Uniting a Nation

Cheerilee gingerly opened the door to Sugar Cube Corner, not sure what to expect after what she’d seen at the spa. What she heard, as soon as it opened a crack, was Pinkie Pie singing, and what sounded like a couple dozen foals giggling back at her.

All you gotta do is take a couple ponies, add them to the mix!
Make sure that their disposition’s sweet, not stony, a pinch of salt does the trick!
Making these treats is such a sinch, and it’s all thanks to Zecora!
Slide another batch in the oven, ‘natch, and it’s time to bake some more ‘a—

Most of the sounds were coming from the kitchen, but the door was closed, so Cheerilee joined the small crowd of curious ponies waiting around in the front room. “What’s she doing?” she asked.

“I think she’s baking cupcakes?” said the pony in front of her. The song’s refrain seemed to confirm that hypothesis.

“Not… giant pony-sized cakes?” Cheerilee asked. “Does Discord’s spell make it tickle when she cuts them up into tiny pieces or something?”

“Yep!” Pinkie Pie said, opening the kitchen door a crack and peeking out. “But that’s for the frosting. Want me to make you a cupcake, Cheerilee?”

“Ah, I heard about yesterday’s catch. She will make a most powerful batch!” said Zecora, remaining out of sight.

“I’m not here to be eaten,” Cheerilee said, looking around. “Are the rest of you here to be eaten?”

The others glanced around, at each other and at Pinkie Pie, who just kept on smiling at everypony. “I’m… not sure?” one of them answered, at last. “She asked if I wanted her to make me a cupcake, and I said ‘sure’? This place has always had the best cupcakes.”

“And I’m sure yours will be even better than the best, Morning Glory!” Pinkie Pie said, with an especially wide grin.

“Soon you ponies can join the fun, for another batch is almost done,” Zecora said.

Pinkie Pie eeped. “Sorry! I’ll be right there!” she said, then retreated into the kitchen.

===

In the kitchen, Zecora was chanting and mixing her strange zebra brew in what was otherwise an ordinary measuring cup. There was a fizzle-pop sound, and the mixture changed colors, turning a faint green instead of its previous sludgy blue.

Pinkie Pie bounced happily, and gave a high-pitched squeal. “You know what that means, ponies? It’s time to make more frosting!”

There was an enthusiastic cheer from a box on the counter.

Pinkie Pie reached inside and felt around. “And the lucky pony is…” Feeling somepony latch on, she lifted up her hoof, and clinging to it was a tiny blue stallion. “Pokey! Yay! Blue frosting this time!”

“What do I need to do?” Pokey asked, his voice squeaking like he’d been breathing helium.

Pinkie Pie giggled, turned to the counter, and dumped him into the blender. Pokey landed clumsily, slipping off the central post and sliding down between the blades. He was still squirming around trying to climb back up without cutting himself when she added a stick of butter, which knocked him back down and pinned him to the bottom, and then poured in the sugar until he was completely submerged. Zecora carefully tipped her head and poured in her potion.

“You ready, Pokey?” Pinkie Pie asked, as she put on the lid. She hit the button for the highest setting, and the blender whirred into action. There were a few thumps and chunks at first, and a horrible grinding noise as the butter and other solids were reduced to paste, but then the mixture inside started to get to a more even consistency and it faded to a faint whirr.

“Aww,” Pinkie Pie said, frowning at the slurry inside her blender. “It came out pink again.”

===

A few minutes later, Pinkie Pie pushed back the crowd as she opened the kitchen door. “Okay, time for what you’ve all been waiting for. Cupcakes!” Balanced on her back was a plate of large cupcakes with bright pink frosting, one for each pony in the room, including Cheerilee. Cheerilee wasn’t especially hungry after her time at the spa, but she took the cupcake when it was offered.

“Eat up!” Pinkie Pie said. “They’re goooood.”

Cheerilee eyed the cupcake suspiciously. There was something off about it, although from a cautious sniff it at least smelled edible. Not entirely normal, since there was the scent of pony infusing it, but still sweet and sugary. “I heard Zecora in there. What did you put in the cupcakes?”

“Don’t you mean who?” Pinkie Pie giggled back at her.

Cheerilee scraped the frosting off with her hoof, and tore the cake part of the cupcake in half. The cake was mostly vanilla, but sitting in the middle of it was the unmistakable silhouette of a pony, darker in color but still made out of cake. “Okay, who was this?” she asked, turning to show Pinkie Pie.

“Um… Meadow Song, maybe?” Pinkie Pie said, shrugging. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t keeping track of who got which cupcake. But she was happy! They’re all happy!” Pinkie Pie bounced in place. “I love making ponies happy!” As she turned to watch the rest of the ponies eating their cupcakes, she said, “Eat up, Cheery! And don’t forget the frosting. It was made with love!”

“Actually, I’m not that hungry,” Cheerilee said, looking up as she added, “does anypony else want… my…”

The crowd was gone. No, not gone – the noise of the crowd was still there, just a bit higher pitched. Looking down, she saw what had happened – there were all the other ponies who’d eaten the cupcakes, scattered across the tiled floor, shrunk to miniature size. A couple were pinned underneath saddlebags or bit pouches, which hadn’t shrunk with them. Pinkie Pie rescued one of those by picking them up in her teeth, and dropped her into a cardboard box she’d fetched from the kitchen. She looked up and met Cheerilee’s gaze. “Eat the cupcake, Cheerilee. A pony died for that cupcake!”

Cheerilee gingerly set the cupcake down on the table, which just left the frosting stuck to her hoof. She caught herself about to lick it clean, and flicked it across the room with a squeak. It splatted across Pinkie Pie’s muzzle, and before she could say ‘Oopsie!’ the pink pony had reflexively slurped out her tongue and licked herself clean.

“Oopsie!” Pinkie Pie said, her eyes going wide.

It only took a few seconds – Pinkie’s body and face rapidly shrank, while her hair got larger and larger until it exploded into a pile of balls and eyepatches and cooking equipment, with a few rocks and muffins and other odds and ends. Tiny ponies on the floor screamed and ran as one of the balls rolled off the pile and made its way across the floor, threatening to crush them!

Cheerilee leapt forwards to stop the ball, only to feel something squish under-hoof. She screamed, and lifted her hoof quickly mid-stride, throwing herself off balance and sending her sprawling across the floor, tiny ponies squirming underneath her as her unexpected plummet left them unable to avoid her bulk. She rolled to her belly, and held her hoof up to her face to see the damage.

“I’m okay!” said the frazzled Morning Glory stuck to her frog, waving a hoof.

“Be more careful!” squeaked a tiny stallion clinging to her side.

Cheerilee looked over at the pile. “Pinkie!”

The rest of the tiny ponies were already trying to dig through the mess to find their host, but for Cheerilee it was a matter of seconds to carefully set aside the odds and ends Pinkie Pie had been keeping in her mane, until she found the mare herself safely trapped inside an upended measuring cup, rolling on the floor and giggling. “You!” Pinkie squeaked. “You made me shrink! Do you know what this means?”

“No more cupcakes?” Cheerilee asked, tipping the measuring cup to let Pinkie out.

“No!” Pinkie Pie squeaked, jumping up onto Cheerilee’s chest like a flea and then scrambling up over her shoulder and into her mane. “More cupcakes! And Cheerilee’s going to bake them!”

The tiny ponies all cheered. Cheerilee rolled her eyes. “I’m really not much of a baker…”

“It’s easy as pie!” Pinkie Pie said. “Oooh, do you think we could make pony pies? I think we still have some pie crust in the fridge…”

===

Being a baker was a lot of work, even with all the batter already pre-mixed. Zecora had to maintain constant concentration on her shrinking potion – it was based on poison joke, and the slightest mishap could quickly become the largest mishap. That meant that before she could even start baking, Cheerilee had to run all over the shop doing little chores. She took a batch of finished cupcakes out of the oven, cleared the discarded saddlebags and other possessions before new ponies coming into the shop could see them and get the right idea, put all the used dishes into the sink, and then tracked down the tiny ponies who’d managed to scurry around everywhere and put them back in the box where they’d be safe.

It actually looked pretty nice in the box. Pinkie Pie had set up a miniature party diorama, with games and snacks and plenty of salt on hoof to keep everypony in a silly mood.

“You can eat one or two,” Pinkie Pie said with a giggle. “Nopony’ll notice!”

“Eat me! Eat me!” said a tiny green and yellow mare.

“But Sunflower, you said you wanted me to make you a cupcake!” Pinkie Pie shouted back down from her perch between Cheerilee’s ears.

“Oh, right,” she said, plopping onto her butt. “Can I do both?”

“Sure, but you have to be a cupcake first,” Pinkie Pie said. Then, to Cheerilee, “The batter’s in the fridge.”

Pinkie Pie walked her through all the steps, although there weren’t many. First, she picked out a tray with a dozen little spaces for cupcakes. Then, she had to put a paper wrapper in each tray. Next, she added the ponies.

Sunflower sat in her little paper cup, waiting impatiently for the batter. What was taking so long? She paced around for a while, then put her hooves up on the edge of the depression so that she could see out. Apparently, Cheerilee was having trouble getting two of the other chosen ponies to stay in their spots – they’d climbed out and were running around, playing tag with her hooves. The giant purplish pony’s motions were clumsy and slow, since she was being careful not to knock the tray around and spill everypony.

Suddenly, Cheerilee got an evil look in her eye, and her muzzle darted down and snapped up one of the troublemakers, catching her in her teeth and sucking her into her muzzle.

“Hey!” said the other. “Let her go!”

Cheerilee gave a vicious smirk, and started chewing.

Crunch.

Snap.

The remaining pony crept slowly backwards into his basin, and curled up, whimpering. Cheerilee fetched a replacement pony from the box, and then went to get the batter. As the bowl loomed over Sunflower’s spot, she sat back down in place, and sighed. “Finally!”

Then the batter came down in a thick goopy rope, and splattered across her back, sliding through her fur and instantly matting her mane and tail. It was cold, and thick, and smelled absolutely delicious – as the tide started to rise to her shoulders, she opened her mouth and held it up into the stream, swallowing what she could as her face was splattered with cold, clinging sticky batter, swallowing and wallowing until her whole world was batter, thick and cool and so, so delicious. She couldn’t see or hear anything, but smell and taste was enough. She moved her limbs in lazy circles, enjoying the feeling of the batter dragging against her movement.

Then, slowly, the batter started to warm up around her, and that only made it better. She basked in the heat and warmth and let herself drift… but it just got warmer and warmer until it was an impossible heat, and the batter bubbled around her, and inside her, stiffening and changing from better into cake. She couldn’t tell where she ended and the cake began – it was all cake, really. Little sparks of happiness exploded in her mind, as she embraced her fate.

===

Cheerilee was still chewing on the pony when it was time to take the next batch out of the oven. There had been a little bit of texture at first, but after the first few chomps she had gotten all soft and stretchy, like bubble gum, and so by long-forgotten instinct from back in middle school, she spat the pony out onto her hoof and stuck her on the edge of the table, while she used her mouth with the oven mitt to grab the tray.

Afterwards, she realized what she’d done, and poked at the pony gingerly with a hoof.

“That looks like fun,” Pinkie Pie said, eyeing the hairy wad of chewed up pony-gum. “I think that’s how I want to go. Zecora, do you think it’ll work the same if you chew on me like that?”

Zecora smiled. “Discord’s spell is set on you, so you should be safe no matter who chews.”

Cheerilee scraped the gummy pony onto her hoof, and headed for the blender. Pinkie Pie tugged on her ears. “What are you doing?”

“We need frosting, right?”

“Eww!” Pinkie Pie squealed. “She’s been in your mouth!”

Cheerilee rolled her eyes, and put her gum back in her mouth for another chew.

===

There were only four ponies waiting in the front room, when Cheerilee finished frosting the two batches of cupcakes she’d had cooling. “I think business is dying down,” she said to Pinkie Pie, as she watched the four new victims – that is, customers – eat their cupcakes and shrink to tiny size. “I don’t think we need any more cupcakes.”

“But what are we going to do with all the extra ponies?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“You said you had a pie crust?”

Making pie was almost as easy as cupcakes, with the crusts already prepared. There were enough tiny ponies for two pies, so she split them up, putting half in each. One she prepared as a typical sweet pie, with sugar and almond extract and a few other ingredients. The other, she filled with the same sort of spices and herbs as she’d used on Carrot Top, and added some tomato puree and onions.

“Don’t worry,” she told the ponies swimming around in the savory pie mix, “I’m sure you’ll be delicious!”

Then she pressed the upper crusts down into place, hiding away the ridiculous food fight going on in the sweet pie, and popped them both into the oven.

“There,” she said. “Done. The pies should be safe for Zecora and I to share, and we can leave the rest of the cupcakes out in the front room. I’m sure tiny little ponies won’t have any problem finding somepony to eat them.”

“Aww,” Pinkie Pie said. “No more baking?”

“There’s no point baking if there isn’t anypony left to eat what you bake,” Cheerilee said. “The festival’s almost over.” She walked over to the window in the front room, and she and Pinkie Pie looked out into the square. Where at first it had been moderately crowded, now there were only a few ponies here and there, wandering in groups from stall to stall trying to find one that wasn’t deserted. “It looks like almost everypony’s gone. That means the festival was a success. We shouldn’t have any trouble consolidating the rest of the population tomorrow.”

“Then it’s okay if I get eaten,” Pinkie Pie said, flopping onto Cheerilee’s mane.

Cheerilee swallowed the gum-pony she’d been nursing for the last few hours, who’d long since run out of flavor anyways. “Do you want me to eat you?”

“Nah, I promised Zecora,” Pinkie Pie said. “I hope she gets back soon, before I think of some other reason to stick around. It helps that I’m so tiny. A teeny weeny itty bitty shrinkie Pinkie can’t do most of the things I’m thinking of anyway.”

“I’m sorry I got you shrunk, then,” Cheerilee said.

“Heehee! Don’t be sorry, silly. I should have been shrunk yesterday, and gotten eaten then like I promised Twilight.” She crawled down onto Cheerilee’s muzzle, and looked down at her chest. “Is she still in there? Sorry, Twilight!”

Cheerilee eyed the cupcakes. She’d set them up on the display rack, with a little sign reading ‘Eat Me!’ All she had to do was follow her own advice, and she’d be as tiny and helpless as Pinkie Pie – easy prey for Zecora when she returned from the spa. It’d be easy enough to agree to get eaten when there was no chance of being able to eat anypony else, right?

Unless it wasn’t.

In any case, she couldn’t even find the strength to take a step near enough to the table to smell the cupcakes, so it was a moot point. She and Pinkie Pie chatted for a bit until it was time to take the pies out of the oven, and then she and Zecora had a lovely dinner of petite pony pies. It was a bit messy – the jellied bits of pony kept oozing out of the sides of the pie slices – but just as delicious as she’d promised.