For a long while, all anypony could do was stare.
"So…" Applejack finally said distantly. "You were tryin' ta make…"
"Brownies," Dash muttered. "I like brownies, okay?"
"And then the oven…" Rarity continued.
"I don't even know," Dash grumbled, pressing a hoof over her eyes.
"You tried to use a bolt of lightning to…" Twilight started to ask.
"We went over this already."
More silence. "I didn't even know clouds could explode," Fluttershy eventually murmured in awe.
"Yeah, neither did I," Rainbow Dash growled as she pulled her hoof back from her face, leaving a bright blue circle right in the middle of her soot-caked face. Nopony had anything else to say beyond that, so they just stood with Dash and watched as the rest of the weather pony team finished whisking away the last bits of Rainbow Dash's cloud home that had flown every which way after the deafening boom from inside it had rattled every window in Ponyville half a mile away. Once Rainy Day had finished scrubbing all the displaced rainbow essence off a nearby tree and the overpowering smell of ozone in the air had dissipated slightly, Twilight turned to Rainbow Dash.
"Well, you're welcome to stay with me until, um…" she said.
"Until my house comes back from orbit?" Dash finished in a deadpan.
"Actually, I'm pretty sure it just disintegra…" Twilight's lips came together promptly once Rainbow Dash sent a caustic glance in her direction. "Oh, that was a…right," she said sheepishly. Instead of making another sarcastic quip, Rainbow Dash just sighed and looked mournfully back into the void of empty space where her cloud-home had floated peacefully for so long.
"Aw, now don't get yerself down, Rainbow," Applejack reassured her. "T'ain't the end'a the world, is it? Y'all can just make a new house lickety-split, can't ya?"
"It's not that…" Dash replied morosely. "I mean, yeah, the house is no biggie, but that autographed poster of the Wonderbolts is gonna be impossible to replace. And all those Playmares were vintage…"
"Those what?" Rarity repeated with an air of confusion.
"Nothin'," Rainbow Dash answered quickly. "That's not even it, though. I just…"
"Just what?" asked Fluttershy.
Once again, Rainbow Dash sighed. "I just didn't think cooking would be so hard!" she half-shouted, though it was out of frustration with herself rather than with her friends. "You know what the brownie mix box said to cook 'em for? Forty-five minutes. I mean, who's got that kind of time? And then you can't even give it more heat and do it faster, 'cause then it doesn't cook right…"
At that precise moment, a glossy magazine about the size of a couch pillow fluttered past Dash's nose and plopped down to the ground right in front of her. The image on the front was of a powerfully built stallion lying luxuriously on his back, and wearing nothing but a smoldering stare and a very well-placed fig leaf. "Or it blows up in your face," Dash mumbled, too exasperated to even have the decency to blush.
"Well, why don't you ask Pinkie Pie for help?" Rarity suggested as she propped a hoof up under Fluttershy's chin and gently tore her friend's wide-eyed gaze away from the self-proclaimed stud's smoky red eyes staring up at her. "I'm sure she'd be more than willing to give you a few tricks of the trade."
If reality were determined by what the expression on Rainbow Dash's face reflected about it, Rarity would've grown a second head just then. "I'm not that hungry," the brightly-maned pegasus muttered.
"Why, that's a great idea!" Applejack agreed. "Pinkie'd love to lend ya a hoof…" She paused in mid-sentence as another magazine landed hard in a tree branch about thirty feet away, right in front of a gray-furred, yellow-maned pegasus with strangely crossed eyes that snapped straight into focus once a lengthy insert unfolded from the center. "…or two," Applejack finished a moment later.
A third sigh pushed its way out of Rainbow's chest. "I don't really have a say in this, do I?" she asked in a tone that made it clear she already knew what the answer would be.
"I think you should go, Rainbow," Twilight said with a sincere smile. "I'm sure Pinkie would really appreciate the help."
Rainbow Dash raised her eyebrows and glanced back at Fluttershy, who had returned to staring at the glistening pages between Rainbow's forelegs. "And the company," Twilight added in a poor attempt at backtracking.
"Just give it a try, would ya?" Applejack pleaded. "What's the worst thing that could happen?"
"Okay, you guys are doing this on purpose, right?" Dash said in a monotone. When nopony deigned to reply, a fourth and final sigh escaped her lips. "Fine," she grumbled. "But don't expect me to have any…"
• • •
"Fun!" Pinkie Pie shouted, her eyes lit up like the Summer Sun Celebration.
"Pinkie, I just want to learn how to make brownies," Rainbow Dash said hopelessly, her attention already diverted by the warm summery day waiting just outside the bakery's window. "Quickly, if at all possible."
"Brownies? Why would you just want to make brownies when there's so many more fun things we can make?" Pinkie asked about half an inch away from Rainbow's nose. "We could make bread or beans or butterscotch or blondies or burritos or biscuits or banana cream pie…"
"Pinkie!"
"Or…just brownies," the pink pony conceded, her smile unaffected. "Well, all righty, Miss Flighty! Let's make some brownies!"
"Miss Flighty?" Dash muttered under her breath. "Wonder how long that took her to come up with…"
"Okay, first things firstly," Pinkie announced. "You get the flour, and I'll get the chocolate powder!"
"Wait, what flour?" Rainbow Dash asked as Pinkie Pie bounced off into the pantry. "My recipe didn't say anything about flour…"
"Well, duh," Pinkie shouted from inside the packed storeroom. "'Cause you used mix! The best brownies are baked from scratch!"
"From…huh?"
"Scratch…y'know, like that blue-haired pony whose music you always listen to when you're taking a bath!"
Rainbow Dash's face bleached under her fur. "How did you…"
"It means ya make the brownie mix all by yourself!" Pinkie Pie continued. "Isn't that exciting?"
"Heh heh, yeah," Rainbow Dash laughed nervously. "Awesome…" she continued morosely a moment later.
"Found it!" Pinkie declared, bounding back out of the pantry with a bag of deep brown powder clamped in her teeth. "You got the flour, Dashie?"
"The…yeah, just a sec!" Dash assured her as she sped over to the pantry. "Flour, flour, flour, flour…here we go!" she muttered as she combed over the shelves, finally stopping when she saw a small brown paper bag full to the brim with white powder. There was just one problem: there were another identical bag right next to it, and neither of them had any labels. "Hey, which one's the flour?" Dash shouted out to Pinkie.
"The brown bag with the white stuff in it!" came the pink pony's reply. Rainbow Dash barely resisted the urge to smack herself in the forehead and just grabbed the bag on the right.
"Now we need half a cup of that, and a full cup of sugar," Pinkie said once Dash returned to the yellow plastic bowl Pinkie had set aside for them to use.
Rainbow Dash stared back in disbelief. "It's a brown bag with white stuff in it," Pinkie added helpfully. With a frustrated groan, Rainbow dashed back into the pantry and grabbed the second bag, a multi-colored beam of light trailing in her wake. "Okay, that's it, right?" Dash said once a good-sized helping from both bags had been tossed unceremoniously into the bowl. "Are we done now?"
"Almost!" Pinkie Pie replied. "Now we just need eggs, butter, salt, baking powder, honey, chocolate chips, and vanilla!"
Dash couldn't bring herself to stand up after that, so Pinkie took the initiative and puttered around collecting ingredients, humming a happy tune to herself while Rainbow Dash contemplated how long she would have to hold her breath before she passed out.
"Okey-dokey-lokey!" Pinkie said after ten minutes of mixing and stirring. "Open up, Mr. Oven…here comes the brownie train!"
The bubble of air Dash had been holding at the back of her throat expelled itself from her mouth in a hurry. "Really? We're done? We're done!" she shouted, hopping to her hooves and already making her way towards the door before Pinkie could even answer, which indeed was exactly her intention. So it was really quite unfortunate that Pinkie Pie chose to answer anyway.
"Of course not, silly filly!" Pinkie called out just as Dash opened the door and tasted sweet freedom on her tongue for the first time in half an hour. "We gotta wait for it to bake!"
Rainbow Dash shut her eyes and sucked in a long, deep breath through her nose. "How long does it take to bake?" she asked through clenched teeth.
"Um…" Pinkie let her eyes drift up towards the ceiling and did a few calculations under her breath. "Multiply that…carry the one…put a squiggly thingy over the sixteen…about thirty-five minutes!"
"Aw, c'mon!" Dash yelled at no one in particular. "There's gotta be a way to speed this up!"
"Nope," Pinkie replied cheerfully. "Baking has to go slow. You gotta invite the heat in. That's what Mrs. Cake always says!"
Rainbow Dash whipped her head around and trotted over to the oven, leaning her head down to stare through the window in the door at the maddeningly uncooked brownies inside. "Well, Mrs. Cake isn't the fastest flier to ever come of Cloudsdale, is she?" she said confidently, applying herself fully to the task of figuring out how to get the brownies moving along pronto. "If you had to get a batch of brownies cooked in ten seconds flat, how would you do it?" Rainbow wondered aloud without turning away from the oven.
"Ooh, that's easy!" Pinkie replied. "First, I would go talk to that nice brown stallion with the hourglass cutie mark. He says he's a doctor, but he's got this neat box in his attic…"
While Pinkie rambled on about Celestia-knew-what, Dash continued to stare at the brownie pan. The brownies needed thirty-five minutes to cook at 350 degrees, and using a bolt of lightning hadn't worked before, but lightning was really, really insanely hot, wasn't it? So the problem had been too much heat…no, wait, it had been too much heat for too much time. So if she used more heat with the right amount of time…
"I got it!" Rainbow Dash shouted.
"And then this one blue pony had a toothbrush and…got what?" Pinkie asked.
"Okay, so if it needs thirty-five minutes on 350 degrees, and I need it to be done in ten seconds flat…" Rainbow Dash reached out and put her hoof on the temperature dial. "Then I'd get the same thing if I put it on…" Dash twisted the dial all the way over to the right and heard a satisfying hum as the oven kicked itself up a notch. "…a million degrees for ten seconds!" she said proudly. "Plus or minus five, or something!"
"Um…Dashie?" Pinkie said nervously. "I don't think the oven goes that high…"
"Oh…" Dash muttered. Well, that was disappointing. "Maybe half a million degrees for twenty sec…hey, is it supposed to be hissing like that?"
Pinkie and Rainbow paused and listened. Sure enough, a distinct hissing noise could be heard coming from behind the oven. "Oh, that hissing!" Pinkie said. "Well, there's only two things that could be."
"What are the two things?" Rainbow asked. Was it just her, or was the hissing getting louder?
"Well, the first one is that there's a snake back there…" Pinkie said with complete calmness, not noticing Rainbow Dash jump back and launch herself into a hover. "But that's probably not it. Snakes don't even like brownies."
"Well…okay," Dash said after a moment's pause, dropping back down to the ground once she had regained her composure. "Then what's the other thing?"
Pinkie Pie shrugged. "A gas leak," she said.
Rainbow Dash looked at the oven, then at Pinkie Pie, then at the oven again. The hissing stopped, and her eyes went wide.
"Oh, horse app-"
• • •
"So…" Twilight said. "It didn't go well, then?"
"Shut up," Dash growled.
"Well, at least the weather ponies were already close by…" Rarity remarked. "And I know for a fact that Mrs. Cake has very good insurance."
"Yay for her," Dash intoned. Applejack made like she was going to say something herself, but bit her tongue at the last second and kept her silence. The raging inferno that had completely overtaken Sugarcube Corner was quite an awe-inspiring sight, marred only by the sudden appearance of an entirely blackened Pinkie Pie.
"Wow, that was so cool!" Pinkie Pie shouted. "The way the brownies just went whoosh and then boom and then-"
"Hey, Pinkie?" Dash said.
"Yes, Dashie?"
"Stop talking."
Pinkie Pie relented, but only for a moment. "We definitely have to bake some more," she proclaimed with gusto. "And I know just what we'll make next time…"
For the first time that day, Dash finally gave in to her urges and facehoofed. "More brownies?" she said with a defeated tone.
"No…" Pinkie replied. "Cupcakes!"
A/N: I wrote this for Cereal Velocity's speedfic contest on Equestria Daily, the prompt for which involved writing a story about Rainbow Dash trying to learn to cook, with a time limit of two hours to write and edit. It seemed to be well-received by the blogponies, so I figured I might as well toss it up here. I surprised myself with how happy I was with how this turned out, so hopefully y'all enjoyed it too.
Also, I was listening to "Centerfold" while writing this. Hopefully, that explains the beginning part.