The crates were almost full now; Sassaflash stood in the warehouse doorway and flicked off the lights closing the door behind her as she turned to leave. It'd taken a tough week to get enough stock prepared for Pinkie's Party on Saturday, and she hadn't seen Caramel in days. Sassaflash walked sedately back to the brew-house while Celestia's sun set like so much wet concrete; there was still some tidying to be done.
Ponyville's streets were emptying slowly; those ponies still present outside almost exclusively had reasons to be so. Sassaflash nodded to them as she passed and tossed a bit to Applejack for an apple as she skirted the farmpony's, now quieting, stall. It took less than a minute before the pegasus trotted into her brew-house and closed the door behind her, grateful to be out of the cold. Thanks to Quickfix, the building's machines always lent a comfortable warmth to the air. Sassaflash pulled a lighting chord with a hoof to illuminate the mess of her hard day's work.
Sassaflash's sarsaparilla workshop was essentially a huge barn, and its walls had never had much call to grow ears (the churning of the machines had not the beauty of the music of the spheres) but if they had, then they would have heard the faintest of groans. The workroom was a dump; as she began to clear the rubbish Sassaflash privately concluded that the return of Discord's chaos would go some way towards helping her to tidy the place up. Whistling quietly under her breath, the cyan pegasus flitted from shelf to shelf stacking and unstacking, labelling, noting, cleaning, dusting and at one point, removing a small and untraceable box of limes from her desk drawer.
Had she known that it was only the first of several impossible things she would do tonight, she might have made certain breakfast reservations immediately.
As the last light of Saturday's dusk faded from the windows, Sassaflash brushed a final spider gently out of the door with the warm, fuzzy feeling of a boring job finally done. The machines of the brew-house were spotless; stacks of oddities were labelled and catalogued neatly in thick ledgers (themselves stacked, labelled and, against all sense, catalogued) on her now lime-free desk.
The limes themselves had been set aside for future consideration.
Sassaflash leant back on her desk chair and took the first bite from her freshly purchased apple. She grinned and enjoyed the fruits of her labours as a line of juice dribbled down her chin unnoticed. From outside came the hoots of owls and the calming chirp of night-birds and in the warmth of the workshop Sassaflash began to nod gently towards sleep.
Were it not for the interruption she might even have made it there.
The double doors to the barn, a remnant of its previous life, were thrown open with vigour and a flash of vibrant pink shot into the workshop; shocked, Sassaflash tipped her chair over backwards.
"Hey Sassy!" Pinkie loomed over the desk and peered down at the stunned cyan pegasus. "Whatcha doin'?"
Clutching at her head, Sassaflash rose to her hooves and rubbed her eyes wearily. "Pinkie..." she moaned. "What're you doing here?"
The pink mare grinned, Sassaflash felt offended that she could have so much energy. "Just getting everything set up for tomorrow. Wondered if you'd got the sarsaparilla."
Sassaflash nodded drowsily. "It's... It's in the thing." Pinkie stared at her. "The... The warehouse." Sassaflash waved a hoof vaguely in the direction of the offending building.
Pinkie nodded energetically. "Okie dokie lokie!"
"Would you mind picking it up yourself? I'm a little tired." As the party pony nodded, Sassaflash hesitated: she'd have to give Pinkie a key to get into the warehouse. Eventually, she concluded that the risk was worth the sleep and rummaged around in her draw for her keyring. As she pulled it out onto the desk, Pinkie dropped a small bag of bits beside it. Sassaflash looked up, confused. "Where'd those come from?" She queried.
"What?"
"The bits." She persisted. "Where'd you keep them?" Now that she came to think about it, she couldn't think of any time she'd seen Pinkie bother carrying things in her mouth.
The pink mare snapped out of her puzzlement suddenly. "Ooh! I just hide 'em away until I need 'em." She beamed, clearly thinking her point made.
Sassaflash disagreed. "Where?"
"What?"
"Where do you hide them?"
Pinkie squinted, as if trying to get her head around a difficult concept. "Away?" She ventured.
The pegasus frowned. "Try again."
Pinkie looked concerned. "Outside?" She tried.
"You mean in holes in trees and such?"
"No."
"Then where?" Sassaflash was becoming hysterical. Pinkie on the other hand seemed merely very uncomfortable.
After some time, the pink mare seemed to give up, "Look." she began. "Why don't I just show you?"
Sassaflash nodded energetically; her curiosity had piqued long ago and was now reaching the 'burning' stage. With a final shrug, Pinkie grabbed the pegasus's head with both hooves and, amidst her protests, slung her around her back.
To Sassaflash, it felt like the largest hiccup possible. Backwards. In her distress, she grabbed onto Pinkie's tail with her mouth and the earth pony gave a squeak of alarm as she fell backwards with a sucking noise and the smell of burning hay.
Inside the workshop the walls would've heard a commotion, and then a silence.
The two ponies rolled backwards and collapsed in a heap. When Sassaflash finally opened her eyes, her jaw forgot to drop.
There didn't appear to be any floors any more, nor ceilings or walls. This itself wouldn't have been an issue were it not for the additional lack of ground, sky or indeed anything bar a faint, indistinct whiteness and a scattering of mismatched trinkets. Sassaflash looked down, she didn't appear to be standing on anything, and when she fluttered up into the air she found that she didn't so much as sink downwards afterwards but remain standing above her previous point.
Her eye twitched.
Ignorant of the pegasus's fraying nerves, Pinkie walked around the space prodding gently at nothingness and frowning. After several minutes of silence she remembered her guest and looked up. Sassaflash hadn't moved.
"It's all wobbly." The party mare stated happily. "You know, I've never been here before. Isn't it always like that? You never do anything in your home town 'till somepony new pops in?"
Sassaflash's reply was non-existent, although her eye twitch did continue.
"Sassy?" Pinkie had noticed the pegasus's silence. "You ok?"
Nothing.
"Sassy?"
Equally little.
"Hello?"
Sassaflash's head turned, eyes squinted. "Pinkie... Where are we?" She spoke slowly: urgent reports were travelling too and from her eyes, and her brain had lost all the memos, contracts, and consent forms.
The pink mare returned to her usual beaming self, "I never really had a name for it," she explained. "It was always sort of there. Good place to hide things though."
Sassaflash looked down at small piles of sunglasses sitting on, for want of a better word, the floor. A small cannon could be seen several yards away, though it floated slightly above Sassaflash's head.
The pegasus's eye tried with great effort to recommence its twitching, it was shouted down. Returning to the present, Sassaflash focussed on the problem at hand.
"Ok... How do we get home?"
Pinkie smiled. "Easy! I just reach back and..." Her expression froze into a grimace as she swiped at the air behind her.
"Pinkie?"
"Err..."
After much frantic searching the crates in the vicinity had yielded a large number of trinkets, odds-and-ends, doohickeys and some items only to be considered combinations of the three. Regretfully, what they hadn't contained was large quantities of food.
Sassaflash's stomach rumbled, tellingly.
The two ponies sat opposite each other with an upturned wooden crate between them. A pack of cards in the crate had led to several hands of poker: it had helped pass the hours; Sassaflash knew that it couldn't have been more than hours, but it felt like longer. Pinkie was clearly feeling the effects too; her mane had wilted into sombre strands and her vibrant nature had fled from her body. Both ponies had given up on the card games some significant time ago. All reasonable, and unreasonable, topics of conversation had been exhausted, and the trapped ponies sat in musty silence waiting for something to happen. Pinkie's futile escape attempts had consisted of much arm flailing, tail shaking, and the invocation of various strange powers the nature of which Sassaflash was blissfully ignorant of. It hadn't seemed to help.
Distantly, Sassaflash heard a faint popping sound. Its source wasn't immediately obvious but after the monotony of the last few hours she looked up with interest.
There was a hoof. Sassaflash stared.
It probed around for a moment before touching a set of blueprints.
When she spoke, Sassaflash did so quietly, as if afraid that anything louder might scare the probing hoof away. "Pinkie..." She ventured.
"Hmm?"
"Somepony's here."
Pinkie perked up suddenly and spun to the hoof. After a moment of staring, she lunged at it frantically.
It vanished with a pop. The blueprints were gone as well.
There was a decent amount of subsequent searching for the gap through which the hoof had come and gone. Eventually Pinkie concluded that it, "was only there when it needed to be". Sassaflash's response that they, "bucking well need it to be here right now" didn't seem to convince the universe to any considerable degree. Logic aside, Pinkie spent the next hour or so intently watching the spot from which the hoof had originated in the hope that its owner may wish to return the blueprints they had taken.
There was indeed another pop; though it came several hours later and by now both Pinky and Sassaflash were tired of waiting and were both too busy wallowing in hunger to immediately notice. The same hoof once again emerged from the air and felt around questioningly. It was Pinkie Pie who noticed it, but not until it grabbed her hair in its groping search. Her eyes shot open from shock and, rolling dramatically, she made a grab at the hoof. Shocked, the hoof withdrew, pink mare in tow, and both pony and hoof vanished with a resounding pop and a squeal.
Sassaflash's ears swivelled at Pinkie's squeak and she sat up groggily. She was fed up; it showed. "Pinkie...?" The pegasus's mane appeared to have been combed with a hedgehog, quite possibly against its will. Her wings hadn't fared much better; a quick preen might have cleaned them, but anypony could see that they would've tasted somewhat terminally like dirt and arsenic to the preener. Sassaflash mumbled a confused query: Pinkie was noticeably absent.
Nevertheless, her body was pushing at her. It felt like night; she certainly hadn't slept in hours. Giving in to the biological demand, she slumped into a heap.
In any reasonable universe the opposite of a backwards hiccup would be a bog standard, run-of-the-mill hiccup, but to Pinkie this didn't seem to be the case; there was certainly a feeling of being stretched out thin and as impressive a light show as might be found ten-a-penny in any good sci-fi movie.
It was still a hiccup though, all else aside.
Pinkie's next thoughts revolved around the smell of the dirt across which her face was sliding. She came to rest against what felt, at least on impact, like a rock. A hoof prodded her gently. A groan was produced. Pinkie had no idea where she was, it was certainly dusty; she licked her lips to moisten them and frowned, disappointed.
Yep. She mused. That's dust, not icing sugar.
All in all it was turning out to be a rather distressing day, however Pinkie's mood was improved significantly by the voice that spoke up from behind her; it was both concerned, and familiar.
"Woah there, Pinkie!" A light brown hoof was extended down to the party mare's head. "Wanna hand?"
Pinkie rolled over slowly and rubbed at her eyes. "Cheese... Is that you...?"
It was. Cheese Sandwich, party pony extraordinaire, stood over Pinkie with a hoof extended. The light of the sun illuminated his mane angelically and Pinkie shielded her eyes from the glare. She reached up weakly to grasp the proffered hoof and was pulled, shakily, to her feet. The stallion watched in confusion and concern as Pinkie tried desperately to form syllables.
"Need... Cake..." She croaked. Cheese's brow furrowed and he produced a slice of the requested cake from a knapsack. He handed it to Pinkie, who consumed it rapidly and with no regard for cutlery or, for that matter, cleanliness. It was the work of a moment for Pinkie to wolf-down her gift and be standing, mane full of frosting, with eyes sparkling and a grin threatening to remove the top of her head.
"ThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouTHANKYOU!" Pinkie inhaled deeply and Cheese stuck a hoof in her mouth to forestall a further tirade of thanks. Pinkie mumbled into the hoof; it was spat out.
"Where in Equestria did you come from, Pinks?"
"There. The place, you know." Pinkie looked at Cheese pleadingly, obviously hoping that he, at least, would understand.
He did. "Well... How did you get there?"
Pinkie began to recount the events of the past night, after a minute or so she paused in puzzlement and began rummaging behind her back with her tongue stuck out in concentration.
"Pinkie?" Cheese looked at the mare in confusion, she'd gone uncharacteristically silent.
"Almost. Got. Her... Ah-Ha!" Pinkie's concentrated expression changed to one of relief as she extracted a wilted and unconscious Sassaflash from behind her back and placed her daintily on the dusty earth of the path so as not to wake her. Pinkie finished her story in a whisper; Cheese listened carefully, but with one eyebrow raised.
"So you got stuck... There?"
"Yep."
"And there was nothing to eat?"
"Nope."
"No cake?" He added; it was a difficult idea to grasp.
"No bread, no cake, nothing."
Cheese looked down at the sleeping pegasus. Worried thoughts were forming in his head: what'd happen when she tells everypony about... There? The last thing he wanted was everypony poking around with his party planning gear. Unlike the problems, answers failed to congeal in Cheese's head. He voiced his concerns to Pinkie.
"There's no chance she's forgotten is there?" She suggested.
Cheese Sandwich looked suddenly thoughtful. He could feel the shape of a solution coalescing in his mind.
He smiled. "You know... There just might be..."
Sassaflash awoke with a grumble; she was starving but just knew that as soon as she sat up she'd have a headache. Her desk wasn't the most comfortable headrest, but the pegasus was tired enough not to care: she closed her eyes.
It took her fully seven seconds, in her drowsy state, to realize the narrative issues with the current situation.
The realisation prompted the pegasus to shake out her mane and sit up. She looked around the room in confusion; she was in her workshop, there was no doubt about it: same chair, same walls, same slightly cracked Discord lamp on the desk, but she knew that she shouldn't, under the laws of normal physics and causality, be here.
That said she had been with Pinkie so, "normal physics" might not be a viable argument.
Light from the windows caught motes of dust in the air and the room filled with a glow. Roused and curious, Sassaflash rolled off her chair and made her way outside. She took note of the ponies on the street; dozens of cheerful faces passed her as she walked sedately towards her house. The day was in full swing; it was at least noon already. Reaching her house, she pushed the door open slowly and made her way to the kitchen. It was just as it had been yesterday and the food squirrelled away in various cupboards made a decent tulip sandwich with hayfries. She sat at one window with the meal and looked out onto the midday bustle.
Call this lunch then. She mused. At least I've no pressing work to be doing.
With the last of the hayfries appreciated, Sassaflash stood and looked herself up and down. It didn't take her long to reach a decision.
Spa. Definitely spa.
As she relaxed in the pampering hooves of the spa-ponies, Sassaflash tried to recall yesterday's events. It wasn't a great leap of thought to put the whole thing down to too much cheese before bed or, in this case, chair. She sighed as Aloe massaged her to the point of not really caring what had happened; Pinkie would've collected the Sarsaparilla whether Sassaflash gave her a key or not, she knew that much.
She convinced herself that it didn't matter, it was certainly a dream, of course it was. Or rather Aloe's hooves convinced her; the spa-pony was being particularly attentive today.
Pinkie had made sure of it.
Author's Note
Aaaaaaand done. Thanks for the read all, I appreciate it greatly.
The story took longer to write than I'd thought it would, but it was also about 50% longer than I'd been aiming for too so that's ok. Props to all of you who spotted the references; I do enjoy adding those, and please do follow, like, complain, praise and criticize as you feel appropriate.
Once again, many thanks for dragging your eyes across all 3000 odd words. I might add further instalment(s) here at a later date, I'm not quite sure yet.
So long, for now, and thanks for all the fish.
Epilogue: The Nitty-Gritty of "Back Again"
*thunk* *thunk* *thunk*
Sassaflash's head bounced sporadically off rocks as Pinkie Pie dragged her slowly homewards. The furrow in the dusty path behind them was of no concern to the mare, and if her companion had any concerns then he wasn't showing them.
"All I'm saying is that it's nice to have you here, Pinks; Boneless is good company, but he's not too talkative."
"Yea, Gummy's the same." Pinkie giggled.
Cheese Sandwich glanced over his shoulder at Sassaflash. "She's gonna have a doozie of a headache when she wakes up."
"Meh. She'll be fine."
The morning sun was hot; Cheese nodded his head to a gap in the roadside where the two, or call it three, ponies could stop for a drink. Taking off his broad-brimmed hat, Cheese Sandwich sat down on a rock and relaxed with a grateful sigh. Pinkie squatted by the riverbank, gratefully sucking up water with a sound like a broken tap, and transferring the stream into Sassaflash's mouth via the absorbent medium of her tail. Cheese watched with amusement.
Pinkie garbled out a sentence, cheeks full of water. "H'ww m'ch fuuuur'thr?" She chuckled at her own voice, then began to cough as water inched its way up her nose.
"A few miles is all." Cheese replied, once the coughing had stopped. "I was heading to Appleloosa, but it can wait."
"Ooh, what's going on there?"
"It's Sheriff Silver Star's, "Sorry-We-Accidentally-Dropped-A-Barn-On-You-Hope-You-Get-Better-Soon-Party". It's a long story."
"We're walking all the way to Ponyville." Pinkie deadpanned. "We've got time."
Realising that he had a captive audience, and better yet one that might enjoy his ramblings, Cheese grinned.
"Well..."
"...And then the cork came out of the whole thing and we didn't know what to do!"
Pinkie was rapt, "So what did you do?"
"Well Braeburn- Oh, lookie there."
At her companion's instigation, Pinkie looked around. The familiar scenes of Ponyville's outskirts caught her attention and she looked over one shoulder at the pegasus whom she had dragged for several miles.
"Good news, Sassy! We've almost got you home!"
Sassaflash was unresponsive, and rather bruised. That said, it was probably less work to be dragged than to walk, and the headache would've worn off by the time she woke up.
Mostly.
It didn't take too long for the duo of party ponies to realise that careful planning was in order. Cheese broached the subject first.
"How're we meant to make her think this was a dream?"
"Umm..." Pinkie's brow furrowed in frustration, "You know..." she added. "I really hadn't thought that far along..."
Cheese cast about for inspiration, and spotted a bedcover hanging on a washing line...
"I would've sworn... *grunt*... that she wasn't this heavy!"
"Calm down, Pinks! Ponies are looking at us."
Cheese Sandwich was right: it was almost noon, and the street was full of inquisitive faces; most of those faces turned to look at the party ponies as they passed. Some waved at Cheese, some shouted a greeting, but most simply looked on perplexedly. It was the sheet that did it, it had to be, it covered Pinkie's back like barding and dragged along the road as they walked through town.
The hump underneath made her look like a camel.
"Some gentlestallion you are; why am I carrying her?"
Cheese looked confused, "I offered to carry her, Pinks."
"Oh." Pinkie brightened up. "Right." She began to bounce along the street effortlessly, all sign of her exertion gone. Cheese trotted to keep up. The two, or again, call it three, ponies eventually arrived at the Sarsaparilla workshop; the doors lay open from Pinkie's entry the night before. Making their way inside by their respective means, Pinkie pulled the sheet off her back to expose Sassaflash, still unconscious, resting beneath it. Cheese lifted her off Pinkie's back and lay her on the desk.
Pinkie's eyes widened alarmingly. "Sweet Celestia's Sugar Muffin!"
"What? What happened?"
"The party..."
"What party?" The brown party planner was confused, Pinkie hadn't mentioned a party on their way back.
"It's today! I've got to go! I'm sorry, Cheese, can you finish here yourself?"
"Um... I guess so, l-"
"Super-duper! See you soon!" Pinkie had vanished out of the barn doors, and her sentence trailed off into the distance with her.
"Pinkie? Pinkie!" It was no use; she was gone. Cheese looked around the barn in quiet contemplation. He wasn't quite sure where to start.
It would've helped if she'd told me where to put h-
*Pop*
A whiff of burning caught Cheese's attention and he turned to find a scrap of paper on the barn floor behind him. It was a note, written in Pinkie's typical messy scrawl, and in some kind of shorthand, on the back of a sarsaparilla bottle's label:
She st chir
Cheese looked at the chair lying on its side by the worn wooden desk, from the meticulous order of the workshop he had guessed that Sassaflash might be a bit of a workaholic. Pulling the mare upright, he sat her in the chair and rested her head gently on her desk. One more curious look around revealed an out of place box of limes; concluding that he'd done all that he could, he took one. His eye twitched as he bit into it.
"Woah nelly!" Cheese's mane shot out from his head wildly before recoiling on itself like a bunch of springs. "That's a doozie!"
The party pony's head spun as he heard a mumbling from Sassaflash, she rolled her head on the desk. Quietly, Cheese Sandwich edged his way to the barn doors, a lime and a half held in his mane.
As he exited, he pulled the doors closed with the faintest of creaks, and the clock in the square struck noon. Inside the barn, Sassaflash stirred.
Around her, the world went on.
Author's Note
Little extra piece here folks, for them as are interested.
Zero actual plot development, but I think I can excuse myself that on the basis that the story's plot was rounded off enough already that it could've been rolled down a hill in lieu of a ball.
Or a boulder.
Or... Something else round.
... Oh hush, why would you expect me to be eloquent?
Comment, like, favourite, follow, criticise, praise and make random observations on as you feel necessary; any level of response is appreciated, mindless or otherwise.
Ciao for now, everypony. Many thanks for the read!
