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// Why Do They Call it a HACKsaw, anyway!? 
// Story: Pinkie's Sweet Tooth 
// by Atreyu 
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“Fluttershy said I could find—ah...Pinkie Pie here?” Sweet Tooth awkwardly tried explaining to the cakes as they cowered behind the shops counter. Carrot Cake was shakily wielding a knife while his wife brandished a particularly nasty looking rolling pin.
Sweet Tooth had been subjected to much worse many times before, so he was kinda de-sensitised to humouring people's concerns.
“What do you want with Pinkie Pie!?” Mrs Cake demanded
“Look, I just wanted to apologise for trying to slaughter her earlier!” Sweet Tooth, held out his hands, he couldn't understand what the big deal was!

Mrs Cake fainted. 
Sweet Tooth started forward reflexively. Carrot Cake panicked as the monstrous thug advanced on him and his helpless wife. He lunged forward and wildly swung the knife driving it into Sweet Tooth’s side, where it stood fast. Carrot Cake stared in awe at what he’d done and at how little it had affected the juggernaut before him. Sweet Tooth looked down plainly at the embedded knife, growing tired of the melodramaticism of all these ponies.
He simply pulled the knife back out “You done?”

“Sweetie!!” a familiar voice squealed with joy from across the room. Pinkie Pie was standing ecstatically at the base of the staircase and was already bounding over to greet her newest friend. 

***
Pinkie Pie busily yet joyfully pulled out assorted trays, bowls, flans, pans and ingredients from Sugarcube Corner’s many cupboards and drawers. As Sweet Tooth watched on, laying out his side of the story of their first meeting to her.
“So, you were going to cut me up into little pieces!?” Pinkie gasped with a smile.
Her light-hearted reaction caught Sweet Tooth a little off guard “Well...yeah—maybe not little pieces” he mumbled absent-mindedly. “But, yeah, I was.” 

Pinkie Pie chortled “And there I was thinking you were going make some ice cream. Boy, would my face have been red!”

“Yeah...red...” Sweet Tooth noted, rolling his eyes. “I just came to tell you that I--” 

“HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” Pinkie Pie gasped abruptly “You know what we should do!? We should totally make our own ice cream! It’d be totally funerific!” Pinkie bounced eagerly like a child on Christmas morning.
Sweet Tooth realised that getting through to Pinkie was going to be a more of a marathon than a sprint. Rolling his eyes, like a babysitter with a persistent and over-eager child, he looked up to the sky with a sigh and reluctant shrug of agreement.
Pinkie flapped her front hooves together excitedly, over Sweet Tooth’s agreement; outshining the reality of his apathetic approach.

***
Cupcakes were baking in the oven and ice cream mixture was being stirred together as the seemingly impossible couple conversed like two old war buddies.
“So I’m standing there, covered in blood, with this skunk under one arm and a 3-foot salami under the other. And so I says to Mable, I says: Oatmeal? Are you crazy!?” 
Sweet Tooth roared with laughter at Pinkie’s ridiculous anecdote.
“And they never found out?” He asked with a tear of laughter on his cheek.
“Didn’t look like it.”
“Bwahohaha ha-HA-- Pinkie Pie, you-- are so... random!” Sweet Tooth said through hysterics . “Oh-hooo, oh boy, I gotta keep my sides from splitting” wiping another tear of laughter from his eye.
“Er, no kidding” Pinkie added, matter of factly as she noticed the open wound in Sweet Tooth’s side. 
“Whoops, forgot about that” Sweet Tooth said with disinterest. 
Pinkie Pie, however, was a little more concerned “Doesn’t that hurt!?”
Sweet Tooth rolled his eyes a little bit; dismissing her concern “I’ve had worse... trust me.”
“If you say so” Pinkie slapped a bandaid over the wound.

“Besides, it was just a knife anyway... The thing was a tooth-pick compared to my machete” he added, with obvious yearning for his recently disintegrated weapon.
“Yeah, that thing was cool-looking!” Pinkie sympathised “Where did’ya get that anyways?”

Sweet Tooth angled off from the little pink pony giving her a perplexed look.

“What?” Pinkie was almost offended “I like shiny things. And sharp things are exciting! So a shiny and sharp thing is always fascinating!” she explained innocently.

“Uh, I made it from some twisted metal I found at wreck” he concluded, still slightly suspicious of the little pink mare.
Pinkie Pie picked up on his suspicious bewilderment.
“Heh, it’s funny.” Pinkie punched in some numbers on the microwave and placed the ice cream mixture into the fridge to cool. “People often assume the worst about someone when they reveal something unexpected” she wily noted, turning back to face Sweet Tooth.

He didn’t respond.

“I suppose I can understand why people find it concerning that I like sharp things” Pinkie, attempted to force a smile, but abandoned the idea and instead just looked away and swiveled her hoof on the ground. 
“A while back, when I was a filly, I moved away from my family on the rock farm. I was still new to Ponyville so I didn't have many friends. At school, one of my classmates made up a rumor that I had locked all of my old friends in a room and...” she scrunched her face in repulsion before letting out a sigh “...made them into cupcakes.”

Sweet Tooth was used to: hearing of, witnessing, as well as inflicting his fair share of cruel and disturbing pain on others. But the idea of this cute little pink pony standing before him, doing such atrocities? 
Sweet Tooth knew how to tell the crazies from the normals. He’d been on both sides, after all. 
He realised that she was a bit of an odd one, but... 
He then realised that he was beginning to feel something, something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time...
He realised that he felt sorry for her, remorseful. 
She didn’t deserve the injustice she received from some stupid kids who thought they knew everything.

Pinkie Pie continued recounting her sorrow “As if being alone in a new town and new school wasn't hard enough!” She threw herself into the air and managed to remain there an unnatural amount of time, flapping her arms in a fit.  “It wasn’t just the things they said about me, it was the looks I got. Ponies were scared of me.”  
She touched back down to the ground still huffing, in what Sweet Tooth could only assume was as angry as Pinkie got. “Making friends became impossible! Everything I did just came off as psychotic to them!”  Pinkie deflated from light-hearted frustration to a deep and sincere anguish. “It hurt. And I didn’t know what to do with it all. I was... confused and frustrated" she confessed quietly. "But ultimately, it made me angry.” Pinkie’s tone got increasingly bitter, “So angry that I felt like giving them a reason to believe the rumours. If they wanted to be mean and nasty to me, I would be mean and nasty to them!”  
Pinkie looked up at Sweet Tooth’s masked face, “An eye for an eye, right?”

“What did you do?” Sweet Tooth asked.
“One day, during the lunch break. I was watching her, the one who started it all, across the courtyard, surrounded by her friends: smiling, laughing--occasionally after pointing at me. She was having the time of her life over there with all her friends, at my expense” Pinkie sat down glumly, ashamed. “In my bag, I had a rock that I’d brought to my home from the rock farm-- A big one...a hard one” Pinkie heaved in regret.
Sweet Tooth lowered himself to be at her eye level “What did you do?” he repeated.
He didn’t know what to think or feel about the seemingly innocent little pink pony when she began to slowly grin, eyes down, glazed in remembrance. 
“I remember it all so clearly” she recounted, shaking her head gently with a vacant smiling stare. “I was going make things even... I wasn’t going to be the only hurt one anymore.”

Sweet Tooth knew exactly where this story was going. He scoffed, “But, surely, you didn’t...finish her... Did you?”
A small grin formed on Pinkie's face, “No, I didn’t.”
Sweet Tooth wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed, “Well then, what happened to her? To you?”

“I was just about to get up and ‘finish it’, when somepony came up beside me and asked: Is this seat, taken?” Pinkie seemed more familiar now as she spoke, her trademark effervescence slowly returning to her: In her eyes, her mannerisms and on her voice. “I couldn’t believe it! Somepony wanted to talk to me!?” She pressed her hooves to her chest, in wide-eyed disbelief, re-living the thrill of the memory. “She actually wanted to be my friend! She said that: ‘us farm ponies, need'a stick together.’ It was Applejack who had reached out to me!” The original shock and joy of the moment still resonated as Pinkie recounted it.  “I asked her why she wasn’t scared of me like the others. And you know what she said?”
Sweet Tooth gave a hesitant shake of the head. He had a feeling the question was rhetorical, but it was often hard to tell with this one.
Pinkie began to erupt into a buzzsaw of joy “She said that, she wanted to hear the honest truth, straight from the horse’s mouth! Said: she knew that the rumours couldn’t be true! Granny raised her better than to judge somepony before getting to know 'em!” The pride and joy slowed down now as Pinkie reminisced. 
She smiled at Sweet Tooth “That was the start of a great friendship. One that we still share today!” she noted with delight

Sweet Tooth repeated his question, “What happened to the other girl?”

Bing! The microwave timer sounded. 

Pinkie Pie began removing the ice cream mixture from the fridge and putting it into a container. “Well, after I became friends with Applejack, I was able to start clearing my name” She placed the container in the freezer.  “Not just through what I said, but through what I did” Pinkie explained, giving the door a light kick closed, tilting her head cheerfully to the side with a smile, as she did so.
She swooned as she started to reminisce over childhood memories, “Applejack and I: went in school bake-sales together, helped plan school parties and events together... just serving those around us with a smile and a laugh, doin' the little things, y’know? We started to make a bit of reputation for ourselves--”

“But, what about the other girl!?” Sweet Tooth implored impatiently. He still felt angry at the one who’d done all of this to her. He still felt angry about what had been done to him.

“I was getting to that, silly!” Pinkie Pie, smiled and flopped a hoof as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She regressed to a more serious and vulnerable tone,  “Of course, I was still mad at her for the way she had treated me, those feelings still lingered even after I had become friends with Applejack; I’d just given them a backseat to my joy.” She let out a sigh as she continued. “Sure enough though, with time those feelings started creeping up again” she looked away, deflated.
Her softly quaking eyes and disheartened frown shattered as she sprung back up, progressing with the story with her usual enthusiasm, “So, I told Applejack, about how I felt about it all”  just as quickly as her enthusiasm had appeared, it began to slowly fade once again.  “I told her about what I had planned to do, how I was going to get even... I was worried that my confession would make her think that, after all that time, I really was a monster like everypony said.” Pinkie was crestfallen. “You know what she did?”

‘Another rhetorical?” Sweet Tooth’s internal quandary was overcome by his anticipation as Pinkie continued.

“She hugged me. And she told me some things, something I’ll never forget” Pinkie’s face began to light up. She whimsically jabbed a hoof to her eye,  “An eye for an eye and the world goes blind... sugarcube” she added whimsically, for historical accuracy “Like Granny Smith always says: you reap what you sow. If you give in to that anger, it doesn’t go away, it just gets bigger and bigger until it swallows you. You’ve got to break the cycle! Love your enemies. Do to others whatever you would have them do to you!”

Sweet Tooth was stunned, it almost seemed like she was speaking another language.

“But I was still so angry!” Pinkie scrunched her face at the memory. “I told her that, and that I couldn’t just do nothing about it!” she stomped her hoof.
Sweet Tooth cracked a grievous grin behind his mask as he anticipated the assurance he had been hoping for. “Of course! You can’t just do nothing! It’s not fair! So, how did you do it? Did you double team her?” He rubbed his palms together with impish glee.
Pinkie looked away with an amused smile, remembering when she too reasoned like that. She turned to face Sweet Tooth again.
“I wanted to. But--”
“But what? But what!?” Sweet Tooth asked maniacally. His hopes, of finding another lost soul, fading.
“But I was just... tired... of being angry” she concluded warmly. “Applejack showed me a way out of my dark, un-fun place. She gave me a light and a path.”

Sweet Tooth tried to speak, but he couldn’t. The words died in his throat. 

Pinkie placed a friendly hoof on his shoulder and looked him in the eye: “Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.” 

Sweet Tooth thought back to how this all started. How he had always lashed out, his bloodlust; not just at the ponies, but everyone. His rage, his confusion and at the core of it all, he realised, his fear of the unknown and his desire to feel he had power over what happened to him. He realised that all of his anger and all of his hate, were spawned from his fear. He was still just a boy underneath it all, a hurt, confused and scared child who wanted to out-match the big bad world that had broken him; to scare it off. To prove he could hit harder than it could. To prove to it that he could give worse than it could.
Pinkie Pie went to give him a hug. He stood up sharply and turned his back before she had a chance.
He was overwhelmed by the way he had just related so deeply to...to-- a little pink pony, of all things! Her story of injustice and anger, of hate... 
He wanted to believe he too could find a way to this so called light. Was it even possible? Was it real? Through it all, there was so much he wanted to say, to ask, to do. There was a storm of emotions raging inside of him, some new and some of them old ghosts. 
Finally, He made a decision: If it were possible, he wanted to at least try.

He looked back over his shoulder “I'm sorry” he said plainly, reluctantly, as if Pinkie was his sibling, “For trying to kill you earlier” he added.

“That’s ok! I forgive you” Pinkie replied almost immediately.

Sweet Tooth was noticeably astonished at the brevity of her response. Pinkie Pie simply giggled. He couldn’t help but feel a bit dejected.  
“If you didn’t, we might never have met!” Pinkie remarked.
Her ironic attempt to comfort him was met with a stone-cold reception.

Sweet Tooth, beginning to feel uncomfortable, attempted to move the spotlight back to Pinkie, “You still haven’t answered my question. What happened to that other girl?” 
Pinkie smiled to herself “Rarity...” she corrected. “...eventually came to me to apologise”
Sweet Tooth raised an eyebrow, he recognised that name.

Pinkie elaborated “She said that she was sorry for the way she’d been treating me. She said that she had just been trying to make people like her because she was afraid to be alone. When she realised that she had sold herself out to be in, when she realised she was living a lie, she wanted to change... She saw how Applejack and I had endured, in the face of peer pressure and ridicule and she was 'so, so, so sorry' that she ever put us through any of it. She wanted 'in' on something that special. She wanted to be my friend.” Pinkie Pie smiled triumphantly “I forgave her right then and there. With the biggest hug and the even biggerest  smile I had!”

“So, let me get this straight.” Sweet Tooth cross-examined her case. “She tried to sabotage your life...apologises ...And you just: forgave her? Just like that, huh?” 
“Yeperoonie!” Pinkie Pie replied with proud and unwavered confidence.
Sweet Tooth considered all of what Pinkie Pie had testified to him before breaking his silence “Then I have another question.” 
“Yeah?”
“Do you think...she’d do the same for me?"