“This bites!” Scootaloo pulled at the hem of her sailor fuku. “Why is Miss Cheerilee making us wear these lame school uniforms?”
“Ah think we look cute, day-su,” Apple Bloom chirped.
“We always look cute. These outfits are just… creepy and inappropriate.” Scoots gave her skirt a few more futile tugs. “Seriously, did some dirty old stallion pick these out? This barely covers my flanks.”
Sweetie Belle had gotten really good at scoffing sarcastically. Even Scootaloo had to admit how impressive her delivery was. “Stallions don’t like mares that are half-naked. We’re always naked.”
“Oh.” Scootaloo chuckled sheepishly. “Duh.”
“Nah, see, stallions go for mares with lots of clothes. Like, lots. Forelock to fetlock.” Shuddering, Sweetie let out something between a groan and a gag. “One time I walked in on Rarity wearing a hazmat suit. You do not want to see your own sister looking like that.”
“Huh?” Apple Bloom tilted her head. “Why not?”
“Whoa!” AB and Sweetie ran into Scootaloo’s outstretched hooves with a grunt. “Get a load of that,” Scoots whispered reverently. Ahead of them, Big Macintosh staggered out of Sugarcube Corner, struggling to hold aloft a magnificent, monumental mass of moist mcake. Scootaloo wiped away her drool with the back of a hoof. “I’m gonna eat that.”
“Don’t even think about it,” snapped Sweetie. “The Cakes have been perfecting that recipe for months. They won’t let you have any.”
“Don’t care. Gonna eat it.”
“Girls, back up, why is it not okay to look at your sister wearing clothes?”
Sweetie narrowed her eyes and poked Scootaloo in the chest. “They will literally kill you.”
Scootaloo smirked. “Bring it on.”
“Hmph,” Apple Bloom pouted, kicking at the dirt. “Ah think Applejack would look beautiful in a snowsuit.”
“And stay out!” Pinkie hissed as the shadowy figure retreated back into the sleeping car. Rushing back to the table, she looked over every glazed inch of the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness. “Thank goodness,” she moaned, hanging her head. “You’re still safe.”
Perfectly jinxed, the door to the sleeping car was bucked open, and then exploded. “Not for long!” Scootaloo emerged from the carnage, her sailor fuku fluttering in the smoky breeze.
“A-ha!” Pinkie Pie pointed pointedly at the pegasus. “I should’ve known it was you all along, Scootaloo. But the only dessert you’re getting is just desserts.”
“You don’t understand...” Scootaloo raised her forehooves out of the swirling ash. Duct-taped to one, a wakizashi. Duct-taped to the other, an MP9. “...how bad I want that cake.”
“And you don’t understand,” said Pinkie, rising onto her hind hooves and taking a fighting stance, “just how serious the Cakes were about security.”
“Bring it on, then!” Scootaloo charged at the pink one, her pleated skirt flaring behind her. Pinkie lunged, but Scoots set her wing abuzzing, skidding sideways just enough for the punch to sail past her ear. With a roar and a forward flip, she brought her ninja blade down hard on Pinkie’s exposed foreleg, slicing apart sheet metal and exposing the wiring beneath. “H-Huh?” Scootaloo tried to pull back, but the sword duct-taped to her hoof was lodged firmly into the cut.
Pinkie—or rather, the Pony-Incinerating Nuclear-Kombustion Instrument of Eradication 3000—flashed its laser-red eyes at the young filly before pointing its side-mounted flamethrower squarely at her muzzle. “Error loading witty_oneliner_175.aac,” she said, before washing over Scootaloo with a torrent of blue-white flame.
“Nyaaar! Bkooo! Pshuuu!” Pinkie slammed her action figures against one another with loud, plastic clacks, as she provided fitting sound effects.
“Pinkie Pie!” Twilight shouted above the din while meanwhile snatching the deerstalker hat back. “Can you shut your sugar funnel for just one second?”
“Pow!” One final slam sent her ninja action figure flying. Scootaloo ducked, narrowly avoiding getting beaned in the face with her own placeholder. “Sure I can!” answered Pinkie Pie. “But is one second enough because I figure that your angry rant is—”
An eye-twitching glare was enough to cut Pinkie’s word jumble short.
“...can I at least keep the pipe?”
“No,” Twilight snapped, grabbing that too. “Bubble pipes are for winners. Now can you please stop with the insanely unrealistic accusations?”
“But this one actually happened!” Pinkie whined.
“No, it did not,” Twilight lectured at fifty percent of her maximum egghead potential. “For starters, if you had burnt Scootaloo to death, she would be actually dead.” She angrily booped Scoots’s nose to accent her point.
Scootaloo coughed, scuffing the scorch marks out of the carpet with a hoof.
Twilight turned back to Pinkie. “And you do not own a flamethrower-wielding deathbot!”
Pinkie Pie coughed, hiding a hoof-sized remote control within the curls of her mane.
“Now if we can just think through this problem rationally,” Twilight sassed, “and think of a logical expla—and great, there go the lights again.” She huffed as the train passed through yet another tunnel, plunging the train car into pitch blackness.
Scootaloo crouched down, ready to capitalize on the darkness and to finally get a bite of the MMMM, but went rigid as a set of claws grasped her about the withers. “Please don’t get creepy on me,” she whimpered. “I’m not some hazmat hussy.”
“Ahh, mah delectiblé mousse moose,” Gustave le Grand purred in her ear. “Zoon I shall taste your zilky chocolat.”
Try as she might, squirming and twisting beneath his grip, Scootaloo couldn’t break herself free. “Not a dessert, definitely a pegasus, please don’t eat me.”
Gustave tutted gently. “Ah, mon amie, but zat is exactly what a mousse moose would say, no? Now, how you say… geet in muh bellay.”
As the train emerged from the tunnel and sunlight once more spilled in through the windows, Gustav licked his talons and harrumphed. “Vah! You ponies and your bland cuisine. It is as ze saying goes, zat everything tastes like ze chicken.”