In a wonderful little country known as Equestria, there was a small town that was named 'Ponyville'. And in this nice little town, there was a stallion who was absolutely determined to open a confectionery shop. Not just a confectionery shop, mind you, but the greatest confectionery shop that the town, no, the world, had seen. There was just one small problem; nopony had ever tried to open a confectionery shop in Ponyville, or at least one that only sold that sort of thing. The stallion also had a bit of a financial problem, which was probably a much bigger problem if you think about it. His story is one of drama, near-misses, the forming and breaking of friendships, failure, and a lovely romance that saved it all.
This is not his story.
But it does involve his confectionery shop.
***
Derpy Hooves awoke to an ear-splitting, ringing noise. Keeping her eyes closed, she stretched a hoof out from under the blankets, seeking the cause of the awful noise. Her hoof fumbled around on the desk next to her bed, pushing a small paperback off and onto the floor, then bumping into a lamp, before finally touching the round object that was causing the racket. She lifted her hoof up, and then slammed it down onto the infernal contraption. The little machine was quiet once again.
This was immediately followed by another alarm going off on the other side of the room. Derpy cracked her eyes open, and turned over to see her backup alarm clock going completely bonkers on a table at the opposite side of the room. Groaning, Derpy pushed the blankets off of her, and sat up on the edge of her bed. The gray pegasus pushed herself off the comfortable bed, and stumbled her way over to the table holding the crazed clock. Derpy raised a hoof and gently pressed down on the bells on top of the clock, stopping the alarm. Her mind noted the time: six-thirty.
For some reason, that seemed very important to her.
With her mind now half-awake, she shambled out of her tiny bedroom, down the hallway, and into the bathroom. She groggily performed the very important daily ritual of cleaning up: Run a comb through the hair. Dab some toothpaste on the brush. Scrub. Spit. Rinse.
As she exited the bathroom and walked through the den, her mind registered a blue uniform and hat placed on a chair. It filed the information away, and pushed the command of get coffee now to the front of her mind.
Derpy walked into the kitchen, making her way over to the wonderful little machine that produced a black liquid guaranteed to wake her up. Pouring some powdered substance into the machine's top and turning it on, she patiently waited while the machine coughed and gurgled away. Occasionally, drops of the caffeinated beverage would fall into a mug sitting on the counter under the machine.
Derpy yawned, and her drowsy mind returned to the blue uniform and hat. There was something about them that kept bugging her. Derpy felt certain that once she drank some coffee, she'd figure it out.
The little machine on her counter blubbed and glugged, before giving a high pitched whistle that indicated it was finished. Derpy grabbed the mug in her hoof, and chugged the coffee down in two gulps.
Slamming the mug back into its little niche under the machine, her now fully awake mind tried to remember the significance of the blue uniform and hat.
Blue uniform and hat...blue uniform and hat... Oh yeah! That's my work...clothes... What time was it, again? Derpy raised her head to look at a wall-mounted clock, which read six fifty-five. Derpy's eyes widened, and she rushed back into the den, hastily putting on the uniform and pressing the little blue cap on top of her blonde mane.
Fifteen seconds later, Derpy was rocketing over Ponyville, heading straight for the post office.
***
With the sun now high in the sky and other ponies starting daily routines of their own, Derpy flew to the next house on her route. She had just barely made it into the office on time, earning an earful from her boss about how she wasn't supposed to crash through the doors and break the brand new punch-card machine. He had been more angry than he normally was when it came to the punch-card bit.
Well, if I wasn't supposed to punch it with the cards, then why's it called a 'punch-card machine'? Derpy thought as she placed an envelope into a mailbox.
Flipping the mailbox lid closed, and flipping the little flag on it to the up position, Derpy flew to the next home on her route. It used to be the Golden Oak library, but thanks to a certain jerk from Tartarus, Derpy now had to fly to a castle on the outskirts of town. And although Derpy would never complain to a princess about where she lived, her route had been only half as long when that princess lived in a library in the center of town. Dropping the envelopes in the slot on the castle's door, Derpy turned around and headed back into town, continuing her route.
It was close to noon when Derpy arrived at Sugarcube Corner. The confectionery store was a nice place on her route, mainly because she always arrived there in time for her lunch hour, and the shop always had Derpy's favorite little baked good in stock. Derpy's stomach rumbled, letting the mare know that she'd neglected to eat any breakfast earlier. Hopefully a muffin or two would help solve that problem. Maybe three muffins, just to be safe...
Derpy smiled as she walked into the shop, a bell hanging from the ceiling giving off a pleasant little ding when she pushed the door open. As she fished the letters addressed to the Cakes and Pinkie Pie out from her saddlebags, she thought about what type of muffin she would have liked for the day. Maybe a blueberry, or a lemon, or maybe even banana! She walked up to the store's counter, where Mr. Cake was standing with a friendly little smile that most shopkeepers have when they're greeting a customer.
"Morning, Mr. Cake! I got a couple of letters for you today," Derpy said as she pulled some envelopes out from her saddlebag and hoofed them over to the yellow stallion, who stuffed them in a pocket on his apron. Derpy looked down at the treats on display behind the glass in the counter, looking for a muffin that might catch her eye. To her surprise, she didn't see any muffins at all. Her smile fell for a moment, before she looked back up at Mr. Cake.
"Where's the muffins?"
"Oh, we sold the entire stock this morning. If you come back in a few hours, I'm sure we'll have some more." Mr. Cake said.
Derpy's smile collapsed into a neutral line. Her stomach rumbled again, louder than before.
"...You sold the entire stock?" She asked.
"Uh... Yes, that's right..."
"You're out...of muffins?" Derpy's face started contorting in irritation. Her left eye started to twitch, her teeth ground together, and one of her ears folded back.
"...Yes..." Mr. Cake's friendly little grin vanished, and he started to back away from the counter. Previous experience had taught him that it wasn't wise to be close to Derpy if the mare had a freak out.
For one to understand Derpy Hooves' frustration, one needs to know that Sugarcube Corner was the only confectionery shop in Ponyville that sold muffins. The shop was literally the only place for miles around where a pony could buy muffins, cupcakes, normal cakes, et cetera. It's also important to know that it was not a good idea to keep Derpy Hooves from getting muffins.
No, seriously, the last time it happened she went completely nuts and wreaked havoc all over the town of Ponyville. Laser beams, freaking laser beams, had shot out of her eyes! Granted, she'd gone through anger management classes since then, but still...
Derpy took a deep breath, then turned around and casually walked out of the shop. Behind her, Mr. Cake breathed a heavy sigh of relief, and then fainted. Mr. Cake did not handle stress very well.
Flying up and over Ponyville once she was on the street, Derpy started to fly towards Canterlot, because that was the closest place that had a store that sold muffins, and by Celestia, Derpy was going to have a muffin before the day was up.
Though it'd be preferable if it was during her lunch hour...
Derpy Hooves hummed as she flew through the clear sky. She often did so whenever she had to fly a long way. It helped her deal with the boredom such long flights produced, and humming wasn't as loud or as obvious as singing tended to be. Derpy often thought about singing whenever she hummed, but those thoughts never really went anywhere other than very noisy showers.
She wasn't really angry about the lack of muffins in Sugarcube Corner. A little annoyed, perhaps, but not mad. She had, after all, learned to manage her temper in those anger management classes. It was just that Sugarcube Corner never seemed to run out of cupcakes, but they ran out of muffins almost every other month. Derpy thought that if Pinkie Pie liked muffins as much as cupcakes, Sugarcube Corner would probably never run out of them.
The truth was that Pinkie Pie liked muffins just as much as cupcakes, but muffins took slightly longer to make. Of course, Derpy did not know this.
Derpy decided to discuss the issue with Pinkie the next time she saw her.
A short time later, Derpy landed outside of Canterlot. She trotted through the large gate to the city, made her way to the first street she saw, and stopped. She squinted as she tried to remember the layout of the city. She lifted a hoof to her chin, stopped humming her little tune, tilted her head to the right, and thought about the last time she had visited the place. Her last visit hadn't been too long ago, but enough time had passed to make the memory fuzzy and hard to reach. Derpy slowly remembered a very strange talk she'd had with Lyra Heartstrings in the city during her last visit.
The green unicorn had told her all about some job at a research laboratory, or something like that. Derpy remembered that it had been a very interesting conversation, but she couldn't remember just what it was that made it interesting, or what it had to do with finding a bakery. Science was a good thing, but muffins were more important to Derpy.
Keeping a hoof under her chin, the gray pegasus sat down on the street, closed her eyes, and stuck out her tongue. A few of the 'upper-class' unicorns looked at her like she was out of her mind. They did not recognize the universal thinking pose when they saw it, for they had never really thought that much. Other ponies, ones who were not considered 'nobles', saw Derpy in the thinking pose and nodded respectfully, recognizing a great thinker when they saw one.
Think, Derpy thought to herself. Think, think, think. There's a bakery here somewhere... What was it called again? Robot Bill's? Merry Treats? No, no, it was... it was...
A glowing light bulb appeared suddenly over Derpy's head. She opened her eyes, and looked at it for a moment. Then, she remembered.
***
Meanwhile, in Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle was trying to figure out just what had happened to a new light bulb. She had just pulled it out of the box, and was just about to screw it into a socket when she sneezed. When she recovered, the light bulb was gone. She called her assistant, Spike, into the room, and the two of them started looking for the little bulb.
***
Donut Drops? Derpy thought. Easy Cooker? No... Donut Pretzel? Donut... Donut something. It's Donut something.
Donut Joe's? Yeah, that's it! The bakery's called Donut Joe's! Derpy grabbed the light bulb with her mouth, and placed it in a pouch on her mailbag.
Derpy had never had a chance to visit Donut Joe's bakery, but Derpy knew that every bakery had to have muffins, because if it didn't have muffins it wasn't a real bakery, and the pony in charge wasn't really a baker.
Derpy hoped that Donut Joe was a real baker.
Donut Joe was not a real baker. As a matter of fact, Joe had never made a single muffin in his entire life. He liked muffins as much as he liked filing tax returns, and he liked filing tax returns as much as he liked visiting his crabby uncle.
Donut Joe was a not-quite-brown-but-not-quite-yellow unicorn whose name had been a silly joke his father had made. The only items he ever made in his bakery were donuts, and cups of coffee. Donut Joe thought that it was rather obvious that he did not make anything other than donuts and coffee, and was annoyed by how many ponies did not know this simple fact. He had been so annoyed, he had put up a sign in his shop's window that read, "I sell donuts and coffee, and nothing else."
Joe was then annoyed at how many ponies never read that sign and continued to ask him for things he did not make. He would often ask those ponies if they had read the sign, and they would tell him that no, they hadn't. Joe would then sigh, and explain to those ponies that if they had bothered to read the sign, they would know that he did not sell anything other than donuts and coffee. Those ponies would then look like they had made a great scientific breakthrough, nod their heads, and walk out of his shop.
Donut Joe did not like those ponies.
His greatest hope was that one day somepony would read the little cardboard sign and tell him that while they had been hoping to get a muffin, they would gladly settle for a donut and a cup of coffee. He thought that if one more pony came into his shop and asked him for something that was not a donut or a cup of coffee, he would scream.
Derpy Hooves did not notice the little cardboard sign stuck in the window of Donut Joe's shop. With a big smile and a rumbling tummy, Derpy pushed the door to Joe's bakery open and walked in. She made her way around the tables set up in the little shop, and trotted up to the counter where Donut Joe was standing.
Donut Joe's left ear folded back a little. Postal workers never walked into his shop, for Joe's shop did not get any mail other than a monthly bill, so it was a little confusing for him to see a wall-eyed, gray and blond pegasus wearing the blue jacket and cap of a postal worker walk into his shop. Joe wondered if the postal service was anything like the police force, which loved to eat donuts and was his biggest source of revenue.
Derpy stood in front of the counter. Cheerfully, she asked Donut Joe a very simple question.
"Muffins?"
She was very confused when the not-quite-brown-but-not-quite-yellow unicorn behind the counter smashed his head into the counter, and started screaming.
