It was a cloudy morning. A horribly cloudy morning. Clouds like steel wool covered the entire visible sky.
Rainbow Dash did not want to get out of bed. Lots of clouds meant lots of work. And on such a gloomy day, it was pony instinct to want to hole up inside. Even if "inside" was inside a cloud.
However, Dash needed her job. Not for the money, really; she didn't make that much bucking clouds all day. No, it provided her with a sense of accomplishment, and it kept her motivated. One had plenty of time to daydream about being a Wonderbolt when one had a super boring day job.
So, reluctantly, she dragged herself out of bed and plodded down the stairs into the kitchen. Her hooves dragged on the faux-marble floor. Coffee was obviously a necessity; she started the pot automatically. Then, she stood in the center of the kitchen for a moment, trying to evaluate what it was that her tongue told her it was craving.
Something crunchy... and sweet? No, salty. No, a little of both, she thought. I definitely want peanut butter. Just the thought of the delightfully sticky substance brought her to full consciousness.
She rifled in the drawers for a minute, before emerging with a spoon. It was way too gross outside to worry about trivial things like bread.
Dash pulled open her cabinets, trying to locate the peanut butter. She really didn't have much of an organization system; she usually just stuck things into the closest receptacle whenever she was done with them. That was one of the reasons that Twilight didn't let her take books out of the library anymore.
After a couple of minutes, she determined that the peanut butter was not in the cabinets. She cracked open the fridge door and peered inside, but to no avail. She pulled open the freezer door, and there, seated on a throne of frozen vegetables and TV dinners, was a jar of peanut butter. She snatched it up and shut the door, juggling the jar between her cold hooves as she carried it to the table.
Dash pinned the jar to her chest with one hoof and placed the other hoof on its lid, giving it a twist. The jar stubbornly refused to yield its contents to her. She grasped the jar in both hooves and used her mouth to try to pry the lid off, but succeeded only in hurting her jaw and chilling her teeth.
She realized what the problem probably was: some peanut butter had gotten caught in the threads of the lid, and now that it was frozen, it was effectively cementing the whole thing shut. She flew over to the sink and turned the dial on the faucet to its hottest setting. She waited until she saw steam curling off the stream of water, then stuck the jar under for a few seconds. "That ought'a do it," she muttered.
Dash shut off the water and tried again to open the jar, but her hoof slipped off the wet lid. She grabbed a towel off of the floor and dried off the lid; then, she held the towel over the lid as she tried once more to open it, thinking that the extra traction she would gain would be enough to help her complete her task. It wasn't.
"Okay, seriously?" she grunted to herself, still trying in vain to twist the lid off. "This is getting ridiculous. I just want some fricking peanut butter!"
A hoof knocked on her door, and Dash dropped the jar, grumbling. She stomped over to her front door and wrenched it open.
"Hey, Rainbow Dash." Thunderlane chuckled nervously under his boss's wrathful gaze. "You, uh, you okay?"
"What's a pony got to do to get a little breakfast around here?" She stomped back into the kitchen, leaving the door open. Thunderlane trailed awkwardly behind her.
"I was just stopping by 'cause, well, in case you didn't notice, it's pretty nasty out there this morning," he explained. "And I was talking to some of the other ponies on the team, and we were going to try to get an early start this morning, so we can get home sooner. But you weren't in yet so they told me to see what was keeping you..."
Dash wasn't really listening to him; she was preoccupied wrestling with her jar of peanut butter. "Yeah, one sec," she muttered.
She used her teeth, then her hooves, then her teeth again, but the lid didn't budge. She gave a whinny of annoyance and dropped the jar again. She rummaged around in the kitchen drawers for a minute, before taking out a very large, sharp knife.
Thunderlane's ears flattened against his skull. "Whoa there, boss. Calm down."
She ignored him, sitting down with the jar in her lap and attacking the lid from all angles. Shavings of plastic flew around the room, but the lid didn't loosen. Dash threw aside the knife in frustration; it embedded itself, quivering, into the cloud-wall, an inch above Thunderlane's mane.
Dash smacked her head on the floor. "Why" smack "won't" smack "this" smack "open?" she groaned.
Thunderlane picked up the jar in one hoof and effortlessly twisted off the lid with the other. He set the jar back down in front of his boss, who looked up at him with an awestruck expression.
"How-how did you do that?" she whispered reverently.
He shrugged. "I dunno. Wasn't all that hard."
Dash narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. "Thanks..."
He nodded awkwardly. "Just, uh, want to get out of here. Y'know, clouds to buck and all."
Dash picked up her spoon from the table and returned to her spot on the floor. She picked up the jar eagerly and dug the spoon in. It scraped against the bottom. She did a double-take and peered into the jar's opening.
About a teaspoon of peanut butter remained in the jar.
Dash set the jar back down, her face an inscrutable mask. Thunderlane approached her tentatively. "Rainbow Dash? D'you want something else, or can we go now?"
"GrrrrrrrRAEAGHGH!"
Rainbow Dash has yet to fix the small, circular hole in her ceiling.