The knock at the door startled Fluttershy up from her oatmeal. She'd been awake since dawn, of course, seeing her nocturnal friends to bed and her diurnal ones off to start their days, but this early in the morning, she didn't often get actual visitors.
It had to be bad news, then.
Sighing, she stood, her mind spinning into worst-case scenarios. It wasn't that she regretted becoming one of the great heroines of Equestria. It was just that it had forced her imagination to grow wilder, more grandiose, and scarier in its efforts to come up with possible threats to the realm that were worse than the things she'd already faced alongside her friends.
Plodding across the front room, she took a breath. The return of Tirek? All four princesses vanishing at once? A giant space squid threatening to spray the sun with ink? Pony eating worms boiling up from beneath the ground? At the door, she wrapped the knob in her teeth and pulled it open.
"Hi, Fluttershy!" Pinkie bounced past her. "Told you she'd be up, Cheesy!"
"Well, all right!" a stallion's voice said, and Cheese Sandwich pranced in behind Pinkie, a long white box balanced across his back. "Good thing we brought donuts!"
"Ummm..." Fluttershy watched the two party ponies throw a rainbow patterned tablecloth into the air over her dining room table, then they snatched her bowl of oatmeal, the box of brown sugar, the milk jug, the toast rack, the napkin holder, and everything else off while the tablecloth drifted downward. It settled into place, and they quickly put all the items back exactly where they belonged with the donut box right in the center. "Thank you?" she finally decided to say, though she couldn't keep a question mark from curling up at the end.
"You're welcome!" they both said at once. They burst into giggles, slid into a couple of chairs, and began pulling cups and plates and saucers and gravy boats and serving platters and who-knew-what-all from their manes and tails to set places for about ten ponies at the table.
Swallowing, Fluttershy peered out the front door. "Are we expecting more guests?"
"No, no," Pinkie said, and Fluttershy looked back to see her positioning an already lit candelabra next to the donut box. "It's just that we're here to ask you a really, really big favor, so Cheesy thought we should be all nice and butter you up first."
"You know me!" Cheese Sandwich straightened the little cow-shaped creamer. "I'm all about the dairy products!"
Fluttershy did her best not to grimace. As happy as she was to tuck away her mental list of possible general disasters, she really had no choice now but to unpack her mental list of possible Pinkie-Pie-related disasters. And that unfortunately was a much longer list. "Thank you," she said again, hoping that for once in her life, good manners would actually prove helpful. "But there's really no need."
"Knead?" Pinkie took the cover off the plate in front of her and began mooshing the lump of dough on it with her front hooves. "She's got you there, Cheesy. 'Cause you can't make a sandwich without baking bread!"
He nodded. "Or an omelet without breaking eggs." Taking the cover off his own plate revealed four large eggs; he leaned back in his chair, put a hoof to his snout, waggled his eyebrows at Fluttershy, and whispered loudly, "Don't tell anypony, but it's a cheese omelet!"
It took some effort for Fluttershy to keep her hooves from dragging, but she chose to take it as a good sign when she reached her place at the table without any cannons blasting confetti into her face or tangling streamers in her mane. Maybe—just maybe—if she got right to the point, It would keep things from spiraling too far out of control.
The impossibility of the thought almost made her droop, but instead she managed to stretch a smile over her snout. "So. How can I help you this morning?"
Pinkie flipped the white box open. "You can have a donut." She bent her muzzle in Cheese Sandwich's direction and whispered loudly, "Fluttershy likes chocolate old-fashioneds so she can nibble the little fringy bits off first."
"Ah." Cheese Sandwich reached a hoof into the box without even looking, came up with a chocolate-frosted, old-fashioned donut, and flicked it across the table to land perfectly on the little plate beside Fluttershy's half-finished bowl of oatmeal. "Obviously a mare of charm and distinction."
"Shhhh!" Pinkie hissed, bending closer to him. "We'll never get her to help if you tell her she's got dis-stink-tion!" She turned a big, obviously phony grin at Fluttershy. "He means you've got dis-nice smelling-tion!"
Cheese Sandwich blinked. "Dis-perfume-tion, maybe?"
"I dunno." Sniffing, Pinkie wrinkled her nose. "She kinda smells like cold, sour oatmeal, really." Her phony grin burst into place again. "Not in a bad way, though!"
A part of her wanted to inform her two guests that her oatmeal had been perfectly warm before they'd arrived, but a larger part of her felt certain that a comment of that sort would only result in her table being set on fire in an effort to reheat her breakfast. Bending down without breaking eye contact with Pinkie, Fluttershy took a nibble of the donut's nearest fringy bit and asked, "So! Now that I've had my donut, what is it you need my help with?"
Both Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich went completely still, something Fluttershy had never seen either pony do before. "Well," Cheese Sandwich said, "y'see, back before the dawn of recorded history—"
Pinkie snatched a powdered-sugar coated donut and mooshed it between Cheese Sandwich's lips, translucent yellow goo oozing from the corners of his mouth and scenting the air with lemon. "Lemme just fast-forward a couple quajillion years to last night," Pinkie said. "'Cause that's when Cheesy stopped by Sugar Cube Corner on his way back from a big party in Hoofington. And we got to talking, him and me and Boneless and Boneless 2 and Gummy and the fireflies from my sitting room lantern and the moths who were swooping around outside my sitting room lantern and the lizards who were—"
Swallowing his mouthful, Cheese Sandwich scooped up a blue-frosted donut with green and red sprinkles and shoved it in among Pinkie's teeth. "We began discussing ancient philosophy," he said while Pinkie frantically chewed, "like you do when you've each eaten a couple dozen éclairs and you can't tell anymore where your brain ends and the custard begins." Licking his lips, he reached into the box and pulled out an éclair. "Custard's a dairy product, too, y'know." He chomped the end off the donut, the chocolate glaze crinkling.
"I do know!" Pinkie picked up the little ceramic cow, poured about half the cream down her throat, and smacked her lips. "Along about midnight, we got to debating one of the foundational elements of epistemological thought, and just after sunrise, it occurred to me that you would be the perfect pony to settle the question once and for, well, not all, I suppose." She gave a real grin this time, green and red and blue showing here and there. "But for most at least."
"Exactly!" Cheese Sandwich's grin was just as real, but it had yellow and off-white streaks criss-crossing it. "So! Whaddaya say?"
Very carefully not saying any of the things she really wanted to say, Fluttershy looked from one to the other. "Remind me again what we're talking about exactly?"
Cheese Sandwich waved his hooves in the air. "The fundamental question at the basis of all comedy!"
And both he and Pinkie recited together: "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"Ummm..." Fluttershy couldn't stop her brow from wrinkling. "Isn't the answer 'to get to the other side'?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" With a back flip, Pinkie left her chair and landed solidly on the floor. "If you want to limit your thinking to the Boolean and pedantic! But we left such simplistic reasoning behind six hours ago!"
A soft bell started clanging, and Cheese Sandwich raised a front leg to squint at a miniature grandfather clock strapped to his pastern. "Seven hours ago," he said.
"Seven hours ago!" Pinkie started pacing up and down beside the table. "In fact, the only real conclusion we've reached is that theoretical discussion just plain breaks down once the jelly donuts run out."
"What?" Cheese Sandwich sprawled onto the table, forks and cups and long-stemmed drinking glasses scattering before him. "The jelly donuts!" He grabbed the white box, spun it upside down, and shook it empty, donuts of every shape, size, and color bouncing and flopping across the rainbow tablecloth. Well, every shape, size, and color, Fluttershy couldn't help noticing, except— "We're out of jelly donuts!" Cheese Sandwich wailed.
"Cheesy!" Leaping over, Pinkie clapped her forehooves to the sides of Cheese Sandwich's face, his cheeks squishing till his lips bulged forward like a fish's. "We talked about this, remember? That's the reason we came to see Fluttershy!"
His lips flexed. "She has jelly donuts?" he asked, his voice muffled.
"She has chickens." Pinkie's head swiveled slowly till she was facing Fluttershy, her grin like something carved by a first-time jack-o-lantern carver. "And you can talk to them, can't you?"
"Oh, yeah!" Cheese Sandwich slipped from between Pinkie's hooves and turned an equally jagged grin in Fluttershy's direction.
All things considered, it seemed quite tame for a Pinkie-Pie-related disaster. So Fluttershy assumed she didn't understand the matter correctly. "You want me to ask Elizabeak...why she crosses roads?"
"Please!" With a cotton candy colored whoosh, Pinkie appeared on her knees beside Fluttershy's chair. "It's for science!"
"No!" An orange whoosh brought Cheese Sandwich to Fluttershy's other side. "It's for the spirit of philosophical inquiry!"
Pinkie made a rude noise with her lips. "Not as catchy..."
"Ha!" Cheese Sandwich sprang onto his hind legs and pointed a forehoof at Pinkie. "You nuts-n-bolts types are all the same!" His hoof flicked, and a floppy, button-eyed puppet of Pinkie Pie appeared over it. "'I'm Pinkie Pie!'" Cheese Sandwich said in a high-pitched voice. "'If the angles of my pratfalls aren't calculated out to the nearest arcsecond, I don't consider them worth taking! Because I'm looking to provide the ultimate comedic experience!'"
"That's a lie!" Bounding onto her hind legs as well, Pinkie aimed a shaking hoof at him. "Those buttons are brown, and my eyes are blue! Besides, you're the one who keeps yammering on about the one proper method of comedy!"
"That's right!" He nodded his head so sharply, Fluttershy thought she heard his chin swish through the air. "The tried and true!"
"Fiddle faddle!" When Pinkie flicked her hoof this time, peanuts and caramel popcorn spattered into Fluttershy's lap. "'Trying' means 'experimenting!' Or are you actually informing the world that you're against improvisation?"
"Even improv has rules!"
"I agree!"
"No, I agree!"
Fluttershy leaped into a hover above the table, her mind intent on diving for the window.
But Pinkie suddenly sprouted a black-and-white striped cap between her ears and blew a steamship-loud blast on a whistle that appeared on a lanyard around her neck. "Stop!" she shouted.
Cheese Sandwich froze, his face contorted and his mouth partway open. Fluttershy looked from Pinkie's wavering eyes to the beckoning escape route and back again. Sighing, she drifting down into her chair.
"See?" Pinkie took off her hat and pressed it to her chest. "That's why we need your help, Fluttershy. 'Cause Cheesy and me, we always agree and never got shouty or cross. But when we discuss the basics, we fuss and feud and get thrown for a loss."
Another whistle blew, and Fluttershy started around to see Cheese Sandwich, now also wearing a black-and-white striped hat, throw a yellow piece of cloth into the air. "Five yard penalty!" he announced, his voice somehow distorted and echoing. "Rhyming without a poetic license!"
Clearing her throat, Pinkie arched an eyebrow and held up a card with her picture on it and some writing too small for Fluttershy to make out. Cheese Sandwich leaned over, squinted at it, and pursed his lips. "How do I know this isn't a forgery?" he asked.
Pinkie pulled another card from her mane. "My forger's license," she said. "You'll notice it's expired?"
"Hmmm..." Cheese Sandwich rubbed his chin, then broke into a giant grin. "All right! Case dismissed! Donuts for everypony!"
The two flung themselves onto the table and started gobbling the donuts lying everywhere. Fluttershy drew her hind legs up against her chest and wished she'd slept in that morning. Not that it would've helped, she was sure. All this would just be taking place upstairs in her bedroom instead of down here.
It wasn't that she regretted getting to know Pinkie Pie. It was just that Pinkie had a uniquely draining quality to her—or at least Fluttershy had thought it was unique till she'd met Cheese Sandwich. And whenever the two of them got together anywhere in Fluttershy's vicinity? She found herself picturing one little rock nudging another little rock and another and another and another till the whole mountainside began tumbling and crashing directly toward the lovely meadow where Fluttershy saw herself admiring some edelweiss blossoms.
Shaking the image away, Fluttershy tried once more. "So," she said as if two ponies weren't squirming around on her table and slamming their faces into the assortment of donuts littering it. "You need me to talk to my chickens?"
"Yes!" Pinkie whirled, and Fluttershy felt something plop onto her head; a glance upward showed that it was the black-and-white hat. "You're the referee now! It's up to you to make the ruling that decides the fate of all comedy everywhere forever!"
"What?" The back of Fluttershy's neck went hot, then cold, then hot again. "But I don't know anything about comedy!"
"Nonetheless." Cheese Sandwich rolled off the table onto all fours. "We at least need a rule of thumb. Or, I mean, well, you know—" He held up a hoof and waggled it. "A rule of lack-of-thumb."
Silence settled over the room like a nervous sparrow, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. "Ummm," Fluttershy said, sending an apologetic and slightly envious thought toward the tailfeathers of the imaginary fleeing sparrow. "I guess we'll go out into the yard, then."
"Yes!" It was Cheese Sandwich saying it this time; he reached into his shirt, pulled out a giant rubber cockscomb, and snapped it on over his mane. "Will we need costumes?"
"No!" All Fluttershy's protective urges bristled inside her. "You'll just scare the chickens!"
Pinkie's grin spread over her face like spilled ink. "Scare them into crossing some nearby road?"
Unsure how to explain—or if she should even bother trying—Fluttershy took a not-so-cleansing breath. "Chickens aren't like ponies. They prefer things to be calm and regular. Peculiar things make them skittish, and then they run away and hide."
"Huh." Pinkie poked an elbow into Fluttershy's ribs. "That does sound like a pony I know, actually."
Fluttershy blinked at her, and Pinkie reached across to tap Cheese Sandwich on the shoulder. "Hear that?" she asked. "That was way ruder than when you called her stinky, don't you think?"
"Let's find out." Cheese Sandwich pulled a small notebook from his shirt, flipped it open, and gave Fluttershy another of those phony grins. "Ma'am, I'm taking a survey. Do you feel more insulted now, or did you feel more insulted then?"
The oatmeal Fluttershy had managed to eat earlier was turning to stone inside her. Her face heating up, she slid out of her chair and started for the back door. "Hmmm," she heard Cheese Sandwich say behind her. "I'll just put down 'declined to state.'"
"I'm sorry, Fluttershy." Pinkie peered around the edge of Fluttershy's peripheral vision, her blackberry bramble mane a little droopy. "I know I can get a little silly sometimes—especially after my fifth box of éclairs and my second day without sleep. But you know I love having you as a friend, right? Right?"
"I guess," Fluttershy said. And that was as far as she meant to go, but the words she was thinking came trickling out. "I just don't know why."
"Why?" Pinkie's right eye blinked, then her left one, then both of them together. "Why the chicken crossed the road?"
With a swallow, Fluttershy turned to face her. "Why we're friends," she could barely whisper. The heat in her face increasing, she looked away and pushed out into the yard.
The spring morning was just an hour old at this point, the clouds drifting through the blue above still as fluffy and clean as freshly laundered pillowcases. Which just made Fluttershy think of her bed and how much she'd like to be in it—or under it, maybe...
But instead, she kept going to the gate in the fence around the chicken coop.
"Awkward." Cheese Sandwich sang the word softly, and Fluttershy tensed up, not sure she could handle a musical number right now. But Cheese Sandwich just went on in his regular speaking voice, "Do we need some laughter here to cut the tension? 'Cause I can head into town to pick some up if the stores are open."
"Cheesy..." Pinkie's spoke with a hardness Fluttershy rarely heard from her.
A part of Fluttershy wanted to feel bad about that, but the part of her that didn't want to was almost exactly the same size. So instead of saying anything, she undid the twist of wire that held the chicken yard gate closed and pushed inside. "Everypoultry? We have visitors."
Elizabeak and the other hens blinked up at them, but Fluttershy could tell they weren't upset. "I already fed them," she said, scooting around behind Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich to close and fasten the gate. "So they should be in a nice, relaxed state of mind to answer your question."
"No." Pinkie's chin jutted out. "We've already taken up too much of your time."
"What?" Cheese Sandwich's curly mane blew up around his head like a puffer fish. "But— Arguing for seven hours! Making all those donuts! Sneaking out so Boneless and Boneless 2 wouldn't feel bad we weren't asking them! And...and...and—!" He waved his forehooves at the chickens, most of whom had gone back to scratching and pecking at the ground. "They're right there! Right there!"
Pinkie snorted. "I forgot. These chickens have lived their whole lives behind a fence. They wouldn't know what to do with a road if it knocked on their door with a box of donuts."
The part of Fluttershy that wanted to apologize was growing larger and larger, but a significant minority loudly insisted that she had nothing to apologize for. So she didn't.
"Hmmm." Cheese Sandwich was rubbing his chin, a bright yellow hardhat now squishing his mane back down. "We could put in a petition to the zoning commission and get this entire area designated as a public thoroughfare." He glanced at his pastern, a calendar there now rather than a grandfather clock. "That should only take eight or nine months."
The silence that fell over them then wasn't the pleasant, restful kind that Fluttershy loved. It was the kind that dug its awful little teeth into her neck. A silence only did that, she'd learned over the years, when she was being mean. So maybe she didn't need to apologize, but she didn't need to be a grouch, either.
Taking a breath, she imagined it swirling up all the unhappiness inside her, then she blew the whole bunch of it out with a whoosh. "Maybe...we could make a little pretend road?" She pointed from one side of the hen yard to the other. "And see how they react?"
Everything about Pinkie seemed to slowly expand. "Perfect!" She shook herself into a pink blur, ten or twelve little toy trucks and tractors plopping from her into the dirt, and when she stopped shaking, she was wearing a hardhat of her own and unrolling some blueprints over the ground in front of her. "We can follow the gradient here to get the proper drainage, and—"
"Enough!" a strange voice, deep but still somehow squeaky, announced.
Snapping her head around, Fluttershy saw something swirling in the air at the far corner of the yard: a little black whirlpool balanced on end in the air, tiny lightning bolts flashing from the center. As she watched, the whirlpool spiraled larger, opening to show dark storm clouds behind it.
Beside Fluttershy, Cheese Sandwich pulled a book from his shirt, the words The Friendly Planet Guide to Ponyville written across the cover. "That's just the Ponyville Vortex, right? The famous local atmospheric phenomenon?"
Before Fluttershy could do more than shake her head, the whirlpool had grown to about pony size. A shadow loomed on the other side, and out of the roiling clouds stepped—
"A duck?" she heard Pinkie ask behind her.
"Not just any duck!" the duck said, and Fluttershy had to agree with that. It was nearly twice as large as any duck she'd ever seen before, and its black feathers bristled with the pale light of certain fungi she'd seen swaying out in the Everfree Forest even when there wasn't any wind. The glowing red eyes weren't usual, either, to say nothing of the dozen or so scaly green tentacles flailing away where its beak should've been. "I am Duck'thulhu, mortals, and I am your doom!"
"Huh." Cheese Sandwich was still squinting at the guidebook. "No, I'm not finding anything about that. Is it part of the Ponyville Penguin Museum?"
Pinkie popped up beside him, her attention also on the book. "Remind me to take you there before you leave," she said. "It's both a nice place and an ice place at the same time."
"Ummm, hello?" The duck waved its wings. "Doom over here."
"A room?" Pinkie started riffling through to the back of the book. "We'll need the hotel section, then."
"That's at the front." Cheese Sandwich looked over at the duck. "How much are you planning to spend per night?"
"Spend? Spend?" The duck's little tentacles, Fluttershy noted, twitched and writhed in the same rhythm as the words it was saying. "Duck'thulhu doesn't spend! Duck'thulhu earns! Specifically, she's earned her reputation as the doom of mortals!"
"Oooo!" Looking away from the book, Pinkie gave the duck a nod. "Nice wordplay!"
"Thank you." Duck'thulhu gave a little bow, and Fluttershy thought maybe she blushed—ducks didn't normally blush, of course, but since this was such an unusual duck, Fluttershy was willing to consider the idea. "Still, there are some fowl things ponies are not meant to know."
Pinkie clapped her hooves. "You did it again! 'Fowl' and 'foul'! This is so great!"
Fluttershy had never in her life imagined that she would hear a duck clearing her throat. "Yes," Duck'thulhu said. "I've been listening to you two since last night, and it's apparently rubbing off on me." She sighed, and Fluttershy almost gave a little cheer: she was adding so many items to her list of unusual bird behaviors this morning!
"As I was saying, however," Duck'thulhu went on, "I am tasked with the keeping of all avian mysteries, and this whole 'chicken crossing the road' thing is one of them. While you were arguing about it, I could spare your wretched lives. But now that you've discovered a way to plumb the depths of these forbidden matters, it's my duty to—"
"Have some breakfast!" Fluttershy blurted out, finally realizing what it was about the duck that looked so odd—other than the tentacles and the glowing eyes and everything. "The most important meal of the day, and you haven't had any yet this morning, have you?"
"Breakfast?" Duck'thulhu blinked. "I feast upon the souls of those unfortunate enough to attract my attention after I've flayed them for a century in my dungeon of torment!"
Sitting back, Fluttershy folded her forelegs across her chest. "And when did you last do that?"
A gurgling noise rose from Duck'thulhu's midsection. "It...has been a while," the duck admitted. "Five, six hundred millennia, maybe?"
"My goodness!" Fluttershy sprang onto her hooves again and spun toward the two party ponies, busily making paper hats out of the pages of the guidebook. "Pinkie? We need a stove top right now!"
"Huh?" Pinkie blinked, at least four paper hats sticking out from various parts of her mane. "And where am I supposed to get a stove top way out here?"
Fluttershy just raised an eyebrow.
Pinkie's mouth went sideways; slinking over to the chicken coop, she dragged a large camp stove out from underneath. "But it's only for cooking emergencies!" she said, shooting a purse-lipped glare over her shoulder.
Leaning toward her, Cheese Sandwich put a hoof to his snout and said in a loud whisper, "I'm thinking this might qualify."
Fluttershy flared her wings. "I should say so! Imagine! Not eating a proper breakfast for so many hundreds of thousands of years!" She leaped into the air. "Now, Pinkie and Cheese, if you could please get the stove fired up, I'll fetch the basic ingredient." Clearing the top of the fence, she angled her wings and landed next to the marigold bed. She hadn't had many duck visitors lately, so she was able to pluck quite a nice crop from the plants before flapping her way back into the chicken yard.
During her absence, Cheese Sandwich had produced a small magnifying glass and was focusing the sunlight through it onto a page from the guidebook while Duck'thulhu watched with evident interest. "And to think," Duck'thulhu was saying in that quacky-but-not-at-all-quacky voice, "that the hated sun, symbol of all that's good and pure, can also be harnessed as a destructive force."
Pumping away at the gas can on the stove, Pinkie blew air through her lips. "That's nothing! You should see Princess Celestia go after a seven layer cake!"
That was when the guidebook page started smoking, and Fluttershy landed with her precious cargo cupped between her forehooves just as Cheese Sandwich and Pinkie were connecting the fire and the gas, a blue flame springing merrily to life around the stove's burner.
Duck'thulhu's head came up, and even though she didn't seem to have a nose, Fluttershy was sure she heard sniffing. "Do I detect the succulent aroma of—?"
"You do!" Holding out her hooves, Fluttershy beamed at the duck. "Snails!"
"Oh, my!" Duck'thulhu's fiery eyes went very wide. "I...I've not devoured the living flesh of a mollusk in...in— I can't even recall how long!" She took a step forward.
"Now, now." Fluttershy hopped into the air to land closer to the stove. "You let us get them all fixed up for you." She looked at the two party ponies. "I think a little escargot gratinés will be just the thing."
They both whipped out big poofy chef's hats, and Fluttershy shook the dozen or so snails from her hooves into theirs. She kept a bed of marigolds because they were pretty, of course, but the way snails headed straight for them and didn't bother her other plants made the flowers indispensable. And then, when her duck friends came by, she had snacks all ready for them.
Duck'thulhu's little tentacles had begun dripping a greenish liquid. "Will...will they have garlic butter?"
"But of course!" Cheese Sandwich already had a pan sizzling on the stovetop. "They'll also have mozzarella, Parmesan, and Gruyere cheeses!"
The big black duck squished when she sat down in front of the stove, and Fluttershy took the opportunity to make sure none of her chickens had wandered into the vortex, still swirling stormily at the far end of the yard. Fortunately, Elizabeak had shooed the others into the coop before hopping in and closing the door behind herself, so Fluttershy was able to get a count through the window and see that they were all there.
A lovely oily, cheesy smell began drifting over from the stove. This was followed by slightly horrible slurping noises, and Fluttershy trotted back to see Duck'thulhu somehow sucking down both snails and shells even though she didn't appear to have any openings in her face below her eyes. Still, Fluttershy wasn't about to look too closely at whatever those tentacles were up to...
"Such flavor!" Duck'thulhu nearly sang the words. "Such bouquet! Such viscosity!"
The grins on Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich's faces looked a little strained, but Fluttershy felt a very real grin on her own snout. "Now, Duck'thulhu," she said. "If you ever get that peckish again, I want you to promise me you'll stop by. I won't always have such wonderful chefs visiting, but I'm sure we can whip up something nice for you."
"I...I will." Something that may have been a tear boiled to steam at the corner of Duck'thulhu's eye. "Thank you." She blew out a brimstone-scented breath, hopped back up onto her webbed feet, and brushed at her dankly luminous chest feathers. "Seriously, though, you guys. The answer to 'why did the chicken cross the road?' is 'to get to the other side,' and nothing else! So quit poking around with it, all right?" She aimed several tentacles at Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich. "Promise me?"
Cheese Sandwich looked at Pinkie, and Pinkie looked back at him. "Oh, all right," they said.
Duck'thulhu leaned forward. "Pinkie promise, I mean."
Both ponies sighed and went through the familiar ritual.
"Well, then!" Duck'thulhu flapped her wings against her sides. "I'd say my work here is done." She turned to Fluttershy. "Thank you again for the lovely time. And if you ever need anypony flayed, you know who to call." With a little wink, she spun and waddled back to the vortex. Stepping through, she vanished, the cloud whirling tighter and tighter till the whole thing made a popping sound like the cork from a bottle of sparkling apple cider.
"And that," Pinkie said into the silence that followed, "is why we're friends!" A whoosh behind her, and Fluttershy couldn't stop a giggle at being enveloped in one of Pinkie's giant hugs. "I introduce you to duck monsters, and you convince them not to cast me into eternal torment!"
"You know, Pinkie?" Shifting as much as she could, Fluttershy managed to squeeze Pinkie in return. "You're absolutely right. I'm just sorry you didn't get the answer you were looking for, though."
"No biggie." With another whoosh, Pinkie was back on the other side of the stove and helping Cheese Sandwich push it under the chicken coop again. "There's plenty of other mysteries in the comedy world. We'll just contemplate those instead."
"Yeah!" Cheese Sandwich whirled and aimed his big grin at Fluttershy. "You wouldn't happen to know any woodchucks, would you?"
Giggling, Fluttershy shook her head and opened the gate, closing and fastening it once the party ponies had stepped out and started across the grass.
"Ooo!" Pinkie gave a little hop. "I've got a good one!" She cleared her throat. "'Why a duck? Why-a no chicken?'"
Cheese Sandwich gave a shrug. "I'm a stranger here myself." And they walked through the doorway into the house.
Fluttershy felt like prancing a little. It was always so nice making a new friend! Especially one who looked like she could use a friend...
"Hey, Fluttershy!" Pinkie stuck her head back out the door. "Me and Cheesy were cleaning up, and I was wondering if you wanted the rest of your donut?"
"Yes, Pinkie." Fluttershy smiled. And it was even nicer re-making an old friend, now that she thought about it. "I'd like that very much, thank you."
