Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Startracking - Part 3

Pinkie Pie was in Ponyville, inside Sugarcube Corner, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. Baking a cake. The least active part of the baking process, that being the waiting done while the cake sat in the oven. So to compensate, she was also mixing a bowl of butter and sugar to use for her next cake, balancing it atop her head as she stared at the cake through the stove's tinted glass.

The following trembles and quakes came as a surprise to her.

Now, if talking about any other pony and almost every other creature, that would have been nothing unusual. Of course the surprising and unforeseen event would come as an unforseen surprise to them. But Pinkie was most definitely not any other pony.

Despite her appreciation for surprises, she rarely found herself on the receiving end of one, at least when considering physical events. Creatures could still surprise her, yes, despite her meticulously detailed folders of data on them, but the purely material consequences of their actions were generally something she could see coming in advance. The sudden and repeated shaking of the earth definitely fell closer to falling objects than surprise birthday parties, and therefore in the realm of things her personal brand of clairvoyance was prone to picking up on. Especially so when it was something so massive.

But instead she'd felt nothing. Not a twitch or a shiver or an itch or a quiver or a tingle running up or down her spine or ears of legs or tail or nose or eyelids or any other part of her pink equine body. Not a single thing that could hint at what was coming.

This of course caused quite some trouble for her. First and foremost, it made it rather tougher to balance the bowl on her head. Of course she could have set it down or grabbed it with both hooves, but that would have required also setting down the other bowl that was held in one of her hooves as she mixed the eggs and flour inside it with the spoon in her mouth. And while that could have been set on the floor, by the time she caught up with what was happening the second step had come down and now the other bowls and cakes that completely filled the table threatened to fall off and the bags and boxes of ingredients on the shelves were slipping out and drawers were sliding open and cupboard doors were swinging this and that way and the thrid step came and then the fourth and Pinkie was rushing towards a corner of the room a second and then running to the opposite one the next as the shelves tilted and the walls creaked and the tables bounced and the earth shook and shook and shook.

About thirty seconds later, the room looked like a very large version of a tiny dollhouse room that someone had thrown a set of poorly mixed cake ingredients into, wrecking havoc upon the miniature mobilia. It was, instead, in fact, a regular-sized room, which had been filled with a much too large quantity of poorly mixed cake ingredients.

From somewhere beneath the pile of half-broken wooden panels, wet flour, and cracked eggs, Pinkie Pie emerged, coughing, spoons and other tools in her mane and more frosting than usual splattered across her coat. Eyeing the widening crack in the ceiling and the dust that fell from it as the ground shook yet again, she decided it was best to leave the room and perhaps the whole building.

Outside, once she'd made it past the empty but possibly even more damaged main hall and through the now shattered entrance door, the rest of the citizens in the area and particularly the Cake family were rather relieved to see she was as alright as could be hoped.

And Pinkie turned towards Canterlot, following the direction many a other pony around her were looking in, and her gaze set on the waning, uncertain shape of the Behemoth. And Pinkie thought to herself that it was definitely weird.

Yes, she thought. It was very odd and strange indeed.

Author's Note:

Proofreading by IncongruousAndHarmonious

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

And Pinkie thought to herself that it was definitely weird.

If that's not a sign of the end times, I don't know what is.

[WanderingPony]

Anything that slips through the Fourth like it wasn't there definitely Doesn't Belong Here.