It sat on the table with a restricting glass down over it.
It was sickening her just looking at it.
She wanted to devour it.
She needed to devour it.
But alas, she could not. The pastry was a small muffin with strawberry glaze expertly placed in a perfect amount. This teased her all the same because she, once again, could not eat it. It had a certain dye inside that Mrs. Cake said is "bad on Pinkie's nerves".
When Pinkie asked why she was able to eat other red things, like apple. Mrs. Cake would simply say that they didn't have the ingredient that some pastries and candy contained.
There was only one word that Pinkie could think of as a response, but it only fueled Mrs. Cake's reasoning.
'Kumquat' was the only legible word she knew would fit there at the time anyway.
Taking a deep breath, she decided that she would go with a more beguiling approach before she would try anything sneaky.
She peered through the crack in the door that was slightly ajar. The bakery had a mild flow of costumers and Mr. Cake was running the register. This was perfect.
She opened the door carefully, slinking up to Mr. Cake trying to be nonchalant despite failing horribly at it. Once she was inches away from him, she called his name. She was probably a little louder than she should have been based on the scream he let out and the weird squirming motion he made as he dove over the counter to escape what could have been potentially trying to eradicate him. As he peered over the counter to lay his sights on his attacker, he let out a bemused groan when he found the pink mare bobbing back and forth.
"Ugh.... yes Pinkie?"
"Can I have one of those muffins in the back?"
"The strawberry ones?"
"Yeah! Those!
"Well Pinkie, normally I would say yes, but..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know..."
Shot down, but it wasn't over. She made her way to the kitchen and over to the display the muffins were in. Extraction was going to be tricky, but she could pull it off. With one quick motion, she attempted to grab the glass shielding. She stumbled back, gripping her muzzle.
"Maybe grabbing the glass with my mouth wouldn't be the best idea." She thought out loud rubbing her muzzle.
After a series of quick thoughts, a revolutionary thought crossed her mind. What if she grabbed the glass with her hooves?
She formed her hooves around the glass, barely touching hovering them above it before pressing them on the glass. With another quick quick motion, the glass was lifted. As quickly as it was lifted, however, gravity took it's turn for the worst, causing the glass to crash onto the ground.
"Pinkie?! What's going on in there?" A familiar voice called from the other side of the kitchen door.
Pinkie knew that voice. It belonged to Mrs. Cake.
"Er, yeah! I'm just uh..."
"Just what?"
"Kumquat!"
"Er.... alright? Just, uh, clean up any messes you made please..." The voice drifted away from the door.
Pinkie let out a relieved sigh, thanking Celestia that she didn't enter the kitchen.
After cleaning up the broken glass, she quickly realized that she had every ability to eat to her heart's content. She finished her job at an abnormal speed and went to the tray.
They were perfect.
She picked one up, fearing that if she grabbed it too hastily, she might mar the overall outstanding quality of the pastry. The smell was enticing and she couldn't stand the infinite supply of teasing that the baked goods gifted her. As she took a bite from the top, chills ran up her spin, giving her a pleasant feeling. The taste wasn't too over the top, but it was still quite the taste. The mix of strawberry and bran surely complimented each other with every bite.
There was something else there as well.
Something she couldn't taste that made her tingle all over. It wasn't sudden, but it was slowly making itself apparent.
A whole new energy engulfed her body. She found herself sprinting out of the kitchen faster than she could ever imagine.
The crowd in the bakery increased in size from the first time she entered the area. Her sky blue eyes glimmered at all the new faces in the bakery she had yet to see that day.
A smile grew as she charged to the first table she could see with a mare and her filly.
The mare was a grey one with a blonde mane. Her filly bore the same quality except she had a slightly different coat color.
"HOW ARE YOU GIRLS TODAY?!" She shouted a little louder than she meant to.
"Uh?"
"WELL I AM JUUUUUST DANDY TODAY!" Pinkie squealed, not giving them time to answer as they stared at her in utter confusion. "ANYWAY, DO YOU NEED ANYTHING?"
"Yeah, um, we'll take a-"
"KUMQUAT!" Pinkie screeched.
"Er, what?" The grey mare asked, her eyes not exactly meeting Pinkie's.
"OH NOTHING!"
"Oh, um, okay? Well we'll take two muffi-"
"STRAWBERRY MUFFINS?! OOOOOH GOOD CHOICE!" Pinkie cried, charging into the bakery, piling ten onto a plate and one in her maw before charging back out.
"HERE YOU GO!"
"Er, we only need two but, uh, thank you." The mare said, smiling awkwardly.
With that Pinkie spun around and ran into the kitchen to meet a sight that she would dread to see for the next fifteen minutes or so.
All the muffins were gone.
"But how? There were, like, ten when I left?!" She thought out loud once more. "I need to get to the bottom of th- OOOH A BIT!" She cried, picking up a shiny gold coin misplaced from somepony's bit bag.
She shook her head, and her look shifted to one of determination. She will find who did this.
She slipped out of the bakery and glanced around. The muffins had to be in the general area, they just had to. She scanned the area until she finally found them, a grey mare with a set of quirky eyes and her filly sat at a booth staring awkwardly at a large pile of strawberry glazed muffins. With that, Pinkie put on her detective's hat she always had for just such an occasion.
She charged to the table with a "AHA!"
"Er, miss? Could you take these b-"
Pinkie shot to the mare, only inches away from her face.
"Listen to me missy. I have no idea who you are, and I don't know what you want. If you're looking for bits, I can tell you I only have one." She paused to glare at her. "But what I do have, however, are a very particular set of skills: a set of skills I have acquired while baking here over many, many years. Skills that make mares like me a nightmare for ponies like you. If you give me my muffins now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for them, I will not pursue them. But if you don't, I will look for them, and I will find them. And I will eat them."
The whole bakery sat in silence.
That eerie kind of silence that makes you feel like something bad was going to happen.
The grey mare sat in such a silence with Pinkie before finally speaking up.
"They're right here; you gave me too many of them!" She cried.
Pinkie stared at the muffins, eight of them sat a tray before them. It was clear that some were eaten, but that mattered not in Pinkie's mind. She retrieved them from the table, gave the mare and her daughter weird look, then sprinted to the door. She smiled as she charged the door to the kitchen.
"Wait? Why am I planning on running through? This door isn't double hin-" Before she could finish her rather loud thought, she slammed into the door. The pastries flew everywhere, meeting their unexpected end on the floor of Sugar Cube Corner.
Pinkie laid there for only a moment before shooting straight up and glancing around. The mangled corpses of the muffins frightened her. Shooting up and running into the kitchen for a broom, she found the one mare she did not want to see.
"KUMQUAT!"
