//------------------------------//
// Home Swaggin' Home 
// Story: Appledashery 
// by Just Essay 
//------------------------------//

	Rainbow Dash flew to the stoop of her cloud home.  She paused, hovering in place.  Her eyes closed and she took a deep breath--more like a sigh.  At last, with fidgeting hooves, she reached forward and opened the door.

Almost immediately, she was subjected to a horrible wave of cacophony.  Darting her eyes to the right, she saw pots and pans rattling to the cloud stone floor of the kitchen.  There, Lancie stood atop the kitchen table like a cat caught in the spotlight.  A ladle rotated to a stop, dangling precariously off the edge of one of his antlers.

"Seriously, do you not keep a cheese grater anywhere in this rat's hole you call an apartment?"

"What... in the buck..." Rainbow grunted as she flew towards him.  "...do you need a cheesegrater for?"

"Hmmmph.  I swear.  One of those mangy mutts was chewing on my leg while you took your sweet time to yank it out of that gas-guzzling tank of theirs."  He continued rummaging through a dislodged shelf of random kitchen utensils.  "There's gotta be a way to file the tooth marks out of the rocky surface.  I wanna have a spotless complexion once all of my me-parts are back to being hooked together again.  Whoah!"  He gasped because he was being yanked off the table by his stone tail.

"Ptooie!"  Rainbow Dash spat him onto the kitchen floor and began picking up the kitchen utensils one by one.  "Dude, I'm pretty sure you'll be fine.  If having all of your pieces together can give you--like--ten times the power you have when we scavenge a single one, then you'll just wriggle your nose and get whatever polish you need in a blink."

"I'm more inclined to fold my arms and nod my head," Lancie said from where he reclined on the floor.  "With or without the springy noise... and belly button."

"Darn it... and would it kill you to not make a mess of things while I'm away?!" Rainbow Dash grumbled.  She grasped the drawer in two hooves and fluttered over to the kitchen counter, sliding the thing into place so that it snapped onto its hinges.  "Believe it or not, I come back to this place to chillax."

"I thought you did that by flying, Sparky."

"Yeah, well..."  Rainbow Dash picked up a spare spatula off the floor.  "I can't exactly sleep while winging it."

"Pffft.  Why so obsessed with sleep?  A mare with your metabolism would develop quite the belly if you keep sticking to your nap habits--"

The spatula suddenly clattered onto the floor.

Lancie craned his neck with a raised eyebrow.

Rainbow winced, rubbing her forelimbs as her senses tingled.

"That's a seriously counter-intuitive way to hoof-wrestle yourself," Lancie said.

"Meh..."  Rainbow Dash grumbled.  "It's not that... it's..." A sigh.  She winced, struggled, but finally picked the spatula back up, placing it gingerly on the kitchen counter.  "It's nothing."

"Seems like an awful strain for something that's the opposite of 'something.'"

"Just drop it, okay?"

"But you seem quite fine doing that yourself--"

"I mean it!" Rainbow snarled in his face.  "Don't make me buck you into next year!"

"Whoah-ho-ho-ho!"  He waved his arms with a nervous smirk.  "Easy there, Madame Grunts-A-Lot!  I'm sorry!  I didn't know I had crossed into the 'no-touchie-zone.'"

"That's the whole dang house if you think about it."  Rainbow Dash lingered at the edge of the kitchen.  "Look, believe it or not, my life was a great deal less stressful before you decided to crash here."

"It was?"

"Point being, I need time to just... I dunno--kerplunk and let things settle before I move on to what's waiting for me next."

"Pffft.  What does that accomplish?  You've got so much going for ya, Sparky.  Granted, most of it involves collecting the rest of my shards and mostly helping me, but there's no excluding the fact that you've got much more flank to kick and explosions to cause!"

"Not now, okay?"  Rainbow Dash hovered limply towards her room.  "Just... not now..."

Lancie folded his arms and smirked.  "Did you meet a certain freckled friend today?"

Rainbow Dash said nothing, shutting the door to her room tightly behind her.

"Screw me into a light bulb socket," Lancie grumbled to himself as he slinked towards the opposite end of the room.  "The mare's got to have fruit snacks around here somewhere..."