Viral Love

by housedoc

1. LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs

...Every morning after I wake, I shoot a glance toward the clouds.
Hoping I might see you blaze by.
Always brightening up the sky.
The way your mane whips in the wind when you fly.
Your pretty smile makes butterflies dance-

“Okay, that does it!!”

---

The weekly tea parties at the Carousel Boutique had become a long-standing tradition for the five friends. It was an opportunity to hang out in a calm and tranquil setting and discuss the small things in life like regular friends do. Gossip, basically. No monsters, no drama, no grand adventures. In theory.

Though as fate would have it, the parties seldom went by without interruption. Today was no exception.

SLAM!!

The front door was kicked open violently and a puff of wind rustled all the dresses hanging in the showroom of the boutique. It did not, however, rustle the five attending tea party guests in the slightest. They were all too familiar with unexpected interludes by this point. Even the yellow pegasus was becoming jaded enough to not get startled.

One of the six elements usually never attended the tea parties. They were too full of stupid gossip and yucky tea for her. In other words, not particularly cool. Today however, was an emergency.

“Okay, who the HAY did this?! I want answers!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she stormed in through the door, stomping furiously with each step.

Rarity sighed and raised her teacup to have an unfazed sip. “Did what, dear?”

“THIS!” Rainbow hissed and slammed a piece of pink paper down on the round dining table. The tea nearly spilled out of the cups from the impact.

All ponies seated around the table stared down at the paper. It was immediately clear in so many ways that this was, in fact, a love letter.

Twilight snickered. “Hehe, looks you've got a secret admirer, Rainbow,” she said with a smug smile.

Rainbow's face started getting intensely red. A mix of embarrassment and wrath. She realized that she had come here emotionally unprepared. Come to think of it, she wasn't sure why her first course of action had been to come here at all.

Applejack joined the train of ridicule. “Yeah, I'll be darned. Ain't that cute?”

“NO!! I'm not... cute! I'm awesome! Who would have the guts to call me cute?! Tell me who wrote this!”

Twilight covered her mouth with her hoof to stifle her laughter. “Hihi, calm down Rainbow. Aren't you happy? Most of us would feel flattered if we got a cute- eh, cool letter like this.”

“Well, I'm not like most of you! I don't sit around sipping tea and blab about dreamy stallions for half a day! I'm cool and awesome and this letter is practically an insult to my coolness!”

Twilight frowned. “That's not what we do on these meetings!”

Pinkie suddenly reacted. “Meetings? Hey, I was told these were tea parties! You guys tricked me!”

Rarity looked at the embellished lettering and cleared her throat hesitantly. “Well, I can tell you one thing... a stallion did not write this.”

The whole room blushed. Rainbow felt herself reacting weirdly to those words... In a good kind of way, perhaps? She tried to play it cool.

“Ok, so... um, a mare... Any more specific ideas of the perpetrator's identity?”

Twilight rolled her eyes at the choice of words, but decided to play along. “Well, the hoofwriting is quite fancy, so I guess it can't be from Applejack.”

“Hay! What's that s'posed to mean?!”

“Hm? What? Are you saying this is from you?”

“N- No! Maybe it's from you! Ah've seen the way you blush when Rainbows giving you flying lessons!”

“What are you talking about?!”

“She's even given you preening lessons, right?”

“Oh, for Celestia's sake!” Twilight planted her front hooves on the table in defense, before pointing one accusingly at her friend. “You hang out with Rainbow the most out of all of us, Applejack. What about your so-called 'friendly competitiveness'? Isn't that hinting at some other kind of... tension between you guys?”

Applejack chose to divert attention. She pointed her hoof at Rarity.

“Rarity! You're into sexy speed devils aren't you? The daring, heroic, athletic type and all that.”

Rarity's eyes perked up. “Sexy speed devils?”

“Yeah, isn't that what's in those romantic novels you read?”

“Never mind that, you just called Rainbow Dash a sexy speed devil.”

“...Nah, I didn't.”

“You most certainly did.”

“Whatever! Honestly, this letter looks like your work with all the fancy squiggles.”

Twilight chipped in. “Yes, and longhoof writing like this is obviously easier with magic, so the likeliest candidate would be a unicorn.”

“Or alicorn,” Rarity added.

“Hrmf, I don't know about that,” Twilight mumbled.

Rarity went to the next pony in line to take the stand. “What about you, Fluttershy? They say opposites attract.”

Fluttershy looked terrified at suddenly being noticed.

“Well... I've known Rainbow for a very long time, and she's always been very supportive and kind to me and I do love her...”

“A-HA!” Twilight blurted accusingly.

“...as one of my best FRIENDS.” Fluttershy actually saw fit to add some assertiveness to her voice. She did not, however, have the gall to pass on the blame. Luckily, that got handled for her.

“Pinkie? You've been awfully quiet... Uncharacteristically so, even.” Twilight said and squinted her eyes in suspicion.

“Yeah, what about all the prankin' you and Rainbow used to do together?” Applejack added.

Pinkie gasped. “Yeah, and look! The letter is even PINK. What a giveaway!”

Twilight lifted an eyebrow. “...Eh, you're framing yourself, Pinkie.”

“Well, you just called me uncharischmatistic, so I had to say something!”

Twilight was starting to get annoyed. She looked at Rainbow, who was quietly observing all the bickering. Judging by the silly look on her face she was actually enjoying it quite a bit.

“Why do you even think one of us wrote it?!” Twilight asked Rainbow, who snapped out of her self-absorbed trance with a startled blink.

"Huh?" Rainbow did not really have a good answer. She scratched the back of her neck with her hoof. “W- well, I just... assumed that-”

“That one of us has a crush on you?” Twilight asked, dead-serious.

Upon hearing those words Rainbow felt a nice tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach. Was that why she had actually come here? She wanted answers, but which answer did she actually want?

“Y- yeah, well... I am awesome. It wouldn't be that surprising,” she said, proudly lifting her chin up.

“According to this here, you're more 'cute and pretty' than awesome,” Applejack said.

Rainbow's teeth grated out an angry squeak. “I'M. NOT!”

Pinkie was as lighthearted as usual. “Oh, come on, Dashie! Having an admirer is awesome! You have a fan club, right? This is the same thing, but even more awesome!”

Rainbow Dash felt this entire intervention had backfired. She would not be okay with ponies seeing her as some softie who swoons over cute love letters. It was bad enough that she had cried in front of everypony that time Tank had to go into hibernation. Cute?! Pretty?! This time, she had to drive the point home. In desperation, she could only think of one last thing to do.

“You wanna know what I think of this?!” Rainbow picked up the letter with a spiteful smirk upon her face.

RRIIIIIP!

Everyone stared in disbelief at the paper shreds floating towards the floor. A moment of disapproving silence followed.

“That was very insensitive of you, Rainbow Dash...” Rarity mumbled.

Rainbow Dash started to realize what she had just done. She allowed another moment of shameful silence to pass. Finally, she opened her mouth and a coarse whisper came out. “I'm... sorry, I... shouldn't have done that. Whoever wrote it, that is, if you're here right now... thank you... I really mean that...” The last part was barely audible.

Rainbow hurriedly collected the pieces of paper from the floor and stormed out, tears trailing behind her as she flew off into the sky.

After yet another short moment of contemplative silence, Rarity spoke up. “So... that was... interesting. Which one of you wrote it?”

No one answered. They all stared down into their teacups or out into the thin air, sharing the same deflated gaze.

“Right, I think it would be for the best if we postpone the rest of this social gathering. The tea has gone cold anyway.”

---

Later that day at the Ponyville Post Office

The postmaster looked at Derpy with stern eyes. “There have been complaints again, Ms. Hooves.”

Derpy looked back at the grey stallion with one worried eye. The other one stared down in shame at the floor. “Yeah, I just don't kn-”

“-ow what went wrong. Yes, yes, I've heard it a million times, Ms. Hooves! Last week it was a mailbox somehow catching fire, the week before that it was a whole day's worth of mail floating around in a lake! This time it's misdeliveries! Hundreds of misdeliveries! We're talking a young colt receiving hard apple cider for his cute-ceañera! Old Granny Smith got a... well, I won't go into any details but it didn't work very well as an egg beater!”

Derpy knew it was bad. This was one screw-up to many, and they were already too many to count.

“I feel very much like kicking you out of this post office once and for all, Ms. Hooves. What have you got to say for yourself? And it better not be 'I just don't know what went wrong'!”

Derpy tapped her chin with a hoof, to help her think better. “I... know what went wrong?” she finally said with an honest shrug.

The postmaster's face turned a deep shade of furious red. A blood vessel popped in his left eye. “Get out of my office, Ms. Hooves, otherwise I'll soon be the one not knowing what went wrong...”

Comments

[A Hollow Shell]

Very nice, a good bit of humor too. Little jabs here and there are always fun to read, especially if it can remind me of my own group of friends. It perfectly describes everypony's personalities, which is something you don't usually get out of fanfiction involving between-the-six crushes. I applaud you good sir. I'm intrigued now...

[ferret]

HOW DARE ONE OF YOU HAVE A SECRET CRUSH ON ME!

None of us have a crush on you, Dash.

Y-y-y-you don't? *rips letter* I thought we had something special! *runs away*

...what jus' happened

Season 5, apparantly.

[survivor]

DERPY!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!