The Happiness and Peace of Mind Committee
Chapter 6: Be Careful What You Wish For
“This meeting of the Rebellion Bureau will hereby come to ord——”
“What the hell were you thinking, Applejack?!” Rainbow shouted, her face red with anger. She slammed her hooves down on the table and stood over the blonde earth pony, appearing as if she was ready to pounce on her at a moment’s notice. Applejack sat calmly in her chair.
“I don’t know what you mean——”
“Like hell you don’t know what I mean!”
“C’mon you guys, there’s a little filly standing a few feet away from you…” Twilight pointed out. Rainbow glared at Applejack, but sat back down reluctantly. Twilight smiled.
“This doesn’t mean we aren’t still extremely upset with you,” Rarity brought up. “We’re simply resorting to a more civilized form of argument. There’s no need for such barbaric language, after all.” Rainbow shot Rarity a dirty look, then slumped down in her chair.
“Alright you guys, it’s not a big deal, really——”
“We agreed to never go there unless we had ran bone dry on options! What were you thinking?” Twilight cried.
“That black magic is dangerous, you know! Do you even know how fond voodoo practitioners are of loopholes?” Rarity added.
“What if you got hurt? I still wanna be super best friends with you!” Pinkie chimed in.
“Please! Please! Just let me explain!” Applejack shouted. Everyone quieted down, their faces tense and their minds bursting with things to say. Applejack took a deep breath.
“You received the letter I had Apple Bloom give to you all, right?” she asked. Apple Bloom perked up to the mention of her name. “I’m pretty sure that explained the main question, so why are we all still wondering about it?”
“Because it makes no sense!” Twilight cried. “Why would you go against everything that we have said just so you can make a wish for your little sister? It sounds mean when I say it like this, but the stakes were far too high for you to risk something like that! Heck, we still don’t know if you’ve come away from that experience a winner! How do we know something horrible hasn’t happened to you?”
“Oh Twilight,” Applejack sighed heavily, “I knew that you out of all of us wouldn’t understand. Your brain is too technical and calculating. You have to understand at some point that if you don’t take into account the way that people think, and how their virtues play into their decisions, then the rug is going to be pulled out from under you.
“It’s no secret that the one thing I care about above everything else is my family. I just learned that my little sister is still alive, in the mental sense. Do you think that I’m going to let her be torn away from me again? I needed to do everything in my power to protect her, even if it meant going behind you guys’ backs.” Applejack laid back in her chair to let the information sink in a little, when she felt a tug at the end of her mane. She turned and saw Apple Bloom looking up at her with big eyes.
“So you’re saying that the whole reason you disobeyed your friends and did something extremely dangerous like that was all for me?” she asked.
“Of course, Apple Bloom. You mean the world to me.” Applejack ruffled Apple Bloom’s mane affectionately. Apple Bloom seemed to zone out, lost in thought.
“Nevermind that,” Pinkie piped up, “how did you get out of the city? The only door through is in The Committee’s headquarters. You couldn’t have possibly snuck in there and back and stayed in one piece!”
“Yeah, and how did you know where to go once you figured out a way out?” Aquamarine added. Applejack shifted forward in her chair.
“Well,” she started, pondering where to begin. “I’ll spare you all the details, but I went into that library that Aquamarine and Twilight talked about a few weeks back and where The Path to Eternal Happiness originally came up. I found an envelope, which was unopened for whatever strange reason, and inside was some sort of spell or something. I read the sentences out loud, and the next thing I knew, I was in some sort of alternate dimension. So, in a way, I never left town at all. I know it wasn’t a dream, though, because it was far too vivid.”
“Well…” Rainbow tried to think of some sort of comeback, something else to prove that whatever Applejack did was wrong. “Are you positive that you didn’t screw anything up? Did the ritual go exactly as it was supposed to?”
“I swear on my life that nothing bad is going to come of this, and if anything bad does happen, it won’t be anything to worry about,” Applejack assured, making an X over her heart.
“Alright then, I suppose it’s fine. I mean, I’ve already been bitten in the butt over denying one of my friends something that they wanted, and I definitely don’t want to do something stupid like that again…”
“Wait,” Twilight interjected. “We can’t write this off as fine yet. What exactly did you wish for? Word for word?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Applejack replied, rubbing the back of her neck a little. “I never directly told her what it was that I was wishing for, but she still knew what it was. Is there a way for her to find a loophole in words that I never said?” The group pondered the possibility, but ultimately none of them could come up with any sort of explanation.
“I guess if we don’t know for sure, and if there’s no way to figure it out, we should put it aside for now…” Twilight sighed. She hated not being able to figure out no matter how much she tried. Not being able to figure out a method of rebellion was really driving her nuts.
“So, nothing else is really up for discussion right now, huh?” Pinkie asked. Everyone exchanged glances, then shook their heads.
“Hold on, there is one thing I need to say,” Aquamarine interjected. “Lately all of these meetings have been focused on nothing but our friends. Shouldn’t we be investigating more? I feel like we’re on the verge of something, but I’m the only one that actually takes time to investigate. While there is a time for grieving, there is also a time when we need to learn to move on.”
“I suppose you’re right…” Twilight mumbled. “Moping all of the time isn’t going to get us anywhere, will it? I’m sure Fluttershy would much rather we find a way to figure everything out as opposed to crying over our loss.”
“So is that everything?” Applejack inquired. Twilight nodded.
“This meeting of the Rebellion Bureau is hereby dismissed.” The group of friends pushed in their chairs and left the building, taking no notice to the sparkling tears running down the little filly’s face as they filed out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aquamarine slipped from street corner to street corner, keeping herself as inconspicuous as possible. If nobody else was going to investigate, then she would just have to do it on her own. She needed to find a lead somewhere, but so far none of the places she deducted there would be clues proved fruitful.
She turned a corner. At least she tried to, but she was pulled back by her tail. She figured it had just been caught on something, but then she felt something alive against her skin. She broke into a cold sweat. Her time had finally come. She spun around to confirm her fears.
“My God, Twilight, you scared the life out of me!” Aquamarine scolded.
“Sorry,” Twilight apologized, laughing a little. “You were right, though, we really should be taking this whole investigation thing more seriously. I don’t know why I wasn’t, I feel like normally I would’ve jumped at any opportunity to learn, but for some reason I just don’t have that passion anymore…”
“Well, at least you’re helping, right?” Aquamarine affirmed. Twilight nodded.
“So where are we headed?” she asked.
“To be completely honest? I have no idea.”
“The library?”
“I’ve checked every single square inch of that room. If there’s anything else there of interest, I would’ve found it.” The two pondered their next course of action, weighing both how likely a location would help them find something and how likely it would be that they would get caught. In most cases if one of the things were true, the other one was also. Twilight sighed. Now she knew why Aquamarine was so frustrated that nobody was helping.
“Well, do you think we could——gyah!” Twilight was cut off when she tripped over a loose stone on the ground mid sentence. She flailed, then grabbed onto a nearby building wall for support. The brick that she grabbed hold of slide right out of the wall, failing to catch her fall, so she fell face-first on the pavement. “...Ouch.”
Aquamarine didn’t respond, instead studying the wall intently. Twilight stood back up and dusted herself off, using a little spark of magic to keep the blood in her nose at bay.
“Not even an ‘are you ok’?” she asked. She stopped when she noticed the whole in the wall. “Hey, what’s that?”
“It’s the hole that the brick fell out of. I’m not positive, but I think there might be something in it of importance.” Aquamarine studied the gap in the wall a bit longer.
“Are you kidding? That’s awesome!” Twilight cried in excitement. She slapped a hoof over her mouth. She didn’t need to be caught now over something like being too loud.
“...False alarm. It’s nothing,” Aquamarine confirmed, sweeping her sapphire blue hair out of her eyes. Twilight’s shoulders drooped.
“Well, in that case, we should probably put this brick back in,” she suggested. She kneeled down and picked up the brick, but it seemed a bit lighter than a brick should be. She peered down at it, and noticed that it was hollowed out. She turned the opening to her other hoof and shook it a little, and into her palm fell a little key.
“What do you suppose it could be for?” she asked, her eyes filled with wonder at their discovery. Aquamarine bent down to get a better look.
“I’m not entirely sure…” she replied.
“Maybe it goes to one of those little lock boxes? It’s really overly intricate, and usually that’s how those kind of keys are,” Twilight inferred. Aquamarine nodded, then stood back up.
“Should we go try and figure out what it could go to?” she asked, helping Twilight back up.
“It’s getting kinda dark. I think we’ve done well enough that we can call it a night…” The two said their farewells and went back to their assigned homes, perhaps one step closer to solving the puzzle.