“You okay, Pinkie?”
Pinkie Pie blinked. Her keen nostrils flared; the sweet exhaust of the bakery had acquired a subtle wooden acridity. Her jaw dropped, and two golden coins bounced crisply on the countertop. She drew a deeper whiff, and her denial ended then.
She quickly assessed the circumstances with efficient simplicity. Mr. Cake had fallen ill. She and Mrs. Cake had been alternating in their duties maintaining the bakery. It was her turn to manage the storefront, while Mrs. Cake, who would never let a fire start in her bakery, was working in the kitchen. Something happened to Mrs. Cake.
Without further thought, she sprinted to the back of the bakery, leaving Sugarcube Corner’s latest patrons bewildered. She closed her eyes in anticipation of the irritating rush of hot air and kicked the kitchen doors open. An inverted waterfall of smoke spilled out under the top of the doorframe. The kitchen was saturated from ear-height and up with the smoke, and illuminated by an orange glow. Pinkie Pie ducked inside and bolted instinctively to the fire extinguisher beside the brown syrup cabinet.
Armed with the cold red canister, she she charged at the blooming pillar of incandescence, her frosty blue eyes watering from the assault of its dry, bitter effluence. Grunting, she tugged the locking pin from the extinguisher and unleashed a cold white torrent on the fire, its hollow roar momentarily overpowering the soft rumbling of conflagration.
The blizzard diminished to a frosty hiss, revealing a slightly weakened fire. Pinkie Pie’s pulse accelerated, and her thoughts turned to Mrs. Cake. With eyes burning, she scanned through the haze, beginning at the counter beside the epicenter of the fire. On that surface lay a cluster of unfinished crème brûlée dishes, silver spoons, and the soft body of Mrs. Cake, frozen and contorted in the throes of a stroke. The still-running blowtorch had been accidentally shoved from the counter and lay at the base of the fire.
She rushed to the still body of her mentor in the culinary arts and agitated it fruitlessly with her forelimbs. She frantically pressed her nose to the legs and neck, searching for a pulse. No time for resuscitation, unless I can get her out of here, she thought. Pinkie Pie tugged the body of Mrs. Cake off the hot table and onto her back, gritting her teeth. Straining to carry its weight, she marched out of the kitchen and wheezed alerts to patrons who had already departed the establishment.
A hot explosion rattled the bakery, knocking Pinkie Pie to the floor under the weight of Mrs. Cake and plunging her into a stunned, tinnitus-blanketed moment of false tranquility. As she slowly recovered, dizzy from inhalation of smoke and the concussive burst of the blowtorch canister, she remembered her first duty in such a case: the foals.
In her dash up the stairs to the bakery owners’ domicile, her lungs stopped obeying her and opened wide. The starved organs accepted and engulfed a generous quaff of the painfully hot miasma, causing her to stumble and cough. She willed her quivering limbs back under her to bear her weight and continue, and they briefly protested that the stairs had become more hard and smooth than they were accustomed to. They forgave her with a cool and giddy muscular tingling when there were no longer any more stairs to shove away.
The door was shut. Pinkie twisted and bucked it open. Within, the room was darkened by closed curtains and deathly quiet except for the confused whimperings of two suddenly-awakened foals. Pinkie Pie scrambled to the crib. The foals’ protests loudened into cries of despair when they beheld their once beloved, bubbly caretaker. Pinkie Pie imagined how she must have appeared to them in the dim light of the room: curly pink hair frazzled by sweat and smelling of burnt grease; a grim expression of fear and purpose in place of the omnipresent smile; manic, bloodshot eyes burning intensely at them.
As she scooped Pound and Pumpkin Cake from the crib and set them on her back, she felt the floor rapidly heating beneath her hooves. The foals cried more as their warm bodies slid around clumsily on her moist back. She carefully stepped to the windowsill, parted the curtains and flung open the windows with Pound and Pumpkin clinging to her. The floor began to smoke.
Outside the window, a directed downpour of rain fell fruitlessly while the fire continued to rage downstairs. Halfway to the end of a street that seemed to stretch for miles, a massive red tank on wheels approached. It was pulled by a team of four stocky stallions in uniform and accompanied by four more wearing saddlebags that bulged with emergency response supplies. One of the four that weren’t pulling the weight of the water clumsily pulled from his bag a massive canvas sheet, and the others sidestepped in to clasp a corner in their teeth. Too late.
Flames burst from the floor beneath and the door behind. Pinkie Pie leaped out through the window and out of the maw of the inferno with the Cakes’ children still on her back. In the moment of weightlessness that followed, she prepared her legs to extend the length of impact and soften the landing of the foals on her back. With the rush of rain and open air in all directions, her mind cascaded through the channels of causality that had singled her out for this sacrifice. The pegasi are busy pounding water out of the clouds; the fall is too short to allow time for reaction. The responders are still too far away. The bakery wasn’t adequately fireproofed.
Pinkie Pie stared into empty space that was once occupied by an upward-facing wall of hard, wet cobblestone. Every muscle in her body gently eased out of the tension of sudden and imminent oblivion. A frozen wave of adrenaline had passed over her, and her heart turned calm as a ruby. Every giggling pink thought process within her had halted. She focused her mind on that image of shiny stones and falling water, back into the untrained depths of her inexplicable mind. The vision of all she had just seen repeated and completed itself in her memory.
“Pinkie Pie? You okay?”
Rainbow Dash craned her head to look into the eyes of Pinkamena Diane Pie. The sharp colors of her eyes and mane in the afternoon sunlight and the worried look on her face bolted her from the trance.
“I’m sorry, you were saying?”
“Nevermind, it’s not important. Why did you tense up there for a few heartbeats? Is something about to happen?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Nope, everything’s a-okay!” Pinkie Pie chirped.
“Really? So, you’re sure that goin’ all stiff for a spell ain’t some new kinda Pinkie Sense?” Applejack asked incredulously.
“Nah, just a part of it that doesn’t do anything except in my head. I see things that never happen, really ouchie and really sad and really really scary things where ponies get hurt.”
“Really? That sounds mighty awful.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad; this is the first time I’ve seen the things when I’m around other ponies. Maybe it’s to make up for all the times that my Pinkie Sense is right. I’m even glad I get false alarms sometimes. You should be too!”
“What?” Applejack and Rainbow Dash said in unison.
“All ponies are born with a little Pinkie Sense. My mom and foal doctors always called it paranoia, but to me, it’s nature’s way of reminding me to be prepared, ‘cuz sometimes the world is so totally random that not even Pinkie Sense can tell what’s going to happen next.”
