Any Exaggerations Made For Comedic Purposes Have Been Slight
If Pinkie had truly thought about it, she would have recognized that two common ingredients in the Bearers' most frequently-utilized recipe for disaster had already been placed into the mix: the Princess and an old book. But she didn't think about that as she trotted back to Sugarcube Corner with that old book gently clamped in her mouth. When it came to recipes, she had another concern, and the Princess occupied the heart of it.
As Pinkie understood the event, the Zoology Conference was a biannual casual dinner, or as casual as anything could be with that much power gathered in a single huge dining room. For the guests would be the leaders of the world's nations and this year, the hosting duties had rotated back to Equestria. Avoiding any number of diplomatic incidents had invoked a certain need to get the food right and when viewed through that lens, it could be argued that the Cakes had been paid a tremendous compliment. Multiple Canterlot bakeries would have cheerfully trodden the bodies of their competition into deliberately-ruined flour in order to invite the stress into their own shops, and the dreadful responsibility had simply been offered to Sugarcube Corner -- which hadn't known how to deal with it, much less turn it down.
The Cakes had been given more than a moon's worth of advance notice, and the extra time had not proven helpful. Two ponies who casually dealt with the assorted pressures of running a small business, raising twins, working in Ponyville, and living with Pinkie had been rendered into trembling balls of stress and froth by the prospect of disappointing the Princess. They wanted -- were in fact convinced they had to -- make something perfect. They had started with the prospect of creating something the Princess had never seen before and, after a frenzied week without sleep had been wagered against her lifespan and lost, decided to settle on trying to bake something she might not have had in a very long time.
So they had, through Pinkie and Twilight, dipped into the library exchange program, asking for the emergency loan of the oldest bakery guide known to exist. Something which might contain lost recipes: things only the Princess had heard of, which nopony had actually created in centuries -- or at least, that was the last desperate hope. Twilight's fieldwriting had secured the transfer, and now Pinkie was serving as a one-pony honor guard for the ancient text.
The Cakes mutually looked up as Pinkie proudly reentered the bakery, and both managed to hold back the shiver fits until the last customer had been sent out of the abruptly-closed shop.
"Set down here, Pinkie," a lightly-trembling Mr. Cake requested, and she gently deposited the old book on the indicated counter. "Did you get a chance to look in it yet?"
She shook her head. There had been the box, several forms to sign before taking custody, and a book which tasted slightly of old flour.
"Then we'll all see it together," Mrs. Cake sweated. "Please, please let there be something good..." She nosed the front cover, flipped past publisher's credit and printing notice (1st) until she found the first recipe page. "No, everypony knows that one..." Another flip.
"That's just cupcakes," Pinkie observed as she tried to push back the encroaching disappointment: there were a lot of pages to go. "Maybe it's the first cupcakes, but it's still just cupcakes."
"And that's Black Forest," Mr. Cake groaned. "I didn't even think they had Black Forest that far back..."
Many pages went by. Some still bore stains from their visits to bakeries long-past. Others had faded somewhat, making them a little harder to read. But all of the contents were familiar.
"We're running out of book," Mrs. Cake sighed. "Maybe we need to start thinking about -- going original again."
"We should probably wait on the new pressure cooker first," Pinkie suggested. "Nopony found where the old one landed."
"Just keep flipping," Mr. Cake pushed on. "We haven't hit the back cover y --" and green eyes went wide "-- hello..."
Both mares looked down.
"...I've never seen this one," Mr. Cake slowly stated. "Never in my life. Not in a recipe book, not in somepony else's shop..."
"They didn't teach it at my school," Mrs. Cake carefully added as dream began to spread through her eyes. "And I had some of the best instructors in the world."
Two ponies with baking marks, having just mutually failed in their knowledge, looked to the wild card.
"It's not a rock farm recipe," Pinkie declared.
And with that, there was hope.
"Look at the name!" Mr. Cake crowed. "Princess Cake! A recipe fit for royalty! And if the three of us haven't heard of it, with all we've seen, then it's possible that she hasn't had it in centuries!"
"Or," Mrs. Cake broke in, because she was the more practical of them, "that it's a secret of the palace kitchens. Something which doesn't get out any more, and she has it all the time."
"Then she won't be expecting us to make it, will she?" But now there was a little doubt in his eyes. "But maybe we should try to do something special with the icing..."
"Or maybe," Pinkie said as more than a thousand years flashed through her mind, "nopony makes it any more because it's so old, some of the ingredients are extinct."
Three sets of eyes simultaneously moved for that section of the page.
"Pretty standard so far," Mr. Cake risked. "Some of this is unusual, but it's nothing a fully-stocked bakery won't have and no matter what the Canterlot losers might have tried to insist, that's us. I've got pink salt in a vial at the back of the third cupboard."
"No problems with the super-high cacao content," Mrs. Cake added. "I can ask Zecora for extra if we wind up going this dark."
Pinkie had reached the next-to-last line.
"What's durian?"
They all stared at the entry for a while.
"...I don't know," Mr. Cake finally conceded. "I've never heard of it -- Cup?"
Who shook her head. "New to me."
They all went over the recipe again, and could account for every ingredient but one. Some time was used for officially finishing the book, which was followed by flipping back to that one page.
"It's the only new thing," Mr. Cake eventually admitted. "New to us, anyway. And just the name... even if it's a palace recipe which escaped, I'd be willing to risk it. But -- durian?" He took a breath, shook away some of the sweat. "Pinkie, would you please trot down to the library and look that up? See if it's something we can get, something which still exists. And maybe drop in on a few stores along the way. See if they carry it. If we're lucky, it's just not a standard baking ingredient and everypony else uses it all the time."
"Could we swap it out?" Mrs. Cake asked as Pinkie began to head for the exit. "Use something similar?"
Another look at the page. "It's essential for the filling," Mr. Cake said. "And we can't try to use something similar if we have no idea what it's like..."
But that was the last Pinkie heard before the doors closed behind her.
She peeked into a few shops along the way to offer her query, and not all of them sold food. Pinkie had been trained by experience, and several of those said that when you were looking to make something special for Spike, it was often necessary to visit a jewelry shop. (Rarity's storeroom was an option, but it almost inevitably turned out that whatever gem Pinkie needed was the most crucial part of the most important dress ever, and it was easier to pay in coin than in audience to hysteria.) Similarly, there were some very long-standing rumors which claimed the Princess didn't just consume normal food: the most prevalent of them claimed her nutrition came from raw sunlight. This was something which had never made sense to Pinkie: by its very nature, sunlight just had to arrive cooked.
At first, she had no luck: all of the shopkeepers said they'd never heard of durian, and their confusion upon hearing the name seemed to be an honest one. But then Pinkie reached the first produce vendor and noticed that the denial came a little too quickly, with desperation pushing the words into the air as if sufficient force could be provided to send her out the door. The next two in that category seemed to truly have no knowledge of the thing, and the fourth responded to her inquiry by vanishing into the stockroom and never coming out.
It seemed to provide her with a general category and while she was still heading for the library, there was one more stop she could consider making along the way. In truth, it was a place which the Bearers generally avoided: the owner was more than a little seedy (which didn't fit a produce vendor as well as Pinkie had thought it might), not particularly polite, and had been partially responsible for That Thing Which Started With The Cherry. As such, giving him bits was considered to be an absolute last resort, and so she hadn't gone to that stand in a long time.
But it was for the Princess, and so she entered the open-air market, spotted the perpetually-gruff two-tone face, trotted up and asked her question.
"Do you carry durian?"
The stallion's reaction was instant. His eyes went left. Then they went right. A society which included pegasi offered a requirement for a upwards direction.
"Shutupshutupshutup!"
Which seemed rather rude. "I just wanted to know if you sold it! Because I think it must be really hard to get, since the other produce vendors are too embarrassed to admit they can't. Unless it's extinct and that's what they don't want to tell me, that durian just doesn't exist any --"
"-- shut up!" Half a whisper, with most of the rest being hiss. "Not... not out here. Not in public."
Hopefully, "So it's so rare, you don't want to start a frenzy by saying you have it?"
He clenched his teeth. Ponies did that a lot when speaking to Pinkie, and she generally presumed they were thinking about candy.
"Back here," he softly offered, swishing his tail to indicate direction. "Just... come back here."
Pinkie, now lightly confused, stepped into the open-front canopy tent, went behind the table. The stallion dropped down, putting his body behind the table's drape cloth, out of sight. Pinkie automatically did the same, which told anypony who might pass by that the stand was now being operated by an exceptionally fluffy tail.
"I don't have it now," the pegasus whispered. "But I can get it. I'm the only pony in town who can, or would even try. There's certain... risks."
Pinkie pictured the annual rush for the year's first grapes and what usually happened to the pony at the center of it, then nodded. "How long would it take?"
He hesitated. "Three weeks. That's to let the supplier know and get it here."
Which under so many other circumstances would have meant disaster -- but in this case, it left them with one week to master the recipe.
So enough for at least half the Conference, because it would be rude if the guests didn't get any. Add in extras for the trial gallops, then some more because if it works out, we may want to start selling it in Ponyville...
Still, a three-week shipping time had problems of its own. "Will they be fresh?" she said. "Even if only half that time is for coming here, there isn't a lot of produce which keeps for ten days."
"They're shipped frozen." His voice was barely audible now. "They have to be, and that's harder in the spring. There's certain considerations for transporting durian. Things you have to... deal with. Things which have to be paid for. Special routes to follow. Shipment inspectors who have to be the ones which pass the cart through. You understand."
Pinkie, too busy with multiplication to truly think about it, simply nodded. Her tail bounced to suit.
"And since I'm the only pony who'll do it," the pegasus whispered, eyes now glinting with a mix of malice and profiteering, "I get to name the price."
Which was the part Pinkie had been dreading. "How much each?"
He named it.
"That," Pinkie eventually said, after the stun finally began to wear off, "is a very interesting name."
He nodded.
"It's the sort of name," she continued, "which went to college. A very expensive college. And has a lot of student loans to pay off."
"But you're going to give it to me," he maliciously declared. "You don't have a choice."
We can just make another dish... But she was curious. "Why don't I have a choice?"
"Because if you don't pay it," he informed her as his lips curled into a sinister smile, "I'm going to tell everypony you wanted to buy durian."
Pinkie's blink, at least in the sense of how she'd meant it to come across, had been one of completely innocent confusion.
"So?" she replied with equal innocence. "I'd just tell them you offered to get it for me."
The produce seller now had a very odd expression on his two-toned face. It was a look which often occupied the features of those who dealt with the Bearers, and Pinkie had never figured out just what kind of thoughts produced the contortions. In this case, it was the usual mistaken belief that ponies who acted as part-time agents of the thrones would need to possess some degree of law enforcement powers to match, and were furthermore willing to use them.
"...oh," the pegasus shakily said.
She nodded.
He instantly cut the name down by two-thirds, costing it the chance at some precious university courses in disaster relief. The negotiations continued in a generally-downwards direction from there, and so Pinkie never reached the library.
Not that it would have helped.
Three weeks passed, and did so with absolutely no knowledge of what was coming.
Pinkie didn't bother with checking the back door every five minutes -- at least, not starting from the moment she got back after giving the vendor his payment. She only had trouble waiting for things when she didn't know how long they would take: a letter from the Academy had a variable transport time, but a loaf which had to be in the oven for twelve minutes required twelve uninterrupted minutes -- and in this case, three weeks was three weeks. It meant the compulsive peeks towards the bakery's rear exit only started on the twenty-first day and as it turned out, didn't even get to see sunrise.
Sugarcube Corner woke up early. It had to: the only way to be ready for the morning rush was to start preparing well before Sun was brought over the horizon. As the saying went, the bread rose with Celestia, and so the ponies who created it needed to be up quite a bit before that.
"We're running low on brown flour," Mrs. Cake noted. "Pinkie, remember that we have to reorder?"
She nodded, filing it away. "Anything else?"
"Delivery's supposed to be today, isn't it?" Mr. Cake asked as he rolled out the dough.
They'd been working for about an hour or, as Pinkie thought of it, twelve back door checks. "Yeah! I can't wait to find out what they taste like!" Paused. "And what they look like. And pretty much everything about them, really."
Mr. Cake, who was working under the assumption that there hadn't been anything useful in the library, nodded. Sniffed the air over the dough as a normal step in checking the quality.
Then he did it again.
"Cup," he not-so-casually asked, "are the twins sick?"
"They were fine this morning," the instantly-worried mother said. "Why?"
"It smells like..." Another, much more reluctant sniff. "...well, not quite like a full diaper. Or stomach trouble. And I think I'm picking up... you know that oil Scootaloo uses to lubricate her wheels? Remember that time she crashed through the kitchen and we wound up with some of it in the marzipan? It's like that. Only with chipmunks walking through it. Very ill chipmunks. And --"
Which was when the hoof clandestinely knocked on the back door.
Pinkie, who'd been hoping for an early delivery, carefully made sure her workstation was in a place where she could simply stop without any damage. And upon verifying that, raced for the door and flung it open.
"Hi! We've been waiting for --"
The rest of the words died in her throat, with the coroner indicating voluntary, self-induced asphyxiation.
There was an earth pony, a pegasus, and a cart. The earth pony was hauling the cart. The pegasus was on a cloud just above it, with her legs shifting in a way which indicated some degree of weather manipulation was in progress: this was further verified by what was steadily falling from the cloud. Most of it landed on the cart: occasionally, a few stray flakes drifted onto the cloth which had been wrapped around the earth pony's snout. The cart was partially covered by a tarpaulin, and mostly coated by a significant thickness of snow.
But there was more magic than that in play. Air seemed to twist around the cart. Pinkie, who'd hung around Rainbow long enough to learn some of the basics, quickly realized that a private current was being funneled to earth pony and pegasus, while most of the air around the cart itself had been sent straight up. Most. Not quite all.
There was an earth pony, an equally-masked pegasus, and a cart. There was also a smell.
Pinkie spent some time in trying to internally describe that smell. There was something of a public restroom trench around the edges, which didn't do much to conceal the rather strong hint of used surgical dressings. It suggested turpentine, and then further suggested applying it to her own nostrils. There wasn't so much of a clue to deeper foulness as there was a direct solution to the mystery which stepped out in front of the detectives and wrapped up the entire novel in the first five pages just so everypony could get away.
"Take it," the earth pony gasped through the cloth. "Just -- take it. We're going. Before anypony sees us."
"I need to inspect the merchandise," Pinkie said (and, reluctantly, breathed), because she wasn't stupid. Sugarcube Corner took deliveries all the time, and you never knew when a vendor was about to try dumping off their substandard goods just because they'd already been paid and had a clear gallop to the town's border. "It doesn't smell like everything's --"
"-- that's because it's frozen," the weary-looking pegasus mare broke in.
"It smells that way because it's cold?" Pinkie asked.
She nodded.
"Oh," Pinkie said, and decided durian was strange indeed. Well, it would warm up quickly enough inside. "I still have to look at it."
The earth pony might have nodded, or it could have been an incidental motion which came from the desperate attempts to unhitch himself from the cart. Either way, Pinkie took it as permission, followed by also taking a deep breath and resolving to hold it as long as she could.
She trotted closer, reared up on her hind legs, managed to brush some of the snow away with the fore, nosed the tarpaulin up and instantly got poked in the snout for her trouble.
"Ow!" Which sadly meant losing the held breath and even worse, taking another one. "What just --"
It was her first look at the fruit, and the initial impression was of a very large coconut which had gone bald and then decided to be extremely angry about it. If it had smelled more like hair tonic instead of -- everything else, she would have considered it to be the produce equivalent to Cranky. The pre-Ponyville donkey had never taken the logical step of growing spike-covered armor in order to keep everypony away, but Pinkie was sure he would have if he could. Even under the light of a half-Moon, some of the spikes looked sharp, and she realized she'd been lucky in hitting one of the blunter ones.
They were somewhat larger than coconuts (and much more irregular in shape): the smallest were about half the size of her head. A few still had stems. The dominant color was the sort of greenish-brown which, when combined with the smell, made her think about checking on the twins, followed by immediately checking with a pediatrician.
She looked at them again and tried to figure out exactly how she was supposed to move them without cutting her legs or the inside of her mouth. Not that she could get her mouth open wide enough to grip one, but if she could just get at one of the remaining stems...
"Um..." Actually, help would make things better. "As long as you're here, would you please help me unload? I know you want your cart back --"
"-- keep it!" the pegasus mare gasped, and a backblast of no-longer-being-altered currents told Pinkie she'd just lifted off from the cloud: she glanced up just in time to see wings desperately flap, and the light purple body blurred as it streaked off to the west.
Her confused attention quickly refocused at ground level. "But it's not --"
"Burn it!" shouted the earth pony, who, lacking the necessary extra limbs, settled for the kind of land speed which would have won Games events.
"-- ours," Pinkie told a patch of empty air. (It seemed to understand, but couldn't do much to help.) This was followed by dropping down to all four hooves again and turning to the bakery's back door. "Um... they're here..."
"How do they look?" Mrs. Cake inquired from somewhere inside the building. Or at least, that was what Pinkie thought she'd said: the words were a little hard to make out through the gagging.
"It's hard to say," Pinkie truthfully admitted. "There's no mold and I can't see any cracks in the shells for the top ones. But since I've never seen it before, I don't know what could be wrong." Paused. "The smell is because they're cold."
"That's what smells?" Mr. Cake asked as he forced himself up to the doorway.
"Yeah. It's..." Pinkie reached for appropriate vocabulary, found it, and then remembered that the twins were getting near that stage where they were not only up at all hours and listening to the adults, but might take any words they heard and repeat them. In the bakery, to the customers. For the next six moons. "...stinky."
"Hopefully that's just the shell," Mr. Cake said as he managed to get a hoofstep closer. "Luna's tail, what a shell... any ideas on how we're going to unload that?"
Pinkie thought about the amount of effort required to reach a stem, added that to her inability to work from above. "I think Mrs. Cake comes out, you two tooth-hold a stretched-out towel next to the cart, and I kick the cart until the first one shakes loose and lands on the terrycloth. And we do it until we've got enough to start with." Another look at the cart. "And once Sun's been up for a while, I'll go ask a unicorn for help with the rest, because that'll only get the top ones and nopony should be climbing in."
The bakers nodded. "I'll get the towel," Mrs. Cake gagged out from the kitchen: the echo in the sound made it feel like she was next to an open oven. "So there's a shell?"
"Is there ever," Mr. Cake sighed.
"How do we open it?"
The recipe came from the dawn of publishing, and Pinkie initially felt that it had also came from a time before anypony had invented things like helpful hoofnotes. It took a while (and much stronger lighting) before she realized that there was a section at the bottom of the page where print had once been, and she didn't realize the blurry scrape marks had come from angry hooves repeatedly hitting the paper until the next day.
"There's nothing here about opening it," she finally admitted. Hopefully, "Are there any natural seam lines on the shell? Like a walnut?
"No," Mr. Cake said through the cloth he'd wrapped around his snout. "Not that I can see. If there is one, the spines and spikes are covering it up."
"I'll get the coconut chisel," Mrs. Cake offered. "You put that stemmed one in the vise, and Pinkie, you close it. We may lose a few perfect interiors to figuring out the best way to do it --" because the recipe had been very clear about scooping out the four inner pods "-- but that's why we got extras. To experiment."
Eventually, they had everything aligned.
"I'm going to try it from the top," Mrs. Cake said, and then took up the chisel's mouth grip between her teeth.
The first impact did nothing, and nopony had expected it to: she'd merely been tapping the shell, testing its strength. The second brought the tool down with the amount of force required to access coconut milk, and the curved spines simply sent the metal off to the side.
Mrs. Cake looked at the fruit, realigned the chisel to place the point precisely between thorns. Hit it again, with the same amount of power. The vise vibrated slightly.
One more look, and then her head slammed down.
Eventually, they found where nearly all the metal fragments had landed, and simply threw away the entire batch of dough. Just in case.
In Pinkie's opinion, the durian was resting rather calmly in the vise. Which, she knew, was just her being silly again, because durian was a fruit. It had no heart, no brain, no way to feel calm or anything else. It couldn't think, and that meant there was no way it was smugly smirking at all the broken tools which littered the bakery floor.
"What time does the library open?" Mr. Cake asked. "Maybe there's a book which tells you how to do it." Movement under the cloth suggested a worried frown. "Hopefully not one we have to wait a week for."
Any friend of Twilight's would need to memorize the schedule, and so Pinkie answered immediately. "Today? Not for a few hours."
"We need to get this started," Mrs. Cake declared. "We can't practice until we've got a few open, and --" she glanced towards the front of the bakery "-- we're getting close to our opening. We have to get back to preparing for the morning rush."
The other two earth ponies thought about that. Then they each breathed, and only because they had to.
"What about the... smell?" Pinkie asked. "It's in here."
It was. It was more or less wandering around the place while testing the strength of the floor and deciding what it might want to pay for rent.
"I'll wind up the clockwork for the fans," Mr. Cake said. "And we'll leave the rest of them outside. And close the door. And windows. And put the tarp back on. It should get better when Sun heats them up a little."
"Well," Mrs. Cake sighed, "if anypony has any ideas for what we should try on them next..."
And just like that, Pinkie had one.
In some ways, it had been a hard trot. The journey itself had long since passed beyond mere memorization: Pinkie didn't really have to pay attention to what her hooves were doing in order to reach her destination, and often spent the time in simply admiring the landscape. And of course there were no issues in covering the distance. But today, she was wearing saddlebags, each with some durian in it, and...
Her movements didn't shift the saddlebags: Rarity's designs were too good for that. But they did shift the load. Durians moved, poked at the fabric, seemed to be on the verge of poking through. Hundreds of barely-blunted thorns were rubbing against her fur, and it felt as if the skin beneath was becoming rather scratched up. (Fortunately, the saddlebags were cold, and that helped a little.) What would normally be a pleasant trot on a warm spring morning had turned into mobile torment, and when she recognized that the saddlebags weren't exactly airtight and so she was basically bringing a personal cloud of stench along...
Pinkie spent most of the trip in wondering how long a pony could grit their teeth before cracks started to appear and when she reached what she'd been hoping against experience was her only stop, she nearly got shouted off the stoop by a senior who only knew that there was a smell and a pony present together, which meant #1 was the direct product of #2 and something had to be done about that. Fortunately, Big Mac showed up just before the hose did.
But as usual, the first stop wasn't the right location, and the stallion provided directions. (This impressed Pinkie, as she'd never seen somepony talk while pressing their own snout into a wall.) So there was more trotting, and eventually...
"So Ah got one question of mah own," Applejack said, which wasn't quite as impressive a feat when it came from somepony who was merely sticking their snout into grass. (It didn't help. The smell had a way of sinking. And rising. And moving in pretty much every other direction.) "Did it stink that bad when y'left?"
"I'm not sure," Pinkie admitted.
"Because..." with a faint note of hope, "...y'get used to it?"
"No," Pinkie definitively stated. "You don't. It's just sort of like hitting the ground after jumping off a cliff instead of doing it from a mountain."
"Y'mean...?"
"After you get high enough, all of the impacts are pretty much the same. I think Twilight called it terminal velocity." Rainbow usually just called it a challenge.
Applejack forced her head out of the grass. "Well, Ah understand 'bout wantin' to impress the Princess. But Ah hope it's worth the trouble, Pinkie. Did the seller say anythin' 'bout gettin' them open? 'cause Ah can tell you, ain't been no Apple Ah've heard tell of who've raised 'em, bought 'em -- anythin'." Muttering now. "Sure wouldn't grow one."
"It's not a market day and he doesn't like parties, so I'm not even sure where he lives," Pinkie admitted. "He once told me that if I ever showed up at his place for a surprise, he'd consider it to be a surprise attack." With a brief frown, "He's really twitchy in a lot of ways."
"Ah don't even know what a pegasus is doin' sellin' fruit," Applejack declared.
"Who else is going to do it in a pegasus city?" Pinkie reasonably pointed out.
"Yeah, but he's doin' it on the ground. How Mr. Bunko got into that line of work, Ah'll never know..." Applejack automatically took a deep breath, then visibly regretted it. "So since Ah ain't got the lore -- an' sorry 'bout that, Pinkie -- anythin' else Ah can do t' help?"
There was. "You've got those hoof-hammering shoes for barn repair. The metal ones. And you're used to kicking the trees. I thought... maybe if we just found out where to kick them? I don't want to do it without the shoes because it'll really hurt my hooves. In the center." She recalled that part was called a frog, and remembered that she'd always meant to ask somepony why. "And it might do some damage to the durian's insides. But we have extras, so we can lose a few to experimenting."
"Ah can kick 'em without the shoes," Applejack proudly declared. "Going into wood all day toughens y'up!"
Quickly, "Applejack, you didn't see the spines..."
"So Ah'll take one out." A nod towards the left saddlebag. "If'fin y'don't mind?"
"Just be careful to get the stem."
Eventually, the first durian was on the ground, looking odd in the first shine of Sun. It visibly didn't belong among the apple trees. It didn't seem as if it would fit in anywhere.
Applejack trotted around it a few times, surveying things from all angles. She didn't look impressed.
"It's a piece of fruit," she finally said, "which thinks it's a cross between a nut an' a briar patch. Ah? Am an earth pony. This durian is one thing, Pinkie, an' that's overmatched." She glanced backwards, found the thickest available treetrunk. "Y'don't mind losin' one?"
"The shoes," Pinkie protested, "are sitting in the barn --"
"-- don't need no shoes."
Applejack's body spun, aligned itself, and the powerful hind legs lashed out.
"Sorry it took so long t' get here," Applejack said as they entered the barn.
"It's okay."
"What with the limp an' all. So... yeah, there's the shoes. Let me slip 'em on..." and a soft moan. "Oh. Yeah. Maybe not one of mah best ideas, metal on top of what happened back there -- wipe that look, Pinkie."
"What look?" was the natural question.
"The one that's all sad an' guilty like it's your fault. Ah'm the one who didn't listen. Price is mine t' pay. So there we go. Let's get that thing out again -- an' look at this: it's still got some bark on the spines. Well, Ah ain't playing around now. We're doing metal into fruit, an' fruit into rock. Gonna use the old marker wall, out by the edge of the tenants' area. The one that's jus' a bunch of stones set on top of each other. Let's go."
It was a short trot, and a quiet one.
"Birds ain't singin'," Applejack noticed.
"They weren't in the orchard, either," Pinkie observed. "I think they fled."
"Gettin' away from the smell? Don't blame 'em. Can't say it makes me want t' run, but Ah'm sure thinkin' 'bout doing other things t' the source."
"Like what?"
There was a long moment of exceptionally strong silence.
"Pinkie?"
"Yes?"
"Y'know how when Ah answer a question, it's all honest-like?"
"...yes..."
"An' sometimes Ah've got kind of, let's call it a really graphic imagination?"
"...yes."
"Right. So please don't ask me that again."
They reached the wall. The durian was extracted.
"Okay," Applejack declared. "Once was for ego. Second time's revenge."
She kicked, and there was a sound like newborn thunder.
"How many pieces?" the farmer asked, because she was facing exactly the wrong way to see.
"Six," Pinkie softly said.
"Good --"
"-- you cracked that rock into six pieces."
A stunned Applejack turned, and did so at the exact moment they both heard a not-too-distant mooing.
It was a very distinctive mooing. It was loud, more than a little panicked, and arrived as a very large chorus.
"Um..." Pinkie said. "Was it the noise? Or... you know how you said the smell didn't make you want to flee -- Applejack!"
But the farmer was already moving, for the pain from the limp had to wait. The stampede was now.
They got it stopped well short of Ponyville itself. Unfortunately, much of the space between Ponyville and the Acres was occupied. Some of that was by farms, quite a bit was the Rich estate, and nearly all of it was currently taken up by hoofprints.
(Pinkie, who'd never really corralled before, had turned out to be surprisingly effective at it: the cattle had automatically veered away from any approach she'd taken. They'd both needed a minute to realize the bovines were actually moving away from the stench.)
It had taken time to get all the tenants back to their leased land. Too much of it. And now two ponies were heading towards town under somewhat higher Sun, one limping and the other panting from exhaustion.
"Okay," Applejack eventually said. "Ah'm still comin' with. 'cause Ah want t' see what does crack this thing. And then if it's any good, Ah wanna eat one, jus' for the revenge."
"Can you make it?" Because the limp was becoming more noticeable.
"Ah can go a long way to see a hurtin' put on the right pony," Applejack declared. "Fruit ain't no different. 'specially when it smirks."
"It doesn't have a face. Or a heart, or a brain --"
"-- it," Applejack firmly cut her off, "was smirkin'."
Which was when the "Hey!" sounded from overhead.
They both looked up.
"So what brings you two out here?" Rainbow grinned at them, staring down from fairly significant altitude. "I know why I'm here. I'm wrapping up my part of the pre-dawn shift." Which completely and magnificently ignored the fact that she was just that late. "But Pinkie, you'd usually be at the bakery right now, Applejack would be looking at trees, and if both of you are off work at the same time --" More quickly, with open hope, "-- is this a mission? Because you both look like you've been in a fight, and Applejack lost --"
The cyan snout wrinkled.
"Huh," Rainbow said.
The earth ponies waited.
"You remember that time," the pegasus began, "when Spike was trying out coal for the first time? And Twilight was all like 'you eat gems, just because you can bite this doesn't mean you should,' and he was like 'I'm old enough to know what I like, I'm a dragon and I know what I want to eat,' only it turned out he didn't have regular coal, but this weird variant stuff called, what was it, anthracite? And it gave him gas, and he wound up in the basement for an hour because he couldn't be out in public, and then he wound up in the Crusaders' clubhouse for a day because Twilight found out what that gas did to the stuff in the lab?"
They nodded.
"This," Rainbow decided, "is kinda making me miss that. What did you two eat?"
They explained. It didn't take long to recognize Rainbow's unusual level of interest, which was marked by her visibly paying attention to a near-majority of the words
"Huh," she said again. "You're kind of missing the obvious."
"An' what's that?" Applejack inquired, frustration rising slightly faster than hackles.
"You've got the right idea," Rainbow told them. "You just don't have enough force."
"So you're sayin'," and now the words were being shot towards the sky, "that you can kick harder than me."
"Nah!" Rainbow grinned. "I know you're stronger, Applejack! You've just got to think --" and her volume dropped into the tones of conspiracy "-- three-dimensionally."
A too-long moment passed, and eventually found itself hurrying to get out of the area before something bad happened.
"Ah don't take your meaning," Applejack finally said.
"Pinkie," Rainbow smoothly declared, "give me the fruit."
Extraction occurred, and Rainbow dipped low enough to get near the stem, hooves never quite touching the ground. "Okay. You see that flat-topped rock over there? The one that's just about big enough for a stage?" They both glanced at the natural grey shelf. "Watch that space!"
Nimble teeth nipped at the stem, and then Rainbow was gaining altitude. Fast, ascending at a speed she rarely achieved on the vertical.
They both looked at the rock again, as it was easier than tracking a rapidly-ascending (and, visually, shrinking) Rainbow.
"She ain't gonna --" and then Applejack stopped herself. "-- of course she's gonna, it's Rainbow --"
There was a whistling sound, like something very dense tumbling through atmosphere and making the air sing between thorns. Both earth ponies instinctively took a few hoofsteps backwards, because there was such a thing as aim and they still held out hopes that one day, Rainbow would learn what it was. Besides, even if the durian hit the stone, there would be a spray of shell fragments and that meant high-velocity thorns. Getting some distance seemed best.
The greenish-brown object flashed through their field of vision. Hit.
As it turned out, they'd stepped back just enough to avoid the fragments.
Rainbow descended, getting close enough to let them both see her and hear the grin. Or at least the latter, as they were busy looking at something else.
"So there you go!" she crowed. "Just take me to the rest of them and I'll --"
Which was when she truly looked down.
"-- huh."
It was a simple word, and so labored to carry the sheer amount of stun.
The earth ponies, who were still looking at the impact site, continued to do so.
"That's a lot of cracks," Rainbow observed.
They nodded.
"I mean, the last time I saw a rock break like that was at Dragon Mountain. When we went into it."
Again.
With sudden I-just-thought-of-this concern, "You're okay over there? The rock pieces didn't reach you?"
"We're fine," Pinkie shakily said. "Rainbow --"
"-- all right," Rainbow declared as she started into her swoop. "First round to the fruit. This time, I'm going higher!"
It took the pegasus a long time to get her breath back and since all of that was being done in the vicinity of the completely-intact durian, she enjoyed approximately none of it.
"...I..." Rainbow gasped, "...kind of ran out of up." She shook a little froth out of her wings. "Well -- not completely, because there's still more up to go. But the air just gets cold, and it's like there isn't enough to flap against. There's only so high any pegasus can go and stay up. I hit the ceiling. And the durian..."
She glanced at it.
"It smirks. That's a smirk, right? Along that line of thorns?"
"Rainbow," Pinkie began with the air of a pony who was rapidly giving up on the non-sapient fruit idea, "that's not --"
"And it's laughing. At me. Only we can't hear it because it's laughing in plant and we only hear in pony, but I know it's laughing at me --"
The kick was instinctive, and surprisingly solid.
"So what's next?" Rainbow asked after Pinkie had finished checking on the injured hoof. (She was hovering in order to keep the weight off it, and Applejack wasn't doing a good job at suppressing the envy.) "Because I want to see this thing crack. Or die." A hard nod. "Death is good."
"It's fruit," Applejack said, "Already dead, technically."
"Then I want to see nasty things happen to the corpse," Rainbow declared. "We need more force --" and her eyes sparked in a familiar way, one which told them they had seconds to act before sparking company arrived "-- and if I just get a few clouds together --"
"-- no lightning!" Pinkie half-yelped.
"And why not?"
"Because the durian has to cook inside the cake! The recipe said so! You'll ruin the filling!"
"...oh," Rainbow said, and blinked frustrated voltage away. "Fine. No lightning, because the cake is so important... So if you've got some great idea about something which packs more of a kick than lightning..."
"Do you smell that?" Rainbow asked as they crossed the bridge into town.
"Ah ain't sure Ah can smell much of anythin' right now," Applejack sighed. "Or anythin' other than the one thing."
"No. I just sort of noticed that they all smell a little bit different, you know?" Rainbow continued. "Because I was carrying a few of them while I was just sort of trying to cycle through. Some of them are like Spike's old gas problem. But one was a little more like a changeling's leg holes. I got my snout halfway into one of them during the fight: you didn't. There's a smell. And there was this one which was like a compost heap that got drenched in turpentine and had onions draped on top. Plus some sweatbands. There were definitely used sweatbands. Moldy ones."
Both earth ponies swallowed, or rather, swallowed back.
"So I'm getting more of a sweatband smell now," Rainbow mercilessly continued. "It's kind of drifting in on that current Thunderlane set up. And that's along the path where Sugarcube Corner is."
"It's probably the cart," Pinkie sighed. "We were supposed to burn the cart." Which made her wonder why the more local stench wasn't clearing up: the saddlebags no longer felt cold, which meant the durian had warmed up. Wasn't that supposed to make things better?
"And there aren't many ponies on the street," the pegasus observed.
"Workin' hours for most of 'em," Applejack suggested.
"And the ones who are out -- they're moving kind of fast..."
"That's just us," Pinkie wearily said. "They can probably smell us. I wouldn't want to be near us either, and I am us. Come on, I can see the tree..."
Applejack had already spent some time envying Rainbow for her ability to hover and stay off an injured hoof. Everypony had expected to spend their first moments in Twilight's vicinity in floundering within an emerald sea. But it didn't happen, because some forms of unicorn magic required a direct line of sight, while others demanded a high degree of control. And between the two, despite every desperate attempt she made to cross her eyes, Twilight just wasn't capable of using magic to pinch her own nostrils shut.
They'd wound up standing outside the tree and shouting until she emerged. Nopony wanted to find out what she would do if they got the smell too close to her books.
Twilight listened to it all, with occasional pauses to retreat into the tree. The majority of those had been with the intent of reaching a sink, but the most recent trip had been to the Botany section.
"It's weird," she finally said, pinkish energy ruffling through her mane as if trying to scrub out the smell. "I thought I smelled something a little while ago, but I thought Spike had tried anthracite again. Only after eating some bad grapes and gargling with a bottle of hot sauce. And the botany books are even weirder. Not only is there nothing written about how to open durian, none of them even mention durian. Not even Seedling's Guide To Extremely Obnoxious Plants. It's like the fruit doesn't exist."
"It exists," Rainbow huffily said. "It's getting it to stop existing that's the problem."
"Do you know where it came from?" This had been directed towards Pinkie. "Is this something we should ask Zecora about?"
"Just that it takes three weeks to get, and that includes the time to place the order," Pinkie miserably said. "So that leaves Pundamilia Makazi out, because it would have been a lot longer by cart."
Twilight thoughtfully nodded -- then frowned. "So what do you want me to do? I can contact the Canterlot Archives as soon as Spike gets back from the Boutique and ask them to send anything they have on durian, but it'll still take them some time to mail the book out."
"Well," Applejack started, "we've tried kicks."
"And vises," Pinkie added.
"And drops," Rainbow huffed. "None of it worked."
They all looked at her. She simply looked back.
Finally, a very reluctant "I don't get it," broke through, if not the cloud of stench, then the one of sheer awkwardness.
Applejack sighed. "Twi -- we kinda want you t' -- exert yourself. Jus' a little. We can't crack this shell. Ah'm thinkin' you can."
"Oh..." Twilight slowly said -- then, with a blush starting to underlight her fur, "Sorry. I just -- I usually don't think about problems as 'hit them until they're fixed'."
"S'okay," Applejack gently told her. "It's one of the best things 'bout you: nothin' to be ashamed of. But this time, we kinda need you t' hit. An' then come with to Sugarcube Corner an' hit whatever the Cakes need hit. Plus maybe lock the rest in a shield 'til they're needed?"
"That part won't work," the instant (and familiar) lecturing tones said. "Shields are air-permeable. It would have gotten pretty stale in Canterlot otherwise. Just before it got really deadly. We'll have to try something else there. And it can't be an air purification spell."
"Why not?" Rainbow demanded.
"Because I've been casting my best one for the last fifteen minutes. It can deal with volcano fumes, but not durian. I think it's because this is a natural scent." She made the mistake of sniffing. "Somehow, this is a natural scent. So... cracking one open..." The corona around her horn intensified by a lumen or two. "Pinkie, I'm going into your saddlebags... okay, this one looks like it'll do for a test subject. Everypony stand back a little."
"I just hope you can do it," Rainbow said as her wings sent her backwards.
Everypony saw the reaction.
It took a lot to make Twilight talk about her raw magical strength. It was almost impossible to make her brag. But if somepony said something insulting enough, it was still possible to get a reaction.
"Rainbow --"
"-- I mean, I dropped this thing from as high up as I could go! You can see the rock chips which got stuck between the spines. And if that wasn't enough --"
"-- Rainbow," Twilight calmly interrupted, "I levitated the water tower. I can open. A piece. Of fruit."
Pinkish light flared.
Then it flared again, just a little brighter.
And then a completely silent explosion briefly altered the color of the sky.
"OH, COME ON!"
"Ladies," said the half-muffled voice as its owner made the final approach, with the blockage doing nothing to stop the accent. "May we talk?"
The voice had some pain in it, and that got their attention. What kept it was the look which occupied the visible portion of Rarity's face, for she had blocked most of it with cloth, and managed to look somewhat fashionable in doing so. It was an expression of mixed mild agony, extreme disgust, and deep concern.
Spike was on her back, sharing in the concern, and the agony came from empathy -- but showed none of the disgust. A sapient who found volcanic fumes merely improved his health as opposed to killing him didn't exactly have pony lungs, let alone their range of olfactory reactions.
One appeared to have recently been in full gallop, and the claws which were still clenched around her mane said the other had been hanging on for dear life.
Twilight's horn dimmed and the hues of the world began to normalize, at least for those who could still clearly see. "Rarity! You would not believe what we're trying to deal with! Have you ever heard of --"
There was a faint rumble off in the distance. It was somewhat hard to hear, mostly because it had to force its way through the smell.
"-- for the last several minutes," Rarity smoothly cut her off, at least after factoring out the panting, "I have been quite aware that you have been working magic. Rather intensely, at a high level of thaum expenditure, for an extended period of time. This was not due to the flashes of light which came through the Boutique's windows, although that did get my attention. It was the fact that my horn is twinging. Rather severely. I expect that by now, just about every unicorn in Ponyville knows you are doing something, and under normal circumstances, I would not be the only pony coming to investigate."
"...oh." And now the blush was threatening to outshine anything that purple horn had ever done. "I'm sorry, Rarity, I am, but... you don't know what we've been up against. This thing --"
The rumble seemed to be developing words, although none of them made sense to Pinkie. It mostly sounded like a lot of ponies saying "watermelon rhubarb." Over and over.
"-- and I would not have come out," the designer resumed, "had I not seen that light, and felt you working. Because I have been in full retreat. I suspect most of Ponyville tried that at some point, from..."
She finally seemed to see the fruit.
"Is that the source of the smell?"
"Yes," Pinkie managed to admit.
The odd expression of doubled produce was getting close now.
"It smells like failure," Rarity declared. "Like colors which directly oppose each other on the wheel and straw scratching against the grain of the fur. And also like a Barneigh's catalog, which makes the failure part redundant. But that is not the current issue. I got here as fast as I could, because I was the only one willing to take full breaths against the assault. I had to warn you about --"
And then the rumble turned the corner.
Rarity automatically glanced backwards. Looked at Twilight again, and then to the others.
"My apologies," she said. "It seems I talked my way up to the mob."
It was, as mobs went, a somewhat understated one. None of the unicorns were carrying weapons in their fields, and there was a similar lack of implements within mouths. In fact, the majority of ponies had brought nothing more than torches, and nearly all of those were simply trying to inhale the smoke as a means of improvement.
However, there was a surprisingly large number of ponies in it. Just about everypony, in fact. This happened to include the Cakes, but only because they were being prodded along at the front of the group by several extremely angry ponies, all of whom were wearing police badges. (The twins were also in custody, and were currently being Cooed At With Intent To Induce Giggling.) And the mayor, placidly trotting along at the apex of what was starting to look like the world's most murderous triangle.
"Refresh my memory, Twilight," Rarity said with the calm of the doomed. "How many ponies can you teleport at once?"
Starkly, "Not this many."
"Pity..."
The mayor raised her right foreleg, stomped once. The mob stopped, and the older mare alone trotted forward.
"Ladies," she peacefully said. "Gentledragon." Looked directly at the durian which was suspended in Twilight's field bubble, completely undamaged.
"Abomination unto Sun and Moon," she greeted it, which was followed by "So before any degree of festivities begin, please know that I have already spoken to the Cakes. As such, I understand why you have brought durian into my settled zone. A simple desire to make something suitable for the Conference. I will not argue that your intentions were good."
"...thank you?" Pinkie tried, because thanks seemed necessary.
"Which does not change the fact," the mayor steadily went on, "that the air for several hundred body lengths around Sugarcube Corner now smells like a hydra's breath. A hydra where all the heads have recently taken to cleaning the body via their tongues. All of it. And that body had recently taken a refreshing dip in the nearest sulfur pit. That is the air quality for that portion of Ponyville, and the cloud is spreading. Durian is not served in Ponyville. Durian is, in fact, banned from just about every settled zone on the continent, and I believe the only reason Appleloosa hasn't gotten around to it yet is because they have more important things to do. Which, incidentally, might seem to give you a retreat point, but I suspect you would only inspire their lawmakers."
She looked at the durian again.
"It wasn't listed in the Botany section, was it, Ms. Sparkle?" she rhetorically asked, attention still focused on the fruit. "It would, however, have several rather prominent entries under Law. I spent some time reviewing them before coming over, mostly while holding my breath. They make for fascinating reading, especially as the best include transcripts from the debates. Did you know that at one time, this wasn't even considered to be a fruit? In fact, 'durian' in the original language translates directly to 'monster's egg'."
"Oh," Twilight said, if only for lack of other choices.
"The theory died out when somepony rather reasonably argued that any species which laid an egg like that would choose to go extinct. Also, somepony found their orchard. And managed to describe it, after most of their sanity had returned. But... this is for the Princess, and the Conference. So while you have broken the law -- and I will eventually require a full accounting as to just who helped you break it -- your intentions were good. And given that, arresting the Bearers -- and the Cakes -- for breaking a law which is so old, hardly anypony is aware of it at all... that might be slightly problematical. I am not inclined to put any of you in prison for this."
"Oh," Twilight repeated -- then, more tentatively, "Thank -- you?"
"Instead," Mayor Marigold Mare finished, as the mob watched and did its collective best to live on burning wood, "I am simply banishing you, and the durians, from Ponyville for the duration. And said duration is until you have dealt with it. The citizenry will escort you to the train."
Pinkie's jaw dropped, and had plenty of company.
"We're banished?"
"Temporarily."
Rainbow landed, mostly from sheer shock, and immediately twisted her left hind leg until that hoof was off the unforgiving ground. "All of us?"
"Yes. Plus the Cakes. And as this is a Bearer matter, Miss Fluttershy will of course go with --"
"-- she ain't done nothin'!" Applejack abruptly shouted. "Never went t' the cottage! Couldn't risk it after seein' what happened to mah tenants!"
"Oh, so that was the stampede..." the mayor mused. "Mr. Rich was wondering exactly what had happened to his lawn. The note you left was rather hastily written."
"Fluttershy ain't part of this!" Applejack yelled, angrily stomping both forehooves. "She's innocent."
The mayor looked at them. Glanced back at the mob, which really seemed to be obsessed with watermelon and rhubarb in all their possible combinations, which was to say, both of them.
"Yes," Marigold admitted. "So let's just call it an opportunity for her to get out more."
They were sitting in the train car. In fact, they had the whole of it to themselves: eight ponies, two foals, one dragon, a very large cart full of durian, a single extremely thick lawbook which Twilight was trying to read, and a very large amount of stench. The stench could have been described in many ways. Had the group been consulted, they might have eventually argued their way down to 'Tartarus' armpit after it had been drenched in flop sweat, coated in selenium, and braised with hoof infection discharge for a week,' although only after somepony had explained the concept of 'armpit'.
They had the train car to themselves -- now. It had been much more crowded when they got on, and also much warmer.
(Technically, you weren't supposed to move between cars while the train was in motion, but ponies did that all the time. You really weren't supposed to go out the windows, but it made sense for the pegasi. It didn't explain why the unicorns and earth ponies had done it.)
"Fluttershy..." Pinkie tried again.
The one visible blue-green eye silently glared at her, then threatened to switch the first two letters and upgrade.
Pinkie shut up.
"The twins are doing well," Rarity observed.
"They sleep through their own diapers," Mrs. Cake sighed. "I guess they think this is normal -- Spike, what are you doing?"
"Writing a letter to the palace," he firmly replied, scribbling a little more on the scroll -- then paused until the shivering stopped. "This is legal trouble, they signed most of the laws into existence, and... well, there isn't much point in keeping it a surprise now, especially since they kicked us onto the train to Canterlot. We need help, so I'm asking for it."
"Can't we just get rid of the stuff?" Rainbow asked from her current position in the train car: necessity required her to be extremely mobile. "Toss it out the windows? I mean, we're way past where it would hit any of those ponies who --"
"-- illegal dumping," Twilight said, her snout still stuck in the law book, mostly in the name of keeping it safe.
"And we can't set it all on fire," Applejack sighed. "'cause the smell gets worse when they warm up."
"I suppose that is why they're shipped frozen," a thoroughly-updated Rarity mused. "Less disruption. Pinkie, was there anything in the recipe book about that?"
Morosely, "It just said to prepare them in a well-ventilated area."
"Oh?"
"I thought the part about kicking down the walls was a joke..."
The train moved on.
"Spike?" This from Rainbow.
He looked up from where he'd just sent the scroll into the aether, then blew more flame across his claws. "Yeah?"
"Remember that time when I found the expression 'dumpster fire' in a Daring Do book? And I didn't know why Miss Yearling was making that out to be the worst thing ever, so I asked you to set the contents of that one dumpster on fire? Remember what it smelled like, and how that proved how great a writer she is?"
"Yeah..."
(Twilight was now staring at both of them, which took a lot of work in intercepting Rainbow.)
"I miss that smell."
They all listened to the steam engine vent. Several wished for the steam.
"Also," Rainbow huffily declared as a flake drifted onto Pinkie's snout, "I have been keeping this emergency snowstorm going, indoors, in a train car, for the last hour, in the spring, just in the name of keeping the smell down a little, and nopony has said one word about --"
"-- Rainbow?" Applejack interrupted.
"What?"
"It's spectacular. Now shaddap."
The first thing they noticed as the train pulled into The Grand Hub was the complete lack of passengers waiting for their arrival. The second thing which caught their attention was the multiple signs which had been hastily pasted to the walls. Most of them read NO DURIAN PERMITTED IN TRANSIT, for the laws had been written long before trains. Others said NO DURIAN IN STATION. One, applied in haste before the incoming whistle had signaled retreat, had stopped at NO.
"Well, that's us," Twilight sighed. "Changing the world wherever we go... oh, no..."
There were no ponies waiting to board their train, or any other. But there was a single pony on the platform. A very large, extremely white mare.
"Twilight Sparkle," muttered Twilight Sparkle. "Twilight Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle! Twilight --"
"-- Twi?"
"Sorry?"
With open concern, "What'cha doin'?"
The librarian sighed. "Just trying to brace for it."
"It ain't your fault."
"It's always --"
The rest was lost in the screech of brakes and stampede of hooves as the other cars emptied out, with every pony having come to the conclusion that they Really Didn't Want To Be There. They flooded around the white mare at the speed of desperation, and she simply waited.
"Let's get it over with," Spike sighed, and was the first to disembark.
The Princess quietly looked down at him, and then her gaze moved to those who followed.
"When I felt the bursts of magic coming from Ponyville," she calmly said as Twilight emerged, without a single hint of gagging, "I thought there might be a true emergency. Something which would, say, threaten to destroy an entire city. But given the initial lack of missives -- and thank you for the full briefing, Spike -- there was a chance for it to be something else."
She watched the Cakes come down the ramp, easing the cart along between them.
"Something worse," the Princess concluded.
"Princess," Twilight desperately began, "we --"
"-- I am not blaming you," the Princess evenly continued. "The laws are on the books, yes. But they've been there for centuries, Twilight. When something has been banned for so long, and a pony doesn't work directly in produce -- Applejack, your family tends to be specialists: you had the best chance to know, and that turned out to be no chance at all. And to ban something for so long is to virtually wipe it from existence. The laws exist, but there's been no real need to enforce them."
She softly sighed.
"I had initially thought that truly wiping them from existence would be easier than getting the smell out of the old South Wing."
"Um," Twilight said. "The palace doesn't have a --"
The Princess nodded.
"-- oh," Twilight said, and looked very small.
That royal regard turned to the Cakes, and then briefly touched on Pinkie.
"For the Conference," the white mare said. "That's forgivable, I think. And in truth... it's been a long time since I've had Princess Cake. I would truly love to have it again, and I trust the three of you to make it correctly. But you can't do it. Nopony can."
"Because durian is banned," Mr. Cake miserably observed. "We're sorry, Princess."
"No," she said. "You can't make it without me. Brace yourselves, everypony --"
The white horn flared with sunlight, and the train station vanished.
There was blackened, cracked stone all around them and that was all there was, in a portion of the world so far away from Equestria as to nearly put them under Moon. Sun had almost set here, and there were only a few minutes of light left.
Just about everypony staggered, tried to reorient from a teleport across such a great distance. The Princess was simply, slowly trotting over to the equally-relocated cart.
"...where are we?" Fluttershy softly inquired.
"Call it the Wastes," the Princess replied, still on the move. "If you wish to dignify it with that much of a name. This is an old battleground. Nothing lives here, for there's nothing to eat, nothing to drink... nothing left. And it's where we can begin to prepare Princess Cake."
"Here?" Mrs. Cake just barely managed to ask. "But we don't have any equipment! We need our ovens -- well, maybe not, if you can keep the heat going for us, but there's no flour, nothing for icing --"
The Princess glanced back, smiled.
"You're skittish," she said. "Please don't be. None of this is your fault. And I trust you to bake it, once we reach a kitchen again. This is where we conduct the first step: opening the durian."
"With magic?" Twilight instinctively asked. "You're going to use your field to --"
"No."
Twilight blinked.
"But --"
"-- durian is -- resistant," the Princess said. "In many ways. In fact, one of the other reasons it was banned is because it makes for rather effective catapult ammunition. But I'm going to open it, Twilight, in the only way I know how."
And then she looked at Rainbow.
"You were closest," she told the pegasus. "And I know you did your best. But the reason it's called Princess Cake, my little ponies, is not because it was first made in the palace, or because I'm the first one who ate it. It's Princess Cake because in order to get all the ingredients ready -- you need a Princess."
Her horn ignited, and the cart was surrounded by yellow glow. Huge white wings flared. And then she was flying, with the cart close behind. (A secondary bolt of shimmer went for Pinkie's nearly-rent saddlebags, fetched the contents and took them along. Most of the stench stayed behind.)
The Princess quickly became smaller in the sky. Smaller still, until everypony was having trouble seeing her.
Then she was gone.
They waited.
"I was closest?" Rainbow finally said. "Cool! That means dropping it was the right thing to do!"
And then she frowned.
"But... how?"
"Sorry?" a distracted Twilight contributed, still staring up at the vacant, dimming sky.
"Well," Rainbow reminded them, "I went as high as I could. As high as any pegasus could. And it wasn't high enough. So what's she doing?"
"I don't know... maybe she's going to just -- give them an extra push as she lets go?"
Rainbow rather eloquently shrugged. And they all waited, as night fell.
They kept waiting.
"There's the first star," Pinkie observed. "I don't know that one."
"Neither do I," Twilight softly said. "We're that far from Equestria. The sky is different. I don't know that one, or that one..."
Pinkie squinted.
"That one's moving."
The others looked.
"There are," Mr. Cake noted, "several of them moving." He swallowed. "What's going on?"
"There was just the one when I peeked!" Pinkie protested -- then looked again. "Oh! There's lots of them now!"
"And more," Rarity forced out. "And still more... Twilight, please correct me if I am wrong, but... you are our astronomer. Isn't this exactly the wrong time of year for a meteor shower?"
"Yes," Twilight instinctively responded. "It doesn't matter where on the planet you are: the meteors come at the same times every year. The next one is a moon and a half out --"
-- and then the little unicorn swallowed, very loudly, as she looked at the cracks in the rock.
"Everypony," she said in a very small voice, "back up a little. Back up a lot..."
Hooves and claws scrambled -- but the Princess' aim had been true, and so all it meant was that they got to see the results from a somewhat greater distance.
The first shell, a red streak across their vision from the heat of reentry, screamed through atmosphere, flashed before their eyes (along with a significant part of their lives), slammed into stone. Another quickly followed. And then another, and another, a barrage of fruit impacting the barren landscape and deepening the cracks.
Eventually, when they heard the sound of incoming wings, they risked trotting closer.
The Princess touched down between several perfectly-split durians (where the heat had perfectly intensified the stench), and everypony looked down at something very much like yellow dough.
"Scoop it out quickly, please," she said. "The interior is protected while they're intact, but they'll cook from the residual heat if we leave them out here for too long. We'll store the excess in the palace freezers. And if you still have the energy, my bakers, I would appreciate it if you'd make your first try tonight. I'll let you know how it came out." She smiled, and it failed to fully register on the stunned faces. "It has been such a long time..."
Luna made a show of sniffing the air as Celestia rather unexpectedly trotted into the Lunar Kitchen.
"Tomato juice," the younger observed. "You almost reek of it, sister. Was there a skunk in the gardens?"
"Worse," Celestia sighed.
"Worse," Luna tried, and couldn't quite make the disbelief fit.
The elder didn't make her wait for it. "We're having Princess Cake. Tonight for dessert, and then at the Conference."
Luna blinked.
"Truly?"
"Yes."
Quickly, "Did anypony die?"
"No. But I had to issue multiple pardons. So what are you doing in here? I was looking for you, but I didn't expect to find you in the kitchens."
"Oddly," Luna sighed, "it concerns the Conference. We have been requested to serve a rather special dish to the carnivore contingent. Something I had, quite frankly, never heard of before. So with Sizzler not yet on shift, I ventured into his meat locker and examined the stock. Sadly, I found none of what we now require."
"A special dish," Celestia tried.
Luna nodded. "Something they apparently have not consumed in centuries. A direct request to us, as the hosts." A long pause. "And naturally, it would be a diplomatic insult to deny them."
Celestia sighed. "So we'd better take care of it. What's required?"
"To begin, we need," Luna dryly said, "to find a monster."
Celestia waited for the punchline and, after several seconds of watching Luna quietly circling the ice cream churn at the speed of stress, realized there either wouldn't be one or that had been it. "Go on."
"A non-sapient one," the younger continued. "Which generally eats ponies and anything else it comes across, so we may remove it without guilt. We then extract several of the organs, paying special attention to the stomach so as to keep it intact. There is spicing. Marinades. And then all organs which are not the stomach are placed inside the stomach, which is where they are cooked." A long pause. "There is also oatmeal."
"...you're kidding." Wishing for it.
"I do not make jokes," Luna solemnly said, "about oatmeal. Which is why Princess Cake will be a truly special comfort tonight. The full ingredient list is on the table behind you."
Celestia's field snatched it up, held the words before eyes which couldn't manage to hang onto the disbelief.
"Oh."
Luna nodded.
"Well, we'll have to get the -- ingredients... and crack open the armored shell ourselves," the elder sighed. "But we'll trust Sizzler to handle the cooking."
"Naturally," Luna agreed. "And since we cannot eat the final results, might I suggest that as soon as our guests have departed, we add the dish's name to our nation's vocabulary as its newest curse?"
Celestia knew it was a joke, if an exceptionally dry one: to do that would be seen as another insult.
And yet, just for a moment, she tried it on for size.
"Haggis..."
It seemed to fit.
