The first thing Angel noticed about her was her smell. It was so unlike all the other ponies of Ponyville. For starters, she smelled delicious. No other pony had ever smelled like something he wanted to eat before. Not only that, she smelled like his favorite -- raw carrots. Even now, just remembering her scent sent Angel into a tizzy.
The second thing Angel noticed about her was her voice. It was...manly, respectable, like someone that you could lay down your life for. None of the other ponies had ever had that kind of voice, but none of the other ponies commanded respect like she did. There was just something in that voice that made Angel want to obey her. Not even Fluttershy had that power over him.
The third thing Angel noticed about her was that she was literally the only carrot supplier for all of Ponyville, the only one to grow and sell her very own carrots. That meant that every carrot he had ever enjoyed at Fluttershy’s table had been grown, picked, and loved by her. Every good memory associated with them -- every twinge of delight that he felt when he saw, smelt, tasted those orange beauties was from her.
Angel couldn’t stand it anymore. His heart couldn’t take it. There would only be one course of action left to take: Angel Bunny was going to confess his love for Carrot Top.
Carrot Top was a sensible mare, at least she thought so. She was well-grounded in reality. There was not a thing in Equestria that she couldn’t explain away with her own personal brand of logic. From flying machines to ponies walking on clouds, Carrot Top thought she had seen it all. Evidently, she had never expected her entire carrot garden to disappear overnight.
She stood, dumbstruck, as a tumbleweed -- far away from its native home in Appleloosa -- rolled across her garden and hopped the fence with ease. Her left eye twitched nervously. Then, she noticed something in the dirt surrounding her once perfect garden.
Carrot Top bent down to get a closer look. Her mouth scrunched up in rage and her eyes narrowed. She let out a mighty cry, whose jaw-dropping power she had inherited from her mother -- a surly housewife with sixteen fillies and colts to feed.
“RABBITS!”
Her breathing was shallow in anger, and her chest moved rapidly up and down as she tried to control herself. There was only one place where the rabbits roamed free, one horrible and disgusting place where those villains could hide.
“Derrrrppppyyyy!” shouted Carrot Top as she galloped back to her house. “We’re going to Everfree Forest!”
Tracking down somepony in the Everfree was not for the faint-of-heart or for the stupid. Luckily for Carrot Top, she was neither.
“Cah-Can’t we gah-go bah-back?” asked Derpy, shaking so violently that her saddlebags threatened to fly off. “It’s jah-just some cah-cah-carrots.”
They were only a few miles into the Everfree Forest, barely off of the path, and already Derpy wanted to go back.
“You promised on my birthday that you’d go on a hiking trip with me.” said Carrot Top before using a machete to hack down some hanging vines. “You Pinkie Pie promised. And you know how much Pinkie Pie hates having promises in her name broken! Why, I heard that she tracked down somepony all the way to Cloudsdale!”
Derpy gulped.
Carrot Top gave her friend a stern smile and said, “Don’t worry about it, okay? Here!--” she took a carrot out of her bag and tossed it to Derpy, “--Use this as bait for the trap later.”
Derpy nodded and dropped the carrot into her own saddlebag.
“We’re going to find those dastardly rabbits.” said Carrot Top, looking deeper into the forest. “We’re going to find them if it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Derpy gulped again.
“The last thing?” she asked tentatively.
Carrot Top nodded and repeated herself, “The last thing we ever do.”
For being a pony with a bundle of carrots for a cutie mark, Carrot Top was surprising good at setting traps. Maybe it was her experience with her older and younger siblings, but there was just something inside of her that made her want to ensnare weaker beings. Luckily for those mildly sadistic tendencies, her traps captured various forest animals. Unluckily for her plan, none of those creatures were rabbits.
After setting free the sixth squirrel from a snare after eliciting a promise from it not to tell Fluttershy, Carrot Top groaned in disappointment. This whole escapade was going nowhere!
Derpy popped out of the bushes behind her friend, her face caked in mud and her mane tangled up with leaves and sticks. Carrot Top rolled her eyes.
“Have you been eating mud?” she asked.
Derpy looked a little offended but lowered her wings in shame.
Carrot Top brought her forehoof to her face and let it rest there.
“As long as you’re not eating the carrots, you’re fine.” said Carrot Top.
Derpy’s wings perked up again and she nodded enthusiastically. She dove back into the bushes and Carrot Top followed.
After a few minutes of waiting and listening to Derpy eat mud, Carrot Top heard something rustle near the trap they had set.
“Quiet!”--She put her hoof over Derpy’s mud-coated mouth and tried to slow down her breathing as so not to be detected.--” I hear something!”
A few more seconds passed and a shadowed figure came out of the bushes on the opposite side of the trap. Carrot Top’s heart skipped a beat when she saw that it was a rabbit. Finally! Her prayers to Celestia had been answered!
The rabbit loped along in the grass, sniffing until its eyes laid upon the carrot. Moving quickly now, the rabbit took a step towards the trap, then another, and another until it just about--
There!
Carrot Top burst out of the bushes in glee, letting out a victory screech loud enough to scare off animals for miles around.
She rushed to the trap and realized that she recognized the rabbit struggling to break free from her clever snare. It was Angelo...Antonio...Angel! Yes, Angel -- the rabbit that Fluttershy was so fond of! Carrot Top grinned. If anypony knew what was going on with her carrots, this rabbit would. He was probably the leader of the rabbit syndicate that stole her precious garden’s delicious contents.
“Start talking, bunny boy.” said Carrot Top as she tried to contain her joy.
Angel couldn’t believe that he fell for such a stupid trap, but he could never resist her carrots. The one that had been his downfall had her scent all over it, and Angel just couldn’t help but to go up and take a whiff.
The pony of his dreams stepped towards him and said something. Whatever it was, he didn’t know. He couldn’t speak pony. He could only understand clips and phrases of what Fluttershy said and hardly anything else.
Still, he knew that his lady love would set him free from this awful trap, and then they’d ride off into the sunset together and--
She wasn’t doing anything. All she was doing was staring at him with an odd look upon her beautiful features. Was it anger? Perhaps. He had rarely seen that emotion on a pony’s face before. Maybe she was waiting for him to break free on his own, to prove his rabbithood so to speak. But when he began to struggle, she just said a few words and another pony came out of the bushes behind her.
That was odd, bringing a friend on what was supposed to be a romantic evening. Especially that mail pony that always messed up Fluttershy’s orders. Perhaps she wanted to go on a double date. Angel could arrange that. He had a couple of bachelor buddies who could stand going on a romantic evening with a wall-eyed buffoon.
It was only when she pulled out the machete that Angel realized that it wasn’t going to be all sunshine and roses for the two of them.
She hadn’t meant for it to go that far. Carrot Top was always in control of herself. It was just that the little creature hadn’t even attempted to give her any answers, is all. So she had to pull the machete out, just to scare him a little bit. That made him struggle a lot more in the snare, but to no avail.
Her stance softened, and the machete fell out of her mouth. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t threaten an innocent creature, even if it was the mastermind behind the Great Carrot Theft.
“Are you okay?” asked Derpy as she looked at her friend.
Tears were rolling down her face now in streams. She dropped to the ground completely and began to sob openly.
Carrot Top felt a warm paw against her cheek. She snorted and looked up, blinking through the wetness on her face.
It was the rabbit. The rabbit was trying to comfort her, even as she had had him tied up and had threatened him with a machete and--and--
“Derpy, cut him free.” said Carrot Top with a smile.
“Okey dokey.” said Derpy before trying to use the dull side of the machete to cut the rope.
Both the rabbit and the earth pony rolled their eyes.
“The other side, Derpy. Use the other side.”
