Happy?

Two days after Sugar Swirl stupidly ate a Poison Joke cupcake and Dark Rose invited him into her home for tea. The two ponies, now friends, went for a walk together, mostly to collect some sugar cane for Sugar's newest creation.

"It's going to be the greatest piece of candy Equestria has ever seen!!!!" he rambled as they walked, Dark Rose paying more attention to the flora around them then to her companion. As Sugar Swirl began listing all the ingredients for the seventeenth time in the past five minutes, she absentmindedly trotted up the path with the cheery stallion chatting away.

"HEY!" he shouted suddenly, making the normally unfazeble mare jump out of her skin.

"What?!" she hissed, turning slightly to face him as she walked.

"I just realized, your'e cutie mark is a beaker, and yet you work as a demolitionist! So, what I mean is, what's your special talent?" he said eyeing the mare's flank with a questioning glance at the bright green foaming beaker that served as her cutie mark. She merely sighed and gestured to the path ahead of them.

"Once we reach the pond where this stuff grows, I'll tell you." with a edible squee noise, Sugar Swirl dashed ahead in a neon orange blur, forcing Dark Rose to speed up. In a quick five minutes, the two had arrived at a small body of water with a few bunches of sugar cane and mint. Sugar Swirl wasted no time plucking the amount he needed and turned t his companion.

"Sit!" he said, pointing to a log tipped over a few feet away. After both of them sat down he stared at the grey mare eagerly. "Now tell!"

Dark Rose sighed again and began her cutie mark story. "I was a very small filly when I was younger, not many ponies thought I was good at anything, because everypony else my age had gotten their cutie marks already. I was prepared to accept that I was going to be a blank flank for life, when a poster hit me in the face. I skimmed it over to find a science fair was happening on the weekend, this made me very giddy, as it was my best subject. So I raced home to prepare a project, I was going to make a chemical reaction. I spent the night perfecting the brew, acetone peroxide and hydrazoic acid, works like a charm. When the fair came around, all the school foals laughed at the small beaker at my stand, the judges came to evaluate my project.

I carefully dropped a few drops of acetone and nothing happened, a bully laughed and pushed me from behind, causing me to spill WAAYY to much into the beaker. The blue brew turned acid green and started foaming, a few judges tried to take a closer look, and BOOM! the beaker exploded, sending the grown ponies flying. A bright green puddle fizzed on my stand, the school filled and colts gave a collective gasp, and I turned to look at my flank, a bright green foaming beaker stood proudly as my cutie mark. So my talent is a mix of mad science and explosives." she finished, sucking air into her lungs after continuously talking.

Sugar Swirl just gave her a blank stare and the corners of his mouth slowly twitched upward. "Did you win?"

She shrugged, "I got a blue ribbon. So I guess."

Sugar started shaking with glee. "My turn!" he cleared his throat and started speaking in a Morgan Freezerburn voice. "I was a pretty shy colt when I was younger, but that never stopped my mother from trying to shove me into social situations. So one day, she gave me a box of lollipops to share with the foals at my schoolhouse, and I tried one. By Celestia's mane they were terrible, sugar free and tasteless< it just wouldn't do. So I snuck back into my house and filled a cupcake tin with sugar paste and food colouring with some fruit juice, stuck a popsicle stick in each and put them in my freezer. For an hour I avoided my mother around my home, hiding in cabinets, under my bed, under her bed, until finally They were done.

The ones with taste I brought to the park and sat down on a bench and waited, I even ate a few to test them. Sugary perfection. A pink filly bounced up to me and asked if she could try one, I gave her one and she quickly bit on it and her pupils shrank to pinpoints. She screamed and started jumping around my bench, she then shouted to all the other foals to come and try one of the "BEST PEICES OF CANDY SHE EVER TRIED!". When all of my creations were finished, I trotted home, when I opened the door, my mother greeted me, then gasped and gave me a hug. Turns out when the pink filly was shouting, I had gotten my cutie mark." he concluded, gesturing with his hoof to the bright red lollipop on his flank.

Dark Rose was about to comment, when a low growl echoed around them, Sugar didn't seem to notice as he continued talking. D.R placed a hoof over his muzzle to silence him. "MHMM?!"

"shush. Listen..." the growl came again, closer. Yellow pupil-less eyes appeared across the pond, staring down the two ponies. Several other pairs of eyes appeared around the first set, before a giant timberwolf came out of the bushes and pawed at the water to see if it was safe. It barked to the others and a pack of twenty wolves entered the clearing, all staring at the two ponies. "Sugar, give me the mint. NOW!" she hissed holding out her hoof slowly.

Sugar Swirl obliged in fear as the mare slowly stood up and calmly walked to a patch of dried thistle. She started grounding the thistle in with the mint and threw it in her mouth, she then approached the pond and snapped a piece of sugar cane and ground that up to. The pack of wolves were getting closer to her, swimming across the body of water. She waited before spitting out the contents of her mouth on the crushed sugar and threw it in the water.

"RUN!"

The ponies wasted no time in running away from the wolves and now foaming pond, agonized wails erupted behind them as the foam reached the timberwolves. As the leader turned to mulch, the rest tried to swim away, but Dark Rose's mixture was spreading across the water too fast for them. Once the two were out of the Everfree Forest, trying to catch his breath, Sugar Swirl stared at the mare in front of him in amasement.

"HOW IN EQUESTRIAN DID YOU DO THAT!?"

"Equestrian *Huff* thistle has magical *puff* properties. When mixed with *wheeze* oil, it acts as a *struggled breath* acid." she started in between laboured breaths. Without thinking, the neon colt wrapped his forehooves around the mare and gave her a hug. The hug didn't surprise her in the slightest, but she stiffened when she realized it wasn't a bone crushing hug that would have eliminated her attempt at inhaling.

A few passerby glanced at the peculiar scene, a bright orange stallion clinging to a distressed grey mare. which the latter was desperately trying to understand what was going on, but her brain acted like "I DON'T KNOW! MAYBE HE'S HURT?" but luckily, before Dark Rose's brain had a meltdown, Sugar Swirl pulled away from the hug and looked straight into her confused eyes.

"You just saved my life." he said uncharacteristically calmly, stepping away from his friend, before snapping out of his temporary stupor and bouncing towards his house. "Welp! See you tomorrow Rose!" he waved.

She waved back with a dumb expression on her ever deadpan face, she waited until he was out of sight before exhaling a breath she didn't realized she was holding in. Clutching her chest because of lack of oxygen, she slowly treaded home in a cloudy manner, almost bumping into several other ponies on her trip to her doorstep. She stalled as her mind cleared, realizing what he had said she put a hoof to her forehead in shock.

"He called me Rose. No pony has EVER called me Rose."