Author's Note
Thank you for choosing to read this unfinished work! I'm going out on a limb and have chosen to do something that I've never done before, which is to upload an unfinished story and allow readers to submit their ideas and desires for input into the story. Don't be shy! You're encouraged to leave ideas and general comments in the comments section, or send them to me in a PM if you feel more comfortable with it, have a bunch of options you want to include, or want to have a general discussion about them. So what do you want to see? See any critical errors? What are your thoughts on what Pinkie has done so far and what else could she do in the future? Happy reading and happy collaboration!
Chapter 1
It had been a busy day at Sugarcube Corner, extremely busy in fact. It felt like everyone and everything had been working overtime in the sweet shop, from the still-heated ovens to the dough covered baking pans, to the exhausted yet satisfied employees in the midst of it all. There were the Cakes, of course being the proprietors of the establishment, Mr. and Mrs., and Pinkie Pie, their faithful and bubbly employee who helped keep the place pumping out delectable sweets in exchange for a place to stay. Next to them though, it had been such a busy day that the Cakes, and Pinkie for that matter, agreed that it would be best to hire in some temporary help in order to keep up with the easily overwhelming demand.
Three stallions, a Palomino, the other a Chestnut, and the final Black, themselves newcomers to the quaint little town of Ponyville, volunteered to take on the job so that they would have some extra spending bits. As odd as it was, the Cakes nor Pinkie really had the time to socialize with the newcomers their first couple of days in the workplace; it simply felt alien seeing as how the business that was Sugarcube Corner operated more as a family unit than a company full of divided up employees. Mr. Cake had been the one to interview the group, but other than that neither Mrs. Cake nor Pinkie Pie had been afforded the opportunity to get to introduce themselves properly, let alone get to know them. They would listen to any order given by the Cakes or even Pinkie Pie, for they were the experienced ones after all, and would engage in seemingly pleasant conversation with the incoming and outgoing customers, but would otherwise keep to themselves. Either way, the three stallions seemed to be extremely close with each other, and with Pinkie Pie being the friendship element of Laughter, that was just fine with the Cakes as well as herself, even if it did mean that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to make some new friends for themselves.
Finally, after all the action of the day, things had started to slow down and the evening crept upon Ponyville and Sugarcube Corner. Closing time wasn’t far off, and taking into account that everypony had worked so hard, the Cakes decided that it wouldn’t harm anything if they decided to close upon. Furthermore, the Cakes’ anniversary was but a mere couple of hours away and the couple had already planed a beautiful trip in advance, having already elected to leave their business in the trusty hooves of their resident star employee, Pinkie Pie, who herself speculated that to be their motive for being so willing to close up early.
“You’re sure you’ll be OK dearie?” Mrs. Cake asked as she rushed about the counter area, wiping things down and otherwise doing some simple housekeeping.
“You betcha!” Pinkie responded, enthusiastic as always. “I’ve done this, like, a million times!”
“Oh I know, I know. You know that an old mare can’t help but be nit-picky.” She finished cleaning the counter up and chucked the dirty rag down into a bin below the register.
“What? Old?” Pinkie giggled, “Oh Mrs. Cake, you don’t look a day over forty!”
“Uh-huh,” she finally responded with a tone that matched the unamused look that she had offered Pinkie.
Ever oblivious, Pinkie continued her closing down routine while Mrs. Cake walked out from behind the counter and moved to walk around and go up the stairs, but instead was met by her husband as he came down them, two packed bags upon his back.
“Hello Puddin’,” he affectionately greeted her with a peck on the cheek. “You ready to go?”
“Have been since we opened up this morning, don’t cha know?”
“Well what are we waiting for?!” he asked and wrapped his foreleg around Mrs. Cake and whipped around to the opposite side of her so that the two of them faced the door. She giggled when he did so, and took a few paces forward with him before they both stopped and looked back at Pinkie Pie, still behind the counter. “You sure you’ve got the fort held down here?”
“This isn’t a fort silly, it’s Sugarcube Corner!” Pinkie giggled, “You of all ponies should know that silly! I mean, you do own the place after all and…”
“Pinkie!” the Cakes called out with a slight frustration, almost in unison.
“Relax!” she chided at them, her bubbly personality unaffected, “Just kidding.” She giggled.
The Cakes rolled their eyes, again almost in unison and stepped even closer to the door, this time opening it and allowing the crisp evening air inside.
“Well, we trust you, but if you be sure to have that nice young dragon friend of yours, Spike, send us a letter if you need us for anything at all. We’ll be gone a week, so the place is all yours,” Mr. Cake informed her.
“Yes sir!” Pinkie saluted, semi-seriously and semi-jokingly.
“Oh! Don’t forget to count out the till,” Mrs. Cake called back as they started out the doorway, “It’s the only thing that needs to be done.” She exited behind her husband but briskly poked her head back in and concluded, “Oh! And don’t forget to pay those nice stallions back there. They’ve been such a nice help! You be sure to give them each a little extra too. It’s been a rough day and their help is well worth it.”
“You got it!” Pinkie smiled and waved them off as Mrs. Cake pulled the door shut behind her with a slam.
The pink mare wasted no time in setting to work with her assigned tasks. She knew that the Cakes had placed a good amount of faith in her, as they did each time they leaved her to run the business for herself for an extended period of time, and Pinkie would do her utmost to ensure that their faith was well-placed. She opened up the register full of bits and started to count out the day’s earnings while at the same time placing a modest amount for herself out to the side, as well as factoring in what she would need to pay the newcomers.
Pinkie hated math because it was no fun at all, but she figured that maybe because she didn’t like it all that much it was the reason that she was able to do it so quickly and correctly, and always balance the books out in the end.
Just as she concluded her bookkeeping duties, the three newcomers came out from the kitchen area behind her. The well-built stallions walked across the floor, which itself echoed with a soft thud that was unison with each step that they took. The males were intimidating in their own right, not because they looked dangerous or acted with dangerous tendencies of course, but rather for the simple fact that they were males; they towered over Pinkie Pie and Mrs. Cake, and were not as light as Mr. Cake, yet only one of them was as muscular as Big Macintosh, while the other two were as large as Applejack’s brother. The trio was so intimidating masculine-wise that they gave Pinkie a slight start when they closed in on her.
Pinkie giggled, “Hey guys! Long day, huh? Here to get paid?”
They all three nodded, but only one of them responded verbally, his voice rather smooth and pleasant to Pinkie’s ears.
“Yep, that’s right. Ready to call it a day.”
“Me too!” Pinkie responded but then subsequently spiraled off into one of her rants, “Not because I don’t like the job or anything though, or baking, not that I don’t like that either. I love baking! Oh, and I love the job too!” Thankfully though, she was able to stop herself, “But anyway, enough about all that jazz. I’m sure you guys are ready to get out of here. Got you all good to go!” She scooped three moderately sized bags of bits off of the counter and handed them out one by one to each of the stallions and concluded, “Even threw some extra in for how busy it was today and how much of a help you all were.”
“Thanks,” one of them replied, different than the one who first spoke, his voice deeper and indicative of his virility, yet still pleasing to the mare’s ears. “We picked up after ourselves back there and finished up everything that was on the task list.” He handed her a wrinkled piece of paper that had a list of tasks on it, all of them crossed off, as proof of his statement.
“Awesome!” Pinkie said and glanced at it briefly before sliding it under the register.
“There is one more thing though,” the last stallion to speak chimed in, his voice calm and easy, yet not quite soft-spoken, again a pleasing sound for Pinkie to hear. “There’s something in one of the ovens back there, on slow bake. Was there when we came in this morning. Want me to take it out?”
“No!” Pinkie exclaimed in an overly dramatic way that could be mistaken for rudeness had the three of them not been around her enough to know what her tendencies were like. She dashed over to the oven in the kitchen, just in view of the stallions, and dramatically positioned herself in front of it in a protective stance. They all three gave her confused looks which prompted Pinkie to stand down and regain that little bit of composure that she generally maintained.
“Sorry,” she said and walked back towards them, blushing ever so slightly, though not before she could inspect the time and temperature settings and, of course, the contents of the oven itself. “Promise you won’t tell anypony?”
“I… guess?” one of them responded, still with a confused look upon his face.
“Well,” she lowered her voice down when she was near them, “That’s my Super Extra Special Pinkie Deluxe Cupcake recipe baking in there. Can’t tell you what I made it with,” she winked at them, “but I can tell you that it’ll be super extra specially delicious! This first one is for me and my bestest friends to share, but I’ll make all of you guys one too! Promise! It’s taken me so long to work on it that I started to worry that I wouldn’t finish it, but I finally got it done last night and put it in the oven this morning. Each one takes a long time to make, but it’ll totally be worth it in the end. Sorry I went a little loopsy,” she crossed back in front of them to her previous spot, “but I’d just die if anything happened to it! There’s no way I could ever copy the same recipe again!”
“You mean you never wrote it down?” one of them asked.
“Nope! Don’t need to, because it’s all in here!” she tapped on her forehead. “Well… I think it is.” She looked upwards as she tried to remember all of the ingredients and measurements that she had taken to get it just right. She couldn’t remember them all in that moment, not even half, but she was sure that she would when the time was right.
“That’s cool.”
“Nah, it’s nothing really,” Pinkie blushed and waved off the compliment as she crossed closed up the register and locked up the day’s earnings, “Just took a little bit of hard work is all.”
“No, really,” another one of the stallions commented, “You’ve got talent. That’s cool.”
“Stop it!” Pinkie waved her hoof at the group, “You’re making me blush.” None of them could really see the blush on Pinkie’s pink coat, but it was an interesting thing to think about anyway.
“Maybe you could teach us how to do some stuff like that? Could show us some other things too.” This time, it was one of the stallions who winked at her.
“Other things?” Pinkie asked, disregarding the former statement completely, her interest piqued. She had never fancied herself a teacher, but the concept of teaching ponies new things, especially when it came to baking always excited her.
“You know… other things,” the stallion smiled at her.
“Oh!” It finally kicked with Pinkie Pie what the trio of stallions were talking about, and it made her blush deeply. “Gosh, I can’t believe you’d take me for that kind of girl,” she commented at batted her eyes at them.
“You’ve just got that vibe,” one of them replied and offered up a cocky smile as he looked deeply into her eyes. “You should tell us what kind of girl you are sometime. One of us anyway.” The speaker smirked at his comrades while they shot him a peeved look.
“Yeah,” Pinkie giggled and flipped her mane aside, “I can bake a mean cake, but I’ve never actually been able to cook. All those vegetables and oils, and pots and pans and knives! I just don’t see how anypony does it!”
Once again, the three stallions were left nothing short of confused. Still though, they remained persistent.
“No, no, no,” one of them chuckled softly, rather amused by her obliviousness. He stepped forward and wrapped his foreleg around her, “That’s not what we’re saying. You should get with us sometime and really 'show' us what kind of mare you are.” He winked at her and gave her a little squeeze before he stepped away from her.
“Ohhhh! I gotcha!” Pinkie nodded her head and winked back briefly before she stopped, “Wait… No…” she waved her hoof at them, “I’m confused. So you want to see me cook, not bake, but cook and then show you what I made? Ooh! Or do you mean that I get to watch you cook something and then you’ll show me what it is and then you can show me how to make it? Either way, sounds super-duper fun even though if it’s the first one I’ll probably burn it. Wait! Unless… can you bake a carrot like a carrot cake? ‘Cuz if you can I can, like, totally do that and…” Pinkie Pie jumped in place with excitement as she ranted away.
“Pinkie!” one of the stallions exclaimed as he stepped forward and subsequently placed his burly hoof over her mouth, which caused her to cease talking and jumping in place. “I don’t think you understand what any of us are saying. We don’t want to cook with you or bake with you.”
“Well what do you want to do then silly? I am, like, so confused!” Pinkie pushed his hoof away from her mouth just long enough to speak and then put it back securely into place atop her muzzle.
“Do we really have to spell it out for you?”
“Mhmh,” Pinkie nodded her head but did not move his hoof away again to speak. The stallion pulled his hoof away from her mouth and shook his head with a slight frustration before he looked back at her.
“We’re saying that we want to fuck you. You know, have sex? What we were saying is that you should meet up with us sometime and show us what kind of mare you can be... so to speak.”
“Oh!” Pinkie said, surprised by the confession. “With me?” she asked.
“Yes,” one of them nodded, “With you, and at the same time.”
“Woah,” Pinkie gasped and then eventually burst into laughter, “I was not expecting that! You guys are funny!” She playfully hit the stallion closest to her on the shoulder.
“We weren’t joking,” one said with a serious tone.
“Oh come on, yeah you were!” She finished laughing and wiped a tear away from her eye that had slithered down from where she had laughed so hard. She turned to skip away from them, en route to check on her prized cupcake, but was swiftly stopped when one of the stallions grabbed onto her tail and pulled her back towards them. “Yikes!” she exclaimed with a mixture of surprise and pain. It had hurt when he pulled on her tail, but at the same time Pinkie couldn’t help but like it. Still, she couldn’t help but feel like it was a little uncalled for. “Hey!” she asked with a chiding tone, “What are you doing back there?” She had to turn her head to look back at them, for one of the males still held tightly onto her tail and her hindquarters were facing them.
“You’re clearly not hearing or understanding what we’re saying, so how’s about we just show you instead?”
