//------------------------------// // Apple Stuck Season // Story: My Little Pony: Friendship is Absurd // by Lord Seth //------------------------------// “No!” Trixie declared as she slammed the door on Flim and Flam’s faces. “Well, so much for that. You’d think they would show a little more concern for our problem,” Flam said. “I know!” Flim responded. “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 isn’t working quite right, so we have to do all the work manually! That takes a whole lot more time and cuts into our sleeping! But no one is interested in helping us!” “Wait,” Flam said, “I already know all that. Why are you telling me?” “Because,” Flim whispered, “you never know when somepony might be listening and take pity.” The two looked around for a few seconds, hoping that that might be the case. They soon realized, however, that it was not. “Well, I guess we have to do it all alone,” Flam said. “I certainly hope this won’t make us overly tired and unable to keep up all of my town duties that I recently volunteered for!” “Oh, please,” Flim said. “What are the odds of that?” One day later… “All right!” Lightning Dust declared. “Are you familiar with what you have to do?” “What? Oh, yeah, sure,” a tired-looking Flim said. “Good! No problem!” declared Lightning Dust as she stood on one end of a catapult. A few seconds ticked by. “Uh, Flim? You’re supposed to do your bit here.” “Oh, yeah!” Flim said sleepily. A pause. “What bit was that, again?” “Maybe I should just get someone else…” Lightning Dust mumbled to herself. “Oh, no, no need for that! I’m here! Just remind me what to do!” Lightning Dust sighed. “You climb up that tower I made, then jump onto the other side of the catapult, which will then catapult me up into the air, allowing me to do all kinds of super cool stunts and whatnot.” “Oh, right,” Flim said. He climbed up the tower, then jumped… missing the other site of the catapult entirely. This happened several times in succession, to Lightning Dust’s increasing irritation. “Okay, that’s it. If you don’t get it right this time, I’m finding someone else,” she threatened. Flim yawned. “Okay, don’t worry, it’ll be done this time…” he said as dozed off and walked off of the tower. Luckily for him, he landed right on the catapult. Unluckily for Lightning Dust, her calculations on the catapult were entirely wrong, causing her to instead get thrown smack into the Golden Oaks Library, breaking the door on the way. Sunset looked up from the book she was reading. “I just had that thing fixed! Can you wait a little while before breaking it again?” Lightning Dust got up, feeling loopy. “Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry about the whales,” she added before collapsing. Sunset looked at the unconscious Lightning Dust, then picked her up and threw her out of the tree, closing the now-broken door behind her. “So how’d it work, Lightning Dust?” Flim asked, eyes still mostly closed. “Lightning Dust?” he called again after no answer was given. “Enh, must have flown off.” He walked off himself, coincidentally soon coming to the street where Lightning Dust was lying. “Oh, hi Lightning Dust. How was your routine?” he asked, yawning. “Uh, terrible,” Lightning Dust muttered, having just regained consciousness. “I totally miscalculated that whole thing.” “Are you sure it wasn’t just because my sleepiness didn’t screw you up somehow?” Lightning Dust considered the suggestion. “Well, I sure don’t mind deflecting blame away from myself, and maybe if Sunset decides to try to make me pay for the repairs this time, I can blame it on you. So yeah! Totally your fault for being so tired.” Flim yawned. “I’m glad we agree.” Across the town, Flam seemed to be doing no better in staying alert. He had volunteered to help Mr. and Mrs. Cake bake cupcakes. Coincidentally, Trixie had also volunteered to do so (“free cupcakes!” was her stated reason) and was taking the lead in the cupcake creation. Or at least, she was the one telling Flam what to do while sitting around reading a magazine. “The Great and Powerful Trixie shall show her great power over cupcakes!” she declared dramatically, then stopped when she realized that she was alone outside of Flam. “Regardless! I now need you to get me chips!” Flam yawned. “What?” “Chips!” “Oh, sure, chips.” Flam grabbed some tater chips and threw them into the bowl. “What next?” “Enh, apparently baking soda.” “Gotcha!” Flam grabbed some baking powder and poured it into the bowl. Luckily for anyone who was going to eat the cupcakes, Trixie grew bored of her magazine and went off to find another one. Along the way she happened to pass by the bowl and look in. “I don’t think these are what I asked you to get.” “What? You asked for chips and baking powder.” “Okay, fine, so I should have specified more on the chips, but I said baking soda, not baking powder!” Flam had apparently fallen asleep midway through Trixie’s sentence, so she grabbed him and shook him back and forth. “Stay awake! What’s with you?” “Didn’t I tell you? The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 isn’t working quite right in ripping the apples off the trees, so we’ve been having to do it manually and it makes us very… sleepy…” Flam said as he nodded off again, then collapsed onto the floor. Trixie looked at his sleeping form. “No matter! The Great and Powerful Trixie shall best any and all cupcakes!” Later… Trixie looked at the large crowd at the Ponyville hospital. “Okay, so maybe I did need a little help in preparing those.” “So, are you the one who made the cupcakes?” a nurse asked Trixie. “Uh, well… I was one of them,” she said. “Well, that seems problematic, because there’s a whole lot of liability issues here. You’re probably going to have to at least face some serious fines. Here’s a starting estimate.” The nurse gave Trixie a sheet of paper. Her eyes bugged out at it. “What? This is way too much! I don’t want to have to pay it!” “Well, should’ve thought of that before you made all of these people get sick,” the nurse said with a shrug. Trixie was so annoyed she decided she had to find someone to rant to. Luckily, Suri’s shop was nearby, so she went there. “Gyah! Flim and Flam are driving me crazy!” she complained upon entering. “Well, okay, technically it was just Flam, but you know as well as I do you might as well group those two together!” Trixie stopped her ranting upon observing that Suri wasn’t even in the store at the time. “Huh? Where did she go? The door was unlocked.” She looked up. “Oh, right, this place has multiple floors. Maybe I just don’t come here enough to remember that.” Sure enough, Suri soon came down to the ground floor. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Is it to buy something? Because I have some amazing specials today on–“ “Suri, you’re forgetting I’m familiar with your trick of claiming your regular price is 50% off. And that’s not why I’m here anyway.” Suri frowned at Trixie. “Well what do I care then, if you’re not here to buy something? Especially because I’m a bit busy at the moment. Flim volunteered to buy some things for me, but he was so tired that he bought completely different things than were on the list.” She paused. “Although, it turns out the list I gave him was completely wrong anyway.” “You’re having trouble with Flim? Flam was way worse! He was of no help in making cupcakes! Though,” Trixie added in an unusual bout of self-recognition, “I guess my directions were pretty bad to begin with.” “And Lightning Dust was in here recently complaining about how Flam messed up her catapult by not landing on it, but the whole thing was flawed to begin with…” Trixie scratched her head, which was surprising considering she had hoofs. “So is basically what happened wasn’t so much that they screwed things up by being sleepy, but that we were all being idiots, and if Flim and Flam were more awake, they might have stopped us from being said idiots?” “So, what,” Suri asked, “are you actually advocating we help them out with the apple harvesting?” “If it’ll make them more helpful, why not?” Later… Lightning Dust, Suri, and Trixie all approached Sweet Apple Acres. “Hey! Flim? Flam? You here?” Trixie called. Flim and Flam showed up in surprisingly fast speed. “You rang?” “Uh, yeah. We figured that you two probably needed some sleep, so we figured we’d help out some.” “Great idea!” yawned Flim. “Though we’re so tired from working that we’re not really up for working at the moment, so if you could gather the apples and then we’ll help you out…” he said before yawning and then falling asleep. “Let’s just get this over with,” Suri said. “Seriously, the only reason I’m doing this is because I’m sure I can leverage this to get favors from them.” Several hours of grueling work later, they had managed to clear out a substantial portion of the apples from the trees and brought them to the main house. “Well, I don’t know about you, but the Great and Powerul Trixie feels like she’s done a fulfilling thing today!” Trixie declared. “Is that why you kept sneaking all those apples away for yourself?” Suri asked. “It was highly fulfilling!” “Ugh,” Lightning Dust groaned, “I’m just tired. No wonder those two were so sleepy. Though at least it wasn’t that bad a workout. I’m sure this will totally get those Wonderbolts to notice me!” The three went back to the main farmhouse with the gathered apples in tow and knocked on the door. Flim opened it. “Only a few hours? I’m disappointed. We were working for far longer on gathering the apples…” “Yeah, yeah, whatever. We helped you, at any rate,” Lightning Dust said. “Though I thought you guys were asleep?” “Oh, well, erm, you just woke us up is all.” “Sure answered the door fast enough. Anyway… uh… that’s it.” “No more apples?” Flam asked. “We could still use the help…” “You know,” Suri said, “despite you saying we should’ve done more, where are all the apples you gathered? I didn’t see any.” “Oh, they’re all in storage somewhere,” Flam said. “That’s all.” “Where?” Suri asked. “Oh, that’s right,” Flam said. “They all got sold.” “Already? That seems rather odd… well, can you show us the trees you took the apples from?” “What’s with all the questions?” Flim asked. “Because,” Suri said, “before we went on our apple-grabbing hunt for you, I happened to look into the bedroom, and the beds seemed oddly… used. This struck me as odd, considering you were supposedly so tired from not sleeping. I didn’t think much of it then, though, but with this… you two were just pretending to be tired because you were too lazy to get the apples yourself and wanted us to do it, weren’t you?” “What? That seems a ridiculous accusation!” “Ha! I can prove it if it’s true!” Suri declared. “All we have to go is look at the bedroom and see how the bed looks! If it was just slept in, that means you actually were using it. If it isn’t, then you clearly made up the claim that you were using the opportunity to sleep. Let’s look!” “Oh, well, we just were sleeping on the floor. We were too tired to get into the bed. That’s why we were able to answer the door so quickly!” Flam claimed. “Now can you stop with these ridiculous accusations?” “You do have some points here, Suri,” Trixie said, “but it does seem circumstantial.” “Look,” Flim said, “I’m glad you helped us and all, but if you’re just going to attack us for no good reason…” Suri’s mind raced. Could she have imagined it all? “Wait. I know how to find out. Why don’t you tell us who you sold the apples to, and we’ll simply check your story with them?” “Well, they didn’t really give us contact information. They sorta just came, bought them, then left. In retrospect, maybe we should’ve checked on them; who knows if it was illegal.” “Maybe it’s just the fatigue talking, but that makes a lot of sense to me!” Lightning Dust said. Just then, a certain gray-coated mailmare arrived. “Hope I’m not interrupted anything! I’m just here to deliver that part you ordered for the Super Duper Siding Squeaky 4000.” “It’s the Super Speedy Cider–“ started Flim. “Yeah, it’s too hard for me to remember. Anyway, sorry for having to constantly check back here in the last few days to make sure everything in the order was right. Luckily, you guys just stayed at the house, so I was able to find you easily!” Derpy seemed oblivious to Flim’s attempts to cut her off. “Anyway, see you later!” she said as she flew off, leaving Flim and Flam with a very angry-looking Suri, Lightning Dust, and Trixie. “Ha!” Suri said. “I was right! It was all made up!” “Hey!” Flim said. “Saying they’re all in storage and all got sold is still true even if there weren’t any!” “You know, Flim,” Flam said, “maybe now is not the proper time to be explaining that sort of thing.” “Whatever!” Suri said. “The point is, you totally made all that stuff up to make us do work for you. GET THEM!” With speed and power one would not expect from several ponies who just spent the last several hours doing exhausting work, the three all piled on Flim and Flam. Dear King Sombra, Well, some valuable lessons were learned recently, albeit by people other than me. The first valuable lesson is that when you enact a hoax in order to get people to do what you want, you need to be really careful to make sure they can’t find out. And have a quick way to appease them if they do find out. That’s what Flim and Flam presumably learned, albeit perhaps a little too late. The second valuable lesson is that while beating up people who have tricked you can be really therapeutic, you don’t want to do it so hard that they end up in the hospital for several weeks. That’s what I’m assuming Lightning Dust, Suri, and Trixie learned. The lesson will probably stick with them for a while. Sincerely, Sunset Shimmer “And seriously, just look at the thread used in this! Even for a cheap outfit like this, this is inexcusable!” “Suri,” Trixie said, calling down to the bunk below her, “you’ve done nothing but complain about the uniforms since we got here. Could you give it a rest?” “Not when there’s so many things wrong with it! I mean, you can’t tell me these prison uniforms aren’t horribly ugly! Even the color’s boring. Orange? It’s so predictable! Let me tell you, orange is not the new black! And speaking of the color…” Trixie stared up at the ceiling of their cell and sighed. “This is going to be a long 10 weeks.”