My Little Pony: Friendship is Absurd

by Lord Seth

Mare Do Well vs. The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000

“So what was it that was so important you insisted I had to come over to your house to see?” Gilda asked.

“Only the most important thing ever!” said Lightning Dust. “Check it out!” She gestured to a large collection of posters, toys, and various other memorabilia or merchandise all depicting a masked figure in a purple and dark blue labeled “Mare Do Well” on the outside.

“Okay, so you’ve become a collector of something I’ve never heard of,” said Gilda. “Can I go now?”

“No, you don’t get it! I paid to get all this stuff made! Mare Do Well is going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread, and I’ll be cashing in on it with all this merchandise!”

“That expression never made that much sense to me,” said Gilda. “I mean, sliced bread isn’t really that great. Heck, what was the greatest thing before that?”

“Focus, Gilda! I could make tons of money and get lots of fame for this! I’ve even made a theme song!”

“Oh joy,” said Gilda as she rolled her eyes. Lightning Dust put on a record and played it.

“Mare Do Well, Mare Do Well
She’s a pegasi that’s so swell
Flies around, fighting crime
Stops them all just in time
Look out!
Here comes the Mare Do Well

Is she strong? Listen bud
Powerful stuff is in her blood
Fills villains up with dread
Take a look overhead
Hey there
There goes the Mare Do Well.

She’ll provide you support
And help stamp out some crime
So don’t sell her short
Buy her toys all the time

Mare Do Well, Mare Do Well
Friendly neighborhood Mare Do Well
Merchandise
You can buy
The prices are not high

To you, she is a great big hero
If your cash isn’t zero
Buy stuff marked ‘Mare Do Well’!”

“So, what did you think?” asked Lightning Dust as the music ended. “Pretty catchy, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s lyrically lacking, but the melody and instrumentation is pretty good. But how are you planning to actually sell this stuff?

“Easy!” declared Lightning Dust. “I’m going to dress up as this character and fight crime! Then I’ll become really popular and everyone will want to buy my stuff!”

“How’d you even come up with this idea, anyway?” wondered Gilda.

“Oh, Trixie insisted on showing me some story she wrote. It was about me coming up with the idea of this ‘Mare Do Well’ character and trying to sell merchandise based on it.”

“You came up with a business idea based on a dumb story Trixie wrote?”

“Well, when you say it that way, it does sound kind of stupid,” said Lightning Dust. “But think of the money that could be made!”

“How’d that story of hers end?”

“I totally screwed the whole thing up and lost all the money I made,” said Lightning Dust with a shrug.

“And you don’t think that maybe that’s an omen?”

“Nah,” said Lightning Dust. “It failed in the story because I had the line ‘she can totally stop a flood’ in the song, so when a flood happened, everypony lost interest in Mare Do Well. But I have a different lyric in there now, so it’s foolproof!”

“Uh, I think I may have found a problem with your genius idea,” said Gilda.

“What?”

“Ponyville’s a very peaceful town. There’s hardly any crime to fight. Heck, the biggest crime was probably that time you, Suri, and Trixie assaulted Flim and Flam.”

“Enh, there’s enough occasional disaster and giant monster attacks that I’m sure something will turn up.”

Several weeks later…

“Extra! Extra!” shouted the paperboy. “Read all about it! Absolutely no disasters or anything else that might require the services of a superhero occur in the last few weeks! Police force facing potential budget cuts!”

Lightning Dust growled. “Darn it, gotta find some way to make Mare Do Well the next big thing. I sunk too much money into making all this stuff for it to go to waste.”

She went home and paced back and forth. “Got to be something to do,” she murmured to herself. “What did I do last time I needed attention?” Lightning Dust considered the matter, then snapped her fingers. Or at least that’s what she would have done if this was an anthropomorphized universe, which this is not.

---

Trixie put the record onto the player. “All right! Time to give the new album a listen again!” She moved to press the play button, but was interrupted by knocking.

“Ugh,” she mumbled. “What is it this time?” Grumbling, she walked over to the door, only for it to get knocked down by Lightning Dust from the outside.

“Hi Trixie!” said Lightning Dust. “I need your help!”

“And you think that knocking down my door is the right way to get me to agree?”

Lightning Dust considered this. “I guess I didn’t think that through too well.”

“Fine, what’s your request this time?”

“I need your help promoting Mare Do Well. There’s no crimes around so I can’t promote it that way. Any ideas?”

“Well, we could stage accidents,” said Trixie.

“Oh come on, that was straight from your story!”

“Because it was a good idea!”

“Do you have any idea what the legal issues of that could be?”

Trixie shrugged. “It’s only illegal if you get caught.”

“Come on, Trixie, work with me here,” said Lightning Dust. “You’ve got partial equity in this thing because you came up with the name ‘Mare Do Well,’ so start showing your worth.”

“Considering I came up with it, I think I should have all of it,” muttered Trixie.

“Hey, I was the one who financed the making of all that merchandise and actually designed the character!”

“Fine,” said Trixie. “Come back later, and maybe I’ll have something. In the meantime, I have music to listen to.”

Lightning Dust’s eyes fell on the record player. “Didn’t know you listened to music. What is it?”

“The new Cheese Pie album, Required Entertainment!”

Lightning Dust stared. “Cheese Pie?”

Trixie’s eyes widened. “You’ve never heard of them?”

“Not really.”

“You’ve never heard of the best and funniest musical comic duo to ever grace Equestria?!” asked Trixie with a feverish look in her eyes.

Lightning Dust suddenly felt threatened. “Uh, you know, you did want me to leave, so I’ll leave you alone–”

“Oh no, oh no!” declared Trixie. “This album is 45 minutes and 21 seconds long. By that time I’ll have figured out an answer. But in the meantime, you are going to sit here and listen to the whole thing with me.”

“Erk,” said Lightning Dust.

One hour later…

Trixie knocked on the door. Flam opened it. “What you want?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie and the not-as-great and not-as-powerful Lightning Dust are here for a business proposition.”

“Hey!” said Lightning Dust.

“Silence!” declared Trixie. “Anyway, Lightning Dust and I made a bunch of merchandise around this ‘Mare Do Well’ superhero, but we’ve been having trouble promoting it. Considering cider season is coming up soon, and you’ll be selling a lot of cider, we were hoping maybe you could put something about Mare Do Well on the bottles to give us more promotion.”

“You think there’s a big crossover between people who collect superhero memorabilia and people who get drunk on cider?” Flam asked.

“Well, on the non-alcoholic cider,” clarified Trixie.

“And what’s in it for us?”

“A lot of money for putting them on the bottles?”

“Sounds good!” said Flam. “And with the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000 almost ready, there’ll be more cider than ever this year!”

An indeterminate amount of time later…

“Ugh,” said Sunset as the sun woke her up. “Great. Another day.” She got out of bed. “Hopefully this will be better than the last.”

A loud commotion got her attention. “Do I really want to know?” she asked herself. Curiosity got the better of her, however, and she left the house to find a large line of ponies. “Uh, what is this line for?” she asked.

“You don’t know?” asked one of the ponies in line. “It’s cider season! Everypony gets in line for all the cider the Flim Flam Brothers make.”

“Cider, huh?” asked Sunset. “Alcoholic or non-alcoholic?”

“Both!”

Sunset stared at the long line. “I know I’m going to regret this, but if the stupid cider is this good, I might as well give it a try.” She got in line.

One lengthy line later…

“Ah! Sunset!” said Flim. “Want cider? It’s made with the all-new, top-of-the-line Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000!”

Sunset stared at him with a dull look. “After over an hour in line, I’m going to demand my money back if this isn’t the best cider ever.”

“Sorry!” said Flam. He pointed to a sign. “No refunds.”

After a weary sigh, Sunset paid him for the cider and drank it. “Oh, wow. This actually is pretty good. Can I have another?”

“Sure! Just get back in line!”

She looked back and saw the line remained as huge as ever. “Why don’t you hire help? You’ve got plenty of cider, but you seem slow at handing it out.”

“Would cost too much,” said Flim with a shrug. “We did the calculations. The estimated loss of customers due to waiting is less of a revenue loss than if we hired help.”

“Well, screw it then,” said Sunset. “By the way, what’s this ‘Mare Do Well’ thing on all of the bottles?”

“Oh, just a sponsor. There’s more information on the bottle itself.”

“Well,” said Sunset, “I’ve just realized how little I care. I’m off.”

Sunset started to walk off. However, an orange earth pony suddenly sped past her. Surprised, Sunset turned around.

“Hey!” said Flim. “Wait in line!”

The earth pony pulled out a badge. “I’m with the government to investigate claims of false advertising,” she said with a slight accent. “Is that cider really cider?”

“Wha… why, of course it is!” said Flam, producing a bottle of cider.

Sunset was curious as to what was going on, so she approached. “I have just marginally enough interest to ask what’s going on,” she said.

“Oh, it’s just Applejack,” said Flim with a glare at the earth pony. “Butting into our business again.”

Applejack glared at him. “Well, maybe if you weren’t constantly trying to swindle people, I wouldn’t have to keep tabs on you.”

“She has a grudge against us ever since we won a bet that gave us exclusive cider rights to Ponyville,” Flam said in an aside to Sunset.

Applejack in the meantime had used a convoluted-looking mechanism to apparently analyze the cider. “Well,” she said, “this one seems real enough… but how about I try that one?” She pointed to a bottle that was going to be given to the next customer.

“Hey!” said the customer. “I was going to use that! You’re just holding up the line!”

“Don’t worry,” said Applejack, “I’ll buy you two if this doesn’t work out.”

“You know,” said Flim, “you are holding up the line, and you already tested your bottle, so if you’d just leave us alone, that would be appreciated.”

“Oh, this’ll be quick,” said Applejack. She inserted the previously used device into the bottle. It suddenly started beeping and a knob turned red.

“Well,” she said, “what would you know? This drink you’re passing along as cider isn’t actual cider. Care to explain it?”

“Um,” said Flam nervously.

Applejack looked him straight in the eye. “Lying to a government inspector is extremely frowned upon. I’d suggest you come as clean as possible if you want to avoid getting in even more trouble.”

“Okay!” said Flam. “I admit it! The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000 isn’t actually making cider out of apples! It uses a synthetic substitute to replicate the taste! But it’s almost impossible to tell the difference! It tastes the same!”

“Well then,” said Applejack, “maybe you should’ve advertised it as such. As is, you’re liable for false advertising, so you have to give refunds to anypony who purchased your cider.”

“But that’ll cost so much money,” whined Flim, but stopped after wilting under Applejack’s gaze. “Um, I mean, yes, sure.”

“Hey everypony!” called out Applejack to the line. “Just so you know, this isn’t cider made from actual apples, and it’s all just some kind of fake substitute. Just thought you’d want to know!”

A fair number of ponies opted to stay in the line, but some decided to wander off at the news.

“Well, you got your revenge,” said Flim. “Happy?”

“Oh, please,” said Applejack. “If this was actually about revenge, I would’ve waited until you had sold way more of your ‘cider’ before calling you on it, so you would’ve had to pay more back. Anyway, I’ve got other cases of false advertising to investigate, so I’ll leave you two for now.” She gave them a harsh look. “And if you don’t do any of those refunds, you’re going to get in some real trouble.” She left.

Sunset had to work hard not to not burst out laughing during the entire exchange due to the schadenfreude of the situation. She did, however, immediately go up to Flim and Flam. “Hey! You! I want my refund!”

Flam sighed and handed over the money. Sunset left.

“Well,” said Flim with resignation, “we’d better take off all these labels from the bottles, because they advertise it as all-natural cider. Don’t want to get in more trouble over it.”

Later…

“All right!” declared Lightning Dust. “They’ve probably sold through tons of their stock and done all that advertising for us. Let the orders begin!”

Lightning Dust and Trixie set up Trixie’s wagon to have a large booth selling various Mare Do Well merchandise. “All right, business might be a little slow at first, but I’m sure all the kids are going to be nagging their parents to buy them the stuff that they saw on the cider bottles.”

Sunset walked by. “What are you two idiots doing?”

“Selling Mare Do Well merchandise! Want to buy any?”

“Huh,” said Sunset. “I feel like I saw that stupid thing before.”

“Did you get cider today?”

“Oh yeah,” said Sunset, “that must have been it. I think it was on the bottles. For a little while.”

“A little while?” asked Trixie, confused.

“You guys don’t know? Why wouldn’t you be at the site of your promotion?”

Lightning Dust shrugged. “I was there for the start, but then it got really boring, so I left. It would've been preferable to set up near where Flim and Flam were, but they thought it'd be too much of a distraction, so we're here. Anyway, did something happen?”

“Apparently there was false advertising, so they had to take off all the labels from the bottles. Pretty sure most didn’t see the bit with Mare Do Well because of that. Plus, anypony who did see it by buying it probably had a bad impression of the whole thing due to the aforementioned false advertising. Don’t think you’ll probably be able to sell much.”

“What?!” exclaimed Lightning Dust.

“Hey, at least I got free cider out of it,” said Sunset. She walked off.

“Well,” said Trixie, “I guess we could try to get our money back from Flim and Flam?”

A short time later…

Trixie and Lightning Dust approached Flim and Flam’s cider-selling booth just as the last customer in line left with an unlabeled bottle of cider. “Hey!” said Lightning Dust. “What’s going on here? Where’s the labels?”

“Oh, um, er,” said Flim. “There was a mixup, and–”

“I already heard what happened,” said Lightning Dust. “You idiots got in trouble for false advertising, so nopony saw the Mare Do Well stuff, and anypony who did was probably uninterested due to your scam. So I want the money I gave you back!”

“Well, actually,” said Flim, “if you read the contract, you’ll notice it only said we had to put the labels on the bottles. It never said we couldn’t take them off.”

“Oh, come on!” snapped Lightning Dust. “You’re using that to weasel out of the debt?”

“Oh please,” said Flam, “are you telling me you wouldn’t use any legal trick you could to get out of a debt?”

Lightning Dust considered the matter. “Well, I wouldn’t have been guilty of false advertising to begin with, so the point is moot!”

“Well, not quite, because the point is that we’re not paying you back. Sorry.”

“Oh, you two are going to get what’s coming to you!” said Lightning Dust angrily.

“Uh,” said Trixie, “just for the record, I’d like to point out that I’m standing back here, and if Lightning Dust decides to beat you up, I didn’t have anything to do with it. I really don’t want to have to deal with Suri spending 10 weeks complaining about how badly she thinks the prison uniforms were knitted.”

“But Suri isn’t even here,” said Lightning Dust. “You’d get a different cellmate.”

“Not the point!”

“Ugh,” said Lightning Dust, glaring one more time at Flim and Flam, who cowered behind the counter. “You idiots aren’t worth it. I’m going home.” She walked off.

Trixie shrugged. “Well, another get-rich-quick scheme goes down the drain. This feels almost like a running gag at this point.”

---

Trixie knocked on the door. “Hey, Lightning Dust! You haven’t come out of your house for the last few days, and I really want the money you owe me to fix the door you broke!” No answer came.

“Ugh,” said Trixie. She then knocked the door down to find Lightning Dust feverishly writing something on a piece of paper. “Uh, what are you doing?”

Lightning Dust finally looked up. “Doing what I should’ve just done in the first place as a promotion: Making a comic book. Almost done with it now! Want to check it out?”

Trixie raised an eyebrow but went and read through the comic.

“So, what did you think?” asked Lightning Dust eagerly when Trixie had finished. “Really awesome, right?”

“Kinda boring, actually,” said Trixie. “And not particularly well drawn, but I suppose that’s because it’s hard to draw with the pen in your mouth. Why do we even have pens like that? They’re so ill suited for how we actually hold things.”

“Boring?!” asked Lightning Dust indignantly. “How? Mare Do Well is awesome in this story! Nothing can beat her!”

“Which is why it’s boring,” said Trixie. “Nopony wants to see such patently perfect superheroes. She’s so powerful she’s practically invincible; there’s no real suspense.”

“And what would you do?”

“Make it into a comedy or parody!” said Trixie. “Like, take this montage bit where she saves several ponies. I’d rewrite it to something like this.”

Trixie took out a piece of paper and started scribbling on it quickly.

“AAAHHH!” screamed the various ponies in the cart that had gone out of control. Fortunately for them, their ride was halted by a masked pegasus. “YAAAY!” they all said afterwards.

“Stay in school!” declared the pegasus before flying off.

They all looked at each other. “Uh, aren’t we all adults?” one asked.

---

“AAAHHH!” screamed an earth pony as a falling piece of debris was about to hit them. However, the aforementioned pegasus from earlier saved them from it.

“Oh wow! You saved my life!” he said. “Actually, I don’t think I would have died, but you sure saved me some health costs, if nothing else.”

“Right!” declared the masked pegasus. “Don’t drink and drive!” She took off.

The earth pony stood there, confused. “Huh?”

---

“AAAHHH!” screamed a unicorn, who was swiftly approached by the twice-aforementioned pegasus from the previous scene.

“What’s the problem?” asked the pegasus.

“My finger got a papercut! The pain!”

The pegasus stared at the unicorn. “You don’t have fingers. Also, you’re not holding paper.”

The unicorn quieted down. “Oh, I guess you’re right. Thanks!”

“Eat your vegetables!” declared the pegasus before flying away again.

“Now there goes a true blue hero,” said the unicorn. “Well, more like dark blue, but blue nevertheless.”

“See?” said Trixie. “That’s interesting and comedic.”

“It wasn’t that funny,” said Lightning Dust.

“Well, it’ll work better in context.”

Lightning Dust scratched her head. “Why did you write the whole thing in prose format when this is going to be a comic? Some of the stuff here can’t translate at all.”

“People don’t like script format for some reason. I had to put it in prose.”

Lightning Dust stared. “Huh?”

“Never mind. You should have goofy stuff like that. Make the hero good intentioned but still slightly dim. That way you can get a lot of comedy and jokes out of the situations while still having them be a real superhero. Heck, maybe you could have them become more competent as the series goes on for character development.”

Lightning Dust looked back at the comic. “Well, I guess we could do some rewriting to have more jokes. I’m sticking with the general story, though.”

“Oh, no complaints there,” said Trixie. “I liked the story of Mare Do Well having to fight against the evil Dr. Film and Dr. Falm. Including the battle against the giant robot they made out of a cider-making machine. You sure you can call it the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000, though? Isn’t that trademarked?”

“I actually looked it up. The two completely forgot to trademark the thing, so it should be fine.”

“Yeah, but see, that’s the thing. This whole thing is really silly, but it’s played overly straight. Play it more loose and it’ll be hilarious.”

“All right, then!” said Lightning Dust dramatically. “We will work together and make this comic as awesome as I am!”

---

Gilda put down the comic. “So, what did you think?” asked Trixie eagerly. “Did you like it? Lightning Dust and I worked really hard on it!”

Gilda shrugged. “It was okay. Not anything I’d pay for.” She left.

“Well, that was disappointing,” said Trixie. “I at least thought she’d like the art I drew for it.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Lightning Dust. “That’s the most enthusiastic I’ve seen Gilda about anything outside of the things she actually does get really excited about. I think we’ve actually made something good here. Now we just need to get this distributed.”

“Ugh, that’s going to be the annoying part,” said Trixie. “Actually getting a comic published is a long and arduous process.”

A long and arduous process later…

“All right! Finally got it all published and stuff!” said Lightning Dust. “Now we just hope people check it out and like it.”

“And then buy all the merchandise, too?” asked Trixie.

"Huh?" asked Lightning Dust. "Oh, yeah, that too. But I guess for now we wait.”

Some waiting later…

“Well, the money from the comic sales by themselves seem to have recovered the cash I gave to Flim and Flam,” said Lightning Dust. “So that fixes up that, at least.”

“And it looks like it caught on enough to sell some of the merchandise! We’ll want to make some more!” said Trixie.

“Really should also get to work on making the next issue, too.”

“Uh, guys?” asked Sunset. “Why are you telling me all this? I already told you I don’t care.”

“Just keeping you informed!” said Trixie.

“Look, I just wanted to borrow something, but if you’re going to be annoying again, I can leave.” Sunset walked off.

“Enh,” said Trixie. “Her loss.”

“So,” said Lightning Dust, “my idea for the next issue is that–”

She was interrupted by a knock on the door. Lightning Dust opened it and found Flim and Flam were standing outside. “Oh. You two.”

“Hi!” said Flim. “We’ve got a new product called ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ Because apparently this ‘Mare Do Well’ thing is actually catching on, we were hoping maybe you could put a plug for it in your comic.”

“We’ll give you free samples if you do!” added Flam.

Lightning Dust stared at the two, fell over laughing, got up, and slammed the door. “Sorry,” she said to Trixie. “What were you saying?”

Outside…

“Huh,” said Flim. “I guess that’s a no.”

Comments

[cmartist]

Oh, the irony! (Pun Intended)

[ademonsdream]

Huh I find myself reading this only in hopes of discovering what happened to twilight, what's celestia up to, and how long until Sombra destroys Griffin kingdom empire place. Oh and also the mirror

[keaton-furman-prower]

seem to have covered the seems to have finally covered up the cash I gave to Flim and Flam

Something wonky here. Fix it soon please.