Sharing My Creativi-Tea.
Chapter 20
Sharing My Creativi-Tea.
Walking out of the office, I stare in wonder at my brand new hoof. It gleams and feels a just a wee bit lighter than before. Turns out that drills drilling into hooves make a great deal of heat, and that leads to a horrible burning smell. Thankfully, the good Doctor thought to have a stream of water pouring into the drilling hole. Lifting the hoof up, I can see clean through the hole.
He smiles and waves from the door. “Alright, you come back in a month for a real checkup, Mi-uhm Heartbreak! Make sure you are brushing and actually flossing! And make sure not to put too much pressure on that! It needs time to adjust!”
“Iwilldo Dr. Bright-White! Ifyousee Doctor Colgate, tell herIsaid Hi!” I reply.
“Uhm, Yes! I will do that!” I hear a ringing behind me that I can only assume is another patient coming into the dentist’s office.
“Alright,H.B., Nowthatyouhave takenthetime tohave ahole putinyour hoof,it’stimetofind someponytofillitwithsomething. Somethingspecial!” I look around. What I need is a speciality shop of sorts. Well, maybe not a speciality shop, but a shop that whirrs, ticks, tocks, and has the things I need to construct the thing I need. With the proper pony who knows how to construct the thing I need.
Walking down the street, I turn a corner and come across a place that has some strong memories attached to it, The hat shop. In front of the shop is a cart that is half filled with hats and other things that were in the shop. High Hat comes out of the shop with a forlorn look on his face. There are so many things buzzing through my mind about this con-pony. The fact that he tried to manipulate my emotions for his own personal gain in a way that was so terribly transparent. Then, he took advantage of Twilight when it became apparent that he failed with me. At least that’s how I see it. His reaction to being caught on his con was almost priceless, but I was cut off before I could fully lay into him. I am so tempted to just go and give him a piece of my mind before he leaves town.
I reach into my saddle bag and pull out my tea. A few sips and a burst of ideas involving hats, his shop and what I should say to him washes over me. And with Twilight not here. I think I should implement all of them.
I rush up right behind High Hat just as he is about to turn around. “Gaaah!” From his mouth drops a hammer and some nails. His frightened look changes with a mix of emotions. Surprise, angry and then sad again. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Yes,congratulations,you’vefoundme!” I reply. I know he won’t get the joke but I make it anyway. He gives me a sneer and rolls his eyes. “ButIsee thatyou aregoing off and packingup. Ontothenexttownandthenextset ofponies tocon?” He turns and glares at me.
“What else am I to do?” He asks, hitting a stack of hats in his cart with his wing. “I have been found out, my secrets tossed into the public square! Once word gets around this backwater podunk town, there isn’t any way that I could sell a hat. So why bother trying? It’s better to move on where they don’t know me and try my luck there.” He glares at me. “Why am I even telling you this? It isn’t like you care.”
“Oh,Icare,Icare becauseyoutried to playonmyemotions and then ‘surprise! nope! Idon’tcare! I justwant tosellyouthese hats!’, thenwhenIsawright throughyour littletrick, youallowed anotherpony togo and takemybate. Allowedanotherpony totriggerthetrapthat youset forme!” I reply, as I pace back and forth in front of him. “And thenyouhave thenerve! Thenerve totakeher moneyafter I calledyouout on your little scam!” I want to pull my hair in frustration, but alas, my kingdom for a hand right? I am instead resorting to rubbing my face. I then get up right and close to his face. “Andifthereis onething I can’tstand morethan otherponies buyingmethings whenIdidn’t earnthem, it’sotherp-ponies sufferingforthings thatIcouldhaveprevented!” I waggle my hoof at High Hat. “AndIcouldhavetotally prevented...This! Whatyoudid Sir, was wrong, wrong, wrong! Black and white. Clear. As. Day. Wrong! So! Whatdoyouhave tosayforyourself, Mr. High. Hat?” His face is that of pained panic, like an animal that has been cornered. He attempts to open his mouth, but all that comes out is a small squeak. I raise my eyebrow. “Wellll?”
“I-I-I...” He stammers. I take a sip of my tea out of the corner of my mouth. I have backed him against the wall. I want answers damn it. And I want them now. “I returned your friend’s money.” He gasped out.
Backing away, I blink and try to process this. A dumbfounded, “What?” is the only thing that topples out of my mouth.
High Hat looks sad and down at the ground. “You were right.” He points at all the hats. “All these hats I’m selling for a company that makes them, they aren’t fantastic hats but it’s enough to get by. So on the side, I tried to earn extra bits with the marble in a jar gag. I was ok with doing this and nopony has ever called me out on it. I’ve had to move from time to time, but then my first day here! You! Just out of nowhere.” He looks frustrated. “I wasn’t always like this...I used to make good hats...Great hats..” He frowns and looks at me while shaking his head. “Right. I don’t need to tell you any of this. I have to, as you said, get going to scam the next town.” He picks up his jar of marbles.
This isn’t the con-artist pony story I was seeking. It sounds too chopped up, too raw, too bleeding to be such. Con-Artists have polished up their stories so well that you could see yourself in them. Either he’s really bad at this, or he has a story that he wants to tell but he isn’t. I could let this go, but I am not going to. “Hoooooldup, holdyourhorses, wait,Wait,Wait,” I start, zipping to his other side. “Youjustcan’t leaveme inthedark about what happenedhere, ifyouat onetime actually madegoodhats, thenyouaregoing to havetoexplaintome whyyouaren’tdoing it now!”
He snorts. “I will do no such thing! Now get out of my way!” I frown and do something desprate. I grab the jar of marbles away from him. “Hey! Give those back!”
“What’sthematter, High Hat? Lostyourmarbels? HowaboutImake a dealwithyou, more of abargan really...But,it’sadealthatyouare surenot to loose...”
High Hat didn’t look amused but he sighed. “Right then, Miss Heartbreak was it?”
“Just Heartbreak,and H.B.ifyouwouldplease..”I reply.
“Right. H.B. What deal is this?” He asks me.
“Simple, I guesscorrectlythenumber ofmarbelsin the jar, youtellme what happened. If I getit incorrect, youleave, unmolested.” I reply. “Deal?”
He looks at me and scoffs. “You might as well just give me the jar and let me be on my way, Heartbreak.”
I snicker. “SosurethatIcan’t guess right? Unwillingtotakeachance? What’sthematter? Areyou...Scootaloo?” I mock.
“I don’t know what that means, but I get the feeling that I am being insulted somehow. Fine, I will go along with your deal. I can wait a few minutes more to leave Ponyville anyhow.” He replies.
============================================================
Twilight paces back and forth. “This, is very bad, Spike.” She says looking at the horrible mess of drawings, writings and loose paper. “Zecora said that one tea bag was enough, but four tea bags?! I can’t even comprehend what would happen! Why would she even use that many!?”
Spike tried to make himself look a bit smaller than normal, a wash of guilt and shame was running through his veins. After all, he told Twilight not to worry about Heartbreak. “I don’t know, Twilight. Though it looks like the tea made things super easy for her. Some of these drawings are a far improvement from that one drawing she drew of me.”
“Of course. Take a pony out of her world of easy answers and things that solve her problems, then dump her into a world where everything has to be done the hard way! But there is one thing that would make things super easy for her. Magic. Add magic tea, and everything becomes better. Add a little more and it’s sure to be even better!” Twilight says, with an angry sarcastic tone.
“That’s most likely what happened, Twilight,” Spike said, in a half aware tone. The web of papers, ideas, drawings and whatever else Heartbreak left behind was impressive. “But I think we need to ask the question of, ‘What do we do now?’”
Twilight smacked her head. “What we need to do. I need to go back to Zecora’s. If this mess of papers is any indication, this level of tea is hazardous. She’ll know what to do I’m sure.” Twilight pointed at Spike. “You need to find Heartbreak, Stat!”
“But she could be anywhere, Twilight!” Spike replied.
“She couldn’t have gotten far, We weren’t gone very long, and if she is suffering from creative overload, she shouldn’t be very hard to find. Just follow the trail of...chaos,” Twilight replied.
“But!” Spiked started.
“No time!” Twilight said before teleporting away.
==============================================================
High Hat looked at the mare before him. There were many things wrong with this picture. For one. It was apparent, at least to him, that whatever she was drinking, she had way too much of. She sounded like a hyperactive squirrel who had downed more than ten shots of espresso. Secondly, she had outed him on his little con act almost right when she spotted him, he thought that he could have at least gotten her to play his game before she had realized that. And now, in exchange to hear his sad sob story, she was going to attempt to guess the number of marbles in his jar.
Nopony had ever guessed it right. Not with all the little extras he had going in that jar of his. Not with the fake marbles, strange sized marbles, and ‘special’ marbles. And yet, she was attempting to do so. Right now she was sizing the jar up, shaking it slowly and looking at it in as many different lights as possible. Then she put her hoof into top of the jar.
“Hey! What are you doing?” High Hat asked, attempting to take the jar from her yet again.
She held up her other hoof. “Letmeguess, it’scheating. However...” She pushed her hoof up in the jar, revealing marbles that were once invisible. “Trickmarbles. Clever,veryclever,inacheating mean,Iwantyourbits-” She picked up her sipping cup and took a small sip of tea. The smallest sip of tea that High Hat had ever seen a pony take from a cup of tea. “-cheatercheater sort ofway...”
High Hat frowned. Nopony had thought of those marbles at the top, if she had figured that out there was a possibility that-
She pulled out her hoof. “Thereare Six hundred and ninemarbles inthisjar.” She said shaking off hoof dry.
High Hat had a mix of feelings in her assessment of the number of marbles. It was so close! So very close! “Heh, I think I will have to be on my way, because there are six hundred and ten marbles-”
“Sixhundredandnine.” She replied. “Icountedthemandthendoublecountedthem.”
“I assure you, there are six hundred and ten. I only tell you this because I am sure that I will never, ever see you again.” High Hat said snorting and stamping his hoof.
“Totalthere are sixhundredandten, yes. But,” she held up her hoof. ”Thereare sixhundredandnine in thejar,” High Hat was met with a rather morbid but curious thing. In her hoof, there was a neatly drilled hole.. and in that hole shone a cat’s eye marble. “Sixhundredandnine, nowaboutthatstory?”
High Hat looked baffled. She was right, she was getting him on a technicality. She was right, technically. He shook his head. “I-”
“Look, youhavewaited this longtoleavetown, Iamsurethat your storyisn’tgoingtotake a fortnight, what’s fivemoreminutes?” she asked. “Also,” she held up her hoof. “Couldyoupopthis marbleout? Ineedthatholeforsomethingelse.”
High Hat smriked and reached forward. He kissed the place where the hole exited her hoof and sucked the marble out.
“I meantpoke it outwithastick.” she said frowning.
High Hat spat the marble out back into its jar. “I see, but you want the reason I am resorting to conning ponies for their bits. Alright, here it goes.” He takes a deep sigh. “When I was a small colt my mother took me to Canterlot to see one of the grand fairs there-”
“Yayexposision, We’regoingtogointoyour colthood here?” She stomped her hole-less hoof. “Ihate tohurryyoubut-”
“You want to hear my story or not?” High Hat huffed. Heartbreak looked away and licked the tip of her sipping cup. “Alright then. Canterlot. I was a young colt and they were having a Grand Fair. My father took us to see the Wonderbolts, I suppose he wanted to inspire to me to become a great flier like he was. But my mother was more into fashion. After so many long hours of watching pegasi fly, my mother wanted to go shopping. And I wanted to go with her, much to my father’s disapproval. Somewhere in those shops, we found a hat shop. Being in a small cloud island far north of Cloudsdale, you don’t get to see too many hats. I dare say that I was rather excited. Which I know is strange for a Pegasus, but-”
“Butit’s yourthing, youlikehats.” Heartbreak interrupted fighting to stay still.
“Yes. I must say that after that visit to the hat shop and watching the hatter make his latest creation, I was inspired. My mother seeing my excitement, decided to buy me a simple hat. When we got back home, I wanted to make a hat. But, living among the clouds you don’t have much in the way of building materials. And most things, unless they are enchanted, fall right through. All I had to work with was clouds, ice crystals, and a touch of liquid rainbow my mother gave me. Not exactly hat making materials. But I was determined to try and make one. I spent an entire week working on it, trying to shape the clouds, work in the ice crystals, and using at the most a drip of the rainbow. Most of my friends, even my father just told me to give up. I wasn’t successful until that last night when I had stayed awake all night to figure it out...And finally..”
“Youdidit, itwasawonderful creationIamsure...” Heartbreak interrupted again.
High Hat frowned at her. “Yes, yes it was. I rushed tiredly to show my mother my creation, but in my enthusiasm I tripped and the hat tumbled in front of my father. He wasn’t nary too happy to see what I had done. He picked up the hat I created. A lovely top hat that glistened with a rainbow ribbon around the brim. He was about to crush my creation right in front of me when my mother came into the room. She gave him such a deathly glare. There was a brief argument, and then she took the hat from him. She placed it atop her head and wore it proudly. Right there and then, I was just so happy! And right there and then I got this.” he lifted up the tail of his coat to show off his cutie mark. A snowy white hat with a rainbow ribbon. Heartbreak blinked a few times and was nearly chewing on the tip of her cup.
“Thatwasawonderfulstorytobe surethere, HighHat, but..Ifyoucreatedhats in a WillyWonka style, Whyaren’tyoudoing that now?” she asked.
High Hat frowned. “Because of what happened in Los Pegasus.” Heartbreak looked at him, waiting for him to explain. “Right, I spent my time, much to my fathers dissatisfaction creating and making hats. Hats for my friends, for my family, for anypony just for the fun of it. Eventually, my father warmed up to the idea of having a hatter for a son, but it took a long time. I eventually made my way to Los Pegasus to compete in hatter competition, turns out that hatters are rather...cutthroat when it comes to their creations. Being from a small ‘town’ as it were, I was rather naive. Most of the competitors were unicorns who would turn their noses up at me. ‘No Pegasus can be a hatter!’ they told me.”
“ButIamsurethat youshowedthemotherwise, right?”
“Oh did I ever. By then I had hats that were made of all sorts of clouds, wispy things, thundery things, rainbows, and ice crystals. They were impressed, and dare I say, a bit jealous. I had normal silken hats too, I had been, after all, working on the ground as well. All was going well! I was winning competitions! I was a rising star of the hat world!” High Hat said longingly.
“Whathappened?”
“She happened. I really don’t know who she was, but she waltzed into my life-” High Hat began.
“Andletmeguess...Sheearned yourtrust, shewouldtell you allthethings youwantedtohear, andthenwhen youweren’tlooking, shebetrayedyou.” Heartbreak interuppted again.
“Actually, yes,” He said, looking a bit confused.
“AndI’llbet I knowhow therestof this storygoes, shesellsyoursecrets tosomeother hatter.” Heartbreak begins.
“Hey! Aren’t I the one telling this story?” High Hat asked. Heartbreak rolled her eyes and rolled her hoof. “Yes. That is exactly what happened. Top Secret ideas, new ideas for my newest hats in fact.” He sighed. “So, as you can already guess, when I was shocked to see my hats being produced by other hatters, and because they had registered these hats before I had a chance...I couldn’t register my hats without looking like I was stealing ideas from another hatter! Dismayed, betrayed, and excuse the expression, heartbroken, I dropped out of the Hatters Competition and took to the road to just...sell hats.”
Heartbreak looked like she was processing this. “Thatisonehorriblestory. The WillyWonka of Hats. Coursehis solutionwas to hire oopaloompas...Thatstill doesn’texplain whyyouaren’t makinghats again. Youshouldbemaking hats!”
High Hat just looked at the ground sadly. “I just...hit a hatter’s block. I ran out of ideas.”
Heartbreak looked at High Hat and then at her sipping cup, and then at High Hat again. “Tellme Mr. High Hat. Doyoulike tea?” She asked.
“Well, not really...Sometimes, I guess.” High Hat asked disconnectedly.
“Ahatterthatdoesn’t like tea?! Nowonder youare atablock! Tellyouwhat, I’ll makeanother deal withyou. Rightnow, Ihave adozen ideas forhats. And youcanhave them all...”
“If...?” He asked in a slightly confused manner.
“If youcan takeasip ofthis tea and notagree that itisthe besttea in allofEquestria.” She replied.
High Hat thought about this. Even if it was the best tea that he ever drank, he could just lie through his teeth. “Free of charge, no strings attached, and you won’t come back saying that they were your ideas?”
“Mum’stheword. Iwillevenadvertize whenever Iseeone of the hatideas, saying “Yupyupyup! That’soneofHighHat’s finecreations!” She replied.
“And, if by some strange chance I do say that I am unable to resist the urge to say that it is the best tea in all of Equestria?” High Hat had to cover his bases here. Being a con-pony did teach him that much. Always look for the catch.
“Ifbysome randomchance, youdoso happento say,” She took a deep break and closed her eyes. “This is the best tea in all of Equestria”. Then I will give you only five ideas and,” her hoof tapped his top hat. “Igetthe hat that is sat atopyourhead.” she replied excitedly. High Hat looked a bit baffled, after all these months of conning ponies out of ther bits, a deal where he won either way, seemed just too good to be true. “Comeon, onesip, andyougoaway withsomehatideas eitherway. Imean..." She smiled a smile that was all too giddy. "Whatdoyouhaveto lose?”
Stats
Page generated in 0.022 seconds
Total duration
932 users online
1,416,774 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
So all High Hat has to do to get a whole ton of ideas free from Heartbreak is to Not say that thats the best tea ever....this is a trick! He's going to get the ideas running around anyway when he drinks the stuff...
AHEM...
"my kingdom for a hand" SHE SAID HAAAAAAAAAANNNNNND!!!!! Is that a typo or an interesting effect from the tea?
595994
No it is right.
She thought it, she didn't say it.
And a other great chapter Jet, I loved the back story with High Hat.
595994What Flame6666 said.
596893 I've been really bad for that lately... I'm reading too fast again. Then again when I'm constantly expecting multi-chapter updates from you it's not surprising
596914 It's alright. At least this is the only chapter where Heartbreak talks like a hyperactive squirrel on crack.
596914 It's alright. At least this is the only chapter where Heartbreak talks like a hyperactive squirrel on crack.596914 Well the only story.
Bah, this won't end well. Nope nope nope.
Have I said how hard it is for me to read Heartbreak's dialogue yet? GAH
Good one, HB
597673Keep reading. You'll see...
WILLY WONKA
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
I am a huge Willy Wonka fan. I was Willy Wonka in a play. Because there were no boys in the play.
And I had a purple top hat
Why does HB seem so adorable in this? Like a spunky toddler.
608380 It's the tea.
I keep reading Heartbreaks lines as if she has a terrible slur, not made any better by the lack of any vocal reference point for her speech mannerisms and tones. Then again, trying to keep Twilight and Spikes voices straight in my head is a challenge.
Is there a ponysona of Willy Wonka?
Challenge Accepted!
For some reason I have always been able to read sentences without spaces. It takes an extra 3 seconds or so, but its fairly easy. So this wasnt much trouble for me.
596108 MONKEYS!
What he has to lose? Why, only his sanity!
7820479
Mmmmm, I'll drink your ... Sani-tea.
Hoodwinked is an underrated gem. I'm glad you included this reference.
Sanity is for the unimaginative