Pie Am Bread
~OR~
A Peculiar Choice in Crossovers
Pinkie Pie woke up that morning under the preposterous notion that she was bread.
Any sense she might have had (for it was always difficult for her friends to tell if or when she possessed any) had escaped her completely. Not only her sense, but, at least from her perspective, her legs and her hair and her hands and her eyes and tongue and teeth and brain and every other physical accoutrement had all vanished. Even her flesh itself, which was now simply a pulp cultivated from wheat. A brown crust ran all the way around her four corners, forming a shape close to a square save for the curious curve on top.
With some struggle, she managed to wrench herself apart from the rest of the loaf, a single sheet of the bread flopping forward and onto the table. Even without eyes, Pinkie was able to scan her surroundings: taking in the glass of milk nearby, and the small plate with the fried egg, and the jar of jam, and the flower-vase obviously meant for dressing the table. And even without a nose, she could smell those flowers. They stunk of perfume.
But what caught Pinkie’s attention the most was the breakfast around her. There was something missing, as if the scene before her was only half-finished in its construction. Suddenly, it hit her: there was no toast.
She was bread. And bread becomes toast. Either that or stale. But preferably, toast. And in the name of sweet, nourishing breakfast, Pinkie Pie swore, she would become toast!
Downstairs, Pinkie’s father started his morning by relaxing with his usual cup of coffee and a skim of the early-morning paper. His graying mop of hair went uncrowned for now, his iconic black hat resting on the endtable next to his couch, where he currently was seated. His eyes, green and droopy, read the newspaper perfectly, thank you, regardless of how often his wife would bother him to wear those superfluous glasses.
The rock farm’s chores could stand to wait a few minutes, and waking his daughters for their participation in those rituals could stand to wait a few minutes as well. His girls, precious and irreplaceable little angels in his paternal opinion, had been working hard lately both in their farm duties and in their schooling. They could be afforded a small clemency this morning.
He jumped when he heard a thump from upstairs. Pinkie’s room, from the sound of it. She might have fallen out of bed. Ejecting a sniff from his nose as he shut his eyes and allowed a smile to match his sigh, he drank from his coffee mug, set down his paper and cup both, then walked upstairs. Seems one angel fell out of heaven and bumped her halo, he thought to himself.
As he ascended the stairs (the second one creaking loudly as it always did, no matter what measure he took to fix it over the years) he heard another thump. Then another, and another. The thumping become louder and louder and nearer and nearer, and merely the sound itself was surreal enough to alarm him.
Just as he decided he’d shoot up the stairs, he saw his daughter Pinkie at the very top. She stood stock-still, standing straight up like she were tied to an invisible board. There was a look on her face, somewhere between determination and confusion, as if she were a zealot who neither knew nor questioned what the point of her mission was.
He opened his mouth to ask her what on earth she was doing up there. His words had no chance to leave his mouth or take shape from his thoughts, as Pinkie leaned forward and suddenly shot through the air, tumbling toes over tea kettle over the stairs. The very sight of this strange and dangerous behavior stopped the poor man’s heart, fear for his daughter’s safety and sanity almost twisting the aging organ in two.
The trajectory of Pinkie’s fall was such that it initially fooled her father into thinking she would break her head upon the hard, polished wood of the stairs. But for some strange and mystical reason, her stiffened body limbered up midway through her flight, and she barreled not just over her father’s own head, but over the entirety of the staircase. Perhaps strangest of all—dash the “perhaps”, this was the part that made her father consider consulting professional psychiatric help for both his daughter and himself! The strangest part of all was that upon her approach to the low ceiling of the living room, she suddenly stuck to it as if she were made of some kind of adhesive!
There was never a sufficient explanation for much of Pinkie’s behavior. She only ever said whatever maverick thoughts danced through her mind, only ever did whatever irregular actions captured her fancy for that moment. Though she occasionally would talk in her sleep (murmuring something ironically more sensible than her waking statements), Pinkie had never had a history of walking in her sleep. Nothing of this level ever occurred, not even when she was at her strangest. But this spectacle was nothing short of mystifying, confusing, and—to her onlookers—utterly terrifying to watch.
Her father, his hand raised up over his face, began to cry for his angel. He fell on the stair he was on, prayers he was taught as a boy mumbling through lips turned paper-white and flimsy through equal measures of bafflement and fright.
Pinkie—still with her zealous facial expression, still with the strange stiffness and squareness of her body—began to fold off from the lowered ceiling, and the first thought through her father’s mind was that she was going to fall. As all fathers do for their children, he leapt into action the moment he sensed the danger; but for this unfortunate fellow, this unfortunate morning, he met an equally unfortunate consequence of this hasty decision.
Instead of merely falling down to the floor as her father had expected, Pinkie’s upper body flopped onto the ceiling behind her, bending her whole body into an uncomfortable-looking U-shape. Her head pulled her shoulders forward, flattening her out on the ceiling, her back now facing the floor below, her long, rose-pink hair hanging down like a curtain. Once more, her body moved, this time a little more cautiously, her feet swinging down and around. Her head somehow supporting her whole body mid-swing, and her whole body moved as if it were a stiff board merely being pushed over, flattening her against the ceiling. And she continued in this fashion, her body flipping and flattening in a bizarre form of locomotion unexplainable by science.
Her father, meanwhile, had leaped down the stairs as is detrimental to a man his age, and though he’d hoped to at least break his beloved daughter’s fall, he instead merely broke a rib. The explosive sound he made upon landing, followed by an awful squall that shook through his throat, finally awoke the rest of the house.
His wife was the first down the stairs, still in her nightgown, her eyes wide with terror the moment she found her husband writhing on the floor at the foot of the stairs. “Oh—! My land!” she cried, “did you trip down the stairs?!”
He responded with a small gurgle, still struggling to regain the ability to breathe. She shot down the stairs as their other three daughters—Limestone, Marble, and Maud—opened their bedroom doors and wandered out into the early-morning house, rubbing the sleep from their eyes as they shuffled to the stairs. Upon the discovery of their father’s wounded state, all three bolted down the staircase as their mother carefully rolled him over. His arms defensively clutched around his sides, his face beet red, his mouth groping for air.
“What happened?” Maud asked, her voice droning like something dead and disinterested with its afterlife.
Marble gasped and pointed. The family received their answer as they watched Pinkie Pie’s atypical locomotion on the ceiling, and saw her move from ceiling to wall, then from wall to the door. Somehow (perhaps some witchcraft was at work, who knew) she managed to open the front door, and out into the world she flung herself, the same way she did from the staircase.
And so, upon the world was unleashed Pinkie Pie the Human Bread.
Simply moving across the table was quite the chore, Pinkie thought as she flip-flopped across the table. Tricky as simply moving her bread-body was, trickier still was the necessity of crossing the filthy floor below and reach the kitchen island unsullied. Flinging herself forward appeared the only option she had, and upon seizing it, realized only halfway across the floor, that she might not make it.
Fortunately, she had managed to latch onto the front of the kitchen island. How on earth, or in all and any creation for that matter, a slice of bread was able to latch onto anything was a mystery she preferred unsolved, as it aided her quest and proved very convenient.
She heard a loud shriek of breaking glass somewhere behind her, and her keen bread awareness told her she’d accidentally touched the jam jar upon her initial launch, and knocked it right off the table and onto the floor, where it shattered into a swamp of glass shards and strawberry-flavored bread decoration. Serves the thing right for getting left so close to the edge of a table at any rate.
Unperturbed, Pinkie continued: flip, flip, flip, flip, flip… But upon each flip of her body, she felt herself grow weaker, as if whatever force was keeping her adhered to the island’s white paint was growing more distant by the second. But Pinkie was not a quitter—no, sir! She refused defeat the same way she refused broccoli: with utter disgust, disdain, disrespect, and quite the laundry list of other “dis” words.
Her power felt the most distant just as she reached the kitchen island’s countertop. She had perhaps a few seconds left before she would fall to the floor below, where no doubt filth would cake onto her wheaty sides and vermin would skitter along to take a nibble of her. With a great force, she managed to fling herself up and over, onto the countertop just as she lost all energy to do much else. She rested for a moment or two, then took in her surroundings once more.
Toaster. She embarked to fulfill her breadly duties and become toast. She would need a toaster. But where?
The countertop itself had a cake shielded from a hungry world by a glass dome near the wall, and a half-finished Jenga game near Pinkie. Between them was a line of ants, who were invading a rather misfortunate basket of fruit, taking chunks of the stuff back to their headquarters. Avoiding them would prove challenging.
Ah! But over there, far, far away on the end of the kitchen, was the grand—the beautiful—the destination of her journey—THE TOASTER. Her heart, such as it existed in her current form, was elated. Had she lips and lungs, Pinkie would have sung. Instead, as she continued her trek to THE TOASTER, she kept the song in her mind. It went thusly:
All across the kitchen, I’ve been a-floppin’!
To a toaster I’ve been sent
No way, no how this slice is stoppin’
’Til my journey’s at an end!
An absurd and spontaneous song was par for the course for Pinkie Pie, but the degree of near-religious fervor would have disturbed anyone who heard it. Hearing bread sing at all would disturb anyone, for that matter. Let us move onto the next scene before we travel that line of thought into a swamp of needlessly uncomfortable ideas.
The three Apple siblings—nee Bloom, Jack, and their big brother Big Macintosh—rode along the dusty road in Macintosh’s rust-red truck, bumping slightly here and there, but steady and comfortable nonetheless. The morning had been a tad chilly when they’d gone and done their farmwork, and by the time they got their things together to get to school, it became apparent the chill would not let up. Checking the weather reports on her cell phone revealed to Applejack that the day would only become colder, so they’d bundled themselves as soundly as possible. So bundled were the three siblings this morning that poor Apple Bloom waddled out of the house in no fewer than three jackets at her older sister’s request—and both hers and Macintosh’s chagrin.
But some minutes on the road with the heater running and some good old country tunes humming through the radio and their spirits were lifted. They neared the Pie Rock Farm, their gracious neighbors of several generations. They could tell from the size and number of the boulders in their fields that the Pies were far ahead of their schedule.
Macintosh looked at Applejack suddenly, and made a slight motion with his lips. He was never one to speak very much, as whatever he had to say, somehow, his sisters held some kind of unexplained telepathic link. Applejack fussed with the Stetson she held in her lap a bit before she responded to his unasked question. “Naw, Ah don’t think Pinkie or her sisters need a ride this mornin’, Mac,” she said. “If’n she needed ’un, Ah’da received a text from her sayin’ so.”
Apple Bloom screwed her eyes tighter as she craned her neck closer to her window, as if gazing curiously at a rare sight. She pointed a mittened finger outside the truck. “You sure?” she asked in a manner befitting confused children. “’Coz the funny way she’s walkin’ out there looks kinda dang’rous.”
The other two Apples in the truck had all of three seconds to drink in the sight of Pinkie, still in her pajamas, flopping from face to back to face to back along the side of the road before they passed her. Their green eyes widened as their jaws dropped in confusion.
Applejack shakily pointed a finger outside. “Wa-Was Pinkie juss…?”
“E-Eeyup,” Big Macintosh said, genuinely spooked by what he’d seen.
“Mac, what’re you doin’, ya big goob! Stop the truck!!!”
He obeyed his sister’s command, and the truck screamed to a halt, pulling all three of the siblings forward, their seatbelts squeezing them in place before they jolted back to their original positions. Applejack wasted no time in ejecting from the truck, throwing her hat onto her head, scrambling through the chilly air and over the uneven ground to where, indeed, Pinkie was flip-flopping over dirt and sticks and dry grass. She skidded to a halt in Pinkie’s path, where she put one hand on her hip and another out forward, as though she were a police officer stopping a criminal from fleeing.
“Pinkamena Diane Pie, you cut out this nonsense this instant!” Applejack demanded.
Applejack, as anyone close to her can tell you, was a creature used to being the boss. Perhaps it was because her big brother was too doting on her when they were little. Perhaps it even began when she was in her mother’s womb, as there had been stories of how she would thrash around when her mother would eat anything besides apples. Whatever the case, it was to everyone’s great benefit she practiced her bossiness with a certain weight of responsibility attached to it: she would never use it unless she felt there was no other option to control a situation.
So one can imagine her great shock when Pinkie, as if not hearing her demand at all, flip-flop-flip-flopped toward her, until finally, a collision occurred. Her siblings watched from the truck in shock at the sight of Pinkie Pie’s surprisingly bendy body flopping over Applejack, catching Applejack’s blushing face between her thighs. Another flip, and Pinkie bent upwards and knocked poor Applejack off-balance. They teetered—tottered— fell over, with Applejack landing on her back, her blonde hair spilling all about. It was followed by a third flip that carried Applejack forward along with Pinkie for some distance before finally the two disconnected, Applejack left flattened on the ground in a daze, with Pinkie continuing her bizarre pilgrimage down the road. What Applejack growled as she climbed back to her feet would have made sailors blush.
Apple Bloom watched Applejack’s unfortunate encounter alongside Big Macintosh, who leaned over her to witness too this outlandish carnage. She looked up at him with her large, curious eyes and asked, “This is gonna be all over the news ain’t it?”
Big Macintosh nodded sagely. “Eeyup.”
The Jenga set was a difficult obstacle, but tumbled gracelessly, the pieces scattering all across the countertop with a clattering cacophony. Pinkie stood above it a second, triumphant at her accomplishment for toppling a tower is a monumental achievement for a bread of her caliber. Then she resumed: flip, flop, flip, flop.
But the ants! The swarm of flittery dark dots, with their microscopic forms and filthy little seedling bodies. Their neverending want, their incessant invasion. The ants! There had to be some way around them.
And past those pests was the sink. What’s more, the sink was full of water—bread’s natural predator. Touching it surely meant certain doom, and today, like any day, doom would not do. There had to be some way around that.
Then Pinkie remembered the cake in the glass dome. Of course! How simple the answer was, and how easily it had escaped her at first. She resumed, then: flip, flop, flip, flop…
The other two Apples had deserted the truck by this point, intending to help their sister with this Pinkie Pie predicament.
As they chased after Pinkie, whose form of travel—while perplexing—was surprisingly quick, Applejack scrambled her cellphone from her jacket pocket and jammed together a quick text message. Sending out an SOS, as it were, to her other friends, alerting them to Pinkie’s situation. For all the good that might do, of course: besides Pinkie and herself, none of the other girls in their circle of friends lived this far out in the country, and by this time, they’d probably already be on their way to school or even at the school. Still, it was better to prepare them in case Pinkie flip-flopped in their direction.
The situation became stickier once they neared a deep recession. It acted as a bowl for the cold rain from last night. Combined with the sticks and leaves and insects and various refuse passersby had thrown into it over the years, it formed a horrible kind of soup, bordering on stew. The most alarming part of this horrible concoction was that Pinkie was headed straight for it.
Apple Bloom, in spite of possessing much shorter legs than her siblings, was able to reach Pinkie first, and upon closing this distance, leapt for her, her tiny hands open and expecting a grab. Little mittens wrenched around strands of frizzy rose-pink hair, and little feet planted their heels in the ground, and little muscles all worked together to halt Pinkie where she stood.
She slowed Pinkie down only slightly, getting lifted off her feet as Pinkie went another rotation. Applejack reached out and grabbed Apple Bloom’s ankles before she could have endured the same embarrassing routine she’d experienced not ten minutes before. Her green eyes bulged in surprise as the force of Pinkie’s momentum pulled her up and over as well.
But a set of hands the size of canned hams shot forward and grabbed Applejack’s feet, stopping the crazy train abruptly. Big Macintosh strained muscles he never even knew he had to keep Pinkie in place. All three Apple siblings grunted, and heaved, and hissed through clenched teeth as every muscle in their bodies became drawn taut. They held this for several seconds, a train of three cars holding the engine in place.
Finally, Apple Bloom’s tiny fingers ran out of hair to hold onto. The tension that had grown since this interruption had built so much that upon release, Pinkie was catapulted forward as shoved by an invisible and awesome force. She launched clean over the swampy stew, landing onto a tree trunk, where she stuck, as if she were a magnet cast upon a refrigerator.
The Apple siblings, however, were pulled forward by the force of Pinkie’s jump, and went for a swim.
Gasping and coughing, they looked up to witness Pinkie flip herself up so that her feet were stuck to the tree trunk, sticking straight out from the side. She wiggled like a flag in the wind. Then she dropped—as if she could have done so this whole time and only chose now to do so—onto the grassy ground below, and continued on her trek as though nothing happened.
Apple Bloom spat out some of the nasty water that had gotten caught in her mouth as Big Macintosh pulled himself up from the mud. He eyed a pink bra that drifted by with some surprise. Applejack kept her eyes on Pinkie as she swam out to give chase. The cold air and the cold water both gave the three siblings chills—followed by the sniffles—followed by a sudden weakness and a yearning for bedrest and hot soup.
“This is gonna be a rough day,” Applejack remarked, sniffling as she looked at her phone. Much to her dismay, the cold water rendered it useless.
The ants were cleared, as was the sink. Pinkie felt invincible—but now was no time to get cocky!
Her last launch was almost a failure. She didn’t think it possible that she would be caught on the cake dome, but even when she was, there was no stopping bread. Bread was a marvelous thing, as was being bread, and because Pinkie was bread, she could become toast, which she aimed to do because she was bread. Bread.
She cleared the sink, landing on the other side with a noisy flop. The other side of the counter was only a smidge or so in diameter, but flip-flopping across it revealed it to be going on longer and longer. What sorcery was this?
But no sorcery could impoverish her resolve, nor could it dampen her goal. Pinkie Pie would flip-flop-flip-flop for miles, for she was glorious bread! Untouchable! Impregnable! Unimpeachable!
BREAD!
The bus sped off with a hiss, the chill in the air getting pulled along with it. Sunset Shimmer put her book back into her bag, and looked up at Canterlot High, its architecture majestic and its presence beautiful. Students who, like her, had only just arrived, were organizing themselves for the day: meeting with friends, getting their tools and books ready, giving enemies ugly glares…
Sunset Shimmer closed and put away the book she was reading, and pulled her scarf until it was snug around her neck, her wool cap pulled further down on her long, fiery mane of hair. Her jacket was thick enough to almost count as its own body, and the purple simply brought the rest of her color scheme together.
She smiled and scoffed after pausing a second, her breath billowing out in a cold cloud. She sounded more like Rarity just now. Sunset turned her head when she heard a voice cry out from some distance behind her, her hair getting caught in a sudden gust of wind and fluttering like a flag, and caught sight of—well, speak of the devil! Rarity was already there, waving her over with a smile on her face.
Rarity weaved through the other students to Sunset, her smile unwavering as she swept her friend into a hug. “So good to see you, darling!” Rarity chirped, holding a giggling Sunset in place before letting go. “How was your weekend? I was so busy with my dressmaking this weekend, I haven’t heard from you—or really, anyone—since Friday.”
“Been reading up on ghosts,” Sunset replied.
“Ghosts?”
“Yeah, spirits and hauntings and stuff.”
Rarity was about to laugh, but caught herself before she did. “Are there such things in the world you’re from?”
Sunset shrugged. “Yes, and no. Yes in that there are ghosts, but no in that they’re hardly the same thing as they are here.”
She could tell from the blank, glazed-over stare she received that Rarity had no clue about what she just said. Things like ghosts and magic was usually not a subject for “proper ladies” of her countenance. Before Rarity would inevitably change the subject from its current topic to fashion, Sunset lifted a finger shyly. “Okay, let me explain that a bit better. You see—”
“HEY GUYS!”
The new voice—scratchy and gasping—shouted from too close a distance. It was as if Sunset and Rarity were standing next to a bomb when it went off. Sunset Shimmer attempted to clean out the ringing in her ear with her pinky as Rainbow Dash hurried over.
“Y-Yes, darling?” Rarity asked.
“Did either of you get AJ’s text?”
“Might have,” Sunset answered. Both girls pulled their phones from their purses, flipping them open. Indeed, there was a new message from Applejack. It read:
keep an i out 4 pinkie
shes actin werder then usual
“It’s unlike Applejack to misspell so many words,” Rarity observed. “Even in a phone text.”
“That means she wrote it in a hurry,” Sunset replied. She turned to Rainbow Dash, who combed her namesake hair with nervous fingers as she fiddled with a button on her jacket. “You okay, Rainbow Dash? You’re usually not this jumpy.”
“Right, it’s just,” Rainbow Dash began before she mumbled something, then began again. “Look, when I got this text, it spooked me for some reason. I can’t explain it. Something’s wrong with Pinkie, and we need to find out what it is.”
“Did you send a reply, darling?”
“Yeah. And that was like, almost twenty minutes ago. AJ’s never waited that long to send a text. Something might have happened to her, or to Pinkie.”
“What do you suggest we do, then?” Rarity asked, hand on hip. “We don’t even know where she is right now.”
Rainbow Dash paused, pensive. She puffed her chest out, deep in thought. Then she lifted a declarative finger. And opened her mouth. And paused. And then sighed. “Yeah, I got nothin’.” She looked to Sunset Shimmer. “Hey, you’re the egghead in this outfit, Sunset. What do you think we should do?”
“Right. What about the road Pinkie’s rock farm is? It’s the same road where Applejack lives. It’s likely she encountered her there. That’s where we should start our investigation.”
Rarity nods and starts off, Rainbow Dash and Sunset at her heels, her car keys already out of her purse and jingling in her hand. Their eyes twinkle with determination as they crossed the schoolyard, past the other students, past the rearing horse statue and its mirror, past the Pinkie flip-flopping past them, past the small gaggle of…
…The three slowly stopped, their eyes widening until their pupils became pinpricks. The way they turn around feels almost needlessly dramatic, but what they turn around to see outdoes their own absurdity.
She was a blur, flip-flopping like she was a stiff board of some kind, her pink curly hair flaming behind her as she motored, speckled with dirt and twigs and her PJ’s almost completely covered in filth. The reactions of the other students to this anomaly ranged from detached (“That’s just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie”), to mildly intrigued (“Well, what’s Pinkie Pie up to now?”), to stunned (“wat”). Many took their cellphones out of their pockets and began recording this strange scene, no doubt intending on passing this story along to their grandkids.
Pinkie slammed finally into the side of Canterlot High, hitting it with the entire front of her body with a jarring thud. This sudden connection pulled Sunset, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash from their stupor, and all three scrambled across the yard, jumping and pushing by and pardoning themselves as they shouted Pinkie’s name.
The horror Pinkie’s family felt was suddenly injected into the entire present school body when, once again, she began to climb up the wall. She began almost cautiously, slowly lifting her body up as her head held fast to the side of the building. Even though Pinkie was upside-down, Sunset was struck by the expression she held: one of blank, empty determination, like one who wants, without really knowing what they want.
Sunset screamed Pinkie’s name as she neared her, her right hand reaching out to grab at her just as her head left the side of the building. Her fingers barely missed the strands of dirtied rosy hair as Pinkie flipped upwards.
Up, and up, and up went Pinkie, up until she flipped into an open window on the second floor.
The three girls—along with the rest of the school—stood stock-still, mouths agape. Rainbow Dash shrugged. “What the heck was that?!”
Almost half an hour passed before she was able to touch the side of the refrigerator, but upon doing so, Pinkie felt her fatigue fade away. Her bready might pulled her along and up the side of the refrigerator, flip, flop, flip, flop, past the children’s drawings, past the magnets, past the calendar, until finally she reached the top.
From this angle, Pinkie could sense the whole kitchen. She could see where she’d been—the table, the broken jam jar, the toppled Jenga game on the counter, the trail of ants, the sink. She could even see THE TOASTER.
It was time.
Flip, flop she went, pushing herself along past the box of envelopes and the phonebook and the basket of apples, to the very edge of the refrigerator. Just below was a nest of knives: someone had left out all this silverware, with their menacing pointed prongs and blades pointing in ways that spelled the doom of any innocent slice of bread. Had someone been cleaning up the kitchen and forgotten to put those away, or…?
But to her side, far, far below, there sat an innocuous skateboard. It was pointed in the same direction as the counter where the toaster sat, offering a much more convenient road to take. But the drop down might prove perilous.
No matter. Not to worry! Pinkie Pie was BREAD, and bread was unafraid of anything. There was no way a little five-foot drop was going to end her journey. Pinkie prepared herself for this perilous drop…
They were arguing about something—and with those two, it was always something—and Sonata Dusk decided somewhere in the middle of the argument that she would invest her attention elsewhere. As Aria Blaze yammered on about how “all this was your fault” and Adagio Dazzle shouted how “why do you have to be such an idiot”, Sonata observed her fellow students.
This one carried a blue backpack with a familiar yellow dot-muncher on the back. His friend, walking alongside him while gesticulating and talking excitedly as the first kindly smiled, wore plaid. Not Sonata’s first choice, but still there was something remarkable about the pattern, stripes of color all overlapping one another. There was that one girl with the purple hair who smiled in her direction at lunch, though she dropped that smile the moment she Sonata's company.
A loud pop burst near her ear, drawing Sonata out of her observations. Adagio had clapped her hands next to Sonata’s ear, and the twisted snarl on her face promised that what came after would not be pleasant. Finally, Sonata’s patience was at its end.
“What are we even arguing about again?” she asked.
“Oh, for—!” Aria groaned, leaning forward as if deflated by Sonata’s response. Without raising her head to look at this shameful creature she considered an associate, Aria raised a hand to articulate her next point. “We were supposed to move this desk.”
“What desk?” Sonata asked, earnestly.
Two thirds of the Dazzlings pointed, with vexation and bright red faces and bulging eyes, to the desk upon which Sonata had perched herself. It had, at one point, been a rather nice mahogany desk, but had grown covered in chips and nicks and scratches and frankly had become an eyesore. Why they were moving the poor thing from one classroom to another was beyond Sonata, quite frankly because she was not paying attention when Principal Celestia was giving them a short explanation along with her demand.
“Oh,” she said slowly, “that desk.”
Adagio reached over, her long fingers curling around Sonata’s arm and yanking her roughly off the desk. She yelped as she crashed to the floor, her blue hair following her like an afterimage. Without wasting a beat, Aria took her place on the other side of the desk, placing her hands on the side and readying herself to give it a shove forward. Thankfully, it came with wheels and didn’t require that much force.
Begrudgingly—as she disliked this task the moment it had been assigned them—Adagio took the other side of the desk and pulled it along, with Aria pushing it. Sonata instead, looked up with her mouth open slightly, as though she was witnessing a divine spectacle.
“What’re you staring at?!” Aria barked.
Sonata pointed up and behind Aria, up the stairs they were passing by.
But it was too late—by the time Aria turned her head, she received a face-full of filthy pink hair, filthy pajamas, and the filthy Pinkie Pie both were attached to. She was knocked forward, bent over the desk itself as her face was crushed against it by the force propelling Pinkie, crumpling as Pinkie carefully flipped over her and onto the desk.
Adagio fought to say something as Sonata simply stared and marveled and snickered at Aria’s sordid fate. As words—whatever shape they could have taken—were nearing an eruption from her mouth, Adagio got a set of pink, bare heels slamming into her forehead. She toppled backwards as her brain rocketed through a universe of pain and imagery and colors and darkness. As she fell onto her back to the floor, Pinkie flattened herself onto the desk and, with a mystical and unexplainable power, rolled it forward with no effort.
The desk shot forth like a bullet, slamming into Adagio on its way forward, jumping over her upon impact then landing onto the floor with a noisome crash and sped along on its way. Sonata watched, her interest waxing from amusement to worry. As the desk carried Pinkie across the hall, with students bolting out of its path, Sonata got up off her knees and ran to Adagio.
She knelt before Adagio and grabbed her, lifting her up by the shoulders into a sitting position, shaking her with a mad fervor. “Adagio! Speak to me!”
Adagio mumbled something—to Sonata, it sounded like a grocery list for Martians—and then there was a small stampede. Sonata looked aside to find Sunset Shimmer and her friends in a full-on sprint, coming right her way. “Pinkie’s been by here, hasn’t she?” Sunset asked the moment she was near enough.
“Well, no,” Sonata answered.
“What do you mean, she hasn’t been by?” Rainbow Dash demanded.
“Nah, that was just a big piece of bread kinda shaped like Pinkie. Looked like she was on her way to a toaster, even though it might not be a toaster.” The wide smile on Sonata Dusk’s face captured the entire group’s confusion.
“Yeah, sure, bread, toasters,” Aria groaned as she struggled to her feet, her hand pressed against the bruise on her head. “Because why not.”
Sonata jerked a thumb in the direction Pinkie escaped to. “She went thattaway!” she chirped.
The chase continued. Rarity chanced a glance behind herself as she followed Sunset and Rainbow Dash to see Sonata fruitlessly slapping Adagio, Aria angrily slapping Sonata, and Adagio woke up and viciously slapped the both of them. She turned her attention back ahead before she could witness those three engage in any further Three Stooges routines.
The skateboard glided along the linoleum, wheels crunching small bits of dirt and crumbs underneath as it carried Pinkie along to the small kitchen cabinet upon which the toaster was perched. She imagined this must be how sailors feel when they’ve been at sea for months and spot their destination at last.
She remained flat on her bready belly, simply waiting for her moment to hop off the skateboard and onto the cabinet’s side. This remaining part should be a piece of cake.
Or should we say, toast?
Pinkie, once more, began singing the song of her people, the bread:
All across the kitchen, I’ve been a-floppin’!
To a toaster I’ve been sent
No way, no how this slice is stoppin’
’Til my journey’s at its end
I’ll slip right into a slot, one of two!
I’ll stay until I’m good and brown
I’ll get crunchy, that’s what I’ll do!
And when I’m dropped, I’ll land, butter-side down!
All across the kitchen, I’ve been a-floppin’!
To a toaster I’ve been sent
No way, no how this slice is stoppin’
’Til my journey’s at its end
And along she sailed across the kitchen floor.
It was always tricky to sneak animals into the school, but the finches and robins and hamsters fit into Fluttershy’s backpack effortlessly—and simply because she asked so nicely, none of them fought or argued or raised a fuss of any kind. They tweeted and squeaked and danced with delight once Fluttershy opened her backpack, greeted by her gentle eyes, eyes the color of the ocean, cupped by her lovely smile.
“Hello, all my little friends,” she cooed. They all chirped in response, chattering away a hello in their own languages. Thankfully, Fluttershy had been around animals long enough to understand them, and was proud that Mr. Finch was making a conscious effort to curb his language when she was around.
Fluttershy looked this way and that, making sure no one else was around. Then she put her hand in, gently, for the hamsters to craw up her arm, stopping at her shoulder and nuzzling against her face as the finches and robins roosted on her head. “Let’s practice for the recital at the animal shelter, okay?” she said.
She turned her eye to the robin. “Williams, you’re up first. Go right ahead.”
Williams leaned his head back, releasing a small, tweeting cough to clear his throat. He threw open his beak, and a hideous noise escaped it, like shouting voices chasing after a crashing wave. Fluttershy jumped back in shock as Williams shut his beak in puzzlement. Yet the noise continued, and grew closer.
Fluttershy lifted her head from her animal friends, and was met by an absurd sight. Gliding along the hall was a battered old teacher’s desk on wheels, and on top of it, striking the pose of a fish mounted on a plaque was Pinkie Pie. Her blue eyes were screwed forward and her mouth was a hard, thin shape, as if she were focusing one hundred percent on navigating the desk. Fluttershy took note of the filth and mud caked to the pajamas she still wore.
Pinkie and the desk both shot by Fluttershy and her animals, who leapt into her arms as the desk nearly bulldozed them. After the loud, grinding scream of the wheels on linoleum came the shouts of her friends Sunset Shimmer, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash, all with flushed faces and gritted teeth, racing after the desk.
Fluttershy observed the desk beat through the hallway door with a loud bang. Sunset, gasping, yelled, “That way leads downstairs!”
Fluttershy’s eyes popped open, her mind finally processing the gravity of this bizarre situation. She dropped her animal friends into her backpack she’d left on the floor next to her locker, quickly telling them to stay put, and please don’t make any noise, she would be right back.
Her shoes clipped along the linoleum as she followed the chase.
The skateboard finally reached her destination, and Pinkie flung herself off before it even collided with the kitchen counter’s floorboards. Up and up she went, passing the cupboards, passing their doors, passing their knobs, until finally she touched the counter itself and with one mighty movement swung herself onto it, landing with a soft flumpth.
And there it was, standing resplendently between the blender and the box of cereal.
Shimmering as brightly as a brand new dawn, was THE TOASTER.
“You have come,” it said with a regal air, “no doubt to claim your destiny. You will become toast, and do as all toast does. You will be slathered with butters and jams of various flavors, and be eaten and digested. You will serve the purpose of nourishing a groggy body before he begins his day’s work. It is likely you will be washed down with coffee. But your end will be a glorious one, and painless, as you will become one with the eater, and live forever within his body.
“Reaching me was your first step to this fate. Now you must realize it.
“Come to me, child.”
Pinkie did not need to be told twice. Choosing not to waste any further time oohing and aahing over the beautiful majesty of THE TOASTER, Pinkie flung herself forward. She finally reached THE TOASTER, and promptly flip-flopped on top of it. Its two slots were like a pair of mouths ready to welcome her in. Pinkie prepared to insert herself into this gorgeous machine.
Then she stopped.
It was not of her own free will that she did, however: it was as if something invisible were grabbing her from behind, and pulling, preventing her from achieving her destiny. It was indescribable, this sudden disconnect from her higher calling awakening somber feelings from deep inside Pinkie.
Then there came a voice.
It was calling her name.
Sunset Shimmer’s arms wrapped tightly around Pinkie’s middle from behind. Rarity caged Pinkie’s right arm with both of hers, while Rainbow Dash did likewise for Pinkie’s left. Fluttershy wrapped her entire body around Pinkie’s legs, clamping hard and refusing to let go. The desk had been smashed to pieces once it crashed down the stairs and flung open the door to Canterlot High’s boiler room.
The boiler itself was an ancient piece of machinery. Many of the students doubted it was younger than five thousand years. Its design, outdated by a good few decades at least, was one that had a large flu on it, looking like a jaw on the face of the thing. Nozzles and dials and other, much more up-to-date machines lined around the thing demurely, as if they were disciples in the presence of some grand sage.
All four girls held in a shriek when they saw the small door on the boiler’s cauldron slowly open as if to welcome Pinkie into its burning hot embrace as she neared it.
“Pinkie!” Rainbow Dash cried in genuine terror. “What the heck is wrong with you?! Don’t go in there!”
“Pinkie, please don’t do this to yourself!” Fluttershy sobbed.
“Pinkie, sweetness, this is beneath you!” Rarity shouted. “We need you! You can’t do this to yourself! You just can’t!”
Pinkie fought them, fought to move forward, to flop forward and into the furnace where she would be cooked to a crackled crisp. Throughout the struggle, her blank expression of mindless zeal remained unchanged.
Sunset Shimmer, whose mouth was closest to Pinkie’s ear, said her name in a nearly-maternal tone. “Pinkie,” she said, “when I first met you, I’ll admit you annoyed me. I thought you were just some obnoxious clown with no taste for anything but birthday decorations fit for a six-year-old.
“But when we became friends, I realized what a good heart you have. You have this beauty to you that’s unique and flavorful and sweet. I think all that comes from your tireless quest for smiles. You deliver happiness to everyone around you, and the only payment you accept is a smile. I wish I could be so altruistic.
“You’re unique, Pinkie, and you’re beautiful in a way no one else is. I don’t wanna lose you, Pinkie.”
Sunset’s eyes grew moist as she repeated her last sentence, this time in a weak whisper, truly gripped in the kind of terror the imminent demise of a beloved friend dispenses. All four girls continued to struggle.
“What is this resistance?” asked THE TOASTER impatiently.
Pinkie had heard all that Sunset Shimmer and her other friends had said, somehow. Their words had penetrated the strange fog and the fact that she was bread. She was being pulled back by… words. Words from voices she recognized. Sunset Shimmer, who was the meanest bully in school until she realized she was all alone. Rarity, who was generous and artistic. Rainbow Dash, who was cool and athletic. Fluttershy, who loved animals almost as much as she loved her friends.
As she heard their pleas, she began to believe them, and in doing so, questioned her predicament. Did she even want to be toast? Did she even want to be bread?
“You are to become toast!” THE TOASTER demanded, as though it could read her mind. “Toast! And nothing less! Come achieve your destiny! Slip into my slots and let the heat consume you, child!”
Pinkie’s resistance grew stronger.
“Let me warm you,” THE TOASTER continued. “Let me singe your crust, until your middle is crunchy and brown. You will become a thing of beauty. You will be toast.”
Pinkie’s resistance grew stronger.
“You will be toast.”
Pinkie’s resistance…
“I will not.”
…stopped.
“What?!” THE TOASTER bellowed.
“You heard me!” Pinkie said. “I will not become toast!”
“Blasphemy!” cried THE TOASTER. “You shall become toast! It is your destiny!”
“Let me tell you something about destiny!” Pinkie retorted. “Destiny doesn’t just bind someone to some arbitrary fate. Destiny brings people together. Destiny unites people from all walks of life into a single group. My destiny is to make my friends happy—and you know why?
“Because I’m not even bread! I am…!”
“…Pinkie Pie?”
Her friend’s name timidly tumbled from Rainbow Dash’s lips as she suddenly felt Pinkie go slack as a rag. Slowly, the four girls gently set Pinkie down on the basement floor and they all looked at her face. The brainless zeal was gone. Her eyes were closed, her mouth a single line. Her breathing was whisper-quiet. All was peaceful for several seconds.
Then the furnace, whose cauldron-belly had been opened somehow, began to glow angrily as a roar escaped it. The flu that kept the fires caged clanged and banged, opening and closing as if someone invisible were operating it. Inside the fire, for one brief second, was a face. Its scowl could hush a crying infant.
This bizarre moment was beheld by the four girls. Then Sunset Shimmer glared it down. “You can’t have her,” she stated. “We won’t let you.”
The roaring stopped. The fire quieted and lost its phantasmic glow. The flu shot down one last time, its tantrum ending with a loud bang.
Then all was still for several seconds more, before Rarity looked aside at Sunset Shimmer. “What… what in the world was that?”
Sunset Shimmer cradled Pinkie’s head carefully in her lap as she replied, “Like I was about to explain earlier, Rarity, magic might not exist in this world as it does in mine. But believe me, magic exists here in some form or another. Its purpose depends on what fuels it, whether it’s the love we share for each other, or it’s the hatred some creatures have for the world.”
She looked up at the boiler. “I read in a book that spirits sometimes haunt where they died, and when their hatred and misery become strong enough, they lure victims to join them. I hope that one day, whoever died here can find peace.”
“I hope so, too,” Pinkie said quietly.
They all looked to Pinkie, whose face had become jeweled with tears. A group hug was shared as Pinkie blubbered on about not knowing where she was or why she was bread or what the thing in the furnace was. (She called it a toaster for some reason.) This hug was held for a time that felt much longer than it actually was, yet another feat of the magic of their friendship. This was a moment they would share forevermore.
Applejack lied in bed, sick as a skunk who’d eaten a carcass. This was no ordinary bed, either. It was not her own bed. It was the Sick Bed, called so because that was where Granny Smith would quarantine any sick family members. And because she had three grandchildren and you never know who might show up at your door plumb sick, this bed was big enough to hold several people, and had two sheets and three blankets on top of that.
To her left was Apple Bloom, sick with the same cold she had. To her right was Big Mac, with much the same. They all coughed, sniffled, wheezed, and hacked rhythmically, as if this were Sick In Bed: The Musical. Their complexions were paler, with a noticeable, tired blueness around their eyes.
Apple Bloom groaned as she settled under the sheets, trying to make herself comfortable. Big Mac reached over to the nightstand at his side, pulled a hanky from the box sitting there, and blew his nose on it. He dispensed the used tissue into the bucket next to them, even though that bucket was meant for certain, much more dire emergencies.
“Mac, couldja,” Applejack began before flying into a coughing fit, “couldja pass me my glass’a water?”
Mac reached over and, remembering that Applejack’s cup was the one with the ducks on it, took it and handed it over to her. As was his nature, he said nothing, merely watching her suck it down then set it back when she was done.
The door to the Sick Room opened suddenly, a bright beaming smile charging into the room with Pinkie Pie trailing behind it. It had been some few days since that whole bizarre bread thing, and Pinkie looked much better without the “blank-minded zealot” face or the messy twigs in her hair and filthy pajamas. That having been said, Applejack was unsure if she was ready to see her friend at the moment.
“Pinkie?” asked Apple Bloom weakly.
“Heya, everybody!” Pinkie cheered. “I just got back from visiting Dad in the hospital, and apologizing to my family, and helping the Dazzlings repay Canterlot High for damaging school property, and apologizing to Fluttershy because she forgot her animal friends in her backpack and a hall monitor found them and reported her, and discovering everybody who filmed me in my bread phase posted it all on the Internet and I became a meme, and boy is my tongue tired.”
“Pinkie,” Applejack groaned, covering her forehead with her hand, “what’re you doin’ here?”
“I came here to cheer you guys up, silly-billy!” The smile on Pinkie’s face would have been ear to ear had it not stretched from one side of the room to the other. She pulled up a chair, put on a breathing mask she pulled out from under the chair (for “being near sick people” emergencies like this one), and plunked herself down on the chair. Out of her pocket was pulled not one, not two, not three, not five, but four large novels. “Sunny-Side Up told me you liked H.G. Wells,” she said, “so I brought The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Dr. Munroe. Which one do you want me to read to you?”
Applejack lightened up, if only slightly. She hadn’t read any of those books since she was twelve.
Apple Bloom raised an eyebrow. “The Island of Dr. Munroe? What’s that one about?”
“It’s a mite dark Ah suppose, sugarcube, but Ah think you’ll like it. Just hush now ’n let Pinkie read it.”
“Eeyup,” Big Macintosh nodded sagely.
And so Pinkie Pie began to read, and soon all four were lost inside the world of H.G. Wells. It was as if everything had gone back to normal, and would remain that way. And it would—right up until a few months later, when Sunset Shimmer woke up with the preposterous notion that she was a professional wrestler.
But that, my friends is another story for another time.
