Chapter 10: The Least Noticeable Pie Sister
Bulk Biceps
Bulk at first spent an uncomfortable time sitting quietly in the laboratory with Claire.
This was uncomfortable mostly because he could talk to her but didn't know what to say to say to a giant invisible multi-headed fluffy pony. Also, he figured she couldn't talk back to him. So he sat and looked around the laboratory, which was full of all kinds of stuff whose purpose he didn't understand. There was the bank of batteries he'd noticed before, and a lot of wiring. One big table was covered with all sorts of flasks and glass tubes and there were liquids of different colors in some of them. Goldie had told him that she wasn't a mad scientist, and she actually seemed like a pretty nice old lady, but her laboratory sure looked like what one would expect a mad scientist to possess.
Finally he got bored looking around at all the equipment he didn't understand and decided to talk to Claire. Only he didn't know what to say. So he said: "Um, thanks for getting me outta there. Ponyville, I mean, heh-heh-heh." He laughed nervously.
Bulk was never a good conversationalist, even when talking to a Pony he could see clearly, let alone an invisible one. He felt kind of funny, like he was talking to himself.
Tenor trills came from the empty air, followed by a complex sound train.
He gaped uncomprehendingly.
There was a frustrated-sounding basso croak, then a sort of vast happy gasp, and a sort of wet thwapping sound, and suddenly a chalkboard wheeled itself across the lab to Claire's vicinity. A piece of chalk picked itself up and began writing.
Bulk wondered what strange words would come forth from such a peculiar Pony.
"You're very welcome, Mr. Bulk," the chalk wrote. "I was glad to be of help."
Well, that didn't seem so strange. Actually, it seemed pretty polite. He remembered the lecture Goldie had given both of them about how to behave properly, and figured Claire had probably benefited from many such lectures in the past.
"Yeah," Bulk said, nodding.
"I hope you're comfortable," Claire's chalk continued.
"Oh, yeah," said Bulk. "Um, it's okay."
"I'm staying with you in case the Twister attacks," Claire explained. "To save you again."
"Bad. If he does," Bulk said. "Um, what about Goldie?"
"He doesn't want Granny," the invisible Pony wrote. "And she's very smart. She'll be safe."
Bulk hoped so. Goldie was helping him out in a patch of rough air. He didn't like to think of the nice old mare getting hurt.
They conversed for a long while, for there was not much else to do while Goldie made the rounds of her wards. Claire got him some grape juice and various foodstuffs, cakes and plates, pots and pans from Granny's kitchen -- she wasn't sure if it was sure for okay for Bulk to be in the rest of the house, so she simply opened a portal, and the required foodstuffs came sailing out of it, presumably on the ends of her tentacles. Claire also picked up a whole bundle of bread loaves and a tub of grape jam.
Claire insisted on making him some sandwiches. She turned on one of Goldie's lab burners and pan-fried some eggs and cheese, and served them to him as sandwiches with sliced tomato. She wasn't the world's best cook, but her food was edible, and Bulk wasn't even sure how she handled anything properly with those huge wet tentacles of hers. Bulk was pretty hungry after his unusual day, and he was grateful for the food.
Then she whipped herself up a whole potful of scrambled eggs with cheese, chopped up more tomatoes into the mix, and at the same time slathered jam all over the large loafs of bread. The food was conveyed seemingly through thin air to a point -- several distinct points, actually -- where it started to be torn apart with great munching and crunching and slurping sounds. Claire was a noisy eater.
And a messy one, Bulk thought at first, as he saw the chewed up bits of food apparently falling to the floor. Then he realized that they weren't -- instead that they were moving with moderate speed down some sort of invisible tubes to a point where they seemed to be getting very soggy. It was one of the strangest things Bulk had ever seen.
"Huh?" asked Bulk. "What are you doing?"
"Eating," wrote Claire. "I know it can appear alarming if you don't know me. Food and liquids that I ingest are visible to your eyes for a while until they get properly mixed with me, then they become transparent to visible light just as I am. I actually don't eat as often as normal Ponies, and I usually eat more than you're seeing me eat here, but I wanted to be sociable. Sorry if it bothers you." She wrote a little frowny face at the end of the last sentence.
"Oh, nah, it's okay," said Bulk. "Just surprised me. Um, where's your mouth, exactly? I saw food going in a lot of places."
"I'm a little unusual," Claire wrote. "I look kind of like this ..." She began sketching on the chalkboard, a creature that looked vaguely like a Pony with as much fluffy hair as a sheep in need of shearing, its mane the same color as its coat and sort of merging into it. But that was not the strange part of it.
To begin with, Bulk could immediately see as she drew the outline of the legs that there were too many. Claire took pains to draw them posed at an angle that let him see just how, many legs. There were eight of them, and something was odd about the shapes of the hooves. There were also five heads visible, one where you'd expect to find a head on the front of the body, one really-big one on the top that looked a bit like Goldie's head, and one over the shoulder and hip with a small head between them -- Bulk counted under his breath and realized that if the creature were symmetrical there would have to be eight in total.
Bulk gasped and shuddered as he fully perceived the monstrous outline, sat down and looked at the sketch in astonishment. It seemed impossible that anything of Pony born could actually look like this, and even more impossible that he was actually sitting in the same room as such a bizarre monstrosity. However, that anatomy would explain everything about his experience, save for one thing.
"Where are the tentacles?
"Oh!" he heard aloud in a distinct polyphonic tenor. Then on the chalkboard. "Sorry, forgot to show you." The chalk moved and drew a chalkboard. The eraser scuffed out part of one head and redrew it with an open mouth. From the mouth proceeded a very long tongue which reached out and almost touched the depicted chalkboard, a tongue somehow held at the tip of the tentacle. "They're my tongues," the written text explained.
Bulk backed up in shock and surprise. "Wait," he said, "those long wet things are your tongues?" His voice quavered.
"I'm sorry if it bothers you." Frowny face. "They're the only good way I have to hold things -- my hooves aren't like yours, they don't have suckers or a grip-field, but my tongues have both. I can move my hairs around but even my hairs aren't long enough to grip anything at a distance. You don't need to worry -- I wouldn't do anything mean or nasty to you with them. I'm sorry I had to touch you without asking but Pinkie asked me to save you, and the Twister was after you -- and you don't understand what I say aloud. I'm sorry."
Bulk thought about it. "It's okay," he said. "You saved me. Just surprised. Sorry" He looked at the very strange picture on the board. "Some spell?" he asked.
"I was born this way," Claire wrote.
"Oh," said Bulk, ears drooping. That sounded rough.
"I'm not sad," she wrote. "My families love me. My birth family ... and my husbands."
"Husbands?" he asked.
"The Flappies," she wrote. "You haven't met them yet. They look like this ..." she went to work with the chalk.
The things she drew might have come out a nightmare. They were bat-winged, quadrupedal creatures that had something in their outline that resembled crows, or ants, or half-skeletal Ponies. There were five of them, and Bulk could see from the way she drew them that she was representing five individuals. She drew little lines and arrows pointing to each one. The smallest one was "Little Flappy," and somehow she'd drawn him in a posture of alert intelligence. One huge one was "Tiny," the second smallest one "Dash," the second biggest one "Saintly," and a medium sized one with really long talons "Slasher."
They were definitely not Ponies.
"Husbands?" he asked.
"Wouldn't be decent otherwise," wrote Claire. "We live together. We love each other. Married." The chalk flew and drew lots of little hearts coming up off the big multi-headed Pony and the five winged horrors, then after the text a smiley-face with hearts for eyes and the letters "XXXOOO."
Bulk had to allow as that made sense. The strange kind of sense that things on this farm generally made. Ponies sometimes fell in love with, even married, non-Ponies -- that's where hippogriffs and ki-rin came from, when Ponies mated with Griffons or Dragons. And polygamous marriages, while not the norm in Equestria, were accepted assuming that all parties consented. Though one mare wedding five ... whatever they were ... was a bit extreme.
"Where are they now?" he wondered, trying not to communicate the fact that the very image of the Flappies filled him with primal dread. It was very obvious, in every line of their anatomy from their toothy beaks to their long sharp claws and talons, that these were predators. Though, given whom they'd chosen to wed, they probably didn't eat Ponies. Probably.
"Patrolling," came Claire's written answer. She then erased some of her earlier messages, but left the picture of herself and her Flappies. "Against air attack. It's happened before; that time Maud beat it."
"Beat what?" Bulk asked.
"Dragon," Claire replied. "Big, much bigger than me. Maud punched it. Broke its neck. It got Grandpa and some of our cousins." Frowny face with a stylized tear. "We planted the Dragon's bones and scales, got a good harvest, but I still miss Grandpa. Granny misses him most."
"You have Dragons here?" asked Bulk in astonishment.
"No. It came from elsewhere. Paradise said it was possessed -- a Nightdrake. Probably was after Pinkie."
Bulk didn't understand half of what Claire had just told him, but he was starting to realize that a lot of stuff happened on this rock farm. Dangerous stuff.
On the one hoof, this kind of comforted him. The Pies had dealt with this kind of stuff before. On the other hoof, this scared him. He was staying at a place which had been the target of some sort of demon-dragons. The comfort was stronger, for the very uncomfortable reason that he had one of the most dire demons in the history of Ponies mad at him right now. Which was not a very comforting thought.
"Are you going to marry Fluttershy?" the rapidly scritching chalk asked him.
"Um ... uh ..." said Bulk, blushing. "I dunno ... I like her ... love her ... um ..." There was something really strange about talking about this kind of thing with an eight-headed giant invisible Pony who communicated by writing on a chalkboard, and with a pretty high vocabulary, too. Felt like taking some very weird test back in school -- if any of his teachers had been a giant invisible Pony, that is. Which none actually had been.
"Why not marry her then?" Claire's chalk persisted.
"Only known her a few months," Bulk pointed out. "Not sure she likes me that much."
"She does," Claire wrote bluntly. "I can tell."
"How?" asked Bulk, imagining that a giant multi-headed invisible Pony might have all kind of special senses denied to normal Ponies.
A sort of multiple chuckle came from the empty air.
"I have noses," Claire wrote. "Granny has a roof tank she keeps filled, and a bath upstairs in the main house. Just go up the stairs to the end of the hall. Cold water only -- that okay?" she asked.
When Bulk realized exactly what Claire meant, he blushed even harder. He could feel it all down his neck onto his chest. Bulk was glad he couldn't see himself in a mirror, because he knew that showed plainly through his white coat.
And he took the bath. Used a lot of soap, too.
***
After his bath he toweled off and padded back into the laboratory, where Claire was still waiting. Fortunately she didn't ask him any more questions about whether or not he was going to marry Fluttershy. He'd thought a lot about Fluttershy in the shower -- which made it lucky for the remnants of his dignity that it had been a cold one.
The truth is that he would have said "yes" to Fluttershy in an instant, if she asked him. He was afraid to ask her, though, because it was really plain to him that Fluttershy was way out of his league. He didn't understand why she wanted him even as a lover -- he was big and strong, yeah, but he was no good at talking to mares.
Aside from his failed marriage, his experience of romance had been hanging out around Cloud Kicker's fast set, sometimes when he got really lonely, and none of those mares were ones he'd even remotely think of trusting to help bring up Featherweight. That colt had not been quite right in the head since the Day of Discord, when something Featherweight was completely unable to tell him but very bad had obviously happened. He needed a really nice and understanding step-mom.
Fluttershy was in a totally-different class than anypony he'd ever been with before. Literally in a different class than most of them -- her vocabulary and manners made it obvious that she was from one of the Old Clans -- he'd never asked her about this because she never told him anything about her family.
He'd known her last name was "Wind," but assumed that she was from some sort of obscure branch of that family -- the Winds were really old, not just dating back to the Time of Thrones like the Kickers, but going all the way back to the oldest legends, to the time of the Three Tribes. Wasn't Commander Hurricane the Great a Wind, or something like that?. He wished he'd paid attention in school.
If she was even Old Clans she probably didn't want to marry him. Bulk's family were solid lower middle class -- decent workponies who mostly used their muscles instead of their minds to make their livings. Bulk was actually more successful than most of them, because he'd been accepted into the Wonderbolts. If she was one of the Winds, and a "High Lady" to boot ... no way would somepony that highborn be interested in him that kind of way.
Except that she obviously was interested in him that kind of way. So, was she just playing with him?
Bulk had trouble believing this of Fluttershy. She was too kind, too sweet and loving to him -- and she was obviously not very experienced with stallions -- she hadn't been a virgin, but she'd been clearly close to it. She was pretty much the opposite of the mares from Cloud Kicker's coterie. With them he'd always felt like some large slab of meat with an identity inconveniently attached; she talked to him about her day, and asked him about his; she was curious about his thoughts and hopes and dreams. With Fluttershy, their friendship was very much the main thing, sex simply something that made it sweeter. They'd only been lovers in the full physical sense for the last week, anyway -- they'd been friends ever since that trip together to the qualifying meet at Rainbow Falls. three months ago. None of this made any sense if she was only pretending to care for him.
He figured he'd better not question things. Not much good could come of questioning something so wonderful that had come into his life, just when he'd figured that real love was something that was pretty much over for him since the divorce. He and Fluttershy felt what they felt about each other, that was that, and he wasn't going to do anything to make her leave him. She was high above him, and he'd love her as long as she'd have him, and then, he figured, he'd just have to deal with her decision to give him up when it came. Which decision, he thought in a painful pang of realism, seemed pretty much fated to happen eventually.
If the Twister didn't get him first, of course. Yeah, that'd end all his problems. At least all his present problems.
***
Claire told him more about life on the rock farm. Some of it sounded boring and some of it cute and some of it unbelievable. Among the unbelieveable stories were the time that a toddler Pinkie Pie ran off a cliff and their elder sister Maud discovered she could -- sort of -- fly, and did so to save her younger sister. Claire said that she might show him the crater Maud left in the solid rock when she landed. Or the time that Claire herself had almost been kidnapped by some mad cultists who wanted to force her to open a Gate to somewhere nasty. Or the time that the ghost of King Sombra had haunted their west field, claiming that as his kin they owed him crystals.
"He thinks you're kin?" Bulk asked her. When he'd been to the Crystal Empire, he'd heard of Sombra as some kind of demon tyrant who had thrown them out of time for a thousand years.
"We are," Claire wrote. She quickly sketched a skeletal family tree, labeled "Quartzes." There were five siblings, the youngest being a stallion named Crimson Quartz and the second youngest a mare named Iolite Quartz. She explained something about the oldest sibling, Morion Quartz, becoming Emperor of the Crystal Empire and driving out the three youngest. From Iolite she drew a dashed line of descent marked "1000 years" leading down to Jasper Quartz, who married Goldie Pie, who bore Cloudy Quartz, who was the mother of the all five Pie Sisters. To Crimson Quartz she appended two words: "King Sombra."
"So you see," she wrote, "we really all are Princesses of the Crystal Empire, including Granny by marriage.. We just haven't told them yet." And she made one of those weird multiple-throated chuckles.
"What did you do about the ghost?" he asked her.
"We gave him some crystals," she wrote matter-of-factly. "We have tons. Literally tons, with a decent harvest. He went away happy."
He wasn't sure if she was kidding him. It was hard to read invisible faces, even if she said she had eight of them.
At this point Goldie Pie walked back in through the door. She looked tired, her mane drooping, her hooves dragging, the elaborately carved staff less a sign of her magecraft than a support for her weary body in truth.
"Whew!" she said. "That took it out of me. T'aint so young anymore, and that's the truth. Could've gotten all the Daughters together to help on this, but that would've taken time, and I wanted to get this done fast, afore the Twister got any nasty ideas." She looked at Bulk, her eyes only semi-focusing. "Tightened up the wards all around this house and the farm. You should be safe long as you don't stray. Claire, why don't you take our guest down to the main farm, let him meet the rest of your family. Me, I'm for some vittles and an nap."
Claire made a complex train of tenor noises, among which Bulk thought he could catch a mushy-sounding "Bulk" and "vittles" and "bath."
"Oh, that's all right, Claire-Bear, he's our guest," Goldie said, yawning. "Just Gate me in to town tomorrow so I can get some shopping done, nothing to mind."
Bulk felt a bit guilty about having accepted all the kindnesses of Goldie and Claire and given them none in return. "Hey, is there anything I could do for you? Maybe help out?" he asked.
"Naw,"said Goldie, "I don't need any help here. But Igneous -- my Cloudy's husband -- he can always use a strong back and willing hooves on the farm. You look strong -- and I guess you're willing?"
"Yeah!" said Bulk enthusiastically.
He very much wanted to no longer be helpless.
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good stuff.
¡Ah! ¡Claire Pie and Bulk Biceps bond!
this doesnt seem like a fluttercord story at all...
Given what kind of innocently pure world My LIttle Pony is, I REALLY don't see ponies having sex out of wed-lock, it feels, OOC. In particular for a pony like Fluttershy who IMHO would faint before getting anywhere near a stallion like that.
" It was one of the strangest things Bulk had ever seen."
Geeze, you think the food would be invisible once it was inside her.
, they don't have suckers or a grip-field,
That trick seems more limited to Pinkie Pie.
I wondered how performed the ceremony with Claire and her husbands.
Paradise said it was possessed -- a Nightdrake.
If the poor dragon was POSSESSED, then killing it seems rather . . . heartless.
Bulk didn't understand half of what Claire had just told him, but he was starting to realize that a lot of stuff happened on this rock farm. Dangerous stuff.
If things were always so "interesting" around here, how in the hell did Pinkie Pie think living here was absolutely miserable? Constant danger? SHE'S THE TYPE OF PONY WHO'D SEE IT AS A GAME!
Uh. Having Fluttershy's scent on him from love making somehow proves she loves him that way too? Uh . . . I don't get that logic.
WHAT A ****ING SECOND!!!
CLAIRE WASN't SURE BULK COULD SAFELY LEAVE THE LAB OR NOT! So why did she think him taking a bath outside the lab was fine?
Cloud Kicker's fast set,
Fast set?
That colt had not been quite right in the head since the Day of Discord, when something Featherweight was completely unable to tell him but very bad had obviously happened.
0-0 -_- Please tell me it wasn't the same horrible thing that happened to that poor child that rendered him mute with trauma in the Pony POV Verse.
Fluttershy is an INTROVERT, she not the manipulative type IMHO.
because he'd been accepted into the Wonderbolts.
So he passed Wonderbolts Academy, AND the Reserves entrance examine like Dash?
no way would somepony that highborn be interested in him that kind of way.
Except Shy is EASILY the most humble of the mane six.
Unless she wakes up Flutterrage, she's the most likely to go along with what the group wants. (AJ did NOT take no for an answer when she protested AJ kicking out the pests that were consuming the botanic part of AJ's family.)
she hadn't been a virgin, but she'd been clearly close to it.
Like I said, none of the mane six seem the type to have sex out of wedlock.
claiming that as his kin they owed him crystals.
Not much of a ghost if it's still as insane as his cloudy black form.
This is an enemy who was (in the cannon verse at least) able to fight on equal standing with two Alicorns, and whose rule was so awful that two Alicorns intervened to overthrow him. A flesh and blood enemy who was able to match with the sun and moon themselves.
There were five siblings, the youngest being a stallion named Crimson Quartz and the second youngest a mare named Iolite Quartz. She explained something about the oldest sibling, Morion Quartz, becoming Emperor of the Crystal Empire and driving out the three youngest.
And the second oldest?
who was the mother of the all five Pie Sisters.
I wonder how Cloudy survived giving birth to Claire.
He went away happy."
Sombra doesn't seem the type. :-(
Given how Ponies denied or failing at their special talent go slowly insane, I'm honestly surprised Trixie wasn't ALREADY crazy by the time she left the rock farm.
:-(
There is something very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very depressing about hearing that "sex only marriage" is considered "old fashioned." :-(
WHAT is the Winningverse? And ironic since in the pony pov verse, Cloud Kicker is a decent pony and a good big sister to Alula.