Four's A Crowd

by scifipony

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike, Romance, Discord, Slice of Life
Length: 4370

Every pony knew Fluttershy had issued a challenge to me. Even the Caterlot Downtown rag had run a transcript of my Gala performance. Problem was, I had to invite Tree Hugger, the only pony I knew who could see right through me. Chaos would reign.

So Fluttershy said, “Pretty much everypony knows you’ll ask us out. Your performance at the Gala is the talk of the town. The Downtown Rag ran a transcript.” I said, "Well, then, dinner out?" To which Fluttershy replied, "Yes, if Tree Hugger agrees."

And there in a nutshell lies my problem: This red-maned Bohemian was inscrutable and unflappable. And picky about the food she puts in her temple. Worse, I had the uncanny feeling she was playing me. Me? Yeah, she didn’t remember meeting me. That was my line! So, how do you arrange a double date, without raining down chaos, and keeping every pony happy?

Well, I started by asking Spike about Rarity...

Published 2015-05-23 03:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-05-23 03:20:02 UTC

Four’s A Crowd

Today I learned ponies can have different friends for different interests. Twilight later pointed out that the anger I felt had to do with me thinking that Tree Hugger was stealing a resource I thought was mine: Fluttershy’s attention, her time. Neither they nor she are mine, she told me. It’s the definition of jealousy. Apparently, that's bad. When you give up godhood to let creation run as it pleases, you certainly discover strange things about yourself.

-

“Gah! Discord, you’re doing it again! Get out of my bed!

“Technically, Spike my friend, my body is in another dimension and I've added my neck to your blue blanket.”

“Don’t care! Out of my bedroom!”

I rolled my eyes. When all seven dimensions of string space crumple up to a point and you can cross any distance without moving at all, how can personal space make any sense? Still. I snapped my claw.

“Uhhh!” cried Twilight. We materialized with a bang in the middle of the dining table, below that memory crystal chandelier. Her hoof swept a yummy smelling plate; fried eggs and tomato sauce launched across her muzzle and neck. The china plate dashed itself to pieces on the marble floor. The tea cup simply spilled. Twilight jumped back as Spike scrambled away and stood. She pulled the food into the air with her magic and shrieked, “Discord!”

“Spike and I were attempting to have a private conversation.”

Spike said, “We, what? No.”

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked, egg orbiting like a ruby halo.

Spike said, “Twilight? You were staying at the castle after the Gala. You–you cooked?!”

“Not much different than a potion; state transitions with natural proteins–”

I said, “Focus, friends. I said ‘private.’”

Both asked, “Private?”

“Something about Rarity,” I answered Spike soto voce.

He blushed. “Sure. Yeah,” he glanced at Twilight, who quirked a smile.

“Private,” she said.

“See.” Mortals were delightfully slow. Snap. I restored the plate, eggs, and tea in steaming perfection, except for the tomato sauce. I mean, tomato sauce on eggs. Yuk. Snap.

We landed on the edge of the fountain in the town square, Spike windmilled to keep from falling in. Pastel ponies dashed yards away and peered back, following their innate equine program. Only Mayor Mare kept her cool, glaring over a scroll held in a golden assistant’s lime green magic as she trotted toward town hall. I could always count on equines keeping their distance and giving me privacy.

Fists on hips, Spike demanded, “What are you planning with Rarity?” Red on green was a very vibrant color.

“Shouldn’t you be getting over it by now? Everypony knows you have a crush on Rarity, even the dear gal. You telegraph it.” I glanced at the I-heart-Rarity pajama top he wore; I may or may not have put that on him.

He glanced down and sighed. “Rarity?”

“Well, I learned something about friendship last night.” I related the fiasco in gory detail, glossing over a few faux pas, then, “Sooo, I realize I know nothing about going on a double-date–any date for that matter. What would you do were you dating Rarity?”

He scuffed his foot across the stone surface, looking down. “Don’t think she’d date me.”

“Yeah. She’s into stallions.”

“I’m a bit of a colt, sort-of. Thanks, Discord, for reminding me.” His eyes glistened. “I tried growing up once. Not good.”

“Growing up isn’t easy.” Mortals called it maturation. The lessons of Lord Tirek and now at the Gala stung. Being a god, doing anything you wished, got boring once you became self-aware after a few millennia. No surprise, no pain, no elation either. Funny how that latter became addictive. “About Rarity. Surely, you’ve imagined what you might do?”

“Well, I suppose you could start by making a reservation at a nice restaurant.”

I waved my paw from horn tip to tail tip. “Moi.”

The dear boy smirked. “Point taken. I’ll help you with that, but I don’t work for free any more.”

Snap. A ruby appeared in his claw. “Okay. Spike at your service. What does Fluttershy like?”

“Tea cakes?”

“Not a dinner. Have you asked her?”

I shook my head.

“Perhaps you should.”

Snap! Angel Bunny had the ice box open and was heaping salad and fruit into a butterfly-motif earthenware bowl. I grinned at him. The miscreant screamed, jumped into the fridge, and latched the door behind him. I unlatched it because Fluttershy wouldn’t find this as funny as I did.

Snap! Bed made in paisley linens, flowery shams in place, with a heart pillow, and a bowl of rose scented bark.

Snap! In the Canterlot throne room, a rainbow line of ponies–with hats ranging from yellow straw to gray felt top, many in shimmering couture or staid business suits–awaited Celestia’s pleasure. A disappointing few scattered. Celestia glanced up from a scroll that ran down the stairs past a stallion in a lab coat and pop-bottle glasses. “Garden,” she said blandly.

I stopped my fingers so quickly, one fell off. “Maybe I wasn’t looking for Fluttershy.”

Celestia just shook her head without glancing at me. “Everypony in Canterlot knows.”

“Oh,” snap.

There she was, a pink cable-knit scarf around her neck, singing angelically in the gardens with birds flying circles through the air, a kangaroo bounding in time as a buzzard added a not-too-disharmonious drone to the song. Yellow wings shot up, but other than halting the music, she didn’t startle. She smiled, even though the rabbits hopped off. “Celestia invited me for tea in the garden at noon. I’ll be at home by the late afternoon express.” She smiled up at me with the sweet innocent look only the former fille élégante top-model could pull off, kind of a cat who ate the canary look.

“Everybody knows?”

“Pretty much everypony knows you’ll ask us out. Your performance at the Gala is the talk of the town. The Downtown Rag ran a transcript.”

I tried a Spike-blush, but with my multicolor hide, it failed. I sunk into a snake coil. “Well, then. Dinner out?”

A wren, two green finches, and a cardinal settled twittering on her back. “Yes, if Tree Hugger agrees.”

“Riiight. Any suggestions for where?”

She smiled. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say surprise me–”

“Spike woundn’t,” I mumbled.

“–but she’s pickier than Angel about what she’ll put in her temple. Best ask her.” The gleam in her eyes would be mischievous were it in mine.

I sighed and melted further. Fluttershy and I understood each other, had our rituals of cucumber sandwiches, joking banter, and tea parties. This red-maned Bohemian, though, was inscrutable and unflappable. Worse, I had the uncanny feeling she was playing me. Me? Yeah, she didn’t remember meeting me. That was my line! I flowed down the snow-burnt brown grassy knoll until I encountered old Greenhooves washing mud from a plank walkway, flooding it. I popped up. The hose shot away like a cobra when he gasped, releasing the nozzle.

Snap.

I returned where I stood, upside down, realizing I had no destination. The elder pony grumbled, not loosing his wheat stalk: “Consarnit!”

I walked back to Fluttershy using my horn and antler.

“She’s on the Ponyville Way, heading toward town. She likes her gallops. She’s wearing a brown Nehru-collar flower blouse. Can’t miss–”

Snap! I cruised on-high, just below icy cirrus clouds the weather crew had put up as a relief from last week’s winter storm, the one RD made worse. Telescoping my eyes, I traced the red brick road that switched-back down Canterlot mountain before sloping down onto rolling hillocks of bare poplar, maple, and ash, with patches of half-melted snow banking its evergreen shrub sides. For a pony so laid-back she floated on her imaginary clouds, she was fast, already approaching Sweet Apple acres. Changing into an eagle, I swooped in from the south-east, out of the sun to cast a shadow that crossed and recrossed her path, just to see what happened.

She glanced up and slowed, trying to see me. Equine instinct had to be screaming down her spine to dodge. She was no fun. I landed, folding my wings, only my head in my normal shape. She passed me, kicking slush into my face, returning to a gallop, her blouse fluttering like sailcloth in a gale thanks to her Earth Pony speed.

Snap. I jogged backward, huffing, moving faster than my feet should have gotten me, just ahead of her. “Hi, Huggzy.”

“Existential transformational motivation old fellow. Right on,” she said, a faint unearthly music accompanying her profundity. I tried to recognize the virtual instrument, but it stopped. Her hooves kept pounding the road, no perspiration showing, even on her cutie mark emblazoned white linen sweat band. It was cold—not that cold.

“Not old in spirit,” I said, and transformed into a griffin so I could keep up with her, flank to jowl, another predator to incite a reaction, but found myself flapping furiously to keep up. As we passed the farm’s front gate, Big Mac swung a bale of hay on a rope onto a stack, then waved.

“I bet you’re working up quite an appetite.”

“Universal energy fields provide all with sustenance.” Yes, that was definitely a sitar.

“What I was trying to say…” She wasn’t even looking at me and I was beginning to fall behind. Ignoring me, and she would until she finished her “gallop.”

Snap. We appeared yards from the fountain. Again, ponies scattered and shouted. Spike paced on the edge of the fountain, but Pinkie Pie accompanied him. As Tree Hugger skidded across the cobbles to a halt, Pinkie Pie bounced on by us, saying, “Veggie salad. Veggie salad.”

Tree Hugger said, “Virtuous Victuals, sister!”

Pinkie replied, “Maud likes’em, too.”

Tree Hugger did an inelegant cat stretch, her tail waving like a rag mop in the air, then began softly jogging in place, almost as if it were some ethereal dance. It belied that she’d just been galloping at a speed a locomotive might envy.

“Like, I sense you interrupted my Zen meditation for a purpose?” Her movements became languid as she regarded me, eyes half-lidded, red caterpillar eyebrows lifted questioningly.

I vanquished my griffon form for that of a pegasus, preserving my mismatched wings, my yellow eyes, and my horn and antler. I glanced away and said, “About last night–”

“Plentiful consciousness raising, brother, for us both.” When I looked, she smiled, the very definition of languidity. Her eyes locked with mine. She stood still. Her sweat band had disappeared, replaced with a beige maroon-polka dot gypsy scarf. Was she studying me? Didn’t she know I was chaos?

I coughed. “I wouldn’t have sent you to another dimension. Not–”

She spoke over me. “Too bad. It would have have been mind expanding.”

“–for long, anyway…” I finished. I stood and blinked. This wasn’t Fluttershy, or Pinkie, or AJ, Rarity, Dash, or Twilight for that matter. What just happened?

She apparently had a limited attention span because she turned and strolled away in the direction of Fluttershy’s cottage. I followed, and said, “I’m sorry.”

She glanced back and sitar music drifted on the breeze, “The green is clearing from your aura. Let us do better.” She lifted her nose to the breeze nostrils pulsing, turned toward Market street and in a few speechless moments stopped at the herbalist. When she returned to me, she balanced a woven white herbal cachet on her back. She pointed toward the Everfree and the cottage, and I followed wordlessly, replaying the last minutes and starting to see meanings in Fluttershy’s remarks that offhandedly referred to finding somebody to talk chaos magic with. Horses for courses, or “ponies” in this dimension.

In Flutter’s yard, she grasped the cachet with her front teeth and said around it, “Light the end with a small flame.”

Like a flint and steel, I struck my forefinger against my thumb and applied a red flame. The strange whicker didn’t burn, however, and bluish sage-flavored smoke bubbled upward. She began to chant single, long vowels–“Om” and “Ahh”–and wave the sage ball in front of me. The faint sitar music rose and twanged along. “Rest,” she said, only pausing her chant, “Subside. Close your eyes and let your chakras cleanse.”

I sensed a soothing almost syrupy magic that might have existed only in my surprised mind. It swirled around me. I coiled on the ground and closed my eyes.

Well, this is embarrassing. I fell asleep. That became apparent when a hoof gently jabbed me in the shoulder. When I looked up, Tree Hugger said, “Meditation is not sleep. Remember that for next time.” She glanced around me, as if I were actually about three times bigger than I was, waved a hoof here and there, then pronounced, “Your aura is uncolored.”

Odd. I didn’t feel like remaking things to my liking, or caring that nothing was the way I would normally rearrange things.

“A question?” Tree Hugger asked. Her right hoof ground out the last crunchy coals in the ashes of the sage. “Interrupting…” she drawled.

That took a moment, then I remembered Tree Hugger’s “Gallop”, and Fluttershy and the double dinner date she said she would like. I snapped like a rubber band to my full height, towering over her.

Tree Hugger matched my gaze and added, “Clouds of yellow and red. Never fear, certainly fear not the word ‘no’.”

Now I knew what Spike felt like. “Dinner tonight, with Fluttershy and Smooze-face?”

“Righteous. Well done."

“Flutters said I should ask you what you would like to eat.”

“Her aura is so so kind. The first guru lesson is thus, what goes in the temple of your body affects what comes out.” She tapped her head with hoof, as if sensing the joke that ricochetted inside my cranium. “But I am an itinerate professor of ecology. The meadow is my larder.”

Unprocessed food. Veggie salad as Madam Pinkie, idiot-savant, had said. “Spike will help.”

Snap. Well that was funny. I found us tumbling and floating in my unfinished dimension of swirling electric indigo and black fogs, as if some force had interrupted my intention. I heard sitar music as I snapped again and we appeared outside the comics store.

“Whoa!” Spike cried, flinging his purple and red plastic-wrapped Power Ponies comic in the air. The blond poof-maned proprietor stood frozen in the doorway. I shot out an elastic arm and caught comic book, handing it back. That seem to non-plus Spike even more. “Restaurants,” I reminded him. “Natural foods.”

“Tran-san-dental.”

I stared at Tree Hugger. Spike looked at me, at her, at me again and said, “Your Rarity.”

“No, no!” I waved my hands. “No, no. Fluttershy’s my friend.”

“Right,” he said, “Of course.”

“Again,” Tree Hugger murmured, and I had no doubt she referred to the failed teleport.

Spike tapped my knee until I glanced down. “The Daisy and Oleander is Twilight’s favorite.”

Snap. It was an outdoor cafe with wrought iron stools and cultured mushroom tables. A stylish gray stallion with a thin French mustache looked apprehensively from the kitchen door. Even I knew that daisies and oleander were poisonous.

“Processed foods”: Tree Hugger’s statement of fact, not a judgement.

Spike said, “Fresh, on the West Road.” Snap.

Tree Hugger tilted her head as she looked through the window at startled ponies who stared back. Cooked vegetables masked by colorful sauces were the source of a strong curry scent on the breeze. She shook her head slowly.

Spike groaned, scratching the scales on his head. “Meadowbrook? It’s on the second farm before AJ’s. She recommended it to her aunt Orange.”

Tree Hugger had a blissful look as we stepped through the seven dimensions onto the pearl gravel spread before a converted yellow-painted barn. Sawn scrollwork was painted green, like vines, with an abundance of carved wood flowers, mostly painted daisies and poppies. The patio restaurant was vacant, but candles in mason jars announced it dinner-ready. The elderly bed-and-breakfast innkeeper and his wife looked out of the double-doors. A glance at the calligraphic sprawl of a menu looked promising: fresh harvested meadow greens and herbs, stone ground spices, flavored vinegars and oils, all described with words like “heavenly,” “transformative,” and “green-consciousness.” Roasted garlic laced the air.

The innkeeper looked from me, to Spike hugging his Power Ponies comic, to Tree Hugger, clearly convinced none of us were normal, and he was right. Tree Hugger asked, “Would ‘Smooze-face’ find the ambient vibe here as bodacious as might we?”

“Who-face?” In the whole adventure, I’d again completely forgotten why I was arranging a dinner date, namely, Fluttershy saying, “The four of us should go out to dinner sometime!”, and me learning that friendship meant demonstrating understanding. Understanding? Dealing with more than one person, specifically meaning dealing with more than my own desires, proved increasingly challenging and confusing. And then there was the smooze.

I hadn’t lied about going to college with it, him. Last year, I brought him on a visit Canterlot University to show Celestia how much I loved her. While the smooze ate all the glassware in the Star Swirl Alchemy lab, it was the chemical flatulence that followed that got us booted.

I covered my eyes with my paw. I could hear Fluttershy saying, “Four means four.” Tree Hugger obviously concurred. Would the smooze?

“About that,” I said. “Right back!”

With the snap of my fingers echoing in my ears, I appeared alone inside Shoggoth Caldera on a sea island southeast of the land of the griffons. Gray and olive-green granite walls rose into the sky, sharp fingers of rock filled with fools-gold and obsidian crystals that glittered in the sunlight that could only enter in the few hours before and after noon. Claw-like shadows scratched at the crater floor. Sulfurous clouds flowed in wisps at various levels, emanating from the sputtering orange lava flow at the northern most quadrant of the Ponyville-sized environ. The ground shook and rumbled, not so much from an impending earthquake, but from viscous liquid smooze that flowed freely in heat just below boiling.

Technically, Smooze-face was really the smooze, and a piece of it was no different nor more sentient than the sea of goo that surrounded me. That when I came close it smelled like a breath-mint didn’t hurt; and it made me think the volcanic slime creature was probably one of my ironic jokes penned and forgotten a few millennia ago.

I materialized a steam-shovel-sized silver dipper and scooped out a blob, pouring the green goo in a puddle at my feet. As it cooled and congealed, I dropped a gray top hat and red bow tie on top. Smooze-face grew roughly cone-shaped with a constriction that defined a head, and a dripping slash of a mouth that gave it, him, a rough approximation of a toothy smile.

“Remember Fluttershy and her friend, Tree Hugger? I’d like to go out to dinner with her, but she wants us four to go. You’ll be a friend and agree?”

I heard the unmistakable sound of a stomach growling, though he certainly had no internal organs. I sighed and broke off a fang-like rock filled with nodules of pyrite. A hand extended from the smooze's mouth, well, a tongue, and he swallowed the rock candy in a gulp.

“Then you will?” I asked. “We’ve picked a wonderful venue with organic greens and–”

The slime being slid toward the surrounding pool, not interested.

“Wait! I’ll bring a prime assortment minerals and gems to spice it up.”

He began to melt. I remembered that after dancing with Pinkie, he’d become sick. Some of the treasure he’d eaten in the hall closet had not agreed with him. Celestia would have had a snit were the treasures lost. It must have been the tarnish; what the smooze vomited back had been bright and shiny.

This was all falling apart. Perhaps Tree Hugger could “dig his vibe” and help. Snap.

The elderly ponies had come out to discuss plans with Spike and Tree Hugger, but when we two returned, they started backing. For her part, Tree Hugger just circled us, the heat we radiated causing her to keep her distance. “Volcanic life force. Most radical! I should have known.” She knelt, shook her mane out of the scarf, dislodging a notebook and a pencil in a feat that would have made Pinkie Pie jealous. “Shoggoth or Hydia?”

“Shoggoth.”

“He is joining the conviviality this evening?” she asked, pencil in mouth, swiping rapidly across the paper, building up an amazingly life-like sketch, while she looked from the smooze to me without even looking down.

The smooze shook his head slowly.

“Obviously not digging your vibe.”

“I was hoping you might help convince him.”

“Dude, I do not speak Smoozish.” She kept sketching.

I felt my ears drooping, my whole body drooping. “Fluttershy isn’t going to agree if we aren’t four.”

Tree Hugger sighed. “Smooze-face’s aura is clouded. Perhaps he wants to return home.” She spit out the pencil.

What was this alien sensation I was feeling? I could change the physical structure of the universe, put everybody in place like dolls with toy furniture and press the on-button, but they wouldn’t agree, and they wouldn’t like it, and I’d get nothing but anger the way I did the first time I discovered Celestia and her humorless sister. That turned out to be a big bag of hurt, until Fluttershy taught me a different way of thinking.

Was defeat a lesson I was destined to repeat often?

Spike tugged on my bat wing. “This looks like a Rarity moment.”

“Pretty much.”

“When Twilight’s friends can’t agree on where to go to dinner, she usually just takes everybody home and has me cook.”

I perked up, clapping my hands. “Would you?”

“Not in this life-time, buddy. I’m Twilight’s assistant.”

“Righteous idea.” Tree Hugger pushed the pencil into the notebook’s spiral, flipped it skyward while shaking the woven clumps of her mane. She caught it and hid it in her red curls. “I would totally dig your abode. You concur, Smooze-face?”

He nodded, too.

I began pacing and gesturing with my arms. “Fluttershy won’t go. My cobbled-together chaotic cosmos has attracted some unusual wild creatures: one-eyed wings, boohooes, and bat-legged cree to name a few. I’d deport them, but a good scare now and again is fun, and it’s their home as well as mine. That must be Fluttershy’s influence. And don’t get me started on the gravity; it has a mind of it’s own. Not a place for a pony scared of her shadow.”

“Her aura is cloudy blue, but don’t underestimate her. The ‘shy’ is here.” She tapped her forehead. “Amongst the wild creatures, in the jungle, following and observing the breezies foraging, she was fierce. A mistress of animals. A leader. Except for dragons…”

Spike said, “There is that, though she did talk Elder Big Red into tears that time his snoring threatened to blanket Equestria in smoke. Discord wouldn’t remember. He was still stoned.”

“Dragons are people; she cares what they think of her,” Tree Hugger explained, then nodded. “Righteous idea, Diszy: Take me to your home! I shall bare witness to its sweet vibrations, or might it challenge her beyond her comfort zone, you may simply invite us alone.”

“Diszy?”

She said that.

Who amongst pony-kind wanted to see my handiwork? When I tried to make a world look interesting, most did what Spike said, what Celestia, Luna, and Twilight’s friends did: they tried to stone me.

Tree Hugger laughed, and Spike looked around for where the sitar sound emanated. “The second guru lesson is to remember to breathe. Take a deep breath in…hold it, and let it out slowly, slowly and ommmm…”

So I took T.H. into my pocket universe. I showed her the floating islands, and left the smooze at a volcano he liked. She especially liked the peppermint-scented red trees, which coincidentally mirrored her cute mark. I showed her the stranger animals, like the one that was still flying Celestia’s postal pony around. She did insist I send him home. Afterwards, she had me hold the sketch pad so she could draw the preening creature as she floated in zero-G.

Eventually, the afternoon ended. Tree Hugger quietly said, “Some flowers may be delicate, but I believe I can introduce Fluttershy to a wider universe.”

-

Today Fluttershy came to dinner, but insisted on coming directly to my house, which was okay. I tossed meadow greens and orange wild flowers, baked rye bread, wrung the chocolate milk out of a cotton candy cloud, and stocked a smooze-sized barrel with a King’s hoard of gems Rarity found for me when I explained about tonight.

And Fluttershy was right. The stuffed and contented yellow pegasus snored away (daintily) on my fainting couch while T.H. and I chatted incessantly about chaos-based magic and the calming effects of quantum vibrations, drank fizzy pomegranate juice, and later helped the smooze fit into a collection of strangely convoluted blown glass bottles I brought over from Luna’s tower’s basement. (He didn’t eat them.) I learned a lesson. Just because I now had a new friend I chat all night with about geeky arcana that put Fluttershy to sleep, didn't mean we weren’t all friends.

Au Contraire, four’s not a crowd. It’s company!

Author's Note

I'll say it in three words: Stream of Consciousness.

Dear readers, please consider that this was a submission for EqD's Writer's Training Ground. This is like what I've heard called "Speed Painting," but for writing. There was no second draft, just re-reading rapidly over and over, in the middle of meetings, during conferences, and on the treadmill because exercise is important. I found a lot of grammar errors and omitted words. I hope I fixed most. I think I may have put the memory crystal chandelier in the wrong castle room. And, yes, I did have too much fun with episode references, and referenced Lovecraft and 1G MLP, too. Pity please. And...

Critique please. I'd like to know what you thought I was writing about so I can judge my practice's efficacy. Here is my Thank You before hand.