At first I thought being a vampire would be pretty sweet. It felt so cool to casually say, “Yeah, I’m undead. Got a problem with that?” There’s also the super senses, strength, speed, and the joys of consuming meat for a change.
And then there’s missing out on the National Dessert Competition because you can’t eat anything that didn’t die a bloody death.
“This sucks,” I said to Rarity. I thought for a moment. “Now that I’m a vampire, I feel like I’m making a pun every time I say something sucks. That sucks, too.”
“I know how you feel,” she said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the word ‘sucks’ in conversation before.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what were you talking about? Willis?”
“No, I was referring to missing the dessert competition due to our unfortunate condition.”
Well, I guess that made more sense. I left Rarity’s temporary quarters at the library and went to help Pinkie get Mr. and Mrs. Cakes’ Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness cake aboard the train. She called it the MMMM for short.
It was a heck of a cake, I will say that. After watching Big Mac struggle to carry it to the station, I figured the least I could do was stand around and look supportive.
I got aboard the train and scoped out the other passengers. For some reason, the organizer of the event thought it would be a good idea to have all competitors ride the same train.
There was a French Griffon, a mule who seemed to be British, and Pony Joe, who lived in Canterlot but sounded like he was from Brooklyn. I learned that his real first name was actually Donut.
The other ponies arrived. We would all be going to the competition together. Pinkie eyed the other chefs and looked distrusting. There was some slightly-less-than-good-natured argument between the four of them about whose dessert would win.
Twilight broke things up before they could get serious. “Well it sure looks like we're in for a delicious competition tomorrow. Maybe we should all settle in for a good night's sleep.”
“No need,” I said. “This is the Friendship Express. I couldn’t stand by while the train didn’t live up to its name, so I made some modifications. After the work I did on the Appleloosa train, the railroad company was happy to hire me.”
“What did you do?” asked Twilight, suspiciously.
“Wow, you make it sound like I retrofitted it with a nuclear reactor or something. All I did was crank up the steam pressure a little, change out the wheels for something a little larger in diameter, and give everything a good efficiency polish.”
“Oh, well that doesn’t sound so—”
“It’s twice as fast as before.”
I think only Rainbow had any concept of how fast that was, exactly. They were all lucky that the acceleration of the train was limited to the traction of the steel wheels on the steel track, or the delicious desserts would have been splattered all over by the g-forces.
Delicious desserts that I couldn’t eat. Darn it, undeath sucked. With nothing better to do, I sat down and began plotting how I could actually retrofit the train with a reactor.
No, wait, I had more important things to plot. Tactical explosives, for instance. In an effort to forget the French language after my breakup with the girl from Quebec, I had taken a German class. I accidentally memorized the wrong study guide, though, and ended up with plans for a vintage antitank weapon stuck in my head. I’d only recently gathered the materials to actually build it. It was called a panzerfaust. I closed my eyes to help visualize it better.
Anyway, the train moved right along and everything was fine and dandy until we went into a tunnel. When we came out, the MMMM was destroyed.
“Oh my gosh! Who could have done this?” shouted Pinkie. “The Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness has been mutilated!”
“And how,” I added. Sure, I had vampire vision, but my eyes had conveniently been closed as we went through the tunnel and I hadn’t witnessed the act.
“Now we just need to find out who done it,” said Pinkie, seriously.
“You mean, who ‘did’ it,” corrected Twilight.
Pinkie nodded. “Exactly. Who did-done-doed it.”
“Well, having read many mystery novels, I know that the only way to discover the culprit is to investigate.”
“That’s not true,” I said to Twilight. “I’ve got a better solution.”
“Oh really?” she said. “Prove it.”
“I’ll prove it’s a myth.” I grinned. “Don’t try this at home. I’m what you call an expert.”
I rang the little bell and the train conductor came into the car.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Get me a pad of paper and nine pencils—” I popped my newly-made switchblade open “—or I will kill one hostage every minute.”
The train pony dashed off. I hummed a little tune while I menaced the rest of them with the knife.
When I got what I wanted, I gave each member of the assembled crowd a pencil and a piece of paper. “I want you to write down who you think did it,” I said.
In a few minutes, all of them were finished and I collected the papers. The bakers all blamed each other. The response I was looking for, though, came from Rarity. For heaven’s sake, it was Fluttershy and Rainbow. Didn’t you see them do it?
“It was Fluttershy and Rainbow,” I announced.
“The cake just sounded so tasty,” said Fluttershy.
“And boy was it,” agreed Rainbow.
“You ponies are bad and you should feel bad,” I said.
“Wow,” said Twilight. “I guess the investigation method really isn’t the best way.”
I nodded. “Myth busted. Oh, look, another tunnel.”
When we came out the other side, the other three deserts were also ruined. Amid the resulting confusion, Rarity gave me a dirty look. I licked my lips to get rid of the crumbs. While it would probably make me sick if I swallowed, everything tasted awesome. I just had to find a place to spit, now. Oh, the problems of the undead.
A while later, Pinkie and the other chefs had formed a truce. Since none of them had anything to contribute to the competition at the moment, they were attempting to combine their desserts into one. Somehow, Pinkie had cake ingredients with her, and all the ruined pieces of the other dishes were going to be added to the batter.
“We’re putting dessert in a dessert!” she exclaimed.
“So you can get diabetes while you get diabetes,” I added.
“You shouldn’t joke about that,” admonished Twilight. “Juvenile diabetes is a serious issue.”
“Oh, you’ve got that in Equestria, too? It’s also a problem in the United States. It’s been linked to unhealthy eating. And you said ponies had better sense than people.”
“I never said that.”
“I’m sure you thought it at least once.”
Twilight grumbled in a way that told me I was probably right.
We got off the train in Canterlot and the frankendessert was taken away. I wanted to keep a low profile in the city just in case the Mares in Black were looking for me. I wasn’t quite finished building all the robots.
Rather than staying with the rest of the ponies in the castle where I could be easily located, I checked into a hotel. I wrote “Ford Mustang” on the guest register.
“You don’t look anypony of the Mustang family,” said the stallion behind the desk.
“I’ve got a medical condition. Can I have my key now?”
He gave it to me, but still seemed suspicious. Figures that the fake name I created on the spot was already taken.
I went upstairs to my room and slept like the dead.
Author note:
This story will be going dark for a week while we wait for new episodes.
What will I be doing in the meantime?
Well, CMC in NC will be getting an update. Hopefully I will also find the time to write a new chapter for AtSR,SDW. In addition, I’m thinking about doing a short one-shot called So a pony walks into a gun shop…
After A Dream is done for the season, I’ll be starting work on a new Valiant fic that is tentatively titled Sea Dreams. Also, the long-awaited Cyborg Braeburn.
I’ll be back next week with the season-ending chapters of this story. Pretty much everything I’ve been doing for the last dozen episodes has been leading up to this.
Prepare yourself. It’s going to be awesome.