“I brought waffles!” Applejack’s cheeriness was the first thing Big Macintosh heard that morning. Just as soon as he blinked away the worst of the sticky, tacky gumminess from his eyes he saw it too, Applejack marching into his room, a bright and early smile on her orange face. The plate balanced neatly on her back, stacked high with softly steaming, syrup soaking succulence, promised a very fulfilling breakfast to kick off his three day reward. Like the gooey butter, Big Macintosh started to warm to the idea, but just as quickly the rest of the memory fell into place and he scowled.
He sat up, wiping at his eyes intently. “Mornin.’”
His sister stifled a laugh under her breath. “Ya know, I don’t recall ever actually seeing you in bed before. Ain’t that strange?”
“I get up before you,” he said. Gee, he appreciated the gesture and those waffles did smell good, but he didn’t really want to deal with this just now. Didn’t want to have to explain things until at least the aching drowsiness of troubled sleep had been chased away. His hind legs felt heavy as he shifted their weight from the mattress to the floor. He sat stooped over on the edge of the bed.
“Heh, not today you didn’t. Even Apple Bloom’s up and at ’m already.”
“Eeyup...” He stretched the kinks from his neck and, that done, slumped back down. His sister set the plate on his bedside stand. It was a big plate and the stand was small, but it wasn’t as if there was anything there to contest for space. Same with the shelves. Not even dust occupied the empty rows.
“They’re, uh, waffles,” Applejack said hopefully. “For you.”
Big Macintosh nodded and sighed. “Thank you, sis.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said and thumped his back heartily. “You got all the time you could want. Three whole days, so take it easy. See ya downstairs.”
Applejack whinnied at the appearance of Rainbow Dash standing half in the room, looking like something that had crawled up from a crypt, crazed and hollow eyed. Big Mac cocked an eyebrow, saying nothing. “I smell waffles,” the risen fiend uttered.
“Well ain’t this a first. Big Macintosh Apple and Rainbow Dash, up at the same time.” Applejack looked back and forth between the two, grinning at each in turn. “Must be the end of the world as we know it.”
“I smell waffles.” There was absolutely no change to Rainbow’s tone, not that she’d had much of one the first time. Her whole body looked as bleary as Big Mac’s eyes had felt; sleep ruffled feathers stuck up every which way from her wings, and at least one downy little one that had somehow gotten lost and now clung haphazardly to the mare’s ear. As Big Macintosh watched, the ear twitched to dislodge it. The feather held on, and Rainbow hadn’t seemed to be conscious of it at all.
She furrowed her brows and pouted for a second. “Teaches me to try and be funny. Come on then, Dash. These ones are his victory waffles, I made them just for my brother. You can’t have ‘em.”
She gently but insistently escorted the pegasus out, who offered only pitiable little cries of “but, waffles...”
Big Macintosh watched them go. He wasn’t even out of bed yet and his day was proving livelier than most. Definitely not a morning pony, he decided of Rainbow Dash, and left such ponderings at that.
What had Applejack said? Ah, right, victory waffles. The stallion stared, noting a trickle of syrup that had spilled over the side of the plate and pooled on one corner of his bedside stand. Of course Applejack had every confidence in him winning, even if she had been the one to set the bet against him from the get-go.
After a moment’s deliberation, Big Macintosh ate the waffles. He cleaned up the spill, picked up his plate and set out for the kitchen.
“I lost the bet,” He opened his mouth the moment he walked in, plain as that. He didn’t even pause in running the tap and scrubbing the plate as he said it. Three pairs of eyes: Rainbow Dash’s, Applejack’s and Apple Bloom’s, all went wide.
The breakfast Dash had at that moment been engulfing fought back with a spluttering vengeance. Choking and thumping her chest, she croaked out “What?!” Crumbs and chunks of waffle dribbled down her chin, and her wings shot right out. “How could you lose? You had it in the bag!”
Applejack wasted no time in shoving the pegasus back into the seat, neatly dodging a wing that nearly smacked her across the cheek. “Settle down, Dash!”
As they struggled, Apple Bloom leaned over from the other side of the table. “What gives?” she asked.
“I lost.”
Just as soon as the pegasus ceased her outburst, Applejack passed her a glass of apple juice, which Dash greedily gulped from. “I think she means more along the lines of ‘how.’ I’m wondering that too, Big Mac.” She glanced at the entirely more lively and awake peagasus staring keenly at the stallion. “We all are.”
Big Macintosh helped himself to a glass of juice as he tried to think his thoughts and decide what he’d say. Nothing came to mind, but the simple truth came spilling out his lips all the same. “I thought I’d won. Turns out Pinkie Pie had changed the clocks.”
Dash thumped the table hard enough to make the younger filly opposite her flinch back. “That...! I knew it! I shouldn’t have let her roam about the place and feather everything up!”
Her next attempt to strike the table was caught by Applejack’s strong hoof. “Stop it, you’re in my house,” the earth pony mare said gruffly. Dash huffed, but calmed down all the same, choosing to take her temper out on the surviving waffles with industriously overblown chewing. “That’s better, thank you.” Applejack then turned to her brother, her brow pinched together and a tight frown filling her face. “Sounds kinda mean for a prank. Huh. Did she say why?”
“Nope. Tweren’t funny. Nopony was laughing.”
“Not even Pinkie?”
“Nope. Seemed more sad about it than anything.”
“Sad? That’s not really her style.”
“Eeyup.”
Applejack chewed a mouthful. She drank the rest of her drink after sneakily stealing it back from Dash. “Then I don’t rightly understand why she’d do a thing like that. It just don’t seem right.”
“She’s Pinkie,” Dash growled, “does she need a reason?”
Applejack glared at the pegasus. “She’s our friend, Dash. Stop talking ‘cause you’re angry and start talking when you’re thinking. Pinkie might or might not be crazy, but malicious she ain’t and you know it.” The mares met gazes for a terse moment. Apple Bloom and Big Mac glanced worriedly to one another, but before either dare say something the moment seemed to resolve itself with Rainbow Dash sighing a deep breath.
“Yeah...” she mumbled.
“Does this mean big brother don’t gotta go dancing then? Surely it’s cheating and all that to change the time on him. Does it, like, end the bet or something?”
Applejack leant back in her seat. “I reckon it does. Kind of a sour way for the whole thing to go, I tell ya. Mac, I certainly ain’t gonna hold you to it, that’s for sure. Made the whole thing unfair, Pinkie did. I should rightly like to know why. She didn’t say nothing?”
Big Mac took the empty plates and cups, adding them to his task. “Just that it felt right to do.”
“Huh,” Applejack said, but offered up nothing further. Rainbow Dash wiped her mouth with the back of her hoof.
“Doesn’t make sense to me,” Dash said. After a moment’s thought, she wiped her sullied hoof on her hip. “I just hope I don’t have to drag her to your barn again, Applejack. Since when does cheating ever look like a good idea? Seriously.” Her mouth drew back in disappointment when her plan of action: wiping and ignoring, did not actually make the mess disappear.
Applejack propped her head on a hoof. She poked one of the non-sticky bits of her blue friend. “I dunno, Rainbow - I could beat you without my wings - Dash, the big Iron Pony champion.”
Dash scoffed. “You’re not still upset about that?” It seemed the pegasus was right about that anyway, Big Mac decided; both mares were sharing in a peculiar grin.
“You’re right. I ain’t. ‘Cause now it’s Rainbow - I’m just gonna nab all your family’s clothes and hide ‘em up a tree ‘cause that’s obviously a good idea and makes perfect sense - Dash.”
Dash threw a playful jab at her, which Applejack was quick to lean away from, mindful of the syrup rapidly winning its battle against the pegasus’ hygiene. “Gee, Applejack. Save some sarcasm for the rest of us. Anyway, I think I need a shower...” Dash said, looking herself over.
“Good! It’ll get you outa my hair for a bit.” Big Mac wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. Insulting one another was like a game for these two, strange as that was. Maybe that was normal though, he only knew that he wasn’t really the pony to know.
“Thanks for breakfast and all that,” Dash said as she scooted back her chair and made to leave, stretching and flapping her wings in anticipation of flight. “Again sometime?”
Applejack nodded. “It’s been fun, Dash. And sure.”
Dash paused in the doorway. “See ya Bloom See ya Mac. Bummer about Pinkie Pie. You’re still a winner, even if you, um...kinda didn’t. Heh, nevermind me. See ya.”
“Bye, Miss Rainbow Dash” the stallion rumbled. His littler-little sister chirped her goodbyes as well.
“She meant that as a compliment,” his bigger-little sister whispered as she leaned over towards him. “I’m surprised Dash took that news so well. She kinda takes winning seriously, you know.”
“Eeyup,” was all he could think to say on that.
Applejack flicked a downy blue feather from the edge of the table, both her and Big Macintosh watched it drift to the floor. It caught the slightest edge of a breeze and trembled. “Well, anyways, you know what it is you want to do about this?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, Big Mac,” Applejack said, throwing a hoof around his shoulder. “I’m sorry it got so messy.”
“Me too,” said Apple Bloom, hugging his knee, that being all she could reach.
“You still have some explaining to do, Apple Bloom,” Applejack said, her voice still sweet but now baited as well. Big Mac, hugged and immobilized as he was, felt rather a bit caught in the crossfire. Apple Bloom gulped.
“You mean, the uh, hole, don’tcha?”
“I mean the hole, yep. Spill it.”
A bead of sweat, then another, sprouted on the filly’s forehead. Her eyes flicked to the door, to the window, to Applejack. “Well, uh, you see... Me, I’m not really the spillin’ sorta filly. Course I’d like to help ya, but uh, the Cutie Mark Crusader ‘don’t incriminate your fellow crusaders code,’ yeah, um...I couldn’t. So you see-” She detached from Big Macintosh and very carefully readied herself to leap away. Big Macintosh recognized the same self-satisfied, smug smirk on Applejack, the one she had at breakfast the day before when she’d propositioned the whole challenge to him to begin with. She, too, made ever so subtle movements to ready herself. Big Mac tried not to blink.
“That so, is it?”
“Eeyup,” said the filly, squeaky as a bath toy.
“Right then...” Some unknown cue - perhaps Big Mac himself blinking, he didn’t know - and the race was on. Quick as could be, Apple Bloom leapt to her brother’s back, thwarting their mutual sister’s lunge to grab her. The filly then leapt over Applejack, ducked and dodged her way under the table and bolted out the door, Applejack slamming down not two steps behind, (having opted to leap over the whole table rather than attempt to fit under it). The blue feather was held neatly in her teeth.
There were the sounds of hooves, of a crash, a tussle, then a filly laughing uncontrollably. Intermittent cries of ‘I give up!’ and ‘I’ll talk!’ barely broke through the breathless, helpless laughter.
“You sure will!” Applejack shouted, full of laughter of her own.
For the first time that morning, Big Macintosh caught himself really smiling.
“You look cheery,” Granny Smith said as she hobbled into the kitchen. She winced as she sat down, but waved away her grandson’s attempt to help her. “Just one of them days,” she said with a resolute smile. “My hips and back been together so long, they can’t but help argue every once in a while. Get me a glass a juice, would ya?” Big Macintosh nodded and quickly obliged her. The glass wobbled and threatened to spill in her shaky hooves. “Oh stop frettin’ over me like a big ninny.” Granny tightened her chest with a deep breath and thumped her side. Something popped audibly. Her shaking stopped and she sighed relief. “There it goes.”
“I lost the bet, Granny. Sorry,” he added.
“Well what are you apologizing for? Bets, you’re practically supposed to lose ‘em sometimes. Why, I remember your grandfather got me playin’ Truth or Dare once. Course, we weren’t quite anypony’s grandparents yet, but...” she blinked, and the glassiness of her nostalgia settled down, though she did cackle, just a little. “But that’s besides the point entirely.”
“But you said-”
“What I said was that it’s important that you try your best.” She looked him up and down, like she did when scrutinized an apple for her most special of jam jars. “I reckon you did just that.”
“I thought I won. A pony cheated.”
Granny Smith poked her grandson in the chest. “Aren’t you a tad big to be sulking like a foal? So you lost, it ain’t no good, I know. But it’s a shame on them, not you.”
Granny’s cold dismissal of ‘them’ made the stallion suddenly want to defend Pinkie Pie, even if he could not have said why that was so. He was angry with Pinkie, he didn’t understand Pinkie, and he suspected Pinkie wasn’t entirely lucid. At least he knew who it was, though. He cut in front of the old green mare as she turned away. “Pinkie’s not a bad pony,” he insisted.
His Granny turned back on him with a swiftness that startled the bigger pony. She was smiling. “I know,” she said. “Why don’t you go figure out what this was about then?”
Big Mac set the last dish in the drying rack. “What about the chores?”
Granny waved away his concern like she would a bothersome bee. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll get Apple Bloom and her friends to help me.” She picked up a fluffy cloth and started to wipe down his face, regardless of Big Mac’s protests. “Oh, look at you. One day off the farm and you get into a nervous sweat, thinking the barn’ll come down or the trees’ll go to firewood. More to look at in this life than barns and trees, my boy. Now git!” she said, cracking the cloth like a whip. “Go have some fun of it. Trust your Granny.”
Big Macintosh felt rather like he was being shepherded about, like he himself would oft enough do for the sheep. It was the strangest feeling; his hooves practically lead themselves out the door. Once outside, he hadn’t the faintest notion what to do with himself. He glanced back inside. Granny was busying herself with something or other. He glanced over to the barn, then to the road into town. It called to him like unfinished business.
“Ain’t gonna sit right ‘til I get her done,” he mumbled to nopony in particular. He already felt a fool, what was dancing and bonnets going to add to that? He huffed, but already knew he was going to go. He hesitated and shuffled about, but once he took that first step, he couldn’t stop himself, nor did he really wish to.
He just had to pop upstairs for one small thing, first...
Pinkie Pie sprung from behind the last apple tree, scooting herself along to the Apples’ home with what she meant to be sneaky little bounces. She was, of course, making the appropriate sound effects for such an endeavour. Nobody spotted her, but she didn’t pause to congratulate herself, shake her own hoof and offer herself a promotion. There wasn’t time.
“Applejack!” she hissed at the open window nearest her. “Applejack!”
“Wrong window, my dear,” rattled the voice of Granny Smith. Pinkie drew a sharp breath with surprise, but Granny just rambled on, completely unfussed with the antics. “Come on in and quit that huffing. It don’t do at my age to speak to ponies I can’t see. Gives a bad impression to the young ‘uns.”
It was, Pinkie had to decide, a bit silly to panic any further. “Hi,” she said meekly as she popped in through the window. She took a seat, not because she particularly wanted to, but because she felt it was expected of her. Being in the same room as Granny Smith made her mindful of her posture as well, so she sat up straight, despite her urge to move and fidget.
“So you’re the one that made all that commotion. Got my boy in a right fuss over that, you did.”
“-” Pinkie started, but Granny wasn’t done yet and talked right on over her.
“Not that he’s that mad with you. Thinks he is, but he’s more confused ‘en anything. Cookie?” the old mare asked, offering a still steaming tray she pulled from the oven.
“They’re for bribin’ the girls with,” Granny whispered in conspiratorial tones. “That, and they just plain love cookies,” she added.
Pinkie nodded slowly, in what she hoped looked sagely and wizened a gesture. “That they do,” she said. Pinkie Pie took a cookie. Peanut butter, she noted with approval. She ate the cookie, also in what she hoped was a sagely and wizened manner. “Thanks,” she murmurred.
“So what brings you around?” Granny Smith asked as she swung the tray around, neatly depositing every last cookie in a heap on one of the plates Big Mac had just washed.
The urge to fidget was too much, and the cookies too good. Pinkie leaned over absurdly far, stretching her hoof, grasping fitfully at the edge of the plate, the whole thing going on behind Granny’s back. Just as the pink hoof made contact with one of the little baked treasures, a green hoof swatted it away. Granny hadn’t stopped or turned to look, she’d just known.
“Sorry,” Pinkie said, trying to keep her hooves to herself. “Oh, um, I sorta kinda need to know just what exactly it was Big Macintosh had to dance with if he lost the bet.” The silence (and another cookie) egged the young mare on to speak more. It all came out in a torrent.
“You see...Rarity was kind of mad at me all night and Twilight was kind of mad too but the other kind you know but now she isn’t and Dash and Applejack are probably Rarity-mad at me not Twilight-mad which is still pretty bad I don’t know I haven’t seen them yet but they probably are ‘cause of what I did and I don’t have a whole lot of time because Big Macintosh is headed into town and I need to get Rarity on board ASAP!” Pinkie wheezed the last strained syllables from her lungs and slumped chin-down on the table.
The dryness of the cookies and the long speech made her thirsty, but as soon as Pinkie could think this a glass of milk was passed over to her, again without Granny seeming to need to look at what she did.
The old mare slipped another tray of dough into the oven. “I don’t pretend to have caught half of that,” she said. “but ain’t it just a might silly that you're frettin’ so much seeing as how your prank is already won?”
Pinkie shook her head. “Not a prank, was never a prank. Pranks are funny. This is serious. Super serious! Big Mac’s future depends on it!”
Even Granny had to roll an incredulous eye at this. “Macintosh Apple’s future depends on it?” she asked flatly.
“Well...one future?” Pinkie asked with rhetorical hopefulness. “So what was it that he had to dance with?”
Granny Smith sighed, tut-tutted, and smiled. “A bonnet. In the middle of town. That was his bet."
“Okay thanks bye!” Pinkie shouted, the windows rattling with the speed which she dove out the window. She dove back in the window. “Thanks for the cookies!” she said politely and promptly disappeared again.
“Reminds me of myself at that age, heh,” Granny mused. She helped herself to a cookie. They really were quite good.
Despite his mood, the bonnet was exactly as fluffy, light and carefree as it would have been during its - and every other piece of clothing's - brief adventure with Dash the day before. Flapping about as it hung from Big Mac’s teeth, it smacked him once across the face when a sudden breeze lifted it. He growled, unwilling to open his mouth and risk this becoming a chase, instead swatting it back down.
It was frilly pink and, if he listened closely, Big Mac could just about hear it taunting him. “Nope,” he spat out around the edge of it. The fact that it kept flattening itself over his face somewhat deflated his sense of solemn purpose, but despite this he pressed on towards town, past the houses dotting the outskirts of Ponyville. His thoughts, as always, were on gettin’ ‘er done.
Pinkie Pie’s hooves beat the ground furiously. Her passing gave the grass whiplash and the fallen leaves of Whitetail Woods swirled dizzily in her wake. She flew over a hedge and bounded just as doggedly up the steps into town. Steaming along she ran up to Carousel Boutique, popped inside via the usual method ponies took and opened the window, then ran back outside, being sure to close the door behind her. She charged about in a circle in the middle of the road until she had the speed built up to dive clear over the porch and through the window to land in a slide that took her quite a ways on the smooth floor. Sliding and spinning slightly, she came to a complete stop with the gentlest of bumps into the appropriately awed and baffled unicorn. “Rarity!” she shouted. For her part, Rarity was still staring at her door.
“Did you just-” she began, but Pinkie threw herself at Rarity’s hooves.
“There’s no time! He’s almost here!”
“I don’t know what it is you’re on about.” Rarity frowned and pulled away, her nose most of all, which now pointed to somewhere up in the ceiling. “And if it is what I think it is, then haven’t you done enough in that regard?”
Pinkie wriggled her way forwards to latch onto Rarity’s hooves once more. “Pleeease?” she begged, her eyes wide and wobbling with moisture. “Don’t you remember The Doozie? This is just like that! Except this time I sorta had to help it along, had to help him along!” Pinkie sprung up to all fours instantly. “A smidgen-smudge-nudge!”
“I really don’t understand,” Rarity said, but the earlier venom was gone with a sigh. Her nose came back down to ‘commoner’ height. “Fine,” she muttered.
“Great!” Pinkie cheered, wiggling and bouncing and happy. “What we need is-” Rarity twirled on the spot to face her wayward friend, muffling her with a well placed hoof.
“- a rush job at the very last possible minute with a client or in this case friend that has barely comprehensible instructions and intentions, that being you by the way,” she iterated with a quick poke, “ and all the while having said job be good enough to, I presume, win your favour back with not only us your friends but return to poor Big Macintosh’s good graces as well, cheer him up about this mess,” Rarity snatched a sing-song breath, “ and, on top of all that, make some semblance of sense?” They stared into one another’s eyes for a moment.
Still hoof-muffled and now wide-eyed with awe too, Pinkie Pie merely nodded. “Right then,” Rarity said. “Let’s make it happen. She didn’t actually exhale embers when she huffed out that last word, nor were her eyes actually ablaze with fervour and fire, but Pinkie still felt that these visuals would have been appropriate.
Quick as she could ramble and explain and apologize, she did. Just as quickly as the words could spill out of Pinkie, Rarity’s magic lit up the shop. There was a lot to do.
“Not working today?” Cheerilee asked her unexpected but welcome companion of the morning. Rather than answer, she was met with a little cloth, frilly pink thing.
Cheerilee held up the headwear for her scrutiny. “Ah, The dreaded bonnet, oh my. The intolerable embarrassment,” she said flatly. “I would have expected bitter defeat to be less...soft?” She plopped the bonnet, lopsided, atop her own head. “And fluffy. This is definitely fluff lining in here. Have you felt the fluffiness?”
“Eeyup,” said Big Mac grimly, trying to remember that this was supposed to be his serious, solemn business.
The school teacher threw a hoof over his shoulder, pulling and pushing on the big stallion enough to make the pair of them swerve left and right through the street. “So you’re really going through with it then. Putting it all on the line. Honour before embarrassment.”
“Eeyup.” Her smile proved infectious, and he took to pushing back against her as well. They both laughed when they nearly marched headlong into a streetlight. The bonnet slid down over one eye, Cheerilee pushed it back up. “You decided on a dance to go with it?”
That gave him pause. “Nope,” he said resolutely. He didn’t want to think about it. This fun was strange and new and, not least of all, distracting him from the coming woe.
“Macintosh Apple! Do I hear the monosyllable of an ‘I-can’t-dance’ saying colt?” She cut ahead of him and swung about. Her smiling face was impassable.
“Eeyup...er...Nope?” He sighed. “I’ll figure something out.”
“I’m certain you will...” she mused softly and was mostly successful in stifling a giggle.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.” She trotted promptly ahead of him. “How about a bite to eat? My treat. Might as well face fate on a full stomach.”
“Eey... I’d...like that, Miss Cheerilee.”
She turned about again, this time to drape tiny frilly bonnet around the stallion’s neck. “Just ‘Cheerilee’ is fine. You know that.” There wasn’t even half the slack needed to tie it on around his bulk; it was tiny in every way when held up against him. She let the ribbons hang loose over his shoulders.
He didn’t understand the gesture her eyebrows were making, but he got the impression the meaning was one he’d be happy to learn. “Just Cheerilee it is, then.”
“And they said you couldn’t teach a big stallion new tricks. Oh! Just over here, they do a great daisy sandwich, come on.”
He did feel a moment’s unease when the waiter, a haughty, mustache bearing stallion spotted and stared at the bonnet sitting on Big Mac’s shoulders, but this feeling was forgotten more or less the instant Cheerilee next spoke. For once he didn’t just listen and eat, but contributed his thoughts too.
“I could leave if you’d prefer that,” Cheerilee said. They stood outside the pavillion, Big Mac’s chosen Shaming Grounds. There were few ponies about, and those that were ambled about merrily as if somehow ignorant of the fact that this was the biggest day in the stallion’s life. In his distressed imagining of how this would go, he had kind of expected more hecklers.
He did have one, if Cheerilee could be counted as such. He wasn’t sure. “It’s fine,” he said. “Please stay.” He climbed the steps and took the centre of the floor as his stage. He tried to control his breathing, but even so his heart raced and a nervous sweat broke out. Big Mac gulped as he held raised the bonnet above his head. A few pedestrians stopped and stared, a young filly pointed from across the street. Big Macintosh trembled.
“Is somepony shouting?” Cheerilee asked, her ears flicking about this way and that. The stallion paused and listened for it.
“Eeyup, I hear it.”
“Wait!” cried the distant voice. “Over here!” It was Pinkie Pie, bouncing frantically at the front of Rarity’s shop. The unicorn was there too, waving them over.
The schoolteacher waved then turned back to the stallion. “How much of an audience did you want?” Cheerilee asked. “The more the merrier?”
Big Mac mumbled and muttered. “Suppose...” he finally admitted, and dropped the bonnet back on his shoulders.
“Come on then,” she said, dragging the reluctant stallion along behind her.
Big Macintosh had thought it just the two mares, but as he came more into view of Carousel Boutique he saw that there was more. A table had been dragged outside for starters. It had a lovely and perfectly flat table cloth, but nothing else was on it. This seemed to be the basis for a heated argument between Rarity and Pinkie, though he didn’t understand why. There was, however, Twilight Sparkle, waiting nervously on the far side.
“Hi,” she said. She gestured over to the other unicorn. “Oh, um. Rarity came and got me,” she managed to say. She ran a hoof over her mane, looking away and back again several times. “So this is really it.”
“Eeyup.”
As he said it, her hoof came up, but dropped back down. “Right...you can say it now. Sorry, I’m kind of rambling...” The mare chewed her lip. “I feel responsible, I mean-”
“It’s alright,” he said as he set the bonnet at the corner of the table. He was wondering how the confident, even eager mare of yesterday had become so mousey. Strange mares, he mused.
Pinkie’s shrill voice cut across them all. “Rarity, you’ve convinced me. I agree with you. Unfortunately, it’s not up to me, it’s up to the party cannon, and it’s calling for party decorations! Incoming! Big Mac turned just in time to see her hoof slam down on the button, and then all the world went ka-plooey.
Big Mac blinked glitter out of his eyes and huffed it out his nose. He glanced to Twilight who was even worse off; she sneezed a glittering rainbow of sparkles.
Rarity groaned. “Pinkie, you can just be impossible at times, you do know that?” For her part, the poofy pink pony was giggling.
Cheerilee was blinking and staring at them all. She, at least, had been clear of the blast. “You could say that again.” She hazarded the chips and dip now inexplicably on the table. “Not bad.”
Rainbow Dash swooped in and helped herself to the same. “Free chips? Sweet. Hey guys,” she added.
Big Mac was being turned about quicker than he could keep up. “Applejack here too?” Pinkie called over.
“Yeah, I just got here with Dash. You weren’t in the house, I figured that’d mean one thing.” His sister strode up and thumped his shoulder affectionately. “Figured right, didn’t I?”
He shared in her grin. “Eeyup. That’s me; predictable.”
“I dunno about that, Big Mac.” Applejack gestured the whole gathering. “I never saw any of this coming. Least of all you being caught up in the thick of it. You ready?”
The stallion looked over everything; from Pinkie bouncing away to one side to Twilight still frantically getting glitter out her hair at the other. Rarity caught him glancing over at her, she batted an eye at him. When he turned over his shoulder to Cheerilee she had a warm, open smile for him.
“Honestly, sis, I’m not sure. Not sure at all.”
“Huh,” Applejack replied. She grabbed his head and pulled it down to her height. “And there I was, sure you’d say eeyup or nope to answer that. When did you go and get so surprising?”
“I couldn’t say.” He leaned closer to whisper. “You know I can’t dance, right?”
“Yeah, I been looking forward to see how you’re gonna jump that hurdle.”
“Dance? I could teach him,” Cheerilee said, smiling as she stepped in between the siblings. “I don’t think the rules said anything about you having to dance by yourself, did they?
Big Mac glanced to Applejack, who was as slack-jawed as himself. Other ponies were wandering into the little gathering by ones and twos. Helping themselves to the free platter. Seeing what this was about. “Uuh...” Big Macintosh said.
“Brilliant! Then in that case I call first dance with Macintosh Apple!” the mare called playfully, loud enough for all present to hear. Cheerilee winked at the stallion. Rarity, who had been setting a line of ribbons along her doorway, nearly stumbled at the announcement. She recovered herself with blustery defiance. Twilight too seemed to pause suddenly and blush, though why this was so Big Mac didn’t know. He might have searched her expression for answers, except she resolutely wouldn’t look at him.
“Me too, me too!” Pinkie shouted. “I love to dance!” She wasted no time kicking at the air and dancing about, making her own little sounds to make-do as ‘music.’
“Rainbow,” Rarity called sweetly. “Could you be a dear and pop upstairs to get my record player. My fragile, expensive record player...Nevermind, I’ll fetch it myself. I wouldn’t want to drag you away from the, uh, fun.” The pegasus only shrugged and turned back to the budding celebrations. In a moment, something fun and bubbly began to play. Loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough to leave the conversations alone.
“We don’t usually throw a party for losing, ya know,” Dash said. Cheerilee was already swaying in front of the stallion, teasing him as she explained the ways to move his hooves.
Applejack sidled in next to the pegasus, joining her in watching the spectacle. “Pinkie seems pretty much determined to make this an exception.” She pointed over to the mare in question, who was at that moment caught in animated discussion with Twilight Sparkle about something or other. The unicorn shook her head suddenly, made some incomprehensible gestures and turned away, but Pinkie simply grabbed Twilight around the barrel and dragged the mare back into the group.
“I’ve never seen your brother dance before,” Rarity said as she scooted in next to Applejack.
“Me neither, come to think of it.”
Dash chuckled. “What are you doing, Rares, asking her for permission?”
Rarity bristled almost visibly. “What?! I never-” but before she could finish Dash was in the air, pushing her onto the improvised dance floor.
“You can thank me later!” the pegasus called out. Applejack was chuckling when the pegasus retook her seat.
“Ain’t you the cheeky one?”
“You know it,” Dash said without hesitation, and the two friends laughed between themselves.
“Big Macintosh! Ain’t you forgetting something?” He wasn’t quite dancing, but was shuffling about to the beat, like he might start to do so at any time. He had a charming, relaxed smile plastered all over his face.
“Nope?”
Applejack pointed to her head, tried to make a little frilly shape with her hoof. “The bonnet!” she mouthed silently. Her brother whinnied audibly. His eyes went wide and his ears perked up. He glanced about, trying to see past Rarity and Cheerilee, Pinkie Pie and Twilight. All of them gyrating in their own ways or, in Twilight’s case, squirming to get away for some reason. He didn’t have time to think on that as he spotted the headwear of his shaming. It was still there, untouched on the table.
And then it was clenched in Cheerilee’s mouth.
And then it was on his head.
Unbearable shame. Burning embarrassment. Critical emasculation. These things failed to materialize. If anything, Rarity suffered more than he did.
“It’s just so silly” she whined. “Something so silly going on your not at all silly head, it really does offend my sensibilities.” Those sensibilities were offended even more when Cheerilee threw a hooful of party cannon glitter right at her. Rarity gawked and glared.
Her magic lit up, dragging a fruit-bowl from inside the house. In a flash it became the gaudiest fruit-bowl hat she could conceive of. Rarity planted it quite firmly on the school teacher’s head. The mares met eyes, smiled at some sort of understanding and rejoined the dance. Persimmons to pineapples, the hat wobbled precariously, but held together.
“That’s it, Big Mac! Put your hips and shoulders into it.”
“And your knees, too!”
“Move that neck of your’s as well. Like that, yes!”
Between the two mares, each teasing and poking at one another, Big Mac could hardly keep track of everything. Music filled his ears, scents swirled through one another in his nose and colours swamped his eyes. He half suspected the two mares were playing to see who could egg him on the furthest. There was sweat on his brow - theirs too - and his pulse was pounding under his skin. Feeling rather fantastic with it all, he had no qualms whatsoever in obliging them, ridiculous looking or not.
He stepped out after a song ended to fetch himself a drink. He wasn’t prepared to ask how the party cannon delivered, but he was prepared to appreciate the punch, which was only slightly too sugary for his tastes. His legs were noodley as he held the cup to his lips, which kept slipping into an easy smile.
“Well, ain’t this a day for firsts? You get one kick in the butt to get you into town, and look where we are.” Applejack, leaning back in her seat, prodded her brother. “You, dancin’. You, smilin’ ”
Dash dropped in from overhead. “And flirting! Or ‘flirtin’ as you’d say.”
Applejack swatted at the pegasus’ hooves. “That too,” she chuckled. “Hey look, here comes Pinkie Pie. Looks awful...focused.” Applejack’s next attempt was sudden and grabbed true, and she snagged the speedster’s hooves. “I reckon you and me should give ‘em a moment to talk over that thing, ya know,” she grunted as she worked, but her efforts to drag Dash away like a kite instead found Applejack lifted into the air by Dash’s powerful wings.
“Ha! Hook, line and sinker!” the pegasus cried triumphantly, carrying the now helpless, fidgeting Applejack away.
Even Pinkie stopped to watch that for a moment. Big Macintosh hadn’t realized just how close she’d gotten. The wiggliness the dancing had put into his limbs and into his thoughts evaporated.
“Heya.”
He nodded in polite acknowledgement. “Miss Pinkie Pie.”
The mare side-stepped closer to him. She sighed. “Sooo...you’re mad with me. I know.” She paused, but he didn’t speak. “I got you a party!” Her smile went wide, her hooves outstretched, but when the stallion still didn’t join in she slumped back down. She drummed a few quick thumps on her forehead. Her bright blue eyes caught his the instant she snapped out of it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Before any but-buts or explanations, I’m sorry.” Sincerity welled up at the bottom of her eye, it trickled down her cheek. A small smile found itself on her face. “Wow,” she said, blinking the tear away. “It feels really nice to just say something simple for once. I’m sorry.”
Big Macintosh looked at her. To see her fragile and hopeful, it felt petty, even cruel to keep himself mad at her. He looked at the celebration his defeat had been transformed into. He checked his head for the long-forgotten bonnet, and was both amused and surprised to find it still clinging on to one ear. He took it off and set it delicately on the table, confident he was done with it.
“Just needed a smidgen-smudge-nudge in a new direction?” Pinkie said. Why she made her statement a question, he didn’t know. There was, of course, a lot he didn’t know. Like what to say to her. Eeyup. Nope. Neither of them seemed to fit right.
He reached out and patted her shoulder. “Pinkie. I’m not mad. I was, but now I’m not. It’s turning out alright, and at the end of the day it was just a silly old bet. I shouldn’t gotten so serious with it. Friends?”
Pinkie Pie’s eyes glimmered. Her gaze flicked between his face and his outstretched hoof. “Friends? Friends?! Like, not just friends through Applejack and Apple Bloom and Granny Smith and Winona, but friend friends?!” She grasped his hoof in both of hers and shook it to with an inch of its life.
After a minute of hyperventilation the mare steadied herself, going perfectly tranquil. “Eeyup,” she said in perfect imitation, albeit a much higher pitched voice, her sneaky smile poking out around the edges. “Very very Eeyup. Oh!” She leaned in close. “You see Twilight over there? Looking all dazzle-frazzled?”
“Eeyup?”
“Well, I snuck back down to the Plotter last night, ‘cause I was thinking...” She paused and blinked. “Well, okay. I was thinking that it’d be fun to play with it before she dismantles it. She said she’s going to do that today, you know that?” She slunk down to her seat in what Big Mac recognized as Pinkie’s ‘being sneaky’ act. As usual, everypony that saw her doing it promptly ignored it as being utterly normal. “Well, I was down there, and I set it to match her and you...”
If her grin got any wider her head would pop off. “And?” Big Mac heard himself say. He was totally not caught up in the story. Nope.
“Aaaand...I found out she changed it! You remember how she said it didn’t work right? She changed it to not work right!”
He wanted to ask ‘how could you tell?’ but was wary. She answered anyway.
“She left a sticky note to herself on the back. So anyway, I pushed the button to make it normal again, and...” Pinkie giggled and blushed, "I set it to test you two!” When it was back to proper, the little Twi-tube, heh, ‘Twi-tube!’ Oh, right! Well, that one filled right up with pink! Pink, like me!”
Big Macintosh tried to take it all in. Pink, eh? “Why’d she change it? Still don’t make sense.” He stared at the scholar. Admittedly ‘making sense’ was always a bit abstract with her, but still. He glanced back to Pinkie in the hope for answers. She blew bubbles from a pipe he had never seen before, and inexplicably had a white moustache, which she flicked with one hoof.
“I reckon it’s a crush. A big crush. A Big Macintosh big crush,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. “Rather than deal with all the iddly, oogly, tickily feelings, she tried to prove, Prove, that she didn’t have one. That’s my theory,” she said. She took a drag on the pipe, but before Big Macintosh could point out that you weren’t actually supposed to inhale anything she blew the bubbles out her nose, still fixed with an expression of serious, intelligent thought.
She shook her face and both pipe and extraneous hair were gone. “I tested us too!” she said impishly. “But I’m not telling. No sir-ee, hee hee.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked playfully.
“Save a dance for me and we can find out together, okay? Now go help Twilight!” she said, shoving Big Mac forward and upwards with surprising strength. He glanced over his shoulder, but Pinkie was gone.
The giddiness of the dance floor washed right back over him. He ambled and scooted his way past couples and through groups. The whole thing was picking up more and more ponies by the minute. He found the little lavender one off to a quieter side. She didn’t seem to notice his coming.
“Hey, Twilight.”
“Oh! Uh, hi.”
Big Mac chewed his lip and steeled his resolve. He wasn’t one to normally take lead, but just now he had to. “Dance?” he managed to croak.
“Dance? Yes, there’s dancing...Dance! You mean with you! Dance! Us! Oh! No, nonono. I can’t dance.”
“Neither can I,” he said, the words were coming easier to him now. “I’ve just been pretending.” He took her hoof in his own.
“Oh, but...I’m still covered in glitter-” she sneezed as if to drive the point home,” and my mane’s all frizzy-”
“I’m wearing a bonnet,” the stallion added helpfully. Twilight smiled cautiously. He pulled her gently into the press of ponies, towards Cheerilee and Rarity, and they were welcomed warmly.
“Hey, you’re back!” Cheerilee said. She offered up her hoof, but thought better of it when she saw the squashed persimmon slide from it. She flicked the titbits that remained at Rarity, and was quick to dodge the banana of retaliation.
Soon enough, every last pony was dancing, right there in the street. They all looked ridiculous, and were making a right embarrassment of themselves. And the best part? Not one pony cared.
THE END
Eeyup.