2/18: Six Degrees of Pinkie Pie (A Friend in Deed)
“Well,” Skywarp grunted, being the first of the Decepticons to speak, “that happened.”
“What happened?” Laserbeak, perched on a nearby rooftop, looked around the dispersing crowd of what looked to be the entire adult population of Ponyville. The Decepticons, all of them, formed a cluster remaining in the rapidly clearing street. “What? Where? Did I miss it?”
“You know,” Skywarp insisted, “that happened. The whole singing and dancing thing.”
Laserbeak relaxed. “Oh, that,” he shrugged. “Ponies do that about once every other week on average, they do, yes.”
“Yeah, but I don’t,” Skywarp pointed out. “Except I was there singing with the rest of us.”
“Yeah, so was I,” Rumble said. “And what really freaks me out is, Frenzy was singing too, and it didn’t sound… well, it sounded good, is what I’m sayin’.”
“Yeah!” Frenzy, far from being offended by his brother’s remark, nodded agreement. “I just hope it ain’t permanent! I don’t think I could live with sounding nice.”
“No danger of that,” Thundercracker muttered, rubbing his ear with one hoof.
“It is disturbing,” Starscream said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “You were singing. I was singing. Even Megatron was singing-“
“And what of it, Starscream?” There was an edge to Megatron’s voice that made most of the other Decepticons take a step back. It made Starscream flinch, but he forced himself to hold his ground and face the gray unicorn in the guard helmet. “If I feel like singing, I have my reasons. And I decline to share them with the likes of you!”
“Understood, Lord Megatron,” Starscream said without hesitation. “But even you must admit that you singing in public is not exactly characteristic of you.”
“I think you’ll find I have unexpected depths,” Megatron said, drawing out the words. “Depths you will never be able to measure. Now let that be an end of it!”
“Yeah,” Skywarp sneered. “Or maybe you’d like to explain your unexpected depths… Starsing?”
Starscream growled the usual frustrated growl that indicated he had no comeback, and with that the Decepticons dispersed, except for Megatron, Ravage and Laserbeak. Megatron stood looking at Ravage, who sat on his haunches next to him, while Laserbeak remained perched on the nearby rooftop looking down.
“But I confess,” Megatron said in a soft tone once his more annoying subordinates were out of reception range, “I am curious about you, Ravage. Though I am grateful you did not try to sing… I’ve never seen you dance before.”
“Nor has Laserbeak,” the screechy voice from above put in. “The ponies do it every other week, they do. Sing and dance both. Sometimes more often.”
“I do not recall asking you,” Megatron said, giving a warning intended to signal that there would be only one warning.
“But Laserbeak must report!” Laserbeak snapped. “I watch the enemy, and I report! It’s my function, it is! What else should Laserbeak do?”
“You mean, aside from seeking gainful employment?” Megatron asked dryly. Without waiting for an answer (since he knew he wouldn’t like what he got), he went on, “But very well. What causes these sudden outbursts of singing and dancing?”
“HMMMmmm-”
“Get on with it,” Megatron said. “I put up with that because it annoys Starscream. He isn’t here anymore, so get to the point.”
“Yes, Lord Megatron!” Laserbeak said instantly. “Laserbeak has not seen the beginning of many of these, I haven’t. And the beginning can be anything, I think. A pony just starts singing, and then there’s music everywhere. And sometimes other ponies join in, and there’s dancing and even sometimes a parade! Like this one!”
“Why?” Megatron asked. “What draws a pony into a song in progress? I don’t remember deciding to join in. It just happened. And I don’t care for that at all.”
Laserbeak put a claw to his beak and scratched it idly, thinking in silence for a change. “I think…” he said at length, “that is, Laserbeak doesn’t know, but it seems like any pony who feels the same as the first joins in. I always thought they did it because it was fun, or because they wanted to affirm the singer, I did.”
Megatron stifled his mild surprise that Laserbeak had the word affirm in his vocabulary. “I think I see,” he said at length. “This is like when those two unicorns with that primitive automobile food processor showed up. I’m told they got the whole town on their side with a song. Just a song.”
“No, Lord Megatron, not the whole town!” Laserbeak corrected. “I saw it myself! The apple ponies, and Twilight Sparkle and her friends, they weren’t affected, no! But they were part of the song!”
“Is that so?” Megatron asked. “So, whatever this phenomenon is, it is not as straightforward as I thought, then. And its power to coerce is limited.” He tapped his chin with one hoof. “And yet I was singing along with everyone else.”
“As was Laserbeak!” Laserbeak agreed. “Yes! I was singing with Pinkie Pie too!”
“Did you decide to do it,” Megatron asked, “or did it just happen?”
Laserbeak cocked his head and thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “But why shouldn’t I sing with Pinkie Pie? I like her! Every morning as I begin my surveillance, she gives me a fresh-baked muffin! For free!”
“A muffin,” Megatron said, completely unimpressed. Not that he hadn’t known that Laserbeak could be bribed with pencil shavings or zinc filings, but this seemed like a new low.
“Yes! A delicious muffin! Every day! And I don’t have to steal it or anything!” He paused and tapped his lower beak a moment, adding in a tone softened by uncertainty, “Though come to think of it, I can’t steal anything from her, Laserbeak can’t. Each time I’ve tried, she’s always moved whatever I was about to grab just before I could.”
“Take it as a sign that you should stop trying,” Megatron growled. “And I suppose that should also be a warning for all of us not to pursue this line of inquiry. We deal with enough insanity from these ponies as it is.”
Ravage relaxed slightly. He’d just been relieved from the need to explain something he couldn’t possibly communicate with posture and animal sounds. And if it meant never knowing why Lord Megatron apparently also liked the pink one… well, if he’d had a problem with not knowing everything Megatron knew, he’d never have survived this long as a Decepticon.
That said, the robot-turned-panther’s mind went back, back to the day he took a personal interest in a pony other than Fluttershy…
RAVAGE’S TALE
There weren’t many introspective Decepticons, and most of the time that small number excluded Ravage. He thought of himself as a predator, first and foremost. Predators didn’t ask, “To pounce or not to pounce?” If you did that, the prey would scamper off while you were resolving your existential dilemmas. And then, if they were Autobots, they would return with reinforcements and ruin your entire solar period.
But there were days when the prey was not a creature but a concept, and those were much harder to pin down than any Autobot, and the wounds they left far more lasting. So, on this particular day, he lay on a tuft of grass next to the little river that flowed through Ponyville, looking at the water and, as cats do, cautiously stalking the target before committing to the attack.
The concept, in this case, was respect. The ponies of Ponyville had gotten used to seeing a midnight-black cat their size around town. He didn’t think he liked that. He didn’t like the smiles and waves and inane “Who’s a good kitty, then?” that had replaced the stares and whispers. Ravage wanted to be feared… but that wasn’t part of Megatron’s plans.
But really, if he wasn’t allowed to be a predator, what was he? A pet? Not even for Lord Megatron would he be a pet. Ravage was no ignorant, brainless animal to be coddled and cozened. He had a mind, and if he did say so himself, a better one than what most other Decepticons had.
Ah. But there was the problem, wasn’t it? He couldn’t say so himself. He’d lost his vocabulator literal ages ago, as had Buzzsaw and Laserbeak. And while this world had, for whatever reason, given those two their voices back, it had not chosen to do so in his case. Yet again, after another reformatting, he’d been stuck in an animal body with only an animal’s voice. And in a world of talking animals, he felt like the only mute.
And what respect do you give an animal? Even Fluttershy, who loved very nearly any animal you cared to name, treated them all- and treated Ravage- like rather dim children, to be taught, to be appeased, to be comforted. But never to be listened to.
Soundwave didn’t do that. Neither did Megatron. They both knew him from the beginning. They both knew the mind behind the paws, and as much as either bot was capable, they cared about him.
The other Decepticons? Definitely not. Especially not back home, where he was not just animal-shaped but animal-sized, small and comparatively weak. Again and again he’d had to teach them not to underestimate him, through minor acts of sabotage. And again and again the lesson would wear off, because they were the size of airplanes or armored vehicles or spaceships, and he was the size of a Earthling jungle cat.
And even here, where he was the same mass as most of the others (Megatron and Soundwave slightly larger, Rumble and Frenzy substantially smaller), the closest Ravage got to respect was being treated like an unexploded negamatter mine. And while that was sometimes amusing, it didn’t satisfy.
So… if you aren’t truly respected, and can’t demand true respect, and don’t have any way to win true respect… how do you get it?
Ravage lay on the grass, staring without seeing the water and its little fishes passing before him, looking for some opening in the dilemma’s defenses, circling again and again in his mind. And he probably would have kept going round in mental circles until he got hungry, had not a lump of pinkness slapped itself on the ground next to him and a cheerful voice said, “Hey, Ravage! How’s it goin’?”
Ravage had not, at that point, had much to do with Pinkie Pie. His first thought, which held his attention to the exclusion of all else for a very long moment, was: I never heard her approaching.
But there she was, sitting next to him, in the exact same pose he’d relaxed into, which couldn’t possibly have been comfortable for pony legs. And she was looking right at him, and not in the oh-look-a-big-kitty stare, nor the oh-my-maker-we’re-gonna-die looks of horror that the ponies had given him when he’d first arrived.
Ravage didn’t know how long he left Pinkie Pie waiting for some response. It must not have actually been that long, because Pinkie resumed talking as if satisfied that the minimum conversational protocols had been completed. “I was kinda wondering if you could do me a really big favor.”
Shock following shock. Nobody ever asked Ravage for a favor. Megatron and Soundwave ordered. The other Decepticons demanded (even when they had no authority). Prey pleaded (and it never did them any good). Nobody asked.
This time, despite his surprise, Ravage managed a soft interrogative yowl.
“Well, it’s about Megatron,” Pinkie said. “I’m going to throw him a Not-Birthday party pretty soon, and…” Some cybertram of thought jumped its rails in Pinkie’s head. “Unless you could tell me what his birthday actually is? That’d be so much more convenient!” A little doubt clouded Pinkie’s face. “Unless it’s more than a month from now, because that might make some schedule conflicts.”
Now how was he supposed to answer that? Ravage had no idea how you’d go about converting Cybertronean measurements of time into the Equestrian calendar. And even if he did, Megatron hadn’t shared the timestamp of his spark first coming on-line with anyone that he knew of. He settled for shaking his head, followed by imitating a pony shrug of the shoulders.
“Well, no big deal!” Pinkie said, doubt clearing up. “I’ll just go with Not-Birthday! There are three hundred sixty-four of those, y’know, so it’s almost impossible to miss!”
Ravage didn’t need the excuse of muteness to avoid following up that bit of bizarre logic.
“Now, I’m inviting all of his friends,” Pinkie Pie continued, and that would have been Ravage’s biggest shock yet if he’d believed it. Megatron didn’t have friends. Megatron didn’t do friendship. He was pretty sure he was the closest thing Megatron had that qualified, and even then he’d call himself, at best, “trusted confidant.”
“So I asked Starscream to take a day working at Sugarcube corner to fill in for me, ‘cause I know he kinda rubs Megatron the wrong way…”
Gross understatement, Ravage thought, both of the emotion and the number of people Starscream annoyed. But then, “infinity minus Starscream”, while accurate, might be too cruel for a pony to say.
“…but I’m inviting all your other friends, and Twilight Sparkle and Applejack and Rarity and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. I sent Princess Luna an invitation, but she said she’s not ready for society yet. And there’s Filthy Rich, and Mayor Mare, and Hi-Fi, and Davenport…”
The list went on and on, and Ravage began to be impressed. Either Pinkie Pie was hopelessly padding an invitation list, or else Megatron had been cultivating more contacts than he’d realized. All those patrols hadn’t just been for the exercise, evidently.
“… and Thunderlane, and Original Rumble, and you know,” Pinkie continued without so much as a pause, “most other ponies would have stopped me about three minutes ago, but you let me keep right on going.”
Ravage let out a confused mewl, to the effect of, And how was I supposed to do that?
“Well, most ponies do it by putting a hoof over my lips,” Pinkie said. “And look at your paws! I’m pretty sure you could cover my whole face!” Before Ravage realized it, one of his forepaws was being held between Pinkie’s forehooves, palm upwards. “I mean, just look at those kitty beans! You could smother a pony with those!”
Ravage probably could, if he felt like doing it the slow way. Putting aside the thought, he yanked his forelimb back with a short, pointed meow that said all that needed saying about the concept of bodily autonomy and consent.
“Well, you could,” Pinkie insisted. “Anyway, the problem’s this. What kind of present do I get Megatron?”
That went beyond shock, straight to incomprehensibility- so far that Ravage made a rare effort to actually say a word. It came out, “Mreh-fwurrm?” He even forgot to be embarrassed at the abject failure.
“Well, yeah!” Pinkie said. “Don’t you give presents to the birthday filly where you come from? Even if it’s not actually their birthday?”
No, Ravage thought. No, we don’t, because we don’t do birthdays, and anything a Decepticon gets which Megatron doesn’t take for himself gets kept and hidden. Otherwise it’s going to be stolen pretty much immediately. And Megatron doesn’t do presents. If he wants something, he takes it. And if he doesn’t want something, he’ll literally throw it back in your face- if you’re lucky.
“Well, I guess cats don’t,” Pinkie said, not waiting for Ravage to answer. “But ponies do! Every pony loves presents!”
Ravage shook his head frantically. No, they really don’t!
“So the question is, what to get him? What kind of stuff does he like?”
Please, Ravage thought, if you won’t take no for an answer, at least give me options I can say no to!
“Maybe some books? Everyone loves books!”
Oh, thank you. Ravage shook his head no firmly. Unless they were books about how to conquer worlds, Megatron probably wouldn’t be interested.
“Not a big reader, huh?” Pinkie tapped her chin thoughtfully. “How about a cozy hat for winter? That helmet of his must be chilly!”
Ravage shook his head even more firmly than that. Megatron didn’t show his face outside his room without that helmet on. It might as well have been as attatched to him as the one on his robotic head had been.
“Yeah, he does look like a one-hat pony, doesn’t he?” Pinkie said. “What about sweets? Everypony loves sweets!”
That Ravage didn’t veto immediately. Megatron would eat sweet things, but he didn’t seem to care much what he ate. To him fuel was fuel, and insofar as he had preferences, it was for plain oatmeal. He expressed his misgivings with a long, wavering whimper.
“Wow, this is a toughie!” Pinkie said. “Well, what are his hobbies? What kind of things does he like to do?”
Oh, slag. She’d left it open-ended this time. But, Ravage thought, what were Megatron’s hobbies? Did you call casual cruelty a hobby? Was galactic conquest a hobby? No, that was a calling, really. What about single combat? That could be a hobby, and Megatron certainly loved it… but the pony wouldn’t. So… what else…
Wait. An idea came to mind. Two ideas, really. Megatron took pride in his appearance, and ever since he’d been stuck in an organic body, he’d kept it in the best shape he could. Grooming and exercise- those were as close to socially acceptable hobbies as Ravage could think of.
He held up one digit of his paw to get Pinkie’s attention, then extended a claw from it and began drawing in the dirt. The first drawing, being of a specific thing, was simplicity. The second, being a drawing of a generality, really required three different drawings, and Ravage wasn’t quite sure he’ got the point across.
“Huh,” Pinkie said. “A can of polish and a rag… and… pushups, trotting- oh! You mean exercise!” Pinkie leaned forwards and hugged Ravage around the neck. Sheer surprise and shock on his part saved her life. “You’re the bestest, Ravage! Thanks for the great ideas!”
Some instinct, plus the fastest reflexes Cybertron had ever known, let Ravage grab Pinkie’s tail in her jaws just before she could rush off.
“Hey!” Pinkie protested, falling back to the earth mid-bound. “What’s the big idea, big kitty?” she asked as Ravage let her go.
Ravage quickly drew another complex picture, intended to be of Pinkie talking to a pegasus and unicorn who were meant to be Thundercracker and Soundwave. To emphasize the point, he pointed first to her, then in the general direction of the barracks.
“Ooooooh,” Pinkie said. “Yeah, it would be kind of embarrassing if all of us got him the same presents, wouldn’t it?”
Megatron didn’t do the presents thing, but he did do the recognizing-slights thing. When someone did bring him a present, the very first thing he’d ask was where everyone else’s present for him was, even if he didn’t want them. And there was literally no telling what might happen to any Decepticon who failed to show up with a gift.
Including, he suddenly realized, himself.
“All right, I’ll talk to Soundwave,” Pinkie said. “I’m sure he’ll tell the others. Thanks again! I almost made a real big oopsie!”
This time Ravage let Pinkie be on her way, and he returned to staring at the river, this time thinking not about respect and identity but about how to acquire some acceptable present in some way that wouldn’t lead to trouble.
The big shock of the day didn’t come for another hour, when it finally hit him that Pinkie had talked to him exactly like she talked to everyone else. She had treated him as a person- a person with the world’s worst speech impediment, but at least not an animal.
Now his list of people who did that had a third member: Megatron, Soundwave, and Pinkie Pie.
His opinion of her only underwent a small lowering when, two weeks later, he found out she spoke the same way to her apparently brainless pet alligator, too.
SOUNDWAVE’S TALE
Ponyville was not exactly running over with advanced technology, even by the woefully primitive standards of the pony planet. Soundwave had opened his electronics repair shop to a massive round of indifference from the village. In fact, on his first day he only had one pony enter the door, and that pony had nothing to repair. She’d just wanted to say hello, look around the place, and ask about a hundred questions ranging from the barely topical to the wildly illogical.
But, on the fourth day, that one pony had brought another pony in, and that pony had a gramophone with a stripped gear, and the repair covered the week’s rent on the repair shop and adjoining apartment.
Two days later, that one pony brought in someone else, this one with a vacuum cleaner that had shorted out. The motor had turned out to still be sound, and a bit of rewiring had been sufficient to make the customer happy.
The next day that one pony had brought in a little filly sadly cradling one of those annoying Battery Operated Yippy Doggy toys from Hi-Fi’s shop. The filly had given the toy a bath, causing massive damage to its internals. That repair had proven a true challenge, requiring careful disassembly of the toy, judicious use of a bag of rice, replacement of the battery case, delicate cleaning of the motors and gears to remove corrosion, and patching the membrane of the device used to make the yipping sound.
The repair cost Soundwave twice as much as buying another toy from Hi-Fi would have, but he knew better than to charge more than the two bits the filly had brought with her. Besides, now he knew where he would hide the microtransmitter, if and when he decided to use the Yippy Doggy to listen in on someone.
And so it continued, with word gradually spreading around town of Soundwave’s little shop and his talents with things electrical or mechanical. And that word was, for the most part, spread by one pony.
The door to his shop opened, setting off a high-pitched electronic chirp. Soundwave had spent a day making the device out of the bulky, primitive circuits available, simply because he refused to have a simple chunk of metal clattering over his door.
“Hey, Ess Dubbayew!” Pinkie Pie walked in, tugging another pony behind her. That pony had a large black box on her back, along with something long and flat strapped over it. “I got another one for ya! And this one’s right up your alley!”
“Are you sure about this, Pinkie?” the other pony asked. “I mean, I could just take it to Canterlot to be fixed…”
“Are you kiddin’?” Pinkie grinned. “Why waste bits on the train when you can get it done right here?”
“But… well, nobody in Ponyville knows anything about electric guitar except maybe Vinyl Scratch… and she doesn’t do repair work…”
“Oh, don’t worry! Even if he’s never seen it, Ess Dubbayew knows how to fix it! He’s smart like that!”
“Really?” The other pony looked at Soundwave, obviously afraid. This, at this point, was no surprise. The flower sellers gossiped with everyone they came into contact with, and though that had its benefits when he wanted information, its main drawback was obvious.
“Look, just show it to him!” Pinkie insisted, darting behind the other pony and shoving her by the rump until she slid up to the counter. “If he can’t figure out what’s wrong, I’ll eat my hat!”
“Pinkie, you haven’t got a hat,” the other pony said.
Pinkie reached a hoof up into her mane, wriggled it around for a moment, and came out with what looked like a watercress sandwich. She then perched it on top of her mane, then gave it a jaunty little tilt. “Ta-da!” she grinned.
The other pony looked at Soundwave again, this time with less fear and more apology in her face.
Soundwave shrugged silently. This behavior, so far, was well within norms for Pinkie Pie.
“C’mon, show him, show him!” Pinkie insisted.
The other pony sighed, then began unbuckling her load. “The pickups look all right,” she said. “So it’s probably the amp, but I’m not sure.”
Soundwave glanced at the guitar and the large portable box amplifier as they were set on his counter. The amp was of a similar model to the speakers DJ-P0N3, formerly Vinyl Scratch, used in her equipment; he knew their inner workings well. The electric guitar was new to him, but he deduced its operation with a quick glance at the electromagnetic pickups and the metal strings.
“diagnosis premature,” he said. “operating principles: simple. confidence in repair: certain.”
“Huh?” the guitarist pony asked.
“He says easy fix once he figures out what’s wrong,” Pinkie Pie said. “Just watch and be amazed!”
Soundwave activated his horn, concentrating on a particular shelf in the little room behind the counter. His skill in levitation had improved considerably since first coming to this world, and the heavy speaker no longer posed any difficulty. He brought it out into the shop area and set it down on the counter without even looking in its direction. Then, with a little fumbling, he picked up the end of the cord for the guitar and plugged its jack into the proper port.
This done, he looked again at the guitar. The little raised bars on the neck corresponded to resonance points, with the thirteenth in each row being the point at which the vibration frequency would double. He lifted the guitar, slid the strap over his shoulders, and sounded out the strings, one after another, with his hooves. Then, experimentally, he plucked out a simple tune, one from a record Megatron listened to frequently in the privacy of his office.
Through all the plucking, the notes came out of the speaker pure and clean.
“Not bad,” the guitarist pony said. “You’re really heavy on the strings, though. You need to work on a lighter touch or else you’ll have a lot of breaks.”
Soundwave nodded understanding. Of course he’d never touched the instrument in any form before that moment, but he saw no reason to admit the fact. Levitating the guitar back off his shoulders, he said, “instrument functional; source of malfunction: amplifier node. probable cause: relay failure. repair time: minimal.”
“What did I say?” Pinkie Pie grinned. “Easy fix! I told you Ess Dubbayew is a smartie!”
In the end it was, indeed, two blown vacuum tubes, both of which Soundwave had in stock. Half an hour later he had a significant number of bits in his cash register and an appointment in four days for his first guitar lesson.
He was only a little bit surprised when, four days later, he returned from his lesson to find Pinkie Pie waiting at his shop door with a banjo, ready for what she called a blackberry jam session, whatever that meant…
RUMBLE AND FRENZY’S TALE
Frenzy’s full-body lunge at his brother had resulted, thanks to two perfectly timed hooves, in him going flying overhead, landing hard on the grass some considerable distance beyond his target.
This happened every so often. Even Frenzy didn’t know why. A few times in his long life, he’d tried to figure out why some relay would go click in his brain for no apparent reason and make him go full berserker on the nearest valid target. Those moments of self-reflection never lasted long, because he enjoyed bashing other bots' chassis except when it landed him in especially deep slag. His introspection vanished the moment he was out of deep slag and back in Megatron’s good graces (such as they were).
The only thing he’d figured out was that, whatever it was, it only chose tactically valid targets. He’d never attacked Megatron or Soundwave, for example, nor a select few others like Shockwave or Ravage or Ratbat. He’d never spoiled an ambush or blown a surveillance op. And, most importantly, he’d never attacked a non-Decepticon since he arrived in this lame, cutesy-wutesy world.
But the moments happened anyway, and so Rumble, as Legitimate Target Alpha, had had a lot of practice in brawling in a pony body. And, since he knew all of Frenzy’s moves, that meant more and more often Frenzy ended up eating dirt.
Of course that only made him madder- just like now, as he shrugged off the double kick, rolled back onto his hooves, and charged again, this time as a pony would, galloping straight for his enemy before rearing up to kick with the forelegs.
Rumble, again, had seen this before. Instead of rearing up as well, he ducked his head, lunged forward, and sent one hoof into an uppercut that landed straight on the hoof-marks in Frenzy’s gut.
The punch didn’t quite knock the wind out of Frenzy, and it only startled him for a splt-second. Then his hooves came down onto the back of Rumble’s head, and it was his brother’s turn to taste dirt.
Frenzy followed up with a wild sweeping kick of one rear leg, but Rumble rolled out of the way just before it came through, getting space enough to get back on his hooves and clear his head. Frenzy had given him plenty of time for this, wobbling back and forth on that one leg trying to balance a body firmly designed to rest on four legs.
“Yeah! Yeah! Good move, Other Rumble! Shake it off!”
The voice cut through the crimson haze in Frenzy’s optics, but the next words, which came without so much as a pause, blew the haze away and left him as clear-minded as he ever got:
“Give it to him, Same Frenzy! You’re not gonna take that from him, are you? You got this!”
Both Frenzy and Rumble turned to face the owner of the voice- a certain pink earth pony who, for whatever reason, was wearing one of those weird costumes humans used at their sporting events sometimes. In fact, she seemed to be wearing two of them sewn together: half the sweater, half the skirt, and one pom-pom was the same red as Frenzy’s fur, while the other half of sweater, skirt and pom-pom matched Rumble’s violet coat.
Rumble spoke first- probably, Frenzy admitted, Rumble had noticed her first. “Excuse me, Miss Pie,” he said, “but what the shortin’ hay are you doin’?”
“Oh, me?” Pinkie Pie grinned, waving the pom-poms on her forehooves. “I saw you two fighting, and you both seemed to be really good at it, so I thought I’d root for you!”
“You what?” Frenzy asked. “Usually bot- people tell us to stop fightin’!”
“Really? Does it work?” Pinkie asked, looking like she honestly didn’t know the answer.”
“No!”
“Oh! Well, that explains why you fight so often, then!” Pinkie nodded, as if that made even the slightest bit of sense. “So why shouldn’t I root for you, then?”
“Well, for one thing,” Rumble said, not sounding entirely certain of his ground, “I’m pretty sure you’re only supposed to cheer on one side of the fight.”
Pinkie pouted. “Well, that’s no good!” she said. “I want both of you to win!”
“That’s not how fighting works!” Frenzy insisted.
“Yeah!” Rumble nodded. “In a fight, one side wins and one side loses. That’s just how it goes! Both sides can’t win!”
“Is that so?” Pinkie put on a sneaky face so artificial that both Rumble and Frenzy had to stifle laughs. “Riddle me this, then, young colts- is it possible for both sides to lose a fight?”
“Hmmmm, yeah,” Rumble admitted. “If it’s a close enough fight, with lots of… well, if both sides got hurt really bad, then yeah, that’d be a double loss.”
“Well, then!” Pinkie’s face shifted to a triumphant smile that looked much more at home than the sneaky look. “If it’s possible for both sides to lose, then it’s also possible for both sides to win! Pure logic! And you can’t argue with logic! Riiiiight?” She grinned, turning her head and cocking an ear in clear expectation of hearing the words.
Frenzy supplied them. “Whatever, Miss Pie,” he said. “You win.”
Pinkie’s eyes went wide. “Really?” she said. “But I wasn’t even in the fight!” She looked down at herself and said, “I don’t even have the right color uniform on!”
“Would pink on pink even work?” Rumble asked.
Pinkie shrugged. “Guess not,” she said. “I guess all that leaves is my victory party! Come on! You’re invited!”
Following along behind a bouncing, humming, happy Pinkie Pie, Frenzy muttered, “I’m not even sure I know why I was mad at you in the first place.”
“What I’m sure of,” Rumble muttered back, “I’m sure glad Shockwave didn’t come here with the rest of us. Get him an’ Miss Pie here arguin’ logic, and everybody’s circuits in a ten-megamile radius would get fried.”
“Yeah,” Frenzy nodded. “Might be fun to watch, though. From a distance. An’ with audio disabled.”
At the party which followed, Frenzy and Rumble ended up repeating the fight three times, as Pinkie kept insisting they show everyone else just what cool moves they had. At the end they were more sore and bruised than if they’d just finished the fight they were having… but, at the same time, they were full of cake, full of punch, and full of the cheering of the foals of their apparent age group.
Frenzy found himself reflecting: if more of his blind rages ended up like that, it wouldn’t be half bad. Not half bad at all…
BUZZSAW’S TALE
Buzzsaw sat at the counter of his little shop, carving a piece of oak with a pen-knife. He lounged back as he did so, putting on a pose of complete idleness and lack of care, belying the intense precision he put into the tiny panorama he was wringing out of the sliver of wood. Ponies were more likely to buy when they thought the seller was relaxed… but nothing, absolutely nothing, could bring Buzzsaw to give less than his absolute best in even his most minor works.
On a usual market day, he’d make three or four sales. That was fine by him. That brought in enough money to pay the rent on the workshop plus a token amount he contributed to the communal barracks fund for food and other things. Every once in a while he’d sell one of his larger carvings, and that would bring in enough extra to buy a new stump or knot-ridden lumberyard reject that he could use for his personal art.
Recently he’d had his first commission. The main thing he’d learned from that experience was to double his price for the second one- mainly because Filthy Rich had paid his initial fee again in apology for all the trouble Spoiled Rich had given him. And it had been a lot of trouble, because Mrs. Rich simply refused to accept the hologram-accurate reproduction of her face in wood as actually being her face.
Heretofore Buzzsaw had limited the subjects of his personal art to Autobots he’d gotten to know- briefly, but quite thoroughly- on his interrogation table. After his commission experience, he now had a candidate for his first pony subject, once he found the right piece of scrap wood. Unlike the others, that carving would be solely from imagination… but Buzzsaw had absolute confidence in his imagination.
But that was personal. For the buying public, Buzzsaw had carved plenty of happy, innocent, not-in-even-a-little-pain ponies, some generic and some based on actual denizens of the town. It pained him to do it, but just as there is no art without pain, so is there no art without patrons, and thus sacrifices had to be made.
Twilight Sparkle had been the easiest: stick a book in front of her and she’d apparently stay still as a statue for hours, except for turning pages. Mayor Mare in perfect 1:6 scale sat behind a podium on one shelf, frozen mid-speech. He’d sold three carvings of Rainbow Dash snoring on a cloud before the genuine article came by, bought the other two copies he’d carved, and told him to cut it out.
And, of course, there were puppy dogs and kittens and cows and trains and boats and, hanging from a beam in the ceiling, a minutely detailed carved airship. (The rigging was actual twine; Buzzsaw had no trouble carving wood into the shape of rope, but the result had about the same strength and life expectancy as toothpicks.) All cute and cuddly and so nauseatingly non-threatening that they made him feel like a traitor to his muse… but they did sell.
That said, when Pinkie Pie set the bells over the shop door a-clatter, he didn’t really expect her to buy any of them. He didn’t spend all day perched like a vulture on town roofs like his brother, but Buzzsaw did do a bit of surveillance of Ponyville now and again, and he knew precisely who Pinkie was and where her interests lay. And, as regards the representational arts, her preferred medium was- heh heh- crayons and construction paper. Nothing about her suggested the slightest interest in owning statuary.
“Oooh! So this is where your shop is, Mr. Buzzsaw!”
“Indeed it is,” Buzzsaw said, still slumped back on his chair, half-lidded eyes firmly on the wood in one claw and the knife in the other. “Well spotted.”
“Wow, you’ve got a bunch of neato stuff here!” Pinkie said, bouncing around the display shelves.
“I like to think so,” Buzzsaw replied pleasantly, suppressing his internal cringe at having his work, even his poor commercial hackery, described as ‘neato stuff’.
“Hey, you’ve got a giraffe here!” Pinkie stopped bouncing and stared at this one. “I thought I was the only person in Ponyville who knew how to make a giraffe.”
“Really?” Buzzsaw had seen the bizarre creatures on Earth, not in this world, but based on a lesson Rumble and Frenzy had had in that primitive education center, they also existed here. So he’d carved one from memory, because why not?
“Sure! Lemme show ya!”
There came a series of wooshing sounds, as several somethings got very rapidly inflated.
There followed a cacophony of squeaking, as several inflatable somethings got rubbed together at tremendous speed.
And there, in Pinkie Pie’s forehooves, was a giraffe.
It was baby blue, and it mainly resembled a giraffe in that it had four long legs, a short-ish body, and an extremely long neck ending in a nose and two ears. Aside from those aspects, it resembled nothing at all except what it was- a cluster of long, slender latex bladders tied together in the most vague giraffe-ish shape imaginable.
“Very… rapid,” Buzzsaw said at last. He’d wanted to be cuttingly sarcastic, but the effort fell so far below his own standards that even sarcasm failed him.
“Well, you gotta be quick when you’re at little kid parties!” Pinkie Pie said. “They get bored really easy, y’know?”
“I can just imagine,” Buzzsaw said, thinking of roughly eighty percent of his fellow Decepticons, whose limits of interest in art were, “How does it burn?” and “Can I bash something with this?” And then eighty percent of the others would say, “Hey, that’s cool looking. How does it burn? Can I bash Autobots with this?”
“Now, if they were more patient,” Pinkie Pie said, “I’d do this instead.”
There was more wooshing, and then a lot more squeaking.
And then, as Pinkie Pie stared at the mass of orange rubber in her hooves with (Buzzsaw recognized in shock) the exact same intensity of his own eyes, there was a single loud pop.
And the orange object was…
… well, there were limits. It was still balloons. But it was balloons with amazing detail. The legs had hooves and knees, formed by carefully crafted knots. There was a tail, knots all the way down, with a scrap of popped balloon at the tip. The head had popped-balloon ears that, somehow, had torn into exactly the correct shape. There were horns, eyes, nostrils, and even a mouth- not perfectly photorealistic, but close enough that one could almost believe the mouth was about to open and take a bite of a balloon-animal tree.
“Ah…” Buzzsaw had unconsciously pulled his knife away from the wood to avoid damaging his work; now he set both carefully onto the counter. Sitting up, he said, “That is literally incredible.”
“Eh,” Pinkie shrugged. “Everypony does giraffes. But not everypony does...” More inflating, tying, and a couple of pops followed, and Pinkie held a neon green copy of Mayor Mare in her hooves- and the face had the same politician’s smile on it as the wood carving on the shelf behind her.
Buzzsaw struggled to maintain a little of his sang-froid. “You’ve left off the glasses,” he managed.
Pinkie shrugged again. “I’d have to go at least half-scale for the glasses,” she said.
“Ah, yes,” Buzzsaw nodded. “Limitations of the medium.”
“Oh, no no,” Pinkie said, shaking her head. “It’s just that I don’t usually carry balloons that small with me. I could do it if I was prepared in advance.”
“Really?” Buzzsaw said. “I confess, I had never seen… balloons… as an art medium before.” He held up his talons to demonstrate why- not that he hadn’t had even greater obstacles in that department before coming to this world. “Tell me, how did you learn it?”
“Well, lots and lots of practice, of course,” Pinkie said. “Not really any other way, is there?”
Buzzsaw shook his head. “Of course not,” he agreed. Data implants and auxiliary expansion circuitry were no substitute for direct experience.
“But I get ideas from other ponies,” she said. “I started out when I threw a birthday party for a traveling circus’s lion. Do you know, none of the other performers even knew it was his birthday? But during the party the clowns did all these things with balloons and then let the lion pop them! He was so happy! And I wanted to try that, too!”
“Pop them?” The thought shocked Buzzsaw to the core. “But that would be destroying art! High art!” Not that he hadn’t done it, a great many times over during the war, but there had always been shame and regret in it. (Except for Autobot art, because by definition destroying that was beautifying the universe).
“Yeah, a lot of pony kids feel the same way,” Pinkie admitted. “But even if you take care of ‘em, balloon art doesn’t last long. The air leaks out, and all you have left is a lot of floppy rubber knots. So you gotta enjoy it while it lasts.”
Ah. Buzzsaw understood that perfectly. After all, his true art- interrogation- was also an ephemeral thing. “Very wise,” he said. “Tell me, have you made essays into other forms of sculpture?”
“You betcha!” Pinkie grinned. “Why, just last week I made an entire chicken run out of marzipan, right down to spun-sugar fencing!”
“Really? Tell me more…”
STARSCREAM’S TALE
He always told himself that the first time had only been to investigate Pinkie Pie, to better understand what had so utterly warped his mind when he’d made the tactical error of imprinting unscreened engrams into his own brain.
That was why he went to Sugar Cube Corner the first time for cooking lessons from Pinkie Pie herself.
As to why he kept going back, never less than once a week and frequently more often, Starscream deliberately chose not to think about that.
“Curse this recipe!” he shouted, hurling the baking tray across the kitchen along with its contents. “It was supposed to produce crunchy cookies, not crunchy teeth! I’ve seen armor plate softer than these!”
Pinkie Pie had, in one fluid motion, used a plate to intercept the flying failed baked goods before they could hit a non-sanitary surface. (This required a violation of the laws of physics, but Starscream had given up trying to analyze those. They happened too often.) She set the plate full of still-warm tooth-breakers on the counter. “Don’t be mad, Starscream!” she said cheerfully. “Everybody gets a bad bake now and then.”
“I am not just everybody,” Starscream said. “I am a trained scientist familiar with every chemical process. I understand how cooking works down to the molecular level.” He picked up the recipe card in one wingtip and waved it furiously. “So why doesn’t this work? When I’ve followed every step of the process precisely?”
Pinkie shrugged. “Too little yolk in the eggs?” she asked. “Not enough whey in the milk? Oven running too hot? This stuff just happens sometimes. It’s not your fault!”
Starscream sighed. Under his breath (or so he thought) he muttered, “It would be nice if it didn’t just happen so often with me.”
“Hey, you’re a good cook!” Pinkie pointed out. “I mean, you can make ginger snaps even better than I can!”
“That’s true, but only you and I like ginger snaps!” Starscream had never once even seen the recipe for ginger snap cookies. He assumed it was some leftover echo from Pinkie Pie’s engrams. Mental engrams were just the patterns of the thought process and shouldn’t contain memories, but here and there there had been little… contaminations… which sometimes kept Starscream awake at night, trying to pick Pinkie parts of his mind out of the pure Decepticon parts.
One of those bits, evidently, had been the ability to make ginger snaps to a definition of perfection he hadn’t either known or cared about before. And, not to be immodest, his gingerbread was pretty good too. But, when it came to almost any other baked sweet, his record was more spotty than a victim of cosmic rust just before the end.
“They really are yummy, aren’t they?” Pinkie nodded. “Now, let’s double-check.” She looked at Starscream’s cooking station, eyeing the ingredients. “Did you use up all the butter?”
“I couldn’t find any,” Starscream said. “But the recipe says you can substitute shortening, so I did.”
“Aha! And you baked the cookies at 325 for twenty minutes?”
“Twenty-five,” Starscream said. “I did want them to be crunchy. And the recipe says you could.”
“Ah, that’s it!” Pinkie said. “Butter makes the cookie spread out more. Shortening makes it stay lumpy. So you ended up with cookies too thick and cooked a little too long.” She shrugged. “Mrs. Cake didn’t do a good job of explaining the tweaks to her recipe.”
“Overcooked,” Starscream muttered. “So I did fail.”
“What? No, silly!” Pinkie giggled. “Everypony makes mistakes! That doesn’t make you a failure! And it certainly doesn’t make you dumb or anything!” She reached over to the refrigerator and slid apart two bottles of milk to reveal a tub of butter. “It just means you pick yourself up and try again!” She dropped the butter in front of Starscream with not so much as a twitch in the smile.
“I do keep trying,” Starscream said. “But some days it just feels like failure on failure.” Days? he thought to himself bitterly. Try millennia. Aeons. Geologic epochs. “I suppose you never feel that way.”
“You kiddin’?” Pinkie giggled again. “I have lots of days like that! And yeah,” she added, the smile dropping in intensity for a bit, “sometimes I get to feeling down, especially when I don’t think I’m doing my best.” She looked directly at Starscream and said, “But why would you ever feel like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you failing all the time? I mean, that’s gotta be a joke, right?”
Starscream’s lips pressed tightly, as he remembered the very many times Megatron had used that exact word about his schemes- or, more often, him personally.
“I’m just a silly filly off the rock farm,” Pinkie continued. “But you’re smart! You’re always trying new things and figuring out how they work! And you can do all sorts of stuff I don’t even have a clue about!”
Part of Starscream reminded himself that this was what Pinkie did- say things specifically to cheer them up and make them feel good about themselves. He knew it better than anyone else. For a brief time, he’d been Pinkie- at least, partly Pinkie- and he knew exactly how she thought at times like this, if no other time.
But the rest of him also knew that Pinkie didn’t lie about such things. If she said you were smart, it meant she believed you were smart. The word insincere didn’t exist in Pinkie’s vocabulary, not even as a concept.
And as much as he wanted to growl, to scoff, to rant… the fact was, it was very difficult to get angry at Pinkie for doing things like this.
The more you were around Pinkie Pie, the harder it was to not like her.
(This was especially true for anyone with an insecure and fragile ego like Starscream, but his conscious mind didn’t allow this fact to even register.)
“So let’s try this again!” Pinkie said. “And then we’ll get started on the cinnamon rolls! They’re really popular on a chilly morning!”
“Fine,” Starscream said. “I’ll prove I can make this work!” After a moment he added, “But why butter instead of shortening?”
“Because shortening’s homogenized,” Pinkie said. “Butter isn’t. Butter is milk fat with some curds still in. So when it cooks, it separates and adds moisture, right? So the cookie spreads out more over time, which makes it chewy if you bake it short and crispy if you bake it long.”
“Really?” Starscream asked. “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose that’s why you bake ginger snaps at a higher heat? To prevent the oil from letting the dough spread too fast?”
“You got it!”
“Fascinating,” Starscream said, honestly.
SKYWARP’S TALE
That lunchtime was doubly unusual. First, Skywarp was having it at the Clover Café, rather than in the barracks stealing some other Decepticon’s lunch. Second, Skywarp was paying for it with money he’d actually earned- the first time, aside from his time on the weather team, he’d lasted long enough on a job to actually collect the paycheck.
Not that Skywarp liked the whole eating-and-excreting business. It was part of the whole organic thing, and he hated most parts of it. But Megatron’s orders about good behavior had drastically reduced his options for celebrating, so having an expensive meal (which, by Skywarp’s standards, meant spending any currency whatever) had become the best of a short, short list of options.
The proprietor and sole waiter, Savoir Fare, gestured Skywarp to one of the mushroom-shaped tables in the café’s courtyard. Propping a little menu up against the customary flower vase, the waiter gestured Skywarp to the carefully cultivated tufts of thick, soft grass around the table. “Have a seat, m’sieu,” he said. “Will it be water or cider to drink?”
Skywarp flinched at a memory. “Water,” he said. “Gimme water.”
“As you wish,” Savoir said, bowing his head and departing.
Skywarp looked at the table, then at the tuft of grass, then shrugged and brought his haunches to rest.
A loud flatulent sound ripped through the courtyard.
Skywarp jumped straight up in shock, hit a string of decorative pennants overhead, and got flung back onto the ground again. The flatulent sound happened again, even louder.
The dozen or so other ponies enjoying an outdoor lunch stared at him.
As he got back on his hooves, Skywarp felt something rubbery underneath him. He fished it out with one hoof and held it up- a large rubber bladder with a long, loose mouth. From the looks of it it had originally been pink, but someone had given it a very sloppy and rushed coat of green paint- the exact green of the grassy cushion under him.
He gave the cushion a little squeeze. It went brrrrraaaap.
The rest of the café erupted in laughter, including the pony sitting across from him at the table- the pony that, had he not been mad enough to kill slowly, Skywarp would have sworn hadn’t been there two seconds before. “Gotcha!” the pink pony giggle, pointing a hoof at him.
“Gotcha, huh?” Skywarp grunted. “That mean this belongs to you?”
“Yep-aroonie!” The pink pony grinned, leaning up onto the table. The forelock of her tangled pink mane reached out, took the whoopee cushion from Skywarp’s hoof, and tucked it away somewhere within itself. “An oldie but a goodie! Especially for those grumpy-guts who need a good prank!”
“A good prank.” The dumb organic didn’t know it, but she’d just said magic words- practically the only words which would have stopped him from attempting grievous bodily harm, aside from, “Isn’t that Megatron behind you?”
A good prank. Well, if it had been him doing it to Starscream, it might be worth a laugh, yeah. Funnier still if it had been a graviton mine.
But it had been done to him. That was entirely different.
That made it a challenge.
That made it a declaration of prank war.
And Skywarp had never- NEVER- lost a prank war.
The dining room and counter area were crammed chock-a-block with hungry ponies. Almost every appliance in Sugarcube Corner’s kitchen was roaring, whirring, buzzing or clicking.
And with Mr. Cake running the counter and Mrs. Cake taking care of the twins upstairs, that left Pinkie Pie hopping from one task to another, doing the baking and a good portion of the serving, all by herself.
The last of the vanilla cupcake batter went into the cupcake molds and into the oven to bake. Pinkie set the timer, then took a milkshake off the mixer, topped it with whipped cream, pulled a root beer float, set both on a tray along with a bowl, dropped the bowl off at the mixing station, then went out to serve the drinks. When she returned she put together the ingredients for another milkshake, set it to mixing, dropped the rest of the milk and a bag of flour on the mixing station next to the bowl, and poured two glasses of lemonade to go with the milkshake. When she brought the lemonade over to the milkshake machine, she also brought a clean whisk, which went on the mixing station.
Drinks went out into the dining area. Pinkie returned with no new orders, so she was able to get the sugar, the vanilla extract, and the baking powder before she had to take the chocolate chip muffins out of the oven.
That done, she brought the final ingredient- the eggs- over to the counter. With everything in place she reached for the whisk…
… which wasn’t there.
“Huh,” she said aloud. “I was sure I got the whisk earlier! Oh well!” She trotted back to the utensil cabinet for another one, pausing along the way to stick a toothpick into the layer cake baking in the other oven (not done yet), then returning with a new whisk.
She set it down next to the other whisk.
“What?” she gasped, blinking her eyes rapid-fire to make sure they still worked. “I could have sworn that wasn’t there a moment ago!” She tapped her chin thoughtfully with one hoof. “Think, Pinkie, when did you last see that whisk? When I set the bowl next to it, right! So…”
Only then did she notice that the bowl, which quite definitely had been there, wasn’t.
“What’s going on here?” she asked the air. “Am I going loco in the coco- more so?”
The air declined to answer.
She began searching the nearby counters, only for one of the timers to go off- the lemon tarts were ready.
When she returned, the bowl had returned, but one of the two whisks had vanished again, along with the eggs.
“Okay,” Pinkie said aloud, “this is getting creepy even for me. Either I’m getting really forgetful for some reason, or the Cakes’ kitchen is haunted! And what kind of ghost haunts a bakery kitchen during lunch rush?” She nodded to herself and answered, “A really inconsiderate ghost, that’s who!”
The door to the dining area swung open. “Pinkie?” Mr. Cake asked. “How are the muffins coming?”
“Oh!” Pinkie looked at the cooling shelf. “I think they’re just about ready to serve! That is, if the ghost doesn’t steal them!”
Carrot Cake, although used to Pinkie’s normal level of strangeness, could only manage a weak smile at this comment. “Heh-heh… well, just box them up and bring them out, please. It’s a rush order, you know.”
Pinkie did so, pausing every five seconds to shoot a long stare at the mixing station, daring any of the things on the counter to vanish, appear, or multiply. Nothing did.
With the muffins cheerfully given to the customer, Pinkie returned to the kitchen to find the egg carton returned, empty. A measuring cup, which Pinkie knew for a fact she had not used, now sat beside the bowl, specks of flour and sugar still clinging to the inside.
“All right, that’s it!!” Pinkie shouted. “I know you’re in here, ghost, and I’m gonna catch you!” She zipped over to the counter, looking at the various items sitting there, watching for any sign of movement.
Something clattered over by the sink.
Pinkie’s head instantly snapped to look over at the sink, where a small spoon had joined the dishes already there waiting for washing.
Her head turned back to the counter, and the sugar bag, which had been sitting by her right hoof, was gone.
After a moment’s staring, she snapped her head back to the left, and the vanilla extract bottle had vanished.
She looked back to the right, and the sugar had returned.
She looked to the left, and a dirty whisk lay on the other side of the bowl from the clean one. “HEY!” she shouted. “This is a food preparation area, buster! You keep things clean!”
She deliberately looked back to the right, and she was only a little surprised to see the vanilla bottle next to the sugar. A moment later she heard the sound of a whisk landing in a mixing bowl in the sink.
“AHA!” she shouted, looking back to the left.
Something tapped her on the back.
Instantly Pinkie threw her head to the right, which meant her muzzle found the unbaked, freshly whipped meringue pie with perfect accuracy. Egg, flour and sugar splatted all over her face.
“GOTCHA!” Skywarp laughed, not his usual nasty, sneering laugh, but a genuine laugh, a triumphant cackle that just got louder and louder as he did barrel rolls in the air just above Pinkie’s head. “I didn’t even hafeta teleport! You never looked up even once!”
Pinkie wiped gunk off her face with both hooves, giggling her own little giggle. “You got me!” she agreed. She licked a hoof and added, “And that’s not bad meringue, except it isn’t cooked.”
Skywarp’s laughter subsided. “Eh, I figured if Starscream could do it, anybody could. So I looked it up in his cookbook. But it hadda be fast, see, or else you mighta figured me out before the payoff.”
“But why didn’t you just bring a pie already made?”
“Because pies are easy.” Skywarp did sneer this time. “But makin’ a pie from stuff I’m stealin’ right from under your little pink nosecone, an’ gettin’ ya to paste yourself with it? That’s skill.”
Pinkie’s eyes widened. “OOOOOOOOOOOHHHH,” she grinned. “That’s goooooood.” She smiled a sneaky little smile and added, “I’m gonna have to up my game with you, Mr. Skywarp!”
The timer for the cupcakes went off.
“But later,” she said. “Could you clean up your mess while I take care of this? Thanks!”
To his surprise, Skywarp did. In fact, he was so busy thinking about what his next prank on Pinkie would be that he ended up washing the dishes in the sink, learning how to make milkshakes, and mixing up the next batch of cupcake batter.
He didn’t come to until he was halfway back to the barracks with half a dozen lemon-iced cupcakes in a box as a thank-you. When he realized what he’d done, he’d taken a moment to wonder if that counted as a prank.
Eventually, he decided he didn’t care. It wasn’t as if he’d ever needed retaliation as an excuse to prank someone.
Four days later, when he woke up with a rainbow curly wig and a clown nose glued to his head, he had no such doubts.
THUNDERCRACKER’S TALE
Thundercracker didn’t have work that day. The weather schedule called for partly cloudy skies and light breezes, the same as the day before, and so no pegasi were needed to clear or bring in clouds or to monitor rain showers. But, on this particular morning, he’d had more than enough of all the other Decepticons, from Laserbeak right on up to Megatron himself, and so he’d found a cloud big enough for one to sit and think… again.
It had seemed so simple, back in the early days. There had been a just war, a righteous war, to fight and win against the forces of oppression. Megatron had been a glorious and inspiring leader. Why shouldn’t he rule the galaxy? Then the Great War had come, the war which refused to end, the war which proved just how mortal and limited Transformers really were.
The war had taken so many of his friends. It had turned his home, the glittering jewel of the galaxy, into a dark, burned-out husk. But nothing about the war was worse than the Decepticons who’d lived. To Thundercracker’s mind, the war had taken the gold and left the slag behind. What was left of the Decepticon Armada was a collection of idiots, psychotics, opportunists, and backstabbers.
Some days he wondered: had Megatron always been the rage-driven abusive psychopath Thundercracker had come to know? Or had he actually been a good bot, back in the early days, before corruption and war had made him bitter? How much of the shining, glorious leader, the charismatic speaker, the brave warrior, had been real? How much of it existed only because Thundercracker had wanted it to?
That said, he still liked Megatron better than any of the other Decepticons. Soundwave was Megatron’s enforcer with a sideline in blackmail. Starscream was a self-absorbed moron, and Skywarp made Starscream look smart. And Soundwave’s minions were just different flavors of annoying. If Optimus Prime showed up tomorrow and disintegrated the whole lot of them, Thundercracker wouldn’t miss a single one.
Not for the first time, he wondered what he was doing there, still with the Decepticons. Not that he intended to defect; no, he still hated the Autobots a lot more than he hated the other Decepticons, and he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. But he could just desert, right?
Yeah. He could. And he’d thought of that so many times over the aeons… but he’d never done it. No, he’d just gone along, obeyed orders, fought and survived, never changing anything, no matter how insane it all was.
Face facts, Thundercracker told himself, slumping down to rest his chin on the cloud, for all you groan at how stupid the others are, you ain’t any better than the rest of them. And you’re going to go back to base and say yes, Megatron, no Megatron, as you command Lord Megatron, and tomorrow you’ll do it again, and tomorrow, and a million years of tomorrows, because you’re too dumb and insane to do anything else. Just like all the other dumb, insane Decepticons.
It was at this point in Thundercracker’s self-pity party that he heard the mechanical sound somewhere below him, the rhythmic whupwhupwhupwhup of a propeller. That roused his curiosity; he’d seen some dirigibles here and there, but he hadn’t thought the ponies capable of any sort of powered flight.
Then the thing making the noises rose above the level of Thundercracker’s cloud. It had the twin counter-rotating blades of an autogiro, stuck on top of what looked like a human bicycle made out of candy. And there, industriously pedaling with all four hooves, was a smiling pink pony, looking directly back at him. “I knew there was a gloomy Gus up here!” she giggled. “How ‘bout you tell old aunt Pinkie about it?”
Thundercracker looked at the little pink pony. On the one hand, he had to admire her ingenuity for cobbling together a flying machine that, by all the laws of aerodynamics and mechanics, ought not to work, and not only making it work but making it work very well. On the other hand… Aunt Pinkie? Kid, I’m nine million years older than you!
“It’s… complicated,” he finally said, once it became obvious that Pinkie was going to keep pedaling and hovering there until he said something. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Aw, c’mon!” Pinkie said, even more bubbly than before. “You’re talking to a pony who threw a party for a filly and her seven friends, none of whom were talking to the other six, and got them all to have a good time together! I can do complicated!”
Thundercracker sighed. “You’re not going away, are you?”
“Not until you smile!” Pinkie said.
Thundercracker smiled, in that you could see his teeth and parts of his lips stretched vaguely upwards.
“Not until you smile and mean it,” Pinkie corrected, a little less bubbly. “Now spill, what’s got ya down?”
Thundercracker sighed. “Well… did you ever have the feeling that you didn’t… belong… you know, with the people you’ve been around pretty much your whole life?”
“Are you KIDDING?” Pinkie Pie’s grin was everything Thundercracker’s wasn’t. “Of course I have! I mean, I grew up on a rock farm! A ROCK farm!!”
That made Thundercracker blink. “You farm rocks?” he asked.
“My family does!” Pinkie said. “My sister Maud is even going to collage for her rocktorate! I was born on the farm and grew up on the farm! And let me tell you, it was gray! Everything on a rock farm is gray, grey, grayer, gray-ish, grayesque, and hoary!” She leaned over the handlebars of her contraption and whispered, “That’s another word for gray!”
“Uh… huh.” Thundercracker gave Pinkie Pie a second look. If the color gray has an opposite, he decided, pink was probably it.
“Yeah,” Pinkie said, “and you may not have noticed, but I am totally not gray. So I grew up knowing something was wrong, but not what… until the day I got my cutie mark!”
Thundercracker looked at the three balloons on Pinkie’s rapidly pumping flanks. “And?”
“Well, that’s when I realized there was more to life than rock farming!” Pinkie said. “And I knew that I had to go out and see the world, and bring the joy of laughter and parties to everyone!”
“So you left,” Thundercracker said.
“Well, yeah! In a month I’d moved in with the Cakes and already begun party planning for the ponies of Ponyville and the surrounding area. But I always write home every week, and I go visit whenever I can!”
That tidbit got Thundercracker’s attention. “Why?” he asked. “You just said you didn’t belong there.”
“Well, sure,” Pinkie Pie said. “But just because I don’t belong on the farm doesn’t mean I don’t love my family. They raised me. They taught me all the basics of life. And they’ve always got my back!”
Thundercracker sighed. “That must be nice,” he said bitterly.
“It sure is!” Pinkie nodded eagerly. “Of course it’s different for you, since you’re not living with your family.” She hesitated and added, “They’re not your family, are they?”
That was a more loaded question than Pinkie knew, considering how wildly different Transformers defined family ties than fleshlings. By one definition Starscream and Skywarp, being of the same general model and function, were his brothers… not that either one would ever want to admit it. But Thundercracker found it much simpler to just answer, “No,” and let it end there.
“Oh, OK! Whew!” Pinkie wiped her forehead with one hoof, then returned to pedaling. “Yeah, sometimes you just have to get some space from co-workers, am I right? I mean, they don’t know how lucky they are to have you!”
That was not a thought Thundercracker had entertained all that often, not even in an eternity of war. “Really?” he asked.
“Well, yeah!” Pinkie nodded. “I mean, Dashie tells me what a hard worker you are and how you’re always doing extra things to help out! She says you’re smart, too!”
“Smart? Nah, no way,” Thundercracker scoffed.
“She sure did! And you know what? She says you could be a weather manager yourself in a year or two, if you wanted!” Pinkie jabbed a hoof at Thundercracker and said, “And I just bet you your friends in the barracks know all that too! Maybe they just don’t appreciate what they have, y’know?”
Now that was nothing but truth! “No, they sure don’t!” Thundercracker agreed, pulling himself up off the cloud. “Why, I’ve pulled their bolts out of the smelter so many times! And do I get respect?”
“I don’t know!” Pinkie said. “Do you?”
“No!” Thundercracker shouted. “But you know what? I’m going to GET that respect! I’m going to go back to base and demand that Megatron treat me like a proper warrior, not just some… some… well, whatever he treats me like now!”
“Weeell,” Pinkie said cautiously, tilting her autogiro forward so she could put a hoof on Thundercracker’s shoulder, “maybe you should calm down an eensy weensy bit first? You don’t want to shout at your boss, now do you?”
Thundercracker smirked. “Trust me,” he said, “I’ve been living with Megatron’s temper for a long time. I know how not to cross the line.”
Fifteen minutes later the exultation of the moment had faded, and in the presence of Megatron, Thundercracker’s resolve wavered. Like it always does, he thought to himself. I always reset to default at this point. Well, not today…
… but what if he gets angry? I’m not so easy to repair in this organic body!
No. You keep putting this off. Say something.
“Did you have something to say?” Megatron drawled, tapping the manual he’d been reading with one hoof. “Or were you planning on staring at me until my outline was burned into your receptors?”
“Yes,” Thundercracker said. “I do have something to say.” He took a deep breath, something he couldn’t do as a robot but, as a pony, seemed to reset his internal gyros. “And the thing I have to say…” He found he needed another breath. “… which I am about to say…” Wow, those gyros just wanted to wobble all over the place. “… is that I don’t feel you respect me.”
Megatron waited a moment. “And?” he eventually prompted.
“And that’s it,” Thundercracker said. “I’m one of your most reliable warriors. Yeah, I’m not smart like Soundwave or Shockwave, and I’m not as sneaky as Starscream, but I’m always there. I’m reliable. I’m the sane one- probably the sanest Decepticon except you. And yet you take me for granted as if I were some dumb servo like Ramjet or Skywarp. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you and the others give me the respect I deserve.”
Megatron pondered this for a few moments. “I have three responses,” he said quietly. “First, that I acknowledge no equals among the Decepticons. You know that. If you want respect, you will have to take it from me.” He smirked as he added, “I advise against it. I know your skills and weaknesses. You are no schemer. Otherwise you’d have gotten Starscream out of the way long ago.”
“I know I’m not your equal,” Thundercracker said. “I’m no commander. But I do want recognition for what I am.”
“Second,” Megatron continued without acknowledging Thundercracker’s words, “I picked you as one of only three Seekers to join me in the attack on the Autobot Ark. And I picked you again for the assault on the Autobot moon base. I did these things precisely because I recognize your usefulness. Or did you think I enjoy surrounding myself with idiots?”
“Exhibit one, Starscream,” Thundercracker said. “Exhibit two, Skywarp.”
“Starscream is not always an idiot,” Megatron said. “Usually, but not always. And he keeps me alert. And while you are correct about my opinion of Skywarp’s intellect, he has cunning, he is a capable warrior…” The smirk vanished. “And, unlike you, he has never dared to question me or the Decepticon cause.”
“Starscream does it all the time. And he’s nowhere as respectful as I am.”
“You are not Starscream, thank Primus,” Megatron said, a note of annoyance creeping into his voice. “One of him is enough.” He shook his head, and then the smirk returned. “My third point is this: because I respect your capabilities as a warrior, you were first stranded in stasis lock on Earth for four million years, and then transported to this misbegotten dimension and reformatted as an organic. In your place, I might wish for a little less respect in future.”
Thundercracker froze. That sounded very nearly like Megatron had made a joke.
The moment passed, and then Megatron’s smirk went away again. “In any case, I recognize you as a valuable and capable warrior,” he said. “Be content with that. And remember that I will not waste my time attempting impossible tasks like forcing your fellow Decepticons to respect you. Either they do or they don’t, and if they don’t, that’s not my problem. Understood?”
Thundercracker snapped to attention and saluted. “Yes, Lord Megatron.”
“Very well. Don’t let me detain you.” Megatron’s horn lit up, and his book floated off the desk and back in front of his eyes.
“Er, sir?” Thundercracker said. “I have one other thing to say.”
The book lowered slightly, just enough to show two yellow eyes lacking any trace of the marginal good humor which had sustained the conversation thus far. “Well?”
“Thank you, sir,” Thundercracker said. “Recognition was all I wanted.”
Megatron’s eyebrows went up marginally, just for a moment. Then they went back down and the book went back up. “Dismissed,” he said.
MEGATRON'S TALE
It had been a long day, and the party hadn’t actually helped.
Despite the several idiocies committed by his warriors, Megatron had forced himself to hold his temper. Twilight Sparkle had been present, along with her close coterie of friends- including, of course, the host, Pinkie Pie. Going into a rage and executing well-merited justice on the fools he commanded would have been ill-advised, no matter how satisfying it might have been.
Fortunately for them, the other Decepticons had been wise enough to depart before their leader. (And Starscream hadn’t shown his face at all, which would have worried him except for Pinkie’s explanation. Not that he was fool enough to hope that working as a servitor for a day would teach him a little humility.)
The party had blended into suppertime, which he used as much as possible to cultivate the others. He didn’t make any attempt with Fluttershy- she was still impossible to converse with on any subject aside from Ravage. And Pinkie Pie, somehow, managed to be busy throughout the event, even while eating. But with the others he made careful, content-free conversation, listening closely to the responses, focusing on drawing out his hosts while keeping his own inner self concealed for the moment. And that, truth be told, had been the most exhausting part of the day.
No one greeted him when he got to the barracks long after dark, which was fine by him. He helped himself to the communal pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator, doffed his guard armor, and retired to his bedroom.
Only then did he open the present Pinkie Pie had given him. The presents the other Decepticons had given him had ranged from the mundane (armor polish? Really??) to the moronic (Skywarp’s “Get Well Soon” greeting card). But Pinkie Pie had obviously taken advice from Soundwave, and her present… well, it had promise.
He slid it out of its plain white pasteboard sleeve and lowered it gently on the turntable of his record player.
Music began to play, and then Pinkie Pie’s voice began singing.
My little pony, my little pony,
What is friendship all about?
Megatron sipped tea and, slowly, felt the tensions of the day melt away.
He thought of himself as a monster- a creature clawed up from the depths, bringing righteous terror to those who had kept him down, striking fear into any who might think to send him back. He knew himself as ruthless, treacherous, and pitiless, and he felt no shame for any of it. Such, he reasoned, was merely the nature of the universe.
But even the most hardened criminal, the most despotic tyrant, has some feature which an outsider might call redeeming. In Megatron’s case this was a love for music- and not just any music. Military marches and bellicose anthems were, for him, a useful propaganda tool. Sad songs, love songs, songs of regret- all of that found a tin ear where he was concerned.
But there were certain pieces, certain songs, born out of pure innocence, that touched the lonely mining robot he had once been, a robot who had dared to dream of sunlight and friends and happiness. This world, for all its faults, was full of that music. He could almost forgive its daily humiliations for that alone, if he were not Megatron.
Sadly, one of the humiliations was that their primitive audio playback devices had such a short run time. The song ended far too soon, requiring him to flip the record over to listen to the other side.
And then Pinkie Pie sang again, and Megatron’s eyes widened. He’d heard the first song before (although the lyrics naming Pinkie’s friends had been new to him). This one, this one was wholly new to him…
… and, as he listened, apparently written specifically for him.
He listened to it again, and again, and a fourth time, before putting the lights out and going to bed.
The words kept ringing round his head, singing him to a better sleep than he’d had since coming to this world:
Sometimes the world just isn’t the way it should be
Sometimes life just doesn’t go like it should
You just might find you get
Just a little bit upset
And people tell you that it isn’t good
They tell you it’s not healthy to be angry
They tell you to let it go and move along
But there’s one thing that I know
That sometimes it isn’t so
Sometimes it means something is really wrong
It’s OK to be angry sometimes!
Sometimes!
It’s OK sometimes to scream and shout!
It’s not bad to get real mad
Sometimes! Sometimes!
Sometimes it’s best if you just let it out
Little things can really be annoying
But not every thing that makes you mad is small
Situations aren’t the same
There might be no one to blame
Or the problem might be bigger than us all
So think about the stuff that makes you angry
Ignoring it is not the thing to do
Make sure you understand
Then fix it while you can
Or the person you hurt most might just be you
It’s OK to be angry sometimes!
Sometimes!
It’s OK sometimes to say life isn’t fair
It’s OK to not be cheerful
Sometimes! Sometimes!
Sometimes it’s right for you to really care
We can hurt people when we’re angry
And that really isn’t right
But that doesn’t mean getting mad is wrong
So before you act like a jerk
Put your rage to work
Because anger is OK
But not if it goes too long
It’s OK to be angry sometimes!
Sometimes!
So be angry if you need to be, but then
Find out why you’re mad and
Make it! Better!
And then I think you’ll find
More than just sometimes
It’s much more fun to be happy once again
The next morning Megatron would ask himself how Pinkie Pie knew him so well as to write, record, and have stamped a record specifically for him.
The next morning, Megatron would remind himself that the Element of Laughter would need to be treated with the utmost respect, should she become his adversary.
But that would be the next morning. This night, if only for this night, he drifted to sleep peacefully, tranquilly, content.
And, even if Pinkie couldn’t see it, smiling.
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I loved this chapter, especially the Skywarp and Thundercracker parts. There just really isn't much acknowledgement that they have inner personal lives, you know?
This chapter was the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead of the Transformers.
Those were awesome. I think my favorites were Buzzsaw, Thundercracker and Megatron.
It's back! It's here!
*Shooting bullets to the air*
THIS STORY IS ALIVE!!
Oh my God, I thought you weren't going to update your fic for a very long time! I'm glad to read this chapter - and everything you'd to went through in order to publish it. For that, thank you a lot; not many authors can do what you are doing.
It's interesting to read how Pinkie Pie aproaches the Decepticons in some way she somehow is actually helping them. Mostly Megatron from all the Transformers characters who now sees the Element of Laugh with a different perspective. Perhaps, just saying, at some point the Cons decides to give up on their universal conquest scheme and decides to embrace friendship; or maybe they manage to return Earth with the purpose of seeking peace with their fellow Autobots (I mean, both factions belong to the same race and planet. They used to be one).
Until the next time, I guess. And I wish you a Happy New Year.
Why are the tails of Laserbeak and Ravage wagging in the cover art?
Best Chapter yet!
Hey, I liked the original song. I'm curious if there was a particular tune on your mind when you wrote it.
Oh, don't worry, she saw it. The Pink One sees everything. E V E R Y T H I N G .
11462363 Because with cats, a twitchy tail means agitation. Usually in a negative sense.
Tis good. Tis really good. Thank you for the words and lyrics good author, I enjoyed it all. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to ya.
11108085
If anyplace could do it, it would be Equestria.
Pinkie Pie the social engineer. She really doesn't get enough credit for her intelligence, there's a wise mare behind the candyfloss.
She just doesn't like to put on airs.
The song was fine, original songs are better than minor tweaks of canon ones.
I hope you have an ending in mind for this that isn't just "I'm going to do the entire series.
Cause many have tried and failed. others have done it but had to alter a lot of main plot stuff so it wasn't beat for beat per episdoe.
11462459 In this case, not really. It's just slice of life shenanigans until and unless something comes along that makes me say otherwise.
The whole point of the story, to me, is that the Deceps aren't just in Equestria, not just ponies in Equestria, they're BACKGROUND ponies in Equestria.
11462459 Also, I'm only doing chapters for episodes where an idea comes to me. I'm willing to let other writers (of a certain minimum quality) do chapters for episodes I've got nothing for, but nobody's sent me anything yet.
(auto-translation)
it's nice to read, but there's just too much Pinkie Pie in the chapter. I don't want to see her for a few days.
Anyway, I liked the development of Decepticons. Especially Soundwave, cat (best) and Buzz Lightyear.
Groovy. It makes me happy to see this story get updated.
New chapter was so good, I hope you don't take as long with the next one.
Quality work and the Megatron bit? Yeah that made me feel something.
Fair enough, I guess.
A muffin.
That, actually sounds kinda terrifying.
Nobody does.
This is actually a subtly great line. Pinkie is SO much more than "Lol random" humor, she plans her parties meticulously.
They call those Unbirthdays in Wonderland.
You have no idea.
Pinkie is, unique.
Give it a minute.
There it is.
... How did she, you know what? Never mind.
I mean, see Megatron vs Optimus in the 86 movie. Both came out in critical condition.
... Sure thing, Pinkie.
Which would be funny to watch. From a distance.
Perfect.
You ain't kidding.
That's, impressive.
... Of course you don't.
That sounds diabetes inducingly fasciating.
Baking is not an easy task.
I adore little touches like this.
It really is.
A classic.
You just might now.
A pie for a Pie.
It IS impressive.
That, is an EXCELLENT question.
That sounds lovely.
... I mean, he's not ENTIRELY wrong.
Vetinari Megatron kinda works.
... Huh. That's very interesting.
Oh yeah.
That's, actually a very good point.
It really works.
This chapter is a masterful character study.
Aww, someone else already dropped the Vetinary link.
Oh well, Imma going to go with something I reread just yesterday.
Once I re find it.
Ah, there it is.
Pinkie already been in Starscreams head, now she is just helping her poor little Probobodyne offshoot recover.
Digital dueling Banjos. Blackberry verses Pi.
Im sad I missed seeing this till now. I was brought up on G1 animated Transformers, so that Megatrons voice I hear.
As for the gig up front? Cant help there man, I just Haul M.Ass.
To say the least that this chapter was indeed impressive. The interactions were marvelous and the ending was especially sweet.
Hm. I read this chapter in two sittings and I forgot that Pinkie was planning a party and didn’t make the connection on my second sitting.
11464838 The party planning only involved three of the tales. When I saw what was coming out, I reordered them so those three would make a half-assed story arc concluding with Megatron's moment of not being a cruel nasty malicious bastard.
Wonderful stuff. And goodness, but this says volumes about Cranky, doesn't it? It's one heck of a tragic romance when the nine-million-year-old mentally scarred war veteran are easier nuts to crack. Of course, as you said in the author's note, Pinkie's early interactions with Cranky have a marked lack of respect on the pony's part... and we're seeing the Decepticons' interactions with her after more than a year of exposure.
In any case, delightful chapter. Thank you for it.
okay we can all agree that megatron would be able to tell cadence is an imposter just by watching her for a minute, and starscream would crticize the whole plan after the wedding
11471052 It would take longer than a minute if Megatron didn't have a baseline for Cadence's behavior. For one thing, he has Issues with females. For another, he'd have to have some reason to care.
As for Starscream, he criticizes any plan that isn't his on general principle.
11468599 To be fair, Pinkie was trying too hard with Cranky, which was the whole point of the non-song part of that episode.
11471070
yes but in hindsight the changeling invasion has always been exceedingly stupid and counter-productive, also do you really think megatron would slack off on the job. and after nit picker's inspection no way those guys aren't gonna be given the job
11476877 You know what's really disappointing for me? MLP had two Halloween episodes that I can think of offhand, and BOTH of them focused on the older cohort. We never had any CMC shenanigans.
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS GHOST HUNTERS, YAAAAAAY!"
Gummy's revenge upon Ravage for this unspoken slight was terrible to behold...
1 like = 228. Looking forward to more.
split
The most magnificent chapter as of yet!
11545826
So there was once a female Megatron copy that could seduce any male version?
Or was it him after one of his defeats that she was created?
This is the biggest love chapter to Pinkie I have ever read, and it is glorious!
will this update soon?
11863669 My writing has suffered by a combination of headaches and busy times. I've currently got about one-third of a chapter written (centered around Best Young Fliers in S1).