Luna Park was perfect for baseball practice today, thought First Base, as he whipped past the park gate and down the concrete path. Flash would have to admit that, even if he didn’t really like baseball all that much, wouldn’t he? He slowed and fell into a walk, casting a worried glance over his shoulder at his big brother, hoping that this time he’d see him enjoying the cool, fresh feel of the air and the bright spring sunshine. A year ago, Flash would have been gesturing for First Base to come closer and making him be quiet, until he could hear what his brother could hear: bits of bird song, bees flying by, snatches of singing from a block away, the rustle of squirrels running up and down tree trunks. That was when Flash heard everything and cared about it. That Flash Sentry was gone, and First Base wanted him back.
He stopped and waited for Flash, bouncing from foot to foot, trying to be patient as his older brother sleepwalked through the gate, his mind somewhere far away. What could he do? Mom had begged him to get Flash out of the house, and he’d tried, but it wasn’t enough. He pretended to hate it when people called him “Mini-Flash,” because they looked so alike, but really, he was very proud of it. He hadn’t even minded when he’d become his brother’s babysitter after the accident last fall. He was sure that it would all be ok by Christmas, and then he thought it would all be ok by springtime, but now it was April and nothing was ok at all. He wanted to help, but he was just a kid, and all he had were a younger brother’s weapons: whining, begging for stuff, starting arguments, leaving his Legos out in the hallway where Flash could walk over them in his socks in the middle of the night, sneaking into his older brother’s bedroom without permission so he’d know he’d been there and get annoyed, threatening to tell. He did it all out of love.
Oh, yes, and he had baseball. Baseball was perfect. Flash didn’t like baseball, and besides—
“Ow!” yelled Flash, newly stung awake by the hard ball that had thwacked into his leg. “What did you do that for? That hurt! Ow!”
“C’mon!” complained First Base, putting just that little bit of extra whine into his voice. “You promised I could practice my fastball! You promised! Mom said you had to get out of the house, anyways.” He ran back to his brother and began thumping him around the hip with his pitcher’s mitt.
“Mom also said you weren’t supposed to pitch too much with that arm, so don’t push it, squirt,” he warned, stopping the thumping and also instinctively protecting First Base’s arm. “And don’t even think about trying a curveball.”
“Aw. Like you’d know what a curveball looks like,” the boy complained, but inside he was grinning. It was working!
“I do, Mini-Me,” said Flash, fondly grabbing his brother’s head and mussing the blue hair. “You run ahead and find a good spot, and I’ll be right after you.”
“Nuh-uh. Race you!” First Base dropped a catcher’s mitt and a ball at his brother’s feet and took off, which forced him to grab the equipment and run to catch up.
They picked out First Base’s favorite spot by the lake. The ground wasn’t too squelchy, and there was enough room to throw, which was all he really cared about. Patches of crocuses and daffodils, baby ducks parading in a line as they headed for the water—they didn’t interest him at all. They were stupid, especially because they brought out girls, like the one in yellow and green, fussing over the ducks at the lakeside. Girls, he thought, scowling, as he slammed his ball into his mitt. Everything was probably their fault. It ought to be somebody’s fault.
A few years of having very hard balls aimed at him, first by his father and now by his brother, had made Flash a pretty good catcher. He didn’t have any real interest in sports, and didn’t share his school’s enthusiasm for being a Canterlot Wondercolt, but he was definitely interested in not having his nose broken. That would make him pay attention, his brother hoped. Maybe a little verbal abuse would help, too.
“Betcha can’t get this one!” jeered First Base, and whipped the ball, but Flash reached out and easily caught it.
“Try it, Mini-Me,” he answered, hurling the ball back and then brushing some yellow stuff off his jacket. “You’ll have to do better than that. I could have caught that last one in my sleep.”
But that was the problem, thought First Base. Everything Flash did was in his sleep. Running and throwing stuff usually made him feel better, but not today. Everything around them was fresh, new, and alive. If Flash wasn’t, too, maybe he was never going to be. Nothing was ever going to be the way it was before the accident at the high school. He probably wouldn’t get picked for the team, either, and Flash wouldn’t get better, and his Mom would probably find his stash of trading cards and throw them out. She was probably doing it right now. Life just sucked. He flung the ball into the ground so hard that it left a divot, followed by his pitcher’s mitt and his ball cap.
—was that a circus? Something sounded an awful lot like circus music, and it was coming from just where the path bent around the lake. He waited a moment, but nothing came around the corner but a short and slightly plump teenaged girl with a huge pink bush of curly hair that rose high and drooped over her forehead, as bright and puffy as a cone of cotton candy. A string with yellow and blue balloons was tied around her wrist, and the blue and pink of her clothes made her look like a human piece of birthday cake. She was followed by a boy in a loud orange T shirt with a melting grilled cheese sandwich on it and a long sleeved brown shirt over that, so tall and gangling that he looked less skinny than stretched. His brown hair was almost as curly as hers, and he had some sort of pack on his back that looked as though it must be very heavy. The circus music got louder as they got closer. It almost sounded as though it was coming from them, although they weren’t playing any instruments or carrying any audio equipment. He thought he must be imagining it, but others around him seemed to be noticing it, too. They passed by, the girl skipping and the boy staggering slightly as he tried to keep up, apparently completely unaware that people were watching them, and in the middle of a heated argument.
“Pinkie, you have a streamer obsession. Everything doesn’t have to have streamers on it.”
“Oh, really? And what makes you the streamers expert, Mr. McHighExplosives?” the girl shot back, whirling around, hands waving. “It’s all gotta be neeeow, kaboom, all the time!”
“Hey!” expostulated the boy. “Kabooms are fun!”
“Two words, Cheese: fuse wire. Fuse wire, fuse wire, fuse wire! Hmmm. That was eight words, or does that count?”
The boy slowed down for a moment, and then stopped altogether on the path. “I—um—I explained about that. You’re not really still mad about that, are you? Pinkie?”
The girl snorted. First Base could have sworn he saw a puff of confetti, while the boy in the sandwich shirt threw up his hands in exasperation and almost overbalanced. Flash had noticed his brother wasn’t throwing the ball anymore, and came over to see what was going on.
“Well, fine. That’s great. So you’re still ticked off. We’ve got it, and by Gouda, I say we use it,” he said, crossing his arms with a scowl. “We are not hurling streamers by hand.”
“Yes, we are!”
“No, we’re not!”
“Yes, we are!”
“No, we are not!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes, we are! We are using streamers, and that is final!”
“Okey-dokey-lokey!” said the pink haired girl, and skipped happily along the path, while the boy staggered off in her wake.
“That was underhanded crosstalk, Pinkie! I’m calling dirty pool! You can’t use that one: it’s a cliché!”
“You ok, squirt?” Flash said, crouching down with his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” said First Base, and was surprised to realize that he was. He didn’t feel so upset anymore. “Those two, over there—are they in your class?”
Flash Sentry squinted as the two disappeared around another bend in the path. “The girl’s Pinkie Pie,” he said. “I know her, but not very well. She’s . . . different. The guy, I don’t know. I think maybe I’ve seen him around, but maybe not. I haven’t really been paying attention. Anyway, are you up for some more practice, or is your arm hurting you again?”
“Practice!” He could throw for hours more, it felt like, especially if Flash was acting like he cared about something.
“OK, then!” called Flash, running backwards towards the lake. “No curves, remember?” and he tripped, then caught himself.
There it was again. Flash wasn’t careful. He used to caution his younger brother all the time. He still did watch out for him, like preventing him from injuring his arm. But he wouldn’t take care of himself, and that’s probably how he got hurt, not that anyone would ever really know.
Why was there a smoking crater at Canterlot High after that dance? His dad had been on call that night, and he said no one had called 911: no police and no paramedics.
“And even after the accident, the dance just went on!” his dad had fumed at the dinner table, after Flash said he wasn’t hungry and excused himself for the fourth time that week. “Who the heck does Celestia think she is? I don’t understand why she even still has her job.”
No one seemed to know what really happened or what had blown out a whole wall of the school, but there were rumors that the principal and vice principal knew: them and a handful of girls.
He hated girls now. Most of them were terrible, especially his brother’s ex-girlfriend, Sunset Shimmer.
And then his father had said the words that made him lose his appetite, too. “Maybe it would be better to send Flash away to school. Military academy. It’ll blow the spiderwebs out of his brain. Don’t give me that look, honey. You know I’m right.”
He still felt sick inside that Flash could be taken away, just like that. His stomach felt full of snowballs, even though it was warm outside, and he hugged himself around the middle, trying not to throw up, squeezing his eyes tight.
—was that a circus again? He couldn’t stay focused on being unhappy when there was a circus. He opened his eyes and straightened up, but it was just the same boy and girl, coming around the same bend in the path, and they were having the same argument or had moved on to a new one, it was hard to tell which.
“—don’t care. I just want one, is all. I think they’re cutie-patooties,” said the pink-haired girl as she skipped. Did she ever stop skipping? It looked as though she never stopped skipping or bouncing. No, he was wrong about that, because she had just turned a cartwheel. “Wheee!”
“Alligators get into the sewers! They come right up through the toilet when you least expect it. I saw that somewhere on the news. That’s why I always take a plunger with me, just in case.”
“Mine wouldn’t, Cheese Sandwich! I’d kiss it and hug it and it would be my bestest best alligator friend, and I’d take it to school in my backpack like Fluttershy does, and it would never run away for the sewers because yuck, and besides, I’d fill it full of cookies and make it all happy.”
“That’ll never work,” said the boy, shaking his head and turning his back on her abruptly, so that she had to duck out of the way of whatever he was carrying, but instead of dodging backwards or sideways, she just dropped straight down and back up. “Alligators never run out of room for cookies.”
“Hah! You’re just jealous!”
“Huh?” said the boy, over his shoulder. The girl named Pinkie raced around in front of him and tried to glare at him, eye to eye. This was difficult, because she was much shorter than he was, so she bounced, glared, and continued bouncing and glaring alternately.
“You don’t want to share cookies! I turn my back for a second and the whole plate is gone!” She poked him in the stomach. “And you don’t even put on any weight. It’s super-duper not fair.”
“By the way, Pinkie, why exactly did you want me to bring my accordion if all you wanted to do was run in circles around the lake? Because I’m not bragging, but I don’t exactly have the weight to lose, and this thing is heavy.”
The girl rolled her eyes, and then did a backflip. “In case of emergencies, DUH. You never know when you need an accordion, and you’re a lot better than I am.”
“That,” said the boy, slipping the accordion case off and sitting on it, “is absolutely true. And I don’t see the big deal about eating whole plates of cookies. You can just open up another bag.” He glanced at his watch as though he was about to start timing something, and Pinkie gasped.
“That is so, so, so wrong! I never have bags of cookies because the Cakes won’t allow them in the house, and in the first place, they won’t even hear about using any kind of mixes or anything, which means that I bake them all myself. Except when I’m at school or something or trying to get something done with you about the”— the boy waved his hands desperately—“oops, sorry, I forgot that was a secret, but anyway, I’m baking all the time except when I’m not, unless there’s two of me baking and somehow one of me doesn’t know? And no matter how many of me there was baking, none of us would use cake mix, I mean for cakes, not cookies, obviously. . . ”
The boy had crossed one ankle on top on his leg and was sitting back on the accordion case. First Base saw his expression slip sideways into something goofy and unfocused, as though he were enjoying listening to the sound. How could he listen to that voice with a half-smile on his face? It wasn’t as though it was a pretty voice. It was high-pitched and squeaky, and reminded First Base of a yappy little dog owned by the neighbor girl. It went everywhere with her in a tiny purse, yapping wherever it went, and it was so dumb that it yapped at its own foot, thinking it was another dog.
“ . . . and then I said it didn’t matter because if you use clarinet reeds, that’ll fix it right up.”
Cheese glanced at his watch. “Five minutes, two seconds, if it matters,” he said, “and you can’t use clarinet reeds to fix an accordion, but you knew that already.”
“If you knew that I knew that, why did you have to tell me that you knew that I knew that you knew that I knew that?” One of the yellow balloons around her wrist slipped off and began sailing away, and she galloped after it. “Come back here!” she yelled, blue skirt and pink hair streaming behind her like a banner.
As she disappeared around the corner, Cheese sighed, picked up the accordion case, slung it on his back again, and took off sideways at a surprising rate of speed, hanging on to a straw hat that First Base couldn’t remember him wearing before.
A soccer ball came sailing in right in front of him. He didn’t have time to think about it; he simply jumped straight up and sent it back, fielding it with his head. He heard a thwack, the slap of a ball, and “That. Was. Awesome.”
A girl in a tracksuit came running up, so fast that she might have been flying. She didn’t bother running the whole way, but simply slid the last several feet, burning a skid mark into the fresh ground. “Did anyone teach you how to do that, kid?”
First Base didn’t know too many of Flash’s classmates, but this one he knew. He’d made Flash take him to high school games, and she always seemed to be at every one, shaggy rainbow hair streaking out behind her as she raced around a basketball court or a track. She was so cool that she practically didn’t have girl cooties at all, and First Base melted into worshipful mush.
“Uh—um, no?”
She belted him on the shoulder. “You’re a natural, then. Might almost be as awesome as me, heh. Saw your throwing arm, too. Can’t promise anything, but I am coaching this year, so — well, we’ll see.” A boy with blue hair had come running up behind her, and now stood, wheezing and sweating, bent over, with his hands on his knees. “Pick up the pace, Soarin’. Peewee here just drank your milkshake.”
He tried to answer her, holding up one hand as he caught his breath, but she cut him off. “That’s no excuse. And neither is that. Griffon Central’s gonna pulverize us, and we’ll deserve it, and it’ll totally be your fault.” She blew her whistle. “AND WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT?”
“Yes, Coach!”
She pointed her finger, and as Soarin’ ran off, she winked at First Base. “That’s the kind of coach I am. I’m that nice. Later, kid.”
Wow. Maybe on the team! Maybe coached by Rainbow Dash, even! He’d felt so awful right before that weird boy and girl ran by again, but look what he could do after all. He wound up and let go with his best pitch of the day, and was rewarded with an “argh” from his older brother.
“OK, that’s enough,” said Flash, as he jogged up with the ball. "I’m glad I jumped back in time, or I would have remembered that pitch for the rest of my life. You’re done with pitching for today. I was counting. Let’s go sit down.”
They sat down in the shade of a tree, very close to the lake. They dropped the ball and the gloves. Flash leaned against the trunk, while his brother leaned into his side.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Mini-Me. You’re trying to be a bratty kid brother, but it isn’t working. You’re much too nice for that.” Flash slipped his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “I know you’re trying to help, but you don’t have to do it anymore. No more moping in my room, I promise.”
“I just—I miss you, is all.”
“I know,” said Flash, “and I’m really sorry. I should be out and spending more time with you. It’s not as though I’m getting anything done, anyway. I keep trying to write music, but ever since . . . it’s as though all these other sounds are getting in the way. I’m hearing—I don’t even know what.” Flash buried his face in his hands.
First Base poked the grass viciously with a stick. “It’s Sunset Shimmer’s fault. Her and those other girls.”
Flash shook his head. “Sunset’s really different now. I don’t say you’d like her, but she’s not the way you remember her. And I don’t think she had anything to do with the accident. At least, I don’t think she did . . . ” He pulled himself back from wherever his mind had gone. “And anyway, you should quit knocking on girls, and I mean you should stop right now,” he added with a stern glare. It was the firmest and most focused First Base had seen him in a long time. “Someday, you’ll think of them a lot differently. He corrected himself. “Well, actually, no, maybe you won’t, but that doesn’t matter. Girls are just people. You can’t blame half the human race when something bad happens.”
After a while, First Base said, “Dad said something about sending you to military academy.”
“Maybe Dad’s right.”
“No!” blurted First Base.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be a musician,” Flash said. “Maybe I should go into law enforcement, like him. At least I’d be doing something useful. I don’t know—it’s like I’m living someone else’s life. I look in the mirror and it’s as though someone I don’t know is staring back.”
“But I’d hardly ever get to see you again!” This sounded terrible. If Flash just got enough rest, just got out in the sunshine more, if First Base could just get through to him somehow, this wouldn’t be happening.
“It’s not that far away. I could visit on weekends, at least some of the time.”
First Base burst into tears, and the embarrassment made him feel even worse. He was glad Flash didn’t hug him. He didn’t want comfort. He just wanted to feel better and not to think about it. All he needed was a little hope and a little help.
“Hey, I’m playing at the coffeehouse at Sugarcube on Friday. Want to come hear me?”
“Mom said I couldn’t stay up that late after last time.” He wasn’t sorry about that. It had been a benefit with practically no one there. Flash had sung a long, sad song about saving the whales that he’d written himself, while that girl who’d been feeding the ducks earlier passed out leaflets and cried.
Flash smiled ruefully. “And you don’t want to. I’m not as good as I used to be, or maybe I was just never that good and I didn’t know. Maybe I should forget about it.”
Music to Flash was like sports were to him. If he wanted to give up, that was bad. First Base had never felt worse, and he could see Flash felt the same way.
“Incoming!” shrieked a now-familiar high-pitched voice. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, emergency, c’mon!”
Pinkie Pie shot around the corner, followed by the skinny boy, whose accordion case was still weighing him down. She took a sharp left turn and circled back, urgently throwing streamers and blowing a noisemaker. The boy couldn’t stop his momentum and flipped completely over, pinned by his accordion case, and then Pinkie Pie overbalanced and abruptly sat on him.
“Oof,” he said, in a squashed sort of voice. “That’s ok, Pinkie. I wasn’t planning on using my kidneys.”
Both First Base and Flash instinctively jumped up, ready to help. It looked as though it must have hurt a lot. In fact, he could easily have broken his back. Instead, he appeared to have just compressed and sprung up like rubber. He reached his hand up to the girl’s, they pulled against each other, and they were on their feet in one smooth bounce, accordion and all.
The quarreling pair was beginning to attract attention, almost as though they wanted to. People were actually starting to bring their lawn chairs over and settling in to watch.
“That’s it,” he announced, sliding the accordion case off his back. “I’ve had enough accordion-related mishaps for one day, you outmaneuvered me into streamers, you mock me with your talk of cake mix, and you’re planning to unleash alligators on an unsuspecting world. I’m going on strike.”
She let out a squeak of dismay. “You can’t do that! I need to you finish the, the,”—he made another time-out gesture—“the stuff with the thing!”
He shrugged, and a ball popped out of his hand and straight up, followed by another, and another, until there were five circling around his head. He wasn’t looking at them. He didn’t seem to be aware of them at all. “Sorry, boss, but I’ve got demands. I’m gonna need a lot more respect, and a lot more fondue.”
“Demands? What do you mean, demands? You mean you’re breaking a promise?”
“Excuse me, I can’t hear you over the sound of my own awesome. You know it’s true.” He casually blew some flame. “You’re not thinking big enough. Big lighting, big sound, big punch bowls. Expect the unexpected. And everyone expects balloons from you by now.”
Pinkie planted her feet, allowing the remaining balloons to float skywards. She dipped a bubble wand into some soap and slashed it as though it were a sword, a trail of tiny bubbles following her arm. She narrowed her eyes and intoned, “Oh, it is on.”
He swung around to face her. “Did I say strike?” The juggling balls were back again. This time, they were encircling Pinkie, and some plates had gotten involved, too. “I didn’t mean strike. I meant mutiny.”
She hurled down a beachball, jumped on it, caromed off with a somersault, and landed outside the circle of balls. “You quitter! You quitter-y quitter!” she shrieked, bouncing higher and higher off the beach ball, so that she was again eye to eye with him. “Nobody breaks a promise to Pinkie Pie! I’m not gonna let you get out of this!”
“Pfflt,” he said, blowing a raspberry, catching the balls and making them disappear, “I can get out of anything I want to. I’ll have you know that I’ve managed to not graduate from four different schools, Miss Pie. Everybody can’t do that. That takes talent and hard work.” He defiantly pulled on a large inflatable hat shaped like a fish.
The girl’s voice had now soared into the stratosphere. It was impossible to make out what exactly she was saying, but she was saying a lot of it. As she did, Cheese began to put on a series of hats. The fish hat was replaced by a mortarboard, the mortarboard by a porkpie. Pinkie stopped her high-pitched monologue and dropped back to the ground, but evidently she was not giving up. They were glaring at each other now, and every time he pulled out a hat, she topped it with something bigger. The sombrero was met by a fruit hat, the propeller beanie with a pith helmet, faster and faster, until finally they were windmilling through admiral’s hats, feathery bonnets, tricorns and enormous Oriental headpieces, almost too quickly for the eye to follow.
“Look, Flash,” said First Base, “it’s magic!”
Flash smiled. “They’re good, aren’t they? There’s a girl at school who has a magic act, but they’re even better. Pretty clever how they’re pulling out those hats from their sleeves.”
But it wasn’t clever, thought First Base. It was impossible. There was nowhere to hide those giant feathered hats up the skinny boy’s sleeves, which were rolled up to the elbow, let alone the girl’s short ones. They weren’t pulling those hats out of their sleeves and pockets; they were pulling them out of nowhere.
“No,” he said without thinking, “it’s really, truly magic.”
He wished he’d bitten his tongue out then, because that was the real problem. It wasn’t girls; it was magic. After the dance, no one really remembered what had happened, but it had been Flash who’d come home, wide-eyed and raving, about how magic was real and that he’d seen it for himself. Something was burned on his mind like acid thrown on a rock, but he couldn’t remember what it was: only that it had been horrible, and beautiful, and all mixed up with the memory of a girl no one else remembered very well.
But this magic, if it was real magic, was different. It was good magic. It made you feel happy in spite of yourself. It was too bad they were fighting, because watching them was fun.
The last of the hats spun up in the air and seemed to wink out of sight. The straw hat floated down and the boy caught it—First Base guessed it was his favorite. “April Fool’s, Cheesie!” cried the girl, springing high into the air. “I wasn’t really mad at you!” She flung her arms wide and blew on a noisemaker.
“April Fool’s yourself, Pinkie,” said the boy, smiling. “I didn’t really think you were.”
“Aw, really?” she said, disappointment written all over her face as she crashed back down. “But I tried super-hard.”
“Actually,” he admitted, twisting the straw hat in his hands, “you kinda had me going there for a while.”
“Was it the bit about the fuse wire?” she said hopefully.
“Yeah, it was. So that means you’re not still mad about it?”
“Nope. I’m still mad. HAH!” she said, bouncing around him in a circle. “Got you!” She slowed her bounce, and then simply stopped. She’d stopped smiling, too. “And balloons?” she asked. “Everyone’s really tired of my balloons?”
“No! No, of course not! There’s no such thing as a party without balloons. And you.” He raised his voice slightly. “Not that I have anything to do with parties, of course. I am in no way associated with anything party-like at all.”
“Phew!” she sighed, and her face settled into a wide smile. “So, tomorrow, can you come around to Sugarcube’s? I have to babysit Pound and Pumpkin, but we can also plan the stuff. For the thing.”
The skinny boy grimaced and made some repeated throat-cutting gestures. “Ooops, sorry,” Pinkie hissed, in a voice that could be heard all the way across the lake. “But you’ll be there?”
He nodded.
“Gotta run!” she exclaimed, and hugged him. First Base looked away, because the expression on the boy’s face was really mushy and the girl was too short to see it. Then she waved and scampered off.
The boy waved at her with his straw hat, standing on one leg and watching her until she was completely out of sight, and then turned to the crowd as though he’d just noticed they were there. “Thank you, ladies and gents; that concludes our final performance of the day.” There was a spattering of applause. “No, please don’t applaud. Just throw money.”
He tossed the straw hat on the ground, and turned to the accordion case, unsnapping the clasps. Picking up the accordion, he walked away, settled himself under the shade of a large tree, and began to play, unaware that people actually were tossing money in the hat. It wasn’t at all the sort of music First Base would have expected from an accordion player. It wasn’t a polka, or even particularly upbeat. It was definitely very mushy. Still, he glanced up at Flash, hoping to see that he was reacting to it.
He did seem to be hearing it, and even quietly enjoying it. At last he said, “He’s good.”
“He’s a musician,” First Base said. He had to grab this opportunity while he could. “Why don’t you go up and talk to him, Flash?”
“I don’t want to interrupt.”
“We could take him his hat. See? It’s just sitting out there, and no one’s putting anything in it anymore. If we don’t, someone could take it. Please, Flash,” he begged.
Flash sighed. “Well, all right.” They picked up the hat, walked over to the accordionist, and placed it next to him.
The skinny boy stopped playing for a moment, looked down into the hat with surprise, and said sadly, “Why doesn’t this happen when I actually need bus fare?”
“Excuse me,” said Flash. “I don’t think you know me, but—“
“I do know you, though. You have got to be Flash Sentry.” His fingers ran across the keyboard, and First Base recognized the song he secretly thought of as “Save The Whales, Made of Fail,” played in a polka rhythm. He was glad to see that Flash recognized it, too, and blushed.
“Yeah. Well—that’s really not my best song.”
“It’s not?”
“Anyway, just wanted to say I thought you sound pretty good, um . . . I don’t know your name, sorry.”
“It’s Cheese Sandwich,” he said, shaking Flash’s hand. “Don’t laugh. It’s an old family name. I’m even sort of proud of it,” he said, indicating his Tshirt. “Could be worse, I guess. I’m not surprised Mr. Doodle spends his life in a state of rage.”
First Base burst out, “Flash wants to give up music. He’s going to let Dad send him to the military academy.”
“Military academies,” he said, and winced. “Eeedge. I can’t recommend military academies. But then, I wasn’t really there long enough to find out what it was like. I hadn’t even unpacked.”
“Why, what did you do?”
“I don’t remember,” he said thoughtfully, “but it must have been hilarious.” They walked over to the accordion case, and Cheese began to pack up.
“I have a band,” said Flash, and repeated, “I have a band,” as though he’d forgotten that. “I’d have to put it back together again, but we’re called Flash Drive. We haven’t played in a while, but I was just listening to you and thinking that maybe what we need is an accordion player. We’d be different, for one thing. I’m sure the guys would like to try it out, if you don’t mind coming over and rehearsing with us some time. What do you think? I have to get in touch with them all anyway.”
Cheese hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t do bands, and I’m not supposed to — I mean, I can’t do late nights, either. Good news, though,” he added, with a slightly manic grin. “I’d be happy to drop by first thing in the evening and play a polka medley of everything you guys do. Sound good?”
“Yes,” said Flash, in a daze, “that would be great.”
First Base could not believe it. They had actually exchanged phone numbers. Flash was seriously talking about putting his band together again. Then Cheese quickly said goodbye, put on the accordion case, and was gone before they even had a chance to say goodbye back.
“Wait a second,” said Flash. “Did I just agree to let him play a polka cover of everything we do?”
First Base couldn’t help himself. He snickered.
Author's Note
April Fool’s!
It’s a challenge I set myself: to put Cheese Sandwich/Pinkie Pie, which I love, into the world of Equestria Girls. This fic is meant to introduce them, and also to drop some major hints about the plot points of a larger full-length fic I’m working on. I have a blog entry with some further notes and an FAQ, if you’re interested.
The cover art is a commission from the fabulous WhiteStar. The pretty is all him. The blame is all mine.
