Fragile

by runujhkj

Chapter 2: Priority Mail

Certain noises just aren’t good to wake up to. She was used to loud noises, living smack dab in the middle of Ponyville. Even if it hadn’t been a populous city with a pretty big marketplace, the imminent danger she was used to experiencing (strangely, rather predictably once a week) provided plenty of loud noises to damage her eardrums.

Not to mention her friends. Her friends all had the tendency of being absurdly loud and creating loud situations, but she had to admit, she took the cake - mmm, cake - on that one. She practically couldn’t even say a single sentence without yelling it, she had a tendency to panic loudly, and to top it off, she brought around with her a huge confetti-exploding cannon which she constantly set off in her friends’ ears. She wasn’t exactly quiet.

But no one deserves to wake up like that.

“PINKIE PIE!!!” Mrs. Cake’s voice rang through her door, wall, and brain for the third time, this time forcing her out of her comfortable bed. She wasn’t unfamiliar with waking up to people screaming her name, but Mrs. Cake was the worst yelling voice to start a day to. It meant work, and it meant a lot of work. And for once, she was pretty sure she actually had more important things than just making baked goods all day. If there is such a thing.

From experience, she knew that if Mrs. Cake had to call her name five times, Mr. Cake would come up and drag her out of bed to go do whatever work required doing. Once that happened, she wouldn’t be unsupervised for any amount of time until the work was done. Any other day, she’d suck it up and go do her job, but as a look at her calendar reminded her again, today was different. Twilight was counting on her.

So she quickly made her bed up to give the impression she hadn’t just been sleeping there, threw a hastily-drawn note on the dresser facing the door, and, as Mrs. Cake finished yelling for the fifth time, she ran and leapt into the closet, burying herself behind layers of clothes and closing the door to a slit she could peer through.

After a half-minute of unsettling silence, Mr. Cake pushed open the door to Pinkie’s room. “Pinkie Pie, get up! We need you to-” Through the slitted opening in the closet door, Pinkie watched as Mr. Cake noticed the note on her dresser, went over to read it, gritted his teeth and groaned, and ran back out of the room.

Pinkie gave out a little sigh of relief, and began to slowly re-enter her room, when she heard a thunderous “WHAT?!” come from Mrs. Cake downstairs, followed by rapid thumping. She dove back behind her clothes in the closet and held her breath while Mrs. Cake burst through the door, headed straight for the note on her dresser. After skimming the short sticky-note, she let out an exasperated yell, scanned the room, and stomped back out the door and down the stairs.

Waiting an extra second for her heart rate to return to non-cardiac-arrest levels, Pinkie Pie came out of the closet again. She heard Mr. And Mrs. Cake running through the kitchen frantically working on whatever it was she was supposed to be helping with. She began to pack her saddlebags with the stuff she needed to bring to Twilight, hearing some random customers come in and get snapped at by the Cakes. As the customers left, so did she.

She slipped out of the window facing Twilight’s library, edged along the rim of the building, and jumped to the ground.

“I’unno, let’s check Fluttershy’s pla-” Dash didn’t quite get to finish her sentence, as she was pounded by a pink plunging non-pegasus pony. Pinkie landed and, shaking herself off, looked up to see Twilight, bags under her wide-open eyes, staring at her.

Pinkie, as usual, was first to speak. “Oh good! There you are. I’ve almost got everything, but I need to get one last thing from Fluttershy first, and then I’ll see you at the library, also make sure you find Dashie, this won’t work without her - obviously!; okay I’ll see you there!” With that, she sped off.

Twilight just stood there, mouth wide open, staring at where Pinkie Pie had just fallen from the sky. Dash eventually struggled back to her feet. “Well, I think we found Pinkie Pie.”

Twilight shut her mouth and snapped her eyes to meet Dash’s. “Sorry, what? I kinda dozed off.”

Dash rubbed her head where Pinkie’s hoof had solidly connected with her skull. “Oh, never mind. Let’s just get back to your stupid treehouse... library... thing.” She began walking off.

Twilight trotted along to catch up. "No, seriously, what did you say? You can't just say 'never mind,' that just makes me want to know what you said even more."

Dash smirked. "Then never mind."

Twilight groaned in irritation. "Oh come on, would you please just tell me already? I won't be able to focus all day if you don't tell me what you said."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and gave in, "Okay, fine. All I said was that we found Pinkie Pie."

Twilight twisted her head around to look. "We did? Where was she? Why are we not still with her?"

Dash was confused, and slowed down to look at Twilight. "What do you mean, 'where was she?' She literally fell directly in front of you! You were staring right at her!"

"Oh, is that what happened? I was wondering why you were lying on the ground."

"Are you messing with me right now? You're seriously telling me you didn't see any of that?"

"Like I told you, I kinda dozed off." By now, the two of them had made it halfway out of the town center. The bickering continued for a while, but it gradually came to a halt, as did the pair's pace, as Dash and (to a much lesser degree) Twilight began noticing odd looks.

It seemed like they were in their own little bubble. As they walked down the street, a barely noticeable circle formed around them; some (but not all) ponies would move away from them to either side and give them a little too much space. Some who looked their way laughed, some who looked their way just stared for a few seconds too long, but quite a few of the ones who looked... almost looked... angry? Well, "angry" wasn't exactly the right term for it. "Accusing" probably fit better. Nearly every citizen of Ponyville, as Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash passed through, gave one or both of them an accusatory glare.

The effect struck Rainbow Dash far more than her unicorn companion, since she was more awake. A significant part of Twilight's brain convinced the other parts that it was just a symptom of her sleep deprivation: hallucinating an angry - scratch that - slightly perturbed mob.

As the two friends slowed to a stop, so did the crowd, on all sides. Dozens and dozens of ponies forgot about their destinations; Dash - and especially Twilight - had grabbed a spotlight.

Dash started to become worried. She noticed Twilight's eyes were still half forced shut with sleep, so she decided to figure out what was causing everyone to stare. A cursory self-check glance showed nothing out of the ordinary, but a single look at Twilight caused Dash's blood to freeze in her veins.

Twilight was still pondering the crowd's strange behavior when she noticed her friend's expression. Dash was staring at her in absolute unblinking shock. Blinking a few times, she quickly worked to try and clear the last of her sleeplessness out of her head and turned to look where Dash's eyes were. Seeing what she figured Dash was, she gave a small chuckle and a shrug, turning back to Dash. "Well, looks like we didn’t get everything."

Dash was not amused. Flapping her wings once, she rose into the air, and rearing back, she snatched Twilight and sped towards the treehouse, shaking a single sky-blue feather from Twilight's flank.