It's just Baldness

by Charlie_K

Seventeen

Seventeen

"What in Celestia's mane happened in here!?"

Spike stood in a state of shock and disbelief as he surveyed the kitchen before him and took in its current state. Everywhere he looked there was a mess to be found, with various assorted food stuffs covering just about every surface. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside.

And right at the epicenter of the bomb blast were Pinkie and Twilight, both of them equally messy and looking quite surprised at his sudden yell.

"I go over to Rarity's for a while to help her out with her work, I come back here, and the kitchen is in shambles! What went on in here while I was gone!?"

Pinkie and Twilight looked at each other in response, as if they were silently trying to sort out exactly what they were going to say. All the while sitting there covered in icing, cake batter, food coloring, and what he could only pray to Faust was shortening.

"W-well, Spike" Twilight started, "it all started with a dollop of frosting, and things just sort of got out of hoof."

Spike skeptically quirked an eyebrow in response to Twilight's efforts at an explanation, which seemed to deflate her on the spot.

"You see, Spike, Pinkie wanted to bake cupcakes as part of her therapy session today. And in the process of doing that, we got a bit silly. And the next thing we knew we had a food fight on our hooves..."

"A... food fight..." Spike repeated slowly as he once again surveyed the scene before him. That would certainly explain the food coloring stains, as well as what looked like cake batter currently stuck to the ceiling. "You two decided to have a food fight, and you didn't invite me so I could at least be involved with the fun half of making a mess?"

His tone was heavy with disapproval as he spoke, and he could see they understood that, before he shook his head and sighed, and turned to leave the room. He knew what he had to do.

"That was... unexpected," Twilight said as she watched Spike leave the kitchen.

"Yeah, it kinda was," Pinkie agreed. "I must be really out of it today, my Pinkie Sense didn't kick in at all!"

"It's been a weird day," Twilight said in justification of such, as it made about as much sense as anything right now. Pinkie was way out of her element in terms of her own level of comfort, trying something new she obviously wasn't crazy about. It would make sense -to her anyway- if she felt off and not on top of her game as a result.

"I guess you're right," Pinkie replied and shrugged. Right now it was as good an explanation of anything that might be offered up.

Without argument, it'd certainly been a weird day. But at the same time it'd actually been a -surprisingly- pretty fun day. The baking endeavor they'd set out on had been an absolute disaster, as the kitchen could easily attest. But what'd followed could largely be considered a success.

True, there was a huge mess to clean up now. But the resulting food fight had actually let her forget that Twilight had been bald the entire time, up until Spike walked in and started yelling in surprise. There had been so much laughter, and silliness, and focus on matters other than baldness, it'd just completely slipped her mind without her even realizing it'd happened. It was even more fun than when Twilight had let her play connect the dots on her skin.

It was... it was nice, actually, to be able to just get lost and not think about the unpleasant stuff that was staring her right in the face. It was almost like laughing away Nightmare Moon's efforts at scaring them out of the Everfree Forest, only without a musical number attached to it all.

A musical number. Hmm...

Before she could contemplate what sort of medley would best fit the situation, they were greeted by a sound that could best be described as squeaky wheels coming down the hallway.

The sound of the squeaky wheels turned out to be a trolley cart being pushed by Spike, loaded down with multiple cleaning implements and other various supplies into the kitchen.

"You two went and had a food fight, making a huge mess of the kitchen in the process, and you didn't even have the courtesy of inviting me for all the fun. So you two can clean up this mess the same way; without me!"

With that he promptly walked right back out of the room, leaving two stunned mares behind to process what'd just happened.

"Well... that was... also unexpected," Twilight finally managed to get out.

"Yeah," Pinkie replied and nodded absently. "He does have a point, though. We made this mess, he really shouldn't have to do all the dirty work of cleaning up again."

"I guess you're right," Twilight sighed and moved over to the cart to pick through the various supplies available. "I'll take high, you take low?"

"That sounds fair. We can meet in the middle," Pinkie replied and went to pick out the necessary supplies for wiping down the countertop first. That way she wouldn't have to worry about getting hoofprints on the ceiling during her cleaning efforts. And she wouldn't have to explain to Twilight how she went about doing it.

---

An hour and a half in, and the task at hoof was finally done, with the kitchen once again clean and presentable. Every affected surface had just about been sterilized as far as the level of cleaning went, leaving no mess behind except for the two of them.

"New rule," Twilight sighed as she resisted the urge to slump. "The next time we have a food fight, we do it somewhere that we don't have to clean up afterwards."

The cleanup should've been a simple task, but it hadn't been that at all. She had a newfound level of respect for Spike and the amount of work he did around the palace, after experiencing it for herself.

Nearly faceplanting on the ground after a failed attempt at flight with wings that lacked feathers had been only the first hindrance to be faced. But thankfully it was all over, save for cleaning up their cleaning equipment.

"Seconded. All those opposed?" Pinkie asked, only to be met by the silence of the newly cleaned kitchen. "Motion carried unanimously."

"As it should be," Twilight replied. "Ugh, I'm so going to need a shower after this. I'm all sticky and sweaty..."

She honestly didn't care what Pinkie might have to say to the contrary, wearing icing wasn't any fun. Nor was it very hygienic. And she honestly didn't want to think about the difficulties that might be involved with getting the food coloring stains off of her skin. Maybe Zecora's ink solution would work?

"Yeah, I'm probably gonna need a bath when I get back home, too. I've got shortening in my coat and it's going to be a pain to get back out again.

"Oh?" Twilight asked. Suddenly she could feel an idea taking form. "That blue liquid dish soap we use is pretty good at cutting grease when we make hay fries. Maybe it would work on shortening as well. If you'd like we could share a shower and you could get cleaned up here," she offered.

"Really? You wouldn't mind?" Pinkie asked. "I'd like that. It's been a really long time since I last bathed with anypony close to my own age, even if you count the spa. Let's do it."

"Alright then," Twilight replied, feeling significantly more upbeat than she had been a short while ago. "We'll do it as soon as we're done here."

---

"Twilight?"

The mess in the kitchen, and the resulting cleanup, had finally dealt with, leaving them as the only mess in need of being addressed now. So with dish soap in tow, they made their way to the first available bathroom to tend to the final task of getting washed up.

"Yes?" Twilight asked, her hoof pausing just before reaching the doorknob as she turned back to look back at Pinkie.

"I... I can keep my fur on for this, right?"

Had she been paying more attention in the time leading up to now, she might've noticed Pinkie's discomfort, which was now starting to become more readily apparent as they stood there in the resulting silence. But she hadn't, and now they were here, with such a question in need of being addressed.

Had she actually done something to make Pinkie think that she...

"I don't see any reason why you couldn't. Honestly, it'd be pretty silly of us to bring the dish soap along if we're not going to use it as intended," she stated, doing her best to be humorous on the matter in an effort to put Pinkie at ease about it.

"Intended by us, or the manufacturers?" Pinkie asked.

"Um... yes?" Twilight replied uncertainly, caught off guard by the question.

Fortunately it seemed enough to earn an amused giggle from Pinkie, suggesting it'd had the desired effect.

"Alright, I just wanted to make sure. Not that I don't trust you or anything, I just... you know," Pinkie replied before making her way over to the shower to get the water running. "Do you want it hot to cold?"

"Whatever you're comfortable with should work just fine," Twilight replied, although her thought process was elsewhere at the moment.

What Pinkie had asked, it really hadn't hurt to hear her friend asking such a question - she understood it. But the current train of thought it'd kicked off just might hurt. Before the question had been asked, she never would've given the matter a second thought. But now that it had been asked, her mind had switched gears against her own desires, and led her to contemplating possibilities. Possibilities that might yield significant rewards, but carried a significant risk as well.

She shook her head to try and clear the rogue thoughts. They wouldn't work out anyway.

"What wouldn't work out?" Pinkie asked.

Twilight flinched in surprise as she realized Pinkie was talking to her. Had she wound up saying that last part out loud? Or was Pinkie simply being Pinkie again? Maybe it was best not to think too hard about it.

"You really wanna know?" Twilight asked. Pinkie nodded. "Alright. Just... let me get it all out before you do anything in response, okay?"

Again, Pinkie nodded, although the look on her face was one of curiosity/concern. Somehow that just made it worse.

"Alright. There's a localized version of the spells I use for removing and regrowing my fur. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but if you were comfortable with the idea, I could dissolve the portion of fur that currently has shortening caked in it, and we could have the mess washed away and new fur grown back in, all in about five minutes."

To her credit, Pinkie hadn't gone running out of the room in fear at what she'd heard. She just... sort of sat there with a difficult to read expression on her face, as if her mind was trying to comprehend what she'd just heard, occasionally biting her lower lip uncomfortably.

She should've just kept her mouth shut and forgotten about the idea, rather than sharing it. Now she likely had even more fallout to deal with than before. She could just kick herself!

"Are you sure you can do that? Limit it to just the part with the shortening? Nothing else?"

The question served to break Twilight out of her own self-loathing, as she honestly hadn't expected Pinkie to ask such a thing. She'd anticipated outright refusal, not... well whatever this was.

"Give or take a few inches. But for the most part, yes," she clarified. "Again, I'm just saying that it's a possibility; not something that we're actually going to do."

Another -seemingly- long stretch of silence passed in response, during which time Pinkie wore a look that Twilight simply couldn't get a reading on. It was downright unnerving to experience, even when taking everything else she knew about Pinkie into consideration. After all they'd been through, she liked to think she at least had some understanding of how her friend operated. But situations like this showed her she really didn't.

"I'm not saying yes," Pinkie began once she started talking again, "but if I did want to give it a try, could you do it without looking? I don't want anypony to see what's under my fur, and I don't wanna see it either," she explained.

"I-" Twilight started but paused, "huh. I don't know. Maybe? That's something I might have to practice later and find out. Who knows, maybe I can even figure out how to cut shapes and patterns."

Pinkie snorted in response, finding the very thought too funny to ignore.

"Alright, so it's pretty much settled we're going to try and wash the shortening out. Now get in the shower and let's see what we can do about getting cleaned up. I'm hot, I'm all sticky, I feel gross, and I really want to get all this splooge off of me."

"PFFT!"

Twilight could only blink in confusion as Pinkie was overcome by a laughing fit and fell to the floor. This one looked even worse than the one she'd experienced in the kitchen. "What? What's so funny?"

"What you said!" Pinkie squeaked out, but just barely.

"I don't understand, how's that funny?" Twilight asked, honestly as lost as... well as lost as she normally was when trying to figure out Pinkie.

Through no small effort on her part, Pinkie managed to calm herself down enough to get back up onto her feet, before looking around as if she expected somepony to pop out, and then moved over to Twilight's right ear to whisper the explanation to her.

Twilight's reaction was immediately to go wide-eyed, unable to gasp in surprise due only to how tightly her lips were presently pursed, as everything above her neck proceeded to turn red like a tomato.

"That's not what I meant!" she shrieked in embarrassment, which only served to get Pinkie laughing again. "It's a technical term! Honest!"

"Oh? You mean like brain weasels?" Pinkie asked as she made at least some effort of controlling her own amusement.

"Yes, like that," Twilight replied, not even questioning the term. "It's something Shining Armor came up with when we were foals. It describes any semi-liquid matrix of low-to-medium viscosity with statistically significant potential of resulting in a mess if great care isn't exercised in its usage; just like the icing I was getting thrown at me by the spatula-ful," she clarified.

"Oh," Pinkie replied, "so does that mean you got "splooged" by your brother a lot growing up?"

Pinkie honestly didn't know it was actually possible for anypony to get even redder. But Twilight had somehow managed it.

"Pinkie!" Twilight whined, "don't say stuff like that! It's very embarrassing..."

It'd all been meant in good fun, on Pinkie's part, but apparently it hadn't been received in that manner on Twilight's part. Now Pinkie couldn't help but feel bad for her friend, seeing her uncomfortable state in the wake of the revelation about what she'd said. She'd been mean and hadn't even meant to be, and that was possibly the worst kind of meanness one could engage in.

"Huh," she mentally mumbled to herself. Was this how Twilight had wound up feeling in the aftermath of discovering her history with baldness? And if that was the case, then she felt really bad now for inflicting that kind of pain on a friend.

"You're right, I'm sorry," she apologized, "now, get in the shower. I'll get you nice and clean in no time."

Twilight nodded as she found Pinkie effortlessly taking point on the cleanup, leaving her to climb into the shower right under a relaxing stream of warm water beating down on her. Already this was starting to feel so good compared to just a little bit ago, and they hadn't even gotten to the soap yet.

Her mind idly registered the sounds of Pinkie climbing in behind her and closing the curtain around them, but it was all just background noise up until she felt the sensation of a wet, sudsy rag being rubbed against her side in a circular motion, provoking an unconscious response on her part to lean into it.

"Oh, that feels very nice," she sighed contentedly, all the while grinning as she leaned. "You're very gentle at this."

"Well you don't spend twelve summers reduced to your bare skin without learning a few things; like the proper amount of force to apply with a terrycloth rag while getting cleaned up," Pinkie pointed out.

"Oh..." Twilight replied slowly as Pinkie's words sunk in. "Is this making you uncomfortable? Do you want to stop?"

"Yes to the first, no to the second," Pinkie replied as she moved onto Twilight's back, never missing a stroke. "If I'm not uncomfortable in this, then it means either I'm not trying, or the therapy is working. And since we haven't unlocked the latter's achievement yet, we just have to keep at it until then. Now hold still, I know how much this hurts if it's done too roughly."

Twilight found herself unable to do much but comply with Pinkie's instructions, letting her go to work on cleaning her up with a degree of touch that was all too soothing and relaxing to protest.

"Today was pretty fun."

Twilight honestly hadn't expected to hear that sentence being uttered by Pinkie; not just yet anyway. It'd come out of nowhere and snapped her out of the haze that'd been clouding her mind just a little while ago.

"It was?" she asked as she turned to look over her withers at her.

Pinkie nodded. "Maybe not all of it, but a lot of it. Once we actually got started, things started getting easier. When we were getting ready to bake I was too busy to think about you being bald, and when the food fight started I was having too much fun to think or even care."

"Huh. That's something, I guess," Twilight replied, "Well I'm glad you had fun. Maybe we're finally making some headway."

"Maybe," Pinkie agreed as her hoof trailed along Twilight's backbone with the washcloth. "Would... would tomorrow be good for trying something else? Maybe around mid-morning?"

"Mid-morning? I don't see why not," Twilight agreed, all the while trying not to let on just how excited she was to hear Pinkie actually proposing they continue. "What'd you have in mind?"

"I don't know. We'll just have to see how things go tomorrow, and go from there," Pinkie replied.

"It's a date then."

Comments

[Striving for Harmony]

Heartwarming. Even though it's been a little bit since I read the previous chapter, you seamlessly reminded the reader what these two had agreed to do together. The description of the kitchen catastrophe was great as well; you allowed us to work backward from just witnessing the aftermath, much the same as Spike did. (One note about that, he seems a little bit on the huffy side here, almost as if he's scolding them. That was jarring.)

The cleanup of the kitchen didn't take longer than it needed, but it did slightly bother me that Twilight decided to meet Pinkie in the middle, rather than having both of them clean from the top down (this avoids having to re-clean a spot that got dirtied by cleaning what's above it). That said, I would believe that Twilight hasn't had as much experience with cleaning as Spike, and might need to be told this.

All in all, good character development. Pinkie is slowly coming around, and her self assessment of being uncomfortable but not wanting to stop is spot on.

[i_am_the_jam]

Why didn't she use her magic to clean the kitchen?

[Tangerine Blast]

I really love this story keep up the good work!

[Bloody_Tofu]

Well. Just had this image of Twight bald except for patches of fur that spell out “Eat at Joes”.

[BirdsBooksBrownies]

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[BirdsBooksBrownies]

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Honestly, I don't know, as I'm not the author of this enchanting tale but I do have a couple of thoughts
I think that it was merely Twilight trying to share the load as it were, I mean sure she could have clicked her heels three times and poof, but by including Pinkie, it maybe shows a level of trust. The other is that if Twilight decided (or didn't even consider using her magic) Pinkie would have had to just sit there while Twilight did all the work, she would have had the time and opportunity to think, which given the shall we say delicacy of the current situation would not have helped.

And @Charlie_K, Yet another fine chapter, I'm totally adding this to my tracking list. You have a talent of writing awkward sequences, without them coming across as awkward (if that makes any sense), you also have done well with writing a serious Pinkie, As I said to you two years ago, Pinkie Pie is a much more complex character than many give her credit for, myself included, I like to think of myself as a pretty good person who tries to follow the live and let live philosophy, but I don't think I could live in Ponyville for long without making a snide comment about insufferable Pink Ponies (particularly if I was already tired, or just having one of those days), she's a sweet mare, but she's best handled in small doses, so Cheese Sandwich is, by that measure, a much better person than I am, I am not always patient or as understanding, as I would like to admit.

Anyways, I hope that you are able to continue this story, as I still want to see how Fluttershy deals with it (she's my second favorite character after Twilight) will she be as accepting as Luna and Zecora? Will she bite the proverbial bullet, like Rarity? Or will she be like Pinkie Pie, or worse like Sweetie Belle? Which now that I think about it, it might be an interesting way to go in a reflection of current events. When she loses her cool, she often says things she regrets, and I distinctly feel that she has a tendency to bottle her emotions (much like Starlight did with Trixie, albeit maybe not quite so literally)