Duped
A cyan hoof pushed open the door to Sugarcube Corner, and a little bell at the corner jingled as the entrance brushed past it. Rainbow Dash stepped inside, a look of a disposition that some might call “sour” on her face. Her mane, and come to think of it the rest of her as well were all sopping wet. The rain outside was pouring down like it was going out of style. The only thought going through her mind was one threaded with confusion: why, oh why, could she not learn to start turning down Pinkie’s odd requests?
That morning, the pegasus had awoken to a bright morning; the storm would only come that afternoon, so she had the next few hours to relax and enjoy the sun. Preferably by sunning herself, and taking a nice nap on a passing cloud. Of course, that plan was interrupted when she stepped out her front door, to find a note stuck to her door. She had read it carefully, but it was cryptic, in that way only Pinkie Pie could have been.
DASHIE! COME TO SUGARCUBE CORNER AT 4:00!
BRING THESE!
-BOWL
-SPATULA
-SMILES!
Dash didn't bother questioning how Pinkie Pie had gotten the note up there; she was Pinkie Pie, and the weathermare had learned the hard way that that was explanation enough. Pinkie hadn’t signed it; not on purpose, most likely. She probably forgot. Pinkie was just kind of an airhead. She’d just drift off in her own thoughts, sometimes, and then get startled by the silliest littleKRAKOOM
“Waah!”
The pegasus yelped in terror and slammed the door behind her, as the thunder finished the rest of its crackling and rolling, now muffled through the closed entryway. Clutching her chest and thanking Celestia that nopony had seen that, Dash looked around to see what was going on inside of Sugarcube Corner.
Nothing. Nothing was what was going on. Mr. and Mrs. Cake were nowhere to be seen, and their rambunctious little foals showed neither hoof nor hair. Even Pinkie was mysteriously absent. Rainbow Dash chuckled, a bit nervously, as she stepped inside. Against her wishes, unpleasant memories of the Bakery-Torture-Porn flick she’d watched with Twilight last week came flooding back to the forefront of her mind. She swore she’d wipe all memory of Sickly Sweet from her mind, but there was only so much force of will could do. Setting the bowl and spatula she’d brought on the nearest table, she began to look around and let those thoughts slip in.
She had to admit, it WAS a bit too eerily similar. Pony gets mysterious summons to friend’s bakery with list of items they already surely possessed, only to find it deserted? Heh, deserted; “desserted”. Rainbow laughed at her pun, another moment she was sincerely glad nopony was around to witness.
The only part missing was when the friend burst from the walls, covered in somepony’s blood. The pegasus braced herself, expecting the crashing noise to come with Pinkie bursting from the walls.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash!” came the familiar voice of the party-pony as she walked through the door from upstairs, behind the pegasus. Dash sighed to herself. See? Nothing to worry about. She turned around and threw up a hoof to wave.
“Hey, Pinkie Pi-i-i-i…”
Dash’s mouth fell agape as her twitching eyes beheld the horror in front of her. Pinkie Pie stood before her, smiling as brightly as she ever had; and all the while a viscous red fluid flowed down from her lips, copious amounts dripping off of her chin and rolling down her chest and legs, before pooling at her hooves. Rainbow Dash stammered, trying to find words to describe the gruesome sight.
Instead, she got a particularly shrill scream.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE—“ THUD.
Once the piercing screech had finally ended, the unconscious body of Rainbow Dash smashed head-first into the floor of Sugarcube Corner.
….
“Oh, horseapples, my head…”
Dash’s eyes flickered open, and a throbbing pain pulsed through her skull. Her vision was blurry, and for a moment, she couldn’t quite tell where she was. The sound of rain and thunder outside hinted that the storm was still going on, and the brightly-colored walls hinted that, though she couldn’t be certain, she was quite likely inside. And some… thing was anxiously moving around in front of her. Something pink. Pink, and fluffy, and…
Oh dear.
“GAH!” screamed Rainbow Dash, leaping up from the floor and scrambling to the corner as fast as she could. Crossing her hooves for defense, she screamed, “BACK, MARE-DEVIL!”
While a pony of a saner constitution might have taken offense to the comparison, Pinkie Pie was confused enough by Rainbow’s reaction to assume that it was some sort of game she just hadn’t figured out. So, mimicking Rainbow’s strange gesture, she giggled. “Silly Rainbow Dash! I didn’t invite you here to play games—oh, but we should TOTALLY do that later! I invited you because I needed help!”
"THEN WHY IS YOUR FACE DRIPPING BLOOD?!"
"Huh?" Pinkie Pie walked to a drawer in the kitchen, opening it up to retrieve a mirror, of all things to have lying around a kitchen. She examined herself closely, taking significantly more time than most ponies would eyeing the red liquid dripping down her face. Then, she snorted in laughter, holding a hoof up to her face--inadvertently getting more 'blood' on it.
"Dashie!" she said in a teasing voice. "This is cherry pie filling! I was having my four o'clock post-afternoon-party-pre-night-party snack!"
“R-right.” Dash muttered, warily getting back up onto her hooves. She was convinced of Pinkie's innocence, if not of her sanity. After doing a double-take around to room to make sure there weren't any towels to clean her friend's slowly caking coating with (there were not), she glanced over at the items that any self-respecting baker would already possess sitting over on the table. “I take it helping you is why I brought this stuff?”
“Yep-a-rooni!” Pinkie Pie responded, grinning like a little filly with barely-restrained excitement. This got a cocked eyebrow and a confused grimace from her pegasus friend.
“So… why, exactly, did I need to bring this junk? Don’t you already have like, a bale-load of bowls and spatulas and stuff sitting around?”
“Well, DUH!” Pinkie said, rolling her eyes in opposite directions and spinning a hoof in a circle by her temple. Dash averted her eyes; there was only so much Pinkie her brain could stand to process in a day, and this was a looking like a long one; she didn’t want to waste all that tolerance so early on. The pink mare continued, “I have, like, tons of bowls! But they’re all dirty right now!”
“ALL of them?” Dash asked, skeptical. “How did you manage to make an entire bakery’s stock of bowls dirty?!”
“Well, I was trying to make this new dessert, but I keep screwing up the recipe!”
“Oh, now THAT’S rich!” Rainbow cackled. “A dessert you haven’t made before? Nice try, Pinkie, but I’m not that gullible.”
“No, I’m serious!” Pinkie insisted, with her best attempt at a pleading expression. “Mr. Cake said his mom used to make it all the time, but he’s never tried it before; so, you know, I really just kinda HAVE to try any dessert I haven’t seen before! He gave me the recipe, but I keep messing up and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!”
She threw up a hoof, as if making a declarative statement. “So, thinking quickly, I realized who better to help me get this right than my super-awesome pony pal, Rainbow Dash?!”
“Twilight. Fluttershy. Applejack.” Rainbow recited without the slightest hesitation, face deadpan. Pinkie Pie looked at her in confusion, but the pegasus was prepared for that reaction and elaborated. “Twi’s used to reading long, boring lists with stuff like recipes and un-cool things like that. Fluttershy and Applejack cook. I, do neither of these things.”
Pinkie mulled that over a second, nodding at some comment that only she could hear. But Rainbow’s point seemed to do little to deter her. “But, Dashie, I PROMISE, you really are the super-duperest one to help me!” The pink pony lunged forward, gripping Rainbow’s face between both hooves and drawing it in close, and with utmost sincerity and the slightest hint of creep said, “Trust me.”
Oh, no. The last time Rainbow Dash had followed Pinkie Pie’s plan after those two words, they’d wound up waking up in Las Pegasus with a manticore in the bedroom, Soarin tied to their ironing board, and a bona fide chocolate fountain erupting out from the bathtub. It took days to find Fluttershy after that mess. Every instinct in the blue mare’s body urged her to just turn around and walk away; only pain could come from these endeavors.
But… she couldn’t do it. Element of Loyalty, right? If Pinkie needed help, she needed help. So, Rainbow would help, whether she liked it or not; and right now, she was leaning towards the latter by far.
She sighed and relented. “Fine, I’ll help. So, what is this mysterious dish you keep bucking up?”
Pinkie Pie began talking, wrapping a hoof around Rainbow Dash’s neck as she began walking through the kitchen with her. “Well, it’s called pistachio salad!”
“Pistachio what?” Dash asked with an incredulous expression.
“Pistachio salad!” Pinkie repeated, completely failing to note the source of confusion.
“So… what? With, like, lettuce and stuff?”
Pinkie looked at her friend like she was ready to crack up. “Pfft, what? No! No, silly filly, that’d be… well, silly! And it’d taste weird, blech. Here, I made a list!”
Out of her mane, Pinkie pulled a little slip of paper and handed it over to who friend, who began reading it aloud as they walked. “Can of crushed pineapple, assorted nuts, pistachio pudding, cool whip—the hay is cool whip? Pinkie Pie, this list is WEIRD, I’m not even sure some of this stuff exists! Where did you get it?”
“Eh, not important.” Pinkie dismissed with a wave of her hoof. “See, I had all this stuff lying around, so I kept trying to make it over and over, but I kept messing up!”
“Uh huh, uh huh.” Dash replied, nodding her head and paying zero attention. She was stuck on this ‘cool whip’ the list mentioned. What WAS it?
“So, eventually I kept making it so much that I ran out of ingredients and now I need somepony to go get more for me!”
That got Rainbow’s attention, who jolted her head up from the list to realize with shock that they had wandered over to the front door, now wide open. “Pinkie, what are you—“
SMACK
A pair of hooves hit Rainbow square in her haunches, bowling her out into the street with the list still clenched in her teeth. She barely had time to look back at the door before Pinkie was staring out at her with an innocent smile.
“So THAT’S your game, you conniving little—“
“Thanks SO MUCH for all the help, Dashie, I really couldn’t do this without ya! Sooo, go get all that and come back when you’re done, ok, Okie-dokie-lokey buh-BYE!”
With a resounding thud, the door slammed in Rainbow Dash’s face. The mare groaned and smacked her face with a hoof. “Great,” she muttered. “any chance this could get worse?”
KRAKOOM
“Oh, right. The storm.”
BANG
“Eep!”
A tiny purple dragon went careening off the top of his ladder as the door to the Ponyville library slammed open. The purple mare buried deep in her latest selection for reading looked up to see a disgruntled pegasus trotting in.
“Hey, Rainbow Da—“
Twilight Sparkle was cut off as Rainbow shook like a dog; her body moved like a spinning fan blade as she rapidly tossed the excess water off of her coat. This went on for a few moments, until a satisfied and freshly dried Rainbow Dash stopped and grinned triumphantly. “Hey, Twi!”
Of course, it was only then that Rainbow actually opened her eyes and came to the conclusion that a tidal wave had just passed through the room. Spike looked like he’d been dragged up from the depths of the ocean, and the unicorn giving a notedly unhappy stare at her friend wasn’t much better off.
“So,” said Twilight, deadpan. “Any particular reason you decided to show up now, Dashie?”
“Uh oh.” replied Dash, feeling a prickling on the back of her neck. “That’s not an ‘I got really wet’ frown, is it?”
Twilight shook her head.
“It’s a ‘You forgot something important frown’, isn’t it?”
Twilight nodded. Dash smacked her head in frustration. “Horseapples. What was it?”
“You said you’d help me and Spike shelve the newest encyclopedias from Canterlot.”
Dash gave a low whistle. That was certainly not a little chore; the last time she’d been roped into that duty, she spent a week in the Ponyville hospital for a wrenched back. Spike was in traction for months. “Um… looks like you got it handled?”
“I guess you could call it ‘handled’.” said Twilight, more than a bit irritated. “By the way, if you’re passing the emergency room today, stop in and tell Big Mac and Whooves I said thanks for the help.”
Oh, Celestia. Rainbow facehooved once more, and nearly dragged her own skin off from the friction. It was bad enough feeling guilty, but did Twilight really have to pour on the hostility like this?
“So then.” said Twilight, standing up and casting a quick spell. The books she’d been reading zipped off the table and through an open door to her left, off to whatever shelf they’d been removed from. “You pretty obviously forgot about what you were supposed to be coming here for. So, why are you here?”
“Oh, right, that.” Rainbow Dash scratched the back of her head with a free hoof, chuckling nervously about how hypocritical this was about to get. “I was wondering… uh, if you could help me with something?”
Twilight raised a skeptical eyebrow at that one. “…Right. Sure, why not?” she asked, exasperated. Rainbow chose to ignore the smarm and immediately fetched the list out of her mane.
“Great! So, like, the reason I forgot was because of Pinkie Pie.”
“Dashie, just stop right there. If you’re about to tell me that Pinkie ate your homework or something—actually, wait she’d probably do that… it was just an analogy anyway. My point is, you can’t use her as an excuse for everything.”
Dash shook her head. “No, no! I mean, she stopped by my house this morning and—“
“How?”
Dash would have looked at Twilight incredulously had she known what the word meant. “Huh?”
“How in Equestria did Pinkie Pie get up to your house?”
Dash opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly felt the wind taken out of her sails. “I… I don’t know…”
Both ponies sat still for a moment. Though they weren’t sure why, both of them felt very, very scared. This awkward moment lasted until Rainbow Dash nervously said “Well, uh, she left me this note saying to come and help. So I did, and she stuck me with this list of junk that I need to get for something called ‘pistachio salad’.”
Twilight arched an eyebrow, contemplating that name. “…What, like with nuts and lettuce?”
“No!” replied, Dash earnestly. “Look at this thing, it’s weird!”
Twilight’s horn glowed as she retrieved the list from her friend, carefully scanning the ingredients list. Her eyes squinted, and she leaned in closer to get a better look. She almost looked indignant.
“The hay is Cool Whip?”
“I don’t know!” exclaimed the pegasus. “I asked the same thing but Pinkie wouldn’t tell me!”
“Well, I guess this is an interesting intellectual challenge. So, yeah, I’ll help.” Twilight turned to her little assistant, currently, still air-drying himself in the corner. “Spike, do a sweep of the library, find anything that mentions this… ‘Cool Whip’ stuff, okay?”
The purple dragon saluted, and dashed off into the next room to begin his search. Twilight trotted over to Rainbow, pulling her over to a couch and sitting down beside her.
“Okay,” began the unicorn. “we’ll handle this ‘Cool Whip’ stuff when we actually find some information on it. It says you need Pistachio nuts and almonds; that’s easy, you can pick that up at the market. It also wants crushed pineapple…”
Dash eyed her friend with a bit of worry. Twilight looked more than a little concerned as she read that ingredient. “Uh, Twi? What’s the big deal, I’m sure Sweet Apple Acres sells pineapples, right? They have the word ‘apple’ in them!”
Twilight looked at her pegasus friend like she was insane. “Are you crazy? Haven’t you heard about the Apple family’s horrible feud with—“
“Twilight! Twilight!” came the excited cries of Spike, charging back from the other side of the library. The door was magically opened for him, and he sprinted up to the ponies clutching a piece of parchment. He hunched over, gasping for breath as Twilight and Rainbow waited for him to speak up.
“I—I—whoo! Twilight, I found something about Cool Whip!”
“Really?” asked the librarian, quite plainly shocked.
“Yeah! Really!” Spike insisted, waving the parchment around. “Right here, in one of those letters you’ve been getting from Princess Luna—“
ZZZOOP
A burst of violet light faded away to reveal Spike’s freshly zipped-up mouth, and Twilight squealed in shock as she magically tore away the parchment from Spike’s claws. She pulled it close to herself, deliberately keeping it away from Rainbow Dash as she leaned over to get a look. The pegasus eyed Twilight suspiciously, and the mare doubled the suspicion by blushing furiously.
“…Twi, why have you been getting letters from Princess Luna?”
“I-it’s nothing!” Twilight insisted, faking a giggle as she played keep away with the parchment. “We, uh, we just, erm converse! Yeah, you know, converse about… magic and… spells… and stuff…”
“Right, right sure…” Rainbow cooed, reassuringly patting Twilight on the head. The purple mare seemed to relax as the crisis was averted; just the opening Rainbow needed to bonk her over the head and disrupt her spell. The dazed unicorn leaned away, eyes going wonky as the parchment hung still in the air. Rainbow snapped out with her teeth and grabbed it, gleefully bringing it close enough to read.
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
I am forced to admit, this secrecy bothers me as well, but—
Rainbow’s reading was interrupted as she felt a prickling on the back of her neck. She slowly turned around to see a freshly recombobulated Twilight, levitating a wooden plank. She did not look amused. “The letter, Dashie.”
The pegasus gulped, and reluctantly returned her piece of blackmail. She knew when she was beaten against this mare. Twilight happily retrieved her letter, and began to read through it herself. Silently, to Dash’s dismay. After a moment like this, she folded the letter back up, casting a spell and poofing it away to Celestia-knew-where.
“As it turns out, Spike was right.” Twilight informed her friend. “Princess Luna did mention this ‘Cool Whip’ stuff and, while the way she suggested using it makes me question how it relates to food, if you need it then she’s probably your best bet.”
Rainbow felt a satisfied feeling building up inside of her. She was about to show Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Dash could accomplish ANY task, even an impossible one. Right now, she decided to just express her gratitude by hugging Twilight as swiftly and as strongly as possible. The purple mare nearly choked. “Aw, you’re the best, Twi! I’d better get going, I’ve got a Princess to grill!”
Dash began cantering for the door, leaving a very flustered librarian to yell after her, “Wait! What about the other ingredients?”
“I’ll come back after I get the Cool Whip!” replied Rainbow Dash, already tossing the door open. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an express flight to make, Destination: CanterloKRAKOOM
Twilight and the silenced Spike winced, averting their eyes from Rainbow Dash as the storm surged back, drenching the blue mare from head to hoof. Dash sighed, and flipped a wet lock of hair out of her eyes. “On second thought, maybe I’ll take the train.”
