Cause, Effect, and Consequences

by Coltsguy

Nothing is Going Like I Thought it Would

"I'm Popeye the Sailor Maaaan!"

"He's Popeye the Sailor Maaaan!"

"I'm strongs to the finish 'cause I eats me spinach! I'm Popeye the Sailor Maaaan! *woo woo*"

Oh man was I having a blast with this. I quickly forgot that I had no damn clue which way Rarity's place was again and I was too damn stubborn and bored to just teleport my stupid ass there. So instead of wandering around aimlessly in silence, I created an illusion of Popeye from the classic cartoon show. Wait, you don't know who Popeye is? Google it you lazy bums! He made spinach cool! Just like the Doctor made bow ties cool.

What was even better was that it was so absurd that ponies weren't even looking at us. Well, most of them anyway. I had apparently passed by the same shop three times before the owner stopped me on my fourth pass. He was only too eager to give me directions to Rarity's place and send me on my way. By then it had been almost forty minutes since I had left Sugarcube. When I made it to Carousel Boutique, another ten minutes had gone by.

I dispelled my illusion and went up to the door to let her know I was there. Before I could, I noticed that it was left slightly open. Instead of knocking like I was planning, I slowly opened it up in case something was going on. There was, but not what I was expecting. Rarity was in the center of the room levitating a large number of clothing items around her. What was she doing?

"What are you doing?" I asked; voicing my thoughts.

"I'm looking through my collection so that I don't make the mistake of repeating one of my designs."

"I see," was all the response I could muster.

"I'm taking a small break from my work on our dresses for your upcoming performance at Canterlot Hall to do this. I still haven't started on yours as of yet."

I grimaced at the thought of that horror before continuing on.

"What you're not just going to put me in a penguin suit?" I said sarcastically.

Rarity shifted her gaze from the clothing and gave me a quizzical look.

"What is this... penguin suit you're talking about?"

Me and my terminology at work.

"What I mean is I'm a bit surprised that you aren't just going to put me into a tuxedo and call it good."

"Honestly! The very thought of simply throwing together an ensemble for something such as this would be a stain on my pride as a designer!"

Yeah, I didn't have a dog in that fight. I wear sleeveless shirts for goodness' sake. Fashion isn't something I had any knowledge of. Still, if I was going to see about getting work here I'd probably need to know something. I really hope I'm wrong about that, though.

"Well, there's a reason I'm here today."

"Obviously there is darling. You wouldn't be here otherwise."

Suppress the urge to make a comeback jab.

"The reason I came was to see if you had some sort of job I could do.You see, despite the fact that Celestia is taking care of my expenses, I still feel like I should earn a bit of money on my own. Is there anything you would like for me to do for you?"

Rarity reacted by giving me a bit of an apprehensive look.

"I know I'm not the most fashion forward guy out there," I continued, "but that doesn't mean I don't have the capacity to be helpful in some way. You even asked me to work for you when that whole 'turning Ponyville into people' thing happened."

"I did offer you a position here didn't I? Of course, that was before I found out that your spells disappear when you leave Equestria."

"Only the chaos spells. That doesn't mean I'm incapable of doing anything."

"Capability is only one requirement. Still, I'm nothing if not generous."

I let out a snort of laughter that I was incapable of holding in. In response, Rarity narrowed her eyes at me.

"Sorry. That was just too good of a pun to let slip by," I said sheepishly.

"Yes," she stated dryly, "that was positively hilarious. Nevertheless, I suppose I can have you run errands or something for me."

"Well, what about those dresses you were talking about?"

"Which ones? The ones for my boutique or the ones that we were to wear at your gathering?"

"The latter one," I said with a bit of disdain. "I still don't like the thought of going to that, let alone coming up with something I have to do for this so called performance that Celestia is making me do. However, the fact that it's tomorrow means that I could use my magic on them and not worry about the aftereffects of it. After all, I don't think you would reuse the same dresses for them would you?"

"Well, only Twilight and myself will be needing something to wear. Everypony else declined my request to make them something."

"They probably just don't want you to overexert yourself. Still, hose two on short notice plus what you had to take care of already-"

"I am perfectly capable of finishing all of my work on time even with the inclusion of the new dresses for Twilight and myself."

"And you'd be done even sooner and use less material if I helped out," I pointed out.

"They would also disappear after you went home."

"Which wouldn't matter since most likely none of us would wear any of those garments more than once. Each of us for a different reason, but my point still stands," I countered; my voice getting more gruff.

"I still would rather not make you do anything involving our formal attire."

"Make me? I was trying to get paid helping you like a proper job or something, but now I'm worked up enough about this that I think I'd just do this for free."

"I'd really rather just do this myself if it's all the same to you."

Man, it was like talking to a brick wall on the subject. This was getting me nowhere. She didn't want my help and I didn't think I could convince her to let me do so. For that matter, why was I trying so hard to get her to let me help her? Oh forget it.

"Alright Rarity. You have the authority on the subject, but if you end up needing my help on this let me know. I literally have nothing better to do right now."

"But of course you do! You still have to come up with a performance piece for the show. You said so yourself that you haven't planned a thing to do yet. I would imagine that you should be focusing on that right now."

"Yeah, I know," I said flippantly and turned towards the door. "I'll go do that instead."

"Ta ta!~" she said in a sing-song voice.

I opened the door and left Carousel Boutique behind me. That little side trip for cash was a bust. I honestly didn't think that she'd be so stubborn with what she was working on. I guess that it might be my fault for trying to force myself into the fold so to speak. I can't make her give me a job. That's not how things work. I have to look for one that's already available.

Ha! Like that would work. I'm steadily getting the ghost town treatment. Who would hire a guy that they were all trying to avoid? And for that matter, why do they find me so imposing anyway? Yeah, I'm taller than them but so what? Ugh, maybe that just holds more weight here. Though it has been a bit more of a prevalent absence since the party with Discord.

That was when it clicked. I was some weird creature that they hadn't seen before. I was using chaos magic. I was being buddy-buddy with Discord. Basically, to the ponies I was Discord Jr. Terrific. Just fucking terrific. I'm not sure that's even a salvageable position in their eyes. Yeah, he may be reformed, but that's pretty recent and some grudges are hard to forget.

Well, that pretty much limits my options to the girls and possibly Zecora since she seems level headed. Actually, I take that back. No, not the level headed part. I mean she lives in the Everfree Forest by herself. She may do that on purpose, but I doubt that she has any spare money laying around with her living like a pseudo hermit.

Let's go over my options a bit. Rarity almost tossed me out of her shop so that's a no. Applejack won't let me use magic on her farm and if I do things manually then the two of us will probably get on each others nerves like last time. Rainbow Dash is on the weather team so I don't think that there's anything for me there. Pinkie Pie is just an employee for the Cakes and I don't think they would hire me given their past disposition towards me. Well, it's not doomed to failure like the others so I'll see about that one later. I'm not sure if I'm on good enough terms with Fluttershy to ask her for a job. Besides, I'm pretty sure Angel would just mess with me the whole time and I would fail to get anything done.

That pretty much left me with Twilight Sparkle as my primary option. The problem is that right now she's avoiding me while this running joke is going on. Actually, I think that this joke might help me with achieving that end. I can get to the resolution step and see if she is willing to give me a job out of guilt.

...Okay that felt a bit dirty. Maybe I can ask for something afterwards instead. Eeeh, that still feels like the same thing. Dang it. I guess I'll just let things play out and see if I can find somewhere to bring it up.

For now, it was time for a conclusion to the joke. A good start would probably be at the library. I charged myself up a bit with some magic and teleported to in front of the giant tree. Standing just outside the library was Rainbow Dash and from the look of panic on her face I'd say she was probably on the lookout for me.

"Hey there Seth! How's it goin'?"

"It's going alright. How about you?"

"Oh, you know, it's going pretty good."

Yeah, that turned into an awkward silence.

"So," I pressed on eventually, "any reason why we're just standing out here?"

"Just, um, watching ponies go by us is all."

I looked around and managed to hide a smile as not only were there no other ponies around, but you could hear the sound of a cricket chirping somewhere nearby. As if to accentuate the situation, a sudden slight breeze blew through carrying a tumbleweed right by us. I looked back at Rainbow Dash who quickly gave me a cartoony smile.

"Uh huh," I replied slowly. "Did they take five or something?"

I ended up cutting off her reply with a wave of my hand.

"It doesn't really matter too much. I just wanted to talk to Twilight for a bit."

Yeah, that look of panic came right back to her face.

"Wait! You can't go in!" she exclaimed while failing to hide that same panic in her voice.

"And why can't I go in?" I asked while crossing my arms.

"Um, because she's, uh, doing an experiment! Yeah! She's in the middle of one of her egghead experiments right now and can't be messed with!"

Wow, that actually a pretty decent cover story. Color me impressed. It was good enough that I had to think of a way in to circumvent her. The trouble was that I couldn't think of anything. I just ended up staring at Rainbow Dash for I'm not sure how long before I noticed some thing odd. Her eyes has lost their focus a bit and it seemed like she wasn't really staring at me, but instead she was staring at nothing.

"Rainbow Dash?"

She mumbled something I couldn't quite hear.

"Rainbow Dash!" I shouted at her.

That seemed to snap her to her senses. She shook her head violently for a split second and looked around a bit before her gaze was focused on me once again.

"You okay? you kinda spaced out a bit there Dash."

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said with a voice filled with more confidence than I was expecting.

"What just happened? You spaced out a bit there."

"I don't really know," she said with a bit more of the uncertainty that I had expected. "You went quiet like you sometimes do. Then there was some colors and I don't really remember anything else until you shouted at me."

That was pretty weird. Did she just space out hard like me? What did she mean by colors? Dang it, I hate when I feel like I missed something obvious.

"Well, I'm not sure what just happened," I spat out at last. "I suppose I just was thinking too hard about trying to get inside."

"Well, why don't you just walk inside? It's not that hard you know."

"...What?"

"It's not that hard to get in there. You could just teleport inside if you think it's too small for you to get through or something dumb like that."

"..."

What the flying fuck? What's up with this? Up until a second ago she was trying to keep me out of the library and now she's acting like she doesn't care at all. Something happened. She saw something while I was zoned out. Perhaps Twilight signaled her? Dammit this is getting weirder and weirder. And not funny weird, but more like the Twilight Zone weird. Heh. Well, that was a little funny I suppose. I guess if I go inside then I may get some answers. If not, I can always ask Twilight if she might know anything. Besides, I need to get this joke back on track.

"I guess I'll just teleport inside. It sounds stupid to think I can't just walk inside," I said with a hint of confusion.

"Yeah, that does sound stupid," she said with a light chuckle. "I'm going to go on home since I don't have to do anything else today. Later!"

With a salute, I watched the rainbow colored mare take off in the direction I presumed her house was in.

"That was incredibly odd," I spoke voicing my thoughts aloud, "but whatever. I'd like my DS back now."

With a quick spin of my heel I was facing the library again. I quickly teleported inside and stumbled a bit over some books on the ground. After I regained my balance, I noticed that I wasn't just unlucky. Books of all kinds littered the floors in piles, stacks, and for some reason a miniature house. The shelves that they were meant to rest on were nearly bare. I found the couple of books somehow resting on the ceiling when I looked up especially humorous. Standing just off from the center of the room was Twilight. She was continually levitating books in front of herself, scanning through them for a bit, and then closing them while moving them out of the way for the next book.

Ahh, Twilight in deep frantic research mode. It always was a bit humorous... to start with. It quickly gets old if no other stimulus is added in. Heh, I guess that's my role this time. I stepped around the books until I was standing right behind her. After a few more seconds I put a shield over my bottom half to avoid any hilarious accidents.

"Hey there Twilight."

Twilight responded with a high pitched yell and jumped up into the air. I was lucky in the fact that when she did jump into the air her limbs shot straight out and while her jump placed her at my eye level where the shield wasn't her ramrod straight legs had gone to the sides of my face and missed hitting me altogether. She landed softly and quickly spun around to face me while at the same time her hold on the books was released and they fell to the ground with a 'thud!'

"Seth! Hello! What a surprise to see you here right now."

"I'm sure it is," I said knowingly.

"Well, um, whatever it is you're here for it can wait. I'm busy looking for something important."

Good cover. However, this one I was prepared for.

"That's fine. Just let me grab my DS and I'll get out of your way."

Her eyes widened and she turned her head around so that I couldn't see her face. It didn't take a genius to figure out why. Well, at least someone who knew what was going on anyway. After several seconds, I was about to comment on her lack of response when she turned back towards me.

"I would, but it's really cluttered right now. I'm really not sure where it is right at this moment. Let me finish this, clean up the mess, and then I'll give your game back to you."

That was a pretty nice save princess. Too bad I know how to answer that.

"Well, I have nothing better to do. I can wait for you to finish and when you're done I can help you clean up."

"Oh! Um, uh, I guess that's fine. It might take a while, though, so you might want to head back to your place for now."

"Nah. I'm fine. Anything that I was going to do there I can do here instead. Or whatever."

At that moment, my stomach growled to remind me that I still had not eaten yet. That gave her the perfect excuse.

"You sound like you haven't eaten today."

"I did, but training with Discord took it right back out."

"Well then you should probably go home and eat something," she said with some confidence returning to her demeanor.

Betrayed by my own body. What else was new? Still, I was not letting this go on any further.

"I can just eat here while I wait," I countered.

"I do not want you eating in here!" she exclaimed forcefully. "You'll get food all over the books!"

"I didn't really mean in here," I responded defensively with my arms raised. I knew not to mess with books around Twilight Sparkle. "I mean I can make something in your kitchen and eat there."

"You can't!" she snapped. "I have a, um, very important experiment going on in there!"

"Weren't you looking for something in here?"

"I'm perfectly capable of multitasking. Now, you should go home and get something to eat. I'll bring you your game after I'm done with everything here."

Dammit, there's no counter to that other than the truth! Dammit, dammit, dammit! Why can't I be smarter than this? With a heavy sigh I calmed my rising temper and relented to the fact that this joke was now going to take even longer. It's like a damn conventional law from 'SWTG' like 'Rule of Funny' and I had to just let it go because I'm, again, not smart enough to argue it away.

"Alright Twilight. I'll head home, get something to eat, and, ugh, maybe work on figuring something out for that performance Celestia wants me to do."

"That's great! I'll help you get there!"

"What do you-"

I actually cut myself off when I saw Twilight charge up her horn. I knew what she was doing to late to do anything about it as a bright flash encompassed my vision for a moment. A bit of blinking away the blindness later and I found myself standing in front of the door to the cabin. I groaned disdainfully as I went inside.

"Well, I suppose trying to do whatever I can to put this off isn't really helping me out any," I said out loud to myself as I made my way inside to the kitchen area. "I guess I'll just brainstorm some stuff while I wait for this joke to end."

Author's Note:

I was originally going to have a montage scene where Rarity and myself worked on those outfits, but I thought that continuing the running joke of Twilight messing up my DS and bringing it more to the forefront would be cooler. Plus it got me to write faster too! Maybe.

Comments

[D48]

Well, that was amusing, although I am kind of worried about Rainbow. It looks like something took a bite out of her memory there which could be a very bad sign given the earlier memory problems so I feel like it should be dealt with sooner rather than later.

[Allstar13521]

Did Seth just use a jedi mind-trick on Dash? I don't know wether that's cool or disturbing and I can't helpbut feel that Dash isn't going to be too pleased with it later.

[Kevin Lee]

"What just happened? You spaced out a bit there."
"I don't really know," she said with a bit more of the uncertainty that I had expected. "You went quiet like you sometimes do. Then there was some colors and I don't really remember anything else until you shouted at me."
That was pretty weird. Did she just space out hard like me? What did she mean by colors? Dang it, I hate when I feel like I missed something obvious.

I think that's supposed to be "I went quiet like you sometimes do..."

5075332 And I'm pretty sure it wasn't Seth that did it.

[Coltsguy]

7890319 Nah that's correct. I went quiet and she was pointing it out.