Author's Note
A short, stupid idea I had. Like all my other ideas, but shorter. And stupider.
Is this the same Dillon who likes Pinkie from that other story about the local human named Dillon who likes Pinkie? Or is this a different local human named Dillon who likes Pinkie?
Yes.
I'm the man in the box
Pinkie Pie, notable creator of astounding treats, aimer of unexpected cannons and all-purpose imagineer entered the home of Dillon, local human and local human.
“Dillon? You said I should come and enter your home?” She asked as she entered, looking around for signs of him. Ahead, around a doorway, stepped Dillon.
“Wait. Three steps backwards, one step to the left,” he said, pointing to the spot where he needed her.
Pinkie obliged. Dillon nodded.
“There’s a surprise at the end of this but you’ve got to stand there to get the full effect. I thought this out,” he said, tapping his temple. This made perfect sense to Pinkie. The full effect of a good surprise hinged on these little details.
“Okie-dokie!”
Dillon nodded again. All going to plan so far.
“Right, excellent, now. I have uninteresting news - not bad news, just dull - and very good news. Which one do you want first?” He asked.
“Ooh! The good news second, the good news second!”
As was custom. Sometimes. Except the times when it wasn’t.
“The uninteresting and dull news is that I ordered some cutlery and that it arrived,” Dillon said.
Pinkie’s face fell, then rose as she tried to grasp at least a thin thread of something joyful in this information. Joy was lacking, however, as cutlery inherently drains joy from the world by its mere existence, and her face fell again, settling into something of a frown.
“That is uninteresting and dull,” she said, plainly disappointed.
Dillon, however, didn’t look disappointed at all. If anything he looked the opposite. This was all part of his surprise-deployment plan, this little lull. He’d factored this in.
“It is, isn’t it? But! Then the very good news! And the surprise! My pack of six forks arrived in THIS!”
And he produced from around the corner and previously out of sight the most ludicrously oversized cardboard box as could be conceived. Even empty he had difficulty maneuvering it, such was its size.
With a grunt he thwacked it down into the empty space between the pony and himself, almost immediately hiding her from view, at least from where he was standing. Pinkie’s face lit up like the Blackpool Illuminations. Dillion didn’t have to see this to know this was the case.
“Dillion! It’s so big!” She squealed, body lowered, legs splayed and eyes wide.
Dillon beamed with pride, as well he should on hearing such fine words.
“I know! I was surprised when I looked down, too! The sheer size took my breath away!” He said, hands on his hips, assuming a full powerstance.
Looked down at his front step on which the box had been set when it had been delivered, he meant, obviously. Why else would he have looked down and what else might he have been looking at?
Pinkie, eyes like saucers, circled the box, awed.
“Where do we start on something so hugely enormous, so enormously huge?” She asked.
“Oh I wouldn’t even know Pinkie. It’s the biggest I’ve ever come across. Didn’t think I could handle it all on my own, that’s why I had to find you!” Dillon said, and on hearing this Pinkie paused in her circling, looking up at him.
“Me?”
“Well, who else do I know who would know what to do with a massive box?” He asked.
“I do have the most massive box experience in Ponyville,” Pinkie conceded, tapping her chin.
“You do, you do. When I think of Pinkie Pie ‘massive box’ is the first thing that springs to my mind,” Dillion said, grinning. Then the grin faltered as a doubt crossed his mind. Less a doubt, actually, more a nagging worrying. A concern.
“Do you ever get the feeling that words are being put in your mouth by some outside force beyond your control or scope of comprehension?” He asked.
“All the time,” Pinkie said breezily.
“Not just me then. That’s oddly reassuring. Anyway! Enough flapping about, let’s get down to business. What do we do with this box first?” Dillion asked her, hands on his legs as he squatted down a bit the better to get onto Pinkie’s level.
“Hide in it!” Pinkie said without so much as a hint of hesitation.
“Right then!”
And so that’s what they did first, Dillon flipping it over and both of them getting in underneath it.
The box, despite its prodigious size, could not conceivably contain (comfortably) both a pony and a not-tiny human, and yet it did, somehow, with room to spare. Probably not worth digging into the hows and whys. The two of them huddled in the cool darkness of the box and giggled at how covert they were, Pinkie stuffing a hoof into her muzzle to muffle herself while Dillon bit on a knuckle. Wouldn’t do to give their position away with giggling, after all.
Anyone from the outside looking in would have seen just a perfectly ordinary, unsuspicious box - having no idea of the sneaky, hiding cargo it contained! Only being invisible would make them less conspicuous! This idea tickled them greatly.
But this was just the start of their adventures. Hiding was the mere tip of the iceberg!
By turns and through the sheer, unbridled power of imagination the box became all manner of things. A mighty ocean-going galleon the pair of them sailed to parts known, the formidable and ancient treasure chest they found at the end of that particular voyage, a cave of non-specific wonders and more besides.
For a brief time the box became a castle of sorts, and Pinkie the regal owner. Dillion then played the part of the muckraking peasant come to beg for some sort of boon or favour and bowed and scraped appropriately at the base of the towering walls.
Initially fun, Pinkie quickly found the sight of all the bowing and all the scraping to be a little off-putting - she did not like to see Dillon prostrated so. So they swapped around, but Dillion didn’t enjoy the sight in reverse either so they settled on both being peasants and bowing and scraping alongside one another to an empty box, sharing knowing looks.
This they enjoyed considerably. There was a sense of solidarity.
How much time passed in this manner neither of them could say, but they could certainly say it was time well spent. Still, an important part of a good time is that it does not last forever, and slowly things began to wind their natural course - that is to say, they wound down.
Dillon stood, stretching.
“Well that was fun but-”
He had been going to suggest maybe some food, but Pinkie did not allow it. An idea had occurred to her. Something she couldn’t in good conscience keep to herself.
“Wait!” She shrieked, halting him in his tracks. “I know! I know what we can do!”
“What?”
Pinkie glanced about, as though concerned about eavesdroppers, and tottered up onto her hindlegs to reach and grab Dillon’s collar and haul him in closer to her, the better to whisper covertly right into his ear.
“Have you ever wanted to be,” she said, voice lowering further, still looking about as she spoke: “...an explorer?”
“It might have crossed my mind,” he said.
“What about,” she pulled him in closer still, until her face was actively pressed against the side of his head. “...a space explorer?”
She released her grip on his shirt and the two broke apart, though their eye-contact remained constant. An understanding built between them silently, inexorably. Pinkie grinned and nodded slowly and, in turn, Dillon also nodded, and he too started to grin.
“Pinkie, I am picking up what you’re putting down,” he said.
Or pinking up what she was putting down, whichever.
-
Twilight was outside, reading. How unlike her.
She had retired to the shade of a nice, quiet tree to escape the grumblings of Spike, who had overeaten the night before and thus overslept the morning after (that is to say, this morning) and thus was finding his cleaning and tidying duties to be a lot heavier than they actually were.
He was not shy in making sure everyone in earshot was aware of this. Twilight’s concentration could only fray so much and after having to re-read the same paragraph for the third or so time she’d decided action had to be taken.
And, well, it was a nice day, so why not read outside?
So far this had been working out very well for Twilight indeed and so engrossed was she in her reading and her accompanying note-taking that she didn’t notice that, at some point and quite without warning, she had stopped being on her own.
By sheer random happenstance a butterfly made a nuisance of itself and caused her to spoil her notes slightly and it was while correcting this that Twilight finally noticed she had company, and when she noticed she jumped.
Where there had previously not been a box sharing the space beneath the tree there was now a box, and a box containing both a pink pony and a whatever-coloured human, sitting one behind the other, Pinkie in front, Dillon in the rear. Both were wearing shining brass-and-glass diving helmets of some description.
Twilight had no idea what to make of any of this.
“Hello? Pinkie? Dillon?” She asked, making her place in her book and carefully closing it. A wise habit, in her experience. Pinkie and Dillon didn’t seem to hear Twilight (having a whacking great lump of brass wrapped around your head can do that).
“Excellent landing, cadet,” Pinkie said to which Dillion responded with a crisp salute, nearly upsetting his helmet and forcing him to have to resettle it on his head.
“Is that a cardboard box?” Twilight asked. Again she was ignored.
“I’m preparing to disembark, space commander, are you receiving me?” Dillion asked, clambering out, holding in one hand a tin can with some string inserted into it, into which he was speaking. Pinkie held the can on the other end.
“Loud and clear, ensign,” said Pinkie. What little of her face could be seen through the tiny, circular windows of the helmet looked to be a very serious face indeed, as befitted a space commander.
Twilight continued to have no idea what to make of any of this.
“Is this...what is this?” She asked, leaning backwards a bit as Dillon loomed over her and bent down to - to all appearances - inspect her.
“I’ve discovered an alien, space commander,” he said.
“Native life! Document its habits, able spaceman Dillon!”
Dillon bent down for a closer look and Twilight leaned back some more, utterly at a loss.
“It appears to be reading some sort of book-like object. Possibly a book. I am investigating,” Dillon said, producing from somewhere about his person a whisk wound about with fairy lights. What these lights were plugged into was unclear, but they were twinkling all the same.
This whisk was waved in Twilight’s general area and then held up for Dillon’s inspection.
“These readings are off the charts,” he said.
“Bigger...charts...next...time…” Pinkie said, tongue just seen to be poking out the corner of her mouth as she made a note on her space-clipboard - much like a normal clipboard, only wrapped in tinfoil, the better to survive in the cold vacuum of space.
“Where did you get those helmets?” Twilight asked, reaching up to poke Dillon’s helmet, just to see if it too was just something else wrapped in some sort of foil - she would not put this past Pinkie. Now it was Dillon’s turn to lean away.
“The native life is getting agitated, space commander,” he said.
“Get out of there, cadet! Ensign! Cadensign!”
Tossing the whisk into the air Dillon turned around and launched himself back towards the box, falling into it head-first, legs sticking out the top and kicking. Twilight caught the whisk, more out of reflex than any actual desire to catch it.
“Wait until space command hears about this!” Pinkie said, jabbing her hooves at the inside of the box, almost as if she knew what she was doing.
“We’ll get medals!” Came Dillon’s voice, an arm thrust up triumphantly from beneath the lip of the box.
“So many medals!” Pinkie cried with joy, jabbing at the interior of the box one final, emphatic time.
And off and away into the air the box shot, quite without warning, the force of its departure creating a great gust of air and accompanying cloud of dust that left Twilight squinting, blinking and spluttering. By the time she’d stopped doing all of that she was back on her own again, and of Pinkie and Dillon there was no sign.
Twilight looked at where the box had been, at the whisk she was now holding, and then to the empty skies into which they’d departed. A bird chirped and somewhere a bell was ringing, but this explained nothing.
“...what?!”