // by kwr2k13 //------------------------------// On Our Own Chapter Nine: Food For Thought          Little Horn was headed off to the cafe to pick up some food for her cousin and the other guests at the apartment complex. She had a smile on her muzzle as she finally was reunited with her fellow Cutie Mark Crusaders and a new unicorn friend, Duo. She sighed, as she knew that Sweetie Belle liked Duo.  Besides, Sweetie Belle was her friend, and she didn’t want her friend to be mad at her.   Staying mad at your best friend is the best way to lose a friendship forever, she thought to herself. Little Horn then realized she needed to ask her cousin about how many ponies were eating with them. She went back to the apartment, hoping to be organized so every pony had enough to eat for tonight. Meanwhile, Duo was in the bedroom with Sweetie Belle, reading a kid’s book they had found lying around. “‘Goodnight room, goodnight moon.’” He finished up before closing the book, “Well... that was certainly worthy of being a bedtime book... I wonder what else there is to do in here?” He shifted about onto his back, staring up vacantly at the ceiling. Without warning, Sweetie Belle suddenly jumped on him. “Erk!” He grimaced.          She giggled as she leapt off the bed. “Maybe we can explore the room a bit more? I noticed that nopony has opened that closet yet, and it looks to be practically bulging!” She stated as she walked over to the closet. Indeed, it looked like it was going to explode any minute as she slowly reached for the handle. “Sweetie Belle, stop!” He launched forward. It was too late though, as the door opened up and its contents spilled out with a resounding crash, burying both him and Sweetie Belle from head to toe in an assortment of trash. After a few seconds both their heads poked out the pile and looked around. “Whoa... look at all this broken stuff! I guess somepony here is a hoarder,” Duo murmured. Sweetie Belle nodded her head in agreement. “So... how do we put it back?” Duo would’ve face hoofed, but his arms were trapped amongst the junk. Instead, he settled with quirking an eyebrow, as if to say ‘Are you serious?’. “You opened it! I thought you had a plan already.”  Duo exclaimed, scolding Sweetie Belle for being careless and impulsive. Sweetie Belle simply giggled with embarrassment. “Oops.” As they glanced about at the mess, they noticed two sturdy-looking safes made out of solid steel located at the back of the closet, sitting side by side. The safe on the left was square-shaped in appearance, and around three feet tall, with a simple padlock keeping it locked shut. The second safe was very tall, and nearly touched the roof of the closet. It had a more complex electronic lock, which probably required a numerical code to open, although there was also a slot for a master key to open it if required. Babs Seed, who was with her cousin Apple Bloom at the time, went over to Sweetie Belle and Duo, “I don’t think ya should be messin’ ‘round in there.  Maybe we should clean this mess up before Harmony and Little Horn get back?”  The brownish-orange Earth pony filly suggested. Little Horn was getting a pad of paper and a pen with her magic to write down meal orders when she came around the corner and down the hallway to verify how many orders of food to pick up. “Harmony, I just need to know how many dinner orders to pick up and...” She blinked in surprise when instead of finding Harmony, she stumbled upon the mess the other foals had made. “Hay!” She stomped a hoof in frustration, grabbing their attention, “You need to pick this stuff up before we get back from picking up dinner!”   Duo looked at Little Horn then at Sweetie Belle before looking back at Little Horn. “Sweetie Belle happened...” At that point, Sweetie Belle jabbed her horn into his head making him yelp slightly. “Okay, okay I’ll help!” He pulled himself out the rubble before helping out Sweetie Belle. He then looked at the mess and combined his magic with Sweetie Belle’s to clean it up. Little Horn smiled, “I’ll help as well.  If we all pitch in, we can all get something to eat, and we don’t tell my cousin about this?  Do we have a deal?”  She extends her hoof to Sweetie Belle and Duo, then looks to Apple Bloom and Scootaloo.  “You girls want some food?  I was planning to go to the cafe and pick up dinner for everypony here.” Once the mess was satisfactorily cleaned up, Little Horn nodded to Sweetie Belle and Duo.  “Great job, guys!  Now we can go get something to eat!  What are you in the mood for?” “Maybe some salad would be nice. I don’t want to impose too much.” Duo said shyly. Little Horn got her pen out with her magic and began to write down orders.  “Anything to drink?  Lemonade?  Or we can just have water here.”  Little Horn suggested. Babs nodded, “I’ll have a lemonade and a salad, thanks.” Little Horn wrote down a lemonade with Babs Seed’s order.  “Anypony else want lemonade with their salad orders?”  She waited for the other ponies to place their drink orders. “I want apple juice!” Sweetie Belle and Duo had both said in sync, making them look at each other, and then away from each other blushing. Scootaloo once again made a gagging sound while Apple Bloom giggled. “Me and Scootaloo will have the usual orange juice.” Apple Bloom replied as Scootaloo nodded. Little Horn wrote down the drink orders, “Okay, that’s two lemonades, two apple juices, and two orange juices.  Harmony said earlier that she only wanted a sandwich, so that just leaves a few more.”  Little Horn tapped her pen on the pad, seeing that all her friends had placed their orders.  “Anything else?” A tiny sniffle in the corner alerted her to the existence of a mare who hadn’t ordered - and, to be honest, hadn’t really done much around the house except mope around and look rather sad. From what Harmony implied when Little Horn first saw the tan pony, Mayor Mare didn’t seem all that keen about the whole pony business. Little Horn couldn’t understand why anypony would think so, but she was diplomatic enough to understand that different beings had different opinions. The gray-maned pony was still sniffling slightly. “Mayor?” Little Horn prodded the tan mare. “Mayor?” “O-oh!” the ex-politician snapped out of her semi-trance. “Oh, M-Ms. Horn!” The tan filly chuckled. “No need to get so formal, Mayor,” she began. “We’re just ordering some dinner.” “Dinner. Right. Order.” the gray-maned pony put an unsteady hoof to her chin and closed her eyes, way too deep in thought for a meal... “I’d like a burger, please.” “Burger... BURGER?!” Little Horn blanked out for a moment, unaware how irked out the Mayor was by her gawping. “Did you say ‘burger’, Mayor?” the filly asked again, pen still determinedly not writing those words on the pad. “Um. Yes. Yes, I did,” the Mayor replied, clearly uncomfortable with this continued interrogation. “She means ‘veggie burger’, silly!” Apple Bloom clarified. Mayor Mare’s eyes widened in horror. “No. No!” she suddenly exclaimed, shrinking back into a corner once she realized that her outburst had caused everypony’s eyes to be trained on her. “I meant burger,” she whispered. “Like an actual burger.” “What- ” Scootaloo’s eyes almost bulged out of her head. “An actual burger?! L-like... with meat and everything?!” “Y-yes,” the tan pony stammered, cold sweat forming on her trembling brow. “T-that’s w-what I m-meant.” “B-but... I- ” the orange pegasus flailed her arms about, utterly lost for words. “You know ponies can’t eat meat, right?”         “W-well,” Mayor Mare stuttered in response, wilting beneath the (unintentionally) judgmental glare of her fellow equines. “Y-you know, maybe we can though, because... you know... what we came from... ”         “Come on, Mayor!” Babs Seed interjected impetuously. “You’re still thinking about that human stuff?”         An embarrassed silence from all sides, which only served to highlight the tension. Mayor Mare turned away and whimpered once more, eyes brimming with longing tears, mouth shuddering with unspeakable emotion. How could these ponies understand - how would they ever understand?         Duo, who had felt a need to comfort Mayor Mare, decided to sit next to her and nuzzle her side. “Hey... it’s alright, I am still getting used to my pony self as well. In fact, it is a bit hard to believe still... who knew we used to be ponies before humans, huh? A lot has changed.”         Little Horn coughed nervously, carefully finding a way to extricate the group from this awful, awful situation. “R-right,” she declared, determinedly putting pen to paper. “We’ll get a real burger for you, Mayor Mare.”  She also added ‘Veggie Burger’ to make sure if the Mayor did not like the real burger, she could enjoy the vegetarian equivalent.         Keen to get this sorry episode behind everypony, Little Horn quickly turned to the last pony on the list. “Your turn, Mr. Crankshaft.” “I’ll have a salad and a root beer please.” said Crankshaft calmly. Little Horn wrote down the last two orders. “Thank you, Mr. Crankshaft and Mayor Mare.  This is a big food and drink order, so I’m going to need some help in carrying it all back here.”  She then noticed the Mayor did not include a drink order.  “Miss Mayor, would you like anything to drink with your burger?”  Little Horn asked politely. Without waiting for a reply, she put down a water for a beverage. Suddenly, a loud beep interrupted their thoughts, drawing everypony’s attention to Harmony’s computer, which throughout this time had been patiently sitting idly. Little Horn’s ear twitched. “Harmony, you have another message!” She excitedly turned back towards the apartment. “Are you going to answer it?” “Huh?” Harmony blinked, “Well, it couldn’t hurt to have a look…”   She wandered back into the apartment and across to the computer, commandeering the mouse with her magic. After a few moments, the message popped up, revealing a Pink Earth pony mare with a golden mane.  The mane looked very shiny, almost sparkling in the light. “It’s a video message,” Harmony observed, clicking ‘play’. "Hello, my name is Amethyst, and I'm replying to your message,” the pony explained in a dry, emotionless voice. “As you can see, I was subjected to a similar, if not identical transformation to your own. The major difference being that I didn't turn into a unicorn." The camera shuffles around a bit then falls over.  The mare sighs and picks up the fallen camera with her front hooves. "Dammit, Austin, go play with your cousin." The mare turned and scolded her nephew. "Okay, Auntie!"  The little blue colt responded as a tiny set a blue hooves rushes past in front of the camera. "Sorry about that,” the mare groans exasperatedly, “Anyway, the transformation happened a while back for me, about 5 months to be exact. I fear that whatever this… condition is, that it might be contagious, as it has also affected my nephew.” The mare shuffled her hooves uneasily, shifting the camera around to get a shot of Austin. His lime-green mane seemed to clash with his cobalt-blue coat. A set of tiny wings adorned his back, folded up at rest by his sides.  “As you can see, he's turned into a Pegasus pony," the older mare remarked, before refocusing the camera back onto herself. "I'm hesitant to mention this next part, but I feel that I should inform you that the transformation might also affect the gender of the individual being changed, as I used to be a male before my transformation." She pulls a picture into view, of a Caucasian human male with blonde hair, blue eyes and a goatee. "This is who I used to be. My name used to be Andrew, but as I said, I go by the name ‘Amethyst’ now, because of the color of my eyes.” She paused, sighing under her breath and regarding the camera with a subdued expression. “I look forward to your reply." The video feed then shut off.         Harmony blinked in surprise. “... Wow. For real?” Little Horn grabbed the list with her magic and turned to the assembled ponies.  “Well, I’m going to get the food and drinks now. I’ll be back soon.”   “Hang on,” Harmony stood up straight and approached her cousin. “That list looks a little big for you to handle on your own. Here, lemme give you a hand with that.”         “Does this mean a new pony will be joining us?” Duo looked to Harmony for the answer then suddenly remembered about money issues. “Will there even be enough money? I’d volunteer to be cut off, if that’s the case.” “What the hay are ya talking about, Duo? Little Horn already agreed to take you in. You ain’t backing out now!”  Apple Bloom retorted, stomping a hoof in protest. “Cutie Mark Crusaders never back down!” Scootaloo said, a bit more enthusiastic than it should have been. “Besides, you are one of us now, and it would be bad if the Crusaders split up.” Sweetie Belle finished with a smile. Duo looked at the three fillies and sighed before smiling. “I suppose you are right, sorry about that, girls.” Babs Seed spoke up, “My cousin and friends are right, Duo.  We gotta stay togetha!   Glad we found some other ponies ta take us in.” Little Horn gave Duo a hug, and invited her fellow Crusaders to join her.  “Duo, you are forgiven.  No pony will go hungry.  After what you and the girls have been through, it reminded me of my own transformation into the filly you see before you..”   Little Horn continued,”Besides, you’re our guests, and as hostesses, Harmony and I will make sure every pony is taken care of.  That means you eat your meals, sleep when it’s bedtime, and we can write to our families as part of a fun activity.  Perhaps the Mayor can help supervise?” “If she’s up to it,” Harmony murmured, grabbing her purse with her magic and walking towards the door. “Come on L-H. That food’s not gonna buy itself, y’know.” Little Horn nodded, trotting alongside her cousin and bringing the list out.  “Coming, Harmony!”  The tan filly showed her cousin the rather large list.  “This is what we need to get for every pony.  I hope that Midnight Blossom and that other pony who just sent their video request will show up.”