Lunch

“Hey, Apple Bloom. Nice apple strudel you’ve got there,” Diamond Tiara said, smirking over at the filly from the other side of the picnic table.

“Yeah. Did your mom make that for you?” Silver Spoon asked, before gasping and putting a hoof up in front of her mouth. “Oh, right, I forgot. She died so she wouldn’t have to.”

The two filles giggled nasally as they sneered at Apple Bloom.

Apple Bloom pounded her hooves onto the table, rising up off the bench she was sitting on. “Oh, yeah? Well, at least my sister cares about me enough to make me lunch, instead of having somepony else do it for her!”

“Whatever.” Diamond Tiara flicked her hoof. “Everypony knows you just get leftovers. That’s why it’s always apples. Every day.” She smirked. “Of course, my family can afford to eat more than one kind of food.”

“Hey, what are you two doing here?” Scootaloo shouted from in front of the schoolhouse.

“Yeah! Leave Apple Bloom alone!” Sweetie Belle piped in from beside her.

“Geez. We were just trying to make conversation.” Diamond Tiara shrugged. “Oh well. It’s not like Silver Spoon and I want to eat lunch with you blank flanks anyway. Come on, Silver.” She hopped down off the bench and began walking away, the gray filly grabbing both their lunchboxes and hurrying after a moment later.

“Ugh!” Apple Bloom slammed her lunchbox shut, pounding her hooves on the table.

“Oh, come on, Apple Bloom,” Sweetie Belle said as she trotted over, depositing her lunchbox onto the table next to her friend’s. “Don’t let them get to you.”

“They’re right, though. It’s the same thing, every day!”

“What do you mean?” Scootaloo asked, sitting down on the other side of the earth pony.

“Apples!” Apple Bloom pounded on the table again. “Apples! All I ever eat is apples!” Apple Bloom gesticulated wildly. “No peaches. No pears. No corn. Just apples, day in and day out.”

“But you have a big field of corn out in front of your barn, don’t you?” Sweetie Belle said from her place on the bench beside Apple Bloom.

“Of course we have a big field of corn! And carrots! But do I ever get those for lunch? No! It’s apple strudel, apple crisps, apple pie, baked apples – sometimes, just straight up apples!” Apple Bloom smacked her metal lunchbox with her hoof, sending it sliding across the table.

“It’s okay, I know how you feel,” Sweetie Belle said, setting a hoof on her friend’s back as Apple Bloom slumped over the table. “It’s not like Rarity is any better. ‘Oh, you need to have the proper lunch for a young lady.’” Sweetie Belle swatted at the side of her lunchbox with her hoof, flipping the lid up. “Look at this! Lettuce wraps! And they aren’t even very big.”

“Hold on a tick,” Apple Bloom said. “I thought you lived with your parents? Why is Rarity makin’ you lunches?”

Sweetie Belle’s head fell. “My parents are on vacation again. It isn’t so bad, I guess. I mean, it means I get to spend more time with my sister. But…” She shook her head. “She just makes the exact same thing for lunch every day. Every day! It even looks exactly the same.”

“Well, at least your lunch looks good. Look at mine.” Scootaloo hefted a misshapen sandwich in one hoof. “Peanut butter and jelly, day in and day out, and it doesn’t even look right.”

The three fillies sighed in unison.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Apple Bloom said.

Sweetie Belle lifted her head. “Learn how to cook?”

“No, no. I mean a more immediate solution to our problems.”

Sweetie Belle looked from lunchbox to lunchbox, furrowing her brows. “Switch lunches?”

“Nope!” Apple Bloom set one hoof on her lunchbox as she stood up tall and proud. “Today’s the day we eat at Sugarcube Corner!”

“I can’t,” Scootaloo said, slumping back on the bench. “I don’t have any bits.”

“I’ll pay!” Sweetie Belle bent down under the table, rummaging through her saddlebag before she sighed. “Oh, right, I’m staying with Rarity. My bit bag is at home.”

“Ugh. Well, looks like it is PB&J again,” Scootaloo said as she turned back towards her lunch, lifting up her sandwich, only for Apple Bloom to block its passage with her hoof.

“Wait. I’ve got a plan.”

Scootaloo blinked. “What is it?”

“Well… you know how Pinkie Pie sometimes used to give us free samples that were basically whole treats?”

Sweetie Belle shook her head. “But Mr. and Mrs. Cake made her stop doing that!”

“Yeah, but if we snuck in through the back, maybe…”

“…they wouldn’t notice and she could give us free treats! Apple Bloom, you’re a genius!”

“Aw, shucks.”

Sweetie Belle glanced back at the schoolhouse. “We’d better hurry if we want to get to Sugarcube Corner before lunch is over.”

“Right,” Scootaloo nodded decisively. “Come on, I’ll pull you along in my scooter.”

“It’s locked.” Sweetie Belle said, staring up at the back door.

“Locked? Who the hay locks their door in Ponyville?”

Scootaloo glanced between Sweetie Belle and the door. “Can’t you like, magic open the door or something?”

“Twilight could. I don’t know how to do that.” Sweetie Belle hung her head. “Maybe we should just go.”

“Nopony ever built a house without layin’ the first stone.”

The other two fillies blinked at Apple Bloom.

“That doesn’t sound like an apple pun,” Scootaloo said.

“I’m branching out, okay?”

“Like an apple tree?” Sweetie Belle tilted her head.

“No! Not like an apple tree! I’m sick of apples!” Apple Bloom stomped her hoof.

“Okay, okay!” Scootaloo said, retreating against the side of the building. “Sheesh.”

Apple Bloom shook her head as she sat back on her haunches. “Just let me think.” Apple Bloom’s eyes slowly wandered across the back of the building as the other two fillies watched her expectantly. “Say, Scootaloo. Do ya see that vent up there?”

Scootaloo’s eyes rose. “I see it.” She grinned. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Apple Bloom nodded, clapping her hooves together. “Let’s stack up those boxes and get up there.”

The three fillies moved around the back of the shop, pushing empty crates which once held baking supplies up into a makeshift pile, straining as they pulled one crate on top of another to pile them higher and higher, ever closer to their destination – the large square vent sticking out the back of the building. Finally, Scootaloo clambered up on top of the pile, rearing up on her hind legs and sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth before she finally hooked her hooves over the bottom edge of the vent and pulled herself up. “Whew. That was hot work.”

Apple Bloom was next, swaying unsteadily on top of the piled debris before Scootaloo caught her hooves and drug her up inside. “I don’t think it was the work that’s got us so hot,” she said, sweating in the hot air flowing out of the shaft.

Sweetie Belle paused below. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Come on, Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo called.

“Yeah. It ain’t so bad. We’ll be through the vents and out into the kitchen in a jiffy.”

“I don’t know…” Sweetie Belle said, pawing at the dirt path behind the shop.

“C’mon, hurry up.”

Sweetie Belle sighed and climbed up after her friends, staring up from the top of the swaying crates. She closed her eyes for moment, steeling herself before she leapt up and clung awkwardly to the metal shaft as the crates came crashing down below her. “Help!”

Apple Bloom banged her head on the side of the narrow passage. “I can’t turn around.”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Just let her grab onto your tail.”

Apple Bloom winced as Sweetie Belle’s teeth clamped down around the red appendage, gritting her teeth as she crawled forward after Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle’s hindlegs scrabbled against the back of the building, beating out a staccato rhythm that made Scootaloo lower her ears.

“Do you want everypony to hear us?” she hissed.

“Then help!”

Grabbing ahold of Apple Bloom’s shoulders, Scootaloo pulled, and finally, Sweetie Belle was pulled inside the sloped metal shaft. With the weight of two fillies descending on her, Scootaloo couldn’t keep her footing, and all three began to tumble down inside through the wall, crashing into the vent over the stove. Scootaloo’s eyes watered as boiling-hot steam flowed around her, making her yell loudly and try and shove the other two fillies off of her.

“I’m roasting, here!”

“Does that mean you’re fried—”

“No. Now get off!”

With some amount of grunting and metallic banging, finally the fillies pulled back away from the grate as the ventilation shaft creaked ominously. The three fillies held their breath for several long seconds before it stopped moving, letting out a unified sigh of relief.

“Whew, that was close,” Scootaloo said as she lifted a hoof to wipe the sweat off her forehead. “They’re cooking stuff down there. I thought for a second that I was a goner.”

The vent creaked one last time before the steel screws holding the last section in place gave out with a loud ping, dumping the three shrieking fillies down on the boiling pots of chocolate and caramel on the stove.

“Is Apple Bloom alright? I came as soon as I heard!” Applejack shouted as she burst through the door into the kitchen. Her eyes flicked wildly across the three filly-shaped blobs of chocolate, the orange of Apple Bloom’s eyes the only thing separating her from the other two.

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack lurched across the room, grabbing the chocolate-covered filly by the shoulders. “Apple Bloom, speak to me, please! Just let me hear your voice one more time! Don’t let it end this way!”

“Mmph!” said the trapped filly.

“Woah there!” Rainbow Dash flew over, prying Applejack away from her sister. “The girls are fine! They just got totally covered in Pinkie Pie’s new chocolate.”

Applejack relaxed, slumping against the pegasus. “What a relief. After what Big Mac told me, I thought…”

“I know! It is a total disaster!” Rarity wailed, her cheeks stained with twin lines of leaked mascara.

Rainbow Dash arched an eyebrow. “You do realize that they’re going to be okay once Mr. Cake gets back with that jackhammer, right?”

Rarity raised her hooves to the heavens. “But they will never get all the caramel out of their manes!”

“Cut ‘em off. Manes grow back.” Rainbow Dash shrugged.

Rarity gasped and toppled over onto the floor.

Applejack sniffed a few times, before rubbing at her eyes with her hoof and laughing weakly. “I gotta admit, it does smell mighty fine in here.”

“It’s all my fault!” Pinkie Pie shouted from the far side of the room, Applejack jerking her head as she noticed the deflated pink pony for the first time. “I thought it was just raccoons in the ventilation system again, so I left the pots and went to get a broom to scare them out. And then… and then…” Pinkie Pie sniffed a few more times before going back to sobbing into her hooves.

Applejack sighed heavily as she rose back to her hooves, trudging over to hook her hoof over her friend’s shoulders. “It’s alright, sugarcube. Nopony blames you for what happened.”

“But… but…”

“Applejack’s right,” Rainbow Dash said, flying over to wrap her hooves and wings around Pinkie Pie from the other side. “What happened wasn’t your fault. Though, I do want to know… what the heck did you put into that chocolate, anyway? It’s like rock!”

“Oh! It’s just my super industrial architectural baking chocolate!” Pinkie Pie said, perking up as her mane regained its fluffiness. “You see, I was thinking about making an all-you-can-eat party. But then I realized that you can’t eat tables. But then I thought, ‘Pinkie, why can’t you eat tables?’ So then I tried one, but it didn’t taste very good. But then I thought, ‘What if the table was made out of chocolate?’ So I—”

“Forget I asked.”

Rarity dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “What I want to know is what they were doing in the ventilation system in the first place. Were they trying to get their cutie marks?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Nah. That’s way too lame for Scootaloo.”

“Mpph,” agreed the trapped filly.

“I suppose we’ll just have to ask ‘em when they get out,” Applejack said, shaking her head at the three chocolaty blobs.

“Actually, I may be able to answer that question.”

Four heads jerked towards the new voice in the room. “Twilight!”

Twilight smiled weakly. “Sorry it took me so long. I was investigating.”

Applejack blinked. “You didn’t have to go and do that for us, sugarcube.”

Twilight shook her head. “Nothing’s more important than what happens to my best friends’ sisters.” She sighed, her ears falling. “You might not want to hear it, though.”

“Why?” Rarity asked, her voice quavering.

“Well…” Twilight’s eyes fell down to a piece of paper hovering in front of her snout, wrapped in violet magic. “I asked some of the kids at school if any of them knew why they might have gone to Sugarcube corner and left their lunchboxes behind.” Twilight bit her lip. “Two of their friends said that they heard them complaining about having the same thing for lunch every day, and thought they might have been sneaking into Sugarcube Corner to… well…” Twilight sighed loudly.

Applejack slid away from Pinkie Pie, trudging back over next to where Apple Bloom stood stiffly. “Oh, Apple Bloom, why didn’t you say anything to me?” She wrapped her hooves around her entombed sister. “I coulda gotten some carrots from Golden Harvest, or made some cornbread, or somethin’.”

“I know just how you feel,” Rarity said, hanging her head as she trudged over to stroke Sweetie Belle’s shoulder. “If she had just told me that she was tired of the salad wraps, I would have made her something else, like tea sandwiches, or quiche!” Rarity paused. “Well, not quiche, that does not keep very well. But maybe a salad, with just the right hint of vinaigrette dressing. It would have been nice.”

The two ponies stared down in silence at their little sisters for several long moments before all the ponies slowly turned their heads to look at Rainbow Dash.

“What?” Rainbow Dash said, nervously fluffing her wings.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” Rarity asked.

Rainbow Dash fidgeted. “What am I supposed to say?”

“You know, saying what you would have done differently, if only you’d known?” Twilight said, stepping forward.

"Well, what am I supposed to do? It's not like she lives with me or anything."

"You coulda done somethin'.”

"Like what?"

"I dunno,” Applejack said, waving her hoof. “Maybe speak up and talk to her parents about what they made her for lunch or whatever."

"But..."

Applejack tilted her head. "But what, sugarcube?"

Rainbow Dash gestured helplessly. “Squirt here always told me she made her own lunch."

Author's Note:

I'd like to thank Bribri for demanding I rewrite the original ending of this (and a few of the jokes), and Horizon for his further feedback and refinement. I'd also like to thank Magello for a final sanity check on the piece before it was posted.

And finally, I'd like to thank my keyboard of 12 years, which finally gave its life to the cause after this story was finished. It shall be missed.