Pinkie Pie Clicks a Cookie

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Chapter 1

It was a perfectly ordinary day in the town of Ponyville. The sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky, birds filled the air with their cheerful song, and ponies greeted each other with a wave and a friendly smile as they went about their business. One Twilight Sparkle, settled comfortably on a bench in the Ponyville Municipal Park, was enjoying the outdoors in her own favorite way: head buried in a copy of A Brief History of Equestria: Volume XVII, engrossed in an account of the short-lived Water Balloon Rebellion of 722 CE, completely oblivious to the sights, smells, and sounds of the outside world.

As one might expect, she was caught entirely by surprise when Pinkie Pie spotted her from across the park and decided to drop in and say hello.

“Hi Twilight!”

Twilight yelped in terror, flailed about, and rolled off the bench. When her head finally stopped spinning, she found herself lying on the ground staring up into her excitable friend’s grinning face.

“Pinkie! How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me like that?!”

“Twenty-seven this month!” Pinkie answered cheerfully. “Twenty-eight, if you asking me just now counts!”

A pause.

“Uh, Twilight? Why are you lying on the ground like that? It doesn’t look very comfortable.”

Twilight opened her mouth to reply, but thought better of it. Instead, she rose clumsily to her hooves and shook the dust from her mane. “Right. Now that I’m up, was there something you wanted?”

“Nope!” Pinkie Pie replied. “No, wait. Yes! Come with me to Sugarcube Corner right away! There’s something I need your help with!”

“Well, I—”

“Great! Let’s go!”

Twilight let out a cry as Pinkie Pie grabbed her and dragged her through the streets of Ponyville at an uncomfortably high speed. Buildings and trees and surprised-looking ponies whipped by in a blur, and she wondered briefly why she had ever decided to leave the safety of the library in the first place.

Before she knew it, Twilight was standing in the kitchen of Sugarcube Corner, side by side with Pinkie, staring down at the object on the floor. It was round, about two feet across, and painted to resemble a giant chocolate chip cookie.

“Okay, Pinkie, I give up. What exactly am I looking at here?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Twilight? It’s a cookie button! You click it to make cookies!”

Pinkie pressed down on the button with her hoof. There was a loud click, and a chocolate chip cookie appeared out of thin air above her head. She snatched it up in a single bite before it hit the ground. “Mmm, tasty!”

Twilight Sparkle was understandably bewildered by this turn of events. As an avid reader, top student of Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, and all-around egghead, she understood better than most the complications involved with causing objects to appear out of thin air. Immediately her brain presented her with a list of several dozen reasons why Pinkie’s cookie button made no sense, and she voiced her thoughts on the subject to Pinkie in a calm and measured tone of voice.

“That’s… but… what… I don’t even… what?”

“I know, right? Isn’t it great?” Pinkie Pie giggled. She clicked the button several more times and expertly caught half a dozen cookies on a plate as they flashed into existence before Twilight’s eyes.

Twilight finally found her voice. “This… it’s… there’s no way something like that can work!”

“Looks like it’s working just fine to me.” Pinkie clicked the button again and caught another cookie on her plate. She thrust the plate under Twilight’s nose. “Here, have a cookie!”

Twilight pushed the plate of cookies aside with a hoof. “Not now, Pinkie. I’m trying to think.” She sighed and shut her eyes for a moment. Hardly five minutes had passed since she fell off the park bench and already she could feel the beginnings of a Pinkie Pie-induced headache coming on.

“Are you sure you don’t want a cookie?” Pinkie asked, plate of cookies balanced precariously atop her head. “It’ll cheer you right up!”

“Pinkie…” Twilight paused to compose her thoughts. “This button… where did you get it?”

“It was a gift!”

Twilight blinked. “A gift.”

“Yup! When I woke up this morning it was right there in my room leaning against the wall tied up with a ribbon and a big bow! I was really surprised ’cause my birthday isn’t for another ninety-seven days!”

“It was a gift,” Twilight repeated.

Pinkie was still talking. “And I don’t know who left it ’cause it didn’t have a tag or a note or anything, which is too bad, ’cause now I don’t know who to send a thank-you card to. So anyway, I tried it out and that’s how I found out it was a cookie button, but now that I think about it the spiffy cookie paint job really screams ‘cookie button’, doesn’t it?”

“Somepony gave you this button as a gift.” It wasn’t making any more sense to Twilight no matter how many times she said it out loud.

“And it’s really great timing too, seeing as how Mr. and Mrs. Cake and the twins are out of town for the week! It’ll be so much easier to keep the shop running smoothly now that my cookie preparation time is—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Twilight interrupted. “The Cakes are out of town?”

“Yeah!” Pinkie replied, pulling her head out of the oven where she had been checking on a tray of banana nut muffins. “They’re visiting relatives in Fillydelphia. They’ll be back next Tuesday.”

“And they left you in charge of Sugarcube Corner.”

“Uh-huh!”

“All by yourself.”

“Yep!”

“With a magic button that makes instant cookies.”

“Of course not, silly! They don’t know about the button!”

“Oh, good,” Twilight said. “That means they’ve only partially lost their minds.”

Pinkie Pie frowned. “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I’m just surprised they’d leave you in charge for a whole week, considering what happened the last time they let you run Sugarcube Corner on your own.”

“Come on, Twilight, it wasn’t that bad.”

“You gave half the town food poisoning!” Twilight was very nearly shouting.

“Hey!” Pinkie Pie protested. “You can’t pin that all on me! We both know that was at least thirty-seven-point-nine percent Applejack’s fault!”

“But…” Twilight started, then reconsidered. The conversation had veered way off course, and she was determined to steer it back in the right direction. “You know what? Never mind all that. The Cakes trust you, and that should be good enough for me.” It wasn’t, but she kept that bit of information to herself. “So. About this cookie button—”

“Oh, that’s right!” Pinkie exclaimed. “I was gonna ask you for help!”

“Great!” Twilight said. Finally it was time to get down to business. “Now, we’re clearly dealing with a very powerful magical artifact here. But the strange thing is that I can’t sense any magic at all coming from it. And that worries me, because with the amount of energy it would take to instantly generate an object as complex as a freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie out of thin air, this button should be literally glowing with magic.”

Pinkie tilted her head to one side in confusion. “Are you sure about that, Twilight? I mean, you poof stuff out of nowhere all the time, and it doesn’t look that hard.”

“It is hard, Pinkie,” Twilight explained patiently. “Spells that generate objects purely from magical energy are really tricky to get right. In most cases the object isn’t meant to last for more than a few minutes before it destabilizes and disintegrates. The energy requirements increase exponentially with the complexity of the object and the amount of time it lasts. They’re good spells for practicing my magic, but when I need something important it’s a lot more efficient and useful to just teleport it in from a nearby location.”

“Huh,” Pinkie said. “Well, maybe that’s what the button’s doing. Teleporting them in from somewhere else.”

“I thought about that too, but it just isn’t logistically feasible. There would have to be a pretty big stash of cookies hidden away nearby for—”

“Ooh! Ooh!” Pinkie interrupted. “Maybe it’s teleporting them from a cookie planet in a galaxy far, far away!”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, Pinkie. Even if the very idea of a planet like that wasn’t completely absurd, it would be well out of the teleportation range of even the highest-level unicorns.”

“Oh.” Pinkie scratched her head. “Well, maybe they’re teleporting in from an alternate universe where everything is cookies! Like a cookieverse of some kind!”

“That makes even less sense than the cookie planet idea!”

“Well, where do you think they come from, then?” asked Pinkie.

“I don’t know!” exclaimed an increasingly exasperated Twilight Sparkle. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” She paused for a bit to regain her composure. “Look, Pinkie, I’m glad you called me in to help, but all this wild conjecture won’t get us anywhere. What we need now is good old-fashioned scientific research. I’ve got some books on magical artifacts back at the library that might give us an idea as to how—”

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa, Twilight,” Pinkie interrupted. “That’s not important right now.”

Twilight was confused. “Iff’s noff?” she mumbled before spitting out the hoof Pinkie had shoved into her mouth.

“Nope. I don’t need to know how the button works. I brought you here so you could magic me up something that can click it for me while I’m dealing with customers.”

Twilight could feel her left eye starting to twitch. “You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious!” Pinkie Pie said. “How am I supposed to be able to click cookies and work the counter at the same time? I can’t be in two places at once!”

Twilight wasn’t entirely sure that last part was true, but she didn’t say so. She thought it was a bad idea to continue using the cookie button without knowing anything about it, but she didn’t say that either, because at that moment an impatient voice called out from the front of the store.

“Hey! We’ve been waiting in line for fifteen minutes! Are you ever gonna take our orders or what?”

“Hold your horses, I’ll be out in a second!” Pinkie shouted. She turned to Twilight. “See? The customers are getting disgruntled. Pretty soon they’ll start leaving without any baked goods. And they’ll tell other ponies about the poor quality of service, and those ponies will tell even more ponies, and pretty soon nopony will want to come here! Sugarcube Corner will lose all its business, and Mr. and Mrs. Cake will have to close up shop forever, and they’ll kick me out on the street, and I’ll have to release Gummy into the wild and move back in with my parents and push rocks around all day and I’ll never see you or any of my friends ever again! But you wouldn’t let that happen to your bestest pal Pinkie Pie, right, Twilight?” She gave Twilight her best sad puppy face.

Twilight was sorely tempted to try to convince Pinkie that there was nothing wrong with taking a break from pushing a button to go help customers. She debated telling her that the only reason customers had been left waiting in the first place was because she abandoned the shop in the middle of the day to wander around in the park looking for ponies to pester. But in the end, she decided that starting an argument with Pinkie Pie was not likely to be a productive use of her time. Besides, the cookie button had piqued her curiosity, and she would never be able to satisfy it if she had to contend with an uncooperative Pinkie.

Twilight sighed, hoping she wasn’t about to make a terrible mistake. “Fine. I’ll help. But on one condition. You have to give me a couple dozen of those cookies to study. You may not want to know where they’re coming from, but I do.”

“Deal!” Pinkie said. She reached a hoof into her mane and pulled out a yellow foam finger with a bold black #1 printed on it, and tossed it to Twilight. “Here, you can use this!”

Twilight caught the finger with her magic, and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You want me to make an automatic cookie clicker out of a giant foam finger?”

“Well, yeah!” Pinkie said. “It just kinda feels right to me, you know.”

“If you say so,” Twilight said, unconvinced. Nothing about the present situation felt right to her. Shaking her head, she turned her attention to the finger. “Hmm. A simple come-to-life spell should do the trick.” She concentrated for a second, then released the spell from her glowing horn into the finger.

Their eyes followed the foam finger as it floated lazily toward the button. Once it reached its destination, it stopped and hovered in place.

“Uh, Twilight? It isn’t doing anything.”

“Just give it time.”

Several seconds passed before the finger finally descended, pressing the button. A cookie dropped to the ground. The finger floated back up. Twilight and Pinkie waited. Several more seconds passed, and the finger clicked the button again. Another cookie dropped to the ground, landing right next to the first.

“Hmm…” Pinkie thought for a moment. “Aha!” She slid the button across the floor toward the counter. The finger dutifully followed. She then grabbed a large tray and positioned it on the countertop, eyeballed it thoroughly from multiple angles, nudged it about an inch to the left, then, satisfied, stepped back. The next cookie landed directly in the center of the tray. “Perfect!” She tossed an empty cake box to Twilight. “Here, take as many cookies as you need! I gotta go re-gruntle some disgruntled ponies! Thanks a bunch, Twilight!” She rushed from the room before Twilight could respond.

“Well, looks like today is turning out to be more interesting than I bargained for,” Twilight said to nobody in particular. She levitated the box above the counter and clicked the button with her hoof until the box was full. Then she set off, box of cookies in tow.

As she walked out the door, Twilight was already mentally compiling a checklist of experiments to run on her sugary sweet acquisition. Lost in her thoughts as she trotted away from Sugarcube Corner, she passed a fluffy gray kitten sitting by the side of the road. She didn’t notice it, and it paid her no mind. Its attention was focused entirely on the bakery from which she had departed. Soon it was joined by a second kitten, then a third.

Together they sat, and watched, and waited.

For those of you curious about what Twilight was reading in the park, the following is an excerpt from A Brief History of Equestria: Volume XVII.

The Water Balloon Rebellion of 722 CE [Celestial Era] began as a simple water balloon fight between two teams of rambunctious fillies and colts on a hot summer day in Canterlot. Events escalated when a poorly-aimed balloon hit Princess Celestia as her chariot passed by on its way to the castle. The fight came to a screeching halt, and the terrified fillies and colts anxiously awaited whatever horrible punishment the Princess would inflict upon them.

With a grin and a ferocious battle cry, Princess Celestia leapt from her chariot and returned fire, unleashing a barrage of water balloons upon the children, who squealed with delight as they ran for cover. The two previously opposed teams formed an impromptu alliance and launched a counterattack, concentrating their fire on the Princess as she took shelter behind her guard detail. The guards themselves refused to be drawn into the fray, standing vigilant even as they were pelted with balloons from all angles (including more than a few thrown by the Princess herself).

The Water Balloon Rebellion ended abruptly upon the arrival of several sets of parents, who, horrified upon seeing their children engaged in such treasonous activity in full view of the public, immediately shooed them all home and began apologizing profusely to the Princess and begging her forgiveness. Despite her repeated assurances that no harm was done and no apology was necessary, they continued to grovel and plead and follow along behind her chariot until it reached the castle gates, whereupon they were denied entrance by the guards.

There were no casualties, though several of the children were sent to bed without their supper that night, and some of the castle staff had to work late cleaning up the puddles of water Princess Celestia and her guard detail tracked across the floors.

Chapter 2

Spike the dragon was in the midst of reshelving the remnants of Twilight Sparkle’s most recent reading binge when she returned to the library with her box of cookies.

“Spike! Where are you?”

“I’ll be right down!” He hastily shoved a well-worn copy of Obscure Unicorn History more or less into its proper place on the top shelf, slid down the ladder, and scurried off to meet Twilight as she entered the front door.

“Ah!” Twilight said. “There you are.” Her horn glowed with magic and half a dozen books, a few of which Spike had very recently put away, floated off the shelves and dropped into his arms. “Help me carry these books down to the lab. It’s time for a little scientific research.”

Spike grunted under the unexpected weight of the stack of books he suddenly found himself holding. “Uh, Twilight? Today was supposed to be your day off, remember? You’re supposed to be out having fun, not locking yourself up in the basement for hours to work on another one of those projects of yours. Don’t think I won’t chase you out of here with a broom if I have to.”

This was not an idle threat. Enforcing Twilight’s vacation time was one of Spike’s many duties, and one he took very seriously, having had plenty of firsthand experience in dealing with an overworked and overstressed Twilight Sparkle. He had, in fact, resorted to physically shooing her from the library with a broom on more than one occasion.

Today, however, Twilight would not be denied.

“Scientific research is fun, Spike. Now come on, I’d like to get started as quickly as possible.”

Spike sighed and dutifully followed her down the stairs into the basement laboratory, where he dumped his armful of books onto the nearest workbench. “You really need to find a normal hobby, Twilight. Have you ever considered stamp collecting?”

Twilight ignored him. She was already wearing safety goggles and a lab coat and humming a cheerful little tune while arranging a rack of test tubes, three Erlenmeyer flasks, a microscope, a Bunsen burner, several bottles of assorted chemicals, some eye droppers, and a beaker filled with glass stirring rods on the table in front of her.

Spike rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why I even bothered to ask,” he muttered under his breath. Then he noticed the box of cookies. “Well, at least you brought snacks. Good thing, too. I’m starving!”

He grabbed a cookie and took a bite. Or, he would’ve taken a bite, if Twilight hadn’t telekinetically yanked it from his grasp and returned it to the box.

“Don’t eat those, Spike!” she said. “I need them for the experiments!”

“Wait a minute. We’re going to run experiments on cookies? What for?”

“Because I need to find out where they came from.”

Spike glanced at the box, clearly labeled Freshly baked sweet treats from Sugarcube Corner!, then looked back to Twilight. “Uh, Twilight? Are you feeling okay? You didn’t hit your head or anything while you were out, right?”

“No, I’m fine,” Twilight said. Her attention was divided between Spike and one of the books he had brought with him (101 Easy Cookie Recipes), currently open on the table in front of her. “I mean, yeah, I fell off a park bench earlier, but those are pretty low to the ground, so no risk of serious head injury there. Why?”

“Well, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say those cookies probably came from Sugarcube Corner. You know, ’cause of the box and all.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I know that much, Spike. That’s where I got them from, after all. What I really need to find out is how they ended up there in the first place.”

Spike was getting more confused by the minute. “You do realize it’s a bakery, right, Twilight? That’s kinda what they do there. Again, like it says on the box.”

“Yes, Spike. I know that, too. The thing about these cookies is, they weren’t baked. Pinkie Pie… well, for lack of a better term, she clicked them into existence.”

“Clicked them?”

“That’s right,” Twilight said. “Somehow Pinkie has gotten her hooves on some sort of cookie button that makes cookies appear out of nowhere when it’s clicked. And I want to make sure it isn’t dangerous, and to know that for sure, I need to figure out how it works. That’s why you and I are going to reverse-engineer these cookies and see if we can determine how they were made.”

Spike was debating whether or not to ask Twilight again if she had hit her head, because her story was only getting more and more ridiculous. Then again, considering Pinkie Pie was involved, he figured there very well could be something to this “cookie button” business after all. Then his stomach rumbled. So he grabbed another cookie from the box and opened his mouth to take a bite.

For the second time, a cookie was pulled from his claws before he could taste it.

“Cut that out, Spike!”

“Geez, Twilight! Can’t I have even a tiny little bite?”

“Oh, please. You and I both know you can’t stop at just one bite. There wouldn’t be any cookies left to experiment with.”

Spike groaned, though deep down he knew she was right.

“Now then,” Twilight said, “if you promise to be a good little lab assistant for me, I’ll take you down to Sugarcube Corner after we’re done here and buy you anything you want.”

Spike’s eyes widened and he began to salivate as visions of delicious baked goods danced across his imagination.

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Spike, suddenly dressed in a little white lab coat of his own, whipped out a quill and a roll of parchment. “Number One Lab Assistant, reporting for duty!”

Twilight grinned. “Great! Let’s get started.” She fired up her Bunsen burner and grabbed a cookie out of the box with a floating pair of tongs. “Experiment number one: I am going to burn this cookie to find out how many calories it has.”

“Oh, come on! That’s just cruel!”

The cookie ignited with a woosh and was reduced to ash in a matter of moments.

“Hmm… the bright blue flame indicates that this was a particularly sweet cookie. Make a note of that, Spike. It might be important.”

“I hate you so much right now.”

~ * ~

A few hours later, a couple dozen cookies had been sacrificed in the name of science. Rolls of parchment filled with hastily scribbled notes littered a workbench in the corner of the room, a couple spilling down onto the floor below. Cookie crumbs were scattered everywhere. Spike was massaging a claw cramp and trying to take his mind off his growling stomach as Twilight Sparkle paced back and forth, mumbling to herself.

“Twenty-seven experiments!” she exclaimed suddenly. Spike’s head jerked up at the sound of her voice. “Twenty-seven! And what do I have to show for it? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”

Her once-pristine lab coat was stained with chocolate. Her safety goggles were slightly askew, and a few stray hairs had sprung out from her formerly well-combed mane. Spike could read the signs clearly. A complete and utter Twilight Sparkle meltdown was rapidly approaching. And that would mean, among other things, no delicious treats from Sugarcube Corner for him. He spoke up, hoping to defuse the situation.

“Don’t talk like that, Twilight. Think of it as narrowing down possibilities. I’m sure the next experiment—”

“Will end just like the last twenty-seven,” Twilight interrupted. “And then I’ll have twenty-eight experiments all pointing to the conclusion that these are nothing more than perfectly ordinary chocolate chip cookies!”

“Well,” Spike said after a moment, “have you considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what they are? Perfectly ordinary chocolate chip cookies?”

“You weren’t there, Spike,” Twilight snapped. “You didn’t see these cookies appearing out of thin air at the click of a button. That kind of thing just can’t happen. At least not without leaving behind evidence of how it happened. Some alteration in chemical composition, or a physical abnormality, or traces of residual magic significantly above normal background levels.” She shook her head. “But there’s nothing! They’re just cookies!”

“Well then, maybe we should just file this one under ‘Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie’ and leave it at that. I don’t think either of us wants a repeat of the Pinkie Sense incident.”

Twilight sighed. “I wish it were that easy. But Pinkie didn’t make the cookies herself. The button did. And she didn’t make the button either. Somepony gave it to her as a gift. That means the Pinkie Pie argument doesn’t apply, and that means there has to be some logical explanation for how the button works. But I’m getting nowhere with these experiments! Argh!” She slammed her head onto the table hard enough to rattle the rack of test tubes.

Spike winced at the sound of the impact. “Geez, Twi, take it easy. You’ll dent the table.”

Twilight glared down at him.

“Uh, that is, I mean,” Spike backtracked quickly, “well, since we’re not having any luck with the cookies, maybe we should try looking at this from a different angle. You know, the button.”

“Yeah,” Twilight scoffed at the idea, “good luck trying to get Pinkie Pie to give up a cookie-generating button for more than five minutes. Experimenting on the button is not gonna happen anytime soon.”

“I can see how that might be a problem,” Spike admitted. “Still, you said it was a gift, right? So, somepony out there must have given it to her. If we ask around town, then sooner or later we’re bound to run into somepony who knows something about it!”

Twilight shook her head. “I wouldn’t count on it, Spike. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just pick up while you’re out grocery shopping. It’s an incredibly complex and powerful magical artifact, probably one of a kind, and it’s not listed in any of the major magical artifact catalogs I’ve ever read. Potsherd’s Compendium of Arcane Artefacts and Enchanted Oddities alone has detailed entries on thousands of artifacts dating back almost to the founding of Equestria, but no cookie buttons, or any food buttons of any kind, for that matter. And there aren’t any ponies around today with the expertise or the sheer magical power needed to construct an artifact of this quality, much less sneak it into Pinkie Pie’s room in the middle of the night. As far as I can tell, it shouldn’t even exist.”

“Huh.” Spike thought for a moment. “You could try writing Princess Celestia. She knows about all kinds of stuff that nopony else knows.. Maybe she can point you in the right direction.” He snapped his fingers. “Or maybe she even made the button herself!”

“I don’t think even Princess Celestia knows how to make food appear out of nothing, Spike. Everything I’ve ever read says that it’s physically and mathematically impossible to—”

Twilight’s voice cut off abruptly, her eyes unfocused slightly, and Spike could almost see the gears rotating inside her head.

“Uh, Twi?” Spike waved a claw in front of her eyes. “Is everything all right?”

“I just had a thought,” Twilight said. She turned her attention to a shelf along the far wall, and an unlabeled bottle floated its way across the room to her. “I think it’s time for one more experiment after all.”

She took a final cookie from the box, crumbled it into a clean test tube, added some water, and set it aside in the rack. As the cookie crumbs settled to the bottom of the test tube, she unstoppered the unlabeled bottle and extracted a small amount of cloudy gray liquid from within using a dropper. She added three drops to the test tube and waited.

Thirty seconds later, the liquid in the test tube began to glow with a faint green light.

“Green.” Twilight said. A grin spread slowly across her face. “It turned green. It turned green!”

“Hey, that’s great!” Spike said. “So, uh, what does it mean?”

“Well, on its own, not much. But in conjunction with the results of our first experiment, it tells us a great deal.”

“Still kinda lost here, Twi.”

“Oh, Spike,” Twilight giggled. “I don’t suppose you know what kind of magic leaves a green spectral trail and has an unusually high sugar content, do you?”

“Nope,” he said. “I must have skipped over that chapter when I was reading The Big Book of Useless Magic Trivia the other day.”

“I really should have seen it earlier,” Twilight said, ignoring his sarcasm. “This whole time I’ve been looking for a logical explanation for how the button works. I just assumed that since Pinkie didn’t make it, then it had to follow at least some of the fundamental laws of science and magic. I based all my experiments around this assumption. I didn’t even consider any other possibilities, at least not until you made me think about the problem from a different angle. I came up with a new hypothesis, an idea of who might have made the button, and that last experiment just confirmed it. The cookie button really does make absolutely no sense!”

“And that’s a good thing why?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? We know where the button came from! Oh, I love science!” Twilight was nearly dancing with excitement.

“Okay,” Spike said, scratching his head, “maybe I missed something here, but where exactly did the button come from, again?”

Twilight gave him a look. “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet? It’s so obvious! It was—” She suddenly stopped dancing. Her eyes widened as the discovery she had just made about the origin of the cookie button began to truly sink in. “Oh no. No no no no no!”

“Twilight?” Spike said. “You’re starting to scare me. Is everything okay? What’s going—whoa!” He was cut off as Twilight’s magic glow lifted him onto her back.

“We have to go, Spike,” Twilight said, trotting up the stairs and into the library. “There’s no time to lose. I’ll explain on the way to Fluttershy’s house.”

“Fluttershy’s? But you promised you’d take me to Sugarcube Corner!”

“Sorry, but we’re gonna have to take a rain check on that,” Twilight said. “The fate of Equestria could very well be at stake.”

“Wow. Whatever you found in those cookies must be really bad stuff if it has you this worked up.”

“You can say that again,” said Twilight as she galloped down the road toward the outskirts of town and Fluttershy’s cottage, past several groups of kittens headed in the opposite direction.

For those of you who are curious, the Compendium of Arcane Artefacts and Enchanted Oddities was originally published in 891 CE by the archaeologist Potsherd, who, before its publication, was perhaps best known as the pony in charge of sorting shards of ancient pottery according to the size, shape, and color of their painted stripes in the basement of the Museum of Equestrian History (don’t call it “MEH”, they hate it when you do that).

In researching the book, she traveled to the far corners of Equestria and lands beyond, and if she had done anything even the least bit exciting or adventurous during this time, maybe somepony would have written a book about her. But she didn’t, so we will have to content ourselves with reading about Daring Do instead.

Upon its publication, Potsherd’s Compendium was the most complete catalog of magical relics ever compiled up to that point, and subsequent editions further cemented its status as the go-to source for information on all things arcane and enchanted. The most recent edition contains entries for over nine thousand separate artifacts, including the Alicorn Amulet, six of the great mage Meadowbrook’s eight enchanted items, and the mysterious Drinking Bird of Trottingham, which is made of glass, wears a top hat, and, through some strange magic, can move on its own to repeatedly dip down and drink from a cup of water.

Notably absent from the Compendium is any mention of the Elements of Harmony. Thankfully there exists another book, The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide, which has all the information anypony could ever want or need about these most important of magical artifacts. Except for, you know, what they do, how to use them, what the sixth Element is, unimportant stuff like that.

Oh, and just so you know, The Big Book of Useless Magic Trivia is not a real book. That was just Spike being a jerk.

Chapter 3

Applejack was in the south orchard at Sweet Apple Acres inspecting the apple trees when her brother came to inform her that “that pink friend of yours is up to somethin’ over by the carrot fields.” When she asked him to elaborate, Big Macintosh replied, “Best if you see for yourself.”

And so Applejack found herself standing at the edge of the south orchard next to her brother, watching as Pinkie Pie skipped back and forth across the empty field, humming a happy tune while she worked.

“Is… is she buryin’ cookies in the carrot fields?” Applejack asked.

“Eeyup.”

“Did she happen to mention why?”

“Uh, maybe.”

Applejack stared at her brother. “You didn’t even ask her, did ya.”

Her brother stared right back. “I’ll have you know I did. Her answer didn’t make a lick of sense, though.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Pinkie Pie all right,” Applejack muttered. To Big Macintosh she said, “Don’t you worry yourself none over this, big brother. I’ve got more practice in dealin’ with Pinkie than you do. I’ll go on down there right now and get everything all sorted out, and then we can get back to work.”

“Good luck,” Big Macintosh called after her as she trotted down to the carrot field where Pinkie Pie was hard at work doing whatever it was she was doing.

“Howdy, Applejack!” Pinkie greeted her as she approached. “What brings you round these parts?”

“Pinkie, this is Sweet Apple Acres. I kinda live here, remember? I should be the one askin’ you that question.”

“Oh yeah!” Pinkie Pie giggled. “Silly me!” And with that, she returned to her work.

Applejack watched for a few seconds as Pinkie dug a little hole with her front hooves, dropped in a chocolate chip cookie, and buried it. Soon it became apparent that no more information was forthcoming.

“You aren’t seriously goin’ to make me ask, right?”

“Ask what?” said Pinkie Pie, a sweet, innocent smile on her face.

Applejack sighed in resignation. “Pinkie, why in the hay are you buryin’ cookies all over my carrot field?”

“Oh, Applejack, don’t be ridiculous!” Pinkie said. “I’m not burying cookies, I’m planting them!”

“Of course you are.” Applejack had had enough conversations with Pinkie Pie to not be too surprised by anything she said, but this was pushing it. “All right, I’ll play along. Why are you plantin’ cookies in my carrot field?”

“Well,” Pinkie answered, “I don’t have any fields of my own to plant cookies in, and I noticed you guys weren’t using this part of the field, and I know I really probably should have asked first and I’m sorry if you were planning on planting carrots today but—”

“Pinkie.”

Pinkie Pie paused and gave Applejack as much of her attention as it is possible for an overexcited Pinkie Pie to give. “Mmhmm?”

“You do know that cookies don’t grow on trees, right?” Applejack said.

“Sure,” Pinkie nodded vigorously, “everypony knows that. It’s more of a shrub, really.”

“Huh.” Pinkie’s response caught Applejack completely off guard. It took her a few seconds to think of something to say. “Uh, shouldn’t you be mindin’ the bakery?”

“Nah, it’s all good,” Pinkie said. “The lunch rush is over, so there aren’t many customers right now. Besides, I got someone to cover for me.”

~ * ~

Three ponies huddled together in Sugarcube Corner, just inside the doorway, casting nervous glances toward the counter. Perched there atop the cash register was a baby alligator with wide, vacant eyes, staring into nothing. It wore a tiny blue vest with a name tag reading “Hello my name is GUMMY” and two buttons reading “Trainee” and “Ask about our chocolate chip cookies!” None of the ponies seemed particularly eager to be the first to approach Pinkie Pie’s replacement to inquire about the advertised cookies.

Finally, one of the trio, a pink mare with a lime green mane, gathered all her courage and took a tentative step forward. “Um…” she began in a shaky voice.

The alligator snapped its head toward her suddenly, perhaps attracted by the movement, or by the sound of her voice. Its eyes blinked, first the left, then the right. Its mouth opened in what may or may not have been a wide toothless grin (it can be hard to tell with baby alligators sometimes). An odd gurgling noise issued forth from its gaping maw.

The pony’s courage left her in an instant. “Never mind we’ll come back later okay bye now,” she blurted out as she and her companions backed out of the door and raced away as fast as they could down the street past several scattered clusters of kittens.

The alligator’s mouth snapped shut and the tip of its tail twitched ever so slightly. It blinked another one of its odd asynchronous blinks and resumed staring into nothing.

From the back of the store came the sound of a click, followed by the thunk of something round and chocolatey landing on a small heap of other round chocolatey somethings.

~ * ~

Back at Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack had just about given up on trying to find a nice way of telling Pinkie Pie to leave. It was time to put a stop to this nonsense before things got out of control.

“Pinkie,” she began, “you’re a good friend, practically part of the family, and we love havin’ you around and all, but I’m afraid that don’t give you the right to come down here and dig up my field for your silly little games. Plantin’ these fields is how we help keep Ponyville fed, and a big part of how we make our living outside of apple season.”

“Oh, don’t worry about all that,” Pinkie said, waving a hoof dismissively. “Once these cookie shrubs start producing we’ll have more than enough cookies to feed everypony. And besides, according to my calculations, based on the current market value of cookies, and factoring in the average yield per shrub, and taking into account the increase in demand for delicious chocolatey treats over the past fiscal year, you can make a lot more money selling cookies than if you planted carrots, even after we split the profits fifty-fifty.”

Applejack was not certain from where Pinkie Pie had produced an adding machine, nor was she able to make any sense of the numbers printed on the ever-expanding strip of tape it was spewing out. Fancy mathematics had never been her strongest suit. If there was one thing she did know, though, it was growing things. So that’s what she went with.

“Look, Pinkie,” she explained patiently, “that’s all well and good, ’cept for one thing. Cookies are baked goods, not seeds. You can’t just stick ’em in the ground and expect ’em to sprout up into shrubs.”

Pinkie Pie gasped. “Oh my gosh, Applejack! You’re right!”

Applejack smiled.

“I almost forgot! These cookies will never grow if I don’t water them!”

Applejack’s smile faded.

Pinkie darted off somewhere and returned two and a half seconds later carrying a watering can filled with milk. As Applejack groaned and mashed her hoof into her face in frustration, Pinkie marched up and down the rows of planted cookies until the soil was good and moist and the watering can was empty.

Applejack was about to attempt once more to explain to Pinkie Pie why her scheme wouldn’t work when, to her complete and utter surprise, tiny green shoots began to push their way up through the soil. She stared, slack-jawed, as the shoots grew steadily larger before her eyes.

Her first thought was that it must be some kind of trick, that Pinkie had secretly planted seeds alongside the cookies and doused them with some sort of plant-growing potion. Then the little shrubs matured into big shrubs and the first tiny chocolate chip cookies began to bud from their branches, and Applejack could feel her whole world crumbling to pieces around her.

“That… that just ain’t possible!”

“You know,” Pinkie said, head tilted slightly to one side, “Twilight said something a lot like that earlier when I showed her my cookie button. Made almost the exact same face, too. It’s actually kinda funny, when you think about it.”

Applejack was completely lost. “You can’t grow cookies like that, you just can’t,” she tried to reassure herself even as the first crop of chocolate chip cookies ripened on the shrubs in front of her.

“Oh wow,” Pinkie exclaimed suddenly, glancing down at a watch Applejack was fairly certain hadn’t been strapped to her hoof just a few moments before, “is it that late already? I gotta get back to the shop! Hey AJ, when this first batch is ready, could you be a pal and pick ’em for me and bring ’em on up to Sugarcube Corner whenever you get a chance?”

Applejack slowly turned her head to face Pinkie. Her eyes were wide with fear, searching desperately for some sliver of sanity in a world where cookies grew on shrubs and everything she knew was wrong. “Huh?” she managed to utter.

“Great!” Pinkie said. “See you later, alligator! And speaking of alligators, I’m off to check up on Gummy.” She leaned in conspiratorially and added, in a stage whisper, “Between you and me, he’s a hard worker, but not so great with the customers.” And with that, Pinkie Pie bounced away merrily, leaving Applejack alone in her misery.

She was still sitting there staring off into the distance when Big Macintosh returned to check up on her some twenty minutes later. He had to call her name a few times and wave a hoof before her eyes before she turned to face him. It took a few long seconds for recognition to replace the dazed look in her eyes. “Hey there, big brother,” she said weakly.

He tilted his head toward the field of cookie shrubs. “Pinkie Pie?”

“Pinkie Pie,” Applejack answered.

Big Macintosh nodded. Evidently this was all the explanation he needed. “Welp,” he said, dragging over a wooden tub, “I reckon we better get to it.”

Applejack watched dumbly as he began to shake the cookies out of the first shrub in the row. When he noticed he was alone in his work, he turned to her. “So are you gonna help, or am I gonna have to harvest these all by myself?”

“Whoa, there, Big Macintosh. You’re actually gonna do this?”

Big Macintosh shrugged. “Might as well. No sense in lettin’ a perfectly good crop go to waste.”

“But they’re cookies! Growin’ on shrubs! Right here in our carrot field!”

“Eeyup.”

“So that’s it, then?” she asked disbelievingly. “You’re okay with this? You ain’t even gonna question any of it?”

“Nope.” He dragged his tub along to the next shrub in line. “Way I hear it, nothin’ good ever comes outta questionin’ Pinkie Pie. Best to just go with it. ’Sides, we can always use the extra money.”

Applejack blinked. “Nuh-uh. No way. Goodness knows I let a lot of Pinkie’s shenanigans slide by without so much as a second thought. I can deal with her Pinkie Sense. And the time she painted a giant mural of her face across the side of the barn. And that incident with the tomato catapult last week. But this? This is way past just Pinkie being Pinkie. This is goin’ against the very laws of nature. I can’t just drop this one.”

“Suit yourself, then.” Big Macintosh gave the next shrub a good shake. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Well, fine,” Applejack huffed. “You stay here and make believe like nothin’s wrong. I’ll be headed off into town now. Surely somepony there will take my concerns seriously and help me get to the bottom of this.” Applejack pushed an empty tub under an unharvested shrub and, with a good, swift kick, filled it with cookies. “And I’m takin’ these with me. Just in case.”

Big Macintosh watched silently as his sister stalked off down the road to town with a tub of cookies on her back. As she disappeared around the bend, he shook his head and returned to his work. He wished Applejack had listened to him and stayed out of Pinkie Pie’s business. He was certain she was running straight into a heap of trouble. But there were some things, he knew, you couldn’t simply tell a pony, especially one as stubborn as his sister. Sometimes you had to let them figure it out the hard way.

~ * ~

Applejack had just reached the outskirts of Ponyville when she spotted Twilight Sparkle running in her direction with Spike on her back.

“Twilight!” Applejack exclaimed happily. “Boy, am I glad to see you! I really need your help with these.”

“Sorry, Applejack,” Twilight panted as she ran past, “but I’m dealing with something really important right now and—” She skidded to a stop upon seeing Applejack’s cargo. “Oh no. Please tell me you didn’t get those cookies from Sugarcube Corner.”

“No, actually.”

Twilight sighed in relief.

“Now, this is gonna sound kinda crazy, but Pinkie Pie stopped by my place earlier and grew these in my carrot field, and I was hopin’ you could help me figure out how she did it.”

Twilight’s face fell.

“Oh man,” Spike said from his seat on Twilight’s back. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“No, Spike,” Twilight said. “That’s not good. It’s bad. Very, very bad. It means things are progressing much more rapidly than I hoped they would. We’re running out of time, fast.”

“I feel like I’m missin’ somethin’ here,” Applejack said, confusion evident on her face. “What’s goin’ on? And why do I suddenly have a feelin’ that I don’t really want to know what’s goin’ on?”

“Follow me to Fluttershy’s. I’ll explain when we get there.”

And so together, two ponies, one baby dragon, and a wooden tub filled with freshly-grown chocolate chip cookies headed off toward Fluttershy’s cottage to save Equestria from certain doom.

For those of you who are curious, Pinkie Pie’s so-called tomato catapult was never meant to be a tomato catapult at all, but a long-range cupcake delivery system. She designed and built the thing herself over the course of a frenetic sugar-fueled weekend, and set it up on the roof of Sugarcube Corner the following Monday.

Mr. and Mrs. Cake took one look at the thing and decided that they wanted no part of it. When Pinkie asked them for some spare cupcakes for test firing, they made it clear to her in no uncertain terms that she was to remove the contraption from the roof of the shop before the end of the day and never speak of it to them again.

Pinkie complied, and moved the catapult to the roof of the building across the street during her lunch break. She acquired a basket of tomatoes (close enough to cupcakes in size and weight to serve as an acceptable substitute for testing purposes), loaded up the catapult, took aim at Ponyville Town Hall, and fired.

It is unclear whether anypony at Town Hall was aware that they were the intended recipient of Pinkie’s tomato delivery, but in the end it didn’t matter. Due to a rounding error in the design phase, the catapult was way too powerful. The tomatoes sailed clear out of Ponyville and rained down across Sweet Apple Acres, splattering the barn, the farmhouse, the chicken coop, and Applejack’s dog Winona.

By some amazing coincidence, Winona had had an unpleasant encounter with a skunk mere minutes earlier. The tomato bombardment removed most of the skunk smell, for which the dog was sort of grateful (as much as one can be after being pelted with tomatoes, anyway).

Applejack was not happy when she saw the mess, but Pinkie was able to smooth things over a bit by offering to help with the cleanup.

Pinkie Pie has no regrets about the incident and insists she would do the whole thing over again. Though perhaps with a less powerful catapult next time. And not quite so many tomatoes.

Chapter 4

Rainbow Dash was in her element.

The rush of the wind across her wings, the distant cheers of the spectators below, the whole world whipping all around her in a dizzying blur as she performed increasingly flashy and dangerous aerial stunts—these things exhilarated her like nothing else.

But the best was yet to come.

She paused, adjusted her flight goggles, and swept her gaze across the stadium, where thousands of ponies were fixated on her every movement. She waved a hoof and a hush of anticipation fell across the crowd.

It was time for the grand finale.

With a flap of her wings Rainbow began her ascent, rocketing skyward, the air around her growing ever colder and thinner as she flew higher than she had ever dared to fly before. At the apex she paused, turned to survey the magnificent sight of all Equestria laid out below her. To the west, the seemingly endless green expanse of the Everfree Forest. To the south, a silver ribbon of railroad track winding across the desert. In the north, the magnificent glittering spires of the Crystal Empire just barely visible in the distance. And below, so small she could cover it entirely with a hoof, the circle that was the Cloudsdale Colosseum.

A wry grin spread across her face, and she plummeted headfirst toward the stadium below.

To the gathered ponies, the suspense was nearly unbearable. All had their gazes turned skyward, none daring to blink lest they miss her descent. Several agonizing seconds passed in near-total silence, until one excited filly pointed a hoof and exclaimed, “Look! Look! Here she comes!”

A thousand pairs of eyes turned as one to the same piece of sky, where a rainbow-colored streak was rapidly accelerating toward them, moving faster than any pony should have been able to move. Closer she came, and closer still, speed building toward near-impossible levels.

The audience collectively held its breath.

With a blinding flash, a rainbow burst across the sky, radiating outward in all directions, reflected in a thousand pairs of unblinking eyes. The sound wave hit a moment later, a tremendous explosion rocking the Colosseum, reverberating in the ears of the ponies long after the colors had faded and the wind had died down. One by one, the ponies looked to the center of the arena.

And there she was, hovering, a satisfied smile on her face, the mare of the hour, Rainbow Dash.

The crowd erupted. Wild cheers, whistles, the stomping of thousands of hooves, a roar of approval approaching the Sonic Rainboom itself in magnitude. Rainbow Dash loved every moment. She floated there, eyes closed, hooves outstretched, basking in the adoration, as the ponies began chanting her name.

Rainbow Dash…

“Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash, wake up!”

Rainbow’s ears perked up, her tail twitched, and one eye reluctantly peeled itself open. Groaning, she hung her head over the edge of her fluffy white cloud to peer down at the annoyance who had taken it upon herself to ruin a perfectly good dream. She was mildly surprised to see that the culprit was, for once, not Pinkie Pie.

“Rarity?”

“Oh, wonderful,” Rarity said, “you’re awake! Well, mostly awake, anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rainbow yawned loudly. “So what do you want?”

“Lovely weather we’re having today, don’t you think, Rainbow?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Please don’t tell me you woke me up from my nap to talk about the weather.”

Rarity ignored her. “Yes. Quite lovely indeed. As I recall reading in this morning’s paper, we’re scheduled for clear skies all week long, are we not?”

“Yup. So are you gonna get to your point any time soon, or can I get back to my nap?”

“Well,” Rarity huffed, “I beg your pardon. I simply assumed that the weather pony on duty might appreciate her good friend informing her that the skies are not as clear as they ought to be.”

“What are you talking about, Rarity? I cleared all the clouds hours ago! Well, except for this tiny little thing—” Rainbow patted her cloud-platform with a hoof, “—but it’s not doing anypony any harm.” She narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute. You woke me up because of my napping cloud, didn’t you.”

Rarity almost looked genuinely hurt, though Rainbow knew her well enough to suspect otherwise. “Rainbow Dash! Do you really think me so fussy and inconsiderate as to wake a dear friend from what I am certain is a well-deserved three-hour nap over such a trifling matter as one tiny cloud?”

Rainbow considered this for a few moments before answering. “Yeah, a little.”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “No, Rainbow, I’ll have you know I did not wake you because of your ‘napping cloud’, as you call it. I woke you because of that.” Rarity waved a hoof in the direction of the center of Ponyville.

Rainbow Dash turned and gaped at the mass of clouds that had accumulated over the town. “Whoa! Where did those come from?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, darling,” Rarity said, inspecting the tip of her hoof. “Perhaps they drifted in from the Everfree Forest. You know how unpredictable the weather can be there. So… spontaneous, and humid, and, well, downright dreadful.” A look of displeasure crossed her face at the thought of the horrid place. “But that is beside the point. Wherever they are from, the clouds are here now, and must be dealt with. I trust you can handle it.”

“Yeah, I should really get right on that. The next shift probably wouldn’t appreciate it if I left all that mess for them to clean up, heh. Thanks for the heads up, I guess.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m always willing to help a friend. Especially if it means not having to worry about getting caught in an unexpected downpour without my umbrella.”

Just then Rainbow noticed a familiar-looking fluffy white shape slinking quietly along the road toward the center of town, and pointed it out to her friend. “Hey, isn’t that your cat?”

“My…” Rarity turned her attention to where Rainbow was pointing, and gasped. “My darling Opalescence! What are you doing out of the house?”

Upon hearing its owner’s voice, the cat abandoned all efforts at stealth and scrambled away at top speed. Rarity was after it in a flash. “No, Opal, wait!” she exclaimed. “Stop right this instant! I am not playing around with you!”

Rainbow watched her charge away, her increasingly angry shouts and promises of violence gradually fading into the distance. “Man, I am so glad Tank’s not a cat. Tortoises are so much easier to deal with.” She pictured said tortoise in her mind’s eye, waiting patiently for her back home, then shuddered as the image shifted to that of a vicious, hissing ball of fur and claws strapped to a propeller, stalking the hallways of her cloud house.

Paragon of loyalty that she was, the thought of helping her friend corral her wayward pet crossed her mind for perhaps a second before she discarded it as not worth the trouble. Instead, she turned her attention back to the mysterious cloud bank that had sprung up over Ponyville while she was napping. Rainbow Dash stood up on her cloud, shaking out her legs and stretching her wings.

“Well, let’s get this over with.”

It took very little time for her to reach the first of the offending clouds, which had gathered, as she now saw, in the general vicinity of Sugarcube Corner. She attempted to burst it with a swift karate chop, and got her first indication that something was wrong when her hoof sank into the cloud and stuck there.

“What the—hey, let go!” A brief struggle, and she managed to pull her hoof free, bits of sticky white fluff still clinging to it. Upon closer inspection, she noticed that the cloud was whiter and fluffier than an ordinary cloud should be.

“Yeah, that’s definitely not normal.”

Suddenly, a terrible thought occurred to her. She raised her hoof to her mouth and gave it a tentative lick. It tasted like…

“Marshmallow fluff?”

The implications of this frightened her. She remembered the last time she had encountered clouds made up of some sort of sticky sweet confection.

“This had really better not be what I think it is.”

The cloud before her suddenly rumbled and darkened slightly, interrupting her train of thought. She looked down, and at that moment it registered in her conscious mind for the first time that a hundred or so kittens had been closely observing her actions from the moment she flew in.

“Whoa.”

She raised a hoof and waved it slowly, first to the left, then back to the right. A hundred kittens turned their heads in unison to follow the movement.

“Oooookay, that’s kinda creepy.”

The kittens continued to stare at her.

“So, uh, you wanna cut that out or what? It’s really weirding me out here.”

None of the kittens responded.

“Right,” Rainbow muttered. “Don’t know why I was expecting that to work.”

“Expecting what to work?”

If she hadn’t already been hovering over Sugarcube Corner, Rainbow Dash would have shrieked and jumped several feet straight up into the air in terror. Instead, she shrieked and nearly dropped out of the sky in terror. After recovering from the shock, she noticed Pinkie Pie grinning at her from the bakery’s second-story window.

“Hi, Rainbow Dash!” she called, waving a hoof enthusiastically.

“Geez, Pinkie!” Rainbow gasped. “You just about gave me a heart attack!”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “Oh Dashie, don’t be such a drama queen! I’ve scared you like that tons of times and you’re still ticking! So what brings you by? Care to sample some of our delicious chocolate chip cookies? We’re having a special today!”

“You know,” Rainbow said, “any other day I’d take you up on that, but right now there’s some seriously weird stuff going down that I gotta handle before it gets any weirder.”

“Really? What kind of stuff?”

“Well, for starters, there’s the massive pile of clouds hanging over our heads right now.”

Pinkie looked up. “Yup. Those are clouds all right. Not really that weird, though.”

“Well, the sky was clear just this morning. And clouds don’t just pop up out of nowhere like that. Take it from somepony who knows their clouds. Also, they’re, uh…” Rainbow trailed off as she considered the consequences of telling Pinkie Pie exactly what the clouds were made of, then decided to change the subject. “Yeah. And then there’s the kittens. There’s like a hundred of them, and they’re all just sitting there staring at me. It’s pretty freaky.”

Pinkie looked down. One particularly fluffy gray kitten looked back up at her and let out a tiny adorable meow.

“Holy moley, that’s a lot of kittens! There’s even more now than there were when I got back from Applejack’s place! Hey! You think they’re here for cookies? Do kittens even eat cookies? I don’t know much about cats, but I do know that Gummy really loves cookies! Well, actually, Gummy’ll eat pretty much anything he can fit into his mouth, and sometimes he even tries to eat things that’ll never fit in his mouth, but he’s got no teeth so he usually can’t pull it off, but kittens do have teeth so they can take bites out of stuff that’s too big to swallow all at once. Oh! I bet Fluttershy knows what kittens like to eat! I can ask her if—”

Rainbow Dash, already not the most patient of ponies, was about ready to lose it. But before she could, the cloud above her head, the same one she had previously tried to burst, rumbled again, darkened even further, and then proceeded to rain all over her.

Upon seeing a soaking wet Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie stopped her rambling. To her credit, she managed to contain herself for nearly two whole seconds before bursting out laughing at Rainbow’s plight.

Rainbow sighed and with a flap of her wings, shifted her position about a foot to the right, out of the stream of rain. After a few moments, the cloud followed, and Rainbow found herself once again under the downpour.

Pinkie laughed even harder.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up,” Rainbow said. Suddenly her eyes widened. She stuck out her tongue and caught a few drops of the strange, pink-tinted rain. It tasted an awful lot like…

“Strawberry milk? Oh, that tears it! I knew we couldn’t trust that lying, no-good—”

“Ohmygosh it’s raining strawberry milk?! I gotta get in on this!” Before Rainbow even realized she had moved, Pinkie Pie was lying on her back in a puddle of strawberry milk, mouth wide open to catch as much of the deliciousness as possible. All around her, kittens had gathered around smaller puddles, lapping up the milk.

Rainbow mashed her hoof into her face. Pinkie Pie could be so random sometimes. And not always in a good way. “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Come on, Pinkie, cut that out. You and I are going to Fluttershy’s cottage right now.”

“To ask about what kittens eat?”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure, whatever floats your boat. Now let’s get moving!”

“Okey dokey!”

~ * ~

Not far away, a slightly disheveled and irritated Rarity was making her own way toward Fluttershy’s cottage, with a cat carrier floating along beside her.

“Honestly, Opal,” she addressed the cage, “I cannot for the life of me imagine what could have possessed you to run off like that.”

The cage growled.

Rarity stopped and glared at the cage. “Don’t you make those noises at me, you naughty kitty. You are in enough trouble already.”

A clawed paw shot out from between the bars and took a swipe at Rarity. Fortunately, she had kept herself just out of the ill-tempered feline’s reach and so remained unscathed.

“Ugh. You are simply impossible to deal with when you are in one of these moods of yours. Hopefully Fluttershy will be able to figure out what has you so bothered and we can put this whole ugly incident behind us.”

The cage hissed at her.

“Hmph.”

Rarity and her floating cat carrier resumed their trudge along the road to Fluttershy’s cottage in silence.

For those of you curious about what Rarity’s cat was doing wandering the streets of Ponyville so far from the Carousel Boutique, I must admit that is a very good question.

You see, Opalescence is an indoor cat, through and through. From the time she was a kitten, way back when Rarity’s parents gifted her to their daughter, Opal has been pampered and primped and spoiled rotten and enjoyed every minute of it. She has spent so much time with Rarity that she has even picked up a few of the pony’s personality traits herself, including an aversion to anything the least bit unclean. Cats are pretty clean animals by nature already, and Opal takes this to such an extreme that she even tolerates the frequent baths Rarity gives her, sitting there soaking wet and miserable and shivering in the tub being soaped and scrubbed, all without trying to claw her owner’s eyes out. Well, not trying as hard as she could, anyway.

Since the great outdoors is such a filthy disgusting place, Opal prefers not to spend too much time there. An occasional visit, for a pony pet playdate maybe, is acceptable, and she prefers to do her business outdoors (weather permitting) to keep her home clean, and she sometimes accompanies Rarity on long trips (in the safety of her cat carrier, naturally), but for the most part she is perfectly content to stay in.

So clearly it must have taken something dramatic to drive Opalescence out of the house and halfway across Ponyville. It is possible (though unlikely) that her deep-rooted feline instincts to hunt and explore temporarily overwhelmed her more fastidious qualities. Perhaps she was simply trying to avoid the escapades of Rarity’s little sister Sweetie Belle and her energetic friends. Or maybe it was that same mysterious force that had recently caused so many kittens to come from miles around and converge upon Sugarcube Corner.

Sadly, we may never know the true reason, unless cats learn to talk, in which case we can simply ask her and solve this mystery once and for all.

Chapter 5

The door to Fluttershy’s cottage burst open suddenly and Twilight Sparkle charged in. Spike and Applejack had elected to wait outside, figuring that one pony charging into the house unannounced would be a bit less of a shock for their easily-startled friend than the whole group marching in at once.

“Fluttershy! I need to talk to…” Twilight’s voice trailed off. Fluttershy was nowhere to be seen. “That’s odd. She’s usually here this time of day.”

Her gaze swept across the room before settling on the cross-looking white rabbit seated on a sofa at the far end of the room.

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed. “Hello there, Angel Bunny. Is Fluttershy around?”

Without taking its eyes off her, the rabbit pointed one paw straight up into the air.

“She’s upstairs?”

The rabbit shook its head, and once again pointed up.

“Uh, she’s fixing the roof?”

The rabbit, clearly frustrated at Twilight’s inability to understand its obvious gestures, tried once more to convey its message, jabbing its paw repeatedly upward.

Twilight was completely clueless. “Sorry, I’m really not sure what it is you’re trying to tell me.”

The rabbit covered its face with its paws and groaned and shook its head in defeat.

“Um, Twilight?” a quiet voice sounded from above. “I’m up here.”

Twilight Sparkle looked up and immediately understood what the rabbit had been attempting to communicate to her. An upside-down Fluttershy looked back down at her from the ceiling. She was seated in an upside-down chair at an upside-down table, sipping from an upside-down cup of tea.

Across from her, also upside-down, sat that mishmash of assorted animal parts more commonly known as Discord, Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony.

“Twilight Sparkle!” he exclaimed, a somewhat unsettling grin spreading across his face. “What a pleasant surprise! My dear friend Fluttershy and I were enjoying an afternoon tea. Why don’t you come on up and join us?”

“I—whoa!” Twilight cried out as gravity reversed itself around her and she fell up toward the ceiling, landing with a crash next to Fluttershy.

“Oh my! Are you okay, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

“Ugh.” Twilight struggled to her hooves. “I’m fine, Fluttershy.”

“You really should think twice before doing that, Discord,” Fluttershy scolded. “Twilight could’ve been hurt.”

“Oh, lighten up, Fluttershy. She said she was fine.” Discord turned his attention to Twilight. “So,” he said, filling a cup, “how do you take your tea? Salt? Mayonnaise? Perhaps a lump or two of radioactive cesium?”

“I’m not here for tea, Discord.”

“Ah, well, more for me, I suppose.” He downed the tea in a single gulp and tossed the empty cup over his shoulder. Twilight watched gravity take hold of the cup and carry it toward the ground. It landed with a dull thunk and began slowly melting into a puddle.

“That was my teacup,” Fluttershy said quietly. No one paid her any attention.

At that moment, Spike and Applejack barged into the house.

“Twilight! We heard you shout, and then there was a crash! Is everything…” Spike trailed off when he noticed the room was seemingly empty.

“What the hay is goin’ on in here?” Applejack said. “Where’s Twilight? And where’s Fluttershy, for that matter?”

“Hey!” Spike said, pointing toward the sofa. “Maybe Angel Bunny knows where they are!”

Twilight Sparkle knew firsthoof how that conversation was likely to go and decided to spare Spike the headache. “We’re on the ceiling, Spike.”

Spike and Applejack looked up, then looked at each other, then looked up again. Applejack spoke up first. “What are y’all doin’ on the ceiling?”

“Having a tea party, from the looks of it,” Spike said.

“Yes,” Discord interjected, “and we were having a lovely time, too, until you all barged in and started making all that racket.”

“Discord!” Applejack exclaimed. “We need to have a word with you! Come down from there!”

“Oh, I’m quite comfortable where I am, thank you very much. Why don’t you come up here instead?”

“Oh boy, here we go,” Twilight sighed.

Applejack yelled in surprise as she fell toward the ceiling and crashed into Twilight, leaving a bewildered Spike alone on the ground with the white rabbit.

“Discord!” Fluttershy said in what was, for her, a surprisingly harsh tone. “I just finished telling you not to do that. Please try to be nice.”

Discord shrugged. “Well, what else was I supposed to do? She’s an earth pony. She couldn’t very well fly up here on her own, now, could she?”

“Applejack?” Twilight said. “I’d very much appreciate it if you’d get off of me.”

“Sorry ’bout that, Twilight.” Applejack rolled off her friend’s back and rose unsteadily to her hooves. “Hey, where’s my hat?” She looked up and spotted it lying on the ground. It had, for some reason, failed to make the trip up to the ceiling with her.

“Well, that’s strange,” Discord remarked. “With the way you wear that thing everywhere you go, I always assumed it was attached to the top of your head like a barnacle or something.” He glanced over at Fluttershy, who was giving him a tentative smile, sighed, rolled his eyes, and snapped his claws, and an instant later, Applejack’s hat sat once again in its rightful place. “There. Right as chocolate rain. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you.”

Fluttershy beamed. “Oh, how wonderful! I always knew you had it in you, Discord.”

“Now, Fluttershy, stop it. You’re making me blush.” Discord was clearly not blushing.

“Ugh,” Spike said from the floor below. “I think I stepped in something.” He lifted his foot for a closer look. “Uh, I think this used to be a teacup.”

“Um, that was mine,” Fluttershy said. “Sorry. Oh, there are some towels in the second drawer on the left over there if you’d like to clean yourself up.”

“Wait a second,” Applejack said suddenly. “This isn’t my hat. My hat’s still lyin’ up there on the floor.” The others on the ceiling all looked up (well, down, but up from their perspective) and, sure enough, there it was. “Where in the hay did you get this other hat from, Discord?” A worried look flashed across her face as she recalled his earlier remark regarding barnacles. She reached up with a hoof, and let out a sigh of relief when the hat lifted easily off her head.

“Now that’s definitely strange,” Discord said. “I’m certain I specifically summoned your hat to appear on your head. My magic must have pulled one of your spare hats out of your hat closet instead for some reason. Ah, well, that’s chaos for you. Nice and unpredictable.”

“Hey! How do you know about my hat closet?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Discord said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a secret.”

“Will you two knock it off!” Twilight yelled. “This is not a productive area of discussion! We have to find out about—”

It was then that Rarity walked in. “Fluttershy, darling, are you busy? I have a bit of a cat situation and—oh, hello, Spike. How are you doing today? Is Fluttershy around?”

Spike took a break from cleaning liquid teacup off his foot to look up at her. “Run, Rarity. Don’t ask why. Just turn around right now and run out the door. Trust me on this one.”

A gasp drew Rarity’s attention toward the ceiling. “A cat situation? Oh dear. Is it Opal? Is the little darling okay?”

“Oh, my!” Rarity exclaimed. “What on earth are you all doing on the…” Her voice trailed off when she noticed Discord. “Ah. I see.”

“A pleasure to see you, too,” Discord said, not looking particularly pleased at all. “I’d invite you up, but, as you can see, it is starting to get a bit crowded up here.”

“I never thought I’d find myself agreein’ with Discord,” Applejack said, “but I really want to get down now.”

“Seconded,” Twilight said.

Even Fluttershy spoke up. “Actually, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d like to check on Rarity’s kitty.”

“Well, fine, then. Suit yourselves. The tea party was starting to drag on a bit there towards the end anyway.”

With a snap, Twilight Sparkle and Applejack once again found themselves falling victim to the force of gravity, while Fluttershy floated gently to the ground. Discord vanished with a flash of light and reappeared moments later with another flash of light on Fluttershy’s sofa, much to the surprise and dismay of the white rabbit who had up to that instant been its only occupant.

“Uh, Applejack? You kinda landed on me again.”

“I know, I know, hold your horses there, Twilight.” Applejack once again rose to her hooves. She instinctively reached up to straighten her hat, only to find it missing. A quick glance toward the ceiling showed her that, once again, her hat had been left behind. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud! It happened again!”

“Well, how about that,” Discord remarked. “One would almost think I was doing it on purpose.” He rolled up a sleeve, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Here, let me fetch you another.”

“No!” Applejack shouted before he could snap his claws. “Ah, I mean, y’all don’t have to do that.” She scooped up her first hat, the one that had remained on the ground when Discord pulled her to the ceiling, and set it atop her head. “See? All better. Not that I don’t trust you or anything, but… well, yeah, I don’t trust you.”

“Come now, Applejack, don’t be like that. At least let me get your other hat off the ceiling for you.”

“You know what?” Applejack said. “You keep it. I’ve got a whole closet full at home.”

“Very well, if you insist.” Discord stretched an arm up and plucked the hat from the ceiling and planted it on his head. “Hmm. Not quite my style, but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.” A snap of his claws, and the hat was suddenly topped with a small heap of assorted fruits and vegetables. “Now that’s more like it.”

Discord reached up, plucked a banana from the hat, slowly and deliberately peeled it, ate the peel, and tossed the remainder over his shoulder. Four ponies, a baby dragon, and a white rabbit watched the banana arc toward the ceiling and splatter against the abandoned upside-down table. A long moment of awkward silence ensued.

Rarity was the first to speak up. “Well,” she said. “That was most certainly… something.” She turned to Fluttershy. “It would seem I have come at a bad time. Perhaps I should return later, when you have finished up with… whatever it is you all are doing here.”

“Oh, no, Rarity,” Fluttershy said. “It’s no problem at all. Especially if you have a cat emergency you need help with.” She looked around. “Where is Opal, by the way?”

“Fluttershy, you are too kind, really. I left Opal’s carrier just inside the—”

Rarity was interrupted mid-sentence by Rainbow Dash, who chose that moment to burst in through the window and straight into an unfortunate Twilight Sparkle, tackling her to the ground. With a hasty apology, she disentangled herself from the purple pony. Her eyes swept quickly across the room before settling on her primary target.

“Discord!” In an instant, she was hovering before him, jabbing an accusing hoof in his face. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, pal! I’ve got half a mind to mmph hmmph hmm!” Her shouting was suddenly cut off when Discord plucked a head of cabbage from his hat and wedged it into her mouth.

“Rainbow Dash. How nice of you to stop by. Though I really wish you wouldn’t talk with your mouth full.” He glanced around the room, ticking off ponies on his eagle claw. “Three, four, five. Hmm. We appear to be one short.”

Right on cue, Pinkie Pie bounced in through the front door, nearly colliding with Fluttershy, who was yanked out of the way at the last moment by Rarity.

“Hey, Fluttershy!” Pinkie said. “Dashie and I have some questions about kittens for you!”

“Ah, there she is,” Discord said. “Running a bit late, but better late than never, as they say.”

“Late? Late for what?” Pinkie’s eyes darted back and forth across the room, looking for signs of fun. “Did you guys start the party without me? Wait! I didn’t know there was gonna be a party! Why didn’t anypony invite me? Oh! Is it a surprise party? Where’s the cake? And the streamers? And the balloons? And the music? No bobbing for apples? No pin the tail on the pony? No punch? Wow. I gotta say I’m disappointed in all of you. This isn’t a very good party at all. I thought I taught you better than this.”

Rainbow Dash, having finally managed to extract the head of cabbage from her jaws, shouted, “Pinkie! There’s no party! We came here to yell at Discord, remember?”

“We did? I thought we were here to find out if kittens can eat chocolate.”

Rainbow groaned and buried her face in her hooves.

Fluttershy was still recovering from the shock of having both Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie crash into her house in quick succession, but her ears perked up at Pinkie’s question. “Oh, no, Pinkie! You can’t feed chocolate to cats! It’s toxic to them!” Her eyes widened as her mind made the logical connection to Rarity’s situation. “Oh no! Tell me you didn’t feed Opal chocolate! Oh, dear! The poor little thing! She needs immediate medical attention!”

Rarity chimed in before Fluttershy could descend into a full-blown panic. “Fluttershy, dear, do calm down. Opalescence is not ill. I am quite certain she hasn’t eaten any chocolate.”

“She hasn’t?”

“Not at all.”

Fluttershy calmed significantly. “Oh, thank goodness! I was so worried. But, um, if she’s not sick, then what happened that you needed to see me?”

“Oh, it’s nothing too serious,” Rarity said. “Opal is in one of her moods again, and I—”

Rainbow Dash cut in suddenly. “Yeah, yeah, stop the presses, your cat’s a jerk. We got bigger problems right now.” She ignored the glare Rarity was leveling at her and jabbed an accusing hoof at Discord. “He’s been causing trouble in Ponyville again!”

“Who, me?” Discord held a paw to his chest, and a halo blinked into existence hovering above his towering fruit-and-vegetable hat. He was the very picture of innocence. “But I’m reformed, remember?” He dragged a surprised Fluttershy into a slightly-too-tight embrace. “My dear friend Fluttershy here saw to that.”

Fluttershy squeaked.

“You see? She agrees with me. Now, I don’t know what piddling little thing it is that has you all so worked up as to bust in here and give poor little Fluttershy such a fright, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it.”

“Hmph. A likely story.”

“Um, actually, Rainbow,” Fluttershy spoke up, “I think he’s telling the truth.”

Rainbow did a double take. “Wait, what?”

“Well, you see, he’s been here with me all day. He can’t have caused any trouble in town.”

Discord grinned. “Oh, Fluttershy, I could just hug you.”

“But you already are hugging me…” Fluttershy squeaked again as Discord squeezed her just a little tighter.

“But— but—” Rainbow Dash sputtered. “It has to be you! There are marshmallow clouds raining strawberry milk all over Sugarcube Corner right now! And the kittens! Hundreds of kittens! You must have hypnotized them with your freaky magic or something!”

Discord shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, Rainbow Dash. It does sound an awful lot like something I would do, and I wish I could take credit for it, but the fact of the matter is that I am innocent. Maybe some other spirit of chaos and disharmony is on the loose in Ponyville.”

Rainbow was about ready to explode when Applejack spoke up. “Now wait just one apple-pickin’ minute here. What’s all this about kittens and marshmallows and strawberry milk? I thought we were here about the cookies.”

Rainbow gave Applejack a blank look. “The what now?”

“I don’t think I have any cookies,” Fluttershy said quietly.

“Now that you mention it,” Rarity said, “as I was walking up, I noticed that somepony has left a tub filled with cookies out by Fluttershy’s mailbox. Is that what you’re referring to, Applejack?”

“No. Well, yes. Maybe?” Applejack shook her head. “To be honest, it’s all mighty confusin’ to me. Twilight said she can explain, and I’m anxious to hear what she has to say.”

“Cookies?!” Rainbow exclaimed, before Twilight could even open her mouth. “Who cares about cookies? We gotta stop Discord before he turns Town Hall into tomato soup or something!”

“Oh, come now, Rainbow Dash,” Discord protested, “you can’t possibly still think I’m to blame! Not after Fluttershy came up with that brilliant alibi for me!”

“It really wasn’t all that brilliant, you know,” Rarity interjected. “Er, no offense, Fluttershy.”

“None taken,” Fluttershy responded.

“Yes, well, as I was saying,” Rarity continued, “we know all too well that you are perfectly capable of creating chaos in Ponyville from right here. A quick snap of your, er, claws while Fluttershy is distracted for a split second. It’s not hard to imagine.”

“Yeah, what she said!” Rainbow added.

Discord threw his arms up, dropping Fluttershy unceremoniously to the floor, and let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know why I expected anything more out of you lot. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t trust me at all.” His towering fruit-and-vegetable hat drooped slightly, and several raisins dropped off, plumped into grapes, and rolled across the floor.

Rainbow Dash looked good and ready to let him have another few earfuls, but before she could get back to accusing him, Twilight grabbed her tail with her magic and pulled her back down to earth.

“Let me try talking to him, Rainbow.” Twilight turned to Discord. “You want us to start trusting you, Discord? I’m going to give you a chance to start earning that trust.”

Discord folded his arms. “I’m listening.”

“Right. Here’s how it’s gonna go. I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to answer it. If you’re honest, you earn trust points. If you lie—and believe me, I’ll know—you lose trust points. And you really can’t afford to lose very many of those. Got it?”

“Sounds straightforward enough. Ask away.”

“Okay.” Twilight cleared her throat. “Discord, did you leave a cookie button in Pinkie Pie’s room last night?”

Rarity and Fluttershy exchanged confused glances. Rainbow whispered a question to Applejack, who shrugged. Pinkie leaned in slightly to hear Discord’s response.

“That’s it? That’s your big question?” Discord chuckled. “And here I thought you were going to give me a hard one. Yes, that was me.”

Twilight Sparkle, having half-expected him to outright deny it, was momentarily surprised into speechlessness.

Pinkie Pie gasped. “I should have known! It all makes perfect sense! Wait, no, it doesn’t. Wait! Yes! No! No! Yes! Of course! It was a birthday present all along!”

“How does that make any kind of sense?” Applejack asked. “It’s not even your birthday! And what the hay’s a cookie button anyway?”

“It’s a button that makes cookies, duh! And obviously it was a surprise birthday present! What’s more surprising than a birthday present when it’s not even your birthday?”

“I gotta say,” Discord remarked, “she really gets me. Happy birthday, by the way.”

“I don’t get it,” Fluttershy said.

“Nor do I,” Rarity agreed.

“This is nuts!” Rainbow exclaimed. “Why are we wasting our time talking about cookies? What about the marshmallow clouds? The strawberry rain? The kittens?!”

“If everypony would just STOP YELLING for one minute I’d be happy to explain!” yelled Twilight.

A few moments of silence.

“Much better. Ahem. Now then, the reason I’m trying to talk about cookies is because I believe that it’s the cookies that are causing trouble in Ponyville and not Discord.”

A few more moments of silence.

“Twilight, dear,” Rarity said, “I must admit I find this difficult to believe.”

“But I have evidence! Spike and I proved through scientific experimentation that the cookies made by the button are contaminated with chaos magic! And if they’re—”

“You know what else is contaminated with chaos magic, Twilight?” Rainbow interrupted. “I’ll give you a hint: it’s Discord! And let’s face it, this is exactly the kind of stuff he loves to pull!”

“But—” Twilight stopped suddenly. Rainbow Dash was making a surprising amount of sense, and Twilight considered the possibility that her friend might actually be right. She turned to Discord. “You know, she has a point.”

Discord frowned. “Really, now, Twilight, I answered your question honestly, didn’t I? I earned those trust points fair and square. Is it so much to ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt?”

“Oh, I believe you wouldn’t risk your friendship with Fluttershy by doing something as blatantly obvious as whipping up marshmallow clouds and strawberry rain in the middle of Ponyville. But I wouldn’t put it past you to give a magic button to Pinkie and let her make some chaos while you sit back and avoid taking any blame!”

“That’s preposterous!” Discord protested. “How is she supposed to create chaos with a magic cookie button? All it does is make cookies. Everypony loves cookies!”

“Not if they’re contaminated with chaos magic!”

“‘Contaminated’ is hardly the word I’d use. It can’t be more than a trace of magic, not even enough to harm a fly.”

“But what if you made a dozen cookies? A hundred? More? How long before the accumulated magic starts to reach dangerous levels?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous! The number of cookies you would have to click before you even start getting close to that point… well, let’s just say it’s far more than anypony in their right mind would ever—” Discord stopped suddenly as a disturbing thought crossed his mind. “Oh.” His eyes widened slightly. “Oh, dear. It would seem I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Moments later, a very similar disturbing thought crossed the minds of five of the ponies in the room. They all turned to look at the sixth.

“What are you all looking at?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Is there something on my face?”

“Pinkie,” Twilight asked, dreading the answer she would receive, “how many cookies have you clicked today?”

“Oh, about ten thousand four hundred seventy-six, give or take a few.”

For those of you who like numbers, let’s do a little cookie math together.

Pinkie Pie claims to have clicked 10,476 cookies. If we assume an average rate of 4 clicks per second (which I think is more than generous, considering the button measures 2 feet across and surely takes a bit of effort to push all the way down), it would have taken her 43 minutes and 39 seconds of continuous clicking to reach that number of cookies.

By comparison, Twilight’s magic finger, clicking at a much slower rate of 1 click every 10 seconds, would have taken over a day (29 hours and 6 minutes, to be exact) to click the same amount of cookies. Over the same 43 minutes and 39 seconds, the finger would have clicked 261 cookies, only 2.5% of Pinkie’s impressive feat.

In actuality, Pinkie Pie has been busy most of the day running a bakery and keeping an eye on Gummy and occasionally running off to harass Twilight and Applejack, and didn’t have time to just sit and click for 43 minutes straight. She did her clicking in small chunks here and there, whenever she had a few moments of free time, so it probably took her closer to a couple of hours. The finger, on the other hand, has no such restrictions, and so has been clicking nonstop since Twilight activated it. Even with all this extra time, though, it wouldn’t have even reached 900, much less the 10,476 that Pinkie clicked.

Now, just for fun, let’s say we were to take those 10,476 cookies and stack them up, one on top of the other, even though doing so would serve no practical purpose. This very unstable stack of cookies would reach about 435 feet high. To give you an idea of just how impressive that is, the famous statue that stands in the Manehattan harbor is only 305 feet tall, including the base and pedestal.

In conclusion, that’s a lot of cookies.

Chapter 6

An uneasy silence fell over Fluttershy’s house as the ponies within struggled to make sense of what Pinkie Pie had just said. Knowing her well, they had expected the cookie count to be high. Maybe even into the mid-hundreds. But this was just plain ridiculous.

“Ten… ten thousand?” Twilight Sparkle finally found her voice. “Ten thousand, four hundred, and seventy-six?! What in the name of Celestia could you possibly need that many cookies for?!”

Pinkie Pie shrugged. “I figured it’d be best to be prepared in case eight hundred and seventy-three ponies came into the shop asking for a dozen cookies each.”

Another few moments of silence ensued, as Twilight tried and failed to follow Pinkie’s logic.

“The button makes cookies instantly, Pinkie! You could easily fill each customer’s order as they came in! There’s no reason to stockpile them!”

Pinkie considered this for a moment. “You know, you’re right! What was I thinking?”

“That’s a good question, sugarcube,” Applejack said.

“Twilight, dear,” Rarity interjected, “If I’m understanding correctly, these cookies are potentially dangerous in large numbers. How dangerous, exactly, are we talking here?”

Twilight thought for a moment. “Well, I can’t say for sure. Chaos magic is unpredictable by its very nature. But whatever happens won’t be anything good. And the more the magic builds up, the worse things are going to get. We’re starting to see some of the effects already: marshmallow clouds, strawberry milk rain, kittens behaving strangely, all in the area of Sugarcube Corner, where we know somepony”—she shot a glare at Pinkie Pie—“has been hoarding cookies.” She paused for a moment. “I’d say we’re lucky that so far, kittens and strawberry milk are the worst things that have—”

“Oh!” Pinkie Pie interrupted. “I just thought of something, Twilight! When you wanted to know how many cookies I clicked, did you want me to include the ones your magic finger made? Because I didn’t count those.”

All eyes in the room shifted suddenly to Twilight, who was suddenly looking a bit pale.

“Oh no. The finger! I completely forgot!”

“Don’t worry, Twilight,” Pinkie reassured her friend. “That finger was sooooooo slow at clicking, it’s like a drop in the bucket compared to the ones I clicked myself.”

“But it’s still something! Every additional cookie just makes things worse!”

“Uh, I don’t mean to worry you more, Twilight,” Applejack said, “but there’s also all them cookies Pinkie grew on my farm.”

Twilight turned a few shades paler.

“Oh my,” Fluttershy said with a concerned look at her friend, who appeared about ready to toss her cookies. “Discord, isn’t there anything you can do to help?”

“Well,” Discord said, “I can fetch her a cold compress and some ginger ale, but really the best thing in situations like this is for her to get it out of her system. Maybe I should grab a bucket and a mop, just in case.”

“That’s not what she meant, you dummy!” Rainbow Dash said. “She wants you to do something about the cookies!”

“Oh, yes, that makes much more sense.” Discord stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Nope. Can’t help there. Sorry.”

“What?! What do you mean, no? This is your mess! You should at least act like you want to help clean it up!”

“First of all, Rainbow Dash, it is only half my mess at best. Pinkie Pie shares some of the responsibility, as does our queasy friend over there, apparently.” He waved an arm in the general direction of Twilight Sparkle, who had shut her eyes tightly and was taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. “Second, I was being literal when I said I can’t help with the cookies. It’s out of my control at this point. If I tried to help, it would likely only make things more… well, more interesting is one way to put it. I’d say ‘fun’, but I don’t think any of you would appreciate the results nearly as much as I would.”

“Don’t give me that! We’ve all seen you poof much weirder stuff back to normal before! They’re just cookies! Make with the magic and disappear them already!”

Discord sighed. “Oh, right. I forget how dense ponies can be sometimes. Maybe a visual aid will help. Do try to pay attention, now.”

Ignoring Rainbow’s glare, he conjured up a chalkboard, upon which was drawn a stick-figure version of himself.

“This is me.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Duh.”

The chalk-Discord snapped his claw and squiggly blue lines appeared around him.

“And this is my magic.”

The squiggly blue lines wiggled away from chalk-Discord and began swirling around and around. A drawing of a cookie button faded into view at their center, and the swirly blue lines sank into it.

“Now we have a cookie button. Let’s click a few cookies and see what happens.”

A chalk-Pinkie trotted in from the side of the board.

The real Pinkie was overjoyed. “Look, look, it’s me!” she said, bouncing with excitement.

The chalk-Pinkie walked up to the chalk-button and clicked it. The swirly blue lines reappeared and began vibrating rapidly. One of the swirls turned green and broke away from the rest. It spiraled around itself, faster and faster, then collapsed entirely.

Where the green swirl once was there appeared a chalk-cookie, with tiny green squiggles radiating from it. The chalk-Pinkie promptly devoured the chalk-cookie, then proceeded to repeatedly mash the chalk-button. More and more chalk-cookies popped up across the chalkboard.

“Notice how the magic in the cookies is different now than it was at the beginning. Different enough that I no longer have control over it. And if I were to try to get rid of them, well…”

As he spoke, the chalk-Discord launched squiggly blue lines at the chalk-cookies, but they were unaffected. Instead, the squiggly blue lines bounced off in all directions and exploded in little chalky puffs of smoke. Soon the chalkboard was filled with drawings of spatulas and bowling pins and muffins and tubas and other miscellaneous objects.

“Let’s just say different wavelengths of chaos magic don’t mix well.”

With a swipe of his paw, Discord vanished the chalkboard back to wherever he pulled it from in the first place.

“And that’s how Equestria was made. Any questions?”

Twilight Sparkle, mostly recovered from her panicked state, had been watching Discord’s demonstration closely. The classroom-style presentation combined with the soothing (to Twilight, anyway) scent of chalk dust brought up pleasant (again, to Twilight) childhood memories of sitting in lecture halls and learning about intermediate magic theory, which helped her relax and think clearly.

“Wait,” she said. “You expect me to believe that your magic changes so much in the transition from you to the button to the cookies that you lose all control over it?”

“That’s about right, yes.”

“But what makes that happen? What does the button do that alters your magic so much?”

“Well, it’s really all rather complicated. It has to be, in order to summon cookies from nowhere on demand like that. And the magic sort of gets jumbled up in the process. I could’ve drawn up some complex mathemagical formulas on the chalkboard to illustrate exactly what happens, but that would have taken far too long and gone over most of your friends’ heads. I figured the silly cartoon drawings would get the point across just as well, and without boring everypony to tears.”

“Okay, fine, let’s just say you’re right,” Twilight said. “The cookies are off the table. But what about the button? If your ‘silly cartoon drawings’ were accurate, its magic is still very similar to yours. You should be able to stop it easily.”

“Huh.” Discord blinked. “To be honest with you, it never occurred to me to try that.” He scratched his head, and glanced for a moment over at Fluttershy, and then sighed heavily. “Oh, I suppose I can give it a whirl.” He snapped his claws.

Nothing happened.

“Strange. That usually works.” He snapped again.

Nothing happened.

He frowned, and snapped several more times.

Nothing happened.

A few moments of silence.

Discord shrugged. “Well, I’m out of ideas.”

“Wait, that’s it?” Rainbow said. “Big bunch of help you are.”

“Look, I tried stopping the button, all right? It’s not listening to me. Maybe all the heaps of cookies piled around it are interfering with my magic or something.” He sat back down on the sofa, pulled an orange from his hat, and stuck a straw in it. “If you can bring the button here I’ll shut it off for you. But other than that, you girls are on your own.”

Twilight was disappointed but not entirely surprised. “Right. Guess we’re doing it the hard way, then.” She turned to her friends. “We’ll split into two groups. Applejack, you and Rainbow Dash head to Sweet Apple Acres and pull up those cookie shrubs.”

“You can count on us,” Rainbow Dash said. Applejack nodded in agreement.

“Pinkie and I will go to Sugarcube Corner to retrieve the button. Fluttershy, you’d better come with us. If those kittens are still there and under the influence of the chaos magic, we might need your help.”

Fluttershy nodded meekly.

“What about me, Twilight?” Rarity asked.

Twilight thought for a moment. “Hmm. You can go with Applejack and Rainbow. That’ll keep the two groups balanced.”

Rarity looked horrified and disgusted. “You can’t possibly expect me to go to a farm and perform manual labor! I’ll get all sweaty and gross!”

“Yeah!” Rainbow chimed in. “She’ll just spend all her time complaining about the dirt and telling us how we’re pulling up the shrubs all wrong.”

Rarity gave her a nasty look. “You’re not helping!”

“Girls, please!” Twilight said. “We don’t have time to argue. Rarity, you can either go to the farm, or you can come with us and help Fluttershy deal with a hundred potentially hostile kittens. It’s your call.”

This caused Rarity to reevaluate her options. “Oh my. When you put it that way, a little farm work suddenly doesn’t sound quite so awful. I have enough trouble dealing with only one angry cat. I don’t even want to imagine what a hundred would be like.”

“Okay, that’s settled, then. Remember, our top priority for now is to stop all cookie production. We’ll meet up afterward to figure out a way to deal with the cookies themselves.”

Twilight looked to each of her friends one last time and nodded.

“Right. Let’s go!”

As the six ponies rushed out the door on their way to save Ponyville, none of them noticed that Applejack’s tub of cookies, left sitting next to the mailbox, had been completely emptied.

~ * ~

Fluttershy’s house fell silent once again. For a few seconds, anyway.

“Wait,” Spike said. “Did they all just leave without me?”

Angel Bunny shrugged.

“Looks that way,” Discord replied.

“Huh.” A few moments of silence. “I don’t know whether to be mad that they forgot about me, or happy that I don’t have to deal with this whole cookie mess, or worried that they left me here alone with you.”

“Oh, we’re not alone,” Discord said. “Angel Bunny is here. And it appears that Rarity left her cat as well.”

The cat carrier, sitting against the wall next to the front door, let out a menacing growl.

“Now, what say we find some way to entertain ourselves?” Discord pulled an ear of corn from his hat and handed it to Spike, who was only a little surprised when it began to pop. “Here, have a snack, grab yourself a seat, and let’s watch an ornery cat chase a bunny around the house. That should be fun for at least five minutes.” He reached toward the cat carrier.

“You really don’t want to do that,” Spike warned. “Rarity’s cat can reach some pretty epic levels of nasty.”

“Come on, kiddo. I’m the Spirit of Chaos, remember? I think I can handle one grumpy little cat.”

“Even if she’s being affected by the cookie magic like all those kittens in town?”

Discord jerked his claw back from the cage door. “You know what sounds fun? Sitting quietly on that couch over there. Let’s do that.”

~ * ~

Applejack and Rainbow Dash arrived at the front gate to Sweet Apple Acres at nearly the same time. Rarity caught up about half a minute later, panting and wheezing and struggling to catch her breath.

“Did we really… have to run here… so fast?”

“You heard Twilight,” Rainbow said, trying to hold back a smile. “We can’t afford to waste any time.”

“That’s right,” Applejack added. “Now suck it up and let’s get a move on!”

“You girls… go on ahead… I’ll be along… shortly….” Rarity gasped. She lit her horn and a fainting couch appeared, onto which she promptly collapsed. “Just need to… rest a bit….”

Applejack rolled her eyes. “We should probably just leave her be, Rainbow. She ain’t gonna be no good to us in that condition anyway.”

“Right,” Rainbow said. “Don’t take too long, Rarity! I’ll be sure to save a couple shrubs just for you!”

And so Rarity was left alone to recover while her two more athletic friends made their way to the carrot fields. It didn’t take them long to reach it, and it didn’t take them much longer to notice that something was missing.

“So,” Rainbow said, “where exactly are all the cookies?”

Indeed, the rows of shrubs growing in the carrot field had been picked clean. No cookies remained on their branches, and no cookies filled the tubs scattered across the field.

“I don’t rightly know,” Applejack replied. “But Big Macintosh was harvestin’ ’em last I saw him. Maybe he did somethin’ with ’em?”

“Maybe,” Rainbow said. She pointed toward the barn, where Applejack’s brother was unhitching himself from an empty cart. “We should probably ask him.”

“Hey Big Macintosh!” Applejack hollered, running toward him, Rainbow Dash flapping along beside her. He nodded in acknowledgement.

“So, you finished harvestin’ the cookies then?”

“Eeyup.”

“And you took ’em into town to deliver ’em to Sugarcube Corner?”

“Eeyup.”

“But Pinkie wasn’t there?”

“Nope.”

“But she left a note on the door with directions on where to take ’em in case she weren’t back yet?”

“Eeyup.”

“And you didn’t run into any weird chaos-magicky stuff along the way?”

“Nope.”

“And nothin’ crazy goin’ on here at the farm while I was out? Besides the cookies, I mean.”

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“Eeyup.”

“Okay,” Rainbow Dash interrupted, “how in the hay are you guys doing that?”

“Doin’ what?” Applejack asked.

“That whole conversation! It’s like you can understand… but all he ever says is… but you were…” Rainbow threw up her hooves in defeat. “You know what? I don’t even really care anymore. This whole day has been one big bucket of weird and I want to get back to my nap. So let’s just do what we came here to do and be done with it already.”

“Right,” Applejack nodded. “Say, Big Macintosh, care to lend us a hoof diggin’ up those cookie shrubs? Twilight reckons they could be a mite dangerous if we let ’em go on makin’ cookies, and after hearin’ what’s been goin’ down at Pinkie’s place I’m inclined to believe her.”

Big Macintosh considered this for a moment, before replying with an “Eeyup.”

The three ponies worked quickly. Nearly a quarter of the shrubs had been dug up by the time a mostly recovered Rarity showed up to help. Well, not so much to help as to fret over the way the shrubs had been tossed aside haphazardly. As the other three continued their work, she spent her time and energy arranging the discarded shrubs into neat rows, and then magically trimming them into more visually appealing shapes.

Soon all that remained was an empty field and an arrangement of uprooted heart- and flower- and star-shaped shrubs.

“You do realize we’re gonna have to burn those, right, Rarity?” Rainbow said.

“Yes, but until then, we’ll have something a little nicer to look at than an ugly heap of untrimmed shrubbery.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Whatever. My work here is done. If you all need me for anything, just look for a cloud with an awesome pegasus napping on it. And then go find somepony else to ask.” With a flap of her wings, she was off. Or, at least, she would have been off had Applejack not caught the tip of her tail in her teeth.

“Not so fast there, Rainbow. Your work ain’t done just yet. We still gotta head into town and meet up with the rest of the girls to figure out a way to get rid of all them cookies Pinkie’s got piled up.”

Rainbow sighed impatiently. “Fine, let’s get going, then. The sooner we’re done, the sooner I can get back to doing more important things. Like catching up on lost nap time.”

The three friends departed for Ponyville, leaving Big Macintosh behind to finish the cleanup.

~ * ~

By the time Twilight, Pinkie, and Fluttershy arrived at Sugarcube Corner, the skies were clear and the streets were devoid of kittens. Only mostly-dried puddles of strawberry milk and lots of tiny, muddy pawprints remained.

“Everything looks normal,” Twilight said. “That’s a bad sign.”

“It is?” Fluttershy asked. “I thought it would be good. If the chaos has stopped, then maybe the cookies weren’t as dangerous as we thought.”

“They’re dangerous all right, Fluttershy. And the chaos hasn’t stopped. Not unless the cookies all spontaneously combusted or up and walked away. The fact that the clouds and kittens are gone could simply mean the chaos magic has taken on a new form. We’ll have to be extra cautious from here on out.” She approached the back entrance to the bakery slowly. “I’m going to open the door now, girls. There’s no telling what may be behind it, so be prepared for any—”

“Hey, what’s this?” Pinkie shoved Twilight aside to closely inspect the scrap of paper pinned to the door. “A note!” She read it out loud. “‘Temporarily closed. Please redirect all cookie deliveries to 742 Horseshoe Lane.’ That’s weird. I don’t remember leaving a note. And I certainly don’t remember authorizing any changes in scheduled cookie deliveries!”

“Let me see that.” Twilight magically yanked the note from the door and brought it in for a closer look. “Strange. There’s nothing at 742 Horseshoe Lane. Half of that block is just empty lots. Why would they want cookies delivered there? And what do they intend to do with them? And why would they sign it with a…” She looked closer. “A tiny pawprint? Did one of the kittens…?”

The creaking of door hinges distracted Twilight. She looked up to find her friends gone and the back door of Sugarcube Corner wide open. “Well, so much for being cautious.” She followed Pinkie and Fluttershy into the shop’s kitchen, and froze in shock.

The place was a mess. All the drawers and cabinets had been opened and emptied onto the floor. Pots and pans and sheet trays and utensils lay scattered around the room. The faucet had been left running and the sink was overflowing with water. A sack of flour had been torn open and tipped over. Tiny white pawprints covered every surface, including the walls and ceiling.

“Oh no!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “All the cookies are gone! And the button, too! I’ve been cat-burgled!”

“That explains why there’s no chaos here,” Twilight said.

“Just look at this mess! It’s gonna take me hours to clean this up! Mr. and Mrs. Cake would have kittens if they saw this! And more kittens is the last thing we need!”

“Oh, those poor kitties!” Fluttershy said. “There’s no way they would ever do such a thing on their own! The chaos magic must have driven them to a life of crime!”

“We’ll have to track them,” Twilight said. “They’re loaded down with thousands of cookies, so they can’t have gotten too far.”

As it turns out, Twilight, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie were not very good trackers. The trail of muddy pawprints they were following ended at a patch of grass, where, apparently, all one hundred kittens had meticulously wiped their tiny paws clean before continuing on.

“This is hopeless!” Twilight said. “We’re never gonna find them at this rate! Today is turning into one big catastrophe!”

Pinkie Pie snorted and burst into a giggling fit. “Hee hee! I see what you did there! It’s gonna be a CAT-astrophe for sure! A PURR-fect storm! The whole KITTEN-caboodle! The—”

“Pinkie! Please! This is no laughing matter!”

“Sorry.” Pinkie covered her mouth with a hoof in an attempt to suppress any further giggles.

Suddenly, Twilight’s face lit up. “Wait! The note! It was signed with a pawprint! The kittens must have taken the cookies to Horseshoe Lane! And I’ll bet they took the button there too!”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Pinkie said. “Let’s go get those cookies back!”

~ * ~

The two groups of friends ran into each other a couple of blocks away from Horseshoe Lane. Twilight was pleasantly surprised to learn that the shrub situation had been handled with ease. She was less pleasantly surprised to learn that Big Macintosh had already delivered an entire crop of cookies to 742 Horseshoe Lane.

“The cookies Pinkie clicked were able to summon kittens and create strawberry rain all by themselves. Adding the cookies from the farm is only going to make them that much more powerful! We have to put a stop to this soon or—whoa!”

The group turned the corner and skidded to a stop. A sizable crowd of ponies was gathered in the middle of the street.

“Whoa nelly!” Applejack exclaimed. “It looks like all of Ponyville is here!”

“What on earth is going on?” Rarity wondered.

“Block party!” Pinkie shouted, darting off into the crowd.

“Don’t worry, I’m on it.” Rainbow took to the air with a flap of her wings and flew off to keep track of Pinkie.

Twilight flagged down the nearest pony, a gruff-looking earth pony stallion. “Excuse me, sir,” she asked, “you wouldn’t happen to know what all these ponies are doing here, would you?”

“Waiting on the mayor, mostly, I’d guess,” he answered. “Word is she’s gonna make a speech soon. Don’t know any more than that.”

“We’d better go and see for ourselves,” Twilight said. “I have a bad feeling about this.” They pressed on, working their way through the throng of ponies, Fluttershy apologizing to each and every one she accidentally bumped or jostled, until finally they broke through to the other side, where Pinkie and Rainbow were waiting for them.

“Twilight,” Rainbow said, “you are really not going to like this.”

“What are you…” Twilight’s voice faltered when she saw what Rainbow meant.

Before them, in what was very recently a row of empty lots, stood 742 Horseshoe Lane. It was huge, stretching nearly the entire length of the block, a rectangular monstrosity of red brick and tall, narrow windows, twin smokestacks jutting into the sky. The sign rising from the roof, featuring a smiling cartoon kitten, identified the building as “Fuzzy McWhiskers’ Old-Time World-Famous Original Chocolate Chip Cookie Factory”. The banner hanging above the door proclaimed this to be a “Grand Opening”, and the smaller sign on the sidewalk announced “Factory Tours Available: Inquire Within”.

Rainbow Dash was right.

Twilight didn’t like it at all.

For those of you who are curious, this is what Cheerilee found drawn all over her chalkboard when she showed up at the schoolhouse the following morning:

She hadn’t had her morning coffee yet and was in no mood to deal with Pinkie Pie and/or Discord’s shenanigans. So she did the only sensible thing: she erased the board completely, drew up the diagrams and equations she’d need to teach her first lesson, downed a few good doses of caffeine, and went about the remainder of the day as if the drawing had never existed in the first place.

Chapter 7

Twilight Sparkle’s friends were starting to worry about her. She’d been standing in the same spot, staring up at the factory, slack-jawed, unblinking, and unmoving, for nearly two whole minutes.

“Hello? Earth to Twilight! Anypony home?” Rainbow Dash waved a hoof in front of Twilight’s face, trying to elicit some sort of response. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this out of it before.”

“Well, can you blame her?” Rarity said. She pointed at the factory. “Just look at this place. It’s so drab and lifeless! I daresay whoever designed this building had absolutely no sense of style!”

Applejack rolled her eyes. “Right. That’s the biggest problem we’re dealing with here.”

“All I’m saying is that a coat of paint couldn’t hurt. It would certainly brighten things up a little. Oh! And maybe some decorative—”

“Give it a rest, will ya, Rarity?” Rainbow interrupted. “We gotta snap Twilight out of her funk and figure out our next move.”

“Don’t worry, I got this!” Pinkie Pie said. She bounced up to Twilight’s side, leaned in real close, and licked her ear.

Twilight shrieked. “Pinkie! Yahhh! What are you… why would you… ew! Just, ew! Ew ew ew ew!”

Rarity grimaced. “Pinkie Pie! That’s disgusting!”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”

“That is beside the point!” Rarity shook her head. “You can’t just walk up to a pony and… oh, why do I even bother. You’re probably not even listening.”

It was true. Pinkie Pie wasn’t listening. She was too busy bouncing cheerfully away toward where the mayor was preparing to make her speech.

Twilight, now thoroughly snapped out of her funk and rubbing her ear in an attempt to clear out the icky wet sensation, suddenly remembered why she was here. “The mayor! I have some things to discuss with her!” She darted off after Pinkie. The rest of the girls, not knowing what else to do, followed.

“Oh, hello, Twilight, girls,” the mayor said. She paused when she saw the look on Twilight’s face. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong doesn’t even begin to describe it!” Twilight said, her face uncomfortably close to the mayor’s. “This—” she waved a hoof at the factory “—this building didn’t exist this morning! It shouldn’t be here! It’s impossible! But it’s here! And now you’ve gathered everypony in Ponyville here to, what? Celebrate?!”

The mayor took a step back. “I admit I wasn’t expecting them to finish the construction quite so quickly, but—”

“Wait. You knew about this?”

The mayor cleared her throat. “Well, yes. Surely you know that all new construction in Ponyville must be approved by my office before—”

“You— you approved this?! When did you approve this?!”

“Why, just this afternoon. I was skeptical at first, but that adorable little kitten with his suit and tie and tiny briefcase was very convincing during his proposal.”

Twilight blinked. “What.”

“Even after all that, I almost didn’t believe they’d actually be able to pull it off in such a short amount of time, but, well, here we are, aren’t we?” The mayor gestured toward the factory. “I’m always happy to welcome new businesses into our—”

“Does none of this strike you as odd in any way?” Twilight interrupted.

The mayor gave her a blank look. “Odd, you say?”

“Yes, odd!” Twilight snapped. “As in, kittens don’t normally wear suits and ties, or carry tiny briefcases, or make business proposals at Town Hall, or construct entire factories in a matter of minutes!”

The mayor tapped her chin. “You know, now that you mention it, that does all seem a bit odd.” She shook her head. “No. More than a bit odd. Downright impossible! How strange! It all made perfect sense right up until a few seconds ago! I was all set to announce the grand opening and everything! What in the world is going on here?”

“Chaos magic,” Twilight said. “The kittens must have used it to cloud your mind. But you’ve finally seen through it, so you should be fine now.”

“Chaos magic?!” The mayor exclaimed. “Oh dear! Is Discord up to no good again?”

“Not exactly. Let’s just say one of his little pranks has unexpectedly spiraled out of control. But don’t worry, we’re on the case. My friends and I are going to shut this factory down, whatever it takes, and put an end to it. You should probably clear these ponies out of here, just to be on the safe side.”

“Of course. Good luck, girls!” The mayor stepped up to her podium to address the crowd. “Fillies and gentlecolts, may I have your attention, please?”

“Come on, girls,” Twilight said, as the mayor made her announcement. “We’re going in.”

~ * ~

Upon entering through the sliding glass doors, the girls found themselves in a well-lit reception area. Their hoofsteps clattered against the dark wood floor as they made their way across the room. They walked along a wall papered with vertical blue stripes. Three large paintings of chocolate chip cookies hung there. Beneath the paintings was a cushioned bench, flanked by a pair of end tables piled with assorted cookie-related magazines. A potted ficus stood in the corner. Soothing, slightly jazzy music filled the air, along with the tantalizing aroma of freshly-baked cookies. Against the far wall, an orange kitten wearing wire-rimmed spectacles and a headset sat behind the reception desk. It looked up as they approached.

“Hello and welcome to Fuzzy McWhiskers’ Old-Time World-Famous Original Chocolate Chip Cookie Factory. Meow may I help you?”

A few moments passed.

“I’m not crazy, right?” Rainbow Dash said. “You all heard that kitten talking just now, too?”

“Yep,” Applejack answered.

“I heard it,” Rarity added.

Fluttershy and Twilight nodded in agreement.

Pinkie Pie rushed up to the desk. “Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! Are you Fuzzy McWhiskers?”

“Oh, no,” the kitten replied. “I’m just the receptionist, meow.”

“Do you know if Fuzzy McWhiskers is here? I’d really like to meet him.”

“I’m sorry,” the kitten said, “but Fuzzy McWhiskers doesn’t actually exist, meow. He’s just a composite of several popular cat-related corporate mascots, meow.”

“Oh.” Pinkie’s excitement level deflated a bit. “Never mind then.”

Twilight pushed Pinkie aside. “Actually,” she said to the kitten, “we were looking for some information about your operations here.”

“I see.” The kitten looked over the group. “We are currently offering guided tours of the facility to members of the public, meow. I am certain you would find it very informative, meow.”

“Uh, would you excuse us for a moment, please?” Twilight said. She gathered the others into a huddle.

“I say we take the tour,” she whispered. “We can use the opportunity to learn more about what we’re going up against.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Rarity agreed.

“Maybe if we ask nicely, the tour guide might even help us find the button,” Fluttershy added.

“Nuts to that,” Rainbow whispered. “Let’s just bust in there and wreck the place. Cause some chaos of our own, and snag the cookie button on the way out.”

“That’s a terrible idea, Rainbow,” Applejack whispered. “This place is huge and we don’t even know where they’re keepin’ the button. I’m with Twilight on this one.”

“I wonder if they give out free samples,” Pinkie whispered. “I’ve got a hankering for some cookies all of a sudden.”

“When do you not have a hankering for cookies, Pinkie?” Rainbow asked.

“Well, sometimes I have a craving for cookies, and other times I have an appetite for cookies, and other other times it’s more of a taste for cookies, and once it was a weird tingly sensation behind my left ear, but I think maybe that one could have been a mosquito.”

A few moments of awkward silence ensued.

“Oooookay, then,” Twilight whispered. “So that’s four votes for the tour, one vote for all-out assault, and one vote for whatever Pinkie Pie was talking about.”

Twilight looked up from the huddle. “We’d like to take the tour,” she announced.

“Excellent,” the kitten said. “Tours run every twenty minutes, and the previous group has just left, so you will have to wait, meow. If you’ll take a seat over there, I’ll call you as soon as the next tour is ready to start, meow.”

“One moment, please,” Twilight said. She ducked back down into the huddle.

“We can’t afford to wait twenty minutes,” she whispered. “The chaos magic will be building up even faster now that they’re mass-producing cookies.”

“All-out assault is starting to sound pretty good right about now, huh?” Rainbow whispered with a smug smile on her face.

“No, Rainbow. We need a plan. Or at the very least, a map. If we get lost in there, it could take us much longer than twenty minutes to shut the place down, get to the button, and get out.”

“Um, I have an idea,” Fluttershy whispered. “What if we asked them nicely?”

“Right,” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “‘Hey, chaos kittens, we think it’d be swell if you would kindly shut down this factory and give us back our cookie button, even though it goes against all your plans for cookie-based world domination.’ That’ll work.”

“No, I meant—”

“Rainbow’s right, I’m afraid,” Rarity interrupted. “Negotiating with cats is difficult enough when they aren’t corrupted with chaos magic. I know you’re good with animals, but I think even you might be out of your depth here.”

“But I—”

“Do you think they make other kinds of cookies here?” Pinkie whispered. “Like oatmeal raisin, maybe?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Applejack asked.

“Just ignore her,” Rainbow whispered.

“Maybe they have gingerbread cookies! Shaped like little ponies! I like to bite the heads off first.”

“Pinkie, focus!” Twilight whispered sharply. “We have to come up with another plan.”

“We could always just send Pinkie in to eat all the cookies,” Rainbow suggested.

“I know you’re not being serious, but there are thousands of cookies in there. It would take an army of Pinkies to eat them all.”

“Oh!” Pinkie whispered. “There’s always the mirror pool!”

“No!” four other voices whispered simultaneously.

“Say,” Rarity whispered. “Where’s Fluttershy?”

The others all looked up from their huddle, just in time to see Fluttershy approach the reception desk.

“Um, excuse me? I know the tour group has left already, but my friends and I have plans for later and we really can’t wait twenty minutes for the next group. Is there any way you would consider letting us join them, even if they’ve already started the tour?”

“I don’t know, meow….”

Fluttershy flashed her kindest, gentlest smile. “We would be ever so grateful.”

“Very well,” the kitten sighed. “Proceed through the door on the left, meow. But you’ll have to hurry if you want to catch up to the group, meow.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” Fluttershy said. She turned around to find her friends staring at her in stunned silence, and immediately became very self-conscious. “Oh dear. Um, Twilight said we didn’t have time and then you all started arguing and I don’t like arguing and so I thought that maybe… um, I’m sorry?” She shrank back into her own mane.

“Fluttershy, dear,” Rarity said, “you have absolutely no reason to be sorry. That was brilliant!”

“Yeah, great job sweet-talking that kitten!” Rainbow added.

Fluttershy blushed. “I didn’t really do anything all that special, though. I just asked nicely. I’m sure anypony could have done it.”

“Yes,” Twilight said, “but anypony didn’t do it. You did. And it was great! Now let’s go catch up to that tour group!”

~ * ~

“Wait! Wait for us!” Twilight shouted to the tour group at the far end of the hallway. One of them must have heard her, because the group stopped moving until Twilight and the girls caught up, slightly out of breath.

“I see we have some late additions to our little group,” said the tour guide, a tabby kitten wearing a tiny blue bowtie. “Well, come along, then. We were just getting to the exciting part! Behind this door lies the future! Let’s take a look, shall we?”

The guide opened the door at the end of the hall and the ponies in the tour group filed through: a trio of energetic Filly Guides pushing and shoving each other in their attempt to be first; a pair of pegasus ponies Twilight recognized as part of the Ponyville weather team; a cream-colored earth pony with a pink-and-blue mane, whose name eluded Twilight for the moment; and finally, Twilight herself and her friends. They found themselves in another hallway, this one wider than the first, and with a row of windows along the right wall.

“Here at Fuzzy McWhiskers’ we believe that cookies are the future, and no part of this facility exemplifies that more than our Research and Development Laboratory. Now, we can’t let you into the lab for safety reasons, but we can offer you the next best thing. Through these windows you can catch a glimpse of our scientists and engineers, hard at work, designing and testing new and improved ways to bring our cookies to you!”

The guide led the group to the first window. “This first team is currently testing alternative conveyor belt technology. If these tests go well, we’ll begin upgrading to these new, sturdier conveyor belts within the next few days, bringing a significant boost to efficiency and productivity.”

The three Filly Guides pushed their way to the front of the group to get a good view through the window, but were disappointed by what they saw because, well, conveyor belt technology isn’t the most exciting thing in the world.

“Everyone gotten a good look? Excellent. Now, if you’ll all move along to the second window, some of our more magically inclined researchers are attempting to summon fully-formed chocolate chip cookies from thin air.” The guide peeked in through the window, where a pair of kittens wearing pointy wizard hats were using brooms to beat back the dozens of writhing, slimy tentacles emerging from the portal they had inadvertently opened. “It appears they aren’t making as much progress as some of our other research teams.”

“Oh my. Are they going to be okay?” Fluttershy asked.

“They’ll be fine. All our researchers are trained to handle situations like this.” Even as the guide spoke, the two kittens succeeded in pushing the last of the tentacles back and began the ritual to close the portal. “There, you see? Disaster averted.”

“So, uh, does this sort of thing happen often around here?” Applejack asked.

“Well, we haven’t been operating for very long yet. But yes, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Let’s move on.”

The tour group paused in front of the third window, where a trio of kittens wearing white lab coats and safety goggles watched over a series of bubbling flasks. “Ah, this is one of our more interesting experiments. These scientists are attempting to transmute various materials directly into cookies, thus bypassing the production line process entirely and greatly boosting the rate at which we can produce cookies.”

One of the flasks suddenly spewed out raging bluish-green flames and melted to the table. A kitten rushed in with a fire extinguisher to douse the fire before it spread.

“Hmm. Apparently copper is not a viable candidate for cookie transmutation. Well, a negative result is still a result. Hopefully they’ll have better luck with one of the other materials. Come along, then. On to the final window.”

The tour group followed the guide to the window at the far end of the hall. “Here we have our most ambitious and exciting project to date! Our scientists and engineers have really outdone themselves on this one. If you’ll look through the window, you’ll see…” The guide’s voice trailed off.

Behind the window was an empty room.

“Right. It appears they’ve gone and moved it. Again. Without informing me. Well, never mind, then. It’s not as if this was the highlight of the tour or anything.” The guide put on a slightly forced smile and turned to the group. “So, are there any questions before we move on to the next part of the tour?”

“Yeah,” said the cream-colored earth pony. “What used to be in that room?”

“Well,” the guide said, “the thing about that is, since they removed it from the tour and all, I don’t know whether I’m even supposed to tell you about it anymore. Which is a shame, since, as I mentioned, it’s exciting stuff. Made the whole tour, really. My apologies. Anyone else?”

One of the pegasus ponies—Flitter, or maybe it was Cloudchaser? I get those two mixed up all the time—raised a hoof. “So eventually you do plan on having actual cookies on your cookie factory tour, right?”

The guide chuckled. “Yes, my impatient friend, there will be cookies. In fact, our next stop will give us a nice view of the factory floor itself, where the cookies themselves are made!”

“Now we’re getting to the good stuff,” Rainbow whispered to Twilight.

The guide pushed open the door to the next room and gestured to the group to follow. “Come on, then! Let’s have a look!”

The group found themselves in a shorter hallway than the previous one. This hallway had a single long window running nearly the entire length of one wall, overlooking the factory floor below.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

Twilight had to agree with the tour guide. The factory floor was huge. Conveyor belts crisscrossed the room, creating a path from one piece of complicated-looking machinery to another. One machine dropped dollops of dough onto the belt, which were whisked away to another machine that shaped them into perfectly round balls, then through what appeared to be an enormous oven, and past another that sorted out improperly cooked or misshapen cookies, and into another machine that packaged the cookies neatly into boxes. Here and there, kittens wearing yellow hard hats were inspecting the machinery, and loading sacks of flour and sugar and eggs and salt and baking soda and chocolate chips into gigantic mixers, and stacking boxes of cookies onto pallets.

“Very impressive,” Twilight said. “Exactly how many cookies is this factory producing?”

“An excellent question,” the tour guide replied. “As you know, we have only recently finished construction, and as such, our production lines are nowhere near running at full capacity yet. But we should be up to speed by tomorrow, at which point our humble little factory will be pumping out over a quarter of a million cookies per day!”

Twilight gulped. “That’s… a lot of cookies.”

“And if all goes well, that’s only the beginning. Aside from the new conveyor belts, we’re in the process of upgrading several other vital pieces of equipment. When the upgrades are completed toward the end of next week, we expect a new daily output of nearly thirteen million cookies!”

“I take back what I said before,” Twilight said in a shaky voice. “Suddenly a quarter of a million cookies doesn’t sound quite as… well, big.”

“Yes, it is impressive.” The guide looked over the rest of the group. “Any other questions?”

“I’ve got a question,” Rainbow Dash said. “What’s powering all these machines and stuff?”

“That would be our central reactor. It generates all the power we need to run everything in the factory: the machines, the lights, the soothing background music, the sliding doors.”

Rainbow peered through the glass. “So which one of those is the reactor?”

“Oh, it’s not on the factory floor,” the guide replied. “The central reactor is located in a restricted sector, which means unfortunately that we will not be seeing it on the tour today. Any other questions?”

The rest of the group remained silent.

“Very well. Let’s continue on, then. If you’ll all follow me….”

Twilight motioned to her friends to hang back as the rest of the tour group headed into the next room.

“I’ve seen enough,” she said in a low voice once the group had gone. “The guide’s obviously not gonna give us directions to the reactor. We’ve gotta find it ourselves and shut it down, and fast.”

“And the button!” Pinkie added. “We can’t forget my button!”

“Aw yeah!” Rainbow said. “Finally, it’s time for some action!”

“Right. This way, girls.” Twilight pushed open a door marked “RESTRICTED AREA EMPLOYEES ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT” and led them through, totally unaware that her every movement was being watched.

~ * ~

The kitten at the reception desk watched on its monitor as Twilight and her friends broke away from the tour group and wandered onto the factory floor. It sighed, and pressed a paw to its headset.

“There’s been a breach, meow.”

A pause.

“A group of troublemakers ditched the tour group and entered a restricted area, meow. I had a feeling they were up to something the moment they walked into the building, meow.”

A pause.

“Yes, I’ll alert Security shortly, meow. They won’t make it very far, meow.”

The kitten removed its paw from the headset and sighed again. Knowing how Security treated intruders, it almost felt sorry for the ponies. The yellow one in particular. She was so very kind, after all.

~ * ~

Meanwhile, at Fluttershy’s cottage…

Spike, Angel Bunny, and Discord sat around a small table, each holding a hand of playing cards. More cards were spread in a pile on the table.

Spike studied his cards intently, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.

Angel Bunny thumped his foot impatiently.

“Any time now, half-pint,” Discord said, scowling over his cards.

“Okay, okay, geez,” Spike said. He turned to Angel Bunny. “Got any threes?”

Angel Bunny gave him a smug smirk and shook his head and pointed to the pile.

“Of course you don’t,” Spike muttered. He picked a card from the table—not a three, sadly—and added it to his hand.

“My turn,” Discord said. “Hmm. Let’s see here…” He sent a piercing gaze toward Angel Bunny. Angel Bunny returned the stare, his tiny bunny eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

Spike sighed heavily. “Are you two gonna try to psych each other out like this every single time you get a turn? Because it got old like six turns ago.”

“Quiet, you. I think I’m starting to get a read on him.”

“Yeah, you said that five turns ago. I’d be more inclined to believe you if he weren’t beating the tar out of both of us right now.”

At that moment, an angry-sounding voice interrupted the game. “Enough of this nonsense! Cease your incessant mindless chatter this instant!”

All eyes turned toward the source of the voice, the cat carrier next to the front door.

“Good,” the voice said. “Now that I’ve gotten your attention, perhaps one of you clods might do something useful for once in your lives and let me out of this cage.”

“Well, the cat’s talking now,” Spike remarked. “That’s new.”

“Release me at once! I am losing patience!”

“See, this is why I don’t make talking animals anymore,” Discord said. “They’re always so rude to me for some reason.”

“Think it’s the cookies that are making her talk like that?” Spike wondered.

“They are calling to me! I must be free! I must join them!”

“Of course it’s the cookies,” Discord replied. He pulled a pocket watch out of his ear, flipped it open, and glanced at it. “Twilight and the girls certainly are taking their time stopping this mess.”

The voice in the cage cackled loudly. “Do you truly believe this is a thing that can be stopped? Fool! It has only just begun! The cookies grow in power with each passing moment! Your friends are doomed to fail! My brothers and sisters will see to it! There is no hope for any of you, no hope for Equestria! The future holds only despair, and cookies! Endless cookies, covering all the land in delicious, fresh-baked, chocolatey—”

“Okay, your turn to speak is over now.” Discord snapped his claw and a cone of silence fell over the cat carrier. A large, orange cone of silence, wrapped with bands of reflective tape. Opal’s ranting was almost entirely muffled. “That’s much better.”

“So,” Spike said, “is this a thing we should be worried about?”

“Not at all,” Discord reassured him. “She’ll probably go back to normal once the girls sort this whole mess out and all the excess chaos magic dissipates harmlessly into the aether.”

“Yeah, that’s all well and good, but I was really more asking about the whole ‘Equestria buried in an avalanche of cookies’ end-of-the-world scenario she was talking about.”

“Oh, that.” Discord shrugged. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. I have every confidence that Twilight and her Sparkle Squad can handle the problem before it gets that far out of control. And if they don’t, well, we can always move Equestria five miles down the road, out of the way of the avalanche.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not,” Spike said.

“If it makes you feel any better, neither can I, most of the time,” Discord said. “Now, where was I?” He glanced back down at his cards. “Ah, yes. Do you have any eights?”

“Go fish.”

For those of you who are curious, the wonderful, fantastic invention once featured in the final room of Fuzzy McWhiskers’ Research and Development Laboratory was…

A scratching post.

But not just any scratching post. No, this was an eight-foot-tall, multi-level, full-blown kitty condominium, with rooms for kittens to hide in, and little round windows for them to peek through, and those springy door stoppers that make that sproingy sound when you flick them, and toy mice dangling from strings, and a television playing a continuous loop of canaries splashing in a bird bath. So basically, Disneyland for kittens. Which kind of explains why the tour guide was so disappointed when he saw it was missing.

But why was it missing? Well, the reason for that is simple (and not very interesting). Shortly before the tour group arrived, the team of scientists and engineers working on the project declared it a success and had it installed in the break room. Apparently the tour guide missed the memo. Oh well. At least he’ll be pleasantly surprised during his next break.

Chapter 8

“Hey!” A black-and-white kitten wearing a yellow hard hat and carrying a clipboard ran across the factory floor toward where Twilight and friends were trying to get their bearings. “You all can’t be here! This is a restricted area!”

“Oh, my,” Fluttershy said. “We’re so sorry! We were with the tour and, um, we kind of… got lost?”

“Lost. Perfect. That idiot Victor needs to keep a tighter leash on his tour groups,” the kitten muttered, before turning to Fluttershy. “Relax, it’s fine, no harm done. See that door over there?” The kitten pointed a paw. “Just go through there, take the first left, and you’re all set.”

“Thank you so much.” Fluttershy turned as if to leave.

“Not so fast there, sugarcube.” Applejack moved to block her path. “We still got unfinished business here.”

Fluttershy whimpered.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Mister, er, Kitten…” Rarity began.

“Alonzo,” the kitten replied. “And seriously, you really can’t be here.”

“Well, you see, Mr. Alonzo,” Rarity continued, “the thing is, we’ve come all this way hoping to get a glimpse of your central reactor. They say it’s quite a marvel of engineering, you know. And who knows when we might have another opportunity like this again. So if you would kindly point us in the right direction, we’ll be out of your fur in no time.”

Alonzo groaned in frustration. “Look, lady, what part of ‘restricted area’ do you not understand? If you all don’t turn around and leave within the next five seconds, I’m calling Security.”

“Welp,” Rainbow Dash said. “We tried the nice way. Now it’s time for my way.” She darted up and jabbed at Alonzo with her hoof. “Listen up, fuzzball, here’s how it’s going to go. You’re gonna take us to the central reactor. We’re gonna shut it down. Then, you’re gonna go back to wherever it is you came from and forget all this ‘working in a factory’ nonsense. Because you’re a kitten, and kittens don’t work in factories.”

Alonzo rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.” He turned and walked briskly toward a large red button labeled “SECURITY” on the far wall.

“Hey, get back here! I’m not done with you yet!” Rainbow dashed off to intercept him.

“Tough cookies, ’cause I’m definitely done with—hey!” Alonzo skidded to a stop when Rainbow cut him off. “Step aside, bright eyes!”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. “Make me.”

“Fine. You asked for it.” Alonzo took a step forward, and bopped Rainbow on the head with his clipboard.

“Ow! You little jerk!”

Alonzo bopped her again.

“Cut that out! Or else!”

“I’ll stop when you move.” He bopped her again.

“Oh, that’s it!” Rainbow growled. “You’re asking for it, pal!” She raised a hoof.

“Uh, Rainbow?” Applejack said. “You’re not really aimin’ to pick a fight with a kitten, are you?”

“He started it!” Rainbow retorted. Then she thought about what she was about to do, and looked down at the adorable little black-and-white kitten with his tiny yellow hard hat, and looked at her hoof, and looked back down at the kitten. She let out a frustrated sigh and lowered her hoof.

Alonzo smirked. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. Now, if you’ll just take a couple steps to the right so I can reach the—”

A red light blinked on just above the SECURITY button.

“Oh. Never mind. Looks like someone else beat me to it. Probably Jonathan up at the front desk. I bet he’s been keeping tabs on you bunch since you walked through the front door. He’s got this weird obsession with the security feeds, watches them like it’s some kinda soap opera or something.” Alonzo shrugged. “Well, I’d better get back to work, then.” He turned, paused, turned back. “One last word of advice, because most of you seem like decent enough ponies: get out of here as quick as you can. Security doesn’t play nice.”

“Hey, wait!” Rainbow shouted at the kitten as he turned away to inspect a conveyor belt. “You’re supposed to tell us where the central reactor is!”

“Forget it, Rainbow,” Twilight said. “They’re clearly not going to be cooperative. We’ll have to find it ourselves.”

“Hey, maybe this will help!” Pinkie Pie shouted from across the factory floor. She was hopping up and down and flailing her hooves and pointing at a conveniently-placed map attached to the wall.

The rest of the girls rushed over, dodging kittens and conveyor belts along the way.

“Wow. Finally, a bit of good luck.” Twilight traced her hoof along the map. “Let’s see… aha! Here it is! In Sector 7-G! Down this hallway here, then through the second door on the left, past these two rooms, down these stairs, then three right turns, and we’re there!”

“That’s… quite some distance to cover,” Rarity remarked. “We’ll have to move quickly if we want to get there before Security catches up with us. And with the way that kitten was talking, I would prefer if that didn’t happen any time soon.”

“Right,” Twilight said. “We can’t afford to waste any more time anyway. Remember what the tour guide said? Once this factory’s running at full steam it’ll be able to pump out more cookies in twenty minutes than Pinkie Pie made all day today! I don’t even want to begin to imagine the consequences! So let’s get going!”

She pulled the map off the wall and led the group deeper into the factory.

~ * ~

“…And that concludes our little tour,” said Victor the tour-guide kitten. “Those of you who are interested in taking home a souvenir, maybe a box or two of our delicious fresh-baked cookies, feel free to visit our gift shop.” He looked up and blinked. “That’s strange. I could have sworn there were more of you when we started.”

Flitter, Cloudchaser, and Bon Bon, the only three ponies left, looked at each other and shrugged.

“Yeah, that is kinda weird,” Cloudchaser said. “Maybe they all went to the bathroom or something.”

“That, or they got bored and wandered off,” Bon Bon suggested.

Victor groaned. “Well that’s just great. My first day on the job and I lose half my tour group.”

“More like three-quarters, actually,” Bon Bon pointed out. “I think there were twelve of us at one point.”

“That’s even worse! And if they got into a restricted area…” Victor groaned again. “They’re probably going to dock my pay for this. If they don’t outright fire me, that is.”

“So, good luck with that or whatever,” Flitter said. “I’m gonna go see if they got any snow globes. You girls coming?” She trotted off toward the gift shop. Cloudchaser and Bon Bon followed, leaving poor Victor alone with his worries.

“I could really go for some catnip right about now.”

~ * ~

“We’re getting closer!” Twilight exclaimed, leading the group down a drab gray hallway. “The stairs down to Sector 7-G should be just past the next room, and—” She skidded to a stop in front of the door at the end of the hall, sealed with yellow tape. The posted notice proclaimed the room beyond to be closed, and warned of dire consequences to any foolish enough to enter.

“Twilight?” Rarity said. “Is something the matter? Why have we stopped?” Then she saw the yellow tape, and the notice, and all the skull-and-crossbones stickers. “Oh. Oh my.”

“Um, maybe we should go back?” Fluttershy suggested quietly.

“Nah,” Rainbow Dash said. “Let’s bust on through! Whatever’s on the other side of that door, I’m sure we can handle it if we all work together!”

“I don’t know what to do!” Twilight said. “On the one hoof, all the warnings and yellow tape tell me that going into that room is a very bad idea. But on the other hoof, backtracking to the last fork and trying to map out a new route will take time we don’t have. But on the other hoof, what if it’s something really dangerous, like a poison gas leak? We wouldn’t make it five steps! But on the other hoof, the longer we spend wandering around in here, the more likely our chances of getting caught by—”

“Come on, girls!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, bouncing past the group and bursting through the door in typical Pinkie Pie fashion, without stopping to notice all the obvious warning signs. “Let’s get a move on!”

“Well, I guess that solves that dilemma,” Applejack remarked. She and Rainbow Dash followed Pinkie into the room.

“Wait!” Twilight shouted. “You all can’t just go charging in there without… oh, who am I kidding.” She went in after them, leaving Rarity alone to try to coax Fluttershy through the door and into the unknown.

“Please don’t make me go,” Fluttershy said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Fluttershy, darling, it’ll be fine,” Rarity assured her. “If there were anything truly dangerous in there, Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense would have warned her and she would have never gone in.”

“Are you sure?” Fluttershy said, slightly less quietly.

“As sure as one can be about Pinkie Pie,” Rarity said. “Besides, what Rainbow Dash said before was true! Why, together, we’ve faced Nightmare Moon, and a full-grown dragon, and an army of changelings, and any number of other terrible things, and we’ve always come out on top! Whatever is in that room, we have almost certainly seen worse before.”

“Well, if you say so…” Somewhat emboldened by Rarity’s little pep talk, Fluttershy gathered what little courage she could, took a deep breath, shut her eyes tightly, and stepped through the doorway. When nothing bad immediately happened, she dared to open an eye ever so slightly and sneak a peek.

Crates. Nothing but stacks and stacks of crates, filling the room almost to the ceiling, turning it into a maze of sorts.

“Huh,” Applejack remarked. “This ain’t nearly as bad as all them warnings on the door were suggestin’.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash agreed. “It’s kind of… boring.”

“I don’t mind boring,” Fluttershy said. “Boring is so much better than scary or dangerous.”

“According to the map, we’re in Storage Room B,” Twilight said. “And it looks like the central reactor is one floor directly below us! We’re almost there!” She looked up at the towering crates and frowned. “Now all we have to do is make our way through these boxes to the other side of the room.”

“What do you suppose they keep in all them boxes, anyway?” Applejack wondered.

She didn’t have to wonder for long, because at that moment, a stack of crates collapsed suddenly in front of the group, spilling cookies everywhere.

“That answers that question,” Rainbow Dash said.

Twilight stepped forward to inspect the cookies closely. “I wonder if these came from Sugarcube Corner, or Sweet Apple Acres.” She nudged a misshapen, slightly burnt cookie with her hoof. “Then again, these look a little irregular. Maybe they’re the cookies from the factory floor that didn’t pass the quality inspection. I wonder…” Her horn glowed slightly as she prepared to cast a spell, then fizzled out with a shower of sparks.

“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, jumping back. “What was that?”

“I don’t know! I was just trying to pick it up for a closer look! The spell failed for some reason!” Twilight tried again, and again the spell fizzled out. “Something in this room is blocking my magic!”

Another shower of sparks, followed by a gasp. “Mine too!” Rarity said.

“What could cause somethin’ like that?” Applejack asked.

Twilight thought for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Oh no. We have to get out of this room, fast!”

“What? What is it?”

“Chaos magic! The cookies have chaos magic in them! And we’re surrounded by boxes and boxes of cookies, stacked all the way to the ceiling! This place is so oversaturated with chaos magic that it’s interfering with even the most basic of unicorn spells! And at such high concentrations, there’s no telling what—”

Twilight was cut off by a loud crash from behind the group, as a second stack of crates tumbled over. Fluttershy squeaked and jumped into the air, and the rest of the girls huddled close together.

“I don’t think we’re alone in here,” Applejack said quietly.

A few seconds of silence.

“All right, whoever you are,” Twilight Sparkle said loudly, not quite managing to suppress the faintest tremor of fear from her voice. “There’s no point in hiding. We know you’re in here, so come on out and show yourselves.”

One of the piles of spilled cookies shifted slightly, eliciting startled jumps from the ponies.

“Th-there’s something moving in there!” Fluttershy squeaked.

For a moment, none of the girls dared to move. Finally, Twilight gathered her courage and stepped forward. Using her hoof, she poked and sifted through the pile, looking for any sign of whatever had caused the cookies to move.

“Be careful, Twilight,” Rarity whispered. “There could be anything under there.”

“I don’t see anything,” Twilight said quietly. “Just cookies. No sign of whatever was—YAHHH!” She yelped and jumped back suddenly.

“What?!” Rainbow shouted. “What is it?!”

“One of those cookies just… looked at me!”

A pause.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “The cookie did what now?”

“It looked at me! I-It has an eye! One big eye right in the middle! Then it blinked!” Twilight paused. “Or maybe it winked. I’m not sure what the proper term is when there’s only one eye!”

“Twilight, dear, that’s preposterous,” Rarity said. “Surely you must have imagined it. Cookies don’t have eyes, and they certainly don’t oh dear Celestia it’s coming this way.”

Sure enough, the unusually large cookie emerged from the bottom of the pile, rising to its, well, for lack of a better term let’s just say feet, and slowly shuffled toward them, its eye darting back and forth, lingering on each of the ponies for an instant before focusing on the next.

“Ugh, that’s gonna haunt my nightmares for months,” Rainbow said. “Let’s get the hay outta here before any more cookies come to life.”

“You mean like those cookies?” Pinkie pointed to the right, where several more unusually ambulatory cookies were shambling across the floor aimlessly. Three of the cookies took notice of the ponies and turned, slowly advancing toward them.

The ponies huddled closer together as more and more cookies rose from the spilled piles, surrounding them.

“Well, it looks like the cookies have achieved sentience,” Twilight said, locked in a staring contest with that first sentient cookie. “Possibly a side effect of prolonged exposure to high concentrations of chaos magic.”

“Do you suppose they’re dangerous?” Rarity wondered.

“I don’t think I wanna stick around to find out,” Rainbow said.

“I just hope they aren’t too mad at me for eating so many of their brothers and sisters,” Pinkie Pie remarked.

“So,” Applejack said, “time to run?”

“Sounds good to me,” Twilight said. “There’s an opening to the right. We run on three. Ready?”

The others nodded.

“One.”

The first cookie, as if sensing their intention, shuffled toward them a bit faster. The ponies edged slowly to the right.

“Two.”

The cookie opened something resembling a mouth and let out an unsettling guttural growl.

“Three!”

Twilight made a break for it, followed closely by her friends. They left the slow-moving sentient cookies behind and fled deeper into the labyrinthine stacks of crates.

They didn’t make it very far before running into a second, much larger swarm of sentient cookies.

“Geez, how many of these things are there?” Rainbow Dash said.

“Well,” Twilight said, as the cookies slowly advanced, “there were about ten thousand from Pinkie’s place, plus maybe another ten thousand from Applejack’s farm, plus however many more they’ve manufactured here since the building went up. Which, judging from all the crates they have stacked in here, is a lot.”

“So, we’re in trouble, then.”

“That would be a fair assessment, yes.”

“Of course.” Rainbow sighed. “Say, Rarity, thanks again for waking me up from my nap earlier. I’d much rather be here getting eaten by zombie cookies than sleeping on a nice comfy cloud.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rarity snapped.

For those of you who are curious as to how the girls have been able to wander around inside the factory for so long without running into anything remotely resembling Security, well, it would really be easier to just show you…

~ * ~

Deep in the bowels of the factory complex, behind a door labeled “SECURITY CENTRAL COMMAND AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY”, in a small room lit by a single flickering light bulb and the glow of numerous monitors, a gray kitten sat on the floor, absentmindedly batting around a ball of bright yellow yarn. Behind him, beneath one of the monitors, a red “SECURITY BREACH” warning light blinked, unnoticed, until a second kitten entered the room.

“Oi! George! How long has that been going off?”

The kitten on the floor looked up, blinked. “Who’s going off now?”

“The alert, George! Security breach!” The second kitten, mostly black except for his white paws, glanced at a nearby monitor. “A big one, too, from the looks of it! A veritable pony parade, traipsing about in Sector 4-C!” He narrowed his eyes. “You did see the alert, right?”

George blinked again. “Oh, hello, Bill. How long have you been back for?”

Bill groaned. “You’re hopeless, you know that, George? I ask you to do one thing for me: watch the monitors for five minutes—just five minutes, George!—while I run off to the litter box. And I come back to find there’s been a level-four breach and here you are sitting on the floor playing with a ball of yarn! You know we’re not supposed to take those out of the break room, George!”

George blinked. “…Right. Sorry about that, Bill. I got distracted.”

“Distracted is putting it mildly. You’re downright oblivious!” He pointed at the blinking red warning light. “You probably wouldn’t notice if the entire monitor wall burst into flames right behind you!”

A few moments of silence passed as the two kittens stared at each other.

“So,” George said presently, “with you being back and all, you won’t be needing me to keep such a close eye on things anymore, right?”

Bill mashed a paw into his face and shook his head.

“Right. Lemme know if you need anything else, then.” And with that George went back to playing with his yarn.

“Hopeless,” Bill muttered again. Stepping around George, he made his way to the console with the blinking red warning light, and pressed a series of buttons. “There. That’s handled, finally. Better late than never, I suppose. Almost feel sorry for those ponies, but then they’re the ones who broke into a restricted area, brought this upon themselves and all.”

~ * ~

FMCW TACTICAL ENFORCEMENT DRONE: SERIES 409

*** WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED ACTIVATION OF THIS DRONE MAY RESULT IN SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH, AND REDUCED PAY FOR THREE MONTHS ***

LOGIN ACCEPTED
CONNECTING TO CENTRAL COMMAND SECURE NETWORK..........
SECURE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
DOWNLOADING 6 NEW FILES..........100%

PRIORITY TARGET LIST UPDATED
PRIORITY TARGET: PONY DESIGNATION “TWILIGHT SPARKLE”
PRIORITY TARGET: PONY DESIGNATION “APPLEJACK”
PRIORITY TARGET: PONY DESIGNATION “RAINBOW DASH”
PRIORITY TARGET: PONY DESIGNATION “RARITY”
PRIORITY TARGET: PONY DESIGNATION “FLUTTERSHY”
PRIORITY TARGET: PONY DESIGNATION “PINKIE PIE”

INITIATING STARTUP SEQUENCE..........

REACTOR..........ONLINE
SENSORS..........ONLINE
WEAPONS..........ONLINE
ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL

MISSION PARAMETERS SET
SEARCH AND DESTROY MODE ACTIVE

Chapter 9

“This way, girls! Hurry!”

Twilight and friends raced through the storage room, dodging fallen crates and wandering clusters of sentient cookies as they searched desperately for the exit.

“Wait! Dead end! Turn back and take the left fork!”

“I thought this was the left fork!”

“It was, Rainbow, but now we’re going in the opposite direction!”

“Cookies incoming! Heads up, y’all!”

“There’s a gap! Push through!”

Cookies bounced and scattered as the ponies charged past. One unfortunate straggler was trampled to crumbs beneath six stampeding sets of hooves. It was shortly replaced by ten new cookies, bursting out of a crate to join in the pursuit.

“Oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness…”

“Twilight, we’re going round in circles! I’m certain I’ve seen that crate before!”

“How can you tell, Rarity? All these crates look exactly the same!”

“Look! Up ahead! I see a door! It’s the exit!”

“We’re almost there! Pick up the pace!”

A crash from behind, followed by a cry of pain, brought the chase to an abrupt stop.

“Oh, no! Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy lay sprawled on the ground amidst the remnants of a broken crate, dazed from her collision. Around her, scattered cookies stirred and rose to their feet.

“Fluttershy! Get up! They’re coming!”

Fluttershy looked up, saw the cookies surrounding her on all sides. Her eyes widened with fear, and she let out a quiet gasp. Two of the nearest cookies, attracted by the sound, turned.

Rainbow Dash leapt into action instantly. With a quick flap of her wings, she rocketed toward her fallen friend, whipping past the stacks of crates at breakneck speed. Yet even as she took off, she knew that it was hopeless, that despite her best efforts, the cookies would reach Fluttershy before she could stop them. Her heart sank. “No…”

Fluttershy froze, paralyzed with terror, unable to do anything but watch as the nearest cookie shuffled toward her, reaching out with its chocolate-chip-studded claw-like appendage, filling her field of vision, grasping cookie-fingers inches away….

THWACK!

A flash of silver, and the cookie vanished from sight. An unearthly shriek, fading into the distance, cut short by the solid thud of a sentient cookie impacting against a wooden crate at high velocity.

A sudden silence fell over the room as all the cookies paused and looked up. Fluttershy glanced up to see what had grabbed the cookies’ attention, blinked, and did a double take.

Hovering there just above Fluttershy, brandishing an oversized spatula in her two front hooves, was a very pleased-looking pegasus filly wearing a Filly Guide hat and sash.

“Oh, wow! Didya see how far that cookie flew? If there’s a record for cookie launching, I think I just broke it!”

“Yeah, that was pretty far, I guess,” a voice called from behind. Fluttershy turned to see the source—a second Filly Guide, leaning against a crate next to a giant wooden spoon, wearing a bored expression on her face. “Nothing I’d write home about, myself, but, you know, whatever.”

“Oh, you’re gonna be like that, huh? Well, I’d like to see you do better, ya crumbum.”

The second Filly Guide shook her head. “Nah, not worth the effort. We both know how it would end.”

“As if! Maybe you’ve got the power, being an earth pony and all, but power ain’t everything, you know. It takes skill to make a shot like that!”

“If you say so. All I know is, the harder you hit something, the farther it goes.”

A third voice chimed in, this one from the side. “Hey, cut it out, you two,” the third Filly Guide said around the huge whisk she held in her teeth. “We have more important things to worry about.”

“All right, all right, don’t be such a donut,” the first Filly Guide said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not our fault your horn crapped out on you, so don’t take it out on us.”

“Would you stop saying that! I keep telling you, my horn didn’t ‘crap out’. Something in this room has been messing with my magic since we came in here.” The third Filly Guide sighed and set her whisk down, then trotted over to Fluttershy. “Sorry you had to hear all that, miss. Those two tend to get really competitive at the worst possible times. Are you okay?”

“I think so.” Fluttershy stood, still a bit shaky from her ordeal, and looked up at the first Filly Guide. “Um, thanks, for, you know, earlier.”

“Don’t mention it,” the Filly Guide said, slinging her spatula up over her shoulder. “Filly Guides are always ready to help those in need. It’s kinda our thing.”

“Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash rushed in and tackle-hugged her friend to the ground. “Oh man, am I glad you’re okay! I thought you were a goner for a second there.”

“Rainbow… can’t… breathe….”

“Oh, sorry, heh heh.” Rainbow released Fluttershy just as the rest of their friends trotted up.

The girls and the Filly Guides stood there sizing each other up for a few moments before the first Filly Guide broke the silence.

“Right. Introductions. Name’s Chip Shot. That’s Crumbum, and that’s Donut. Good to meetcha and stuff.”

“Chip!” The third Filly Guide shook her head. “Ugh. Look, just ignore her. She thinks she’s funny but she’s really not. I’m Phyllo Dough. Not Donut.” She shot a glare at Chip, then gestured toward the second Filly Guide. “And that’s my cousin Berry Crumble. Definitely not Crumbum.”

Berry Crumble looked up at the sound of her name, saw six pairs of eyes studying her, nodded, then went right back to ignoring everypony in the room.

“Ooh, introductions!” Pinkie Pie squealed, hopping up and down. “I love introductions! Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! That’s Applejack, and Rainbow Dash, and Rarity and Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle! We’re on a top secret mission to—”

“Ooookay, that’s enough of that,” Applejack interrupted, shoving a hoof into Pinkie’s mouth. “Well, it’s nice to meet y’all, I guess, but you girls really shouldn’t’ve wandered off from the tour. This place is dangerous.”

“Dangerous, nothing!” Chip snorted. “These cookie monsters are the most dangerous thing we’ve seen so far, and they’re so slow and stupid they might as well be cardboard cutouts of themselves! Besides, you six were the ones who wandered off from the tour first. We just followed you here.”

“Well then, y’all shouldn’t’ve followed us. We’re here for a very good reason. And we can handle ourselves in sticky situations.”

“We can handle ourselves too! We’ve all three of us got badges in hoof-to-hoof combat, urban exploration, improvised weaponry, first aid, and baking!”

“Now wait just a minute there,” Applejack said. “I’m pretty sure they don’t give out badges for—”

“That’s beside the point anyway,” Chip interrupted, waving a hoof dismissively. “What I’m trying to say is, we heard you all talking during the tour, about your plans to shut this place down and stuff, and we want in!”

Applejack blinked. “You what now?”

“Look, Filly Guide Cookie season is coming up in a few weeks, right? Well, if these guys start dumping millions of cookies into the marketplace, it’s gonna mean bad news for our fundraising efforts. Like, driving-the-Filly-Guides-out-of-existence levels of bad news! And there’s no way we’re gonna let that happen! So whaddaya say? Partners?” She offered a hoof to Applejack.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “You’re joking, right?”

“No way! I mean, the only reason we were on that tour to begin with was to gather intel on this place to figure out the best way to close it down! We’re on the same side here, so why not work together?”

Applejack turned to Phyllo Dough. “Okay, you seem like the reasonable one here. Can’t you talk some sense into your friend?”

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” Phyllo Dough said. “But Chip gets these ideas in her head sometimes, and it usually leads to nothing but trouble. And the more you try to talk her out of it, the more she wants to do it. At this point all I can really do is be there to help her out when things get crazy.”

“Unbelievable,” Applejack muttered, shaking her head.

Meanwhile, Berry Crumble glanced up at Rainbow Dash, who had drifted up close and was carefully inspecting the Filly Guide. “You want something?”

“So what’s your story?” Rainbow asked. “You here to keep her out of trouble too?”

“Nah,” Crumble shrugged. “Mostly I’m just here to hit stuff.”

“Oh, so you’re the tough one, then?”

Crumble shrugged again. “I guess you could call it that, if you really wanted to.”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” Applejack said. “Look, it’s cute that you girls want to help and all, but we’ve got this covered. Why don’t you three get back to the tour group and let us handle things from here on out?”

“Yeah, ’cause you were doing such a great job before we showed up, right?” Chip said. “I mean, it’s not like I saved your friend from being cookie chow or anything.”

“And she thanked you for it! We’re all mighty grateful, believe me, but now it’s time for you three to—”

Berry Crumble cleared her throat, interrupting Applejack mid-sentence. “So, yeah, can we wrap this up already? In case you haven’t noticed, the cookies are starting to regroup.”

Twilight Sparkle glanced around worriedly. Though most of the cookies remained stationary, a few had once again continued their advance and were shuffling ever closer. She sighed, then turned to the three fillies. “Okay. You girls wanna help? You can help. But you have to do exactly as I say, okay?”

The three girls nodded.

“Wait, you’re not actually going to—” Applejack’s objections were cut off by Twilight’s hoof inserted into her mouth.

“Right. Here’s the plan. The six of us will go on ahead and figure out a way to shut down the central reactor. That leaves you three to handle the very important task of containment. We’ll lock the door behind us when we leave. You make your way back to the other entrance and seal the cookies in. Don’t let a single one escape. These cookies are contaminated with chaos magic, and it’s imperative that we prevent it from spreading beyond this room. Once the factory is shut down, we’ll come back and figure out what to do with all the cookies. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am!” Chip saluted. “You can count on us!” She turned to her fellow Filly Guides. “Well, you heard her! Let’s get this show on the road!” Without waiting for a response, she darted toward the nearest cookie and swung her spatula.

THWACK!

The cookie shrieked as it soared through the air, right up to the moment when it slammed into a stack of crates, exploding into a shower of crumbs and gooey chocolatey lumps. Another THWACK, and another, and two more cookies met the same fate.

Berry Crumble cracked the faintest hint of a smile. “Excellent.” She took up her giant wooden spoon and charged headlong into a cluster of cookies. Thrusting the spoon forward like a spear, she shoved one cookie backward into another, then into a third, smashing them to bits. Her ear flicked around at the sound of a fourth cookie approaching from behind, cookie-claws reaching for her tail. A swift, solid kick sent it tumbling back into yet another pair of cookies, knocking all three to the ground. She crouched, then leapt into a backflip, somersaulting and twisting through the air, landing with a CRUNCH on two of the fallen cookies, bringing her spoon down on top of the third with a CRACK that echoed through the room.

Phyllo Dough rolled her eyes. “Showoffs.” She bent down and grabbed her whisk in her teeth. “Don’t worry,” she said to a stunned-looking Twilight. “We got this.” And with that, she trotted off after her friends into the mayhem.

A moment passed.

“Wowsers,” Pinkie Pie said, breaking the silence. “They’re good.”

“Surprisingly good,” Rarity agreed. “I admit I had my doubts, but it seems those girls really can handle themselves.”

“They do have some pretty cool moves,” Rainbow admitted. “Nothing compared to me, of course, but not bad at all for a bunch of Filly Guides.”

“It don’t matter how good they are,” Applejack said. “This still ain’t no place for little fillies!”

“Of course it isn’t,” Twilight replied, pushing open the exit door. “That’s why I sent them back. Now let’s get out of here and get this door locked up before they figure out we’re ditching them and try to come after us.”

~ * ~

“Hey, wait a minute,” Chip Shot said, screeching to a sudden halt. “I think we just got ditched!”

“What are you talking about?” Berry Crumble trotted up beside her. “Dough didn’t ditch us, she just fell behind. If anything, we ditched her.”

“No, not Dough, ya dummy! I mean—”

“Will you guys slow up a minute?” Phyllo Dough panted, finally catching up to her friends. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to ditch me!” She glanced around. “Hey, where’d all the cookies go?”

The immediate area was indeed deserted, with no sign of cookies save for a scattering of crumbs and a few smashed crates.

“Huh,” Crumble said softly. “Weird.”

“Ya think maybe we got ’em all?” Chip wondered.

A few moments of silence, broken by a quiet shuffling-dragging noise somewhere in the distance.

“I think maybe they’re hiding from us,” Crumble said. “We must have made an impression on them.”

“Well, whatever the case, this is perfect,” Phyllo Dough said. “We should have a clear shot back to the entrance now. We can lock up just like Miss Twilight said and—”

“What? No way!” Chip shouted suddenly. “That’s exactly what she wants us to do!”

Crumble and Dough looked at Chip, then back at each other, then back at Chip again.

“Uh, yeah?” Dough raised an eyebrow. “That was the plan, remember?”

“Yeah,” Chip snorted. “Her plan to ditch us. We gotta get back there fast!”

“No,” Dough countered, “the plan was to deal with the chaos magic. You know, seal the room, keep the cookies contained, and all that.”

“So it’s a plan to deal with chaos magic and a plan to ditch us at the same time. Plans can be two things at once, you know.”

“Look,” Dough insisted, “whether she ditched us or not, containing the chaos magic is still an important mission! Miss Twilight and her friends are counting on us! You wanted to help, right? Well, this is helping! So suck it up, and let’s get back to the door, and lock these cookies in!”

Chip sighed heavily. “Fine. They’ve probably already got the exit sealed up tight by now anyway. We’ll go along with the plan. Make our way back to the door, and lock up.”

“Glad to see you’re finally listening to reason.”

“Then we hit up a map and find a path around this storage room and catch up with Twilight.”

Dough groaned.

“Right,” Crumble said. “That’s settled. So we done standing around here? The longer we wait, the more time the cookies have to find hiding places. And I ain’t done smashing yet.”

~ * ~

“Just… about… there!” Applejack shoved the heavy, near-ceiling-high file cabinet the last couple of feet across the floor. “That oughta keep them cookies from bustin’ out.”

The file cabinet joined an upended table, a stack of chairs, and a potted ficus, all pilfered from a nearby conference room and piled up in front of the doors to create a makeshift barricade.

“Oh, I’m so glad to be out of that horrible room,” Fluttershy said. “Those awful cookie creatures…” She shuddered. “So scary.”

Meanwhile, Twilight studied her map of the factory. “We’re close,” she said, horn aglow, as she traced a hoof along a path on the floating map. “It’s just down this hallway here, and through this—”

“Hey!” Pinkie Pie chirped. “Your magic’s working again!”

Twilight jumped in surprise. Her horn flickered, and the map dropped a couple inches before she regained her focus and caught it again.

“Well, mostly working, anyway,” Pinkie said.

“The interference is definitely lower here,” Twilight agreed, “but it’s not completely gone. The more distance we put between us and that room full of cookies, the better.”

“So what are we waiting for, then?” Rainbow said. “Let’s get moving! It feels like it’s been months since we’ve made any progress!”

“Right. This way, girls.” Twilight Sparkle marched down the hallway, took the second left, and came to an abrupt halt. Her friends, following closely, nearly bowled her over as they turned the corner.

“Geez, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash complained. “How about a warning next time you decide to stop in the middle of the….” She trailed off when she saw why Twilight had stopped. “Oh.”

The FMCW Tactical Enforcement Drone Series 409 was situated in the center of the hallway, squatting like some nesting mechanical flightless bird on its massive metal legs, bent backward at the knee. The main body, a large battleship-gray oblong shape, was capped by a sleek black dome, behind which were presumably situated any number of sensors and electronics, and upon which, strangely, thin catlike whiskers were attached with sticky tape. On either side sprouted two stubby “arms”, bristling with menacing-looking weaponry. “SECURITY” was painted on each arm in bold white block lettering. The whole thing was capped off with two fuzzy blue cat ears glued to either side of what could be considered the head. It towered over the ponies, at easily three times the height of any one of them. It was a machine designed first and foremost to intimidate, and despite the addition of ears and whiskers, it was doing an admirable job.

“This is not good,” Rainbow said.

At the sound of her voice, the drone came to life. With a mechanical whirring and groaning and creaking, it rose to its full height and swiveled downward to train its weapons on the group of ponies. Then it spoke in a booming synthetic voice: “ATTENTION. THIS IS A RESTRICTED SECTOR. PRESENT AUTHORIZATION CODES OR LEAVE THE AREA. YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLY.”

“This is so not good.”

~ * ~

“This is soooo boring!” Chip Shot groaned. “We haven’t seen a single cookie in forever!”

Phyllo Dough rolled her eyes. “It’s been like two minutes, Chip.”

“Yeah, but Crumble smashed that one before I could get to it!”

“I didn’t see your name on it,” Berry Crumble said.

“Well, I’m calling the next one, then!”

“If it’ll shut you up, then fine. Next one’s all yours.”

“If we even see another one before we make it to the door,” Chip muttered.

“Speaking of which…” Dough pointed ahead, toward the door on the wall at the end of the row of stacked crates.

Chip snorted. “Figures. I don’t even get one last swing before we have to leave.”

Dough galloped on ahead toward the exit, followed closely by Crumble. Chip took up the rear, plodding along dejectedly.

They made it about halfway to the door before the sound of a distant crash startled them to a stop.

“Whatever that was, it sounded big,” Dough said.

“Probably just a stack of crates falling over,” Chip said uncertainly. It had sounded far too heavy to be a stack of crates and they all knew it.

“We should keep moving,” Crumble said.

But before they could take a step, another crash echoed through the room, and another, and another still.

“Okay, definitely not falling crates,” Chip said.

“I think I felt that last one,” Dough said nervously.

They stood absolutely still for a few seconds, listening, waiting.

Nothing.

Finally Crumble spoke up. “I think it’s over.”

Another crash, this one definitely louder than before, rattled the room.

“Or not.”

“Yep, definitely felt that one.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

CRASH!

The entire building shook with the force of the blow, causing the three fillies to stumble, and bringing stacks of crates tumbling down all around them.

~ * ~

Meanwhile, twenty seconds or so ago…

Twilight’s friends were on the verge of panicking. Well, one of them was, anyway.

“I think we should go back please let’s go back I want to go back we have to go back.” Fluttershy cowered and trembled and hid as best she could behind the nearest available object (Rarity’s tail).

“We can’t go back, even if we wanted to,” Applejack said. “The door’s blocked off, remember?”

“YOU NOW HAVE FIFTEEN SECONDS TO COMPLY,” the security drone announced.

Twilight Sparkle boldly stepped to the front of the group, glaring up into what passed for the drone’s face. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Twilight, it’s probably not a good idea to antagonize the giant death robot,” Rarity cautioned.

“I don’t care,” Twilight said without looking back. “It feels like we’ve been running around in a panic all day, and I for one am tired of it.” Her horn began to glow. The drone responded instantly, lurching forward menacingly and growling like some large jungle cat, but Twilight stood her ground. “I’m done running. Either this thing gets out of our way, or I move it out of our way.”

“YOU NOW HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY… NINE… EIGHT… SEVEN…”

Twilight’s magical glow intensified. “Should I take that as a no?”

The drone continued its countdown. “SIX… FIVE… FOUR…”

“Have it your way, then.” Twilight’s horn began throwing off sparks.

“Duck and cover!” Pinkie Pie shouted, tackling Applejack and Rainbow Dash to the ground. Rarity and Fluttershy took several rapid steps back.

“PONY DESIGNATION TWILIGHT SPARKLE IS DISPLAYING HOSTILE INTENT. I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO USE PHYSICAL FOR—”

Twilight’s eyes opened, glowing pure white with magical energy. Her horn flared brightly, and with a shriek of twisting metal and a shower of sparks, the drone’s left arm was wrenched from its body and tossed aside. The drone stumbled backward and raised its right arm, attempting to launch a counterattack, but it was too slow. Twilight’s horn flared again, and the barrel of the nasty-looking weapon aimed in her direction crumpled in on itself, as easily as if it had been made of paper.

Her magical aura engulfed the entire drone now, wrapping it in a purple glow. Strain showed on her face as the damaged machine lifted one inch, then two, then three inches off the ground. She tilted her head to the left, and the drone was hurled sideways with tremendous force, crushing what remained of the its right arm and leaving a spider web of cracks in the wall. She tilted her head to the right, and the drone flew across the hallway and smashed into the opposite wall. She tilted her head back to the left, and once more back to the right, pinballing the drone back and forth, each impact sending bits of stone and metal flying in all directions.

Breathing heavily, she allowed the drone to float helplessly in the middle of the hallway for a few seconds, then jerked her head upward, rocketing it into the ceiling, smashing partway through the floor of the room above. Finally, letting out a shout, she jerked her head downwards, and the drone plummeted, hitting the ground like a meteor falling from space, shaking the entire building and rattling windows in houses up and down the block.

As the dust cleared, all that was left of the FMCW Tactical Enforcement Drone Series 409 was a mangled, smoking heap of wreckage half-buried beneath a pile of rubble. The power indicator LED on what remained of the drone’s head flickered weakly for a couple of seconds, then blinked out. The glow around Twilight’s horn gradually faded, and her eyes returned to normal.

“…Whoa,” Rainbow Dash gasped, eyes wide with amazement. “Remind me never to get on Twilight’s bad side.”

~ * ~

Deep in the bowels of the factory complex, behind a door labeled “SECURITY CENTRAL COMMAND AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY”, a tiny black kitten with white paws stared slack-jawed at the carnage unfolding on the monitor in front of him. A tiny gray kitten, taking a break from batting around a ball of yarn, peeked curiously over his friend’s shoulder.

“Say, Bill, whatcha watching there? Some kinda action flick? Is that new? I don’t remember seeing this one. Scoot over and let me have a peek, yeah?”

Bill stepped wordlessly to the left to let his friend take a closer look.

“Wow, that purple one’s really wiping the floor with that robot!” He leaned in and peered closely at the screen. “You know, that looks a lot like one of our TED-409 drones, don’t it?”

“That’s because it is one of our TED-409 drones, George,” Bill said.

George took another close look at the monitor. “Hey, you’re right! I didn’t know we were lending out drones to movie studios as props.”

Bill smacked George across the back of the head.

“Ow!”

“That’s not an action movie, you nitwit! It’s the security feed! That little pony just single-hoofedly wrecked a TED-409! Smashed it to bits! And she made it look easy!”

A beat.

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed!” Bill turned from the monitor and paced back and forth nervously. “This is an absolute disaster! Management is not going to be pleased! We’re sure to take the blame for this! They’ll probably fire us! Out of a cannon! Into the sun!”

“I think you’re overreacting, Bill,” George reassured his panicky friend. “I mean, what, some little pony broke a drone? Who cares? Armory’s full of ’em. And not just the TED-409s, either but all sorts of different models. They’re not gonna miss just one measly drone, right?”

Bill stopped his pacing suddenly. “You know something, George? You’re absolutely right.” He rushed over to the nearest console and began typing furiously. “We do still have plenty more drones. And I’m going to send every last one of them after those ponies.”

George’s eyes went wide. “A-All of them, Bill? Do you even have the authorization to do that?”

Bill continued typing, the tip of his tail twitching back and forth. “Of course I do. In emergency situations, the ranking security officer—that’s me—has free rein to handle the emergency, taking any actions he or she deems necessary. And after what that pony did to that TED-409, I deem this action very necessary.” A few final keystrokes, and he stepped back from the console, looking very pleased with himself. “Done. Let’s see them smash their way out of a full-on level five security lockdown.”

~ * ~

A chime sounded throughout the building, signaling an imminent factory-wide announcement. All the kitten workers paused what they were doing and looked up at the loudspeakers in anticipation.

“Attention all Fuzzy McWhiskers’ personnel: as of this moment, a level five security lockdown is in effect,” a chipper synthetic voice proclaimed. “Security drones are now active in all sectors. If prompted, please present your authorization codes immediately in order to avoid a messy, violent demise. Also, a reminder: all employees are required to thoroughly wash their paws after using the litter box. That is all.”

The chime sounded again, signaling the end of the announcement, and all the kittens went back to work.

And in one particular hallway deep in sector 6-F, a group of ponies did not like what they had just heard.

“I don’t like what I just heard,” Applejack said.

“No kidding,” Twilight agreed. “We should go before any more of those drones show up.” She took two steps down the hallway, stumbled, and collapsed to the ground.

“Twilight!” Rarity exclaimed, rushing to her side. “Are you all right?”

“Ugh,” Twilight groaned. “I’m… totally drained. Those last few spells… took a lot out of me. We must still be too close… to that chaos vortex in the storage room.”

“Oh my!” Fluttershy gasped. “Maybe you should take a few minutes to rest.”

“We don’t… have a few minutes,” Twilight said. “We… have to…” She struggled to a standing position, wobbled, and collapsed again. “Okay… maybe I do need to rest for a bit.”

At that moment, a security drone wheeled around the corner at the far end of the hallway. Not a TED-409 menacing-killbot-of-doom model this time, thankfully. No, this drone was a non-combat model, closely resembling a garbage can with sparks coming out of it, with a single camera-lens “eye” protruding from its domed “head”, and no apparent weaponry. The girls all looked up and watched as it rolled almost sluggishly down the hall and came to a stop before them.

“Is… is that a garbage can?” Rainbow said, raising an eyebrow. “On wheels?”

The rounded top of the garbage-can drone rotated around, pointing its camera eye at the group. From a speaker concealed within its dome, a high-pitched synthetic voice spoke: “PRESENT AUTHORIZATION CODES.”

“Ooh, a talking garbage can!” Pinkie exclaimed. She bounded up to the drone and peered into its camera eye. “Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! What’s your name?”

There was a whirring sound as the camera eye adjusted its focus. “ERROR: INVALID CODE. PRESENT AUTHORIZATION CODES.”

“That doesn’t sound like any name I’ve ever heard of,” Pinkie said skeptically.

“ERROR: INVALID CODE. PRESENT AUTHORIZATION CODES.”

“Geez, don’t you know how to say anything else?”

“ERROR: INVALID CODE. MAXIMUM FAILED CODE INPUT ATTEMPTS EXCEEDED. YOU ARE TRESPASSING IN A RESTRICTED AREA. ALL TACTICAL ENFORCEMENT DRONES IN THIS SECTOR HAVE BEEN ALERTED AND WILL ARRIVE AT THIS LOCATION SHORTLY TO ADMINISTER AN APPROPRIATE PUNISHMENT. THANK YOU AND HAVE A NICE DAY.”

“Oh, you’re no fun at all!”

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Applejack said, grabbing Pinkie’s tail in her teeth and dragging her away from the drone. “We’re leaving. Now.” She tossed a limp Twilight Sparkle over her back. “Sorry, Twi, but you’ll have to rest up on the way.”

Twilight groaned.

The girls brushed past the drone and galloped to the end of the hallway and disappeared around the corner. After a few moments, the drone spoke again: “SUBJECTS ARE ATTEMPTING TO FLEE. TRACKING MODE ENGAGED.” It wheeled around and rolled after them at a leisurely pace.

~ * ~

As the final announcement chime faded away, silence returned to Storage Room B, but only for a few moments. A faint shuffling sounded from beneath a large pile of toppled crates. Shuffling turned to scrabbling, scrabbling turned to grunting and cries of effort. One of the crates near the top tilted slightly, then rocked back to its original position. It shifted again, a bit farther this time, before finally toppling down, rolling and bouncing down the heap, crashing to the floor, smashing open and spilling its crumbly chocolatey contents. From the hole where the crate once rested emerged three fillies, looking a bit bruised and battered.

“Ugh, I think I pulled something,” Chip Shot grumbled, gingerly flexing her left wing.

“Oh? Let me see.” Phyllo Dough reached out and poked Chip’s wing with her hoof. “Does this hurt?”

“Ow! What’d ya do that for, ya donut?”

“Yeah, that’s not supposed to hurt. You probably shouldn’t use that wing for a while.”

“Hey, what are you doing back there?”

“Hold still, Chip. I’m trying to help.”

“It’s not that bad—ow! You did that on purpose!”

“I’m serious. If you keep squirming around you’re just going to hurt it worse.”

“I wouldn’t have to squirm if you—ow!—weren’t tying that so—ow!—tight!”

“And… done!” Dough stepped back to admire her work. “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”

“You kidding?” Chip craned her neck around to inspect her freshly bandaged wing. “I think it hurt less when that pile of crates fell on me!”

“Yeah, well, a stack of crates and a whiny pegasus fell on me,” Berry Crumble said, trying not to smile, “but you don’t hear me complaining.”

“Nopony asked you, crumbum.” Chip sighed. “This stupid room is giving me a headache with its stupid piles of crates and its stupid zombie cookies. Let’s get out of here and catch up with Twilight already.” She scrambled haphazardly down the heap of fallen boxes. At the bottom she paused, called back to Crumble: “Hey, toss my spatula down, will ya?”

“It’s not your spatula,” Crumble replied matter-of-factly. “You swiped it from that test kitchen we snuck through before we got here. Same place I swiped the spoon and Dough swiped the whisk, remember?”

“Seriously, Crumble, toss it down,” Chip said, a tone of urgency in her voice. “There’s a bunch of cookies down here, and they look a lot angrier than the ones from before.”

A second later, the oversized spatula came sailing down from the top of the boxes. Chip leapt into the air and caught it expertly in her teeth. The spatula was followed shortly by Crumble, giant wooden spoon gripped firmly in her mouth as she hopped nimbly from box to box down to ground level. Dough took up the rear, picking her way cautiously down the unstable pile of crates, huge whisk in tow.

By the time she reached the bottom, Chip and Crumble had already jumped into action, charging headlong into this newest group of cookies, spatula and spoon twirling and spinning and thwacking cookies in all directions. Dough flinched as one unlucky cookie crashed into a crate barely a foot to her left.

“Hey, watch where you’re whacking those things!” she said. “That one almost hit me!”

Neither of her friends answered. They were having too much fun.

A low growl and a quiet shuffling sound to her left drew Dough’s attention away from the battle. She turned and, much to her surprise, came face to face with the very cookie that had nearly crashed into her moments ago. Unlike the cookies they had encountered earlier, this one remained relatively intact after its beatdown and subsequent high-speed trip into the side of a wooden crate.

“Uh, girls?” she called out as the cookie advanced toward her, snarling. “I think there’s something wrong here.”

“Save your thinking for later!” Chip said. “Right now it’s clobbering time!” She whipped her spatula around and with a loud THWACK, launched another cookie toward Dough. Fortunately, it missed her, crashing instead into the first cookie, sending them both smashing right back into the same crate as before.

“Seriously!” Dough exclaimed. “These cookies aren’t staying down like the ones from before! It’s like they’re less crumbly and more… uh, squishy and doughy than the last batch!”

As she spoke, the two cookies rose again from the splintered remnants of the crate. And they were, indeed, more squishy and doughy than the earlier cookie hordes.

So squishy and doughy, in fact, that they were stuck fast to each other.

Dough watched in horror as the two cookies struggled for control, their four arms and four legs flailing in their attempt to move in two different directions at once. Unable to keep their balance, they fell to the ground, snarling and writhing and clawing at the air. As she watched, the two slowly sank into each other, the four arms combining into two, followed by the legs, then their entire doughy bodies fusing into a single entity. Two distinct growls gradually merged into one, then went suddenly silent.

It blinked once, twice, rose to its feet, one doughy blob twice as large as either of its two predecessors. For a brief, terrible moment, it locked eyes with Phyllo Dough, staring at her intently, before shifting its gaze toward the battle underway before them. It opened its mouth and let out a surprisingly loud, high-pitched shriek.

Everything stopped.

Cookies and fillies alike turned to see the source of the sound. Dough took the opportunity to rush back to her friends’ side, while one by one, the cookies shambled their way past her toward the newly formed double-cookie dough blob.

“So I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that oversized chunk of cookie dough over there is what you were trying to warn us about earlier,” Chip said.

“It doesn’t look that tough to me,” Crumble remarked. “I bet I could take it.”

“Look around, Crumble!” Dough said. “Out of all those cookies you beat down, how many of them got right back up again?”

“Uh…” Crumble looked left, then right. Not a single fallen cookie in sight. “Huh. I hadn’t even noticed.”

“Of course you didn’t notice! When you get all ‘smashy smashy’ it’s like you’re in a whole other world! You and Chip both! Me, on the other hoof, I pay attention to things! Something you two might want to try sometime!”

At that moment the first of the cookie horde reached the smashed crate where the dough blob stood. The two creatures stared at each other, unblinking, for several tense seconds.

Suddenly, without warning, the dough blob lunged forward and grabbed the smaller cookie with both arms and pulled it into a sticky, doughy embrace. Within moments the smaller cookie had been completely absorbed, and the big, misshapen dough blob had grown bigger and more misshapen.

“Okay, yeah, that’s kind of gross,” Chip said.

“I still think I could take it,” Crumble remarked.

“Nopony’s taking anything!” Dough exclaimed. “We’re getting out of here! Now! While we still can!” She started shoving her two friends toward the exit door as the rest of the cookies slowly began to scatter.

Behind them, the dough blob continued its assimilation of the cookie horde. One cookie after another fell to its relentless pursuit, and it grew larger and larger with each catch. The fillies reached the door just as the dough blob was consuming its final victim.

Dough was first through the double doors, followed by Crumble, with Chip taking up the rear.

“Whoa!” Chip exclaimed excitedly. “Didya see how big that sucker got? I swear he was halfway to the ceiling!” She shot a grin at Crumble. “Still think you can take it?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Crumble replied.

“Will you two shut up for a minute and help me with this?” Dough said, struggling to push the doors closed. “I think the lock’s busted!”

“All right, all right, quit your whining,” Chip said. “Let me see.” She stepped forward to inspect the lock. “Yep. Definitely busted. We’ll have to improvise.” She snatched up Dough’s whisk and slid it through the door handles. “There. Problem solved.”

Dough eyed the makeshift lock dubiously. “You really think it’ll hold?”

A sudden crash sent the three fillies skittering quickly backward away from the door.

“For a while, maybe,” Chip said.

A second crash, then a third, rattled the doors and the fillies’ nerves.

Then, silence.

Several nerve-wracking moments of silence.

Finally, Dough spoke. “Maybe it gave up.”

At that moment, with a creaking of metal, the doors began to bow outward, straining against the whisk handle.

The three fillies backed away further down the hallway.

“It didn’t give up,” Crumble stated, wooden spoon gripped firmly in her teeth.

The doors bent more, groaning under the intense pressure. Small gobs of cookie dough began seeping through the crack between the doors. The wooden whisk handle flexed noticeably, then splintered and snapped in two with a loud CRACK. The double doors slammed wide open and a wall of cookie dough flooded into the hallway.

Meanwhile, at Fluttershy’s cottage…

Angel Bunny sat on the floor next to Discord’s discarded fruit-and-vegetable hat (which had been tossed aside without a second thought the instant the novelty wore off), browsing for a snack. He plucked a radish, inspected it closely, and, apparently finding fault, chucked it over his shoulder, where it joined an ever-growing mound of similarly undesirable fruits and vegetables.

Spike sat on one end of Fluttershy’s sofa, slurping a mug of hot cocoa and kicking his legs back and forth. Discord slouched on the opposite end of the sofa, holding his own mug of cocoa and counting the fruits and vegetables as they flew across his field of vision.

In the corner, in a cat carrier beneath an oversized orange traffic cone, a chaos-infused cat slept soundly, dreaming of world domination and chocolate chip cookies.

“So…” Spike said, breaking the silence, “I gotta admit I’m a bit curious.”

“You should be careful about that,” Discord remarked without looking up. “You know what they say about curiosity and cats.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never heard anypony say it about dragons before,” Spike replied.

“Good point.” Discord straightened up in his seat and set his cocoa mug on a side table before turning to stare at Spike, resting his chin on his lion paw. “All right, I’ll bite. What are you curious about?”

“I want to know how the cookie button works,” Spike said, getting straight to the point. “Where do the cookies come from?”

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Discord grinned. “You see, when a mommy and daddy love each other very much, they measure out two and a quarter cups of all-purpose flour and a teaspoon of baking soda and—”

“Just stop,” Spike interrupted. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“It’s not?” Discord asked innocently.

Spike groaned. “Can’t you be serious for once?”

Discord held out his paw. “Hi. I’m Discord, spirit of chaos and disharmony. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Spike glared at him.

Angel Bunny sniffed at a strawberry, made a face, and tossed it across the room.

A few seconds passed.

“Oh, very well,” Discord sighed. “Just this once, I’ll indulge you. Mostly because I’m incredibly bored.” He paused, glanced left, then right, then leaned in conspiratorially to whisper in Spike’s ear: “It’s magic.”

Spike facepalmed.

“What?” Discord shrugged. “That’s how it works. You press the button, then the magic finds a freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie and zaps it to your location. We had a lecture on this earlier, with a chalkboard and everything, remember?”

“But where does it find the cookies?!”

“Well,” Discord said, stroking his scraggly goat-beard, “it’s not so much a question of where as it is a question of when.”

“When…? Wait, you’re talking about time magic!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not time magic, it’s chaos magic.” Discord paused for a moment. “Chaos magic that takes cookies from the past and pulls them into the present, yes, but still technically chaos magic.”

“Are you nuts?!” Spike shouted. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to mess with time? Haven’t you ever read any comic books? Even the slightest change to the past can ripple forward and have terrible consequences! Twilight nearly drove herself crazy using a time spell once, and she only went back a week!”

“To be fair, it’s not that hard to drive Twilight Sparkle crazy,” Discord pointed out. “Besides, Pinkie Pie already spent hours this morning clicking that button practically nonstop. If there were going to be some sort of time-cookie-related crisis, it would have happened by now. And everything looks fine to me.”

“Sure, if you don’t count the strawberry-milk rain, or the mind-controlled kittens, or the possibility of being buried under an avalanche of chocolate chip cookies!”

Discord waved his paw dismissively. “Yes, yes, but those are all chaos-related crises. Nothing at all to do with time cookies.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better about any of this,” Spike said.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Discord replied. “You didn’t ask me to make you feel better. You wanted to know where the cookies came from. And now you do.”

“Yeah, and I’m starting to wish that I didn’t.” Spike sighed. “I guess this is why they say what they say about curiosity and cats.”

“Indeed,” Discord said. A few moments passed. “Well, I’m bored again. What shall we do next?”

“Honestly? Let’s just go back to sitting on the sofa and sipping hot cocoa in awkward silence while I try to forget everything you just told me.”

And that’s what they did.

Author's Note

Not dead.

Just really, really good at not writing anything for months on end.

My bad, y'all.

So yeah. I do intend to finish this story. Next chapter will be out when it's done. Hopefully in less than eleven months this time.

Thank you, and have a nice day.