It's The End Of The World As We Know It

by Samey90

42. The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Pancakes

Indigo opened her eyes. She realised that somehow, she ended up in her bed. The sunlight was jarring her eyes, so she turned away from the window. Which, in this case, meant facing Bulk.

“What happened to me this time?” she asked.

“You passed out,” Bulk replied. “We went to the doctor and apparently it’s anemia again. Then we went back home and you decided to take a nap. That was yesterday. I went back home and came here in the morning. Your mom said you were asleep all the time.”

“Ah, that explains the headache,” Indigo muttered. “And why I feel like eating a hamburger. Or twenty.” She sat on her bed, immediately feeling a headrush. Rubbing her forehead, she waited for it to end and stood up.

“Indigo?” Bulk looked at her unsurely.

“Yeah, those pajamas are too small for me,” Indigo muttered, looking around the room. “Mom dressed me in them, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Where are my clothes?” Indigo limped to the closet.

“Indigo, you’re walking,” Bulk said.

“I do?” Indigo turned to him, suddenly hissing and grabbing her leg, resting herself against the nightstand. “Well, that’s probably the end of my feats…”

“I’ll get your crutches,” Bulk replied. “Get dressed and we can grab something to eat.”

Indigo smirked. “Sure.”

---

Sugarcoat walked out of the store, carrying a bag with some new clothes. Now that school was almost over, she decided that the new chapter in her life could best be started with a new attire. Besides, after the day filled with her AP courses and organising all the things related to her enrolling in college, she just wanted some rest.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t given much of it. Soon after she left the store, she met Twilight Sparkle who, it seemed, was also shopping for clothes.

“Hi, Sugarcoat,” Twilight said. “I was just thinking of calling you.”

“Why me?” Sugarcoat muttered.

“I talked with Lemon Zest recently,” Twilight replied, fixing her glasses.

Sugarcoat froze. “Oh no,” she whispered.

“It seems that we’re taking the same course, in the same place,” Twilight said, avoiding eye contact with Sugarcoat.

“Of course,” Sugarcoat muttered. “I forgot that telling Lemon anything usually results in the whole town knowing about it.” She sighed and shook her head. “So, you’re going to study physics too? Not bad.”

“Yeah,” Twilight replied. “I was just thinking… If you’d ever need a roommate…”

Sugarcoat raised her eyebrows. “Twilight Sparkle… For years, I’ve been making your life miserable. I also make terrible mess in my room, I never wash the dishes, leave the toilet seat up, and you don’t even want to know what’s going on during the red tide. You wouldn’t want to live with me.”

“Well, it’s always someone I know,” Twilight replied. “Besides, I don’t mind. I often pull an all-nighters, forget to eat, and sometimes I don’t flush. Also, I have a dog.”

“Eww…” Sugarcoat muttered. “If your dog eats my rats, I’ll throw you down the stairs. Followed by him.”

“Spike doesn’t eat rats,” Twilight replied as they walked down the aisle. “Or anything that is alive, for that matter.”

“Okay, but I’m not letting him in my room,” Sugarcoat said. “Also, I hope you’re not vegan or some other nutcase, because pretty much anything that I can cook consists of pasta and ground meat.”

“Then you’re better than me,” Twilight replied. “I can burn water, somehow. But I can always wash the dishes.”

“Yeah, that’d be great…” Sugarcoat looked at Twilight. “Wait, why are we planning to live together if we don’t want it?”

“Well, we can always try to find something…” Twilight replied. “Though we may need more roommates.”

“There’s Sandalwood. He wants to study something useless,” Sugarcoat said. “Sunny dropped out and she doesn’t need roommates anyway. How about that lumberjack boy?”

“Timber?” Twilight shrugged. “He’s staying in the camp, I’m afraid. I still wonder how to maintain that relationship…”

“Poorly, if at all.” Sugarcoat smirked. “Though the guy has his own business, so–”

“I’m not with him for his business.” Twilight blushed.

“Then why?” Sugarcoat asked. “Not for the wits, unless…” She smirked.

“He’s pretty witty, actually.” Twilight was still blushing furiously. “Speaking of, his cooking skills resemble yours.”

“So, your destiny is acute pasta poisoning,” Sugarcoat muttered, looking around. They were in the section of the mall filled mostly with bars and restaurants. “Hmm, I feel like eating something that’s not spaghetti.”

“Is that Bulk and Indigo?” Twilight asked, waving at them.

“What is she doing here?” Sugarcoat shrugged. “Weren’t she dying?”

“Lemon said she wasn’t.”

Sugarcoat sighed. “Of course.”

Indigo was, indeed, far from dying. She was sitting with Bulk at the table in front of one of the bars; seeing Twilight and Sugarcoat, she waved back at them.

“Hello,” Sugarcoat said when she approached them. “I see you got better.”

“I can walk,” Indigo replied. “With crutches, but still. So we decided to celebrate with some hamburgers.”

“You’re eating pizza,” Twilight said, looking at the table. “To think about it, I’d eat some too.”

“Yeah, she puked after the hamburgers,” Bulk replied with a smirk.

Indigo furrowed her eyebrows. “At least pizza agrees with me.” She turned to Twilight. “You’re getting in a bad company, I see.”

“We’re getting married,” Sugarcoat muttered. “Or rather, we’re gonna become roommates, which is pretty much the same thing. We’ll spend time in a confined space until we’re ready to maul each other to death with a frying pan over who sits in the bathroom for too long.”

“Is this how marriage looks on your home planet?” Bulk asked.

“Yes,” Sugarcoat deadpanned. “It’s an ancient custom.”

“Umm, Indigo?” Twilight smiled sheepishly. “Where can I get a cricket bat?”

“In a shop with sports equipment,” Indigo replied. “Though I wonder why not a baseball bat. That’d fit Sugarcoat’s face.”

“Cricket bat has this narrow edge, right?” Twilight smiled. “If I could center the force on a smaller area, maybe it’d compensate for my poor strength…”

“And you’re saying I’m a bad company…” Sugarcoat muttered.

“At this rate you may be a dead company,” Indigo replied, grabbing another slice of pizza. “Hmm, that’s what I needed.”

“Pizza and ability to walk?” Sugarcoat shrugged. “It’s easy to make you happy.”

Indigo smirked. “Let’s put it that way: imagine Twilight breaks your jaw with a cricket bat and you can’t talk. You’d also be happy after getting better.”

“Quite,” Sugarcoat replied. “So what, you were sitting here for the whole day?”

Indigo took a large bite of pizza. “What else can I do? I fucked up my life and it’ll take a while to put it back together, so I may as well become a mallrat.”

Twilight nodded. “Sorry about that.”

“Oh, I got used to it,” Indigo said. “Not sure about becoming a helicopter pilot now…”

“Don’t worry about that,” Bulk replied. “I’m sure you’ll get better.”

“You can walk, that’s the most important.” Twilight smiled. “Everything else will come with time.”

Indigo sighed. “So far, my friends go with time. You and Sugarcoat are leaving and so does Sunny. She wants to get a job.”

“Modelling is not a real job,” Sugarcoat muttered. “And she’s way too short for that anyway. She’s also too intelligent to become an actress and fashion industry is not ready for–”

“Oh, I think she has something else in mind…” Indigo smirked.

---

Sunny frowned, looking at the screen. She took another sip of coffee and rubbed her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she cracked her fingers and started typing. Her gaze slid from one line of the code to another, catching the errors and searching for patterns.

A smirk adorned her face. She grabbed the headset and put it on, tapping her finger against the microphone.

“Hello,” Sunny said when she was sure the microphone was working. “I’ve heard your company is hiring. I must admit, your computer’s defences were really good. It took me half a night to find a weak point, so forgive me if I sound a bit tired. Also, I figured out how to prevent any other punks with computers from searching through your, umm… personal stuff.” Sh smirked. “I’d send my CV, but I already put it on your desktop. Good night.”

She took off the headset and turned her computer off. Yawning, she dropped on the bed, still wearing a t-shirt, tracksuit bottoms, and glasses filtering blue light.

“Nailed it,” she muttered to herself before falling asleep.

---

Indigo took another bite of her pizza. Sugarcoat and Twilight had already went off somewhere, but she and Bulk decided to stay at the mall for a little longer. Bulk waved at Drama Letter, who was apparently cleaning the pizzeria now, but she immediately hid in another corner of the place after seeing them.

“Damn, even Twilight is leaving.” Indigo rolled her eyes. “Maybe at least Muffins stays in town. If I can ever ride a bicycle again, it’d be good to have some friend to do that with.”

“She mentioned something about joining the army, but I don’t think they’ll let her in,” Bulk replied.

“Yeah, I’ve seen her idea of tank warfare.” Indigo shuddered. “I’m not sure any battlefield is ready for this.”

“I think there are laws forbidding that, yeah.” Bulk chuckled.

“So, Muffins may stay,” Indigo said. “Not sure about Lemon. She’s looking for something, but I’m not sure if she finds it. Her grades…” She waved her hand as if she was drawing a sinusoid.

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Bulk replied. “She seems pretty intelligent…”

---

Beauty Brass furrowed her eyebrows, trying to recall the events of the day. She spent some time with her boyfriend, but then she decided to go to Lemon to choose some dresses for the prom. This was where the facts ended and speculations started; the next thing she was sure of was that she found herself at 3 AM in Flash Sentry’s kitchen, drinking tea and watching him make pancakes.

“This needs to end,” she muttered.

“Don’t worry, it’s not the first time I end up in the kitchen in the middle of the night, healing people with my tea,” Flash replied.

“That’s some awful tea.” Beauty Brass took a sip. “May I have some more?”

“Sure.” Flash grabbed a kettle. “What needs to end?”

Beauty Brass raised her head. “Excuse me?”

“You said that something needs to end and you most certainly didn’t mean my tea.” Flash shrugged, flipping a pancake.

Beauty Brass rested her hands on the table and rubbed her temples. “Lemon. Seriously, I was never into girls and thought it’d be fun, but then, it’s Lemon. I just can’t dump her like that.”

Flash trembled. “Does she know judo too?”

“No, but since I met her, I learned that her mother died last year, her ex is in the nuthouse, and that Sweet Leaf was her best friend.” She sighed. “At this point, I’m not sure how she’d react. I’d rather not give her the rope, metaphorically speaking.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Flash replied. “You can still be friends.”

Beauty Brass shook her head. “Oh, if it was that easy… She’s pretty, umm…”

“Fuckable?” Flash asked.

“Huggable.” Beauty Brass shrugged. “Geez, I sound like I don’t know what I want, huh?”

Flash put a plate in front of her. “To be honest, you do sound like you’d want to eat a pancake and have it too.”

Beauty Brass looked at the plate. “Pancakes at 3 AM, really… Do you have maple leaf syrup?”

“Sure.” Flash looked at the kitchen door, hearing a somewhat slurred chuckle from the living room. “What is your girlfriend doing with my girlfriend?”

“Watching the uncensored re-runs of Stable Relationships, I think,” Beauty Brass replied. “Even more vulgar and gross than what’s on TV before the watershed.”

“Ah, of course,” Flash muttered. “I think I caught a joke about the difference between jelly and jam.”

“Indeed.” Beauty Brass sighed. “Anyway, the whole point is, I don’t want Lemon to be my girlfriend, but at the same time, I don’t know how to tell her about that.”

“Well, I’m not the best person to ask about breaking up.” Flash blushed. “When I broke up with Sunset Shimmer, I spent a few weeks locking my room at night and sleeping with a baseball bat under my pillow.”

Beauty Brass shrugged. “I don’t think this would happen with Lemon. Though then I’d have to stay with her and cheer her up which kinda defeats the purpose of breaking up.”

“Depends what kind of cheering up you mean.” Flash chuckled; the chuckle turned into a nervous squeal when he saw Beauty furrowing her eyebrows. “I mean, you can always be friends, with, umm… benefits. Isn’t it how it goes now?”

“Is it?” Beauty Brass nodded slowly, eating a bit of a pancake. “Well, it would be like this, but there’s all this stuff I learned about her and I’d like to help her–”

“Isn’t that what friends are for?” Flash asked. “Unless you care more about the ‘benefits’ part.”

“Well, the problem is, I just don’t know how to help her, so we go to bed instead.” Beauty Brass sighed. “And sooner or later I’ll have to tell my boyfriend.”

“Umm…” Flash raised his hand.

“If that’s too much information, just assume you’re my gay friend now,” Beauty Brass said.

“I’m not gay.”

“Imagine that you are,” Beauty Brass muttered. “I’m not gay either and look what happened.”

Flash sighed. “Just tell her that you have your limits.” He shrugged. “Or just be honest and tell her that you don’t know how to help her and that it can’t continue like that.”

“Honesty as the best policy?” Beauty Brass nodded. “I may try that.”

“Bring her some pancakes,” Flash said. “Maybe she’ll take that better.”

Beauty Brass grabbed a plate and walked to the living room, which was quite a curious sight. Lemon was half-lying on the couch with an empty bottle of wine. Her hair was in a mess and she was nodding off. The only spot on the couch that wasn’t occupied by her was taken by Muffins, who was staring at the TV screen where some cartoon characters were doing abominable things to each other.

“Umm… do you want pancakes?” Beauty Brass asked.

“Sure, why not,” Muffins replied.

“Ah, so that’s where the wine I used for cooking went,” said Flash, who was hiding behind Beauty Brass.

“Don’t blame me, it was her,” Muffins said, grabbing a pancake from the plate. “I was just playing along. Remember, I only drink shandy... Because I’m a cyclist.”

Beauty Brass’ eyes narrowed. “I don’t see a connection.”

“In Germany, a drink similar to shandy is called Radler, which is ‘cyclist’ in German,” Muffins replied. “It was invented by a dude who didn’t have enough–”

“Whatever.” Beauty Brass rolled her eyes. “We’re not in Germany. Actually, I just wanted to tell Lemon something, but maybe I should wait till she’s able to understand me.”

Lemon raised her head and turned to Beauty Brass, trying to focus her gaze on her. “I’m listening.” She hiccuped. “What do you w-want to tell me?”

“Really, you should be sober for that,” Beauty replied. “So there are no misunderstandings.”

Lemon sighed. “You want to dump me?”

“Umm…” Beauty Brass froze. “No, of course not!”

“Yeah, sure…” Lemon muttered. “You have a boyfriend and I’m just sad and get drunk a lot. Why’d you hang out with someone like me?”

“Chill out, Lemon,” Muffins said. “If it doesn’t work out, we can always hook you up with the president of our Gardening Club. You like girls with green hair, don’t you?”

“Muffins, shut up,” Flash muttered.

“Listen, Lemon, I’m not breaking up with you!” Beauty Brass exclaimed. “Really, I wish we could have this conversation when everyone’s sober, not in the middle of the night!”

“Do we even have a Gardening Club?” Flash asked.

“We can have that conversation anytime,” Lemon muttered. “I’m not like Sunny.”

“We have,” Muffins said. “Roseluck and I were trying to get her laid for the better part of the school year.”

Beauty Brass rolled her eyes. “Well, I can’t! It’s serious, Lemon!”

“Who is she?” Flash asked. “I don’t remember her.”

“I am serious.” Lemon hiccuped again.

“You talked to her,” Muffins said. “At least a few times.”

“Everybody shut up!” Beauty Brass exclaimed. Years of playing sousaphone caused her to develop a voice reaching quite a stentorian volume. Everyone went quiet immediately. She also noticed the lights being turned on in a few neighbouring houses.

“Thank you,” Beauty Brass said. “Mind if I take Lemon home to explain her a few things?”

Flash looked at Muffins who shrugged. “Not at all,” he replied.

“Good.” Beauty Brass grabbed Lemon and lifted her from the couch. “Have fun, guys.”

Muffins smirked, turning to Flash.

---

The streets were completely empty when Beauty Brass drove with Lemon across the town. In spite of that, Beauty was driving slowly, carefully looking at the pavements, in case someone decided to cross the street right in front of her car.

“My house or your house?” she asked.

“The car,” Lemon replied. “We’ve never–”

“Someone told me it’s not that fun.” Beauty Brass furrowed her eyebrows. “Besides, I was just asking where you want to sleep it off. You know, in case your father has something against you coming home completely soused. Rightfully so, I must say.”

“It’s Friday, he’s playing a gig,” Lemon replied. “Also, I don’t think he minds my life choices.”

“If you puke in my car, your only choice will be which limb you want to have broken,” Beauty Brass muttered. “Also, this needs to end.”

Lemon shuddered. “So, you’re dumping me, after all?”

“I kinda feel like it,” Beauty Brass replied. “I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself. Besides, relationships aren’t about one partner having to drag the other through life, right?”

“They aren’t?”

Beauty Brass sighed and rolled her eyes. “For starters, less drinking and more getting yourself together. I can help you with that, but I won’t hold your hand all the time. It’s not just you in the centre of this relationship. Both of us are there.”

“Mhm.” Lemon lowered her head and leaned forward, snoring.

Beauty Brass shook her head and smirked. “You’re gonna be shocked tomorrow, Lemon Zest…”

Comments

[CSC]

Oh wow, these Shadowbolts.

At least Indigo can walk again.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Well, progress for Indigo, at least. Also, Twilight? Bad idea about moving in with Sugarcoat.

[Samey90]

8756766
Indeed. And think of the poor Sandalwood, who'll have to live with both of them...