Jennifer followed Pinkie’s trail for a while, the result ended her landing on top of a tree in front of Fluttershy’s cottage, and how she landed here was just some logic that she probably didn’t understand. As she lifted the little, sleeping pony out of the tree and to her shoulder, a small rabbit was softly tugging on her pant leg pointing with its paw towards a smoke in the nearby, dark forest.
The pyromaniac stared at the smoke, then at the shadows in the forest, and finally back at the white bunny who, by body language, was begging for her to do something.
Jennifer thought for a moment, then decided to walk away. She had stayed for too long, and the others were probably getting worried. But the bunny just wouldn’t allow this decision to happen. He tried pulling on the boot, but it couldn’t get a good grip on the rubber. It had tried squeaking as loud as it can, but to no avail.
Soon, Jennifer had reached the edge of the park with the small bunny on her shoulder, patting its foot in impatience, and then left when it saw Fluttershy with Arvin. She had seen that everybody was quickly going to leave, but with the sleeping Pinkie on her, she started to walk towards Sugarcube Corner to lay her to rest.
Once arriving however, a trio of fillies was walking out the front door, with the obvious smears across their faces of milkshakes. They were talking about how they could get their cutie marks in candy making. But judging from the way they acted, Jennifer concluded, they would probably end up eating it or get in some kind of sticky mess.
She walked inside, seeing Mr. and Mrs. Cake at the cashier stand, Jennifer asked where she could put Pinkie Pie to bed.
“Her room is up the stairs and the second door on your left,” Mrs. Cake said. “You can’t miss it, it says Pinkie’s room.”
Jennifer walked up the stairs, the sleeping pony still softly snoring away on her shoulder, and saw the door to her room. When she opened it however, the intensity of the color pink was overwhelming and nearly fallen back when a couple of balloons got pushed into her face.
But she had calmed down and shoved herself into the pink room, until once again; she was attacked by some confetti.
“What’s next?” she muttered to herself. “A small alligator with no teeth trying to bite me to death?” She chuckled at the thought of that, but no amount of preparedness had prevented her from ever being so right.
As Gummy landed Jennifer’s head, he tried to chew on the small breather and seeing the small gator; Jennifer nearly dropped Pinkie and screamed until she had noticed that she wasn’t in pain from the biting. She stood there, letting the scaly creature think it’s winning this battle.
After a few minutes, she set Pinkie down on the bed with Gummy still trying to chew his way into her mask. She grabbed him and placed him in Pinkie’s hair, where he tried to chew through her mane. I bet it even tastes like cotton candy, but I’m not even going to try; wouldn’t want her hair in my mouth. She thought.
After Jennifer placed a blanket over the pony, Pinkie snuggled with it and tried to get into a comfortable position. The pyromaniac then walked out of the room, leaving Pinkie to deal with her dreams of sweets and chocolate rain.
Jennifer walked down into the basement, and flicked on the light.
Everywhere, there were metals such as hooks and sharp objects. In the center, there was a table similar to surgeon’s operation stand and many tools surrounding it. There mysterious stain here and there on the table but it was difficult to tell if it was fresh or dry. There were many colorful items that looked very similar to unicorn horns and pegasi wings. The room had a dark red hue, but that was because of the light bulb, which used magic by a red magic-colored unicorn apparently. It was creepy at first, but once getting used to it, it reminded her of a darkroom whenever she watched movies that were from the 80’s.
But it was the owner of the small shop that may surprise — or not — many people.
“Hey Jennifer,” Mr. Cake yelled down the stairs. “Whenever you’re done messing with your tools, can you help me feed a couple of griffons?”
“Of course,” She replied gleefully. “I got to pay back your hospitality somehow.” The pyro started to take off her suit and was dressed how she normally was, like a video game character she loved to dress up as.
“How many times to I have to tell you; there’s no need to do such things.”
“You keep thinking that, I’ll have to ask for the Princess to pay you a full week vacation.” She had put her hair in a ponytail and tied it off with a hair-tie.
There was a pause. “Like I said, you don’t have to do this.”
“No need to worry! In debt or not, I’ll pay you back one way or another to make you happy.”
Mr. Cake sighed. “You’re more stubborn than my wife.” There was a barely audible ‘hey’ a few seconds after that.
“I’m only stubborn when it comes to paying people off.” Jennifer put Pinkie’s flamethrower on the table, hoping that it would stop leaking gasoline and propane gas.
“Have it your way, be up in about twenty minutes.” Mr. Cake closed the door to the basement.
She chuckled, and then went back to try and fix the pony-made weapon. It was going to be a while before it was actually to the power of her basic flamethrower, but it could be done in a night.
She pulled one of the unicorn-looking horns—which was actually a pipe sealing holder— and put it where the propane tank met the rubber pipe. She then turned on the propane tank and lit it with a lighter she had, causing a small flame to appear at the end of the muzzle of the weapon.
But before she got any further, she checked to clock and found that it was only three minutes before she had to do work. Once the flamethrower was turned off, the propane tank safely put away, and the gasoline tanks nowhere near a flame, Jennifer went upstairs. When she closed the door, she locked it and put the key inside her jumpsuit.
It was just another day for the pyro.
(…..)
Big Macintosh watched Heavy pull the cart of apples. He was astonished how Heavy could do it with just on hand, and was even more surprised when Heavy just walked it off like it was just a shopping bag. But whenever he placed where it needed to be, he flipped the entire cart over and repeated the process once again.
Of course Big Mac was on break for about ten minutes, but Heavy just couldn’t stop. The red stallion forgot what Heavy’s official name was; it was something like Mike-Hail or Misha or something like that. Mac just kept it at Mikhail and left it at that. Whenever he said that name at Heavy, he never corrected him so that was the end of Big Mac’s doubt.
Whatever Heavy did to him though, it had caused him to be more talkative. He used to just say yes or no, but instead, he actually gave reason behind his responses. It kind of freaked him out like how Dell’s teleporter worked, but it was at least something that he could talk about with the family at dinner times.
Big Macintosh was mostly concerned about Applejack; she was yelling at him for being at mathematical and whatnot, but he just couldn’t understand how she could build these devices without learning it; so much for her being the smart one of the family. But he was more concerned with Applejack’s relations with Dell; it seems like she wants to be his special somepony, but Dell just won’t notice the hints. Or for that matter, doesn’t even care. Should give him a talk later on about her, he thought, would be a real shame if Applejack decided that she would make the first move and embarrassed herself.
The stallion looked up into the sky, and then went back to work. He’ll want to think more about this situation, but only after his daily philosophical lessons he gives himself — recently he bought himself a book after getting a decent buy from Filthy Rich, and decided to put his extra time to use. The extra time that he found out he had, was extreme. It was wonder that he didn’t decide to take an extra job to help the family. With about fifty hours of extra time a week, he might as well take on a new hobby; like building furniture for instance. What’s even better, since the new two mercenaries appeared and decided to help with the farm, he might as well add seven more hours. Work has been getting quicker and somewhat easier, but that doesn’t mean the farm is pooling in more bits. Macintosh sighed, and walked up to Mikhail and asked where he could find a cart.
Mikhail pointed down the road and Macintosh found a cart filled to the brim with apples. Work may be quicker and easier, but doesn’t mean that the apples got any lighter. He sighed again then latched himself up, and started to work again.
(….)
Demoman watched a zebra brew a potion. As soon she finished, she drank the purple liquid, and her eyes instantly grew half-lidded.
“Now that I have some help to keep,” she rhymed. “I may be able to sleep. Someday, I wish I can get this speech gone. But at the moment, it’s like I have a leech ‘mon.”
Demoman facepalmed, and then gave the zebra a hard, repeated slap across her face. He went from backhand, to front hand, then backhand again, repeating the process a couple more times.
Once Demoman’s hand started to hurt by occasionally slapping the zebra’s golden earrings, he stopped and picked up the zebra, which was near to tears. “Now tell me where it hurts on you,” he said.
The zebra moaned. “It hurts my everything,” she whimpered. “Please tell me, why did you do that?”
“Did ye not lis’en to wha’ cha said?” Demoman said.
The zebra had thought for moment then lain back down. “I’ve forgot. Can you please tell me what I said?”
“Ye no longa’ rhyme like a poet,” He patted the zebra’s head. “An in case ye has forgotten, me name is Tavish Degroot. “
Tavish picked up the zebra, and then sat down to place her in his lap. He started petting her, but no longer after, she had fallen asleep. Tavish shook his head, then went to bed to lie down in, and then placed her on top him. As soon as his head touched the pillow, Tavish soon followed the zebra into a deep sleep, ignoring the loud animal growls and the occasional howls of the Everfree Forest outside of the tree house.
(……)
Fluttershy was having a difficult time trying to get into Arvin’s backpack. No matter how many times she had tried to grab the zipper, her large hooves aren’t able to grab the tiny thing. This time however, she tried her teeth, but the metallic taste to her mouth felt off to her mouth, so she reflexively let go.
She looked at the bed Arvin was laying on, the darkness of the night made it hard for her to see if he was awake; but by the soft snoring, she concluded that she had a couple more tries before he actually woke up.
She once again reached for the zipper, but this time she didn’t let go no matter how badly her mind told her not to. She pulled the zipper up, making its trademark zip sound, and was already halfway finished with opening it.
Once she reached the end of the zipper trail, Fluttershy poked her nose into it. Her mission was simple; grab the thing she wanted very badly, and then escape without him waking up.
The pegasus’ muzzle touched something that made a crumple noise whenever it was touched. She grabbed a couple of the packages with her mouth, and placed them next to the pack. Fluttershy looked at the bed; Arvin was still asleep. She zipped up the pack and looked again; he was still asleep.
Something feels very wrong with this situation, but she grabbed the packages again and slowly walked out of the room. Once she reached the doorway, she closed the door softly and walked back to her room down the hallway. She opened the door, and looked inside. Seeing nobody in there, the butter-colored thief slowly walked in and put the packages on her bed.
She grabbed one of the packages and ripped the top open. Fluttershy then looked around and saw nothing yet again, she opened her mouth and started to pour the items inside the package inside her mouth and chewed.
Fluttershy couldn’t get enough of the Skittles that Arvin had given her that day. Although she knew it was probably wrong for her to steal it, she did it anyways. Arvin would probably never notice that there was a couple missing, since his bag had the same dimensional ability as Pinkie.
How they found out how it was possible was that they brought it over to Pinkie and she grabbed a war hammer about the size of Celestia. She also grabbed her party cannon, a large cake, and Celestia herself! How the princess got in there was a mystery, but Arvin then grabbed a bouquet of roses and gave it to Celestia since he had nothing to do with it — Celestia blushed and then walked away funny. There were many other things he had grabbed, like a glass bottle of Coke, a solar charger from many reasons nopony knew, and a violin and cello — Pinkie grabbed the violin and started playing with Arvin, it was a light tune and it was entertaining, and it had sounded like it belonged to a musical about snow and letting it go.
Fluttershy sighed, then opened another bag of Skittles, this time it was a dark blue bag instead of the usual red. She ate the small berry flavors, and started to wonder why she hasn’t grabbed any different kinds of candy. She lifted her head at that thought and wondered what else Arvin knew about the candy world. She started salivating at an imaginary flavor that will probably make her feel like she was in paradise. Oh how she loathed the fact that Arvin gets to make a decision about what he wanted while she only had her Skittles.
Fluttershy grabbed the wrappers and walked down to the living room, where her fireplace was, and threw them into the fire; where it had burned into nothing but ash and smoke. Afterwards, she put out the fire for the fear of one her animals accidentally falling into the fire pit and burning themselves. The pegasus then walked back into her room and lain down on her bed; but before she had fallen asleep, she lit an oil burner that was filled with dried, green leaves and let it burn out.
She inhaled the smoke coming from the oil burner, then giggled, and fallen into a deep sleep.
(…)
Upon awakening, Jacques lifted a white pony off of him. Rarity was certainly a rough sleeper, but why couldn’t she have gotten a bigger bed?
As Jacques thought, Rarity climbed upon his torso and then latched on to him in a death grip. He tried to remove her, but just couldn’t find a way to, so he gave up and decided that it was for the best that he had a chest protector from an oncoming filly who hugged him every morning.
The spy sighed, and then went to the kitchen to find Rarity’s parents eating breakfast. “Bonjour,” he said, startling the two ponies. “How may I help you?”
“Ahh, so it seems that she has found one of Equestria’s heroes to become her special somepony,” the stallion said. “It was always Rarity’s taste to fall for somepony so, coveted.”
Jacques raised an eyebrow, but then noticed what he was implying. “I’m sorry to disappoint monsieur,” he closed his palms and did a light bow. “But I’m afraid that you’re getting the wrong idea here.”
“No need to be ashamed,” the mare reassured. “It’s okay if you don’t want to admit it, but we’ll keep a secret for you.”
Jacques thought about it for a second, would he like to keep this up and play it out? Or would he just admit the truth and disappoint the two people in front of him how happened to be Rarity’s parents?
As he had opened his mouth, he was saved by the Belle. “Bonjour Jacques! Would you like some breakfast?” Sweetie Belle squeaked.
Jacques nodded and followed her into the kitchen, with Rarity still on his chest, Sweetie Belle hugged his legs. “You know you’re going to get your morning hugs every day until you’re Rarity’s special somepony!” she smiled, her teeth gleaming.
Jacques smiled, at least this kid got spunk and willing to admit it. Used to remind him of someone else when this person was little, always tried to become the better one in the family, although everyone else was older.
Jacques went into a flashback of the boy’s first gift on Christmas, a baseball bat. How he had always tried to make the home run on his team, but unfortunately, he decided to try other sports rather than baseball. The Frenchman sighed; he missed the boy, and often wondered where he is right now.
After he had limited contact with the woman he loved, he couldn’t keep up with the family development. He had taken her out to fantastic dinners, but she always asked about the money he was suddenly earning. He always told her it from the job he was doing and left it at that. The actual job was the mercenary work he is doing today, well, the contract he had last time. It wasn’t until Richard joined the team that he started to wonder if that Richard was his son. There many ideas, but he left it at the fact it was a possibility, but very low.
As Jacques scratched his beard, Rarity started moaning, and then he decided that he had to try and wake her up. For one; it was inappropriate for Sweetie Belle to hear such moans, and two; her parents might think that he was doing something to Rarity.
He tried ruffling her mane, bending her ears, and pinching her. But that only made Rarity’s moans more intense. Jacques then rolled on the ground, lifted his knee to kick her, and even pulled her tail; but it just got worse. He walked out of the kitchen and then grabbed some black paint. If she wasn’t going to wake up, then might as well use her as practice for his drawing skills. Soon, he reached Rarity’s bedroom and looked at a mirror, and started to write a message backwards. He reached the ending and let it dry up before heading to the kitchen.
“Sweetie Belle,” She looked up at Jacques. “Do you think you can get me a cup of ice water?”
“Sure thing,” Her voice cracked. “You’re not going to wake up Rarity are you?” She looked at the marks on Rarity’s back, then handed the Frenchman the cup. “Because she’s going to rage as soon as she sees this.”
He patted her head. “I know; that’s why I’m going to do it. Now, close your ears when she wakes up.”
Sweetie winked, and then pulled on her ears. Jacques then slowly tilted the water into Rarity’s mane, as soon as it touched however; she shrieked and then pulled Jacques closer to her body.
“Bonjour mademoiselle Rarity,” she looked up at him, then noticed what she was doing and let go.
“I apologize,” Rarity said. “It was very rude for me to have done that to you.”
“Also,” he started. “You might need to check your coat whenever you take a bath, preferably a mirror so you can tell what it is.”
The unicorn raised an eyebrow in confusion, and then started to walk out the kitchen. But as soon as she left, her parents slowly appeared with the biggest grins on their faces.
“So, do you find our daughter suitable?” Rarity’s father asked, and then winked.
Jacques answered with a sigh. “In way, yes.”
“Good!” Rarity’s mother exclaimed. “Give us the invitations whenever you’re ready.” They both left the building after that.
Jacques then noticed what he had agreed to, and then did a double facepalm; quadruple if he could grow extra arms.
Later he heard a scream. Jacques then tried to teach Sweetie Belle how to use her cuteness as a weapon, and waited for the upcoming rant about her coat and how it’s going to have to be bleached multiple times to get the paint out.
(…)
Richard was having a completely different day compared to everyone else, if anything; it was that Rainbow Dash was using her new skill of double jumping in her flying routine. So she had challenged both of them to an obstacle course made up of only clouds. Most of it required them to double jump and use their skill of shooting to take out many cloud-targets. Of course Richard agreed, but then changed all the bullets to tiny dried pieces of bread; same weight as a bullet, painful as a paintball with the bursting slap included.
But Dash wanted to use real bullets, but then she noticed that dried bread was about the same when Richard shot her out of the sky. It had hit her in multiple spots on the left side of her, but it didn’t cause any damage to her wings. Just bruises.
But currently, he was currently trying to keep Dash away from him using the Force-of-Nature. It had kept her away, but he was running out of shotgun-bread-shells, and she was using the Baby Face Blaster. Apparently the abilities of the guns worked with the modified shells, and Dash was just learning how to use the gun in her advantage, which was basically running around.
“Dash!” the Bostonian yelled. “If you continue running, I’m going to start calling you Scootaloo!”
“Hey!” an orange filly from the makeshift stands yelled. “I’m still learning how to fly you jerk!”
“Sorry,” he apologized, but then shot another bullet at Dash causing her to knock over, and trip.
The rainbow-mane pony got up and then started to run straight towards him with the Holy Mackerel. He turned around and then grabbed his Changeling Killer, and swung straight at her right side.
She fell once again, but there was the drawback to the weapon Richard used which caused him intense pain to the arm he was carrying it. He hadn’t grown quite used to it, especially when he used it back at Los Pegasus.
So Richard doubled over and in an instant, Scootaloo was at his side trying to get him up. “Hey Richard,” she said softly. “Are you okay?”
He chuckled, and then looked at his arm, but what he saw almost made him pass out.
What happened to his arm was that his hand had turned black and it had reached from there to a few inches above his elbow. What’s even worse was that upon his forearm and hand was that it had various-sized holes that were through and through. So when he looked at his hand, in the dead center was a hole the size of a quarter and on the other side was Rainbow Dash looking at it in horror.
Dash was in tears. “Hey, are you okay?” Richard asked, reaching with his other hand.
She pushed his arm away. “No!” She screamed. “How could you lie to me? I thought we were friends!”
Richard was confused at this sudden outburst. But before he could respond, Dash grabbed Scootaloo and then flew straight down, bursting the cloud and leaving Richard on a lonely island.
“Man, this feels even more awkward than the time I disguised as a high school track athlete to get girls.” He said to no one in particular. The Bostonian then did the next best thing to he could do; make the cloud as comfortable as he can before changing it into a recliner, put in his earbuds, lay back to relax, and check if the other arm had damage.
For sure, the other arm had the same exact result before being engulfed in a green flame, turning back to normal.
The next four hours, all Richard did was learning about his new arm powers, forgetting the fact that the changeling bat was still touching his back.