One week later...
Rainbow Dash squinted as she picked up more and more speed, zooming around the few clouds that dotted the skies just outside Ponyville. Her cheeks pulled back slightly from wind resistance, she blinked a couple of tears out of her eyes just in time to see Ponyville appear on the horizon.
Dash smiled eagerly. After spending another three months at the Wonderbolts Academy to complete her advanced training alongside her fellow Wonderbolt Reserves, she was looking forward to seeing all her friends again and being able to forget about the Wonderbolts and the constant pressure of speed trials and formation flying for a while. Before she did any of that, though, she planned to visit Thunderlane and check in on him. She'd trusted him with leading the town weather patrol for the time she'd spent in Cloudsdale, and thought it wouldn't do any harm to stop by to thank him and see how things had gone.
Dash pulled down into a steep decline, the ground zooming up to meet her at a fantastic speed. After about five seconds of freefall, her wings flew open and her descent slowed, with her making a gentle landing just outside Thunderlane's house. She trotted up to the front door and gave it a series of firm raps with her hoof. When about thirty seconds passed with no response or movement from inside, Dash knocked again and called out.
"Thunderlane? You home?"
For some reason, Dash was beginning to feel a bit nervous. Something about the house felt... off. It was a non-specific sort of eeriness, the kind you get when you're walking down a dark street and can't shake the feeling that something's moving in the shadows. Dash was about to head off and try again later when she heard a noise from inside the house. It was a strange noise, to say the least; some kind of chewing or slurping, punctuated by a deeper wheezing sound.
Dash was torn. On the one hoof, her self-defence mechanism was telling her very loudly to turn around and fly far, far away from there. On the other hoof, her loyal side was telling her just as loudly that if Thunderlane was in danger, she couldn't just leave him there. In the end, loyalty won out.
A gentle push of the door saw it spring open slightly on the latch. The chewing and wheezing was louder, now. Dash remembered the calming exercise Rarity had taught her before she left for the Wonderbolts Academy for the first time: deep breath, hold it, then let it go. Taking as deep a breath she could and steeling herself for whatever lay inside, Dash pushed the door fully open.
She didn't have to remember to let her breath out. It happened entirely of its own accord.
Thunderlane lay inside the living room, his massive form sprawled half-on, half-off the couch, propped up into a sitting position with his enormous gut resting between his splayed hind legs. Sitting next to him was a pile of greasy oat burgers, from which Thunderlane was in the process of extracting one with a flabby foreleg and lifting it with some difficulty to his blubbery jowls. Even this simple act was enough to make a few drops of sweat break out on his forehead. Scattered all around his immobile body were empty wrappers, boxes, trays and cups, obscuring the floor like a second layer of carpet.
"Who pony who...?" Thunderlane mumbled through a mouthful of food. His eyes rolled in their sockets in Dash's direction, who was standing pale-faced and aghast in the doorway. "Rainbow?" he asked, squinting against the sunlight—it had been a while since he'd last left the house, or indeed been able to move from the couch at all. He raised his head slightly, his chins squishing together as he did so.
"Th-Thunderlane..." Dash stepped forward tentatively, picking her way around the detritus on the floor and approaching Thunderlane as cautiously as if he was a bomb. "What in Equestria have you done to yourself? Have you..." She picked up one of the empty boxes and read the label—'Double Oat Burger Deluxe'. "Have you been eating nothing but oat burgers since I left?"
"Not just me," Thunderlane groaned, shifting slightly and sending a wave rippling through his vast sea of adipose. "Flitter... and Cloudchaser... eat them too..." His head fell back and he sucked air greedily and labouredly into his lungs, the act of speaking more than one sentence at a time leaving him as breathless as if he'd run three marathons in a row.
Too shocked and frightened to say anything more, Dash left Thunderlane and flew out of the house. Flitter and Cloudchaser lived just down the street. If Thunderlane had eaten himself to what looked like immobility, then...
"No, no, no, no, no..." Dash muttered as she reached the twins' house. Catching a glimpse of lilac in an upstairs window, she flew up to it, praying for the best.
Her heart sank. She was looking into the twins' bedroom. Both ponies lay on mattresses within the broken remains of their bed frames, their fat rolling off and hanging over the sides, their huge bodies dotted with stains from what looked like ketchup and milkshakes. If the stains were anything to go by, neither of them had moved from bed for a few days, at least. Like at Thunderlane's, the floor around them was covered with litter and food remnants. Flitter looked to be asleep, her hefty stomach rising and falling with each breath. Cloudchaser was just moving a large oat burger—one of dozens more, crowded around her the way a child might crowd their stuffed toys—from her sauce-smeared lips, eyes closed, chewing lazily like a cow chewing on cud. Swallowing, she opened her mouth again and let loose a belch, blowing a few strands of unkempt mane out of the way, before sighing and sinking deeper into her bed sheets, presumably taking a breather before she resumed gorging herself.
Dash half-flew, half-fell to the ground, feeling like her stomach had turned to water. Questions swarmed around her mind:
1. What's happening here?
2. Why are Thunderlane, Flitter and Cloudchaser all clinically obese and stuffing themselves with junk?
Granted, there were only two questions, but they were still pretty big ones. At that moment, all Dash knew for certain was that she wanted to get as far away from there as possible. She zoomed off at top speed, a nauseous feeling spreading from her stomach and all through her body. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. As she flew over the town square, she looked down, and it was all she could do to stop herself from dropping out of the sky from shock right there and then.
A long line of ponies stretched out the door or Sugarcube Corner, but this wasn't what alarmed Dash. What alarmed her was how every single one of them was in some stage of obesity. For as far as she could see, it was a lengthy procession of huge bellies, double chins and tree-trunk thighs. Dash couldn't even see one pony who had a visible neck, just roll upon roll of fat. Shock soon gave way to anger. Whatever was going on, she wanted answers, and she wanted them now.
Dash rushed down to the ground and squeezed herself with some difficulty through the fleshy obstacles crowding the door of the shop. A few ponies voiced their irritation at the line cutter, but none of them had the energy to actually try and stop her.
Pinkie Pie stood at the counter, her size making her resemble a large blob of taffy on legs. Her stomach jiggled ponderously with every movement she made, and her movements were reduced to shuffling, waddling steps. Two new chins melted into her flabby chest, and he rump was about the size of two pillows side by side. Her added weight hadn't curbed her boundless enthusiasm, though, and she gave Dash a big smile upon seeing her.
"Oh hiya, Dashie! Long time no see, huh?" she said cheerfully, her chubby cheeks wobbling as she spoke.
"Pinkie, what-" Dash began, before a voice from behind her cut her off.
"Now, Rainbow Dash, darling, I know you must be very eager to see your friends again, but surely that's no excuse to barge to the front of the line like that?"
Suddenly, there was an ice cube where Dash's heart should have been. She knew that voice... that carefully refined accent. Slowly, she turned her head around.
"R-R-R-Rarity?" she stammered.
Rarity was just as big as the other ponies in line. Unlike most of them, however, her weight had distributed itself a little more evenly around her body, lacking the rolls and folds of many of the other ponies behind her. The result was a large, smooth frame of adipose around her body, making her look rather as if she had been carved out of a large slab of marble. She was still very clearly in the throes of obesity, however, and her fat face was currently wearing the look of patience that she normally reserved for when Dash acted uncouth around her. "Still, as Pinkie says, it's good to see you again. I trust the Academy went well?"
"What in the deepest pits of Tartarus is going on?" Dash screamed, startling her friends and a few other ponies in line, their bodies rippling as they jolted in surprise. "What happened to you? How did you all get so, so, so..." She couldn't finish, and instead slumped to the floor. This was all too much for her to take in within such a short time.
"Aww, don't be sad, Dashie," Pinkie said consolingly, waddling around the counter to comfort her panicked friend. "Here, maybe one of my super-duper cupcakes will- whoa!"
In her distracted state, Pinkie had failed to register a puddle of spilled soda on the floor which she had neglected to clean in between serving her many customers and tending to Mr. and Mrs. Cake upstairs, who had unfortunately become too fat and lazy to do anything other than eat their surplus stock all day. She lost her balance and unwittingly pulled off a comedic pratfall, sending the tainted cupcake in her hoof flying towards Dash, who had opened her mouth to scream in frustration.
The cupcake landed in Dash's mouth with a wet glop sound. She gagged and tried to spit it out, but some of it stuck to the roof of her mouth and slid down the back of her throat and into her stomach. With how potent the blubbercup essence was, a small few crumbs was all it took.
Dash's eyes widened to the size of saucers and she made a strange noise that was somewhere between a rooster's crow and a train whistle. She scrambled to her hooves, threw herself over the counter and started stuffing her face with every cupcake she could reach. All of her fears and panic from just a minute earlier dissipated immediately. All she could think about was food, and how she wanted—no, needed—more.
As Dash continued to glut herself, a muffled voice piped up from the other side of the counter.
"Can somepony help me up, please? I'm a bit... stuck."
A day or so after Rainbow Dash fell victim to the irresistible lure of Hotshot's food, Princess Twilight Sparkle alit from a carriage on the outskirts of Ponyville. She thanked the guards pulling it and watched them leave, before closing her eyes and letting loose an exhausted sigh.
Twilight had just returned from a diplomatic mission in Saddle Arabia, where she had to oversee some very difficult negotiations between Saddle Arabia and Ishayl. The Ishaylis had been kicking up a stink about the Saddle Arabians placing a trade embargo upon them, claiming that it was unprovoked. The Saddle Arabians had claimed that it was in response to Ishayli settlers moving into Saddle Arabian territory without permission. For a long time, the diplomats from both countries had simply refused to budge an inch, and Twilight had been brought in to use her role as Princess of Friendship to help them reconcile their differences. In the end, after three very stressful weeks, she had managed to hammer out a deal between them and avoid a possible conflict between the two nations in the near future. She had spent some time in the Crystal Empire with Princess Cadance and Shining Armour to take a well-deserved break, and was now simply happy to finally be back home. She'd opted to walk the last stretch back to her tree castle, to take in the lovely spring air around town.
For a while, Twilight simply ambled through the fields around Ponyville with a relaxed smile on her face, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the tweeting birds, the chattering squirrels, the fat fillies and colts stuffing themselves in the schoolyard, the gentle swoosh of the grass in the breeze, the...
Wait. Hold up. Twilight stopped in her tracks. Something about that last bit didn't seem quite right. She retraced her steps a little until she found herself at the fence that marked the boundary between the school and the fields beyond. From there, she could see into the playground, and what she saw was simply baffling.
The playground was full of young fillies and colts, as usual. However, there were two marked differences. The first one was that every foal there had put on a lot of weight; any who weren't officially obese would be there before long. Twilight couldn't see a single average-sized filly or colt there—nothing but ample, round bellies and oversized flanks. The second was that there was no sound of play, laughing or shouting. Instead, there was the sound of dozens of not-so-little little ponies eating copious amounts of what looked like pizza, pies, hay fries and soda. Many of them were eating in groups; the Cutie Mark Crusaders eating a twelve-inch pizza each, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon resting their sodas on their bellies while they gossiped with each other, Snips and Snails trying and failing to catch hay fries in their mouths. The few students who weren't eating lazed about on the soft grass, too full and tired to do anything.
Well, this is... unprecedented. Twilight took a moment to let the sight before her sink in, before deciding to talk to Cheerilee. Perhaps she'd have some insight into what was going on, and could help ward off a potential foalhood obesity epidemic in town.
A quick flap of her wings brought Twilight over the fence and into the schoolyard. From there, she walked to the schoolhouse, carefully stepping around the fillies and colts who were either napping or in the grips of a food coma. The others were too busy eating to take notice of her. It was an eerie experience, to say the least. There was no noise other than that of twenty young ponies fervently stuffing their faces, occasionally punctuated by a moan or a contented burp from one of the students lying replete on the grass.
As she got closer to the schoolhouse, she could hear talking coming from inside. She headed over to one of the windows and looked inside. What she saw only confused her further, as well as making her feel more ill at ease.
Cheerilee was in there, as expected. What was more surprising was that Applejack was in there with her. What was even more surprising than that was how they were both as plump as overfed cows. They were both currently talking to a teal stallion at the door. Half a dozen wooden crates were stacked up next to Cheerilee's desk, one of which was open to reveal—Twilight's jaw dropped—a large quantity of pies, just like the ones the foals out back were filling their oversized stomachs with. Empty pie tins, pizza boxes and soda cups were stacked up in neat piles along the walls, while the desks in the room had been noticeably widened in order to accommodate the students' expanding waistlines. A couple of the chairs looked like they had been crushed, presumably having been unable to handle the weight of the fattest students.
Twilight pressed herself against the window to try and better hear what they were saying. Unfortunately for her, the hinge on the window was rusted, and the window popped open and sent her falling straight into the classroom, landing painfully on her foreleg and surprising all three ponies inside.
"Twilight?" Cheerilee asked, a concerned look on her cherubic face as she waddled over to help Twilight up. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, howdy, Twi," Applejack said, looking just as perplexed. "What were ya thinkin' fallin' through the window like that, sugarcube?"
"Yes, I must admit I'd like to know that myself," the strange stallion said drily. "Your Highness," he added, giving a respectful little bow.
Grunting, Twilight stood and dusted herself off. "I just got back from my mission in Saddle Arabia. I came to see what happened to make the fillies and colts outside so fat! And for that matter, how did you get so... um..." Twilight faltered, not wanting to offend or upset her friends. "Zaftig?" she finished lamely.
"Oh, you noticed what the students were eating?" Cheerilee said, smiling. "Not to worry, Twilight, it's all under control."
"Buh?" Twilight said.
"Well, Mr. Hotshot here..." Cheerilee pointed at Hotshot, who waved. "...opened a restaurant in Ponyville not long ago. Everypony in town just can't get enough of his food, me and my students included!" She giggled, her belly shaking as she did so. "Well, Hotshot has very generously agreed to supply the school with food on demand, and he's even offered me a significant discount on it for being such a loyal customer!"
"Hotshot makes 'em, I deliver 'em," Applejack chimed in. "Ah get a nice cut of the profits in return, and the whole family gets a discount as well! Ain't that just enough to make a coyote stop thievin'?"
"But, but..." Twilight spluttered. "How can you not see what's wrong here? Haven't you seen the state of the foals outside? They're enormous! Some of them look like they can hardly stand! And haven't you seen how big you're getting, too?"
"Miss Twilight, I'm simply following the rule of supply and demand here," Hotshot said calmly. "My customers demand, I supply. If any of them lack self-control, I can hardly be held accountable for that."
"All the same," Twilight said, "something doesn't seem right here. I think we owe it to these children to cut them off until we can determine how to stop them gaining this much weight."
"What?" Applejack and Cheerilee gasped in unison.
"Whoa whoa whoa, Miss Twilight," Hotshot said, now sounding a little annoyed. "With all due respect, we can't just cut them off, not when the demand is this large. Do you have any idea how much revenue I'd lose? Or how much Applejack would lose, for that matter?"
"Please, there must be something you can do," Twilight pleaded.
Hotshot sighed. "Alright... Cheerilee, Applejack, may I have a word, please?"
Cheerilee and Applejack waddled over to Hotshot, looking nervous. Hotshot mumbled something to them, and Twilight was only able to catch the last few words: "...no more food for you."
Almost before he'd finished speaking, Cheerilee and Applejack both spun around with crazed looks in their eyes and threw themselves on top of Twilight, pinning her to the ground. Twilight panicked and tried to get them off, but their combined weight was crushing all the air out of her lungs and it was hard to think, let alone concentrate enough to perform a spell. Hotshot moved swiftly and pushed a slice of pizza into Twilight's mouth. Her pupils dilated and her mane prickled. Hotshot nodded and Cheerilee and Applejack both rolled off.
"Now, your Highness," Hotshot said sweetly, "what were you saying about my food?"
Twilight shakily got to her legs. "I... I'd like to get in on my own delivery service," she stammered, drool forming on her lips and legs shaking. "As many pizzas as you can handle, delivered to the castle. Money's no object."
Hotshot smirked. "That sounds very reasonable."