The Melancholy of Pinkie Pie, Chapter 3
The Melancholy of Pinkie Pie
by Kris Overstreet
a blending of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa
and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic developed by Lauren Faust
Chapter 3
A weekend had passed since a unicorn named Trixie Lulamoon had decided to send me to another world with only “minimal data loss,” whatever that meant. Pinkie Pie had insisted on reports on our school patrols at lunch Saturday, but she never said where, and my phone never rang. I spent an uneventful afternoon catching up on chores at home and play with Apple Bloom, who had missed me terribly with all the time I spent after school now.
Maybe, if I’d known it would be the last normal, peaceful weekend I’d enjoy for the foreseeable future, I’d have spent it a little differently, or maybe I’d have focused on remembering everything- how the sun shone, how the grass felt on my back when Apple Bloom tackled me, the simple joy of pounding a new fence post into the ground, things like that. Or maybe I’d have gone back up north to the family farm for the weekend to spend it the way I really wanted.
But I didn’t, and so I really can’t remember any details of that weekend. The Monday afternoon that followed, on the other hoof, will live in my brain until the lights go out on the universe.
The chaos began that morning when I sat down in front of Pinkie Pie. Her hair was flat and straight again, which I was already coming to see was a bad sign. “You were supposed to meet me at Joe’s Donuts and Cakes by the downtown train station, and none of you showed.”
“You didn’t tell us where to meet you.”
“Of course I…” Pinkie stopped, raising her hooves and counting across their arcs; full left, half left, tip, half right, right, then curl the fetlock to remember your place while you count on the other hoof. Only little bitty foals count by stamping feet. I knew one foal in grade school who claimed he could count to a hundred using his hooves…
Sorry about that. Pinkie’s occasional tendency to drift subjects can be contagious. Anyway, as she counted silently, eyes rolled back in thought, I saw her hair slowly curl and rise. The harder she thought, the more poofy her mane became, until finally it reached its full insane glory as she broke into a smile. A stray spear of it sprang out in front, hanging over her muzzle like a unicorn horn. “That’s right!” She said. “Incidentally, that just proves none of you are telepaths. I may not have said, ‘meet me at Joe’s,’ but I definitely thought, ‘meet me at Joe’s,’ very loudly. VERY loudly!”
The smile vanished, and two enormous blue eye stabbed me down to the soul. “I’ll excuse it this once, but next time I expect a report, I WILL get it! And I’m gonna get your phone number, and Twilight’s, and Fluttershy’s, and Dash’s, so there won’t be any repeat of this!”
Fine, fine! Whatever makes you feel better. It’s not like any of us had anything to report… at least, nothing you’d ever believe.
“Nothing to report, huh? We need to get some cameras. If you don’t know if something is mysterious or not, you could take a picture-“
I was spared the illogic by the arrival of our hoofball coach homeroom teacher. “Before classes begin,” he said, “I need to announce that Trixie Lulamoon has transferred out of our school due to family issues.”
I’d been wondering how that would go down. I’d seen Twilight Sparkle rebuild a classroom that had been smashed completely out of existence. Coming up with a plausible excuse for Trixie’s disappearance would surely be a piece of cake.
Unfortunately it was a slice Pinkie Pie wasn’t going to swallow. “WHAT??” she shouted. “Pulling a filly out of school just as she’s making friends? What kind of parent would ever do such a thing? I don’t believe it!” Her mane was flat again, hanging down a neck trembling with righteous anger.
The hoofball coach tried to say something about a work transfer forcing the family to leave Japony, but Pinky’s ranting made it impossible for him to continue. Eventually Pinky wound down enough for the teacher to begin the day’s lesson as if Pinkie hadn’t said a word. Defeated and disgusted, she slumped back in her chair, hooves crossed, looking as upset as I’d ever seen her before.
What brought this on? If Pinkie had spoken a hundred words to Trixie the whole past month I’d be surprised. I’d be surprised if the count rose as high as fifty. Pinkie had treated the missing class president the way she’d treated the rest of the class- file under B for Boring or M for Meanie, depending on what day of the week it was. Yet she flipped her lid as soon as she heard Trixie had left. Since when did she care?
I tried to pry something out of her during class breaks, but nothing doing. Pinkie wasn’t talking. Nor was she staring out the window or laying her head on the desk as she often did when bored or upset. She simply stared straight forward in her desk, looking through me as if I didn’t exist, only the occasional small doodling motion with one hoof to show that she wasn’t frozen or having an epileptic episode. (Come to think of it, epilepsy would be less disruptive than Pinkie’s usual conduct…)
The frozen pose broke as soon as lunch time arrived. Instantly Pinkie Pie was out of her desk, one hoof hooked around mine, dragging me out of the classroom and away from my lunch box stowed inside. We went down to the lockers, where Pinkie pulled a large covered tray out of her locker and dumped it in my forehooves. “Bring this!” she commanded, and juggling it into my teeth I followed, wondering what was going on and whether this was connected to Trixie.
We ended up at the door to the teacher’s lounge. Students, of course, were expressly forbidden from entering, but Pinkie barged in, snatching the tray out of my teeth once the door was open. I followed, still confused and disoriented and hoping for some sort of explanation.
“Excuse me,” one of the teachers said, looking at me over his own lunchbox. “No students allowed. You’ll have to leave.” His cross expression turned to a smile when he looked at pinkie. “Good morning, Miss Pie. How are you today?”
“Oh, not too bad,” Pinkie said, shrugging as she used her forehooves to slide the tray onto a nearby desk. “Today I brought brownies!” She lifted off the cover of the tray to reveal a beautiful pile of chocolate squares, saturated with nuts and covered with multicolored sprinkles.
The various teachers all forgot I even existed, which was a mercy. It gave me a perfect opportunity to witness something I’d thought was completely impossible up to this point: Pinkamena Pie working a crowd. Just last week she’d terrorized these people, but now she had them eating out of her hoof- and, more to the point, doing what she told them to. In about five minutes she had one of the teachers leave the lounge to look up Trixie’s home address in the school records- something which the administration would never, ever do for anypony, not even a deep personal friend (as Pinkie claimed to be.)
A few minutes later we left with an empty bake tray and an address in the better part of the city. “First step, make them understand their rules do not apply to you,” Pinkie said triumphantly. “Once you’re past that hurdle, make them feel good when you’re with them and you can get them used to anything!” She giggle, her hair momentarily regaining a bit of its poof before going straight and slack again. “Besides, it makes me feel good to see people smiling for a change!”
“Seems a bit dishonest, Sugarcube.”
“I told no lies, and I didn’t trick anybody,” Pinkie replied gruffly. “And if it makes them happy and keeps them from getting in the way, then it works out for everybody.”
“So, what are you going to do with that?” I asked. I noticed we were walking across the second-story walkway linking the old and new school buildings. We were apparently heading for the club room.
“We’re going to investigate!” Pinkie shouted. “The SOP Brigade is about fun mysteries, but this mystery isn’t fun at all! If a student were transferring IN to the school, that would a fun mystery because we could make new friends while trying to figure out why they changed schools! But THIS time we’re LOSING a friend! And for a stupid reason like working out of town?”
“How far out of town?”
“Quebuck! And I really DON’T believe THAT! What pony in their right mind would want to move to Quebuck?”
It took a little bit for my brain to sort through the files and produce the location of Quebuck- a country just north of the United Stakes. That… that’s halfway around the planet! Twilight hadn’t messed around! That was a lot more than just putting Trixie on a bus!
“So we’re going to investigate first thing this afternoon!” Pinkie said as we got to the club room. “Just you and me, straight there, until we get to the bottom of this! And I’m not going to stop until I get the TRUTH!” Pinkie slapped a notice on the club room door with one hoof: SOP BRIGADE ACTIVITIES CANCELLED TODAY. “Be ready to go as soon as the last bell rings, AJ!”
And she was gone, taking the bake tray with her, I suppose to stash it back in her locker.
Had she forgotten something? Did she care about one little detail? Did she even know… ?
I opened the club room door, and sure enough, Twilight Sparkle was sitting in her chair by the window, next to Pinkie’s Brigade Leader desk. She didn’t look up at me as I walked over to her.
“Hi, Twilight....”
A half-glance up, a tiny nod, eyes back in the book.
“So, um, Pinkie…”
“I know.”
And that was that. Twilight kept her words to a minimum.
“Um…” Something else was on my mind. “Trixie… well, she kind of said she was going to banish me somewhere.”
“To the realm of the Integrated Magic Thought Alicorn.”
“Yeah, um, that. She said something about four percent data losses.”
No response. After a moment, Twilight turned a page.
“And she said something about that being ‘better than poor Twilight.’ What did she mean, exactly?”
Normally Twilight looks like a statue when she’s reading except when she turns pages. But as I watched, I felt a slight difference, as if she had turned to fur-colored stone that just happened to hold a book. I couldn’t even quite tell if she was breathing. Then, just as I was about to say something, she closed the book, took it in her mouth, and stood, carrying it to the bookshelf.
Oh. Right. Lunch break is nearly over.
As I headed for the door, I heard her quiet, monotone voice: “You do not yet possess the necessary concepts to receive a meaningful answer. Your civilization has only taken the first steps to understanding the true nature of the data you produce. Without those concepts understanding of the consequences of data loss and corruption is impossible.”
I turned to look at Twilight, who kept her head down, avoiding my gaze. “Can you at least tell me if it’s a bad thing?”
That blank face lifted, and the eyes, which had some undefinable touch of warmth in them that Friday evening in the classroom, now had the faintest touch of… deep, inconsolable sorrow.
But no words came, just the look.
What do you think, Sureshod Holmes?
I left.
Someone had eaten my lunch when I got back to class. I never found out who.
Sure enough, Pinkie dragged me out of the classroom the instant class was dismissed, barely giving me time to put my indoor slippers in my locker before hauling me down the hill to the train station. She never said a word to me, and her mane remained in its straight, flat mode all the way down the hill and all through the train ride.
I hadn’t really paid attention to the exact address when Pinkie had got it from the teacher. Likewise, I didn’t pay much attention to the train ride, which Pinkie had paid for, until she pulled me to my feet for the Buckaroo Park stop. When we walked past the bench that Twilight Sparkle had spent two nights on waiting for me, my brain finally began doing the job it ought to have been doing all along.
Twilight told me there were plenty of- what did she call herself- organic interfaces like her around. Would they really have put them all in the same condo complex? Surely some basic common sense would have told them to spread themselves out to limit suspicion, right?
Apparently not, because the address Pinkie had for Trixie Lulamoon was Twilight Sparkle’s condo complex. The exact condo lay two floors below Twilight’s. I wondered idly if rank within the Integrated Magic Thought Alicorn determined how high up in the building you lived- but only for a moment. Pinkie Pie, I thought, was about to make a scene that would make homeroom class look like Fluttershy asking to be allowed to sharpen a pencil.
The condo lobby only opened to key holders. No key, no admittance, unless you were let in by a resident. There was a row of call buttons and a speaker next to the lobby doors for just that purpose. However, I knew that when Pinkie Pie pushed the button for Trixie’s condo there would be no answer- or, just possibly, there would be a new resident with no interest in answering questions about the previous tenants. Either way, Pinkie’s next move would be to storm the gates somehow.
So I nearly choked on my tongue when, about ten seconds after Pinkie pushed the button, I heard Trixie’s voice on the speaker. “Yes? Who is it?”
“Trixie?” Pinkie asked. “It’s Pinkie Pie from class. Applejack is with me. We’d like to speak with you.”
“Um… all right,” Trixie’s voice said. “Come on up.”
The latch of the lobby doors clicked open.
Two floors up, we stood at the door of Trixie’s condo. She opened the door at the third knock. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything,” she said, standing in the doorway. “Everything’s already been packed and sent away. I just made one last visit before I have to leave.”
I didn’t hear her next few words, nor did I heard the pleasantries Pinkie said in response. I had all I could handle to keep my jaw from dropping. Not that Trixie was still there- that was surprising enough, considering I’d seen her body blown away on a sort of galactic wind. I was surprised because, although Trixie was there, she also wasn’t.
I could see right through her body. In fact, if I stepped in just the right spot, she very nearly vanished altogether. Pinkie Pie was talking to Trixie’s ghost- and I don’t think she noticed.
By the time I recovered, Pinkie had got to the meat of the conversation. “Why do you have to leave? You’ve only been in high school a month! What could be so important in Quebuck?”
Trixie shuffled her hooves slightly, but her smile stayed on her mouth. “I’m afraid my family has called me back. You see, there was a serious… disagreement… on how we should be living. I wanted to stay, but I’m afraid I was overruled. My family wants to keep me close to them from now on.”
“Why can’t they just come back to Japony, then?” Pinkie Pie asked. “If your family has enough money to pay for a nice condo like this for just you, they can spare enough money to take a lower-paying job closer to home!”
“Actually… it’s the other way around. I’m not really from around here.” Trixie’s smile looked a bit regretful. “And though I want to stay here, I’m simply not allowed to any longer.” She sighed, shaking her head. “And besides, it will be good to see my family again. I really have missed them so… especially my aunt Luna.”
“You don’t have to go!” Pinkie shouted. “We can find a way to let you-“
“It’s all right,” Trixie said, laying a hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder. “I’m looking forward to going home. I wanted to stay too, but I’ll be all right either way.” She stepped back into the doorway. “I have to get ready to leave now,” she said. “Thank you very much for coming to see me, Pinkamena Pie. I was looking forward to seeing how you changed. We could have been great and powerful together.”
The ghostly face turned towards me. “And Applejack, enjoy your time with Pinkamena Pie. You never know when it’s going to run out. Bye, now!”
The door shut. Pinkie stood staring at it for over a minute before turning away.
Two blocks away from the condo we passed Twilight Sparkle going the other way. She had a shopping bag in her teeth with what looked like a take-out box. “Hello, Twilight,” I said.
Pinkie, head lowered and straight mane nearly dragging the ground, never noticed. She just kept on walking, even as Twilight’s eyes followed her past.
Once Pinkie was far enough up the street to be out of earshot, I whispered to Twilight, “I thought you told me Trixie was gone!”
Twilight never took her eyes off of Pinkie. “What you saw was not Trixie Lulamoon,” she said. “It was an echo of Trixie Lulamoon’s data created to generate an illusion that would allow Pinkamena Pie to accept the need for her departure.”
“So that was why I could see through it?” I asked. Blank stare. “Um, I mean, Trixie was semi-transparent when I saw her.”
“You were not the intended recipient of the message.”
“It still seems like sloppy work for you, though,” I muttered. “Especially considering how neat you cleaned up that classroom.”
“The illusion was not made by me,” Twilight said. “Nor by any aspect of the Integrated Magic Data Alicorn.”
“It wasn’t? Who else could have done it?”
“Pinkamena Pie.”
My head spun like I’d just stepped off an amusement park ride, one of the kind your friends dare you to get on so they can watch you empty your stomach. Are you trying to tell me that Pinkie Pie decided to make herself a slipper puppet show to talk herself out of doing something? A puppet show that I could see as well as her? But then, if she’s all that all-fired slick, why did she make a puppet I could see through?
“Train,” Twilight said, pointing. Pinkie Pie was almost out of sight up the street. Even trudging she could move at a pretty good clip.
Anyway, questions would have to be put off until later. “Wait up, Pinkie!” I shouted, galloping after her and leaving Twilight to walk home with her dinner. I didn’t catch up with the pink filly until the train station. The previous train had left as Twilight and I were talking, so we had a few minutes to wait until the next one came along.
Pinkie’s head was still down, and she still wasn’t looking at me. “Um,” I said awkwardly, “I was just telling Twilight about why we were here. Did you know she lives in the same building? What a coincidence, huh?”
Pinkie’s head didn’t move. Whatever planet her mind was on, it wasn’t receiving signals from Horseton Control.
“Look,” I said quietly, “we did the right thing checking up on Trixie. And…” The next words jammed in my throat as if they’d hit a traffic barrier. I couldn’t say that Trixie was going to be happier where she was going, because I knew for a fact that wasn’t true at all. I couldn’t say Trixie wanted to go, because even the sock-puppet ‘echo’ didn’t really want to go. And I couldn’t wish Trixie well, because I darn well didn’t. There’s nothing like attempted murder, or ‘banishment’, or whatever, to relieve you of any and all charitable thoughts towards a pony.
But… I couldn’t be charitable, but in one small way I could empathize with her.
“And I understand what she means about being good either way,” I said. “I like it here, and it’s important that I get a good education… but I miss home, too. Lemme tell you about it.
“The Apple family have been farmers as far back as we can recall. We’ve been farming the same land for generations, and we’ve done well out of it, all things considered. My granny still runs the farm. On a good day she doesn’t even need the walker, and she can still get apples out of a tree faster than any city pony I’ve ever seen.
“But my folks wanted to do something else with their lives. They still love the farm, and they still help out come harvest time, but it’s not the only thing they want to do. And they wanted their kids to have the option of doing other stuff when the time came. So they left the farm and got jobs here in the city, and the three of us- my big brother MacIntosh, me, and my little sister Apple Bloom- all went to city schools.
“Big Mac decided college wasn’t for him. The only classes he was any good in was math, anyway. He went back to the farm right out of high school. And I’m probably going to do the same thing.” I shook my head, thinking about the orchards, the corn field, and the animal pens. “I want to be here and learn what I can, but book learning really isn’t my thing. There’s nothing I like better than a long day of good, honest physical work… except being around friends.
“So I’m kind of torn,” I said, feeling a bit of homesickness as I said it. “I want to be here with the kids I grew up with, but I miss the farm a lot. I go back and visit every chance I get. I think I understand what Trixie was talking about, y’see?”
“You’re just as stupid as she is,” Pinkie said.
Well, excuse me for trying to comfort you, then!
Pinkie shook her head slowly. “I come from the farm too,” she said. “My family’s all still there, except my mother. But you can’t go forward while looking back!” Finally Pinkie’s head lifted, and she turned to face me with an angry glare. “There’s no time in this life for regrets! The future hasn’t been made yet, and the past is frozen. The only moment that exists for any of us is NOW!” She stamped a hoof. “And I can’t forgive any pony who gives up her NOW just because somepony bosses her around!”
Just because-?!? Pony, do you even recognize how many kinds of hypocrite you are right this minute? Am I supposed to ask your forgiveness for giving up my evenings, my social life and my sanity trailing after you? I think I decline, thank you so very!
Off in the distance a carillion began ringing bells, heralding the top of the hour. Pinkie’s ear twitched at the sound, and her mane slowly began that strange rise from limp and listless into the fluffy tangle of Pinkie’s madder moments.
And then I heard her sing, in a deeper, richer voice than I was used to hearing from that throat:
It’s the answer that has always been here in my heart…
And then I think a little more of my sanity spiraled down the drain, because I began to hear a backbeat, followed by bubbly synthesized music. Pinkie spun round on her hooves, facing me with that determined glare, but the frown had been replaced by a triumphant smirk.
I can hear your thoughts; they’re asking me why I chose you
Well, it’s destiny, fate that won’t stop until we break through
I believe it’s too boring to do what the others do
You’ll be right!
I will do what I want, I will do what I feel, it’ll be so much fun
At about this point Pinkie began dancing on her hind hooves as she sang. I could swear I heard background singers to go with the unseen background musicians.
It’s an adventure! Adventure! In this broken world where all the truths turn to lies
I’ll get stronger, stronger chasing my dreams than I would for somebody else
Won’t you chase them with me
Won’t you run free along with me
Today’s the miracle
In the now where tomorrow becomes yesterday…
I believe you…
It’s just too boring if I don’t take it past the point of no turning back
Won’t you come with me and chase our secret wishes through the looking glass
My delight, I will embrace it with my whole body
Your mind will fly!
You’ll be surprised, and then I’ll be surprised, and we’ll laugh endlessly
It’s the beginning! Beginning! A beautiful friendship shining to light up the darkest night
Our strength, our tears, guiding the way to magic, either way it’s gonna be right
I won’t let my heart be broken
Even if it feels a little fragile
I won’t give in to doubt
Because always I’ve known in the depths of my heart the answer is…
The answer is…
For a brief moment I thought the music was going to slow… and then, of all things, a flat car coasted down the track towards us. Two fillies, one of whom I recognized from our class, stood on the cart, one playing a viola while the other did things to a synthesizer keyboard. Pinkie took me by the shoulders, lifting me up on my hind hooves, and led me dancing to the music from the flat car for about sixteen bars or so, until it coasted out of hearing with a final glissando of chimes.
Then Pinkie looked directly into my eyes as if she were pleading with me for some reason, singing a little slower:
If all the people around me think that I am weird
Then tell me what you all expect me to be
Abnormal is my normal now
The music picked back up to its former beat, and Pinkie stepped back, still on her hind hooves, declaring herself in song:
I will do what I want, I will do what I feel, and I will be myself
It’s our adventure! Adventure! In this broken world we’ll make truth out of all of their lies
We’ll run faster, faster, chasing our dreams until all of them get realized
It’s the beginning! Beginning! A beautiful friendship shining to light up the darkest night
Midway on the road to adventure we will stand together and make it all right
We’ll face the world together
Forever and ever-free
We’ll trump reality
In the now where tomorrow becomes yesterday…
Let’s make it ours
Our miracle
The future’s there
Let’s make it ours
I believe in you….
More bells rang, and the music faded out. The bells were the bells of the commuter train arriving at the platform. Pinkie settled back to her hooves, letting the echoes of her last pleading line fade out.
All of which I could barely see because my eyes were full of tears.
I’d thought I’d hit sensory overload when Twilight Sparkle tried to explain the nature of the Integrated Magic Thought Alicorn to me. I’d thought I’d hit sensory overload when the doors and windows vanished from classroom 1-6 while Trixie was trying to banish me. And I’d thought I’d hit it again when that condo door opened and a ghost carried on a conversation of the heart with Pinkie. But this… this…
Ponies don’t do this. Ponies do not bare their innermost heart to others in, stars help me, a bucking song and dance.
But, a part of me whispered from a place I’d never known I had before, maybe they should. It felt… right. It felt more right than bucking apples out of the trees at harvest-time. It felt more right than playing chase with Apple Bloom around the tiny yard at our city home. It felt more right than anything I had ever felt before in my life.
And I just didn’t understand why.
So, as Pinkie stood there waiting, as the train pulled to a stop, I froze. There were so many words fighting to get out that my mouth just jammed. I couldn’t do anything except stare slack-jawed at Pinkie Pie.
That was the wrong thing to do.
Pinkie’s mane deflated again, and she lowered her head and turned away. “You still don’t understand, do you?” she asked mournfully.
Yes! Buck yes, I understand! My jaw is frozen, my brain is tied in knots, and my heart is a yo-yo in some sadistic god’s hand, but I understand! I think! Just let me get a chance to speak!
Pinkie walked away from the train, stepping down from the platform. “I’m walking home,” she said quietly. “Do what you want. I’ll see you in the morning.” She crossed the tracks behind the train at the street crossing and walked away down the road, leaving me alone at the station. On the ground where she’d stood she’d left enough bits to buy my ticket back to the station closest to home.
Oh, brother. Why does she have to be so… so random?
And why do I have to be so… so… so…
What am I, exactly?
The next day Pinkie was in her desk, slumped forward and depressed, and my tongue was still hogtied. I said hello, she grunted, and at that point we each ran out of words. In fact, we didn’t have words for anyone that day, neither one of us. I think I may have said ten words total from homeroom through to the end of classes that weren’t a response to a teacher’s question. I didn’t even have my usual talk with Lyra and Bon-Bon; those two fillies saw the storm clouds hanging over both me and Pinkie and decided to stay in out of the rain, I guess.
When classes were over it was me who took Pinkie by the hoof and led her out of the classroom and over to the old building. That should tell you how bad we both felt.
Fluttershy was waiting for us in the club room, already in the bunny suit, when we arrived. (Twilight Sparkle was there too, but saying that is like saying that grass has green in it.) As we walked into the club room I smelled something in the air… something slightly bitter, and sweet, and rich at the same time.
“I heard about your classmate leaving,” Fluttershy murmured in that soft, sweet voice of hers. “And I thought, how can I make you feel better? And I thought, well, tea always makes me feel better when I feel bad. So I snuck a hot plate into the club building.” She pointed to a little table shoved next to the old chalkboard, on top of which sat a hot plate with a kettle on it. Next to the hot plate sat an old fashioned teapot and a few glasses. The tea had just finished brewing as we walked in, I suppose; my family is more coffee than tea, but I’ve had it now and again.
I’d never had it like this, though. The first sip from the glass was ambroisia, and the second even better than that. I could practically feel some tea goddess hugging me from behind and rubbing her cheek against mine, whispering that everything would be all right and nothing need ever upset me again. Sadness and regrets fled like shadows where this blessed brew brought its lantern of…
I’m bad at lying, and I’m not that good with metaphors, either.
But the effect on Pinkie Pie was like the effect on me squared. For a long moment she just glared at the cup. Then she took it into her hooves and sniffed the contents. Almost instantly the front part of her mane went from dangly yarn-like limpness to gravity-defying poof. When she took the first sip the rest of her mane did likewise. In seconds she had the glass bottom-side up, guzzling down every drop, until for a moment I thought she’d get her muzzle stuck in the thing.
But when her face came back down, her eyes were glaring- not at me, not at Fluttershy, but at that hot plate. I fancied I could hear the gears in Pinkie’s head turning… with a percolator running in the background. I don’t know why; maybe Pinkie’s more of a coffee person, too. (And doesn’t your mind quail in terror at the very thought of Pinkie on a coffee bender? Mine does.)
And thus the first unprompted words out of Pinkie Pie all day were, “Wholly inadequate!”
Fluttershy, of course, flinched. “Um, I can make a new pot, if you don’t-“
“Not your tea!” Pinkie actually grinned and patted Fluttershy gently on the shoulder. “That’s the best tea I’ve ever had! In fact T isn’t a large enough letter for what you make! Maybe it should be U, or V, or W! Yeah, that was the best double-you I’ve ever drunk in my life!”
It makes sense to somebody; if it’s you, let me know and explain it to me.
“But this discovery!” Pinkie held up the empty glass in one hoof and pointed with the other. “This demonstrates a vital factor that’s been overlooked in the SOP Brigade! And that vital factor is… SNACKS!”
Snacks? There’s a snack vendor just across the street from the main entrance to the school. I think half the students leave their entire allowances for the week at that place, going over between classes or at lunch and coming back with shopping bags full of chips and candies and crackers and things. On more than one occasion I’ve seen Pinkie go the whole day eating nothing but stuff from that shop. So how, exactly, is the SOP Brigade lacking for snacks?
“Store-bought snacks are a pale echo of what ponies can enjoy made from scratch! Made with love, like Fluttershy’s wonderful tea! I mean, you’ve seen what the teachers do when I bring them stuff I made at home, right?” she asked, looking at me. “So what if the SOP Brigade could offer cupcakes, or tarts, or cookies, or noodles, or whatever… any time we wanted?”
Well, then for one thing we’d have to change the brigade acronym to mean: Stuffing the World by Overfilling It with Sugar with Pinkie Pie.
“Fluttershy, go get Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie said. “She’s at track practice, right?”
Fluttershy began shaking in her hooves as she realized, in order to obey She Who Must Be Pinkie Pie, she would have to go out onto the athletic field in the bunny suit… and be seen by at least one-third of the student body. Still, she managed to nod her head and stammer out a yes.
“Then go tell her this is an SOP Emergency!” she said. “A special activity that overrides everything else!” She turned her attention to me and then to Twilight Sparkle, who as ever kept her nose down in whatever book she was reading today. “Then everyone meet me next door- we’re going to requisition some equipment!”
With that Pinkie marched out, slamming the door behind her practically in Fluttershy’s face. Fluttershy yeeped, still trembling, and waited until Pinkie’s footsteps had grown quiet before opening the door, looking up and down the hallway nervously, and then bolting like a scalded cat out of the room.
Twilight closed her book; today it was Charlie Horse and the Chocolate Factory.
“How’s the book?” I asked quietly.
Twilight cocked her head, then said, “Musical,” and put it on the bookshelf. She then walked out of the room, turning left at the door. I followed her into the next room to the left.
The room was about twice as large as the literature club’s room, at least in theory. In reality two large machines took up the majority of the space, and the majority of the space remaining was given over to shelves and shelves filled with boxes and cases of things. The larger machine, closest to us, was a large and complicated thing with huge metal rolling drums, massive levers, and other unidentifiable things, all covered in a thin layer of dust. The smaller machine had a group of ponies around it- all colts, I noticed. So far as I could tell it wasn’t anything more than a bunch of blinking lights with a small TV screen built into one side.
Twilight walked over to the colts, and I followed her, wondering what Pinkie Pie could want with anything here. Nothing in the room looked like it had any connection with snacks or sweets or anything, unless the randomly blinking colored lights were made out of lollipops or rock candy or something.
“Come on, come on,” one of the colts at the blinky-light thing said eagerly, “hurry up and begin transmission!”
“Be patient, Clockwork,” said another, “it takes time for the sending machine to read the punch cards! This isn’t like television!”
“One day this technology will replace television altogether!” Clockwork said. “And we’ll see it happen in our own lifetimes!”
“Um,” I said, causing all the colts to freeze a moment before jerking up their heads to look back at me, “what technology is this, exactly?”
The pony referred to as Clockwork, a mostly brown colt with his shirt neatly buttoned under his blazer, stood up straight and glared at me. “Where have you been hiding all these years, in a barn?” he asked.
For practical purposes, yes, but I refuse to let the likes of you get the better of me, friend.
“This,” he continued, caressing the top of the blinky-light’s casing with one hoof, “this is a computer! Not quite top of the line,” he sighed regretfully, “but close! It’s one of two that we, the computer club, have built by hoof here at North High School!”
Oh. The computer club. I remembered them now. Their proper club room was at the opposite end of the building and on the ground floor. Some of the other students called it the Black Hole of Cowcutta, because it was low and dark and smelled funny and nobody wanted to go inside.
But this was my first time seeing a computer in person. From what I’d learned in science class, it had only been a few years since a computer had been made smaller than a large room, and they still couldn’t do much besides math. Every once in a while there would be minor newspaper stories about how someone made a computer that could bounce a dot on a TV screen, or beep the national anthem, or something simple and childish like that. They weren’t practical. They couldn’t do anything real.
But so far as the seven colts standing or kneeling around Mr. Blinky were concerned, the thing was about to render wisdom as profound as what Parted Waters brought down from the mount.
I felt a tug at my sleeve. Twilight Sparkle lifted a hoof and gestured back to the big machine. “Um, what’s that big thing over there?” I asked, pointing myself.
Clockwork rolled his eyes. “You really have been in a barn,” he muttered. “That was the press for the school newspaper. The journalism club used it until it was shut down a couple years ago. The club president at the time, Gabby Gums I think her name was, turned it into a gossip sheet, and the student council responded by revoking their budget and disbanding the club. Nobody’s petitioned to reform it since.”
I shrugged. Not my problem, then. Last I looked, printing presses did not make snacks, and therefore it wasn’t on Pinkie Pie’s List of Impossible Things to Do Today.
Twilight stepped past me and looked into Clockwork’s face. She pointed to the press and said, “How does it work?”
“Beats me how it works,” Clockwork said. “We haven’t used it. Our computers have print-out devices we can use if we want anything printed. I think I saw a user manual in one of the boxes on that shelf.” Clockwork pointed back by the door, and Twilight walked her usual slow pace over to the shelves and began to look.
A loud screeching sound turned my attention back to the blinky computer thing. A slot just below the little TV screen was spitting out a piece of paper. The colts cheered, then encouraged the thing onward as, screech by screech, a little more of the paper crawled out. “It’s working! It’s working!!” Clockwork shouted.
“What’s working?” I asked.
Clockwork pointed to a cable that ran from Mr. Blinky behind the shelves and over to the door. “We’re successfully sending data from one computer to another!” he shouted. “Specifically, a picture! We’ve spent the last two days with punch cards encoding the image into a digital format, and now the FURIYAC is sending the image here to the SMELIYAC, where it’s-“
A loud groan echoed from the throats of two of the colts. The cheering stopped. Clockwork spun on his heels and looked at the paper. For the first few lines it looked like what might, I suppose, have been the ears and mane of a pony. Then about midway through a line a bunch of random typewriter symbols and black boxes ran in row after row after row. Complete and total gibberish.
“Son of a timberwolf!” Clockwork mourned, pounding a fist against Mr. Blinky. “Data corruption! One of the punch cards must have glitched! Now we’ll have to do it all over!”
“We can’t presume that,” one of the other colts said. “The transmission cable might have bad insulation somewhere. We did run it right past the radio club room.”
Data corruption? That rang a bell. I glanced back at Twilight, who now stood with her back leaned against a wall, holding a thick and ancient binder in her hooves and reading. “What’s data corruption?” I asked.
Clockwork, clearly upset, took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. “Okay, short version: computers run on a set list of instructions that they absolutely have to take in order. Those instructions tell it when information- that’s data- can be received, when it must be transmitted, and what it has to do with it in between. Depending on what instructions you give it, it can take two numbers and get their sum, or it can take one number and get a square root, or it can put a number into a function and plot out the result on a graph. Or, if you’re really patient and clever, you can convert a picture into numbers, like we did, feed those numbers into the computer, and have the instructions turn the numbers back into a picture. Understand that?”
Amazingly, I did. It sounded sort of like a recipe, and I love to bake. “I’m with you so far,” I said.
“Okay,” Clockwork said. “The problem is, the instructions have to be in precisely the right order- and so does the data, the numbers, that the instructions work with. Let’s say the instructions are: first, get three numbers; then, multiply the first by the second; then, divide the result by the third, then print out the final result. What happens if the three numbers you put in aren’t in the right order?”
I was right with him. “You get the wrong answer,” I said. “It’s like putting the apples in the pie plate before you lay down the crust.”
“Something like that,” Clockwork said. “Now, the instructions to turn numbers into a picture are a lot more complicated than that. And to make things worse, we have to use binary numbers, which means only ones and zeroes. No twos, threes, fours, or so on. So the number ‘nine’ in binary is one-zero-zero-one- four digits. Don’t ask why,” he said hurriedly as my eyes started to glaze. “Just accept it. Everything in ones and zeroes, which means the numbers get really long really fast. Lots of digits.”
“Okay, I can accept that.”
“So, let’s say- just for sake of argument- that you could make a picture of a daisy by telling the computer 1100, 0101, 1101, 0011, 1101. But the computer doesn’t have commas. The only way the computer knows where one number stops and the other begins is from the instructions it’s given. They tell it where to break the flow of digits.”
I had a mental image of Apple Bloom the first time she’d tried to help me making tarts. Somehow or other she’d managed to misread the recipe and duplicated the amount for one ingredient with the next, and then proceeded right down the line to use last ingredient’s amount for the next ingredient. I do not want to talk about what came out of the oven after that. “And what happens,” I said quietly, “if somebody puts one digit too many, or one digit too few, into those instructions?”
“This,” Clockwork said, ripping the sheet of paper out of Mr. Blinky and shaking it. “Data losses. Data corruption. Sometimes you get lucky and you get most of the picture, with a bit of it missing. Other times the whole thing fails from the glitch onward. In a math problem, like trajectory analysis or probability calculations, you will get an answer that makes no sense, or worse you’ll get one that looks right but is very, very wrong. But the one thing you will absolutely never get is what you started out with, because once you get an error in the data, that’s gone for good. You have to start over with fresh, corrected data once you find out how the error got there in the first place.”
“But you can fix it, right?”
“Well, yeah, we can correct the problem. If it’s hardware that’ll be simple. But if it’s true data corruption it’s easier to just throw out all the data, good and bad, and start over from scratch.” He wadded up the picture and tossed it into the corner. “In any case, this copy definitely failed.”
I looked at Twilight, who was looking right back at me. Slowly she did her minute, single nod. She had heard every word of my conversation with Clockwork. The room wasn’t that big, and Clockwork hadn’t been quiet.
Clockwork was working with data- numbers, information, stuff- the kind of stuff that Twilight’s Integrated Magic Thought Alicorn was made of. The kind of stuff she had been before she came to Earth, if I believed her, and I did. With this blinking box Clockwork and his friends were almost, but not quite, able to send a picture from one room to another in the same building. The Integrated Magic Thought Alicorn and its interfaces were able to send… people.
They could turn people into numbers. They could turn numbers into people.
How many ones and zeroes did it take to make a person?
And Trixie had predicted that I would only lose four percent of my ones and zeroes en route to wherever she was going to send me. One digit out of twenty-five gone? Or whole segments here and there? That crumpled-up failed picture in the corner probably only had one single digit wrong in it, but it had been almost totally ruined. What would have arrived on the other end? Would it have been anything like me?
And Twilight Sparkle, if Trixie was to be believed, lost a lot more than four percent of her data. What had she lost? Was it ripped out of her, or did she give it up freely? And could she ever get it back?
I’d thought Pinkie Pie was broken in some strange fashion, but I was looking at a filly who had been broken, quite literally broken, from the very beginning.
And it made me so very, very angry- especially since I couldn’t do anything to the pony… alicorn… thing that had done it in the first place.
Twilight shut the printing press manual, set it on a shelf, and walked back over to us. The computer colts were taking apart Mr. Blinky’s casing, flipping switches, making the blinking lights go out. “Mine,” she said quietly, pointing to the printing press with one hoof.
Clockwork, having finished his lecture, was trying to help his friends. “How’s that again?” he asked, his head coming back up.
“Mine,” Twilight repeated, pointing to the printing press.
“Oh, that?” Clockwork shrugged. “Sure, you can use it if you want. It’s too much work for us to throw all that stuff away. You’ll need to get a budget for paper, though. Some of the old ink might still be good, but the paper was taken by the arts clubs last year. But why would you want it?”
“Literature club.”
Clockwork blinked at Twilight, then looked at me. “Oh sweet sun and moon,” he gasped, “you’re with that lunatic Pinkie Pie, aren’t you?” The geek chorus around him froze at their work. “Please, PLEASE don’t tell her we were using a picture of Fluttershy,” he begged, bowing his head in fear.
“We won’t say a word,” I said. “But if she finds out for herself, I won’t make any promi- what are you doing, sugarcube?” Twilight had walked past me, gently shoving her way through the tangle of computer club members and reaching a hoof into the hole left by one of the panels. She twisted it for a few seconds, then pulled out what looked like a strange-shaped little light bulb.
“Burnout,” she said, and dropped the thing into Clockwork’s hooves. “I theorize intermittent failure in this relay that does not show up in standard tests. Replace and retry.”
One of the other colts stuck his head into the gap. “I think she’s right,” he said. “It’s a tube on the modem card. Regular tests wouldn’t even touch it.”
Clockwork stared at Twilight, who was already walking towards the door. “How did she know?” he gasped.
I shrugged. “Lucky guess? She reads a lot of books, that’s all I know.”
Before Twilight could reach the door it slammed open, and there stood Pinkie Pie, one hoof on the handle of a shopping cart full of stuff. “There you are!” she snapped. “I told you two to meet me next door! The others are already there!”
“This is next door,” I pointed out.
“The OTHER next door! Now come on!” I thought I was out of reach and that Twilight would get the dragging treatment, but Pinkie passed her by, ran over to me, and began dragging me out of the room. For her part Twilight walked out peacefully, put her forehooves on the shopping cart, and pushed it along the hall past our club room to the door in the corner of the building. Fluttershy (still in bunny suit) and Rainbow Dash (still in T-shirt and bloomers that showed off a rainbow-colored lightning bolt cutie mark) stood waiting by the door.
“Are we all present?” Pinkie grinned. “Then let’s begin Operation: Get All The Snacks!” She stood on her hind legs, then balanced effortlessly on one leg and said, “Guard the shopping cart, Twilight.” Her raised hind leg kicked forward, and the door slammed open to reveal the Cooking Club room.
Pinkie Pie strutted in like she owned the place- and she probably thought she did. Four fillies and a colt in aprons and chef’s hats had been sitting on stools around the faculty advisor, a somewhat chubby mare with a teal coat and a mane done up in a swirl of lavender with pink highlights. She wore two gumball-sized pink pearls for earrings, and she didn’t seem the least bit shocked by the intruder or we tag-alongs following her into the room. In fact, she seemed amused- a feeling not shared by the cooking club members.
“The SOP Brigade requires a stove!” Pinkie declared, looking around the room. The cooking club had eleven ovens with stovetops scattered around the room, plus a large set of sinks for washing-up cabinets, and an extra-large refrigerator. Pinkie circled around the equipment, looking it over. “Which one is your best one?” she asked.
“Wh-wh-who are you?” the colt replied. “How dare you come in here and demand a stove?”
“I’m Pinkie Pie!” The chirp implied that this fact was the greatest thing since hay fries. “And I don’t think it’s fair that your club be the only club with a kitchen!”
“We ARE the cooking club,” the colt said. “And I’m the club president. And this equipment is provided by the school for the purpose of advancing the culinary arts,” he snarled, “not so a self-centered filly can have a new toy!”
“Um, Pinkie? I thought you joined every club in the school,” I asked quietly.
“Not every club,” Pinkie replied. “I skipped this one because I learned it all in middle school. So you,” she said, shooting the cooking club president a disapproving look, “don’t have to worry about me treating an oven like it was just a toy! So which one’s the best?”
The advisor spoke up. “Number seven is the newest, Pinkie dear,” she said, “but it’s electric and not so good at baking. Besides, I’m sure your club room won’t have an outlet for it. But number two in the corner is a gas stove, and it’s a fine baker with a clean burn. I can make sure the old gas hookup in your classroom is still working before it’s installed.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Cake!” Pinkie looked at me and pointed. “Well, don’t just sit there- go get it!”
“Um…” I looked from Mrs. Cake to Pinkie and back and forth a couple times more. I finally settled on Pinkie. “Are you telling me you want me to just go over there, pick up the stove, and carry it back to the club room?” Oh, my aching back.
“No, silly! Cut off the pilot light first, then shut off the gas, then disconnect the feed line!” Pinkie said. “Safety first, you know!”
“I absolutely forbid it!” the cooking club president shouted. “I challenge your very right to even suggest-“
“A CHALLENGE?” Pinkie said, and immediately she stood eyeball to eyeball with the cooking club president. “On what grounds?”
“Um…” I give the colt credit, he only hesitated for a second. Then again, any male pony who proudly claims the title of president of a high school cooking club has more than his share of gumption to start with. “That an inexperienced filly such as yourself cannot possibly put valuable kitchen equipment to its proper use!”
“Oooooh,” the faculty advisor said, smiling, “bad move.”
Pinkie grinned. It suddenly dawned on me she’d been hoping for this confrontation. She’d been looking forward to it, and she expected to stomp this foal into the ground with all four horseshoes. “I accept your challenge,” she said. “If I win, not only do I get the stove, but the cooking club must swear everlasting fealty to the SOP Brigade!”
“If I win,” the cooking club president said, not batting an eye at Pinkie’s outlandish terms, “you and yours leave and never darken our door again!”
Pinkie stepped back from the club president, considering this point. “Um… that’s not very fair to you,” she said. “You deserve a lot more than that if we win. How about… um… I know!” She went to the back of our little group and pushed Fluttershy, still in that bunny suit, to the front. As she propped the panicked, whimpering yellow pegasus up with her hooves, Pinkie said, “If we lose, you get to keep Fluttershy!”
“WHAT?” The cooking club president and I said it at once, but I was louder, and in an instant I stood between the two, glaring at Pinkie. “Pinkie, Fluttershy is not a thing to be traded around!”
“She is so!” Pinkie said, hugging Fluttershy in a manner that made the poor filly more nervous than ever. “She’s the SOP mascot, and thus SOP property! So there!”
Rainbow Dash rose into the air from behind Pinkie. “Hey,” she said, “I’m member number one of the Fluttershy Fan Club. And I say; chill out. Pinkie’s got this.” She hovered over Pinkie, looking down into her eyes, and said, “Eye of the tiger, right Pinkie?”
“You know it!”
“And besides,” Dash said as she righted herself and settled back to the floor, “this looks like it might be fun! So let’s do this thing!”
I looked into Fluttershy’s eyes, which were silently beseeching me to rescue her from the crazy pink pony. But then I looked into the crazy pink pony’s eyes… and I saw nothing but calm confidence. She didn’t think defeat was a possibility- and thus she was willing to bet Fluttershy on the outcome.
So, this is adventure, huh?
“Er… that’s not necessary!” the cooking club president said hurriedly. “Believe me, never seeing your face again is more than adequate!”
“Oh, but I insist,” Pinkie said. “Think how successful your club events will be when cute little Fluttershy is dressed up as a waitress, delivering your creations to the customers…”
Fluttershy passed out in Pinkie’s arms.
“Fine! Anything! Let’s just get on with it!”
Pinkie nodded. “Then as the challenged party I choose the nature of the challenge. And the battlefield shall be… CUPCAKES! Bring it in, Twilight!” As Twilight pushed the shopping cart in, Pinkie continued, “Two teams, Cooking Club against SOP Brigade, five ponies each! I’ve brought enough ingredients for each pony to make a tray of twenty cupcakes! I’ve also brought trays for everyone,” she pulled out a huge stack of metal cupcake trays, “eight of which the cooking club may keep for its own use after the challenge.
“All cupcakes will be made from scratch- no cake mixes!” Pinkie grinned. “Once baking is done all contestants will withdraw while Mrs. Cake ices them so we don’t know whose is whose! Then we return- and then we’ll have an eating contest! Every pony must eat at LEAST one from EVERY tray!”
My stomach froze in shock at this news. I like sweets, but ten cupcakes at one sitting? From the looks of things a couple of the cooking club members shared my feelings on the subject.
“After everyone’s sampled one cupcake from every tray, they can then go back and grab more cupcakes from whichever tray they like best! The contest ends either when all cupcakes are eaten or when nopony wants to eat any more! The team with the first tray to go empty wins… AND the team with the member who eats the most cupcakes wins! If there’s a tie, Mrs. Cake will determine the tiebreaker!” Pinkie settled back, crossed her hooves, and said, “Any questions?”
“Seems perfectly simple to me,” Mrs. Cake said. “I’m sure that when all you foals and fillies were just a bit younger, you dreamed of the day when you could eat all the cupcakes you could hold!”
One of the cooking club members raised her hoof. “Actually, once I DID get to eat all the cupcakes I could hold… and then I couldn’t hold them anymore.” The poor filly’s natural lime-green coat was going darker green by the minute.
“Nontheless the rules are quite fair,” Mrs. Cake said. “And, young man, you’re about to learn why it’s not wise to issue challenges to ponies you don’t know yet. That filly,” she pointed to Pinkie, “was the star student in my husband’s cooking classes and club at Rock Garden Middle School. She knows her way around a kitchen as well as I do.”
Pinkie smirked, and this time it was the club president’s turn to go a little green.
So, the contest happened.
On our side of things, it became clear very early on that Rainbow Dash had no business within ten feet of a stove. Pinkie Pie had to insist that, since the cooking club had Mrs. Cake to advise, she be allowed to coach the SOP brigade. Otherwise I think Dash’s cupcakes would have poisoned everybody. Fluttershy’s weren’t really much better; what she ended up with were more like very thick sugar cookies than cupcakes. Better stick to tea for now, Fluttershy, until you get more practice.
Twilight Sparkle listened to Pinkie Pie rattle off a recipe just once, nodded, and began making her own cupcakes with a precision I can only describe as mechanical. It’s the first time I ever saw someone scoop a precisely level cup of flour out of a bag- as in, the top was flat and flush with the rim of the measuring cup the moment it came into view. The rest of her effort was that mechanical, except for one moment a couple of minutes into baking when she opened her oven, stuck her horn in for a moment or two, and then made a minor adjustment to the temperature knob, murmuring something about calibration errors.
I wonder if all unicorns can use their horns as thermometers, or if it’s another one of Twilight’s strange alien powers.
Pinkie Pie, of course, was able to do her own work while going around the SOP brigade to provide advice and encouragement. Her method was a controlled chaos that had me convinced, moment to moment, that the resulting cupcakes would fall, that they’d be hard as bricks, or that the tasters would pick eggshell out of their teeth for a week. At one point she was hopping on one leg from stove to stove, stirring the batter with the upper hooves while using the raised lower hoof to hold ingredients yet to be added. I don’t know if she was showing off or if she always cooked like that.
And then there was me. I take second place to no pony when it comes to fruit pies, tarts, chips, anything involving fruit. As you might guess, I’m especially talented with apples, but I can do a lemon meringue pie almost as well, and my pecan pie will go down your throat like a delightful lead brick. But cupcakes… aren’t my thing. And when I absent-mindedly added cinnamon to the batter out of habit, I think that kind of sank any hope I had of placing in the top five. Which meant the SOP’s hopes for glory rested solely on Pinkie, unless the cooking club members had a preference for machine-made store-bought cupcakes like what I knew Twilight’s would taste like.
Then the baking was done, and one by one the contestants left the cooking club’s kitchen as Mrs. Cake began frosting the cupcakes with a simple plain white icing from a tube. That took a little while- not quite half an hour, I think, which is a lot faster than I’d be able to ice two hundred cupcakes singlehoofed.
Then we went back in, seeing ten plates of cupcakes in their wrappers, each plate with a number on it. I had a twinge when I looked at plate #10, the only one on which all the cupcakes were precisely the same height and general shape. Twilight’s, without a doubt- ones and zeroes again. Rainbow Dash’s lumpy, misshapen things on tray #5 were so obviously hers that no debate was possible. Likewise I recognized Fluttershy’s cupcake-scones on tray #6, flat, round, and as I found when I ate one, incredibly hard and dense. Fortunately the cooking club had had one failure of their own- a distinct burnt smell coming up through the icing on tray #4.
And I spotted mine as well- tray #2, the only tray of cupcakes that reeked of cinnamon.
The first ten cupcakes of course were eaten all at the same time, the group of ten rotating around the table with each cupcake in a sort of here-we-go-round-the-salt-lick parade. Thanks to blind luck or something I started out with Rainbow Dash’s tray, and the experience was… not as bad as I’d expected, but nowhere near good. Dash hadn’t bothered to mix her batter evenly, is all I’ll say on that. Twilight’s tasted plain, bland and storebought, as I expected, but so did #8 and #3, which made me feel a bit better about my chances.
Do not ask me to tell you how my own cupcake tasted. I do not want to talk about it.
As soon as the tenth cupcake was down, Fluttershy and one of the cooking club fillies surrendered. The cooking club pony, the one who had mentioned the bad experience with cupcakes as a little filly, wobbled out of the room, I suppose headed for the bathroom to un-hold her cookies. For the rest of us the eating contest began in earnest. After tasting all of the entrants, I’d decided that tray #1 and tray #7 were the two best tasting of the lot, and #1 was more recent in my mind, so I went for that one first.
So did four other ponies.
The cooking club president went for tray #7 for his eleventh cupcake, choking it down as quickly as he could, grabbing another as soon as he could set aside an empty wrapper from the first, before he’d even finished chewing.
Twilight simply continued where she left off on her parade around the table, taking a cupcake, eating it efficiently, then spiking the wrapper on her horn. One of the cooking club fillies, also a unicorn, saw this and began doing likewise. Everyone else made trips back and forth to their ovens and laid the wrappers on the stovetop.
And Pinkie? She went over to tray #2 and ate one of my cupcakes, showing every sign that she loved cinnamon cupcakes with vanilla icing. Then she bounded to #5, Rainbow’s rejects, and ate one of those with every bit as much enjoyment. Then she took one from #6, and I swear I saw that one hit her tummy and rebound.
I managed to get one more cupcake from tray #1 before it was emptied. Another cooking club member dropped out with cupcake #13, taken from tray #7. The cooking club president was on his fourth from the same tray when I went over and almost- almost- took one from there. Then I saw Pinkie take one from #10 and eat it, actually humming out loud with delight as she snarfed it down.
I didn’t know which tray Pinkie’s was, though I hoped it was the now empty #1. But anyone who had paid more than passing attention to our side of the battle would have known, despite Mrs. Cake’s one-size-hides-all icing, which cupcakes belonged to the rest of the SOP Brigade. And Pinkie was deliberately seeking out the substandard Brigade baked goods and making a point of obviously enjoying them.
I took my hoof away from tray #7 and took a cupcake off of tray #10, stepped in front of Twilight (who had just swallowed one of Fluttershy’s gut-bombs whole) and made certain she saw me eat that cupcake. I took my time with it, smiling all the way. I then took one more, just to make the point.
I didn’t eat any more of Fluttershy’s or Rainbow Dash’s, though. I’m sorry, girls, but there are limits to what my mouth and my stomach will endure for loyalty. I took one from #4, though, because every pony has a bad day, and besides they weren’t burned all that badly.
That made fifteen cupcakes in my belly, which my belly decided was quite enough, thank you, and by the way don’t expect to sleep well tonight.
When Rainbow Dash finished cupcake number nineteen I could hear her stomach making really disturbing noises. She groaned, her face a color I never imagined could exist in the natural spectrum, but she pushed herself back to the trays for one more. Fortunately I pulled her back and shoved her out into the hall before she could do herself- or the rest of us- serious harm. She told me later she barely made it to the toilet before bringing it all up again- and in the very next breath demanded a rematch once she’d had time to train in competitive eating.
By the time I closed the door behind Rainbow Dash the eating was down to Pinkie, Twilight, and the cooking club president. The cooking club president had finished off tray #7 at last and was working his way through #8, but his chewing was slow and reluctant. Pinkie Pie seemed to be vibrating a little bit, but she was still working her way through the SOP Brigade product, though I noticed with a little pride that tray #2 held a couple fewer than trays #5 and #6. Apparently someone besides Pinkie had enjoyed cinnamon cupcakes.
And Twilight looked as if she had just begun the contest, still making a very democratic circuit of the table, eating one, and moving on. Apparently her motto was, no cupcake left behind.
Finally the cooking club president put a wrapper on his quite large stack on his stove, turned slowly back to the trays, and then collapsed to the floor, curling up into a ball and moaning in pain. He hit the wall at twenty-seven cupcakes. Mrs. Cake checked to make sure he was all right before saying, “Well, I’m ready to call this if-“
“Not yet, Mrs. Cake!” Pinkie cried. “We can’t quit until there’s a winner!”
On hearing that, I relaxed. Mrs. Cake wouldn’t have said anything about calling it unless we’d won both contests. With only Pinkie and Twilight still scarfing down cupcakes, the SOP Brigade had definitely won that half of the contest. Tray #1 had been the first to empty out, and if it had belonged to any of the cooking club that would have ended in a tie, with some sort of tie-breaker needed. The fact that there was no tie meant that tray #1 had been an SOP Brigade tray… and there was only one SOP Brigade member it could have been.
For the record, Twilight Sparkle won the eating contest, thirty-eight cupcakes to Pinkie’s thirty-five. Pinkie claimed that she would have won in the end if the cupcakes hadn’t run out, a claim Twilight, of course, accepted in total silence.
The school custodian installed the stove in the literature club room the very next day. Once it was in place, we all went to the cooking club room to watch Pinkie administer the oath of total obedience and fealty to the cooking club’s president. I don’t know how much of his rotten expression came from lingering stomachache or having been defeated… but I’m sure a good chunk of it came from the nature of the oath.
“Cross my heart, hope to fly,
Stick a cupcake in my eye!”
I thought he was going to fold up again when he repeated that, but he managed to do it… and then do it again when Pinkie made him do the dance that went along with it, which ended with him holding a hoof over one eye.
That done, Pinkie smiled and hugged the cooking club president. “That’s settled, then!” she said. “I’ll be along now and again to check up on you, and I’ll apply for auxiliary membership in the cooking club in case you need me for things.” Then her expression turned sinister as she leaned up over the club president (who was a good bit taller than she was) and added, “But remember… a Pinkie Promise isn’t something you can just forget. A Pinkie Promise is good…”
Lightning flashed outside, and the power flickered out just long enough for a demonic-looking Pinkie Pie to say,
“FOREVER!!”
The lights came back on, and the cooking club president lay passed out on his back.
I would have said something to Pinkie about doing cruel things like that if Mrs. Cake and I hadn’t been so busy laughing.
To Be Continued
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You have done excellent work and I look forward to you rendition of the Endless eight arc if this fic continues on that long.
2612066 If I do it, it will be much shorter than the anime. (And there was much rejoicing.)
One scene occurs to me...
I was feeling somewhat uncomfortable at Twilight's stare. This was nothing new... when Twilight decided to stare, well, discomfort was as inevitable as apple pie on a Sunday.(To me, anyhow-- Granny had baked at least one ever week since she had turned eight, or so she says.)
"There is data you should be aware of."
Yay. Data. This could not be good.
"This data will make certain that probable future events will be easier to handle."
Okay... maybe data could be good. But I doubted it.
"There is a simple fact, a constant, variable in intensity from case to case. But a constant nonetheless."
I could have insisted that Twilight just up and tell me. I also knew-- now-- that that would be a mistake. Twilight always tells you what you need to know. Precisely.
"Everypony in this school is crazy."
Then again... I'd kind of figured that part out already.
Rainbow Dash is just having the time of her life, isn't she? All the upside of hanging out with Pinkie Pie, none of the headaches.
Oh man that total canon headfake!
I lol'd so hard!
Wrong club!
2612066
Oh god I hope nopony has to write that
LOVING this story. Even in her bad moments, Pinkie Pie is at least ten times better than Haruhi!
And having the contest be with the cooking club instead of the computer club, as well as Applejack's dawning realization about data loss, were perfect.
Welp! This is a real ride, in turns hilarious, touching, disturbing and then right back to hilarious again. Keep up the great work!
It's awesome like always good job my friend.
Maybe you could change this:
Just to stick to the pony theme and boy they cooking contest was brilliant!, and I expect Rarity ti be showing up shortly......
2652030 I'll fix that hand slip soon.
And Rarity shows up first thing next chapter. Mysterious transfer unicorn is mysterious.