XIV - The Crime That Really Took The Cake (Pt. 3)
My Little Sly Cooper: Thievery is Magic
Written by Deyeaz
with the help of the ever-brilliant Alex Rite
XIV - The Crime That Really Took The Cake (Pt. 3)
It had been a few minutes since Bentley had finished his chiding to Murray about how “you shouldn’t make situations feel and seem worse if they are already going horribly wrong”. Murray, of course, said that he apologises... yet only disingenuously. Murray would have his little bit of trolling fun again. When? Well, not even I know that, fellow readers.
Where? I don’t know that either.
Why? Well... why not?
Meanwhile, the competitors in the National Dessert Competition were mourning the destruction of their contest entries, painful melancholy poisoning their very being as they stared down at their mutilated treats. Gustave Le Grand winced at the sight of his decimated eclairs, Mulia Miles could only weep for her slaughtered chocolate-mousse moose, and Donut Joe help back the urge to cry as he laid hurt eyes upon his ruined Donutopia. “This mystery gets more mysterious every minute!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, puffing on her bubble pipe.
“Well, you have to stop the wild accusations and get to the truth, eh?” What Twilight said may have sounded like a request, yet it was indeed a bit of a demand. At least, to her.
“Agreed,” Bentley said, returning with a slightly bashful Murray. “Everyone-”
“Everypony,” interrupted Rarity.
“Don’t care.” Bentley cleared his throat, leaving Rarity scoffing in offence. “Everyone, please return back to your temporary locomotive quarters whilst my companions and I attempt to unravel this mysterious atrocity.” Rather than expecting the chefs to comprehend what he said, they stared at the ex-reptile with a look of bewilderment.
Carmelita sighed and rubbed her temples in agitation. “What the dork said was that you should go back to your rooms while we try to solve this crime.” Gustave Le Grand, Mulia Miles, and Donut Joe finally nodded and hummed in understanding as they did as they were instructed and receded back to their quarters. “Anyways,” resumed Carmelita, “you can’t simply just accuse people-”
“Ponies,” interjected Rainbow Dash.
“No.” Rainbow launched an upset glare at Carmelita, who shook her head at the polychromatic athlete’s arbitrary correction. “You can’t simply accuse people without having evidence first...” Carmelita hesitated, the name of the pink baker slipping her mind as if her hooves were slick with water and the name itself was a soap bar. “Er... it was Pinkie Pie, correct?”
“Yepper-pepper-depper!” bubbly answered Pinkie.
Twilight, who despite her supreme dislike of the ex-fox, nodded in concurrence. “Right. So, Pinkie, if we’re going to solve this mystery, we need to find clues,” she said, emphasising the last word, as if the pink pony she was addressing was a clueless little filly. With her magic, the wisteria mare swapped hats with the pink mare, and removed the bubble pipe from Pinkie’s mouth. With a disinfecting washcloth, Twilight wiped the pipe’s mouthpiece and equipped it into her maw before blowing a small squad of bubbles.
“Precisely,” said Carmelita, shaking her head to clear it and make way for more brainstorming and hypothesising. “As a matter of fact, I think I may have an idea.”
“You do?” Sly tilted his head in confusion. “That was fast, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Carmelita cleared her throat and glided her tongue along her lips. “It was Sly,” she concluded simply.
Well... nopony said that her brainstorming and hypothesising had to be logical.
Gasps befell many of the ponies in the audience. Only Twilight, Murray, and Bentley were skeptical about it, their doubt palpable by their facial expressions and scoffs; Sly merely looked offended at her accusation. “What?” The four said.
“Carmelita, why would you say something as illogical as that?” Bentley asked of her.
“Oh, c’mon!” Carmelita pointed at Sly with an accusing hoof. “He’s a thief. He steals things. He probably ate some cake!”
“Yeah, I steal things. From criminals!” Sly retorted. “What use would I have with cake? I can’t eat it and not end up looking like the Pillsbury dough boy later on!”
“Besides, how could Sly have stolen the cake?” Twilight stepped forward to back Sly up in his defence. “He was sleeping with me the whole night!”
“Oh. Sleeping with you, eh?” Carmelita said wryly, wagging her eyebrows and hinting at what she thought was a rather lewd “pastime”.
“What do you-” Twilight Sparkle stopped midsentence, finally comprehending what Carmelita was getting at. Almost instantly, her wisteria-hued cheeks flooded with red and burned with heat. “Wha- UGH! It’s not like that!”
“Carmelita, that’s gross.” Sly grimaced heavily at the ex-fox’s accusations. “I mean... come on, why would Twilight do that? We’re friends, remember?”
“Y-yeah!” Twilight said, taken by surprise by his words. He just thought of themselves as friends? “I mean, why would I do that? Th-that’s not what you do with friends, anyway.”
“Oh? Methinks otherwise, judging by the looks on your face,” mused Carmelita, wagging her eyebrows.
“Okay, enough!” Sly stomped on the floor with a strong hoof. “Now can we please please please please pleeease get back to this treat-eating crime and be done with it?”
Carmelita scowled. Even though she was vehement and so adamant about her opinions on Sly’s “thievery”, she still felt guilty for accusing him. She and him had some history back home; both good and bad memories swam through her heads like ravenous sharks around a bleeding albacore. She remembered the first time Sly had kissed her at the Krakarov Volcano in Russia: It had been after they had defeated Clockwerk, the large mechanical owl that had murdered Sly’s father and had stolen the Cooper family book: the Thievius Raccoonus.
As the cop and robber had promised, Carmelita would give Sly a ten-second head start to flee as fast as he could after they had rid the world of Clockwerk. However, she knew something was off when Sly hesitated in running away. When the seconds had transpired... he had snaked in a kiss from her. And while she felt her heart soar like a rocket... when she went to leave, she had found that her right wrist had been cuffed to a railing where the facility once stood.
Boy, was she positively beside herself on that day.
“Fine,” Carmelita said, sighing heavily.
“Anyways...” Twilight shook her head to rid herself of the rather graphic image that had rudely invaded her mind. “So, Pinkie Pie, you were up, guarding the cake, all night.”
Pinkie looked at Twilight, slightly appalled by her sentence. She put a hoof to her chest and let out an offended gasp. “You’re not accusing me, are you?”
“No!” Twilight looked back at Pinkie, blowing on the pipe some more. “But maybe you saw something that can help us!”
“Ohhh... well... I saw a silhouette in the moonlight,” began Pinkie, reminiscing what went down earlier in the night.
“Good,” Carmelita said, nodding in approval. “Let’s try to retrace your steps.” With a salute, Pinkie started walking... backwards... towards the end of the train. With a roll of her eyes, Twilight followed her, with a scoffing Carmelita in tow.
“Then, I chased the culprit to the end of the train towards the caboose,” explained Pinkie Pie, opening the caboose door to reveal a kitchen-like section of the train, with sink, cupboards, and kitchen appliances and utensils. “But when I got there, he was gone.” Twilight and Carmelita entered the room and began sweeping the area for any clues or evidence that would assist them in their investigation.
“Aha!” Twilight said, her horn glowing. “Our first clue.” Carmelita grinned at what they had found, but when Pinkie Pie had tried to examine what they had discovered, Twilight was already sealing up a manilla envelope, the evidence that the ex-fox and unicorn had gathered hidden from prying eyes. Twilight tucked away the envelope into her gray saddlebag.
“I think we know who did it, Pinkie Pie,” Carmelita informed the pink pony, a smug look on her face. The pastel equine’s brow shot up in surprise at the sudden news.
“Really? Already?”
“Yes. But I need more evidence to confirm.” Twilight vacated the room with Pinkie Pie and Carmelita. “Tell us what happened next.”
“Well, I heard somepony else in the desert car and chased them up to the engine.” Pinkie explained as they then bolted down the train to the engine room. As they sprinted down, they saw the others bumming around in the locomotive’s sleeping quarters car: Sly was taking a short nap on his bunk; Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were preening themselves; Applejack was untying and retying her trusty lasso; Rarity was fussing over her mane, which was hanging over her right eye for some unknown reason; Bentley was trying to use his magic to make macrame out of a few stray rubber bands he found, and Murray was bouncing a rubber ball off of the car’s ceiling, saying “Bored” in a monotonous and repeated voice in rhythm with every ricochet.
“...But when I got there, all I saw was the conductor shoveling coal.” Pinkie concluded when the investigators reached the engine room, an area cramped with an abundance of black coal. On the room’s other side was the khaki-coloured Earth Pony conductor, a striped conductor’s cap on his brown-maned head and a red bandana draped around his neck, tossing in mound after mound of the black diamonds into the engine, fueling the locomotive even more.
“The conductor, eh?” Carmelita walked over and yanked off the conductor’s headwear before looking into it. The conductor only watched lazily as Twilight glanced in and gasped at what sat inside of the cap before her.
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” The unicorn exclaimed.
“I know... but still, evidence is evidence, and this says it all.” Carmelita watched as Twilight removed a second clue from the hat’s inside and stashed it in another manilla envelope before hiding it in her saddlebag. Pinkie had been trying to observe what the second clue could possibly be, but simply wore an agitated look upon her face as soon as the envelope was magicked out of sight. Carmelita replaced the cap back onto the head of the conductor, who simply adopted a slightly stuck-up look before returning to shoveling coal.
“What happened next, Pinkie?” Twilight asked of the pastel pony.
“Well... I went back to the desert car.” As quick as lightning, Pinkie Pie swapped hats with Twilight and made a mad dash back to the dessert car. Twilight and Carmelita followed and saw Pinkie fervently sweeping the area with a magnifying glass, checking every single nook and cranny for clues.
However, Pinkie Pie strayed too close to Twilight, who looked down upon her with lacklustre-glazed eyes. Pinkie grinned sheepishly at her presence, but with a dejected sigh, returned the large trilby hat back upon Twilight’s head while Pinkie wore the insipid-looking bowler hat once again. “...Yes?” Twilight said, expecting more from the baker that laid not one foot before her.
“Well, the curtains mysteriously closed, all on their own.”
“Strange...” Carmelita began pacing back and forth, she and Twilight simultaneously mulling the information around in their minds. “What else is there to tell?”
“I heard hoofsteps, a loud thud-” To emphasise her explanation, Pinkie Pie slammed straight into the wall of the car, falling on her hindquarters onto the floor with an unpleasant bump. “And then they were gone! When I opened the curtains, I saw the portrait by the door was all crooked.”
Twilight and Carmelita inched closer to the painting, examining it thoroughly. Almost at once, they spotted something rather appalling. “Oh my! What is... that!?” Her shock became more and more palpable as time stretched on. Twilight magically extracted whatever as on the portrait, placed the evidence in a third manilla envelope, and tucked it away in her saddlebag with the rest of the clues.
Pinkie Pie, who had been attempting to see what they had discovered, failed to even catch a glimpse of the clue yet again. She let out a feral growl, steam billowing from her ears in huge blasts due to her frustration.
“What next, Pinkie?” Carmelita inquired, turning around to face the pink mare, who quickly removed the look of anger on her face so that none may see it.
“That’s it!” said Pinkie in a bubbly tone. “I was guarding the cake the rest of the night.” Upon the combined force of both Twilight and Carmelita’s stares of skepticism, Pinkie’s lie was demolished in a mere fraction of a second. “I mean... I slept by the cake the rest of the night.”
“And when you woke up, half of the cake was gone?” Twilight inspected the cake once more.
“Exactly!”
“By Jove, I think we’ve got it!” Carmelita said, the orange ex-fox beaming with delight. “Quick, Pinkie Pie, call everyone back: we’ve got a cake culprit to catch!”
Several moments later, after the case had been solved and Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy confess to eating the cake....
After Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy finished their apologies, Carmelita looked around the room with a smug grin on her face.
"A blue feather, a pink hair strand, and a false eyelash... well, it looks like I've solved another mystery," she said a bit proudly. "No thanks is necessary."
"Unfortunately, Carmelita, that is not the case," said Twilight. Carmelita's grin began to turn into an angry scowl at Twilight's words.
"Are you saying that there was someone else who ate some of the MMMM?" asked Carmelita.
"Yes, and you already know exactly who it was," replied Twilight, a cunning smirk painted on her lips.
Carmelita began to get a nervous look on her face as everyone else in the desert car stared at the two mares.
"Well then, if there really was another pony who took a bite of the cake, which I'm sure there isn't, then why wouldn't I tell you?" Carmelita asked.
"Elementary, Carmelita," said Twilight. "It's because the other pony to eat it was... you!"
Everyone in the car gasped, including the three members of the Cooper Gang. After being chased by Carmelita for so long and given her black-and-white perspective of the law, they never expected to see her do anything bad. It had always seemed she did everything by the book. They couldn't even imagine her getting a simple parking ticket. After a few seconds of silence, Carmelita was able to regain her voice, and she had more things on her mind about Twilight than she could say all at once, which was a good thing since most of it was extremely rude and involved a lot of cursing.
"If you plan on accusing me, rookie, then you'd better have some good evidence," Carmelita said, her rage slowly growing. From the smug look on Twilight's face, Carmelita could tell that the unicorn was enjoying this, which only managed to make her even angrier.
"Well, if you want some solid evidence, other than the fact that you wouldn't stop accusing Sly," said Twilight, "the scent of cake on your breath smells pretty convincing."
Carmelita put a hoof to her mouth and huffed into it before giving it a good whiff. Her eyes shrunk to pinpoints when she realised that, yes, her breath was rank with cake. Everyone in the car gasped again, as Twilight began to do a little dance to celebrate her first victory against the ex-fox. Everyone in proximity steered clear of her, as they were all conscious of her bad dancing. Her joy, however, was short lived as Carmelita began to chuckle.
"Okay, kid, you got me," she said. "I ate some of the MMMM. It looks so good, I just couldn't help myself. There is one other thing though. I couldn't mention it before because it would have given away the fact that I was in here last night. There was another person who ate some of the MMMM."
"Dun-dun-duuuuuun!" Murray said dramatically.
"Really, Murray? Really?" retorted Bentley agitatedly, eye slightly twitching.
"Sorry. I couldn't help it," apologised Murray.
"Yes," said Carmelita, ignoring Murray's interruption. "The culprit was someone who... in all honesty, seems even more of an obvious suspect than Sly. Anyways, what I'm saying is that... Murray ate some of the cake, too!"
Everyone was stunned by this statement, most of all Murray and Pinkie Pie.
"Murray? But he was helping me guard the cake all night! He couldn't have eaten it!" she yelled.
"Yeah! I would never betray my friends like that!" exclaimed Murray, waving a hoof around the room for emphasis.
A hoof that, unfortunately, had cake crumbs smattered on it.
Murray had, inadvertently, doing something similar to tossing his cut and bloody body into a tank full of sharks.
For a second time that day, everyone in the room gasped, including Murray himself. When Pinkie Pie saw the crumbs on his hoof, her mane and tail lost their poof, deflating like punctured balloons. Immediately, her eyes began to water, and soon she was crying out mammoth waterfalls for tears.
"Murray? Why? I thought I could trust you!" said Pinkie between sobs.
Murray was just as surprised as Pinkie, and almost as upset. Everyone else felt the same, except for Carmelita, whose smug grin had returned.
"Pinkie, I don't know how this stuff got on me, I swear!" said Murray. "I would never do something like this! I don't even remember getting close to the MMMM!"
"Wait, you don't remember eating it?" asked Bentley. At Murray's nod, he smiled and said, "Well, that explains this anomaly."
"It does?" asked Murray and Pinkie in unison.
"Yes, it does, actually," said Bentley. "You see, Murray, um... how should I put this without being offensive?... Ah. While slumbering, you... uh...you tend to, uh-"
"You eat sweets in your sleep, big guy," said Sly, cutting Bentley off as he patted Murray on the back.
“That is correct,” the ex-reptile concurred.
"Huh... that would explain all those times I woke up with empty ice cream cartons in my bed," assessed Murray.
"So that means... you didn't lie to me," said Pinkie, a huge smile on her face as her mane and tail reinflating via their own volition, returning to their poofy form.
Murray sighed. "Yeah, but that also means I really did eat some of the cake," Murray said sadly. "I'm sorry, Pinkie."
"That's okay, Murray, I forgive you," said Pinkie. She then did something no one, not even herself, saw coming. She gave Murray a quick peck on the cheek. Murray was shocked that Pinkie had kissed him, and a small blush rose to his face, his cheeks burning as if a raging inferno had been set ablaze in his face. Hesitating and wondering what had become of the fuchsia stallion, Pinkie proceeded to frown, then jabbed him in the side with a hoof to see if he was okay. However, the only reaction she got out of Murray was for him to fall over on his side, petrified like stone.
"Uh... is he okay?" asked Pinkie.
"I'm sure he's fine," replied Bentley as he looked Murray over. "I think he's in just in a state of shock. He'll be fine in a few minutes."
"Ooooh," said Pinkie. “But wait?! What about the other bakers’ treats?”
“Simple!” Carmelita strutted back and forth. “It was the bakers who ate them!” The trio of chefs gasped at the accusation.
“How dare you!” bellowed Gustave le Grand, face redder than a beet. “How dare you accuse ze great Gustave le Grand for eating zese... mediocre treats!”
“Mediocre?” Mulia hissed, eyes narrowed in inextinguishable fury. “I suggest you choose your next words carefully, you nasty French tart!” Gustave retreated, his face scrunched up in nervous fear.
“Oh, quit acting like your dessert would win in the first place, ya sack of flab!” Donut Joe wailed above the din, face blazing with anger.
“What’s wrong with the French...?” Sly whispered to his friends.
“They’re only good at two things: baking bread and losing battles,” answered Rainbow Dash. All except for the three bakers leered up at the floating pegasus athlete. “What? I’m not wrong.” She said with a shrug, yet winced when Sly struck her on the left shoulder with his cane. “Ow!”
“C’mon, guys!” Carmelita butted in between the three arguing chefs. “It’s obviously true!” As fluid as water, Carmelita yanked at Gustave’s moustache, Donut’s mane, and Mulia’s wrinkle-filled face with her hooves and a wing. Chocolate mousse, eclair filling, and doughnut sprinkles resided in the respectively-pulled areas.
“She... she was right,” Gustave said, the reality slamming into him leaving him with his heart in his throat. “Ms. Miles, I am so terribly sorry. I couldn’t help myself when ze pink one spoke of your mousse moose wiz ze most... magnifique description.”
“And the way Pinkie described your doughnuts, Joe,” Mulia began, “made it seem like the most delicious thing in Equestria.” The mule licked her lips in tasteful enjoyment, the memories of the Donutopia flooding through her head.
“And, boy, were your eclairs downright scrumptious, Gustave,” Donut Joe admitted, rubbing his barrel of a stomach with an iron-coloured hoof.
“But what about the contest?” Pinkie Pie said in worry. “None of us will win, now that our desserts are ruined!”
At the reminder of the National Dessert Competition, they could only sit and worry over what will happen, dreading when they travelled all this way for nothing, only to be ridiculed and mocked for their ruined entries.
“I’ve got it!” Twilight said, her idea coming to her as quick as lightning.
More moments later
The four bakers walked forth into the gardens to have their dessert evaluated by the judges. Among them is the one and only Princess Celestia, pastel-hued mane and tail both sparkling flowing in some sort of ethereal breeze. The alabaster alicorn walked towards the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness, moistening her lips at the sight.
The quartet of chefs both shared a proud grin. They had fused whatever they could from their contest entries into one giant uber-cake. Some of them had even wanted to rename the cake. Murray had suggested the name “Diabeetus”, and while Sly and Bentley had laughed comically at the suggestion due to the shocking truth behind its name, his request was shot down moments later by the girls.
But alas, the name should have been that, for when the judges glanced at the cake, their jaws comically fell to the floor at its sheer size. The bakers, following Twilight’s idea, had work together to make an amalgamation of a dessert for the competition. Their mesmerising concoction consisted of four floors of the pastel cake being supported by several eclairs, lined with doughnuts. At the top of the cake itself rested a large chocolate moose head. At once, the cake received an azure ribbon, symbolising its reward of First Prize.
“Twilight, you’re a genius,” Sly said with a genuine smile. Twilight blushed, her horn glowing with a magenta aura as she levitated a piece of cake to Princess Celestia. “And is this the princess I hear so much about?”
“Indeed it is,” Twilight responded. “Sly, Murray, Bentley, Carmelita, this is Princess Celestia, the ruler of Equestria.” The four otherworlders bowed low before the solar ruler; they had heard much talk of the princess, and it would be horrendously rude for them not to bow before somepony of great might and position.
“Ah, so these are your new friends, Twilight?” The voice of the princess sounded like warm and soothing honey, causing the quartet of outsiders to rise from their position of appraisal to look up at the one addressing them. “It’s very nice to meet you all.”
“And it is our utmost honour to be in the presence of someone so regal and mighty such as yourself,” said Sly. Celestia’s smile grew wider at his words.
“Oh, why, thank you,” she resumed. “I’m flattered to hear this.”
“PONYBUNGAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” The cry of warning brings their attention to Pinkie Pie diving off the back of a flying Rainbow Dash. With mouth wide open, she descended upon the cake face-first...
...and swallowed it whole. The cake, however, was much too large, and so she bloated like a pufferfish as she plopped onto the table, jaw working to chew whatever cake was in her mouth. Those around her shared a laugh as the pink whale flailed her arms feebly.
“Er... shall I give you a tour of the castle?” Princess Celestia said, albeit in a slightly nervous tone. She wanted to do this for two reasons: one of them being that while Pinkie was one of her favourite loyal subjects, she was bringing about slight mortification to her. And two: to simply say hello and disregard them would not be the proper behavior of royalty.
“Um... we’d like that,” Carmeltia said. “Can, uh... can somebody get a forklift for Pinkie?” She called behind her, motioning her head to the massive boulder of pink pony flesh still sitting atop the table, with a trusty lasso by Applejack wrapped around her in an attempt to remove her from there.
"C'mon, Pinks! Ya cain't be THIS heavy!" Applejack grunted, sweat cascading down her face. Pulling a now-heavy pink mare was, for lack of a better term, difficult.
“Er... what is this forklift you speak of?” Celestia asked, eyebrow raised in curiosity and befuddlement.
“Ya know, nevermind. Please forget that I said anything.” At the princess’s nod, Carmelita beat her wings and took to the sky. “Please, lead the way.”
“Most certainly.” With that, Celestia made her way to the castle, with Twilight, Carmelita, and the Cooper gang trailing behind her.
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Woohoo updates galore!
W00T!
i demand an Aliens reference next chapter
2165787 yes. yes.
To the author, You could really benefit from a proof reader/editor.
you sir now have a like
Hooray update
So Carmelita ate some of the cake as well huh? Well that's a plot twist I didn't see coming.
Also Murray sleep walks and eats in his sleep. Head Cannon accepted.
and Donut Joe help back the urge to cry
I heard somepony else in the desert car
I went back to the desert car
Twilight magically extracted whatever as on the portrait
1. Held.
2. Dessert.
3. Dessert.
4. Was.
WHOA WHOA low blow!
2167324
lol it's actually a That 70s' Show reference.
2166605
Thanks again for your keen eye, lad. :3
Diabeetus. <--- this is what we chant at my diabetics friend. He doesn't rly care and will occasionally yell diabetes at the top of his lungs. Thats the true meaning of diabeetus.
2170188 that line. That line has done the impossible. That line made me like RD (my favourite) even more. (I judge on comedic value)
2167324
OOOF!! that has gotta HURT!
2165787 I totally wanna watch that movie now...
Rainbow Dash, I need to introduce you to a mercenary known as spy.
Shouldn't they be apologizing to the CAKES? It was THEIR Cake they ate! Not Pinkie Pie's!