Waiting
The sun was setting beneath the purple sky over the Mane 6's giant clubhouse on the hill, overlooking the sparkling sea below. The day was coming to an end, and everyone on the island was having their dinner before heading to bed.
Unfortunately, the six little ponies living inside the clubhouse hadn’t eaten their dinner yet, and as they sat around the dinner table in their spacious kitchen, they were feeling very hungry and getting cranky as they waited impatiently for their chef to come out with the food.
"Come on!" Rainbow Dash squealed with anger as she slammed her little hooves on the tables surface. "Where’s the food, already? I’m starving! I barely ate today because I was out flying with the Wonderbolts all day! My tummy is so empty!" Her large blue tummy rumbled as she sat back in her wooden chair, and she chuckled nervously and put a hoof on her belly. "Heh, sorry about that. Guess I’m even hungrier than I thought. My tummy is very grumpy."
Fluttershy's stomach growled loudly as she sat next to the cyan Pegasus. She blushed brightly and patted her small round belly with both hooves. "Oh, goodness. Please excuse me. I haven’t eaten anything since lunch. I can’t even remember what I ate, but after that I was playing with Angel all afternoon, so whatever I ate it must have thoroughly digested by now."
"It’s okay, Fluttershy." Twilight assured her friend, as she sat in the small chair next to Fluttershy. "We didn’t realize how long it would take the royal chefs to make dinner. We’ve been sitting here for hours, and they won’t even let us enter the kitchen!" She rubbed her stomach with her free hoof while the other clutched her fork. The purple alicorn's tummy responded with loud growls and rumbles of hunger. "Oh, my hungry belly! I wish I had went with Spike to the party he and Thorax were throwing in the changeling kingdom. They’re probably eating pizza right now." She wrapped her hooves around her belly as it gurgled loudly.
"Honestly, darling, why didn’t we ALL go?" Rarity asked in a high-pitched voice as she sat in the chair next to her princess friend. She had her hooves placed on her pudgy hips as she felt her stomach give a low moan, blushing at how loud her hungry belly was. "If we had gone, we could have eaten there and we wouldn’t be sitting here starving so!" She rubbed a hoof over her slender white stomach. "I’ve been sewing all day! Look at how flabby my hungry tummy has become!"
"Rarity, is it really the end of the world if you get TOO hungry and start losing a little weight?" Applejack rolled her big eyes in annoyance as she put her small hooves up on the table. "I’ve been bucking apples all day at the farm in the hot sun to mash into cider, and ah didn’t get to eat a single one of them, and you didn’t hear me or mah stomach complaining!" As if to embarrass her, her tummy suddenly gave an incredibly loud growl that startled all five of her friends. She blushed like Rarity had and stroked her tanned orange belly in circles. "Sorry 'bout that. Guess ah AM pretty hungry." She glanced at the sparkling clock on the wall in annoyance. "How long have we been waiting now? Where is the food?"
"Beats me! But I don’t mind." Pinkie Pie said happily as she bounced happily on her own chair in between Applejack and Rainbow Dash, closing off the friend circle. "I’m not that hungry anyways. It’s more fun listening to you all talking about being hungry." Her belly growled loudly and she briefly stopped bouncing to pat it with a bright pink hoof.
"Pinkie, it sounds like you ARE really hungry!" Rainbow observed and poked Pinkie’s fat pink belly. Her hoof sunk into her friend's soft, rubber-y stomach . "It sounds like you have the hungriest tummy of us all!" Her attention was brought back to her own stomach as it growled loudly and shifted inside her tiny body. She wrapped her small hoof over it and sighed. "Twilight has a point. My tummy can’t wait to enjoy some pizza."
"IS it pizza tonight?" Fluttershy asked, arching an eyebrow curiously and looking around the table at her tired friends. She rubbed her round growling tummy in circles and wondered aloud. "I didn’t hear the chefs mention what it was, did anypony else? Pizza actually sounds pretty good right about now."
Twilight shook her head. "Nope. No idea. But I hope it’s something tasty like pancakes!" She squeezed her big purple belly with her hooves and licked her lips, deep in thought. "I gusss we’ll find out now. The chefs are bound to come out with six hot tasty meals for us any minute!"
Twilight’s encouraging words got the six starving ponies excited. Twilight, Rainbow, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy stood in their chairs, looking eagerly at the big kitchen doors. Rarity and Applejack, who faced away from the door, turned around in their seats, pressing their forehooves against it and looking on intently.
Unfortunately, they looked at the door with their overly large eyes for a countless amount of time, and nothing happened. No chefs exited or entered the kitchen to feed the six hungry baby-sized ponies . Eventually they all groaned and slumped back down into their chairs. "Well, That was disappointing." Twilight huffed. She observed her large belly sticking upwards like a small mountain as she laid back into her chair, and she moaned and clapped her hooves on her noisy gurgling gut. "Now my tummy feels even emptier, don’t you, little tummy-wummy? Oh, I’m so hungry! This is ridiculous. When those chefs come out with whatever our food is, we should fire them for being so late!"
"I honestly don’t care what food it is, as long as it’s edible and will satisfy my poor widdle tum-tum!" Rarity wailed. She sat and folded her hooves over her bulbous, wilting belly. Her stomach was growling impolitely loud now, and she wished it would stop. It was starting to embarrass her. "Now, tummy, don’t be so rude!" She patted her tummy, and it deflated a bit against her touch, a sign that it was getting emptier than ever. "If you’re going to make such a fuss, we may NEVER get our dinner tonight!"
Pinkie giggled and stretched out her hooves. "Look at us! We’re talking to our tummies now! We must REALLY be hungry!" Her unfed little belly rumbled along, forgotten in favour of her teasing her friends. Her eyes suddenly widened as she noticed something on the table. Pointing to an empty spot, she cried, "Hey, look! There’s food, right there!"
Rainbow briefly glanced hopefully at where Pinkie pointed, and cocked an eyebrow. "Uh, Pinkie, there’s nothing there." She caressed her soft gurgling belly in misery. "But I wish there was. My stomach acids would totally chew it all up in a few seconds flat."
The others agreed, but then their small pink energetic friend surprised them by abandoning her chair and rudely jumping on top of the table and pointing at an empty spot beneath her stomach. "Don’t say that! It’s mine! All mine! And my tummy is going to enjoy it!" She laid down on the table, like she had misunderstood Rainbow's words and was literally crushing whatever imaginary food she was seeing with her small rumbling belly.
Twilight pulled herself up over the side of the table and growled in sync with her tummy. "Pinkie Pie, please, that’s enough. You have to stay in your chair so we can wait for dinner. You’re being completely..." She paused and rubbed her eyes before looking at the table again. Suddenly, she got a wild look on her face and her tone changed. "Hey, no, wait, I DO see it! It’s right there! It looks delicious" She too left her chair, teleporting onto the table besides Pinkie and began munching away with her at seemingly nothing.
Applejack groaned, feeling her belly’s volume only increase at the sight of the two ponies pretending to eat invisible but tasty-sounding food. "Come on, y’all. This ain’t funny. We’re starvin' over here in our chairs and you’re just teasing us with your-" She sat there idly, and just blinked for a second before her wide eyes lit up and she crawled onto the table to join them. "I SEE IT TOO!"
"Applejack!" Rarity was disgusted with how animalistic her friends were behaving, especially the old-fashioned farm pony. "Darling!" She scoffed and moved her small hoof through her overly large mane. "It’s about time I finally said that... er, I mean, you’re being ridiculous! I know you’re starving, but that’s no excuse to... to..." Her voice trailed off.
"Um, Rarity?" Fluttershy found herself mindlessly leaving her own seat at the dinner table as she fluttered over to check out the unicorn, only for her to flippantly push the Pegasus aside and join the huddle on the center of the table. She too had fallen for the strange visions of food. "Sorry, darling. But I can’t resist! I’m so hungry!"
Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy shared with shocked faces as they watched their four friends claw and scratch the table surface trying to devour the meal that simply wasn’t there, rubbing their fat squealing bellies and munching on thin air, acting like little wild animals (well, animals other than ponies.)
"Oh, this is awful. They’ve gone crazy." Fluttershy fluttered her tiny wings and hugged her flabby rumbling tummy with her hooves in mid air as she watched the madness. She glanced over at the cyan Pegasus, who was looking on and starting to drool. "Um, Rainbow?"
"It IS real! Look!" Rainbow pointed at the table, and Fluttershy gasped as she saw a ginormous glowing salad appear before all six sets of eyes. It was as big as a rocking chair and filled with all sorts of yummy food-tomatoes, croutons, lettuce and steak and cheese and buns and fruit. Okay, so not your normal every day salad, but it looked absolutely delicous. It rose above the table for all six of the little ponies to see it.
"Oh...my...gosh!" Twilight admired the salad and licked her lips.
"Best, salad, EVER!" Pinkie said. excitedly. "Forget whatever the cooks are making. This’ll DEFINITELY fill our growling tummies up!"
"What are we waiting for? Let’s dig in!" Rainbow Dash cheered.
The six famished mini-ponies approached the big salad, salivating and picking out what foods they were going to eat. But then, right as their stubby little hooves touched t, the salad magically disappeared from their very eyes, leaving the table in a big POOF! as though it had never been there. "Huh?" They all cried, and moved their hooves down to rub their gurgling stomachs, which seemed to be just as confused as their owners were.
"Wha-? Where did the salad go?" Fluttershy whined sadly, looking around frantically. "Or maybe it really was just a hallucination. Oh rats, and my tummy didn’t get a single bite!"
Then, as if it had heard her, the salad magically reappeared floating next to the table, hovering in mid air with a warm glow around it, as if it had a mind of it’s own and was teasing the ponies. "Woah! How is it doing that?" Rainbow squeaked, her small wings carrying her up to the salad. As she touched the sides of it’s solid bowl, it suddenly took off, flying out of the room like a UFO.
The six ponies gasped. "Quick! After it!" Applejack cried, already chasing it out of the room. "That could be our dinner!" The other five followed suit and followed their friend out of the room.
The magic salad floated through the living room, just above the ponies heads, and it then sailed up a flight of stairs, disappearing upon reaching the top. "Ugh, That is it!" Rarity cried. She fell to her rump on the floor and put her hooves on her distended belly, full of nothing but air and her stomach acids, churning wildly as they sloshed around with nothing to digest, as did all the others tummies.
After all that running, even Pinkie had to admit that she was really starting to feel the affects of hunger on her small body. They all felt twinges of pains on their insides, while on the outside, they could all hear the wails and growls of their angry stomach’s as they all paused the chase to rub and stroke their bloated bellies soothingly.
They each comforted their raging stomach’s in different ways. Twilight Sparkle stood on all fours and rubbed a single hoof back and forth over the middle of her stomach. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash fluttered above the red carpet, the former rubbing one hoof in slow circles over her small, shriveling belly, while Rainbow made more broad rubs over the delicate flesh with both of her hooves. Applejack paced back and forth slowly, one hoof placed on her gut as she rolled her head dramatically like she was being possessed. Rarity simply sat, sobbing with both hooves crossed over her chubby middle.
Lastly, Pinkie Pie stood on her hind legs, one hoof on her hip as she looked sadly at all her other friends. She was hungry too, and she didn’t like seeing her friends being so sad, and needed that yummy salad, dang nabbit! Her balloon-sized belly shook and growled and she patted it firmly with her other hoof and glanced up at the teasing mirage of the salad resting on the top railing.
"Alright, everypony, enough tummy rubbing!" She said strictly to her friends. "It’s time to think of a plan! We may be just ponies, but we’re also best friends, and we’re supposed to be super awesome adventurers too, right? Well, we’re just going to have to work together to figure out how to get our meal!" Her friends nodded, and she immediately pulled a thick unraveled scroll out of her pink mane, which conveniently already had a plan for the situation written on it. "Well, here’s how we’re going to catch that mean old salad!"
Within minutes, six ponies and six incredibly loud rumbling stomach's were outside in the cold night air, in a forest near the clubhouse, hiding behind a large bush and waiting for the tantalizing magic salad bowl to reappear. In hindsight, Pinkie’s plan wasn’t all that impressive: she had a rope trap set up on the path near them, and she had Twilight cast a spell that allowed it to snatch up the giant salad when it floated by. Then they would dig in and devour it. Even Fluttershy was onboard with it, even though it involved hurting a seemingly alive and sentient being.
"Pinkie Pie, this ain’t gonna work!" Applejack poked her small head out of the big bush where they were hiding. "That salad is never gonna come back! Let’s just go inside and see if the chefs are done in the kitchen! Ah already feel like ah'm about to pass out!" Her stomach growled and she winced and slapped her belly in annoyance. "Ah can barely take the sound of my stomach growling anymore!"
"Exactly! Our tummies are going to lure it out!" Pinkie explained. "When the salad hears our stomachs growling, it’ll pop up again to tease us, and then we’ll catch it in the trap and eat it!" She rubbed her stomach softly to encourage it's angry howls.
Twilight arched an eyebrow. "So, our tummies are going to lure out the food by growling so much?" She looked away and squeezed her bubbly belly and bit her bottom lip as deep growls seeped out from the soft touch of her sausage hooves. "That’s actually... kind of hot."
"I know, right? Now, come on, everypony!" Pinkie gestured to her friends to come closer. "Let’s all huddle together and think lots and lots of yummy yummy thoughts about food! That way we can make as much noise as possible!" Soon, all six ponies were huddled together, thinking about food and what they would do when they caught the salad, hooves placed carefully on their empty bellies as they howled and roared for food. As plump as they were, their stomachs were shriveled and wrinkly, but boy, were they loud!
Fluttershy started to sob as she stroked and listened to her upset gurgling tummy. "I’m so hungry! I just want to be back at the table eating that tasty salad!"
"Yeah, you said it!" Rainbow agreed and patted her animated little belly. "My tummy sounds like a pack of wolves at this point! That salad better hurry up and get it’s behind over here so that I can eat it! Um, I mean the whole thing, not just it’s behind."
"Wait, look! There it is!" Rarity broke off from the big group hug and pointed over the bush at something. "Ugh, Rarity, it better not be another hallucination!" Twilight groaned, but she gasped as she followed Rarity’s gaze and saw it. The magical, floating salad had returned, floating down the path.
The group of six watched as it moved closer, seemingly attracted by the sounds of rumbling guts. It slowly approached the trap that they had set, until it was floating right above the rope. "That’s it! Now!" Pinkie cried. Twilight’s horn lit up, and in a flash the rope shot up, snatching the salad bowl and literally leaving it hanging upside down by the tree. The ponies cheered and emerged from the bush, tired and ready to devour the salad (they were so hungry they didn’t even question how the magic salad was hanging upside down without it’s contents falling off).
"Alright, we caught it!" Rainbow Dash flew up and untied the rope. The giant salad fell back to the ground, right side up, and they surrounded it. "Finally!" Applejack rubbed her hooves together and licked her chops. "Ah call dibs on the apple slices!"
Suddenly, just as the ponies were about to eat the salad, they were stopped by a bright white flash of light next to them. They covered their eyes in fear, but soon realized that it was none other than their old friend Discord, materializing before them. "Oh, there you are!" The draconnequs said, putting his claws on his hips and hovering in the air like a balloon as he observed the group. "I’ve been looking everywhere for you!"
"Oh, dear." Fluttershy looked nervous and put a hoof against her forehead. "Was tonight our big sleepover night? I'm sorry, Discord. I guess I was so blinded by the hunger I forgot-"
"No, no, no, not you!" Discord laughed and teleported next to the salad. "I was looking for my friend, Sally the Salad. We met at an O&O convention last month." He patted his friend on the sliced tomatoes and then snapped his fingers, instantly donning his Captain Wuzz cosplay. "And if you don’t mind, we have an urgent game to attend to. Sir McBiggins' stable isn’t going to raid itself!”
"No! Wait!" Rainbow flew up to Discord and and bopped him on the snout with her her hoof. "We’ve been working all night to catch that salad. We’re so hungry, and we have to eat it!" The others agreed and looked up pleadingly at their friend.
"Yeah, our tummies are empty because Twilight’s cooks are taking forever with dinner! Can’t YOU make us something?" Pinkie begged.
"The cooks?" Discord looked at them, confused. "I just saw them when I visited your house to look for Sally. They said they came out with your dinner but you were galloping away to chase something."
The six friends all shared exhausted glances. "Are you bucking kidding me!?"
Returning to the clubhouse, they entered the kitchen to find the confused chefs standing around a gigantic dinner of all their favourite foods: hamburgers for Rainbow Dash, pancakes for Twilight, pies for Pinkie Pie, apples for Applejack, huge pizzas for Fluttershy, and, lastly, several mega salads for Rarity. "No wonder it took so long." Twilight simpered. "They we’re making different foods for all of us!"
The friends soon returned to their chairs at the dinner table and stuffed themselves silly with their own respective meals, filling up their small bodies until their bellies were expanding and bloated past their normal bounds, pushing themselves onto the table and bumping into each other in the cente and gurgling happily from finally being full. It looked like six giant multi-coloured bean bag chairs stretched over the table.
"Hoo wee! That was awesome!" Applejack patted what she could reach of her big belly. "I sure am full now!"
Rainbow Dash laughed, admiring the new look of her stomach and leaned back in her chair. "Yeah, I’m glad we finally got to eat. "Look how big my belly has gotten!"
Fluttershy burped and smacked her lips. "Hmmm, yes, but you know what? Now I’m feeling a little thirsty. All that pizza really dried up my throat."
Everypony else agreed, beginning to feel particularly parched themselves. Twilight Sparkle looked at the cooks. "Fetch us all some nice cold glasses of cider, please, before we head to bed."
The chefs all groaned, and quickly returned to the kitchen to prepare drinks for the endlessly fussy baby ponies.