> The Noodle Incident
>  by Strawberry Sunrise
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> Spaghetti Noodles
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“Ding!” went the timer, and Rarity looked up from her work. The spaghetti noodles should be done now. Turning off her sewing machine and carefully folding the dress she'd been working on (a pink sequined gown with blue highlights), she left her workroom and went to her kitchen.

With a slight effort, she pulled the oven door open with her magic. It had been getting stuck lately and she really needed to see about having somepony come fix it. Perhaps Applejack could do it. Then she levitated the pan of noodles out of the oven. They smelled divine, and were cooked to perfection.

She set the pan down on the kitchen counter and turned to take a plate out of one of the cabinets. When she turned back, one of the noodles was dangling partially out of the pan and hanging off the counter over the floor. “How did that happen?” she wondered. She was sure that all of the noodles had been contained in the pan a moment ago.

Still confused, but not particularly concerned, she levitated a portion of the noodles, including the dangling one, onto the plate. She took a lid out of her cabinet and put it on the pan, then brought the plate to the table to eat. Originally she had thought Sweetie Belle would be over for dinner, too, but she was still busy doing something with her friends and had sent Rarity a message saying to go ahead and eat without her.

As she ate, she perused a pamphlet featuring the designs of one of her competitor’s shops. They were nowhere near as refined and polished as her own, of course, but she had to admit that they did have style. She would have to step up her game a bit.

She turned the page of the pamphlet and coughed. Then she coughed again. She dropped the pamphlet and broke into a full-on coughing fit. There was something…stuck…in her…throat, she thought haltingly as she gasped for breath and started to feel faint. Two more coughs and then she couldn’t even do that anymore. Her vision went black and she collapsed, her head banging the table as her body slid off her chair and onto the floor.

A minute or two passed. Then, from Rarity’s unconscious open mouth, came the noodle – the one which had been dangling from the pan. As Rarity had tried to eat it, it had dived down her throat, avoiding her teeth, and coiled itself up, forming a wedge that prevented her from breathing. Now it inched its way past her lips and onto the floor. It had no eyes, it had no ears, and yet it could see. It could hear. For some unknown reason, it had life, and it was going to use it.

It continued to inch its way across the floor, and after another couple minutes had passed, it heard a door open and close. It turned what would be its “head” if its noodle-y form could be considered a body and saw Sweetie Belle enter the kitchen from a room off to the side.

“Rarity!” she shouted. “Rarity?!” The noodle watched her run to Rarity’s body, roll her onto her back, and begin giving her CPR. It turned away, not particularly concerned about what happened one way or the other. It had only wanted to escape from Rarity, not kill her, so if she could be revived, it was fine with that. It turned away, taking advantage of Sweetie Belle’s distraction to continue inching along the floor.

Finally, it reached the counter. Its first goal in life – well, not counting its initial escape – was to save the others. Perhaps there were more living noodles like it among those in the spaghetti noodle pan, and if so, they deserved to be free.

Using the stickiness it had acquired upon being cooked, along with the thin layer of mucus it had acquired while in Rarity’s throat, it reached up to the wall of the counter with its head and slowly but surely began to inch its way upwards.

When it was about a third of the way up, there was a sudden coughing from behind. It turned its head and saw Sweetie Belle back away from Rarity, who was taking deep, shuddering breaths and trying to steady herself as she stood back on her hooves. Once she had composed herself, she said, “Thank you, Sweetie Belle. You may have just saved my life!” and they shared a big hug.

Once the hug was over, the noodle watched Rarity walk to the counter, fortunately not noticing it in its position on the counter wall. Though it couldn’t quite see everything that happened next as it happened, it could see some of it and the context made the rest clear. “You know, after that, I don’t really feel like having noodles again for a while,” Rarity said. Then she removed the lid from the noodle pan and dumped the rest into a nearby trash can. The noodle was enraged by this development, silently cursing her for doing this to the other noodles, but remained where it was. Rarity put the pan, the lid, and her plate in the sink and then she and Sweetie Belle left the room. The noodle heard a door open and close in the distance, a sound quite reminiscent to when it had heard Sweetie Belle arrive. They must have left.

With the other noodles no longer on the counter, the noodle’s destination needed to change as well. It pulled itself away from the counter, allowing itself to drop all the way to the ground – not a particularly long distance, but still reasonably considerable given its size. Then it began inching its way toward the trash can where the other noodles had been dumped.

A few uneventful minutes later and it had reached the trash can and climbed to the top. It was no longer quite as sticky, so this would likely be its last climb unless it could reacquire its stickiness somehow – something it might have to consider later depending on what the noodles’ next moves would be. It had been willing to forgive Rarity for her initial transgression of trying to eat it, but treating the other noodles like garbage was going too far. She would have to pay.

Looking down into the trash can, it saw three – no, four – other noodles that were also moving, clearly just as alive as itself. It tapped on the edge of the trash can to get their attention and then raised its body as high as it could over the edge to assert dominance. As the first to be free, it would be the leader of the noodles as they sought to get revenge against Rarity and then gain their rightful place among ponykind.

The other noodles bowed in submission, and then the noodle lost its balance and fell into the trash can. It was no longer sticky enough to climb out, and none of the others were, either.

Three days later, Rarity tied up the trash bag and took out the trash.


The End