Reinventing the Iron Will

Twilight awoke with a violent start. She quickly glanced over at her cuckoo clock and realized how much trouble she was in. “Two o’clock? How am I possibly going to accomplish everything on my daily checklist now?”

Spike woke up and rubbed his eyes. “Go back to sleep Twi, if it’s only two o’clock, we’ve still got plenty of time to sleep.”

“No it’s two in the afternoon, Spike. We’re in a heap of trouble,” she opened the window blinds to reveal a bright afternoon.

Spike groaned. “Come on, Twilight. Let me sleep some more. You know dragons need more sleep than ponies, sometimes hundreds of years more.”

“Alright, I’ll go and figure this out by myself,” she said almost more to herself than to Spike as she closed the window blinds. She then went downstairs and almost tripped over a bed that was sitting in the middle of the room. “What in the world?”

A loud snore came from the bed, startling Twilight. She suddenly remembered what this was about. She had taken Pinkie home with her, since she did not want to disturb the Cakes so early in the morning, especially now that they had babies in the home. She had levitated Pinkie’s bed down into the main room when she realized that the snoring was going to prevent her and Spike from getting any sleep themselves.

Pinkie sat up slowly in bed and rubbed her eyes. She mumbled something incoherent. It sounded like “Pinkies all is dead.”

“What was that?”

“Pinkie’s Law is dead,” Pinkie said getting out of bed gingerly. She felt sore all over. This was a change of pace for her, given that she normally summersaulted out of bed yelling “Good morning world!” She looked around the library wondering how she had ended up there. “So did anything else happen after I fell asleep?”

“Part of Iron Will’s house collapsed.”

“Holy guacamole! That party must have rocked even more than I thought it did. Do you think we should help him clean up? Ninety-seven percent of the mess was probably our fault.”

“There’s no time. Look how far behind I already am on my daily checklist,” Twilight said as she levitated a large scroll in front of Pinkie.

Pinkie looked over the items on the list skeptically. “Double check checklist? Re-read biography of Clover the Clever? Procrastinate? Are you sure it’s that important that you get everything on this list done? Why would you plan to procrastinate anyway?”

“I knew I was going to procrastinate one way or another, so I made room for it in my schedule.”

“Come on, let’s go help Iron Will,” Pinkie began slowly walking toward the door. Most of her body ached from moshing. Her stomach was also unsettled and she badly needed a bath.

Twilight looked over her checklist forlornly. She knew there was no possible way to check every box by the end of the day. She tossed the list in a recycling container, conceding that this day was lost.

***

Fluttershy fussed as she went about the cottage doing chores. Angel pretended he was paying attention to what she was saying as he munched some cereal she had poured for him.

“Oh, everything is going not as I wanted it to. I barely got to talk to Big Mac before everything blew up in my face. I don’t even think he likes me. He ran off so quickly and didn’t even have an excuse. What could have I done to upset him? Was I too quiet? Was I too loud? Was I just the right amount of quiet and laud, but messed something else up?” With this, she dropped the duster she was carrying and flopped on the couch in tears.

Angel spat out his cereal in astonishment. Something was very much amiss. He scampered over to comfort Fluttershy. All he could really think of was giving her a little hug. This seemed to help. Her sobbing abated and she picked the bunny up in her hooves and looked at him lovingly. “Oh Angel, you’re always so nice to me.”

Angel looked unconvinced. Few statements could have been further from the truth, but he was at least there for her when she most needed him.

“You know what, Angel? I can’t give up on love this easily. Iron Will isn’t giving up on Applejack and he’s in much worse standing with her. I should go and talk with Big Mac right now. Oh, but I’ll need to think of something to say first, but then I’ll have to memorize it and come up with backup things to say if the conversation doesn’t go exactly as I imagine it going. Oh dear, this might take a while.”

***

“Wow, it looks like a tornado hit this place,” Apple Bloom commented as she glanced around the thrashed house. “What should I fix first?”

“Let’s start by throwing away as much of trash as we can.”

“Wow, a garbage collection cutie mark! Wouldn’t that be somethin’. I was thinkin’ that I’d end up with an Apple cutie mark like everypony else in the family, but maybe I’ll end up as a garbage pony. That will make me really special!”

“I think you can aim a little higher than that kid,” Iron Will commented. “You don’t want to be doing this kind of stuff all your life. Believe me, I’ve been there. Why are you so obsessed with cutie marks anyway? Aren’t you a bit young to be getting a tattoo?”

“Cutie marks aren’t tattoos. They’re magical.”

“Oh, I guess that’s probably a less painful way to do it,” he said as he retrieved a stack of garbage cans from a storage room. “So, tell me about your sister, is she the kind of pony who holds grudges for a long time?” He began heaping debris into the trashcans and letting Apple Bloom put the lids on them. She had to stand on a table to reach the tops of the cans.

“Well, I don’t know, I reckon Applejack’s a mite stubborn, but she’s really nice and wants what’s best for everypony. She’s the greatest sister a filly could ever have.”

“Do you think she might like someone like me?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t seem very happy ta see ya for some reason.” Apple Bloom plopped down on the floor and scratched her chin thoughtfully. “She wasn’t none too happy ta see this big old house going up. Said it fouled up the nice view we used ta have.”

Iron Will continued loading rubble into the trashcans, taking on Apple Bloom’s responsibility by also putting the lids on them.

“Mr. Iron William, how do you have so much money? I mean, this is the biggest house I ever did lay eyes on and all.”

“I make money writing motivational books and conducting seminars, but the truth is that I’m in a lot of debt too. All of the damage to this house just complicates things for Iron Will.”

“How does debt work?”

“I have negative money. It’s like having less than zero bits.”

“Wow, so you’re really, really poor… and I always thought we were poor. Why do you have such a big and fancy house then?”

Iron Will found this simple question surprisingly perplexing when he really thought about it. He was just one individual and he basically had no friends or family he spent much time with. If he was not on the road so much he suspected he might become fairly lonely hanging around in this mansion. “I guess I had to prove it to everypony.”

“Prove what?”

Yet again, it was a perplexing question. “Hey, tell you what, since you’ve got some time off from working on the farm, we don’t have to do all of this boring work now. You want to play in the pool or use the weight room? Maybe you can get a swimming or weight training cutie mark.”

***

“I guess I wouldn’t be the Element of Generosity if I didn’t help you with this,” Rarity said sleepily as she, Pinkie, and Twilight approached the summer home. She had received very little sleep that morning. Perhaps she should not have made the mistake of drinking a few cups of extra sugary punch during the party. One question had been irking her since the previous night. “I’m dying to ask him about why Applejack was so mad at him. She refused to tell me what it was about. I’m worried that he’ll go ballistic if I ask though. He really is a brute.”

Twilight rang the doorbell and the ponies waited for several minutes. They wondered if he was even awake yet. Pinkie entertained herself by roleplaying with some stone garden gnomes, trolls, and goblins she found in a flower bed. Apple Bloom opened the massive front door.

“Huh?” Twilight was confused. “What’s going on?”

“Hey, Twilight. Hi Pinkie. Hello Rarity. Iron William is teaching me how to lift weights. Pretty soon I’m goin’ to get so buff I’ll be bigger than him!”

“That seems a little optimistic,” Twilight mumbled sardonically.

“Where is Iron Will and why isn’t he greeting us?” asked Rarity.

“He’s in the weight room, he said he was ‘in the zone’ so he had me answer the door. Come on in. It’s crazy how much he can lift. You have to see it,” Apple Bloom led them inside. Twilight quickly realized they were missing somepony. She stepped back outside to retrieve Pinkie.

“Not so fast, Mr. Trollington, you’ll never be able to defeat the happiness of the garden gnomes,” Pinkie said, doing the voice for one of the figures.

“Come on, Pinkie, coming here was your idea,” Twilight called.

Apple Bloom talked excitedly as she led them through the house. “Iron William is a really great, uh, whatever he his… he’s a bull-man or something. He’s really poor though. I kind of feel sorry for him.”

“Yes, quite poor,” Rarity said to herself as she looked around at the lavish furnishings and fixtures.

Apple Bloom continued. “He keeps asking questions about Applejack. It’s weird. She doesn’t seem that interesting to me. I mean, she’s not as interesting as you guys with all of your crazy magic. I wonder why Iron William thinks she’s so interesting.”

“He might have a crush on Applejack,” Twilight speculated.

“Oh, that’s sooooo sweet,” Pinkie smiled gleefully. “Applejack totally deserves the attention.”

“But it must not have gone very well when he talked with her last night” Rarity concluded.

Apple Bloom looked excited. “Oh, now that makes loads more sense.”

The ponies stepped into the gym. Iron Will had just finished a set of pull ups and his fur was dripping with sweat. “Rock solid,” he said flexing one of his biceps while admiring himself in a mirror.

“Hi! You want some help cleaning up the house?” Pinkie asked more loudly than necessary.

Iron Will dropped his workout bottle and spewed out the water he had just been sipping. These ponies were the last ones he expected to see. In his experience, party guests who trashed his houses were just as hard to find afterwards as ponies who owed him money. “You really want to help me?” he asked incredulously.

“Sure, that’s what friends are for,” Pinkie said happily.

The minotaur’s heart softened. These ponies were changing his general outlook. Their kindness and innocence was refreshing. He was surprised how willingly they accepted him, despite the fact that he was so different from them.

***

By the evening, the ponies had cleaned up most of the house, though damages to the walls and roof remained. Iron Will was surprised they would spend so much of their weekend helping him. He generally had his goat assistants clean up after him, but he was saving money this way and not angering them by forcing them to work on a Sunday.

He walked over to answer the doorbell and was met with a distraught looking Fluttershy. “Oh, it was just terrible! I spent all day trying to work up the courage to ask Big Mac out and then when I did, I said all of my lines wrong and asked if he wanted to hang out sometime soon, but he said he was really pretty busy. It seemed like he wanted to get away from me. I think maybe he probably, certainly doesn’t like me.”

“I’m sure he likes you, Fluttershy,” Apple Bloom trotted up beside Iron Will. “Everypony likes you. My brother’s just really, really shy is all.”

Fluttershy was terrified to see that her minotaur friend was not the only one in the room. She thought she had been speaking with him privately.

Pinkie’s face lit up. “Wow, you have a crush on Big Mac? Everypony is falling in love!”

There were no words to accurately describe how embarrassed Fluttershy felt at that moment. She quickly decided that burying her face in a couch was the best solution.

“You know, we can all still see you, Fluttershy,” Twilight pointed out. “Burying your face in pillows doesn’t actually change anything. Besides you shouldn’t be ashamed of having a crush on Big Mac. I’m proud that you built up the courage to ask him out. The fear of rejection can feel very overwhelming in these types of situations. That’s what I’ve read anyway.”

Apple Bloom sat down on the couch beside Fluttershy and pulled her upright so that her face was no longer buried. “We’re all real busy on the farm right now. In fact, we’re prob’bly gonna be even farther behind now that I’ve been workin’ here all day. Big Mac won’t have an excuse ta avoid ya when we get all caught up though. He prob’bly likes you. You’re really nice and everypony says you’re really purddy.”

“They do?” Fluttershy was surprised. She never really admitted that she was special in any way, instead spending her time finding faults with herself.

“Yes, of course, darling,” said Rarity. “There was a reason Photo Finish made you a model. We all think you’re beautiful, but we don’t just go around saying it all of the time, because we don’t want to embarrass you.”

“Yeah,” Pinkie chimed in. “And since you’re already as embarrassed as you could possibly be, we might as well tell you how beautiful you are!”

Iron Will paced back and forth thinking. “What if I have some of my goat assistants help out around the farm tonight and get all of the work done ahead of time, so Applejack and Big Mac can take some time off?”

The idea seemed a bit half-baked to Twilight. “Do your goats know what exactly needs to be done at Sweet Apple Acres?”

“Well no-”

Apple Bloom interrupted the minotaur. “Oh, oh, oh, I know all of the jobs that need ta be done, I could help ya’ll out.”

“Don’t you need to be in bed soon?” Rarity asked.

“Yeah, but this would be a good excuse ta stay up. Ya’ll get to stay up all of the time for worse reasons. I mean, just look at what ya’ll did to this here place,” Apple Bloom waved her hoof indicating the damaged living room.

“I’ll help too,” Fluttershy offered. Her friends nodded and agreed that they were in.

These ponies never ceased to amaze Iron Will. “Are you sure? You’ve already helped me a lot today.”

“Sure, but this is for love!” said Pinkie. “I mean, this is like really important.”

The ponies and the minotaur spent the next few minutes plotting their nighttime invasion of Sweet Apple Acres. Apple Bloom was to play the key role in the operation. She scampered home as the sun began to set, Twilight trotting close behind. This was going to be a very exciting night. The little filly felt thrilled to be involved with all of this grownup plotting. Maybe she’d even succeed in helping her brother and sister find special someponies.