Twilight Sparkle and the Pits of Despair
Well, Isn’t This Just Peachy...
Author's Note
With apologies to Terry Jones and Michael Palin. I regret nothing.
Well, Isn’t This Just Peachy...
Mornings in Canterlot shimmer!
Mornings in Canterlot shine!
Unless, of course, one happens to be an undergraduate student at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns who’s just finished pulling a marathon thirty-six-hour study session exploring the intricacies of Cosmic Stringweaver’s Fifth and Sixth Principles of Resonance-Field Thaumaturgy, Starswirl the Bearded’s Special Theory of Quintessence/Antiquintessence Particle Interactions, and Bubble Tea’s delightfully-controversial (and rather salacious) treatise on Vibronic Coupling States (Theoretical and Applied). For ponies such as these, mornings in Canterlot neither shimmer nor shine, so much as they just sort of waver in and out of focus in a wibbly-wobbly sort of way. Much as this particular morning was doing for Twilight Sparkle, student of magic, protegé to Princess Celestia Sol Invictus, and slightly-neurotic obsessive-compulsive over-organizer.
“Spiiiiike!”
“What is it, Twilight?” Spike asked as he came ambling out of the dorm’s bedroom to find a somewhat vexed-looking lavender unicorn standing in the middle of what the School for Gifted Unicorns’ official Student Housing Orientation Brochure optimistically referred to as a “kitchenette”, levitating a box-shaped object in her telekinetic corona and glaring accusingly at it.
Unfortunately, the box-shaped object was stubbornly exercising its right to remain silent in the face of Twilight’s accusations. “What is this?” she demanded, shoving the uncooperative box towards Spike as she switched her accusing glare towards a (hopefully) more talkative suspect.
“Um... a box of hayflakes?” Spike ventured cautiously.
“And this?” Twilight asked, lifting another object from the counter.
“A... carton of milk?” Apparently, his caretaker and surrogate mother / big sister was in a mood this morning...
“And what do you normally do with these two items?”
Spike’s brows flattened into an expression somewhere between confusion and exasperation – an expression which the dragonling had acquired considerable practice at by now. “Twilight, have you been practicing Professor Mindstrike’s memory-spell homework on yourself again? Don’t you remember what happened the last – whoa!” he cried as Twilight suddenly flipped both box and carton over, dumping out their contents. “Aw come on, Twilight, I just cleaned the place last night, and you’re already making a...”
One hayflake slid from the box, teetered briefly on the edge of the cardboard, then lazily floated to the floor. A moment later, the single droplet of milk collecting on the carton’s spout finally succumbed to the Universal Law of Gravitation (as first identified by Sir Isaac Neighton), slightly dampening the hayflake as it landed with a barely-audible “plip.”
“...mess,” Spike finished.
“How could this happen, Spike?” Twilight demanded. “Why didn’t you go grocery shopping yesterday?”
“Because... um...” Spike glanced nervously from left to right, fishing for an answer that would mollify the irritable and sleep-deprived unicorn. “Because it wasn’t on the schedule?”
Now it was Twilight’s turn to flatten her brows in an exasperated expression. “Of course it was on the schedule, Spike, I distinctly remember writing ‘grocery shopping, hayflakes and milk’ on the list,” she said, as she lit her horn to summon up The Schedule in a flash of purple. “I even wrote down the exact brands and sizes like I always do, see? ‘Golden Horseshoe Whole-Grain Hayflakes, 28-ounce box, quantity: 1; Whitetail Meadows Creamery whole milk, half-gallon carton, quantity—”
“Um, Twilight?” Spike reached out and tapped a clawtip on the scroll hovering within Twilight’s corona. “That’s tomorrow’s schedule.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Spike, why would I put grocery shopping on tomorrow’s schedule, when based on my average daily hayflake consumption rate and the expiration date on this milk carton, we were clearly scheduled to run out of hayflakes and milk yesterday?”
“The milk has tomorrow’s date on it, too,” Spike pointed out.
Twilight blinked, then turned the carton right-side up again and took a second look. “But that’s... wait. What day is it again?”
Spike just sighed and shook his head. “You really need to get out more, Twilight.”
Twilight groaned in frustration as she dispelled the empty cereal box, milk carton, and The Schedule to their respective final destinations. “Fine... so what do we have for breakfast?”
Spike shrugged and squeezed past Twilight to take inventory of the kitchen cabinet (singular, as the dorm room’s kitchenette literally had only one cabinet), then the refrigerator (which, in defiance of both logic and common sense, actually had more food-storage space than the cabinet). “Well... we have these,” he said, stepping back to consider the results of his exploration sitting on the counter with a critical eye.
“No.”
“I mean, I guess I could make some kind of casserole out of—”
“No.”
“Although I’m not sure if that tube of pesto paste is any good by now...”
“No.”
“...and I don’t think either of us liked that ‘instant polenta’ mix very much...”
“No.”
“...but maybe if I blended it with some of that leftover hummus and sour cream, and a tablespoon or two of that Vegemite{1}, I could make a sauce that’d...”
“Spike, I don’t care what kind of sauce you put over it, we are not having sauerkraut, rutabagas, and oyster stew for breakfast!” Twilight said, stomping a hoof on the floor for emphasis. “In the first place... eww. In the second place, why do we have rutabagas, anyway? You know I can’t eat those; they give me...” She stopped, blinked, did a double-take, then blinked again. “And why in Tartarus did you buy a can of oyster stew? Since when do you like seafood?”
Spike shrugged again. “It’s not mine. I thought it was yours.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Spike, why would I want a can of... ugh... oyster stew?” Twilight asked, scrunching her nose in disgust. “Why would anypony want a can of oyster stew? Why do they even make canned oyster stew? Does anypony actually eat that?”
“I dunno; all I know is, it’s not mine,” Spike insisted.
“Well, if it’s not yours, and it’s not mine, how did it end up in our kitchen?”
“Maybe it’s always been here, and we just never noticed it before?”
A moment later, the disturbing implications of that simple conjecture struck them both:
Fact: there was a can of oyster stew in their kitchen.
Fact: neither of them had purchased the can of oyster stew.
Conjecture: the can of oyster stew had been purchased, then left behind, by a previous resident of the dorm, and had simply gone unnoticed until now.
Fact: Twilight and Spike had moved into this dorm room six years ago.
Conclusion: given the above facts, the can of oyster stew would, logically, be at least six years old. Possibly older. Possibly much older.
By unspoken agreement, moving slowly and cautiously so as not to in any way disturb the can (which, though probably not containing actual Sealed Evil, almost surely contained Sealed Something-Extremely-Unpleasant by now), Twilight and Spike backed away from the kitchenette.
“Maybe... we should go out for breakfast, instead?” Spike suggested.
Twilight nodded. “I think that would be best.”
— — === — —
One hasty addition to Today’s Schedule (“call HazMat Containment-and-Removal services to request immediate removal of one can of Camp Belle’s Country Kettle Oyster Stew (16oz size), age and origin unknown, from kitchenette counter of dorm room 14B”) later, Twilight Sparkle was trotting down the streets of Canterlot outside the school campus, with Spike ambling along beside her. “So, where are we going, Twilight?” he asked.
“Donut Joe’s?”
“He’s closed on Mondays, remember?” Spike reminded her. “How about the Equestrian House of Pancakes?”
“Um... they kind of asked me not to bring you there any more after the ‘unlimited pancakes for four bits’ incident.”
“Aw, c’mon, I’m sure they’ve forgotten about that by now.”
“You started a riot, Spike. Over pancakes.”
“Hey, all I did was call them out for false advertising. If the pancakes aren’t unlimited, they shouldn’t say they’re unlimited. I mean, that’s what the word ‘unlimited’ means, right?” Twilight had to admit, the dragonling had a point there. “It’s not my fault that one family’s foals took their waitress hostage and tried to ransom her for ‘a million bajillion chocolate-chip pancakes’.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “You know, I still haven’t figured out why that pegasus filly with the poofy blonde mane had those ropes, hoofcuffs, and Super Soakers full of maple syrup in her saddlebags...”
Again, Spike’s logic was sound; alas, the management of the Equestrian House of Pancakes had, much to Twilight’s annoyance, stubbornly insisted on refusing to be swayed by mere logic, leaving them at an impasse that would only be resolved when sufficient time had passed for the restaurant industry’s average 52.6% staff turnover rate to remove anypony who had direct, second-, or third-hoof knowledge of the Unlimited Pancakes Incident. “Okay, how about... what was the name of that little health-food place over on Packsaddle Lane? Oat, something?”
“Oat Willie’s?” Spike raised a brow. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not? I mean, okay, the decor’s a bit weird, with all the incense and bead curtains, but...”
“Because the last time we ate there, you spent the next six hours lying on your back staring at your hooves, trying to derive a mathematical proof that they were all exactly the same shade of purple.”
Twilight blinked. “I did?”
“Uh-huh. And the time before that, you stayed up until three A.M. debating Phenomenology with your Smarty-Pants doll.”
“I did?”
“And Smarty-Pants won.”
Twilight pondered that for a moment. “You know, that would explain why the ‘Green Machine’ smoothie kind of smelled like that stuff Dad caught Shiny and his friends smoking down in the basement that one time,” she said thoughtfully, as she mentally added ‘suggest Canterlot Health Department send health inspector to obtain sample of ‘Green Machine’ smoothie from Oat Willie’s for chemical analysis’ to Today’s Schedule. “Okay, how about... um... how about...”
She suddenly halted in mid-step as she realized, to her consternation, that she was already completely out of suggestions. Other than her standing invitation, as Princess Celestia’s personal student and protegé, to take Sunday brunch with the Princess in her quarters, for the past six years breakfast had consisted almost entirely of hayflakes and milk in her room, apple-cinnamon oatmeal in her room, or donuts at Donut Joe’s. (Or a nice tomato-and-mushroom omelet at the Equestrian House of Pancakes, just for a bit of variety – at least until the Unlimited Pancakes Incident.) With those options closed off to her, she found that she had no idea what else was available.
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” she huffed. “We’re in the middle of Canterlot, for pony’s sake, there’s got to be a dozen different cafes and restaurants around here. Where do other students go to get breakfast?”
“The student cafeteria?”
They both looked at each other and shuddered. “No,” they said simultaneously.
“No, what?” a voice asked. Startled, they looked up, and saw the voice’s owner a few feet away, trotting towards them. A lemon-colored unicorn mare with a curly blue mane and tail, accompanied by a light-grey unicorn with streaks of mulberry-purple in her thick, bright-red mane and tail. Twilight was fairly sure she’d seen them before, but couldn’t quite seem to place them.
“Oh, hi, Lemon Hearts, Moondancer,” Spike said. “We were just trying to think of a good place to go for breakfast.”
“Oh! You guys should totally try the Sunrise Cafe!” Lemon Hearts said brightly, nodding back towards the way she and Moondancer had just come from. “Their waffles are just... what’s that word again?”
“Scrumptious,” Moondancer prompted.
“Right, scrumptious. We just came from there. Two blocks down, take a right, you can’t miss it.”
“Great! C’mon, Twilight, let’s go!” Without waiting for an answer, Spike darted down the block as fast as his short legs would carry him. Twilight gave Lemon Hearts and Moondancer a quick nod, then trotted off to catch up with Spike.
“You know them?” she asked curiously.
“Um, yeah, we see them every day, Twilight.”
“We do?”
“They’re in your Applied Quintessence 201 class, remember?”
“They are?”
Spike sighed. “You really need to get out more, Twilight.”
— — === — —
Two blocks and a turn to the right later, they entered the Sunrise Cafe. The cafe turned out to be aptly named, with a large outdoor patio that faced towards the east to provide an excellent view of Celestia’s rising sun. Ponies were seated all around, including several whom Twilight suspected might be fellow students at the School for Gifted Unicorns. Mostly because Spike seemed to recognize them, and several of them were greeting him in return.
Okay, okay, so maybe I do need to get out more, she thought wryly.
“Here we are, sir, madam. Table for two,” their waiter said smoothly, gesturing for them to be seated. “Would you like to hear today’s specials?”
“Sure,” Spike said. “What’ve you got?”
The waiter cleared his throat. “Well, there’s plain waffles topped with peach compote; daffodil waffles topped with butter and peach compote; daffodil waffles with peach compote and raspberry muffins; peach waffles, peach muffins, and peaches; peaches, peaches, daffodil muffins, and peaches; peaches, peaches, daffodil waffles, crumpets with peach compote, and peaches; peaches, peaches, peaches, daffodil muffins with peach-jam filling and peaches; peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, cottage cheese, peaches, peaches, peaches and peaches—”
As the waiter recited the morning specials, a strangely-dressed group of minotaurs sitting at the next table over began singing a mystic chant:
“Peach, peach, peach, peach,
Peach, peach, peach, peach,
Lovely peaaaach, wonderful peach
(peach, peach, peach, peach...)”
Oddly enough, the waiter seemed not to notice. “—and Apples Thermidor aux duxelles with a morneigh sauce served in a provencale manner, with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle paté, brandy and a fried egg on top and peaches,” he finished.
There was a long pause, broken only by the sound of chanting minotaurs in the background, as Twilight digested the waiter’s bewilderingly peach-centric soliloquy. “Do you have anything without peaches?” she finally asked.
The waiter raised an eyebrow. “The daffodil waffles topped with butter and peach compote only has a little bit of peaches in it,” he finally said, in the endlessly-patient tone practiced and perfected by waiters everywhere for those occasions when a customer insists on making things complicated.
“It still has peaches in it,” Twilight replied, in the rather-less-patient tone often used by obsessive-compulsive undergraduate students coming off of 36-hour studying binges.
“Not as much as peach waffles, peach muffins, and peaches, though,” Spike pointed out helpfully. (At least, Twilight assumed his comment was meant to be helpful. The dragonling did seem to be picking up a decidedly snarky tendency lately, though she couldn’t imagine where he was getting it from.)
“I really don’t want any peaches,” Twilight insisted.
The singing at the nearby table was getting noticeably louder and more enthusiastic. Twilight regarded the minotaurs with a perplexed expression, shifted her gaze from the minotaurs to the waiter, and raised a questioning brow.
“Perhaps you’d prefer to order off the menu?” the waiter suggested.
Seeing that the waiter was either completely oblivious to the chanting minotaurs, or at least determined to ignore them, Twilight flattened her brows in confused irritation – another expression she seemed to be getting an inordinate amount of practice at lately – then sighed in resignation and picked up her menu. Let’s see... Ah, here we go, “Sunrise Breakfast Menu. Number 1 breakfast platter: plain waffles with peach compote. Number 2, daffodil waffles topped with butter and peach compote. Number 3, daffodil waffles with peach compote...
Twilight blinked, shook her head, rubbed her eyes with a hoof, blinked again, then started over at the top of the menu. It read exactly the same as before, all the way down to the lengthy description of “Apples Thermidor aux duxelles,” et cetera. With peaches.
Peaches, she thought. Why did it have to be peaches?
“Could I get the number three, without the peach compote on it?” Twilight asked the waiter hopefully.
“What?” the waiter asked, his jaw agape. “No, of course not! How can you have daffodil waffles with peach compote and raspberry muffins, without the peach compote?”
Twilight could feel her left eye starting to twitch. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Because then it wouldn’t be daffodil waffles with peach compote and raspberry muffins, would it?” The waiter seemed strangely insistent on this point.
“Well, yes, that’s kind of the point,” Twilight said. “It would just be daffodil waffles and raspberry muffins, without the peaches, which I don’t want.”
“Exactly,” the waiter agreed.
“And this is a problem because...?” Twilight prompted.
“Because it wouldn’t be daffodil waffles with peach compote and raspberry muffins anymore, of course,” the waiter said, with the air of a defense attorney who’d just succeeded in tearing down a key argument in the prosecution’s case.
Great, Twilight thought sourly. Just what I wanted for breakfast, snark with a side of objectivism. “So you’re saying that to order daffodil waffles with peach compote and raspberry muffins, but to simply skip the step where the chef puts the peaches on the plate, would violate Aristrotle’s Law of Identity, and invalidate the breakfast plate’s entire existence because the thing would no longer be equal to itself?” She felt certain that there had to be a flaw in that line of reasoning somewhere, but for the moment it was eluding her.
“Well, yes. Obviously.”
Clearly, this line of argument was not going to bear fruit, so to speak. Then again, fruit is the problem in a nutshell, so technically I actually want the argument to not bear fruit, which kind of breaks the metaphor and oh buck it, never mind. “Could I just get a plain waffle, then?” she asked with as much of her rapidly-fraying patience as she could muster.
The waiter nodded and began to write on his pad. “Number one... plain waffles... with peach—”
“No! No peaches, just a plain waffle.”
“No peaches?”
“Right. No peaches. Just the waffle,” she confirmed, with considerably less patience.
“Are you sure you don’t want—”
“Yes, I’m sure!” she shouted in exasperation. “No peach jam, no peach compote, no peaches in any form whatsoever because I don’t like peaches, okay?!” A few strands of her mane went sproingg! as she glared at the waiter, prompting the other students from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns to hastily abandon their tables, hoping to get safely out of range before this turned into another Watermelon Incident.
Nopony wanted to go through the Watermelon Incident again.{2}
Meanwhile, the strangely-dressed minotaurs (who, not being students at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, were blissfully unaware of the Watermelon Incident) were singing quite loudly by now. “Lovely peaaaaach, wonderful peaaaach!”
Exasperated, the waiter snatched up a menu and threw it at them. “SHUT UP!”
Undaunted, the minotaurs’ chanting continued, although the menu ricocheting off the back of one minotaur’s head did at least persuade them to lower the volume somewhat.
“It’s alright, Twilight; I’ll take your peaches,” Spike said, seemingly unfazed by the entire incident.{3} “As for me, I’ll have the peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, cottage cheese, peaches, peaches, peaches and peaches.”
“The cottage cheese is a bit off this morning,” the waiter replied apologetically.
“Oh. Well, could I have extra peaches instead of the cottage cheese, then?” Spike asked.
“You mean, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches and peaches—”
On cue, the minotaurs burst into song once more. “...Peach, peach, peach, peach! Lovely peaaaaach, wonderful peaaaach!”
“Shut up! SHUT UP!” the waiter yelled, throwing another menu. “Bloody minotaurs...” he added under his breath, before turning his attention back to Twilight. “So, that’s one order of peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, cottage cheese, peaches, peaches, peaches and peaches, with extra peaches instead of cottage cheese; and one order of plain waffles with peach com–”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAA——” *BAMF!*
When the spots cleared from his vision, the waiter was left staring at an empty table, a pair of slightly-scorched empty seats, and a pair of rather-more-scorched-looking menus lying abandoned on the aforementioned seats. With the endless patience of professional waiters everywhere, he simply shrugged, pocketed his order pad, and walked away to fetch a cleaning rag, muttering something uncomplimentary about how silly this meme was getting. I wonder if it’s too late to change careers, he found himself thinking. I never wanted to be a waiter anyway. I always wanted to be... a lumberjack.
— — === — —
*BAMF!* “——AAAGGGHH!!”
A lavender unicorn and a purple-and-green dragonling tumbled out of a flare of crackling, lavender-colored light, landing in a tangle of arms and legs as the light dissipated and collapsed with a sound of suddenly-displaced air, a faint smell of ozone, the conclusion of a primal scream of frustration from the frazzle-maned unicorn, and a slightly-nauseous groan from the dragonling.
“Ugh... I really hate it when you do that, Twilight,” Spike said woozily, looking somewhat greener (and less purple) than usual as he tried to get his bearings. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Welcome to... The Pit of Despair!” answered a raspy voice. Startled, they looked up to find a stocky, shaggy-maned, albino-white earth pony standing over them, wearing a messy apron with a pad and pencil sticking out of one of the pockets. “Otherwise known as—”
A sudden fit of hacking and coughing cut off whatever the albino earth pony been about to say next, giving Twilight and Spike a moment to disentangle themselves from each other and take in their surroundings while the stallion was preoccupied with simultaneously trying to cough into his apron and dig through its pockets at the same time.
By all appearances, they had materialized in some kind of entry foyer with cheap orange-and-black checkerboarded carpet on the floor. An archway to their left led to a room full of equally cheap-looking laminated formica tables, surrounded by seats covered in pink and orange vinyl and decorated with stylized orange and pink starbursts on their wooden-laminate backs. To their right, a formica countertop and a row of swiveling seats, also upholstered in pink and orange vinyl with the starburst decorations on their backs, ran the length of the remaining space. Blandly inoffensive Muzak drifted from recessed speakers near the popcorn-textured ceiling, and somewhere behind the countertop, a large and well-worn percolator burbled ominously to itself, acrid steam rising from its ill-fitting lid carrying the scent of boiled-and-scorched coffee strong enough to buck a gryphon in the flanks.
“—Otherwise known as ‘Denny’s’,” the rotund stallion continued in a smooth tenor as his coughing fit finally subsided, pausing a moment to pop a lozenge into his mouth. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you to your table. Can I interest either of you in today’s special, daffodil waffles with butter and peach compote?”
Twilight’s left eye began to twitch.
{1}Acquired courtesy of an exchange student from Sydneigh, who kept giving out jars of it as Hearthswarming gifts. Nopony was ever quite sure if it was meant as a prank, or if she was genuinely under the mistaken impression that anypony would actually eat the stuff.
{2}The exact nature of the Watermelon Incident has never been fully determined. Those who witnessed it first-hoof have universally declined to discuss the matter; when questioned, responses have ranged from a glazed look in the eyes, followed by a slight twitch of the left eyelid and a flat statement that “we don’t talk about the Watermelon Incident,” to curling up in the corner while staring into space and mumbling about having gazed upon the face of that which Pony Was Not Meant To Know. The official position of the faculty at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns is that there was no Watermelon Incident, has never been any such incident, that the unusually-excessive amount of watermelon and watermelon-based dishes in the cafeteria’s serving line for several weeks running was merely a misguided attempt by a newly-hired chef to add some exotic variety to the menu, and nopony can prove otherwise.
{3}It said much about the dragonling’s life as Twilight Sparkle’s assistant that a chorus of minotaurs singing full-throated praise of a fuzzy-skinned yellow fruit didn’t even register on his weirdness scale anymore.
Blame Obselescence for prompting everyone to write this nonsense, and Eakin for encouraging it. I regret nothing.)