Under The Radar

Chapter 2

Welcome

Ever get the feeling that someone is staring at you? Normally you just think it’s nothing and move on. But for an agent, that feeling is your best friend. Countless times I’ve discovered I was being watched by some low life criminal, all because I just had a feeling and acted on it. This time however I could feel that I was being watched while I was asleep. I cautiously peeled my eyes open to survey the room, and make sure that nopony was hiding from me in the shower(s). Unfortunately I couldn’t see my living room, and instead I found myself staring at another set of giant blue eyes right next to mine. I didn’t have much time to react; as soon as she noticed I was awake she started asking me questions.

“HEY THERE! What’s your name? Mine’s Pinkie Pie,” She shouted into my face.

I was speechless. Here I was, the top agent of the EBI, and this pony had successfully picked my lock and snuck up on me without a sound. If a pastry nut like her could do that, then what was SH capable of? Unless she was…no, somepony would have noticed by now. I finally just spat out the first thing that came to mind.

“How did you get in my house?”

“Oh silly, it was easy! You forgot to lock the door!” She giggled and pointed to the front door, all the locks were off!

“What? There’s no way I would be so careless, I made sure to lock the place down before I slept.” I stated not believing a word out of her.

“You didn’t lock the Pinkie-Lock though.” She said happily.

“Pinkie-Lock? What in blazes is a Pinkie lock?” I asked completely baffled. Those lab techs never told me what a Pinkie lock was or how to work one. Oh when I get back I’m gonna…wait.

“You’re joking aren’t you?” I asked just now catching on.

Pinkie started laughing like I had just told the funniest joke in the world (only she didn’t die). When she calmed down she started talking.

“Of course not silly, you left the window unlocked and I was able to slip in easily,” she explained it as if she did that every day.

“So you broke into my house and hovered over me until I woke up…..Is there some sort of medication you’re supposed to be taking?” I asked.

“Ah ah ahhh! I’m not saying anything else until you tell me your name,” She said getting even closer in my face.

“Jim. It’s Jim Green. Now could you please get off of my chest? I would like to feel my lungs again.” She really wasn’t that heavy, but I would prefer her not to sit on me.

She nodded and jumped off of me, and it seemed now that she knew my name she was even happier. She then grabbed my hoof and started shaking it lightning fast.

“Well Jimmy it’s nice to meet you! I hope you like it here in Ponyville, it’s SUCH a great place. OOOH I almost forgot!” She bolted out of the house and before the door closed again she was right back in with some sort of contraption. It was a small pink and blue wagon with Pinkie’s balloon cutie mark on it.

“This is my Welcome Wagon! I use it to welcome people here!” She exclaimed. She pressed a red button on the left side of it, and it exploded in a mass of flags and trumpets. In the center was an oven with cupcakes and pies all around it. Suddenly music began to play and Pinkie sang and danced.

“Welcome welcome welcome

A fine welcome to you

Welcome welcome welcome

I say how do you do?

Welcome welcome welcome

I say hip hip hurray

Welcome welcome welcome to Ponyville todaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”

Wait, this part was in the file. Pinkie would welcome people with song and dance then give them a-

BOOM

The oven exploded in a mass of confetti, which completely threw me off. The file clearly stated she would give a cake THEN have a blast of confetti…unless… OH NO!

The confetti cannons started shaking violently, and I realized they were about to erupt in a mega blast of cake batter. If any of it got on my equipment, it would ruin it or cause major malfunctions. I had to act fast, so I grabbed my bag and made a dash for the next room but I wasn’t fast enough. Another blast of confetti went off covering the room even more than before. I stopped dead in my tracks and just looked at the machine.

“OH MY GOSH! I must have forgotten to put the cake in ENTIERLY! It must still be at Sugar Cube Corner. I’m so sorry,” Pinkie apologized, almost like she had killed my cat or something.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said trying to cheer her up. “I’m not that big a fan of cake anyway.”

She then switched from apologetic to absolutely bamboozled. “You don’t like cake!?!?!”

“What? No I didn’t say-” I never got to finish, as she grabbed my leg and dragged me out the door.

I thought Rainbow Dash was supposed to be the fast one, but she seemed to be quicker than thought. I have never seen a pony move as fast as her…neither have I moved that fast. When she finally stopped in front of some bakery, my head was throbbing and I felt like my stomach was in my hind hooves. I stumbled over to the nearest trash can and waited to hurl. Luckily it never happened, so I got off of it and stumbled back to the front door with Pinkie.

“So….Where are we exactly?” I asked, still hoping my lunch would stay down.

“This is Sugar Cube Corner. I’ve never met a pony that’s turned down a cake here! Now come inside and let’s get you that cake!” She grabbed me again and pulled me inside.

The smell of baked goods and candy filled the air around it. There were cupcakes, pies, muffins, you name it they had it on display. The aroma itself was enough to cure me of all stomach pains. Perhaps this crazy pony wasn’t so bad after all. Except there was another smell, and it was hard to identify since the smell of all the baked goods covered it up well.

“Alright, I’ll go get the cake out of the oven!” She bounced away towards the kitchen.

Wow, I just got here and already Pinkie has broken into my house, nearly gave me a heart attack, and had a cake waiting for me in the oven this entire-

“OH SH*T!” It just hit me. What I smelled was smoke! If she had left that cake in the oven this whole time then it must have-

“EEEEEEEEEE!”

Pinkie was screaming in the kitchen, she must have opened the door to meet a blast of fire. I didn’t waste any time, I charged into the kitchen only to be met with a wall of flame. The oven fire was large; in fact there wasn’t much of an oven left. Pinkie had jumped back far enough to keep out of reach of the fire, but it wasn’t going to be long before it spread. I had to act quickly. I ran over to Pinkie and tossed her on my back and ran even faster out of the kitchen. I set her down gently, and noticed that she was still freaking out a little. Her eyes were fixed on the orange glow coming from the kitchen.

“Pinkie, where do you keep the fire extinguisher?” I asked. I hoped she would calm down enough to answer.

“We don’t have one. Well we did, but the cutie mark crusaders needed to borrow ours and we haven’t bought a new one yet.” She answered quickly, but her eyes never left the kitchen.

“That’s just great. Alright let me think.....” I thought quickly. What did we have? Cakes, a burning oven…IN A KITCHEN! “There’s faucet in the kitchen! I have an idea, do you have a wrench?”

“No, but I do have a chicken.” She pulled out a floppy rubber chicken and handed it to me.

“Close enough. Now stay here and DO NOT LEAVE!” I instructed. She nodded lightly, and the fear in her face was something I’ll never forget.

Moving quickly I bolted right back into the kitchen and didn’t even look at the fire. I opened the cupboard below the sink and used the beak of the chicken to unscrew the pipe. Water started spewing out, but it wasn’t enough. I had to think, and fast, because if this plan didn’t work this whole place was going down. Nothing came to mind, and I cursed as I realized I didn’t have any of the tools necessary for this job. Suddenly I had an idea: this wasn’t a logical place, this was Pinkie Pie’s place! Perhaps her kind of crazy thinking was what I needed. I measured the size of the pipe with my eyes and looked for something roughly the same size. The only thing I could see though was muffins and there was no way… No, don’t think like that, think crazy! I grabbed a muffin and shoved it into the pipe. I’ll never know how, but it worked. The SOLID METAL pipe started swelling up like a hose when it’s stepped on, and it slowly got bigger and bigger until POW! The muffin shot out followed by a torrent of water that would put a fire hose to shame, and aimed directly at the heart of the fire.

In no time the flames were doused and the only proof it even existed was a black scorch mark around on the floor and up the wall. There was almost no damage to the ceiling surprisingly. I backed up and slid down the wall, my adrenalin was pumping. First day on the job and I had almost failed. I just sat there staring at the black heap of metal that used to be an oven. Pinkie walked into the room, her eyes darted from the oven to the sink to me.

“You okay?” I asked still breathing pretty hard.

“Y-yeah I’m fine. I can’t believe it did that. I’ve NEVER had a cake do that before.” She was completely distraught. “How could Derpy let this happen?”

“Wait, Derpy? You had somepony watching this place?” Red flags went off. Somepony was watching this place? Of course, there was no way in hell a freaking cake would cause a fire of that magnitude. Somepony would have had to use an accelera.

“Yeah, Derpy Hooves. I was in charge of the kids but I had to go meet you so I asked her to watch the place. She’s a pretty good friend, not the brightest of the bunch, except for that time she ate a glow stick and then she really WAS the brightest-“

“Pinkie,” I interrupted. It seemed she was slowly going back to normal. Well normal for Pinkie.  “Look, it’s very important that we keep this to ourselves. If anyone asks, you came home and something caused the oven to explode but none of the flames lingered so it just left this big mess. As for the water everywhere, say you dumped a bucket of it on the oven to make sure it didn’t start up again.”

“What why? Don’t you want me to tell everyone about how you saved my life AND Sugar Cube Corner? You’ll be a hero to all of Ponyville!” Pinkie didn’t understand why I was trying to keep myself out of the spot. And why would she? Everypony dreams of having their time to shine and I was making sure no one knew what had happened.

“Look, I just got here and I’d rather keep under the radar. You know what I mean?”

She just looked at me funny; she really didn’t understand this at all.

“*sigh* Let me put it this way, I’d like to keep this a secret, and you wouldn’t want to tell anyone my secret and betray my trust right?” I said raising one of my eyebrows. Her file had said something about her never losing a friend’s trust.

“OOOHH! I get it. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” She recited the words with actions to each then actually sticking her hoof in her eye.

I let out a sigh of relief, thankful that no one would find out I was here. I mean, becoming a hero is tempting, yes, but that would draw attention to me, and with how clever SH was it wouldn’t take long to realize that it would have taken an EBI agent or a super hero to do what I just did…and one of those is more possible than the other.

Once my heart had stopped pounding, I stood up and fixed the pipe, the less of a disaster the better. I gave the rubber chicken back to Pinkie.

“Thank you Miss Pie. That was, quiet the welcoming,” I joked as I headed for the door.

“Wait!” She zoomed in front of me. “I just wanted to say thanks.” She grabbed and hugged me so tight I was afraid my eyes would pop out.

“Hey, it was no trouble at all,” I said trying to free myself from her crushing squeeze. “Um, Pinkie, you can let go now.”

“Oh, sorry,” She said letting go with a weak smile. I just chuckled and headed out.

This first day was a lot better than I had hoped. I had not only saved and gained the trust of one of the pony-gang, but I had a suspect. As soon as I got home I powered up my laptop and pressed the light and start time button on my watch.

“This is Agent Green.” I said in a low almost whisper voice. “I need you to send me everything we have on Derpy Hooves. I believe we have our number one suspect.”