The sunlight beat into Rumble’s poor eyelids as Celestia moved her giant golden orb through the sky without a single hint of mercy. Rumble grunted and rolled over in his bed, but it wasn’t the same—now that the horrible light had invaded his retinas, even through the fleshy screen on his eyelids, he was doomed to the waking world.
Grunting, he threw the blankets off of him, and sat up, blinking wearily as he looked around the room. Everything was where he had left it the night before—desk messy with old drawings, tissue papers, and failed tests, dirty dishes scattered across the floor, comic books and dirty magazines wedged into every corner...
“Ah, home sweet filth,” Rumble said to himself with a small smile. He looked back at his widow, where the wretched sun was continuing its ever-present invasion, when he noticed something floating in the air. Tiny specks of demonic essence, twisting and flirting with the tiny air currents.
“Oh shit,” mumbled Rumble. “Dust!”
But it was already too late: the dest had slipped into his nose holes, and he could feel the tickle. The backed up mucus that lurked inside his sinuses like some sort of horrible slime-leech began to tingle, and his eyes cross as he prepared for the expulsion.
But alas, nothing ever came. Rumble was instead left hanging on the edge, in worse discomfort than any blue-balls could pain him. “A complete anti-climax,” muttered the pegasus.
“Speaking of climaxes, I guess it’s time for my morning date with Mrs. Hoof,” Rumble said with a sly grin, sliding his left hoof under the covers. Just before he got down to funky town, the door to his room slammed open, and he quickly pulled his hoof above the covers.
“Hey, Rumble!” Thunderlane, Rumble’s older brother, said in a suspiciously cheerful voice. Rumble narrowed his eyes, and the small beads of sweat gathering in his brother’s brow hairs confirmed his suspicions.
“Huh, I have phenomenal eyesight,” Rumble muttered to himself.
“Happy Birthday, bro!” Thunderlane said, dropping a half-eaten muffin into one of the dirty plates that lay on a precarious stack of playcolt magazines. “There would, uh, be more, but that was kind of my breakfast.”
“Thanks,” Rumble grunted, laying his head back down into his pillow.
“I’m sorry I can’t be around today, Dash is really riding my ass about the weather work today,” Thunderlane said apologetically. “Little tip, bro: don’t ever get your boss pregnant. She’ll be riding your ass all the time with her shifts and shit, just because ‘it’s dangerous to do work while with foal’ and ‘now I’m shackled to you forever’, and ‘it’s your fault you didn’t use protection’.”
Thunderlane turned to leave the room, but turned right back around again to poke his head into Rumble’s room a final time. “But hey! Mom’s here!”
Rumble’s eyes shot open, and he looked at Thunderlane with the gaze that is usually reserved for veterans experiencing war flashbacks.
Thunderlane smiled awkwardly. “Yay!”
With that, he bolted off, muttering something about extra work and back rubs.
Rumble and Thunderlane’s mother only showed up three times a year: on Hearth’s Warming to get some of Ponyville’s famed eggnog, and on the respective birthdays of her sons to remind them about how much turmoil she went through to shove their sorry asses out into the world, which is just what she was doing when Rumble dragged his hooves into the living room.
“Yup, I remember when I foaled you,” came the raspy voice that can only come from years of heavy drinking, smoking, and deep-throat probing. “Didn’t get any sleep all night! You kept kickin’ up there like you were trying to break out of prison.”
“That’s... kind of what was happening,” Rumble said, looking into the fridge, only to find half a cabbage and two deviled eggs that had been left only so long that they were slowly coming to life.
“And then came the PAIN: you stallions don’t know SHIT about pain, you understand me? Now, the doctor says if I drink a gallon of hard cider, I ain’t gonna feel that pain, so the whole pregnancy I’ve been training to reach being able to chug a whole gallon of the stuff. But by the time I chug the whole thing down, my bladder fills right up! And then you come in, fucking hooves flying like a damned epileptic, and you whack me right in the bladder. So in ADDITION to my water breaking, I’m sprayin’ piss everywhere! Now, that was not fun at all...”
Rumble sat down at the dining room table while his mother ranted in the other room, munching half-heartedly on the muffin.
“...And then, after twelve hours of trying to squeeze you out like the worst shit I’ve ever took, you come sliding out, all pale and weak like some sort of gross fish! And Celestia almighty, were you making a racket with that voice of yours! Thank the sisters somepony had the good sense to wash you off in some wine; that shut you up AND got you the cleanest you’ve ever been.”
“Truly inspiring, mom,” Rumble said, rolling his eyes as he picked a raisin out of the muffin.
“What I want to know is, just why do YOU get celebrated today? You did nothing but kick me while I struggled to shove you out of my goo hole! And let me tell you, boy, no stallion wants to slide back up in some place where two foals the size of large pumpkins have slid outta. Your useless father bolted when he saw the wreck you made of the place. And seventeen years later, what’ve you got to show for it? You’d think with all that kickin’ you did, you’d at least be a famous hoofball star by now! But no; all you do is jerk off to comic books and waste time with those two dunderheads that that half-giraffe bitch down the block popped out.”
“Mom, I stopped hanging out with Snips and Snails ages ago.”
“Good, because let me tell you, that mother of theirs is no good. She had them from different fathers, you know. At least I had the decency to get knocked up by the same oaf.”
“Well, as great as it is talking to you about the same thing every birthday, I’ve gotta leave, mom,” Rumble said with a sigh, hopping to his hooves.
“Yeah, you’ll leave alright!” His mother shouted back at him. “Just like everypony else!”
“Gee, with such a lovely attitude like that, why would anyone ever want to leave you, you charmer?” Rumble said under his breath, stepping out of the house and into the cursed sunlight that dogged him in his waking hours.
“I just hope you get beat by those friends of yours so you can feel even a FRACTION of the pain I felt shoving you into this world!”
Due to Thunderlane providing the cash for the two of them, Rumble and his brother could not afford accommodations in their hometown of Cloudsdale, or even one of those Ponyville cloud villas that pegasi like Rainbow Dash owned. The two of them lived in a small cottage on the west end of town, firmly planted in the ground. Whenever Rumble complained about not being able to live in the sky with their own kind, Thunderlane gently reminded him that their mother lived in Clousdale.
That always shut Rumble up.
Rumble walked down their little cobblestone path to the mailbox, chewing on his tongue idly as he opened the front. Peering inside, he saw a large stack of letters.
“Well, at least some ponies want to make sure I have a happy birthday,” Rumble said to himself, half-smiling.
Rumble removed the letters, and flipped through them.
“Bills, bills, bills, death threat from Rainbow Dash to Thunderlane, bills, magazine subscription, love letter from Rainbow Dash to Thunderlane, bills, bills, solicitations for money, bills, bills...”
Rumble flipped to the last two cards. One was a plain white envelope, and the other was a card so pink to made his eyes bleed.
Wiping away the blood from his eyes, Rumble opened the pink one first, just to get the pain over with. He knew who it was from; everypony in Ponyville knew about these...
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” Pinkie Pie’s voice boomed from the card, knocking rumble into his plump, supple rump. The card slowly shrunk, buckling under the weight of its own pinkness, and condensed into the little-seen phenomenon of what top scientists in Canterlot refer to as a “pink hole”.
Rumble turned away from the pink singularity (which will henceforth be known as a “pingularity” because it sounds cool), and opened up the white envelope. Inside was a small, hoofcrafted card with the simple words “Happy Birthday from Scootaloo” on the front.
“Hey, she remembered!” Rumble said, smiling at the card. Rumble and Scootaloo had only been dating for a little over a month, yet she had remembered what everypony else (save for his two family members and one psychotic biatch) had forgotten.
Opening the card, read the first line at the very top of the paper.
“Dear Rumble,
I’m sorry I can’t be here, I’m off in Cloudsdale with Rainbow Dash checking out the housing market. Gotta be prepared for when we graduate, after all! Since I can’t be here to give it to you myself, I’ve left you a kiss. I put on lipstick just so it’d leave the mark.”
Rumble looked below the line, and saw a lip mark staining the paper. He smiled, and gave it a little peck.
“Thanks, Scoots,” he whispered, and read the rest of the card.
“P.S.
Don’t actually kiss that. My cold sores are acting up and I don’t want you to get the herps.”
Rumble sighed, and tossed the card into the pingularity.
Rumble trotted through town, watching ponies go about their regularly scheduled business. He himself had nothing to do today, what with it being a Saturday. He supposed he’d just lay low in order to avoid...
“There he is!”
...his friends.
A somewhat small, wiry pegasus followed by a portly earth pony jogged towards Rumble from the other side of Ponyville Square, eliciting a sigh from his mouth. His two friends always had a way of making his birthdays quite the experience, in a way akin to being mauled by a horde of horny moles is “quite the experience”.
The wiry pegasus took off into the air, alighting the ground next to Rumble, smiling with a bucktoothed grin. “Heya, Rumble! Thought you could get away from us on your birthday, huh?”
“One can always try, Featherweight,” Rumble said with a grunt. Their other friend wobbled towards them, huffing and puffing as he tried to regain his wind, dragging his hooves as he finally reached the two of them.
“H-Hey, Rumble... happy birthday.”
“Hey, Teacher’s Pet. Thanks.”
“Can you guys drop the nickname already?” the colt said with a sigh. “I’ve had it since
elementary school, and it’s getting tiresome.”
“Alright then, Truffle Shuffle,” Rumble said with his tongue behind his teeth, grinning maliciously. Truffle’s ears flattened against his head.
“I still can’t believe your mother actually named you that,” Featherweight said with a snicker. “I know she’s a bit off, but...”
“Sh-She just likes the rhyme,” Truffle muttered.
“Nah, we won’t give you too much crap for it today,” Rumble assured him.
“Yeah! It’s Rumble’s day to get crap!” Featherweight said, smirking. “Come on! We’ve gotten you some birthday food!”
“Oh, joy...” Rumble muttered as his two friends escorted him out of the center of town, heading for the western outskirts.
As the three of them walked under a large group of clouds, they heard a loud “HEY!”, followed by a noise that roughly equated to the sound a puck makes when it gets smacked by a hockey stick. This was followed by a very feminine shriek, which got closer and closer, before Rumble felt a collision with a heavy weight slam him into the ground.
“Guh... Thunderlane? What the hell?”
Thunderlane peeled himself off of his brother, and grunted, rubbing his left eye. “O-Oh, sorry Rumble. I had a little, erm, ‘argument’ with Rainbow Dash. Little relationship tip: don’t use your marefriend’s newly swollen crotchtits as bongo drums, no matter HOW funny you think it’ll be in the moment.”
With that, Thunderlane took flight once more, shaily bobbing up and down as he ascended towards the clouds.
“Sometimes, I wonder how he manages to get up in the morning without setting himself on fire,” Rumble muttered as his two friends tittered behind him.
The three ponies reached the outskirts of the town, climbing to the top of a small hill. Waiting there was a small box next to a crate with a large plate on it.
“We got you pizza and cake,” Truffle said with a small hint of pride in his voice. “We made it ourselves.”
“Oh, boy...” Rumble eyed the pizza on the plate apprehensively. “This isn’t going to be like ‘fertilizer’ cakes, right?”
Featherweight and Truffle exchanged a glance, snickering.
“See, it’s funny because you thought they were made with regular fertilizer, and then ate them to prove a point to us...” Truffle began, snorting.
“...but they were really covered in our jizz!” FEatherweight finished, doubling over with laughter. “G-Get it? ‘Fertilizer ca—”
“Yeah, I got it back then, guys,” Rumble said, shuddering at the memory. “You made me eat your cum. Fantastic.”
“No, but don’t worry, these things are fine,” Featherweight said, wiping a tear away from his eye.
Rumble rolled his eyes and reaches his hoof down, taking a slice of the pizza. It was thin, and covered with enough cheese to give cardiac arrest to a small nation.
Rumble cautiously took a bite a bite of the pizza, and cringed. “Ugh! This tastes like cardboard!”
He turned and looked to see his friends doubled up on the ground once more, guffawing and yukking it up.
“Real funny, you guys. At least I’m not eating anyone’s baby batter this time...” Rumble said as he unpacked the cake from the box next to him, taking a small bite.
“Yeah, about the ‘cake mix’ we used...”
Rumble sighed and threw the cake at Featherweight.
As the hours passed, the trio stayed on the hill. The cake had sailed past Featherweight’s head, and now lay at the bottom of the hill, forgotten. The three had opted to eat the cheese off of the cardboard, and overall, it hadn’t been half-bad.
The day had now almost been done, the remainder of it having been spent dicking around on the top of the hill, doing such wonderful time consuming activities as “breathing” and “rolling Truffle Shuffle down the hill to see if he would ever hit terminal velocity”.
He didn’t.
“You know, despite all of this, I’m really glad you guys are my friends,” Rumble said, smiling at both of them in turn. “I had a pretty alright birthday.”
The three of them grew quiet, and they turned to watch the sun set. The fragile silence was only shattered when Featherweight suddenly shouted:
“Oh hey! We forgot to give him his birthday punches! That’s 34 between the both of us!”
“What? No, wait, guys, I—AAAH!”
Truffle and Featherweight shoved Rumble into his back in the grass, and lifted their hooves, beating him about the head, neck, and chest, rapidly counting up to seventeen as their hooves flew in a furious flurry downward into the supple flesh of poor Rumble.
As the sun set over Ponyville, one could hear the faint sounds of a savage birthday beating wafting from the hills next to town. Rumble’s mother walked out into the porch of her sons’ home, and closed her eyes, smiling as she listened to the wailing.
“Ah, that’s music to these ears.”