It was a normal, beautiful morning. The sky was blue and the clouds were few, and a slight breeze cooled everybody from the hot day that was yesterday. Fluttershy had just put her last birds into their nests for sleep. All her animals were extremely tired, due to the day before, when Rainbow Dash had too much work to do for the weather and Fluttershy had volunteered to give a helping hoof, but she unfortunately had a hard day as well so she collapsed tiredly on the floor a few moments after the beginning and dozed off. Her animals, understanding her weakness, decided to be nice and take her place. Fluttershy was sorry to have put them into such a hard task, but she was also a bit relieved in the bottom of herself. She could have an entire day to relax, to gain back energy, now that the sleeping animals limited the hard work for the yellow Pegasus. She decided to take a calm walk by the road, to visit some of her friends.
The first person she passed by was AppleBloom, to which she asked where was Applejack. The filly answered that her big sister was busy, baking apple goods. They will have company in a few days, some other members of the Apple Family will come visit Sweet Apple Acres for a dinner and to get some news from them. Applejack was busy like crazy lately, but she didn’t refuse the help of picking some apples from the other ponies, though she insisted on making the goods herself. Fluttershy decided to leave her in peace and to go and visit her maybe later, when she won’t be occupied.
She walked slowly, taking the time to profit of each breath. She was calm, away from the excitement and the hard works. She felt freedom, a feeling she hadn’t had for a long time.
She continued walking down, going past acquaintances and friends and stopping to wave them a shy hoof from time to time. She stopped by the Sugarcube Corner, deciding she should go take something to eat, and stop by to say hello to her crazy friend, Pinkie, as well.
As she got in, Mrs. Cake saluted her and took her command. She looked around for the pink pony, but she was nowhere to be seen. As Mrs. Cake came back to give her cookie she ordered, Fluttershy asked her in a shy tone, “Where is Pinkie Pie?”
“Oh, I remember seeing her go to the basement,” she informed. “I haven’t seen her since.”
“Why did she go to the basement?” Fluttershy asked in the same shy tone.
“Oh, it’s her own private corner,” said the blue mare. “She always goes there to do private things,” she explained. “Nobody ever got there except her.”
“Can I still go see her? Well, i-if you don’t mind,” asked the shy mare. “Yes, of course,” nodded Mrs. Cake in return, pointing her left hoof to a door at the end of the wall.
Fluttershy turned the doorknob and got in, shaking. She was scared of the dark, which was a very bad advantage since the room didn’t seem to have much light as she first saw it. Though, by the very few of the room illuminated, she could figure out from the start that the dozen of steps leaded to a very wide room.
She got in, walked a few steps down, and then froze when Mrs. Cake told her she’ll block the door so no guests think they can come in. She waited for a few moments, trying to get used to the complete darkness that lay in front of her. When she started seeing the beginning of the floor, at the end of the stairs, she decided she could see enough to continue on.
Fluttershy was very frightened and moved into very slow movements, scared to bump into something she can’t see. She spotted a dim light not far, which she guessed was Pinkie, so she decided to follow it. As she approached, she could hear some weak whispers slowly get into real words, said in the well-known pitched voice of her friend.
“One spoon, two spoons, three spoons…”
“Pinkie?” the shy mare said, finally finding the pink mare. She was standing on two hooves, near a counter. In her right hoof was a spoon, in her left one was a bowl she held. She couldn’t quite see her expression, nor what she was doing very clearly, since the pink mare was back-facing her.
“… Five spoons, six spoons, seven spoons, eight spoons, nine spoons…”
Pinkie kept taking a spoonful of the bag of sugar that stood on the counter, next to her, and dropped each spoon in the bowl, which she guessed must have been a mix for a treat.
“… Eleven spoons, twelve spoons, thirteen spoons, fourteen spoons, fifteen spoons,” the pink pony kept counting each spoonful, ignoring the shy mare that waited in the back. “…Sixteen spoons, seventeen spoons, eighteen spoons- OH I CAN’T STAND IT ANYMORE!” she suddenly shouted, making Fluttershy jump back and nearly faint. The pink mare threw the spoon in a random direction, but the sound of it touching the floor was really not strong so she must have sent it far. She took the bag of sugar with two pink trembling hooves, held it up above the bowl and let all the containing pour down into filling the mix with white crystals. “There! That’s better!” she said in her normal happy voice, before throwing the empty bag as well and nearly aiming at Fluttershy’s head.
“P-Pinkie?” the shy mare asked, a bit terrified by the suddenly extreme act of her friend. The crazy pony finally took notice over the yellow mare’s whisperings and turned around to greet her. “Oh hi Fluttershy, didn’t expect to see you here!”
The greeting might have been nice, but what Fluttershy saw wasn’t nice at all.
As Pinkie turned, it enabled the shy mare to see her better. The pink pony’s face was terrifying. She had huge pouches under her eyes, probably by an enormous lack of sleep. Her eyes were still wide open, and the red lines of them were very apparent, as they all made a circle around her extremely small pupils. She was grinning, showing all her teeth. Her ears were down, probably because she felt unsafe with all the sugar, but that was nothing compared to her mane and tail. Her normally puffy hair became wild, but this time, truly wild. In her curly hair could be found bits of straight pink streaks, and some of the curls even got above her head, dancing in all directions. She was all shaky but didn’t seem to care, and by her look, she seemed to have lost it.
“I-I think you put too much s-sugar,” Fluttershy did her best to say. Pinkie turned around to face the pile of sugar that dripped from the bowl. “What, this? Oh, no no no, this is nothing, really!” she beamed carelessly. “This is just a low-sugar treat, don’t worry!” her grin transformed into an ear-to-ear smile as she stuck out her tongue, mixing the fastest she could. Her overload of sugar transformed the pink pony into a real mixer, and she went even faster than the fastest machine Fluttershy had ever seen, throwing sugar everywhere. Fluttershy thought at the cookie she had in her bag, and at the idea that Pinkie probably made it like this, she suddenly didn’t want to eat it.
“There!” Pinkie shouted out very loudly. “Off you go, in the oven!” she turned around, holding the bowl as a Frisbee, and threw it right into the open oven door, who closed due to the high air pressure that followed the shot bowl. It was put at maximum heat, and after 3 seconds, smoke already came out of it. “Uh.. Pinkie…” “What?!” the earth pony shouted, like if the shy mare had bothered her from something important. She turned around, looking at the smoky oven, not understanding what her friend wanted. When the smoke alarm finally started beeping, Pinkie jumped to the oven, opening it wide to reveal the fire that set inside it. “There! It’s done~!”
She took out a plate of dark burning stuff. Fire was spitting out of it, but Pinkie seemed to been gone too nuts to even notice her hooves were going red from the heat. She went to Fluttershy, stretching her hooves into putting the fire right under the Pegasus’ muzzle. The shy pony bounced back, scared of the sudden heat burning her nose. She saw a new grin from the crazy pony behind the flames. “Wanna try it?” she asked, eyes wide. “N… No t-thank you…” the yellow Pegasus replied, backing up. Her friend normally was acting crazy, and everypony knew the crazy Pinkie side she had. But never had she seen her like this. Because “crazy” has many definitions and this is not one of Pinkie’s.
The pink pony looked at the flaming cake, trying to find what could be wrong about it. “Oh, well, too bad,” she shrugged. She opened her mouth widely as she passed the flames through it along with the plastic plate. At Fluttershy’s surprise, Pinkie swallowed the whole without even chewing it. The earth pony then stuck out her tongue to lick the pieces of burned cake around her mouth. “That was delicious!” she exclaimed. “You missed something really good.”
She turned to a cake that stood on a shelf, and at Fluttershy’s surprise, it was perfectly iced. The pink pony ran her hoof on the perfect icing, taking a lick of it. As soon as she swallowed the sugar, she shivered from head to toe. “You really need to eat this. It will change your life,” she said at the yellow Pegasus, somehow seriously. “I-I don’t… think so,” the shy mare replied.
Pinkie stared at her with her small pupils for very long. A bit too long, actually, and it made Fluttershy feel pretty bad. Did she say the wrong thing? “I… I mean… I- “You can’t know,” the pink pony interrupted in such a serious and deadly tone that it made Fluttershy freeze. “You don’t know how many ponies made me sad in my life,” Pinkie finished.
“… I never- “You did, too,” the pink mare interrupted once more. “EVERYPONY did!” The crazy mare shouted. “Everypony already made me feel bad once, and almost NOPONY excused themselves!” she looked very angry now, unlike the crazily happy pony she was seconds ago. “I would have cried, every day, every night,” she turned around in a circle, and then stopped to look at the shy mare with those flaming crazy-looking eyes. “… If it wasn’t for sugar.”
Fluttershy looked at her, mystified, as a smile stamped back on the pink pony’s face. Pinkie got up on her two hooves, throwing her front hooves in the air. “Sugar changed my life! Since the day I tasted THIS cake,” she pointed the cake she had tasted a short time ago, “my life changed! Sugar made me see another part of the world. A world of happiness,” she went back on her four hooves, looking at the shy mare with that same crazy face she had when Fluttershy had first saw her. “A world where you are never sad, a world of reality. Sugar made me happy, Fluttershy,” she said calmly. “Sugar made me happy. Don’t you want to be happy too…?”
The yellow mare looked at her, scared. Pinkie had obviously lost her mind, and from what she said, she had probably lost it since a long time. But Fluttershy still saw her as her friend, and didn’t want to hurt her, especially when seeing how happy sugar seemed to make her. “I… I don’t know…” she replied shyly, backing up a bit.
“Then, try, and you’ll see,” the earth pony said happily as she went back to the ‘magic’ cake, and shot it on the floor. The sugary pastry turned and turned as it swept the floor to stop at Fluttershy’s hooves. “Go on,” the pink mare said happily.
The Pegasus looked at the cake, unsure. “I… I don’t think I want to try…” she babbled. Pinkie hopped back to her. “Why not?” she took a piece of cake with her hoof, and shot it right in the yellow mare’s mouth. As she removed it, she shouted, “Eat it!”
Fluttershy swallowed the piece of cake, but the overload of sugar was too much for her. She fell to the ground, banged her head, and blacked out.
As Fluttershy woke up, she took a while to see again. The pastry made her all dizzy, and she could barely get back up. The shy mare found a smiling pink ball at her end, waiting for her wakening. Fluttershy placed a hoof on her forehead, trying to calm the dizziness. “P-Pinkie…?” she mouthed.
The pink pony beamed at her words. “Oh yay, you’re awake!!!” she said, excited. As Fluttershy’s vision placed itself, she saw the pink pony take the cake and put it on her belly. “Want more?” she asked hopingly.
The yellow mare looked at the cake, then at Pinkie, and back at the pastry. She was loosing consciousness again, though she was still awake. She blurrily stretched her hoof to pick another piece of cake, and moved it into her mouth. Her tongue tasted a delicious, heavenly taste, making her smile shyly. She took another bite, and another, and another. She started seeing black, but she continued. Another, and another, and another. She wasn’t controlling her movements anymore; she became only a ghost hidden in the decor, though her body continued moving by itself. It was a weird sensation, but Fluttershy somehow couldn’t control her actions anymore. She continued until her last bite.
The pink pony was very happy after seeing her eating everything. Pinkie seemed somehow satisfied of making her friend discover that paradise she lived in. She leaned closer, curious. “So,” she grinned, “Did you like it?”
The yellow mare nodded unconsciously, a shy smile appearing on her face.
“How do you feel?” asked Pinkie Pie, tilting her head on the side. Fluttershy took a while to understand what the pink mare said, since she started loosing her senses as well. As she looked up to look at the earth pony with big, neuter eyes, she arrived to make a large smile, bigger than she ever did. She looked at Pinkie, understanding her story she told her. She wasn’t scared anymore, neither sad. She seemed to have lost all emotions she could feel, except an extreme feeling of happiness that filled her entire body like a blanket warming her blood. She slowly blacked out, leaving her body, as a mysterious light made of white crystals kept it alive.
“Happy,” the thing said.
