Aftercrud

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Pinkie Pie, Main 6, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Luna, Comedy
Length: 14159

The new hoof crack treatment? That was a little miracle. It takes post-procedure medical monitoring to make Pinkie seek revenge.

Missions are dangerous, and sometimes the Bearers get hurt. But this time, treating Pinkie's injuries only took about an hour. No sealant to constantly reapply and lingering deep aches from the wound: just a simple, magical regrowing of her left forehoof's keratin. Really, it's a pity the procedure isn't available to the public yet.

And because it isn't available to the public yet, there's just one little thing which the inventing company's representative wants Pinkie to do. One little thing that leads into a full swarm of not-so-little things.

It's okay. It's for science!

(Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.)

Published 2020-09-25 01:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2020-09-25 01:50:02 UTC

Cure < Disease < Medical Monitoring

Afterwards, once the situation had moved past inconvenience, galloped beyond irritation, and set up what felt like a permanent encampment in the shadowed lands of Oh Dear Sun I Just Want To Kick Somepony, Pinkie would try to recall the feeling she'd had upon first waking up in the Royal Physicians’ palace-hosted office. Because she had been hurting before the treatment had sent her into an hour's nap, and Pinkie was familiar enough with pain to know that the brain could wake up before the hurt did.

There would be a moment between waking and that first opening of the eyes, where she was just starting to become aware that she was conscious again. She continued to exist in a living world, and that led to a single glorious moment of just knowing that everything would be all right.

But then she would remember.

I'm hurt.

The moment would distort. Invert. She was no longer looking forward to her first sight of a joyous world which existed as a venue for bringing forth laughter. She was simply curled up in a private corner of personal darkness, waiting to see how long it took before the hurt realized she was once again present to experience it. Forcing herself to hold on the instant when the pain began again.

She woke up in the doctors' office and there was a moment when she was happy to simply be alive, especially as the recently-concluded mission had offered multiple opportunities for everypony to go the other way. But then she remembered, and she retreated inside herself to wait for the pain.

It never came.

Her body was no longer constantly crying out for help which couldn't arrive, sending her endless, pointless reminders of something she'd known about for days. (As if she was going to forget.) It simply reported the gentle support of a mattress under her barrel, a soft blanket across her back, and a left forehoof which didn't seem to remember that anything had ever been wrong at all.

She curled up in the warmth of that personal darkness, and basked in the most wonderful feeling there was. The instant when she knew that the pain was truly gone, and could never, ever come back. And then she opened her eyes.

"I'd ask how you're feeling," said the smiling thin white unicorn, watching her closely with twinkling eyes as gravity warped around the upright mass of his mane, "but you're already smiling."

"It's... better," Pinkie half-whispered in reverence. The left foreleg was gradually extracted from the tangle of blankets, and she angled the limb until she could stare at the hoof. "All better..."

Doctor Vanilla Bear's smile became all the warmer. He took a hoofstep forward, putting Pinkie well into the scent cloud produced by every mane enhancement product known to ponies (and a few personal homebrews). "It'll be a little miracle, once it reaches the public," he told her. "Even with the best potions, spells, and treatments we had, it could still take weeks to fully seal a hoof crack that deep." This triggered a slow head shake: she watched the results with fascination, trying to figure out how the skull could move without shifting the mane. There was every chance that the local universe was just anchored to it. "And without any treatments at all -- ten moons to a year, Ms. Pie. But with this..."

She was still examining her hoof. "The color's a little different where the split filled in." More quickly, "Not that I'm complaining! At all! It's wonderful, Doctor. I just feel --" The curly tail gently swayed. "-- so good..."

It was now possible to warm herself just by basking in his emotion. "The hue is off because keratin normally doesn't come in that quickly. It's been like that in all of the trials. It'll match in a few weeks."

'Reaches the public.' 'Trials.'

She spent a lot of time around Twilight, some of which had been spent in mutual retreat from the latest experiment. It had taught her a lot about the language of Oops, and it made the warmth begin to fade.

"This is..." She was trying to be polite about it. "...experimental?" Which was, after some major internal censoring, all that was left of the original query: Is my hoof going to explode?

"No," the physician quickly said. "It's in the last stage of pre-release. All of the tests are coming out the same way: the patient sleeps for an hour because their body is devoting all of its energy to regrowth, they wake up, and the crack is sealed. We're expecting to have it available for the general public in about four moons. It's mostly just a matter of clearing the paperwork. But the palace has a way of vaulting bureaucracy --"

He stopped talking. His head tilted up, and slightly to the right.

Pinkie waited.

"-- but it should still count as winning the race if my severed tail crosses first..." The stallion blinked, and they both watched the last remnants of the daydream dissipate. "...anyway, the Princesses want all of the Bearers to be as healthy, and to heal in the shortest time possible. So they pulled on a few reins and got you added to the final test group. It's perfectly safe, Ms. Pie. You're just getting to enjoy it a little before everypony else." His horn ignited, and a flicker of blue corona adjusted the multi-pocketed white garment which was so common to the medical profession. "Your friends are already on the way back to Ponyville: they wanted to wait for you, but the Princesses told them you would be fine and sent them home. All I want you to do now is rest for a few minutes, just to let the keratin set. And then you can head to the Grand Gymkhana to catch your train."

He turned, began to trot away. Pinkie rotated her hoof, still basking in the feeling of being whole again. (And also carefully filing away a memory for later, because in the event that they ever went up across that kind of monster again, she had to remember not to try kicking it in the armored face.)

Vanilla Bear paused. Glanced back.

"Oh," he added, and kicked in a faint blush beneath white fur. "Sorry. I almost forgot. Because you're in the last test group, there's a follow-up required. But there's no personal contact involved. The testing company was going to send somepony over to brief you. They should arrive in a few minutes. So -- wait for them?"

Probably providing the address for sending in her glowing testimonial. Or, if Spike got involved, flaming. "Okay," Pinkie smiled.

He left, closing the door behind him. She waited, wrapped in warm blankets and happiness. It was so nice just to be in the blankets during the winter, because so much of the last mission had been outdoors. (In Pinkie's opinion, this had included every last moment of the trip home: that caravan had leaked.) And when you had a hoof crack that deep, outside in the cold...

The wound was gone. She was healed. She was happy.

The door opened again. The mare who trotted in, black box hovering within her corona, took the first step towards sending Pinkie on the journey to where she would eventually feel that she existed as something which lived only to kick somepony in the face.

On the most technical level, that desire would fail.

"So here you are!" the charcoal unicorn mare declared as the box bobbed up and down within an uncertain emerald corona, and smiled as a hind hoof pushed the door closed.

The newest arrival was a rather unusual specimen. You seldom got unicorns that tall: this one would have been able to look down on Allie, and meeting Luna's gaze wouldn't have required much of a neck adjustment. Her tail was just sort of... hanging there, and bare fur seemed to ripple oddly along her sides. And she was smiling. Pinkie felt as if there was something off about that smile. The lips were more or less all right, but the teeth didn't seem to know what to do with themselves.

"Here I am!" Pinkie brightly agreed, because it was still a smile and those were important. "Are you from the testing company?"

"Absolutely!" the mare smiled. Every word was emerging from between the teeth of that smile. It was wide enough to see molars, and so it was also wide enough to make Pinkie wish she couldn't. "Now as I'm sure you've been told, you're part of the test group! And we have to keep an eye on how our patients are doing, since there not having been any side effects before this doesn't mean they can't show up later. Maybe they only appear in pink earth ponies with curly tails, yes? There's only one way to find out!"

She kept grinning. Lungs audibly slurped at the air, and the uncertain corona opened the black box. (It was the color which was uncertain. It wanted to be a rather bright emerald and most of the time, it was. It just kept... slipping.) Something floated out.

Pinkie carefully examined the object. It looked something like a hoofband, only with rather more in the way of little floating sparks and rather less in the complete circumference department: in her judgment, it would only cover the front half of her hoof -- at best. The side tines weren't even long enough to wrap a foal's leg.

There was a raised center. Something clear on the surface, which let her see fine twists of silver and platinum wire within. And those little floating sparks. As she watched, one of them fully detached from the surface, and slowly floated towards the mare's horn. Made contact, and vanished.

"This is our monitor bracelet!" the mare brightly announced. "I apply this to your hoof, you see? Right over where the crack was. And then it just... tells me how you're doing. That's what the sparks are for! Every last one gives me an update on your condition. No long train trips to reach our offices! No letters! Just -- wearing it. Isn't that wonderful?"

"Yes!" Pinkie enthused, because her time schedule was constantly close to being perilously overbooked and regular visits to doctors would displace multiple parties. "Thank you!"

The smile got wider, and Pinkie's joy began to fade. It suddenly seemed to the baker as if she had to keep a very close eye on that smile, because there was a good chance that when the ends met behind the neck, the top of the mare's head would fall off.

"So I'll just apply it..."

A vial came out of the box. This took an extra second for Pinkie to distinguish, because the contents were almost the same hue: just more black and bubbling and, once a flicker of light took the top off, gaggy.

"UGH!"

"-- the smell fades!" the mare joyously declared, making Pinkie wonder how it was possible to maintain joy while at the center of that stench. "Once it dries!" Light was already smearing thick dark trails onto the side tines. "Just give it a minute..."

Pinkie tried, because she wasn't all that good at holding her breath and giving it more than a minute would mean applying the bracelet onto a hoof which was guaranteed to remain still. As it was, most of her body kept trying to twitch backwards. There was something almost familiar about that stench -- but her memory worked best for what she'd seen and heard. In this case, she probably had a similar olfactory filing, and she didn't want to bring it back because it would fall in love with the current moment and their kids would be the stinkiest things ever.

The sticky substance was spread across her hoof. Pinkie's entire being tried to recoil from her own body and got as far as the edge of the bed.

"And there we go!" the mare announced. "All set! It'll send reports until we're sure you'll be okay!"

"Thank you," Pinkie just barely managed, because politeness was important and besides, swallowing back enough nausea meant the words were all which could come out.

"So all you have to do," the mare merrily continued, "is follow the RULES."

Most of Pinkie's mind waited. A small, rather sensible portion noticed the presence of multiple audible capitals and bunkered down for the long haul.

"Rules are important," she agreed, because there was still smell coming out of that vial and finding out what the rules were would make it go away. (As promised, the dark crust which held the bracelet in place had stopped reeking. Mostly.) "What are the rules?"

The smile traveled a little more. Pinkie got ready to lunge for any fast-falling ear.

"You can't cover the hoof in a way which blocks the bracelet," the mare happily stated. "Or the sparks can't get out. For the same reason, you can't be in a fully-enclosed space. Always keep a window open! Oh, and no baths or long showers. Brief rinses are fine, but you can't submerge your hoof in anything wet. Plus you can't support more than a tenth-bale on that hoof. Ever."

Pinkie's mind, acting mostly in self-defense, skipped over the first few RULES, went directly for the last, performed a quick calculation of her own weight, and then divided it by four.

"I can't fly," seemed to be a necessary thing to say, because most of her body was wrapped in blankets and that meant there was a chance the mare didn't know that. "Even Rainbow can't hover forever --"

"-- if the hoof is upturned!" the mare corrected. "And you're balancing something on top of it. A tenth-bale, that's the limit. Which of course means you shouldn't wear any tools or weapons there either, if you're the sort of pony who does that. So. No enclosure. No moisture. And nothing heavy. It's easy! Just do all that until the post-procedure monitoring is concluded."

"And..." It felt as if she had to choose her next words carefully, and it also felt like every last possibility was wrong. "...how long does that take?"

"Oh, two, three, maybe six moons," the mare breezily declared, fur rippling in strange ways along her flanks. "Maybe longer, if you turn out to be an especially good test subject. And you certainly look like the best of all possible choices to me!"

Pinkie's mouth opened. No words came out. The silence allowed her to pick up on a fast-approaching, oddly solid sound from the hallway.

"It's science!" the mare gushed.

A rather large silver-clad hoof pushed the door open.

"Ah," the regal voice imperiously stated, dark eyes instantly fixing upon the bracelet. "I see that thaumatology continues to gallop on."

The charcoal mare jumped. Spun halfway around in the air, and landed with uncertain corona flickering a few hoofwidths away from Luna's snout.

"My apologies for having startled you," the younger of the Diarchy evenly stated. "I simply wished to speak with Ms. Pie before she returned home. Is the procedure complete?"

"Y-y-yes," the charcoal mare stammered. Her entire body seemed to be vibrating. "Just... I... I'll -- leave the door open when I go. For -- medical reasons..."

The rather large hoof casually gestured towards the exit, and the mare quickly slid in that direction. The vibrations didn't leave until some time after the body had, while the lingering odor was looking for places to hang decorations.

"Thaumatology marches on," Luna repeated. "In this example, that would be through a swamp mire." Dark nostrils wrinkled. "What is it about that smell...?" The alicorn took a deep breath, and then visibly regretted it. "At any rate, I did wish to see you prior to your departure. To assess your recovery. And..." Another, slower breath. "...to apologize. We had not suspected that the monster would evolve: it is a thought which should have occurred, and thus something which, in a better world, would have been part of the briefing. This wound could have been avoided --"

"-- I'm fine!" Pinkie smiled. "We're all fine. And I know you had to be the one who made sure I was treated, Luna." The healed leg stretched towards the Princess, and did so right up until Pinkie remembered what was smeared across it and switched to the other one. "Everything's okay."

"Even so," the alicorn deeply sighed. "A wound which could have been prevented. And then to have the press catch sight of you all upon emergence? Worse: sight and photography both. Three days of headlines, and the nation seeing your pain --"

"-- the Cakes keep a scrapbook for the twins," Pinkie gently told the second oldest mare in the world. "It's just one more story and picture. For when they can read. And stop thinking pictures are a really really flat me. Who's in black, white, and grey. Mostly grey. And keeps changing sizes."

Luna slowly smiled, and so Pinkie's job was temporarily done.

"Regardless," the alicorn stated. "We need all of you to be healthy. Especially as the planet is... so tumultuous at the moment, and we do not know how much time might pass before we need to send you out again. There is a border dispute forming to the south. The possibility of needing to clean up after a poorly-advised experiment is brewing several blocks away, which would at least lessen your travel time. Rumors of a renegade changeling hive continue to spread, and that is almost a minor concern compared to the chance of a deep place shifting its rules. Should we confirm that, you might find us accompanying you, as the extra help would be required to keep a twisted locale from spreading the alteration into the area as fresh law."

"Deep place?" Pinkie carefully asked.

"Consult Twilight Sparkle," Luna advised. "Cautiously. I heard the last portion of your instructions during my approach and from what I know of the books she would give you, each page violates the mass limit under the weight of theory. May I teleport you home?"

"Thank you," the baker gently refused, "but Canterlot's pretty this time of year, when it's all cold and sparkly and the snow hasn't been scheduled yet. I'd like to trot through the city." With a healed hoof leading the way, no longer pained by crack and cold. "And then I'll take the train."

The alicorn nodded, and they talked for a while. Luna needed to talk: it hadn't taken knowing her very long for Pinkie to understand that. Ponies she could speak with about anything, in order to keep everything from happening again. Pinkie had five ponies like that, plus one dragon, two adoptive parents, and a pair of younger siblings who would listen to anything because they didn't really understand very many words yet.

It would soon give her a choice of places to scream.

It didn't take Pinkie very long to realize that the crisp, snow-free Canterlot cold was actually boots weather, which was followed by bringing back the sight of every last Bearer boot melting into the most recent acid. (The scales of Spike's walking claws had just taken a polish.) It was the sort of thing which encouraged her to move faster. And even with pausing every so often to watch as a spark separated from the bracelet and lazily drifted off into the distance, what she'd intended as a leisurely late-afternoon stroll instead got her to the Gymkhana just in time for rush hour.

This complicated things somewhat. It was easier for an earth pony to push through the ground-based portions of the main terminal's crowd, but it was also rather rude and even if executed properly, put her in competition with a lot of equally-hurried earth ponies. Keeping things more or less polite resulted in her just barely occupying one of the most crowded train cars she'd ever seen.

Well, technically, she was fully occupying the car. It was just that there had been a final tenth-portion of bench available and trying to balance her entire body upon it was doing some interesting things to the local laws of topology. Plus her tail was in the aisle. A few ponies kept trying to go around her tail, while the majority ignored it and so wound up more or less going through.

Pinkie kept the sigh to herself, because commuters were often miserable enough and she didn't need to bring the mood down. Maybe a sing-along on the way home would make a few ponies feel better. For now, all she could do was settle in and wait for the train to start moving, although she was starting to suspect that 'settling in' required an extra three percent.

She tried to tuck her body, curled her forelegs in a little more, and did the latter just as she spotted a spark which was starting to surge somewhat. It made her hesitate, and the little piece of light detached. Floated up to absolutely no notice whatsoever, as there was multiple unicorns using their coronas for levitating snacks, reading newspapers, and doing anything else which stood the chance to take up extra space.

For lack of anything else to do which wasn't arranging the too-early chorus, Pinkie tracked the little spark's travels. It started by heading up, then moved north. This passage was briefly jolted by the first burst of mechanical movement: by the time Pinkie had worked out how much her curls had just splayed, they were on the way out of the city, and the spark's trajectory told her --

-- that was odd. Canterlot was just about due east of Ponyville, and it seldom took very long to clear the Gymkhana: once they'd curved down the mountain, it was a straightline shot to home. Maybe the inventors were in one of the lesser-used parts of the capital.

The spark bumped into the closed door at the far end of the train car. This was repeated two more times, followed by having it drift to a point where it could start rebounding off the uppermost part of a window.

"You can't be in a fully-enclosed space."

...oh. The little spark couldn't get out. It wouldn't be all that long before the charcoal mare would be wondering what had happened to Pinkie.

She was part of the test group for a medical miracle. She had to take the monitoring process seriously.

Pinkie carefully got up: the other pony bodies on the bench used the opportunity to expand by several crucial percentage points. Made her way down the crowded aisle, got past the conductor collecting extra fees from those who'd been too hurried to purchase their ticket in the station, reared up as best she could, angled herself over two other bodies when topology said it really should have been one, and nudged the crucial window open at the top.

The spark immediately flew out, bringing a few dozen degrees of heat for traveling company. This left the train car somewhat empty in terms of thermal occupation, and the winter cold quickly rushed in to fill the gap.

Pinkie immediately began to shut the window, doing so as frost developed along her curls and the sudden shouts of angry commuters threatened to shake it loose. But her leverage wasn't very good, it had been easier to open than close and more cold air was getting in, with the chill made all the worse by speed --

"-- what are you doing?"

She glanced back and down, quickly spotting the conductor. She looked angry. Maybe she'd realized that the cold hadn't paid for a ticket. It was probably reasonable under the rail's rules to demand the surcharge, but Pinkie didn't know how she expected a chill to carry money.

"I'm wearing something medical," she quickly tried to explain, raising her voice to get over the din created by ponies who had flash-frozen in every place but jaw and very, very vocal chords. "The magic has to get out or they won't know I'm okay!"

She dropped down in front of the uniformed conductor, raised her left foreleg so that the next spark reflected off brass buttons.

"Medical," the new earth pony mare tonelessly repeated.

"Yeah! I can't be in a fully-enclosed space! Only this is my first day with the bracelet, so I didn't realize the train counts as one! Or a bunch of ones with lots of little open transverse spaces in between, so it's more of a plural --"

"Medical," emerged for the second time. "Legitimately?"

The speed of Pinkie's nods dislodged the remaining frost.

"Medical," the third time decided, "is freezing the entire car."

Pinkie winced.

"I'm sorry." (She was.) "I don't know what to do..."

"I can't kick somepony off the train when they have a legitimate medical problem," the conductor stated. "That light has to get out?"

More nodding.

The conductor smiled.

"This," she said, "is what we call a train problem."

"I understand," Pinkie decided. "Because it's happening on a train. I'm sorry --"

"-- no," the conductor interrupted with increasing volume: the commuters were now shivering on the audible level. "Picture a train approaching a branch point in the tracks. You can take one side of the fork. The left rails have a pony with her hind hoof trapped under a trestle. The right has five ponies in a cart, with the axles stuck on the metal: they can't move in time. The train is going to hit something. What would you do?"

Pinkie thought about it.

"I would pull the emergency brakes, then hit the rail switch with just enough force to move it halfway. That way, the train is going really really slowly, and it sort of nudges to a stop because there isn't enough rail connection to let it go down either track. How did the one pony get her hoof under a trestle? They're really really flush against the ground --"

She stopped. All of her attention had just focused on the conductor's expression. She didn't usually see an expression like that. Pony features weren't really designed to buckle against themselves. It was like watching an entire face derail.

"Move the switch halfway," the conductor said in an oddly hollow voice.

"It saves everypony! Anyway, if you put a little ramp leading up to the rails at designated crossing points, and added some lights which were enchanted to flash when a train was too close --"

The mare's rising right foreleg cut her off.

"-- I can let an entire train car freeze..." the conductor slowly proposed.

"That's bad," Pinkie immediately decided. "I'm so sorry --"

"-- or..."

Pinkie was almost sure nopony was supposed to ride on the little shifting trotways between train cars. There were wide, flexible chains on each side, swaying with every movement of the wheels, and she supposed that made it safe enough. But it was such a narrow gap between two connected cars that when the part under your front legs shifted, the hind tried to go the other way. Her curls were bouncing out of rhythm and most of the forward ones were trying to go into her eyes. Plus it was really really cold and there was wind whipping through her fur at high speed, which just seemed to make it all the colder. But she sort of had permission and the little sparks could go through the open air, so that was all right.

A spark went past her snout. First it was emerald. Then it was a lighter, somewhat sickly sort of green. The hue seemed oddly familiar. Maybe the cold was making the spark lose strength.

She shivered, and told herself that it was in empathy.

This was... a little irritating. But she understood. It was best for the majority of ponies to be warm. It was just that when it came to majorities, she was very literally on the outside, failing to look in because her breath had frosted the glass.

It isn't a very long ride home.

It wasn't. Measured by the most reliable means she had, it was two incidences of frozen eyelids, one wild wind blast which almost completely straightened her tail, and nearly three thousand tooth chatters.

It wasn't quite the usual chaos when she reached the bakery. The usual chaos was probably at the cottage, still trying to get every last mission detail out of Fluttershy. (The caretaker would be holding back as much as she could, because she didn't want to give him anything he could blame.) But there was a ponypile just inside the door, and the sleepy twins muzzled against her hind legs until their mother took them to where the naps would be a little less in the way.

"And it's completely healed?" Mr. Cake asked, parental concern nearly managing to warp the lantern jaw.

Pinkie raised her left foreleg for inspection.

"But I have to open a window," she reluctantly told him. "Or a door. Just a little, but I won't know which one until I see where the spark is going. I'm sorry..."

He smiled. "I think we can put up with a little chill in exchange for having you back." A little more awkwardly, "But I do have something to ask."

She waited.

"We had a pretty big order come in while you were on the mission," he admitted. "The student baker we got from the palace helped as much as he could, but -- it wasn't enough, and it's all due tomorrow morning. Mrs. Cake and I were just about going to be up all night." Hopefully, "If you think you're up to helping? I'll understand if the mission wore you out too much. But even some flour sifting here and there --"

She nuzzled him. The nuzzle meant for family.

"I had a nap earlier," she smiled. "Let me just clean my hooves and warm up a little. And then show me what's still left to do."

She had to be careful about the cleaning: a fast rinsing might be all right, but it took more than that to reach the point where she would be ready to put on baker's hoof guards. It meant she wound up scrubbing around the edges of the black gunk, followed by taking up a file between her teeth and grinding the residue to where it was flush against the tines. It took more than time than she'd liked, but she eventually felt sanitary enough to proceed.

Mrs. Cake looked up as she entered the kitchen area. "You're sure, Pinkie?" her second mother asked. "It may be healed, but you were still injured..."

"I'm fine!" Pinkie enthused. "And I'm sorry. About what I have to do now. Just give it a minute..."

The restroom window had been adequate. It took her a little while to track where the spark wanted to go, and then she wound up having to crack the back door open. This was immediately followed by putting a portable heater right next to the gap, so the heat and cold could have it out for a while and hopefully reach some level of accommodations. Temperature variances weren't exactly good for baking.

"I'm sorry," she repeated.

"It happens," Mr. Cake assured her from his position near the stove. "Just start rolling out the dough whenever you're ready, because we need a lot of it. This is the biggest pita order I've ever seen. For the biggest pita."

"She did tell us what it was meant for," Mrs. Cake reminded her husband. "It has to be that big."

"Why does she even want to hide inside the pocket?" the stallion grumbled. "It's going to be obvious. A lot of lettuce, a little greenhouse tomato, and a pegasus-shaped bulge. No one's even going to eat the pita afterwards, because it'll mostly taste like feathers. This is a waste of good dough."

"It's a lot of money," his spouse firmly said, "and it's that kind of party."

Pinkie, distracted on the level of her mark from trying to picture that kind of party, just barely managed to reach the point where the dough was waiting for her. Just about all of the central workstation had been cleared off for this one, because a pony pita pocket was going to need a plethora of space. And rolling out dough was slow, repetitive work -- but there was no other way to make a pita, and the scale of the project meant it was something which couldn't be done with a device: there just wasn't one big enough.

She looked carefully at the lumpy beige mass spread across the sternum-high surface. It was going to be a lot of tedious work to get it all properly rolled out, but that was baking for you. Either the steps were followed precisely, with every last one taking just as long as it needed, or the whole process went Scootaloo. If it Scootalooed with yeast involved, you could even replicate the typical explosion.

Pinkie nodded to the dough as one opponent politely greeting another, then moved towards the cabinet which held the hoof guards. She needed the special set of full forehoof ones, with the attached inner mounting points for the rolling pin. No trouble at --

"Pinkie?"

"Mr. Cake?"

"Why did you just facehoof?"

"Just thinking. Um. Do you think pushing my own dumbness aside means moving more than a tenth of a bale?"

"...sorry?"

"Never mind."

...okay. The left guard definitely came up past the bracelet, which meant the sparks couldn't get out. Maybe if she pulled it on just enough to cover the absolute bottom of her hoof, and then placed the pin in the attachment --

-- okay: so doing that had the hanging portion more or less flopping all over the place, plus the ends of the rolling pin kept coming out because she couldn't keep constant pressure or distance on both ends. So maybe if she just put on the right guard all by itself, then took up the other end in her mouth (with a fairly loose jaw grip, because the pin needed to roll) and leaned her head to the side just so...

"Pinkie?" Mrs. Cake this time, who hadn't actually turned because she was more attuned to the sound of a crash.

"Ow..."

"Are you okay over there?"

As sounds went, the noise produced by six different vertebrae going out of position wasn't anything like a crash.

"...I don't know how Lyra does this..."

This time, her second mother glanced towards the center station.

"If you're having trouble," Mrs. Cake kindly said, "we can switch you out to something else --"

Pinkie didn't have a mark for baking. Training, dedication, absolute commitment -- but with no magical enhancement to her skills. It was something which had destined her for no better than an eternal second place, and it could also make her somewhat... defensive.

"I'm fine," she chirped, because she wasn't and if she actually said the words, they stood a chance to emerge with a little touch of snarl.

Mrs. Cake returned her attention to the supersized mixing bowl. Pinkie thought hard.

All right. Neither parent was paying attention to her, because there was just so much else to do. Too much for a pair of bakers, which meant Pinkie had to find some way of helping. She couldn't cover her left forehoof. The side-mouth option would only work when used by a mint-green, double-jointed musician, who was probably busy. Pinkie wasn't going to work barehooved because that was just dirty, plus the dough was so thick that she might wind up sinking in to a depth which covered the bracelet. And the dough had to be rolled out. By her.

She thought about it. A spark went by her snout, wavering in hue along the way.

Her forelegs couldn't do this. She wasn't an alicorn, which meant unicorn magic was out and wings couldn't bend in a manner which exerted that kind of pressure anyway. She couldn't work with one end of a rolling pin in her mouth and nothing on the other side: no pressure, no control, and it would have been hard enough to stay reared up that long anyway --

-- rear.

Rear equals hind.

It was, in some ways, a revelation. She had four legs. Why did she have to work with the front ones? When it came to rolling out pita dough, her body knew exactly what to do! All she had to do was send the instructions to a different section and watch them come out the same way!

Pinkie checked on the Cakes, making sure each parent was completely occupied with their own tasks. All of the Bearers had certain factors in common and when it came to Pinkie's link with Twilight, both mares liked to experiment with whatever was in their workplace and had figured out that some projects were best off finding their hoofing before any witnesses had the chance to say things like 'ARE YOU CRAZY?'

All right. Hoof guards onto the hind legs. Nothing easier. She'd put on hind boots enough times. It was the same process.

...actually... hoof guards were sort of -- custom-fitted. It felt like her hind legs had slightly different dimensions than the fore, and that difference was sort of pinching her. Except where it was loose. Or felt oddly hot -- oh, the heater had shifted: she'd fix that in a minute. First, she had to see just how brilliantly her idea was going to function in practice. Rolling pin --

-- it wasn't really easy to line up everything with her hind legs. Maybe it was because she really couldn't see over, through, or past herself, and her poor tail couldn't see at all. Somepony really had to talk to Twilight about a Seeing-Eye-Tail spell. It might leave eyeballs braided all through her curls in a rather discomforting way, but Nightmare Night always came around again and besides, it would have kept that one monster from sneaking up behind them. Almost there...

...got it! Now all she had to do was back up to the workstation, then rear herself up! The bottom of the rolling pin was beneath her hoof level, so it was like having her very own wheels!

...rearing up.

Rearing up her rear.

This was... really really awkward.

She was an earth pony. Her forelegs were strong. She shouldn't be having this much trouble supporting a portion of her own mass. All right, she was a little overweight, but it was in a pleasantly-padded way and she'd never exactly had any complaints, at least from anypony whose opinion she cared about. Pinkie wasn't carrying more than an extra tenth-bale and since none of that was being balanced on an upturned left forehoof, she should be perfectly all right. Besides, her hind legs were about to come down on the dough.

...almost on the dough. The way rolling out worked was that the wooden pin was the only thing which would make contact, so it sort of took all the pressure from your forelegs and translated it into strength. So her hind legs would sort of be hovering to the sides of the pin, which she had --

-- just rolled across the floor.

Stop. Move forward. Turn. Back up to the sink. (She had to kick the taps.) And after everything was rinsed, rear way up on her forehooves so the pin wouldn't touch anything again, and sort of -- back up that way while balancing on two legs...

Her spine was starting to feel rather odd, and the oddest part was the sudden, unavoidable realization that she had one. Also, her tail still didn't have eyes, which was totally Pinkie's fault because she hadn't told Twilight about the idea yet. What it did have was weight. Pinkie was suddenly very aware that her tail had a mass all its own, and that she had to keep that mass out of the dough because any embedded hairs would make it have less mass, plus pink really didn't go with the color of baked pita. So she had to loft her tail as much as possible...

...tails were heavy. Did anypony else know tails were heavy?

...all right: Fluttershy. Compared to Fluttershy, Pinkie was a cauda equina underachiever, but so was everypony else in town and Pinkie had come to terms with it years ago. If Fluttershy could freely sway that coral tail, then Pinkie could keep her own out of the dough. Back up... keep backing up -- maintain pressure on the pin from both sides or she'd have to start all over --

-- there: she'd just felt the rolling pin hit the workstation's rim. It meant she was there. It also happened to mean she was too low and her ears had just twitched in a Pinkie Sense configuration which she called I Have Ten Seconds Before One Of The Cakes Turns Around And I'd Better Be Able To Prove This Isn't Crazy. Pinkie reared her hind end up higher.

Higher than that.

A little more. Just to be safe --

-- there was another odd cracking sound, and nopony recognized what it meant because that part of the spine had never moved before. And then there was something fluffy in her eyes.

That's pink.
That's very pink. And curly.
I think it's a tail.
...I think it's mine --

Her ears twitched again, and did so at the same moment when gravity, physics, and the Cakes all noticed what she was doing.

After the echoes of the Scootalooing had resolved themselves and the twins had stopped crying, Pinkie's second parents took the time to check her for muscle pulls.

"I'm fine! I can move all of my legs and everything! I just have to work more on moving the back ones. By the way, did you ever wonder what it would be like if you could see out of your --"

"-- you can walk?" Mr. Cake interrupted.

"Yeah!"

"Good. Go to bed."

The only thing she hated more than arguing with them was losing. But they thought she wasn't capable of baking right now, and they just hadn't listened when she'd said she simply needed more practice, maybe a lower workstation and some smaller portion of dough to start with, plus there was probably time to sterilize part of the floor...

But they'd sent her to bed.
Well -- they'd sent most of her to bed.

There was a window open, because there had to be. It was winter because that was the way seasons worked, and it was cold because the weather team's night shift worked a little more efficiently when Rainbow wasn't there. Pinkie had done everything she could to wrap herself in blankets accordingly. Except that enough fabric layers to make her warm was also enough to cover the bracelet. So there was a hoof sticking out, just over the edge of her mattress because that got it a little closer to the window.

A spark floated out. Cold air blew in.

The bracelet was necessary: she'd told the Cakes that, and now she had to tell herself. Over and over. That it was just the last part of the little miracle, and if she appreciated not having to limp around for moons on a cracked hoof and didn't like applying stinky sealant to the same aching area every day, she had better appreciate the bracelet. It was just sort of inconvenient for baking.

But the repetition wasn't helping. She was starting to feel... irritated. Annoyed. Also, her hoof was cold, and her body had just decided majority rule meant nothing because no part of her was apparently allowed to feel warm when one hoof was cold.

The effort to continue feeling grateful was exhausting. More than anything else, it was that which allowed Pinkie to finally fall asleep.

It meant she missed the moment when the first flakes drifted in.

Mrs. Cake's smile was the first thing to poke into the cold attic, which was why Pinkie awoke to the sound of chattering teeth.

"We finished," the weary mare yawned.

"I'm sorry," just managed to make its apologetic way out from under the blankets. "I'll come down in a minute and start working on the morning rush --"

"-- we've got it," was just barely distinguishable within the next yawn. "Take the day off, Pinkie."

They were words which made her head desperately push its way out from beneath the layers, almost leaving the rest of her body behind. "I can't! You're tired, you're both going to be so tired and there's still things I can do! I can wear my mouth guard to take trays out, I can balance things on my back, and I can operate the till! I don't need a hoof guard for everything! Just let me help wherever I can, and I'll figure out more ways while I'm doing that --"

"-- you need an open door or window," Mrs. Cake pointed out. "Even with the morning rush, the door's closed some of the time. It's cold today, Pinkie, and it's going to get colder. The heater won't be able to keep up. We'll -- work out some way you can help, I promise. It may just take a few days."

It took a moment to reconcile that she'd heard 'days'. Her heart had picked up on something closer to 'moons'.

"You had a mission." Mrs. Cake took a few breaths before the next words, mostly to steady out her exhausted swaying. "You may be healed, but there's other kinds of recovery time. Go see your friends. Have a little fun. Maybe go to the spa. Or play in the snow for us, because we can't and somepony should. Please, Pinkie?"

Eventually, and very reluctantly, "Okay."

Her second mother withdrew from the doorway. Pinkie slowly began to work her way out from under the blankets.

A day off. She could do things with that, especially since so much of her schedule had been wiped by the mission. But right now, it felt like something of an insult. And worse: she wasn't helping the Cakes. She wasn't earning her keep --

-- snow?

Her neck twisted. (Several recently-offended vertebrae expressed themselves.) After a moment, she found herself regarding the little indoor snowdrift which had piled up near the open window. A green spark floated out over it, because it had no plowing duties at all.

Plowing! That was something she could do for the Cakes! Pinkie hadn't been thinking about the weather schedule because the place where they'd gone for the mission didn't have one: it wasn't so much having forgotten about the snow as just not possessing a reason to remember. But if there was snow on the ground, then there was snow in front of the bakery! Somepony had to plow the approach path before everything got hoof-trampled into ice. Ponies weren't happy about having to move on ice, and reacted in odd ways when it all went wrong. For starters, it made them order a lot of Trottingham scones, possibly because they felt that if their rear had just crashed into something hard and cold, then their teeth should too.

All right: she had a plan, and the joy of that thought got her out of bed, half-pronking towards the doorway. Now all she had to do was get through the rear exit, go behind the bakery to the storage shed, get the plow out because surely Mr. Cake had been too tired to do it, hitch it to herself, and she would be useful again! If she couldn't do anything else, then she could certainly --

She had recently been reminded that she had four legs, which felt like the sort of thing she really should have been keeping track of. Now she also realized that she had four knees. Also that knee-height was a really stupid depth for snow. Especially when you had four of them and there was so much moisture in snow, with her body heat melting a little of it as she pushed through, that it would probably be all kinds of bad for the bracelet. Plus the snow was thick enough as to count for complete coverage. There wouldn't have been any trouble getting the light to go around a few drifting flakes, but there were millions of the things and they were all ganging up on her.

All of this occurred to Pinkie as she stared out at the fresh, unbroken white blanket from the back door, and it struck her as a rather deep and philosophical thing to be thinking about. Unlike the momentary idea regarding kicking Rainbow, because Rainbow had been on the mission with her, had probably gone to bed immediately upon getting home, and so had been no part of this. Kicking Rainbow was just silly. She had to be more practical than that! For starters, if she was feeling the urge to kick somepony, she needed to find the right snout! And for purposes of medical monitoring, if she was kicking with her forelegs, probably shouldn't land the impact so that she indented somepony's soft belly up to the top of her forehoof --

-- she stopped. Breathed, until her lungs felt as chill as her fur. Went back in for her backup boots.

...she couldn't wear her boots.

All right: more practically, she couldn't wear one of them: the other three hooves would be fine. Pinkie marched to the closet and gathered 75% of her leg protection, with several kinds of sparks frustratedly flying in all directions.

There. Boots. Done. Now all she had to do was get out to the storage shed.

Through knee-deep snow. With four knees, on three legs.

...okay. So she wasn't used to balancing on her forelegs. Ponies reared up on their hind legs all the time! All she had to do was -- get vertical. And once that familiar position had been assumed, she had to... take a step. Without dropping down. And then she could take another step. Enough steps would get her to the shed. It was just a matter of math and anatomy. When it came to the second part, minotaurs did this sort of thing every day of their lives and they had hooves, so that meant getting a pony to do it was either a matter of need or a matter of Lyra, who could manage the feat in her sleep and usually traumatized anypony who spotted her in public before the sleepwalking episode wore off.

Pinkie reared up. Jumped into the snow, because that saved her a few steps, and managed not to overbalance as her hind legs plummeted through the accumulation. Her hind hooves were on the ground. She was vertical.

She pushed her left hind leg forward against the snowpack. Nothing budged. She had earth pony strength: the problem was leverage.

So she could -- what would a minotaur do? Lift the leg, all the way out of the snow. And bring it down again, a little further forward.

...right. She had a plan. She also had a spine which was feeling a little funny again and she was starting to feel oddly woozy because her brain didn't know how to deal with this kind of height, but it was like Twilight would probably say: the plan was the important part!

Pinkie raised her left hind leg.

Somewhere around the middle of the pitched-forward fall, it occurred to her that doing so had left her balancing on one hoof.

There was a sound.

After a moment, a cold, spark-trailing left foreleg thrust itself straight up from the pony-shaped hole in the fresh snow.

"In front of my heating vents, immediately! No, dear: I do not currently care if you drip on a dress or twelve along the way: you are shivering! I don't think I've ever seen you so cold, Pinkie, and the most important thing to do is warm you up." Rarity was already pushing her towards the nearest grating: the unicorn's strength didn't mean a lot there, but the prodding horn did. "The dresses can be dried later: you must be taken care of now. Oh, what have you even been doing to enter in such a state! And you've lost one of your boots --"

The designer paused.

"Dear," Rarity carefully said, "what, exactly, is that thing on your hoof?"

"I'll tell you in a few minutes," Pinkie sighed between the tooth chatters. "And please don't close the door."

Multiple emerald sparks had already drifted through the briefing, along with a number which weren't quite so bright.

"Oh," Rarity summarized.

Pinkie nodded.

"Also," the baker added, "remember that time when Twilight cast the animation spell on the snowplow? Only she tried to make it invisible, so Applejack wouldn't know what was happening? And that distorts the magic, so the spell got away from her and everypony else, until the plow crashed?"

"I wasn't a direct witness," Rarity warily admitted. "But I have heard Applejack recount the events. Why?"

"When you're trying to push a snowplow with one leg raised all the time? The animation spell is faster. But the control's about the same." Pinkie sighed. "It doesn't go much better with pulling, either. So after I got out of the ditch, I tried going to Ratchette's fix-it shop."

"To modify the plow for three-legged operation," the unicorn carefully tried.

Pinkie shook her head. "Do you remember that one pony we met during the trip? The pretty pale blue one, with the mechanical leg?"

"...yes," Rarity slowly said. "I tend to recall those who work in my profession, especially when they both have talent and are so charming as to virtually mandate exchanging long-distance correspondence afterwards. Why would you ask --"

The designer abruptly blinked.

"Pinkie?"

"Yes?"

A little too quickly, "I recognize that the bracelet is an inconvenience for you. However, the key word in that sentence is inconvenience." Skin was rapidly flushing green beneath the white fur. "When it comes to a solution for what is still a short-term problem, I would hope that you would look to options other than amputation --"

"-- no! I just thought she could make me a leg like that! Only modified, because Kerfuffle's is for a hind leg. And hers starts below the knee, and I have to sort of rest my leg at the knee in the mounting point. And then I'd just train myself to walk like that, with my real foreleg bent all the time and out of the snow, or dough, or anything else!"

The unicorn's fur slowly settled back into the grain.

"And what did Ratchette say?"

"That even if she padded the mounting point, I'd eventually get an infection," Pinkie sadly stated. "Wearing that sort of thing all the time can take your fur off, just before it does the same thing to your skin. Kerfuffle's is enchanted to be softer where it goes on, and Ratchette can't do that. Plus the stump gets really tough after a few years. So she said no, because she tried making a few things like that one year for ponies around Nightmare Night, and most of them came back bruised. Except for the ones who were bleeding."

"Understood," Rarity eventually exhaled. "So why come to me?"

"Because it's cold."

"And I was closest, with a strong heater," the designer smiled. "As good a reason for a visit as any, I suppose. Actually, I was planning to destress from the mission at the spa in a few hours. With Fluttershy, of course. Would you care to join --"

"-- I mean, I'm cold," Pinkie clarified. "What with having one hoof exposed. So I --" hopefully ''-- wanted to ask you for a favor? If you have the time?"

"Of course, dear!" emerged immediately. "Whatever I can do! But I'm not sure what a new jacket would accomplish in insulating you when the forehoof is the problem --"

"-- flap," Pinkie said, and smiled.

Rarity blinked again. False eyelashes slipped.

"I believe I know what you meant by that," the unicorn slowly stated. "But for purposes of verification..."

"I need you to cut a flap in my left foreleg boot," Pinkie beamed. "So the sparks can get out!"

Rarity took a breath.

"Pinkie?"

The "...yes...?" was attached to some concern, and the combined weight thudded to the Boutique's rapidly-chilllng floor.

"I would like to order some lava cakes from Sugarcube Corner. The standard type. Not that which Spike insists can be created with proper effort, because nopony needs to deal with a second fire. You understand."

"...yes," tried the mare who was still trying to figure out how to season basalt.

"And in order to ascertain that the center is properly prepared," Rarity steadily continued, "I will require a drop-down panel to be built into each. You understand, I'm sure."

Pinkie blinked.

"...Rarity?"

"Yes, dear?"

Carefully, "That doesn't work. I can't hinge pastry! Plus one seam, no matter how small, and all of the filling will leak out! Any gap at all means losing the heat --"

"-- yes," the unicorn interrupted, tail slowly lashing across the contents of a nearby rack. "That would be the point."

"...oh."

They both sat in the chill breeze for a while.

"Something odd about that hue," Rarity mused as the next spark drifted by. "Perhaps the caster was especially tired, or the spell is weakening. You might need to visit the original caster for a recharge."

"It was supposed to last for several moons," Pinkie morbidly remembered. "It's probably just the caster being tired."

"You look rather -- irritated," the unicorn sympathetically observed. "Rare for you, but -- I recognize that it has been a hard day. The spa offer remains open --"

"No," Pinkie weakly smiled. "Thank you, but no. I'm going to leave now, so the Boutique can warm up again. We all have different ways of relaxing, Rarity. For you, the first thing is the spa. And sometimes that can be me. But it's winter, cold enough for snow is cold enough for ice, and that means I know what'll help me most." She headed for the door. "So I'm going to go do that. I'll try to come see you tomorrow."

The freshly-bruised earth pony slowly approached the steaming indoor pool, and blue eyes regarded both water and occupants with something very close to pain.

"I can't get in," she stated while her body slowly dropped down, even as both friends began to desperately swim towards her. "So I'll just rest on the edge. If that's okay."

She curled up, and did so with one foreleg sticking out. A spark lifted away.

"I couldn't ask Lotus to leave a window open," she added. "But there's vents coming out of the sauna. I'm going to try telling the spark to use them. Not that it listens, but maybe it'll wander around for a while and sort of bump its way out. Do you know if anypony's using the sauna?"

Fluttershy reached her first. Coral dripped water onto the pool's rim: Pinkie pulled her foreleg back just in time.

"...what happened?"

"I could have cut a hole in the fourth ice skate," Pinkie considered. "But that would go right through the laces and ruin the skate forever. And skates are expensive. So I thought, professional skaters go around on three hooves all the time! As part of routines, and stunts, for scoring points in front of judges. Three skates on the ice, and one leg in the air. They do it. How hard could it be?"

She sighed.

"It's actually really easy," the baker added. "For the first ten seconds."

"Pinkie," Rarity carefully asked as straight purple falls of hair spread out on the water's surface, "you look rather like a pony who's just skidded across a lake's worth of ice on her chin."

"Really?"

The designer nodded.

"That's a really specific way to look," Pinkie decided. "I probably won't ever need to look that way more than once. Since I'm never trying it again."

"...I don't understand," Fluttershy softly offered. "What's that thing on your forehoof? Rarity was starting to talk about your having seen a doctor about your hoof crack when you came in..."

The explanation was eventually repeated.

"...you look sort of... annoyed," the caretaker eventually risked.

Pinkie was silent. The other two took it as a bad sign.

"...and... irritated?"

Steam condensed back into water, dripped from the ceiling.

"I just want to rest," Pinkie finally sighed. "This is a day off, one I wasn't supposed to have or should have at all, and I just want to rest. My hoof doesn't hurt any more, but the thing it takes to tell somepony that my hoof isn't hurting is making everything else hurt."

"We all need rest, I think," Rarity gently offered. "The missions do that, and you suffered more than any during the last. After as well. You may not be able to soak with us --"

"I could try to float on my back," Pinkie considered. "But it's hard to get out that way. And I'd probably just flip eventually."

Another spark drifted up. Three sets of eyes watched it bounce off everything in a vaguely northeast direction.

"-- and the sauna's humidity is likely too high for your bracelet. Clearly mud baths are right out. But rest assured, while we all have a mutual time of peace, we shall do whatever we can to help you rest --"

Which, in the name of both timing and irony, was when three flashes of green flame went off in front of their snouts.

Two of the scrolls dropped into the water. Pinkie's hit the rim of the pool, then rebounded into her bruised chin.

There were several problems associated with sneaking into the winding cave passages of a changeling hive, and most of them were based around the seventh word in the sentence. Ideally, you really didn't want anyone to figure out you were there, because a changeling hive had several qualifications required for the title and one of them was 'being full of changelings'. It was possible to wander past a near-mindless ree'krig repairing a wall without setting off the alarm, but anything from the soldier class on up was going to call for reinforcements. A lot of them.

So you couldn't make that much noise, just in case a changeling heard you. Light usually wasn't a total problem because sickly green trails of glowing liquid ran along the walls of renegade hives, but there still weren't that many lumens to work with. Igniting horns to get a better view of anything made soft blue and pinkish reflections dance off too-wet walls, some of which were coated in a near-bubbling black. Nopony could control where those reflections bounced, and that meant the chance to draw attention.

You couldn't talk at normal volume. You couldn't plant your hooves with too much force.

"Pinkie!" Rainbow hissed as the latest release just about went through the spread feathers of her left wing. "Can't you stop that?"

And all things considered, future hive explorers probably shouldn't be leaving a trail of green sparks behind them. Of course, nopony would have known to think about that before it actually happened, but that was experience for you.

"I think they'd just build up under a boot or something," Pinkie miserably whispered. "It would make more of a glow. After a while."

"So turn it off!"

"I don't know how..."

The sleek cyan head furiously turned to stare in another direction.

"I can try to analyze the spell," Twilight softly told them. "But it's going to produce a lot of light, everypony. A lot more than what Pinkie's giving off. That would get noticed." Hopefully, "There's a lot of green in here anyway. Maybe it's -- just getting lost in the background?"

The alicorn squinted at the bracelet, as if considering making the ill-advised attempt anyway. It was new magic, after all.

"Don't, Twi," the farmer quickly said. "Jus' don't. Ah know y'wanna, but this ain't --"

"That's not it," Twilight countered. "It's just... that color keeps flickering. Corona hues usually don't do that." Purple eyes narrowed a little more. "That flicker-hue almost looks familiar..."

"We'll talk 'bout it once we're out," Applejack firmly stated. "We're scoutin' a renegade hive here. Luna thought they were settin' up a new base, close t' Canterlot. Jus' happened that she thought she'd pinned it down a little early. All we're supposed t' be doin' here is verifying an' gettin' out. She don't expect us to take on a hive by ourselves."

"...I think we've verified," Fluttershy softly offered. "I see the act'sti'li trails glowing on the walls."

"We found the eco'nl'in ch'sm pit," Rarity added, and shuddered. "With all the shed chitin."

"And it just smells," Pinkie sighed. There was something distressingly familiar about that smell.

"Yeah," Applejack agreed. "There's jus' one thing we ain't found."

Twilight sighed.

"Changelings," the alicorn declared. "Not one changeling. I'm calling it, everypony." And for the first time since they'd entered, did so at normal volume. "We've been here two hours. We've never gotten this deep into a hive without being intercepted before. This hive was abandoned."

"Figures," Rainbow fumed. "Giving up a nap for this. Not even one faceted eye to kick in!"

Pinkie thought about kicking a changeling's eye, and then found it rather hard to stop.

"Let's just go home," the weather coordinator groaned. "We verified it, and we verified there's no one in it. All we can do now is waste more time..."

"Not just yet -- no, Rainbow!" Flared purple wings cut off the rising protest. "We've never been this deep into a hive before! Not one of the renegade ones! I know the Princesses will send an evaluation team after we leave, but this is the first chance to figure out what they were trying to do. Time could be crucial. We can look for things they left behind. Any signs of their plans."

"...I think they must have left just before we got here," Fluttershy offered. "That valve-door looks freshly secreted."

All six ponies stared at the membrane. It was possible to determine just how fresh it was. You pushed at it, and saw how much force it took before you went through. The secondary measurement was how much time you then spent longing for a bath.

I can't even take a bath.

"Maybe they spotted somepony from the distance survey team and guessed the second wave was right behind it," Twilight theorized. "Give me one more hour, Rainbow. Just that long, and then we'll go back to the entrance and have Spike signal the palace." She sighed. "I wish he was with us right now..."

"We have been over this topic before," Rarity firmly said. "At a distance of four hoofwidths, all spent racing ahead of the fireball. The act'sti'li catch too easily: that is why they are the key to any hive's self-destruct. Even a scroll's arrival might set them off."

"I know," Twilight miserably said. "I wish he was here anyway. Just so he'd be here."

The group advanced deeper into the hive, one cautious hoofstep at a time (which often meant clamping teeth on Rainbow's tail, because 'cautious' had been broken by 'get this over with!' before). There were no changelings. There could still be traps.

Rarity's nostrils flared.

"I smell -- something new," the unicorn announced. "Does anypony else? Vaguely sweet, with a hint of citric acid."

Six ponies sniffed the air.

"Up ahead," Twilight agreed. "Let's look..."

It was just around the next bend.

The newest opening in the cave wasn't covered by a membrane. The strange smell drifted out to the air, and did so in the company of a slightly luminous orange fluid. Something which rained down from the small holes within the ceiling of the little hollow, with most of it vanishing into natural channels in the stone floor.

"That is new," Twilight breathed. "Any ideas?"

"One," Applejack immediately said, and five gazes focused on her. "Ah think that's a shower." The farmer waited out the blinks. "Ah mean it. Look close, everypony. That stone should have a little natural dirt on it. Little grinds from centuries of moisture drips, wearin' the rock away. But everything in there is clean stone. An' that little trickle which ran out here, it's takin' the dirt with it. If'fin Ah had t' guess, we're lookin' at how they get clean."

The next set of gazes carried respect.

"It's a great theory," Twilight decided. "Just don't go in, because that liquid is everywhere in the hollow. And we can't let it touch us. If you're right, Applejack -- and I think you are -- that stuff is capable of cleaning chitin. We don't know what it does to flesh and fur --"

Which was when the first gout of liquid cascaded from the ceiling, crashed into the floor, and bounced.

They screamed. Legs jumped, wings flared, and everypony did whatever they could get away from what suddenly felt like the truest trap. But the wave moved ahead of every reaction, soaked feathers and saturated fur. Coated portions of every form for a few seconds --

--and then dripped away, leaving them completely untouched. And, strangely enough, dry.

"-- oh," Twilight shakily finished. "It does -- that. I'll still check us for side effects -- Pinkie! Your left forehoof!"

The baker, instantly panicked, stared down.

There was a thin black liquid running down her hoof, and it came from the underside of the flared tines.

The bracelet fell. Three sparks were jarred loose by the impact, and drifted off for parts unknown.

The first thing Pinkie did when she got home was to take a long bath, because Twilight wanted to make sure any potential residue from the orange fluid was gone and besides, there might only be the one chance to bathe at all. And then she very reluctantly picked up the cleaned bracelet in her mouth, and trotted off through Luna's night to meet her friend.

"So I guess you have to put it back on," was the first thing she said after depositing it on the desk in front of Twilight. "I don't think it does anypony on the testing team much good if it tells them how my tongue is feeling."

The alicorn looked briefly awkward.

"I don't know how," she admitted. "I do know an adhesive spell, but I don't want to use it. Mine isn't that strong, because it's primarily meant for paper. And if it isn't the same kind which was placed on the bracelet, then it could interfere with the readings. But we should get it back on you as soon as possible." Twilight slowly shook her head. "I don't even know what they're looking for, Pinkie. I understand monitoring and testing: that's part of any new magic. But your body was just magically stimulated to grow the keratin back naturally. Once the magic fades, the keratin is still there. What do they think is going to happen? Anything bad would almost have to hit during the regrowth stage. And it didn't,"

"I don't know what they're worried about," Pinkie sighed. "I just think they're being careful." Irritatingly, annoyingly careful. "So what do you want to do?"

"You could go into Canterlot," Twilight considered. "Head to their offices and have it re-enchanted. The adhesion, I mean: the sparks are obviously fine." Another one drifted past their snouts, and four eyes automatically tracked it. "They may even know it fell off, because the enchantment is standard there."

"Really?" It was genuine curiosity. You could get an education from being friends with Twilight: the hard part was making it stop.

The researcher nodded. "Doctors use the spell all the time, so they can constantly receive updates on patients who are at risk. Most physician unicorns can cast it, and everypony else can buy devices which do it for them. But you'd usually just see it in the intensive care section of a hospital, Pinkie. They make sure there's open channels for the magic to travel through. It usually doesn't have to go more than a few dozen body lengths. All the way from Ponyville to Canterlot..." She slowly shook her head. "Maybe that's why the color keeps shifting. It's too much distance. But then they wouldn't even get there, and the caster would know that. The original caster is always receiving the information -- including knowing when it stops."

Pinkie nodded. "So they'll know it's not on my hoof, like you said."

"If it's standard," Twilight conceded. "I'm not sure. I've never had to analyze the spell before. From what I do know, the real problem is that you can't use it for more than one patient at a time. There's too much information coming in to sort out what goes with who." Another head shake. "But going into Canterlot costs you at least a day. So let's ask Spike to send a scroll to the company. They'll read it in the morning: the flame won't even startle anypony, coming in this late. And they'll send an express courier back with the solution. Once I know how it's done, maybe I can reattach it myself."

"Okay!" Because her friend was trying to help, and was also doing so in a way which guaranteed that Pinkie would spent the night and at least part of a morning without having to deal with the bracelet. "Have it sent to you, and not me? It'll save time that way. I'll come by after the morning rush."

"All right," Twilight agreed. Her corona had already seized a quill, and dark lines of ink were racing up and down the scroll. "Let's just hope they do use an express courier and not standard mail. You don't want to spend too much time without the bracelet, right?"

"Wanna bet?"

Purple eyes came up. "What was that?"

"Nothing! See you tomorrow!"

There was now a box on the desk, sitting next to the once-again deposited bracelet. The box was brown, which registered with Pinkie as being different -- but the company probably just had a lot of boxes in stock.

"I waited to open it until you got here," Twilight said. "Just in case I could put it on right away."

Pinkie nodded.

"You were a little late," the alicorn noted.

"I just had things to do," Pinkie explained. "A lot of them." Her gaze dropped. "Sorry."

"What kind of things?" was meant as a purely innocent question.

"Baking. Rolling out dough. Plowing the snow behind Sugarcube Corner." Pinkie was now staring at the floor. "Stuff I -- won't be able to do for a while." And now she could feel the sympathy radiating from purple eyes. "Just open the box, Twilight. Fast."

She stood there, staring into a personal dark, in the last moment before pain began again. Tracking what was going on using hearing alone: the tearing of cardboard, paper unfolding, and then a small scraping noise as something bumped the edges upon coming out --

"-- Pinkie?" The word was oddly soft.

She looked up, and found a letter floating in front of her face.

"Read that," Twilight slowly said. And waited.

She did.

"'...you are the first recipient to have the adhesive spell fail' -- well, I'm probably the first one to get splashed by a changeling's shower, too -- 'and so we have no standing procedure for reworking the enchantment.'" Her forehead wrinkled. "'Instead, we are sending you a replacement unit. Simply press it to your forehoof. Afterwards, report to' -- and there's the address -- 'so we can attune the spells to the monitor recipient.' A new unit? Why? What's wrong with just sending another vial of the black stuff!" With every last tenth-bit of irritation and annoyance dropping back in at the same instant, joined by a sudden urge to kick something, "And now I have to go into Canterlot anyway! I checked the weather schedule, just in case! It's snow, and who knows if they've plowed yet! I'll have to trot out of Canterlot in the snow, on three hooves, with no fourth boot --"

The corona around the letter winked out, and the paper drifted to the floor. A spark went past it on the way down. Both mares watched the colors flicker.

"I don't know how to cast this adhesion spell," Twilight quietly admitted. "But I do recognize it. It's sort of like -- well, it doesn't use it, but think of it as magical static electricity. Submerging the bracelet wouldn't dissolve the bond: the water just blocks the sparks. There's no enchantment medium involved. No black fluid. We both saw that residue running down your hoof. And this is their standard unit."

"This is weird," Pinkie decided. "But maybe it makes sense. I know Luna pulled reins to get me into the testing program, so maybe I got to test a new adhesive too? Something which doesn't use magic? Just something sticky, because missions can have us getting hit by a lot of magic and they wouldn't want the bracelet just falling away --"

Another spark went past her eyes. It was emerald green. Then it flickered. Still green, but weaker, somewhat washed-out, sickly --

I know that color.
I remember that smell.
I know why the shower made it fall off...

Pinkie blinked. And then she resolved to speak very slowly, because they had time and rushing through it would just have Twilight asking her to repeat everything three times.

"-- Twilight?"

The alicorn, who had seen a different kind of spark in Pinkie's eyes, stared at the baker. And then she waited.

"The press got pictures of us, coming out of the mission," Pinkie carefully said. "Those reached Canterlot before we did. So lots of ponies knew I was hurt. Right?"

Twilight carefully nodded.

"I think I know what's going on," Pinkie told her friend. "What's been happening the whole time, ever since she knew I had to see a doctor, and could guess which one. Call in Spike, and have him send out scrolls. We're all going to Canterlot." She watched the next spark go by. "Or sort of close by."

A sickly green spark drifted in, touched the warped, distorted, and frankly magnificent horn. Told the original caster the only thing she truly wanted to know.

Still in Ponyville.

The changeling queen smiled, and shifted position upon her warped throne. Basked in the dim light which flowed in narrow trails along the walls of a cave somewhat north of Canterlot, and once again reflected upon the most suitable of all topics: how brilliant she truly was.

When you were infiltrating a society all over again, starting from the first hatching... well, the various aspects of the bureaucracy were guarded now. It was effectively impossible to get one of her few remaining loyalists into the palace itself. But there was nothing wrong with being an orderly in a research lab or rather, there was nothing wrong with her ordering someone else to do that. If there was anything interesting coming along, something which could be turned against the ponies as a weapon -- well, then she had already set things up for bringing it into her possession. Even medical magic could potentially be warped: from heal to hurt, and so she'd taken the chance on having an operative there.

Her drone hadn't found anything useful. Just hoof healing, which wasn't much good when applied to chitin.

But then they'd learned the baker was hurt.

Oh, it had been hard for her to get into the inventing company in a hurry: she'd almost had to hold off on the hypnosis for ten whole minutes. But once she was there, had a little time alone with one of the bracelets, and realized that the application of her own ichor as adhesive would create a direct attunement...

Yes, she could have done something with the new potion: a little poison would have changed 'sleep for an hour' to something a little more suitable for the baker, such as 'forever'. But that would just remove one -- and do so in a way which guaranteed the palace would devote every possible resource to hunting her down.

They were already looking. They suspected she was the one who'd potentially returned to the area, and they were right. But why give them more incentive to find her? In fact, knowing which ponies the foolish alicorns preferred to send out, why let them find her at all?

It was a shell game. Set up multiple small hives (and for population, a small hive was all she had left). If the palace got a true lead on any of them, the Bearers would be summoned to perform the penetration scouting -- while the bracelet was telling her they were on the way. Move her forces to another area, well ahead of the pursuit. Frustrate the ponies at every turn -- if only she could feed on that emotion! -- and perhaps she might even let them see a changeling here and there. To make them paranoid, force them to look in the wrong places while she continued to consolidate her new power base...

As with all of her plans, even those which had failed due to pure coincidence and sheer bad luck, it was brilliant. Yes, there had been a bad moment when the younger of the Diarchy had come to check on the baker personally, but all that did was demonstrate why personal devotion to any expendable drone was a bad idea. Given less witnesses and a clearer path out of the palace, she was sure she could have dealt with the Moonshadow then and there. Leaving had just been more -- subtle.

She was one step ahead of her enemy, and would remain so until the moment her hooves were finally pressed against Diarchy throats. She knew where the baker was, and that meant she knew when the palace would try to move against her. She, for all intents and purposes, knew everything.

Except for what was producing that high-pitched whining noise.

She began to open her mouth, because someone had to investigate that and clearly it wasn't going to be her. But before the solid plates of her black jaw could slide enough to allow movement, part of the wall dropped away.

The baker, her forehooves unadorned, stood proudly in the pony-sized gap. Staring into the little bit of glow produced by the act'sti'li and the deepness of the hive's shadows, perfectly content in the last moments before pain began.

"Hi, Chryssie!" the earth pony chirped, because to speak normally would have turned words into a battle cry. "It feels like it's just been so long since I saw you! Even though it's only been a couple of days!"

The hive queen was already scrambling to her hooves, horn igniting.

"I know there's six others right behind you," she hissed, not bothering to think about how her plans had been foiled because it was clearly bad luck or coincidence and seriously, she had to infiltrate a location which was researching countercurses and find out what the alicorns had done to her. "Or five, if you didn't risk the dragon. I can take out six..."

The high-pitched noise sounded again.

An entire rock wall fell inward.

The younger of the Diarchy smiled, and a dark corona set the glowing, twisting edged rotary wheel and its knives of light onto the cave floor.

"A rather suitable device for the occasion, I believe," the Princess observed, and briefly glanced back at the gathered forces of Bearers, Guards, police, and a few members of the palace staff who had accidentally dated changelings during the first wave and so had earned the right to get in on the fun: this had apparently started with the unconscious drones whose bodies were strewn around the outer area. "If still somewhat experimental. Still... thaumatology gallops on. Ms. Pie, as discussed earlier --" the dark horn ignited to a new level of power "-- I shall be countering her magical efforts. The initial honors are yours."

The baker rushed forward, a hurtling pink blur of purest fury. The healed hoof assisted in the push off from stone, and the powerful body twisted in midair.

On the most technical level, she didn't wind up kicking somepony in the face at all.