> If You Give a Crusader a Cookie Cake...
>  by Quillamore
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> ...She'll Try to Make a Cutie Mark Out of It
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as Coco Pommel stepped out of the wafting scents that surrounded her favorite bakery, she was greeted with the sounds of the season.  The clock tower may have only chimed six, but foals of all ages were already screaming and singing in equal measure, and the streets were filled with colors and shapes Manehattan didn’t often see.  More were sure to come when the moon rose, Coco thought to herself, on one of the few times foals could cross the city streets at night without danger.

One filly ran past her with breakneck speed, almost causing her to drop her precious parcel, but she wasn’t about to let that happen on her watch.  Just before the package was about to drop to the ground, Coco balanced herself on the tips of her hooves and reached out, effortlessly catching the object…but losing her own balance in the process.  By the time the foal came back to apologize to her about the slip, though, the mare was already half a block away.

“At least it was me and not you, right?” she muttered to herself, staring down at the long white box.

The item inside was a beautiful shade of golden brown, perfectly rectangular with just the right amount of icing and chocolate chips.  Still perfect, thankfully, even after that whole debacle.  Coco breathed a sigh of relief and kept jogging towards her apartment, thinking all the while of just how different this Nightmare Night was going to be.

Difference numéro un: holidays hadn’t really been a part of her life when she’d worked for Suri.  In fact, the last time she remembered trotting so fast had been when her former boss called her on short notice, begging her to help with some meaningless task Suri could’ve done herself.  But, as it turned out, being a good pony and being on the right side of the law for once meant her hours were far shorter; after all, very few ponies would be caught dead on Bridleway tonight.

And, far more importantly, difference numéro deux: no matter what anypony said about how the holiday was a solemn tribute to Princess Luna, the truth of the matter was that it was always the foals who made it worthwhile.  Manehattan’s elite threw their fair share of Nightmare Night parties, sure, but if you weren’t a foal and you lacked a foal, at least some of the magic was lost on you.  If you happened to have a foal who hadn’t experienced the holiday in a long time, or at least long enough to remember their last Nightmare Night, the magic would be even greater.

Or, at least, that was what Coco assumed, because her Nightmare Night off wasn’t going to be spent alone.  Several years ago, Suri had sent her to a factory to pick up a shipment, but instead of bringing back a bundle of cloth and ending it there, Coco had opted to make another stop.  Inside that factory, she’d found a sick filly doubled over a sewing machine, and, in a strange show of courage for her, she’d helped her escape on top of that.  Up until a few months ago, the filly had lived in a Manehattan foster home—until Coco quit her job with Suri and chose to do something even stranger.

In a matter of months, Coco had gone from a simple lackey to a single mother, yet it was days like this that made it all worth it.  Considering that her filly, Babs Seed, had only recently met the rest of the Apples, it’d make sense to assume that she hadn’t had a decent Nightmare Night in quite a long time.  And so she’d gone all out—in just an hour’s time, Babs’ two best friends would walk into her apartment to find a room bedecked with every sort of spooky decoration imaginable—plus a cookie cake.  The cookie cake, of course, was of the utmost importance.

For a few slight moments, Coco wondered what in the name of Tartarus had happened to her life, considering how she was so concerned about a lump of cooked dough.  Almost instinctually, she stopped and checked it every thirty seconds or so to make sure the slip-up hadn’t harmed it as much as she feared it had.  This sort of vigilance of course meant that, even as she raced to her apartment with a speed she didn’t even know she had, it was still six-thirty by the time she made it back.

“Sorry,” Coco muttered, fake-panting as hard as she could to hide just how embarrassing her reasoning was for being late.  “They were all sold out, so they had to make a new one completely from scratch.  And then I almost dropped it, and…”

Suddenly, all the shame that’d crossed her face from before melted away as soon as the filly laid eyes on the treasured mutant of a pastry—because really, how else would a single cookie get to be so huge if it hadn’t been enchanted in some manner—and gazed at it like it was a fine piece of glassware in a Saddle Row window.  Technically, Coco could feel something else melting at precisely the same time, and it sure wasn’t the cookie mutant.  She’d checked it enough times to know.

One of the former enemies of the Elements of Harmony themselves—or a lackey of one, at least, but close enough still—had not only poured all of herself into planning a tiny filly’s Nightmare Night party, but even worse, she was spending so long staring at the aforementioned filly that she didn’t even try to speak again.  She’d never been much of a threat to begin with, but then again, she never would’ve imagined herself being immobilized by the glowing green gaze of a particularly happy foal.  A foal who, as it turned out, had conned her out of thirty bits without even needing to say anything.

She’s just so cute, Coco found herself practically screaming as Babs drooled over her cookie cake.

Finally, she breathed in and tried to brace herself as much as possible.  Watching her foal—a phrase that was nowhere near as strange as it would’ve been to her just a year before—gorge herself on candy and laugh with her friends was sure to give Coco even more speechless moments like this, and she severely had to monitor her “doting mother” time if her big-shot Bridleway coworkers were to take her seriously.  She already had at least five little brown foals on her cubicle as it was.

“So,” she finally asked, allowing Babs to fully take in the wonder that was a perfectly custom ordered, inexplicably-iced mutant of a cookie, “how was your day at school?”

“Nothin’ too impressive,” the filly sighed.  “We had to sit through another poetry lesson today, ‘cause the teachers think we’ll appreciate it more than a Nightmare Night party when we’re older.  Then Moonlight Muse, the girl next to me, said Saddlespeare would’ve wanted us to ‘celebrate our youth’ or somethin’ and read his poems later.  She actually pulled his biography outta her desk and started readin’ from it until the teacher told her not to question her.”

Coco found the fact that fourth-graders were already reading Saddlespeare to be rather impressive in and of itself and internally dreaded the possibility that her daughter could be learning calculus in seventh grade.  For the love of Celestia, three years was not enough time for her to learn how to help Babs with her calculus.  But, to avoid looking like an overly concerned mother on the verge of an existential crisis about her level of intelligence, she merely smiled and nodded at the right places.

“Sounds like Moonlight knows her stuff, then.  So, did you tell your friends where they should meet up?”

Babs nodded at a breakneck pace, still as eager as ever.  In fact, with her level of excitement, it was a wonder her head stayed attached.

“Of course!  They’re all super excited about it.  Thanks for putting all this on, by the way.  When I said I wanted to have friends over for Nightmare Night, I wasn’t expectin’ all of this!”

Sure enough, the entire apartment had been decorated with all kinds of orange-and-black streamers, cobwebs, and orange-and-black cobweb-shaped doilies.  (Finding the time to make five of those in five days, on top of her Bridleway workload, had been one of Coco’s finer achievements.)  She’d also already taken the liberty of setting up various party games, and all and all, she’d seen cities with worse official Nightmare Night parties than the one that was about to unfold here.  Any filly who’d ever had the misfortune of missing the holiday deserved nothing less.

“Oh, it was nothing,” Coco muttered.  “Since it’s your first in a long time, and my first in a long time, I figured I’d go all out!  I really wanted our first Nightmare Night as a family to stand out, and you can’t really do that without a bit of work, you know.  So just have fun and…don’t worry about all this.  I know you probably don’t think you deserve it, but trust me, you do.  More than anypony else in Equestria.”

Hours after she’d said this, she realized that this time, her meaning to help Babs live a better life would come with consequences the likes of which she’d never seen before.  It most certainly was something, and that was when she realized two things.

One, that Babs Seed never did anything halfway.

And two, that only minutes after she’d put the cookie cake out for the foals, it was already gone.


****


There is always a sort of denial that comes with ponies who eat food that is meant to be consumed in parts in one sitting.  They may try to convince others that they, in fact, did not eat the whole thing, and that part of it had been dropped or eaten by a passing animal.  But, even more than that, this denial is largely self-induced.  The pony will repeatedly tell themselves that they refuse to believe that they ate the whole thing only to realize that they, in fact, did.  This revelation tends to induce intense pain in the sufferer, starting from the center of their body and eventually moving outward.

Then again, that could just be the resulting indigestion.

In either case, Babs ended up suffering from both symptoms after the events of the fateful Nightmare Night party.  For the most part, the first couple of hours were a fairly harmless affair, as Coco told them stories and guided them through several matches of musical chairs.  However, like many ponies of their age group, the Manehattan Crusaders soon found themselves in risky territory, or rather, guided themselves into it.

While the three Crusaders enjoyed their childish activities, they were still itching to get out of their respective comfort zones.  It was Nightmare Night, after all, and everypony knows that different rules are required for such an occasion.  Without some sort of prank, scare, or challenge, the holiday might as well be pointless.

As feisty of a filly as Babs considered herself to be, she couldn’t help but think that her friends were, quite possibly, even more adventurous than she was.  Starrider and Phoenix Stripe had been her first friends in school, possibly even the first friends she’d had in Manehattan.  She couldn’t remember either way, but it was no coincidence that the two foals seemed to fall into her life one right after the other: Starrider was a self-proclaimed sci-fi nerd who took joy in alien conspiracy theories, and Phoenix Stripe was equally as obsessed about Daring Do.  They certainly had their literary role models, and they did everything they could to emulate them as much as possible.

This, in turn, made them dangerous, possibly even more dangerous than the original Crusaders.

“Nopony’s touched the cookie cake,” Coco suddenly observed hours into the party, and hours into drinking warm cider.  “Would you guys like to eat it now, or would you rather wait?”

The three foals sat in deep thought for all of five seconds before coming to a sudden and shared conclusion.  They cantered towards the giant cookie almost as if they only recently remembered it existed and stared at it with the same sort of awe Babs had shown earlier.

“Well, as long as you each take a piece before you leave, you can have it whenever you want,” said Coco.  “Just remember, you’re all going to have to go home in an hour, though.

Just as she said this, she felt a strange sensation cross her gut area, and moved out of the area as quickly as she had only hours before.  The bathroom door slammed shut, and it was then that the foals devised their devious plan.

“Hey,” Phoenix whispered as soon as Coco left, “you think somepony can get a cutie mark in eating this thing?”

“Of course not!” Babs interjected, her Manehattan accent giving off a particularly noticeable twang.  “Anypony can do it.  If ya can’t get a cutie mark in eatin’ a plain cookie, why the hay should’ya get one for eatin’ this?”

“I’ve seen a ton of ponies with cake cutie marks,” Starrider countered, watching the stars shoot across the sky.  “They can’t all be bakers, so there has to be a cutie mark for eating a whole cake.  If that’s true, why wouldn’t it be the same for a cookie cake?”

The three observed the cookie cake as best as they could, wondering if it would end up unleashing the key to their ultimate goal.  Eating an entire cake—cookie or otherwise—was one of the few things they hadn’t tried yet, and it served as a perfectly good Nightmare Night dare on top of that.  At that point, there was only one question on everypony’s minds.

“So, if this whole thing is true, and if we only have one of these,” Babs muttered, staring at the cookie cake, “who’s gonna test it out?”

The minute she asked this, she knew she was already doomed.  She knew Crusader procedure—the one dissenting pony was always the guinea pig in whatever scheme they chose to concoct.  And this time, Babs was the one stupid enough to open her mouth.

Then again, there were worse sacrifices in the world to make.  Vastly worse, considering how utterly delicious the thing looked.  Yet again, her tongue practically waggled just looking at it, and just like a siren’s song, it was enough to make her lose all control.

Her only request before undertaking this trial had been to shove two slices onto her friends, knowing it’d be awfully selfish and un-reformedlike to hog the entire pastry.  They eagerly accepted the offer, figuring that the cutie mark would show up when the pony was close to eating the whole thing.

After that, just about everything was a blur.


****


The next thing Babs knew, she was in her bed, writhing about with a pain she’d never felt in her life.  She paused only to examine her flank, which, in the world’s cruelest case of situational irony, happened to still be blank.

“Uggggh,” she muttered, trying to remember everything that’d happened in the last hour.  Did the three of them talk about Golden Retrievers at some point?  Or had that conversation been about Germane Shepherds?  In any case, sugar drunkenness was one heck of a malady that Babs Seed wouldn’t wish on anypony.

Stupid dare, she thought to herself.  At least the cookie cake was good.

After a short while of lying motionless in her bed, she finally sat up, stretched her front hooves out towards the sky, and instantly regretted her decision.

Was this how Sombra felt before he died?  Those Crystal Heart beams look like they’d unleash Tartarus on your stomach.

“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” she mumbled, not realizing the door had been left ajar.

“Aha!” another voice yelled from the hallway.  “I knew it!”

Before Babs could wonder who it was—and considering all of two ponies lived in this apartment, it wouldn’t have been much of a leap anyway—Coco darted her head through the doorway in a dramatic fashion.  Rather than the annoyed look the filly would’ve imagined on her face, there was a teasing glint in her eyes.  Still, that expression was almost as scary as how Babs imagined an angry Coco would look, and she shied away from the mare anyway, clutching her blanket as hard as she could to take her mind off the pain.

“I’m not mad, silly,” her mother whispered, coming over onto the other side of the bed.  “Everypony’s been there on Nightmare Night, after all.”

“So you’ve eaten an entire cookie cake in one sitting?” Babs asked, half-bewildered and half-impressed by the revelation.

“I couldn’t do it even now!  But with every new year, there’s at least a million foals who try to eat all their candy at once before Nightmare Moon gets it.  It’s the oldest trick in the book, and I get the feeling I know exactly what made you want to do it.”

Coco gave a knowing wink, and her calmness at the situation was one of the few bright spots of such an embarrassing night.  Still, knowing that other foals had probably tried the same idiotic trick—likely with the same idiotic results—made Babs feel somewhat less idiotic.

And then another punch of indigestion hit her stomach and made her realize what an idiot she was all over again.  Even in midst of the pain, though, Babs still reflexively looked towards her flank, only to find that nothing was there except Coco’s mischievous glance.  However, even that soon softened, and the mare placed a gentle hoof on Babs’ shoulder.

“I think we both know you’re destined for something way better than an ‘eating an entire cookie cake in one sitting’ cutie mark.  And, I know I’m going to sound like a broken record here, but when it’s really the right time, you shouldn’t have to hurt yourself to find what you’re really meant to do with life.  Even if it’s just a little stomachache.”

Coco left the room, and Babs almost wondered if she was leaving for some fancy Bridleway party.  But sure enough, she came back within minutes with water and a few pills.  Babs muttered a few words of thanks, but found herself too uncomfortable to say just about anything else.

“Wait,” she finally croaked out, “you really think I’m gonna have some great cutie mark or somethin’?”

“Maybe not something everypony else sees as great,” her mother said with a smile, “but something that can really help ponies anyway.  You’ve already managed to help me without one, and I can only imagine how much you can with one.  If you can change everypony’s lives as much as you’ve changed mine, you can bet it’ll be something amazing.”

She kissed the filly on the forehead and watched as she chewed her pills, and she was just about to leave the room when Babs piped up yet again.

“I saved you a slice.”

Coco looked back yet again, almost as if she didn’t believe the words that’d come out of Babs’ mouth.  Still, the filly made the slightest attempt at a smile.

“Maybe that was why I didn’t get my cutie mark.  ‘Cause I wanted you to have some of it, and because I wanted to thank you for everything.”

Her mother shook her head, wanting to tell her that her flank was likely blank for another reason.  Because she’d been chained to a miserable existence for so long that she, like Coco herself, hadn’t been able to pursue her real talents.  But, as long as the two were free from those forces, such things didn’t need to be said anymore.

As she saw the huge slice of cookie cake sitting on the plate, she looked back to the room yet again.  Its door was closed, but she could imagine the foal inside, the foal she’d spent so long fighting for that she’d freed herself in some strange way.

She bit into the cookie cake, and her filly’s generosity seemed to be baked into the icing itself.

“Something amazing indeed.”