Creeping Normality

by Eyeswirl the Weirded

Chapter 4: Lucrative Trolling

Standing alone on the balcony of an icy, crystalline palace as the sun rose, a pale, fair-haired figure looked over the snowy mountain range below. The wind howled as flurries of fresh powder were kicked across the landscape in billowing clouds, but the observer couldn't have cared less.

"The cold never bothered me anyway," she muttered.

"Yea, me either."

Crunching sounds were heard as the startled, lawyer-friendly version of a well-known fictional character whipped her head to the side, finding Poofy with a little box of nachos in melted cheese.

"Because these Eezy-Cheezy nachos are just the right temperature to keep warm without burning my tongue!"

Said tongue glided out to snatch another nacho as Poofy held the box close, chewing for a few seconds before holding it out where the snow queen expy could reach.

"Want one?"

Eezy-
Cheezy!

%%%

Poofy sat in a soft, plush chair by the desk of the talk show's host as the commercial ended, speaking the moment the cameras were back on her. "The tongue thing wasn't in the script, but I wanted to demonstrate what I was advertising." She winked at the camera, making a quick thumbs-up signal to go with her cute smile. "And to get another taste of the Eezy-Cheezy menu!"

The host, one Prince Blueblood, was a white-skinned, blonde-haired man in a white tuxedo and blue bowtie, with the kind of chiseled face Adagio wouldn't have been surprised to see in shampoo commercials.

Maybe that was how he got this job...

When the chuckles from the audience abated, Blueblood smiled. "I suppose that's an effective, if unhygienic manner to prove one's product."

While she didn't miss the slightly condescending tone of the sentiment, she pretended to. "In hindsight, yea, but I couldn't really use a knife and fork; did you see her castle? All the eating utensils were made of ice! They'd have melted the second they touched the hot, melted cheese! Have you ever had soggy nachos?"

"Can't say that I have."

"And you won't, as long as you're getting them fresh from the nearest Eezy-Cheezy!"

There was more laughter from the audience and what may have been a sincere smile from the host. "Well, I'll have to take your word on that."

As he turned to address the audience and do the standard thing of briefly advertising his guest, Adagio kept her smile up too. He wasn't really happy to have her here, she knew that even without having heard him talking to his staff about not wanting to promote 'common carnival faire' on his show shortly before they got started, but this was show business. This was show business, which meant they went for the highest ratings they could net with a smile. She could certainly sympathize with his dismissal of what she was selling, not having been crazy about anything on the Eezy-Cheezy menu when she got the job, but at least a few items had grown on her.

She could see in Blueblood's eyes that this wasn't the first time he'd have preferred different company. He had probably been at this game for at least a few years now, if not since childhood, and though their time together was limited, she didn't get the impression that he was happy with this life.

Well, the difference between him and her was that soon enough, she'd have her two oldest companions along for the ride again, whereas he would probably spend his stardom days alone. Really, it almost sounded sad when she thought of it like that, but who was to say she'd still be at this five or ten years from now?

%%%

Lying on her bed later that evening, she stared up at the blank ceiling. While not sure how she'd be making her living in a few years, she was sure this Poofy thing wasn't going to last forever, and had already secured emergency funds (using a chunk of what they were paying her now) in private accounts and moderate investments for when tragedy struck again. Maybe she could find something in this line of work, because it certainly wasn't difficult most of the time, just... a little empty, perhaps?

Granted, having to do twelve takes for that Japanese commercial because the director thought things weren't 'surreal enough' was tiring, but I got through it fine. Could I get a job as one of the suits that organize these things? The ones who decide where the money goes? That's essentially Gouda's job now, and I think I understood what the papers I saw him going through are about...

If the Eezy-Cheezy line lasted as a business and people took the girl who played Poofy seriously enough to let her handle the finances, maybe she could secure enough money to last the three of them for life? She was sure she couldn't keep parading about in her cute little outfit forever, because going by the fan art depictions she'd seen of Poofy online, her costume on a fully adult body would probably be more effective in selling something other than cheesy food.

Of course, perhaps the most important thing was that eventually, the Rainbooms would come in, stomp all over everything she had going for her, and leave with nothing but praise and gift baskets for 'saving the day' again.

Maybe it wouldn't go down exactly like that, but knowing the absurd means by which they'd made their comeback and arguably more absurd means by which, she learned, they had gained super powers at some summer camp not too long ago (she felt like she should thank Pinkie Pie for posting so many details to her social media of choice), she wasn't exactly feeling optimistic about her capacity to live a comfortable life while they still hated her. Which, going by their track record, would last until she went groveling for their forgiveness, most likely giving up everything she had now for good measure.

Could they tolerate her being successful without their forgiveness and platitudes? With her being wealthy and famous when they weren't?

Perhaps.

Should she assume they would?

Absolutely not.

She knew very well by now the tendency people had to look at anyone doing better than them in any way and think "Not if I have anything to say about it!" It was half the drive she played on to bring about the Battle of the Bands. Even if she thought the Rainbooms wouldn't attack her for the sake of their pride alone, they were still enemies, and just as Adagio remained cautious of them coming after her on a whim, it would be foolish of them to completely dismiss her as a threat.

Well, I mean, I might have money, but it's not like I have tons of power and influence now or anything. Even if it were only over fast food and possibly the entertainment industry, what am I going to do? Send late-night comedians to heckle them when they're busy? Have bad sandwiches delivered to their houses?

Her worries hinged on them ever coming at all, however, or going after Aria and Sonata because those two were still within reach. There was no magical menace, no fiendish plot, nothing the Rainbooms could justify attacking them for short of sheer suspicion (the sort that had her going down this paranoid line of thought at all...), and any attempt to 'stop them,' stop her, would, in theory, just end with the Rainbooms' collective arrest. Aria and Sonata had the sense to call the police if they felt threatened, right?

The Eezy-Cheezy tour group had its own security team, of course, but it was nothing that would stand up to super powers, she was sure. It was hard to imagine the Rainbooms really forcing their way in without an adequately heroic excuse, but there was the chance their group could try something subtle if they decided to come after her, something with plausible deniability if they could slip past security. In fact, they were just as liable to try that anyway.

Actually... what if they thought they did have a 'heroic' reason? Or just didn't care?

Adagio felt herself smirk.

If they came to cause trouble, just kicked down the door and attacked me without a valid reason, much less a legal one, they'd be completely in the wrong, wouldn't they? At least as far as the law was concerned, and I doubt they can match our lawyers.

She could set a trap; lure them in, get them arrested, and never need to spend another night worrying about whether or not they'd harass her, Aria, or Sonata from then on. Perhaps the best part was that it would all depend on them, because even if they didn't take the bait, it would show her that they weren't driven entirely by their egos after all, meaning they didn't care that much about her doing well and she didn't need to worry about them anyway!

The method she had in mind was kind of stupid and petty, but so was the Rainbooms dropping in to make fun of her for a solid hour at work. The only question now was whether or not Cuttin' Dry and the marketing department would go along with her ideas.

%%%

Quietly looking over the tables of people happily eating cheesy meals just outside the most recently opened location, Poofy sighed contentedly. Then she heard a voice.

"Hi, every-body!" In skipped a yellow young woman with big, black boots, a pigskin-leather jacket over a simple skirt and shirt, and an utterly absurd wig consisting of synthetic bacon strips, making her look like the Medusa of myth, but with bacon instead of snakes. "Who's hungry?!"

The people at the tables exchanged looks, a small boy raising an eyebrow. "We're already eating."

"Great! You know what they say; there's always room for bacon!"

The boy looked at her dubiously. "Does anyone say tha-"

"Bon appetite!" She reached into her own meaty hair to pull out a bundle of greasy bacon strips, throwing it over the nearest table like confetti, to the bafflement and mild disgust of the patrons. "No need to thank me, just-" In the effort to barrage other tables with bacon, she tripped over her own big, silly boots, flying headlong into a wide-eyed Poofy as they collided in a billowing dust cloud.

When the smoke cleared, Bacon Head was lying partially inside Poofy's fluffy hair as she sprawled out on top of her, visibly dazed. "Haha, my bad."

Making an exaggerated, deliberately adorable pout for the camera, Poofy looked around, spotted something offscreen, and smiled. "Cheezy-cheer up, look!" Reaching out to take the plate from an unseen hand, she held a sandwich in the little field she'd been told the camera would be zooming in. "New on the breakfast menu; Eezy-Cheezy's own bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, available at an Eezy-Cheezy near you!"

Eezy-
Cheezy!

%%%

The next shot depicted Bacon Head still lying on Poofy as the sun was going down, the latter turning her head to give the former a slightly worried look as the camera slowly zoomed out. "Can I get up now, or...?"

Bacon Head looked genuinely distraught. "But what if they want bacon and cheese after breakfast?!"

Poofy sighed.

%%%

With the end of the video being played on a phone at a table in Sugarcube Corner, a few of the Rainbooms snickered, Sunset grumpily crossing her arms. "Was that supposed to be me?"

"What," giggled Pinkie, "a biker-looking girl that slams into people when she's trying to help? Nah, definitely not you at all."

Scowling through a fierce blush, Sunset replied through gritted teeth. "I said I was sorry."

"She's gonna be sorry," growled Rainbow, "when that bitch gets back to Canterlot, I'm gonna-"

Twilight tilted her head. "I hate to interrupt, but 'Slams into people'? I haven't seen Sunset do that."

"It was before we met you," Rarity said as she reigned in her giggles, "something Adagio apparently remembers." She turned to Sunset. "I wouldn't be too hung up on that if I were you, Darling, at least that part is true. If anything, I would be offended by the implication that you have messy, greasy hair."

Her eyes briefly widening, Sunset idly ran a hand through her hair. "Thanks Rarity, totally needed to be self-conscious about that."

"It doesn't feel greasy," remarked Fluttershy as she brushed her fingers over a loose strand.

"Or smell bacon-y," Pinkie added with a grin, "which is good, or you might get chased by wolves!"

"Uh... yea," Sunset said with a little smile, "I guess so. Thanks."

"Any time!"

"Guys," Rainbow asked somewhat incredulously while bringing up another video, "are you forgetting something? The reason everyone's making fun of us now?"

"I haven't sat in front of a telly long enough to glean a clue," remarked Rarity, "but I have been wondering why I keep hearing cracks about 'sugar patrol' amid what feel like laughs at my expense."

"Well, feast your eyes," Rainbow muttered sourly as she set the phone where everyone could see, taking solace in the fact that Adagio wouldn't see any ad revenue from a video uploaded to a random Joe's channel.

%%%

It was another scene set outside an Eezy-Cheezy establishment, though this time with no one around during the long, panning shot of the area. Then, out of nowhere came a flash and a cartoonish sound effect from which six girls in brightly colored, slightly gaudy outfits appeared, generic Sentai-style uniforms mostly comprised of painted cardboard and aluminum foil in the Rainbooms' colors.

"Nobody panic," cried their leader, a purple girl with darker-purple hair and a white, wavy skunk stripe, "Rainbow Sugar Patrol is here!"

Without further ado, they kicked open the door and charged in, immediately finding a frightened and perplexed Eezy-Cheezy employee behind the register.

"Uh... it wasn't lock-"

"Don't worry," Purple Patroller said in a heroic tone as she held up a little box, "we're here to fix everything, with the only meal you really need!" She opened the box to reveal an assortment of technicolor cupcakes, all thickly covered with sprinkles embedded in already sugar-rich frosting.

"And we," announced the blue girl with spiky hair of multiple, eye-stabbing colors, looking a little like she was wearing a clown wig with rabies as she gestured to the others "will stand here doing nothing useful!"

The cashier kept a neutral face. "...I just work here, so-"

"Go on," urged Purple, "try them yourself! I guarantee it's tastier than anything else you've ever had, and everyone needs sugar!"

There was a pause as the employee, a bemused look in his eyes, stared back at them. "Like, 36 grams?"

Blink. "Huh?"

Nodding, the employee pulled up his phone to fact-check. "The human body needs about 36 grams of sugar a day, there being around a tenth of a gram in a single slice of cheese. How much is in one of those cupcakes?"

The Shiny Foil Scouts shared a look. "Uhhh..."

"Ignoring the salad bar, I know the Eezy-Cheezy menu isn't the healthiest thing in the world either, and it kinda seems like common sense that you shouldn't binge on anything for long, but if you do, sugar is a lot worse for you than cheese."

"But, b-but," sputtered Purple, holding up the box again, "everyone needs-"

"Look," the employee deadpanned, "relying entirely on any one thing does not a balanced diet make, and people need more than sugar to get by."

Purple and her nonspeaking, barely-involved cohorts looked at the cupcakes, then at the employee, the cupcakes again, the employee again, then started toward the door with their heads down.

Eezy-
Cheezy!

%%%

The table was silent apart from Sunset's snickering.

"Hey, any of those girls look sorta familiar to you guys?"

"She's dead," Rainbow hissed before anyone else could answer, an enraged blush on her scowling face, "when I get my hands on her, I'll kick her butt so hard she'll, she's gonna be... buttless!" Annoyed and embarrassed though the others were, all of them gave her curious looks. She made an irritable face and crossed her arms. "You know what I mean."

"While I don't normally condone violence," Rarity muttered through a grimace, "I'm quite certain she just declared war. Don't get me started on those outfits she imagines us in."

Applejack looked as though she'd tasted a worm. "Hold up a sec, are we even sure that was directed at us? Ah mean, the bacon one sure looked like Sunset, and them cupcake scouts had some'a the same colors as us, but-"

"Are you blind?!" Rainbow immediately came to regret slamming a fist on the table, masking it as best she could as just lightly shaking that hand in rage. "That was totally a dig at us! She did one at Sunset and the other was at the rest of us!"

Cheeks lightly flushed, Fluttershy was smiling. "I was in an Eezy-Cheezy commercial! Eeee!"

"So, wait," Pinkie said while scratching her head, "if she thinks Sunset is a bumbling doofus, does she think the rest of us are like cupcake delivery if the cupcakes were friendship? And, if the sugar is rainbows, does the cheese stand for anything?"

Twilight touched a fingertip to her chin in thought. "Could it be a secret message directed at us? A riddle? Hm..."

Crossing her arms as she leaned back, Sunset shrugged. "It could be that the metaphor in the cashier rejecting the cupcakes is not being able to rely on friendship (the sugar) alone to get through everything and anyone saying it does might come across as obnoxiously naive despite genuinely good intentions, but I wouldn't count on that being Adagio's exact interpretation." She got six perplexed stares, to which she returned a flat look. "While I'm eternally grateful for what happened after the Fall Formal, just having friends didn't exactly solve all my problems."

"It didn't? I thought the idea behind all this was that working together, we can overcome any hardship."

"Even hanging around the school's heroes didn't make everyone stop hating me, Twi. At least not until I helped stop another magical menace." She smiled sheepishly the second Twilight started to frown. "Not you, silly."

"I don't think the commercial made much sense," mused Fluttershy, "but if Sunset is right, if that is how Adagio sees friendship, maybe it's because she doesn't know anything else? If all she's really seen is us always winning through magic (which might be what the sugar meant) that solves everything in a pinch, maybe that's what she thinks friendship really amounts to? The other two sirens, Aria and Sonata, are still here in town, not with her, so if they've had some kind of falling out and she's all alone now, she might understand even less about friendship than she did before, possibly even being embittered on the very concept of friends working together."

Dead silence. Six stares. Fluttershy shrunk in her seat and blushed. "B-but, um, th-that's just a guess..."

Rainbow shook her head. "I don't care what she thinks, she's gotta go down!"

Sunset gave her a deadpan stare. "We still have no grounds to go after her, Rainbow."

"Uh, she's a bad guy?"

"And we will be too if we go kicking down doors because we didn't like a commercial. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how I got one of my competitors disqualified for a Fall Formal a couple years back; I made an embarrassing little video about her, let her fume off, then riled her up a little more until she-" Sunset's eyes widened. "It's a trap. She had stupid, embarrassing commercials made about us specifically so that we'd get all cheesed off-" the other girls snickered and snorted with amusement, Sunset blushing and trying not to smile as she corrected herself, "-get all angry, go throwing our weight around, and probably get ourselves arrested in the process, just like how one of my opponents bumped herself off the running list by throwing a hissy fit at Luna over my video."

"Ah-ha," Rainbow announced with a grin that said she was seconds from scoring the winning goal, "that's a bad guy thing! We've got her!"

"No, we don't," Twilight said with a mild frown, "because even if someone is insulting you with the hope that you'll get mad enough to attack them, that doesn't give you the legal right to do so. We'd still be facing some kind of charges for sure. If we tried to hurt her in any way, we'd be playing right into her hands."

"We can just tell everyone she's a brain-washing witch! Think about it; one of the sirens sings to come buy cheesy crud, and people all over the place come buy cheesy crud! Coincidence?! Sunset even said it was weird that she could sing again, so she's gotta be hypnotizing people somehow, which means she's evil and we'd totally be in the right for kicking her butt!"

Twilight tilted her head. "Your plan is to just tell everyone "No really, she's using magic!"? Because Principal Cinch was going to try the same thing to declare the Friendship Games a farce, and if you thought no one would believe her with no immediate proof, why would anyone believe you?"

"Because we're heroes! We can just prove the magic is real by doing some!!"

"Which would prove that you have magic, which would mean that if anyone was bewitching anyone...?"

Pulling at her own hair, Rainbow groaned as her head sank to the table. "We've SAVED THE WORLD, for crying out loud! Saved it from her!! This isn't fair!"

"Be that as it may," sighed Rarity, "I'm afraid there's really nothing we can do right now. Even if we did succeed in paying her back somehow, what would change? No amount of rainbow blasts is going to have an impact on her growing corporate standing. In fact, she may even be planning legal action against us, should we give her a cause, and not even magic would fix that."

Sunset wanted to object, but Applejack spoke up before she could think of a counterpoint.

"Lay down with the dogs, and ya get fleas. Granny Smith tells Applebloom all the time that the best way to deal with Diamond Tiara is not to sink to her level, be the bigger person an' all that."

Rainbow took a deep breath, the rage finally leaving her expression. "...Yea. I guess so." She scowled. "But can I just say that being the bigger person kinda blows sometimes?"

The seven girls giggled. At least until a small group of CHS kids walked by their table snickering about 'Sugar Patrol,' at which point Rainbow needed a long sip of a milkshake to avoid throwing one at someone. This somehow escalated into a milkshake speed-drinking contest between her, Pinkie, Applejack, and Sunset.

There were no real winners in this struggle, only ice cream headaches, but for her peace of mind, the others declared Rainbow the victor.

Author's Note:

The Rainbooms aren't exactly humble heroes, I find, which is why I don't feel the above depiction is out of line for some of them. Sooner or later, I'll probably make a blog post about how they've consistently stolen their villains' dreams, right from EQG1, even if not on purpose.

Comments

[The Forgotten Siren]

LMAO BACON HEAD MEDUSA!!!

[shy sad jaded shard]

This is how about I thought they would act though I still hope Adagio and shy hit it off (yes I have read sucker for a cute face fav romance)

[JMP]

You really have a knack for chapter titles. This one...this was a great chapter, I didn't catch the stab at Sunset at first (haven't seen the "bacon hair" joke in a little while), but the "Sugar Patrol" was absolutely hilarious.

[B_Munro]

" I'll probably make a blog post about how they've consistently stolen their villains' dreams, "

Yeah, heroes will do that.

i.ytimg.com/vi/VijmhZ74fDA/hqdefault.jpg

Shed a tear for Darkseid.