Confeatheracy of Dunces
Chapter 7
By the time Club got back home, she almost regretted having to go through the crucible she’d subjected herself to. Fearing that she’d blown her cover while secretly trying to search through the library’s inventory of books, Club had to split her focus between her searching the shelves and actually paying attention to the blabbermouth princess. Unfortunately, Club had gravely underestimated the amount of magic history that Twilight knew like the back of her hoof; whole sections of history that the entire rest of the country’s populace didn’t care in the least about, so half the info had been things Club already knew by heart and the other half actually brand-new material she needed to pay attention to. While a part of her mind was trying to move a bright light all over the room just out of view of the princess. And then several times she had to outright kill her searching spell whenever Princess Sparkle’s pesky pet dragon was around, lest he see it.
“Why does somepony with a brain as full of obscure information as hers think it’s a bright idea to keep a fire-breathing dragon in a library full of flammable literature and also a tree?” sarcastically questioned the mare, passing through the doorway into her home and sealing it behind her. For almost four hours she’d had to ensure that mind-rending agony, but somehow she’d actually managed to pull it off. With her magic reserves already starting to wear down to nothing, her magic having begun to flicker alongside the telltale sign of magic exhaustion like a migraine concentrated right at the base of her horn, the book in her saddlebags might as well have weighed a thousand pounds for the effort it took to lift it across a five foot distance simply to drop it on the table with an anti-climatic soft thud.
But even though she had to physically walk to the fridge, as well as use her hooves to take out a bottle of orange crème soda and remove its cap, the moment of weakness was negligible as the weathered tome lay tantalizingly close on the counter. Glittering Glory's Guidebook to Gallant and Guileless Grand Greatness in Geomancy clearly hadn’t been in print for the better part of a century but after going through every single book – and she would kill anypony who suggested she hadn’t on sight – it was the only tome that had the spell she needed. A little lying to the clueless librarian-turned-princess painted a believable story that Club had come looking for that book “purely for research” and absolutely no mention about the one thing it contained she actually wanted it for. Even better was the fact Twilight seemed to have forgotten all about the book or its most notable spell, which explained why it hadn’t been mentioned in whatever talks had gone on with Cheerilee. But it’s going to make that wannabe pegasus look so bad.
Suddenly, the sounds of other ponies emerged from the general direction of the dining room amidst the noise of something falling. While unexpected, Club had a pretty good feeling who had entered her house uninvited…well, not exactly that, either, given who the only other ponies who had the clavial spell to her house.
“Toughie, how many times have I asked you to not lean back so far in my chairs?” asked Club, slightly exasperated in her tone both because of her state of being but also this being far from the first time Tough Love thought it a good idea to try using static chairs as recliners.
“Not enough, evidently” chuckled Failing Grade who sat at the other end of the dining room table. “Don’t know why she keeps doing it, they’re crap chairs from HAYKEA anyway.”
“Force of habit, alright?” snapped Tough Love. “When going over papers I’m usually at my desk with the big red chair Tapie got me that glides on that rocking mechanism like greased butter and I love the crap out of it!”
“I’m going to pretend that I understand what the heck ‘greased butter’ is supposed to mean,” replied Club. “And as much as I appreciate you guys using my house to do your homework in-“
“You didn’t set a place for us to meet when either you got the book or when we were done spying on Rarity and Big Mac, we got bored, and figured you’d have to come home at some point,” countered Grade. “Besides, why else let us have the key spell to your house if you didn’t want us coming in here for cases like this?”
“Whatever, I’m too tired to argue right now. Point is, I got the stupid book and Princess Twilight is none the wiser to what we’re gonna do with it – book’s in the kitchen, finding it in secret burned all my magic I had left for today – so I’m interested to know what you two have been doing as it doesn’t appear you’ve been grading those assignments for more than half an hour.”
Love – now back on top of her righted seat – laughed. “Oh, we got some good stuff to tell you, Club! Turns out Rarity was taking Big Mac to that Prench place because – get this – she’s trying to play matchmaker between him and Cheerilee!”
Club looked as if she’d been smacked. “You’re joking. Didn’t her kid sister and the other two brats try to do the same with that dangerously unstable love potion thing a while back?”
“Yeah, well, apparently the feelings between the two didn’t quite settle,” said Grade. “So, being the town’s hopeless romantic, she’s apparently planning her ‘dream’ date except it’s for Mac and Cheerilee.”
“Well, that’s going to need fixing.”
“Already got a lead for that, too. From what we could see behind that dumb-ass brass door, Rarity really laid it on thick to the greeter guy.”
“The maitre d'?” corrected Love.
“Yeah, sure, whatever the title of the pony who grabs the menus and seats you at a restaurant, I don’t teach Prench much less need to know it properly, ‘kay? Anyway, it was obvious he’s not happy about somepony as ‘hicksville’ as Big Mac setting hoof in that house of snobs, and it’s likely the town freak that’s his date is going to be as warmly welcomed out of pure hospitality.”
“So, what you’re saying is we might have a pony on the inside?” proposed Club, the hint of an evil smile at the ends of her muzzle. “Do we know when this date is going to happen?”
“Saturday, I think around 8 or something. Plenty of time for you to ‘work your magic’ on him.”
Club reared and whinnied in excitement. “Oh, this is gonna be so good! Just the kind of thing I – er, I mean we – always wanted to do to that know-it-all hick back in our school days.”
Love and Grade then exchanged a knowing glance. “Oh, about that…” started Love, an impish gleam in her eye.
It was relatively silent in the house, with both Stronghold and Swiftsprinter off taking care of whatever business they’d needed to take care of. Right now, Dr. Silver Sutures didn’t really have any concerns about that beyond his parents not being in the house right now. The air carried the scent of sweat but punctuated with pockets of warm, dark chocolate. It didn’t help that the sheets on the bed were a rich, caramel brown, and the silly part of his brain made the comparison to him, holding his beloved wife after his efforts to alleviate her stress led to making them both more exhausted than before (but in a good way), inside brown covers like the two of them were at the center of some sort of extremely passionate tootsie pop.
“Well…” murmured Dusty, rubbing her head into the cook of Silver’s neck. “So much for making me feel less tired, huh?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t like it,” he jokingly chided, kissing her on the head.
“Hey, it landed me here in your warm embrace, so why should I complain?”
“Because we’re in the middle of a passion-derived tootsie pop?”
“A what?” Dusty backed off a little if only so she could look her husband in the eyes more squarely. “The heck does chocolate candy have to do with making love exactly?”
“Well, I, uh…” Silver’s brain raced for something he could use to salvage the mood he’d just killed. “You’re…you’re my tootsie pop?”
“That is a terrible save and you know just as well as I do it didn’t work here,” scolded Dusty, before moving in to kiss Silver deeply. Love and passion filled her eyes when she broke off, commenting “but damn if I don’t forgive you anyway because you’re my husband.”
“Careful, dear, you’re making it sound like we’re trying to have a meaningful and revelatory post-coital conversation in some poorly written romance novel.”
“Romance novel? Silver, honey, we’re married, remember? We can’t be in a love story when we’ve already tied the knot that comes at the end of those stories, right?”
“Do you really want the answer to that?”
Dusty laughed. “No, I guess not, since we’re still young and Celestia above if there was anything to be learned from today, it’s that I’m not ready to have kids yet.” She then
went back to snuggling to Silver’s side and enjoying the siren’s call of his body warmth. “I really don’t know how you sister manages to handle them so well.”
“Because…” Silver sighed. “Because Cheerilee’s married to her job. Or rather, she’s married to her calling.”
“I do need to ask her to explain what her cutie mark has to do with teaching, admittedly,” said Dusty, turning around on the bed so she could easily glance down at her own mark, the chalkboard bearing a chalk heart outline leaving nothing to speculation. “Since she does, admittedly, kind of stick out from the rest of her immediate family.”
Oddly, Silver chuckled. “Actually, that’s kind of how she got her cutie mark. I’m the sibling who ended up taking cues from our parents, since dad’s a unicorn and mom’s also a medical expert, so being exposed to that in my early colthood set me on the path to being a doctor right out of the gate. But Cheeri? Well, I know she’d never admit it to anypony, but she had a case of cutie mark obsession like nopony’s business. She was so jealous of me getting my mark so early that she was determined to get hers too.”
Her libido for a fifth round of making love now subsiding in light of her interest in the story, Dusty sat up. “I bet being an earth pony was real interesting for the rest of your family, being so active and energetic.”
Silver then sat up and lightly kissed her on the lips. “Given the past two hours? It’s a wonder I actually could keep up with the earth pony I love.”
“Oh, stop it, unless you want to go again~” she cooed teasingly.
“Anyway,” quickly continued Silver, wanting to spare his hips another round of his wife’s energetic tendencies, “yes, Cheerilee was quite a hyperactive filly, which doesn’t make it surprising that when she finally buckled down in her studies as she wanted to excel in those, too, it wasn’t until she’d finally gotten the hang of being the smartest pony of her class during the neighties – no, a few years before that, actually – that she finally ‘sprouted’, so to speak. Her words, not mine, on the ‘sprouted’ bit, by the way.”
“Ah, so lame comparisons run in the family, it seems.”
“You always told me you liked how I compared things!” Silver groaned.
Dusty smiled. “I didn’t say I minded lame comparisons, did I?”
“Fair enough. Though unfortunately, because Cheerilee’s cutie mark is actually kind of vague, everypony misinterpreted it as being from her simply being the Twilight Sparkle in her social grouping. She was able to skip sixth grade so she’s always been a bit younger than her usual peers, but at the same time that made it a bit hard for her to make friends. So, naturally, Cheerilee started to develop her addiction to work and when college rolled around she…she inadvertently discovered she has a weird connection to alcoholic beverages.”
“Y’know, talking about your sister’s alcoholism after we rocked the bed as hard as we did isn’t the most romantic thing,” pointed out Dusty. “But you already killed the
mood by saying I’m a tootsie pop so might as well get this white elephant out of the room.” Suddenly, a large, white elephant spontaneously appeared in front of the bed, blushed, then hurried out of the room, comically squeezing its mass through the tiny door. Dusty merely turned to look at her husband with a look of slight irritation.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist!” apologized Silver, his horn’s glow powering down. He then took a deep breath, growing serious in an instant. “My sister’s problem with alcohol isn’t that it immediately inebriates her, rather it will do the complete opposite.”
“Oh, so it’s kind of like that weird drug they’ve been cracking down on at Manehatten U.’s campus, er, I forget the name but it was something like ‘Work Hard yes, Play Hard yes’ and one of the students was the drug dealer and…sorry, you were saying?”
Silver raised an eyebrow. “Actually, it’s funny you mention that drug – it’s WHYPHY or “Whippy” in case you were curious, unfortunately I’ve had several cases in the past month dealing with overdose complications resulting from abusing that drug when combined with vibrasnopam, apparently it’s a big thing in the underground scene – because the ‘work hard’ part generally describes the effect controlled consumption of alcohol has on her. If drawn out over time, she becomes laser-focused and will quickly master any new subject that’s the subject of her attention.”
“Like flying,” concluded Dusty.
“Exactly. She just needs one bottle of alcohol, which isn’t hard since her house is actually loaded with secret mini-stashes of locally produced hard apple cider which she says is the best alcohol ever, but that one bottle will get her through a single night of study without any detrimental effects,” he sighed. “But if she does it for several nights in a row, the effects can be…disastrous. Thankfully, she’s never been pushed to go binge drinking, the closest she’s come is probably when her life was utter chaos and we had to come that first time to her rescue.”
“Don’t remind me,” interjected Dusty. “I do not want to remember those awful headaches because your horn got teleported to jam right into my brain thanks to Discord’s ‘prank’ so to speak.”
“I didn’t intend to; sorry. But still, I’m glad the weekend is just one day away for her, since she was showing signs of reaching her limit of that cycle, the very idea of what could happen if she ever goes over the edge would-“
Suddenly, there was knocking at the front door.
“COMING!” shouted Silver, who then immediately looked pleadingly at Dusty. “Please don’t make that joke I know is on the tip of your tongue.”
“We already had sex, Silver, any more and it’s likely you couldn’t even walk right now.”
“Lucky you, then, since in that case you would be the one greeting the door and smelling like-“ the door echoed the knocks again, this time in a slightly more hurried manner. “I SAID I’LL BE RIGHT THERE!” With a quick cleansing spell to mask the musk of love, Silver quickly threw on one of his father’s robes he was borrowing and made his way to the door.
He opened it right as the pony on the other side was about to knock again. “I’m sorry, Stronghold and- Cheerilee?!”
There, standing with hoof raised to knock, was his sister. Clearly she’d been dozing with the slight rings under her eyes being the main clue, but more worryingly was the fact she was shaking from hoof to eartip and her wings looked like they were coated in white glue.
“H-hey, Silver,” she said, clearly trying to not look like she’d been the victim of a nasty prank, “you know anything about getting glue off of feathers? They…didn’t mention this in the books…”
The door to Sugarcube Corner creaked slightly, the noise mostly masked by the cheerful jingle of tiny bells attached to the door signaling its opening.
“Pinkie, is anypony at the counter?” somepony – probably Mrs. Cake – called from above, followed by the subsequent appearance of a pink blur moving so fast it was as if it materialized at the counter.
“I am, Mrs Cake!” happily called up Pinkie Pie with a giggle before turning to greet the customer. “Oh, hi, Rarity!”
“Hello, Pinkie, I’m sorry to be calling on you so late in the day but do you have a free moment?”
Pinkie shook her head. “Nope, fresh out of those, sorry. But I’ve got lots of free time right now, if that will work for you instead!”
The unicorn shook her head good-naturedly, “Oh, Pinkie, just can’t say the affirmative ‘yes’, can you?”
“What’s the fun in that?”
“Just…formalities, my dear, something that I need to make a request of you about.”
Pinkie merely blinked, unsure of what Rarity could possibly be suggesting. “You wanna go up to my room so we can talk about this?”
Rarity shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt.” She followed Pinkie up the steps to the room she rented out from the Cakes on the second floor of the bakery, greeting Mr. and Mrs. Cake along the way as they were tending to their infant children. “Tell me, Pinkie, are those baby Cakes still a hoofful to deal with all by yourself?”
“Nah, they’ve calmed down considerably since that time, and their magic is starting to fade away too since they’re over a year old now.” Pinkie sighed, as if reminiscing a fond memory. “They’re going to think I’m making up silly stories when I joke about how the things they did as babies are difficult for them as young ponies in the prime of
their foalhood.”
“Well, there’s always the possibility you’ll have your own husband and kids by that point, no?” Rarity asked in her usual manner of implying romance in just about anypony’s life. She then grew wide eyed as she realized her mistake.
“Rarity, you’re not asking me out on a date are you?” asked Pinkie, having misread Rarity’s statement and implied intentions in the exact manner the fashionista didn’t want to convey.
“No, no, that wasn’t…”
“Because my Pinkie Sense told me somepony was going to ask me out to dinner and then you showed up so I-“
“But, Pinkie, I-”
“I’m sorry, Rarity, but I like you as a friend only. You’re pretty, but...I like stallions, sorry.”
Rarity blinked. “Huh?” she voiced in a rare non-elegant form.
“Weren’t you going to-”
“No! I mean, yes, but as friends, darling,” cut off Rarity, not wanting to further trip over words in a direction she hadn’t intended to go in the slightest. “See, I’ve actually been helping Big Mac set up the perfect dinner date to which he and Cheerilee can hopefully encourage the flames of passion between them into something neither of them are currently willing to admit.”
Pinkie raised an eyebrow. “So what does asking me to have dinner with you got to do with any of that?”
“Well, truth be told I don’t entirely trust that the staff of the Epicurean Cavelier-“
“That fancy Prench place with the fake chandelier?”
“…Yes, that one.” Rarity wasn’t about to launch into fussing over the details; she’d long since learned that was a lost cause when it came to Pinkie. “The point is, Big Mac and Cheerilee have a date set for dinner there next Saturday at eight in the evening. I want things to go perfectly for them and as I said, the staff there makes me suspicious enough to think they’d try sabotaging the affair. So, I reserved a table for two for dinner at the same time, and given your unique foresight through, er, ‘Pinkie Sense’, I would appreciate your company as well as being there to help prevent any significant disaster from occurring.”
“Hmmm…” hummed Pinkie, assuming a look suggesting deep thought and scratching a hoof to her chin, wagging the attached toothless alligator on the raised foreleg as if she was oblivious to him. “Okay!” she chirped.
The suddenness of Pinkie’s acceptance caught Rarity off guard momentarily, but she was readily back to form just as fast. “Marvelous, though I should also mention there is a dress code there…”
“I’ll just wear my gala outfit!” declared Pinkie. “If it’s good enough for that Toity Hoity guy, it’s good enough for a simple formal dinner, right?”
“Y-yes, I do believe so,” nervously agreed Rarity. The dress was not of concern, specifically, after the disaster that had been its predecessor, Pinkie’s old Gala dress was a true masterpiece. The problem was that the only other time Pinkie had ever worn the dress beyond the fashion show was at the actual gala that she tried to co-opt into being a much more lively affair. If anypony at the restaurant recognized the dress and pony combination, it could turn the staff’s suspected ire on both Pinkie and Rarity.
But at the same time, considered Rarity with a small smile, it more likely will be a warning of the trouble they’ll get if they screw up Big Mac’s big chance with Cheerilee. It was a risk worth taking, in her book, all in the name of love.
“Honestly, Silver, you’re telling me you never learned this?” questioned Swiftsprinter. “Especially after all we paid for you to go to medical school?”
“I’m a general practice doctor, mom!” he called out. “I know how to remove glue from pegasus wings, especially since I have to do it at least three times a week!”
“So why did you have to get me out of work early?”
“Because he’s my brother, not just a doctor, and if there’s anything we learned from you having wings, mom,” piped up Cheerilee, “it’s that wing cleaning is kind of a very private thing because pony wings are sensitive – which he probably understands more than I do because it’s his job to know - and since this isn’t life threatening, it would be extremely awkward for him to be getting all touchy-feely with his own sister.”
“And I bet he also thought your mother having lived with wings all her life would have a more experienced touch instead of the rush job he’s conditioned to do when prepping patients for surgery or whatever,” suggested Slipstream. To which she noted he was correct, even if partly the reasons for it were unknown to him as more than once, Slipstream had herself been subjected to sticky substances on her wings by means of a juvenile prank. As a result, she’d developed her own homebrewed method of cleaning the gunk off of pegasus feathers painlessly and efficiently with an exacting mixture of soap, alcohol, and mane shampoo (the ones that claimed to make manes shine brighter worked the best). But when she’d gotten notified her services were needed at her own home, hadn’t expected the patient in question to be her own daughter. “Honestly, how did you even-“
“Club, Love, and Grade,” replied Cheerilee, knowing she need not elaborate on the culprits or their identities.
“Now Cheerilee, you’re not serious, are you? Surely those three have something better to do - like their jobs - instead of coming around to do pranks like dump glue all over somepony.”
The victimized teacher just sighed. “They’ve been out to get me ever since I kept proving to be smarter than them on a regular basis even though I don’t have part of my brain erupting from my forehead like they do and the old stereotype they worship of unicorns being better than everypony else except maybe - maybe - alicorns.”
“That’s only because it’s true, hon,” piped up Stronghold, who had since come home and overheard that choice bit of the conversation, to which he stuck his head inside the door to add his two bits. “We all know you got your brains from my side of the family after all.”
“Yes,” droned Slipstream, “the recessive chromosomes of genius, since the only reason we ever met in the first place was the inevitable result of you trying to win a drunken bet about trying to prove thin ice wouldn’t break if you drove a fencepost into it, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Hey, it led me to meeting you, so I’d say in retrospect that was the smartest thing I ever did next to asking you to marry me,” chuckled the unicorn as he moved from the door.
“I don’t remember either of you mentioning he was trying to drive a fencepost into that ice,” mentioned Cheerilee.
“Dear, I was the first pony on-scene at the time and all I saw was your father demonstrating the swimming skills of a paraplegic bear while trying to hold onto a sledgehammer with his magic for whatever reason. And I love him too much to admit he ever was stupid enough to accept a bet while intoxicated that ice doesn’t break if you hit it directly
with a sledgehammer.”
“Still sounds more believable than an earth pony trying to be a pegasus.”
Slipstream glared at her daughter. “Don’t you dare go into that self-depressive state again over being a pegasus.” Taking the younger mare’s face in her hooves, the mother brought her daughter’s face into full view. “There have been some bumps along the way, that much is true, but even though the odds were unimaginable when you
let yourself agree to May’s stupid decision, you’ve gotten this far, haven’t you? From what Dusty and Silver say, Rainbow Dash is well on her way to being fully recovered, which in of itself is a mighty accomplishment.”
“Yes, but-“
“And yes, they told me about what happened today with Scootaloo, but if I get the gist of her relationship with Rainbow, you’ll do more for that filly in helping her big sister figure regain what was lost, then trying to get Scootaloo to do something she quite possibly isn’t ready to do.”
Cheerilee looked up to her mother with an appreciative smile. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, mom. Just…just gotta hang in there a few more days, light at the end of the tunnel and all that, right?”
Slipstream nodded. “Uh-huh. Soon Rainbow will be back in the air, you’ll be free from having to ever teach flying again, and-“
Suddenly, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it!” called up Silver, followed by the opening of the door. Oddly, there seemed to be a moment of utter silence that followed, before he followed up with “Uh…it’s for you, Cheerilee!”
“For me?” asked Cheerilee, “I’m not expecting anybody, plus how would they know I’m at my parents’ house and not at my own home?”
Slipstream shrugged. “I don’t know, but it would be best to see to whoever it is, no?” Cheerilee nodded and, five minutes of toweling later, the now un-sticky-winged pony went to meet the pony requesting her presence.
“Er, H-hi, Cheerilee,” greeted Big Mac, “Ah was…was wunderin’ if you would, um, like t-to allow me to take y-you dinner next Saturday, if that’s alright.”