"Ooh, what's this, Sunny?"
Sunny Starscout looked up from her box of musty books and glanced across the living room to the kitchen. Izzy was surrounded by stacks of tins, jars and instant hay packs, and she had one oddly-shaped can floating inches from her muzzle as she squinted at its label.
“Sir… strom… ming?” said Izzy as she rotated the can on its axis. “Huh. That doesn’t sound like any language I know.”
“How many languages do you know?” asked Hitch as he clambered up from the basement, covered in a thin layer of sweat and dust.
Izzy grinned. “Just one, but the point still stands!”
By then, Sunny had gotten close enough to see the object in question, and she first thought that Izzy must’ve found it on the roadside, where it had been sitting for years after falling off somepony’s trade cart. Patches of rust and tarnish covered most of the bright red and yellow paint, and she could just about identify a couple of happy equine figures prancing on either side of the word Surströmming. And from the way the top and bottom bulged outwards, the can looked like it had aspirations of becoming a beach ball at some point.
But after giving it another moment’s thought, Sunny decided that it must’ve been part of her lighthouse’s original inventory. Izzy wouldn’t have waited until now to mention it if she’d picked it up on the roadside.
“I don’t remember seeing this before,” she said as she gingerly tapped on the can with a hoof.
Then again, there had been a lot stuff that they’d accumulated over the years, so maybe nopony had bothered to give it a second thought before tossing it into a crate. Cleaning up after Sprout’s rampage had been an awfully busy and tiring affair for everypony, after all.
“My dad must’ve left it in the basement and forgotten about it,” she concluded.
“You mean like his stash of—”
“Izzy!” she hissed, casting a quick glance at Hitch as she felt her cheeks burn.
Thankfully, he was too focused on the can to pay attention to Izzy’s words. Instead, he simply frowned and asked, “Do you know what it is? Where’d you find it?”
“In the box with jams and pickles.” Izzy’s smile then widened as she floated it higher and pointed at her glowing horn. “Come on, let’s open it and see. I bet it’s something nopony in Maretime Bay has tasted before!”
Hitch yelped and snatched the can out of the air with a hoof.
“Whoa now, I’m not so sure if that’s a good idea,” he said, cradling it away from Izzy. He then scowled at the can and shook his head. “We don’t even know if it’s edible. It could just as easily be an industrial compound that got mixed up with the foodstuffs, and I don’t want anypony to get poisoned on my watch.”
Sunny rolled her eyes and pried the can from his hoof, ignoring his protests as she did so. “Oh come on, we’re not foals. We can just, you know, not eat it if it’s something other than food. I’m sure we can tell the difference.”
Hitch stared at her with half-lidded eyes. “Remember that time your dad had to rush us to the hospital because we ate those beetle grubs?”
“That was because Sprout double-dared us and you know it,” Sunny snapped back with a grin.
Hitch shuddered. “Ugh. I still have nightmares about them wriggling in my mouth…”
“Well, there’s your problem. You’re supposed to fry them first!” Izzy piped up. Shen then stared into the distance and smacked her lips. “Mmm, buttered pine grubs…”
Sunny and Hitch shared a sidelong glance in utter silence.
But before they could say anything in response, Izzy snapped out of her reverie and turned her gaze towards the lift leading up to the lighthouse’s upper floors.
“Hey Zi-Pipp!” she hollered.
Zipp’s voice bounced back down. “Yeah?”
“Do you know any foreign languages? We found something weird!”
Sunny heard a couple of audible thumps as Zipp and Pipp set down whatever they’d been arranging upstairs, and a couple of seconds later, they flitted into the kitchen with a rush of air and fluttering wings. There were splotches of wood lacquer and sawdust on their coats, especially Zipp’s, so Sunny made a quick mental note to recommend the best spot for dipping in the sea, later.
Once they'd landed, Sunny surrendered the can into the elder sister’s hooves for inspection. Zipp made a show of hemming and hawing for a bit whilst Pipp tapped away on her phone, before finally passing it back to her with a shake of her head.
“The words remind me of some old dialect I might’ve seen in the royal archives, but I’m afraid it's not anything I actually understand,” said Zipp. “What is it?”
Hitch shrugged. “We were hoping you could tell us. Sunny and Izzy think it’s food and want to open it, but I’m not sold on the idea. This Surströmming sounds like something you could threaten somepony with…”
“Well, I wouldn’t know.” Zipp turned to Pipp. “Any luck?”
Pipp pursed her lips and shook her head. “Ooh, bummer. None of the Pippsqueaks have a clue what it is, and I’ve got zero relevant hits on the search engine. We might have to wait until a language buff comes online.”
“Well, look over here,” said Zipp as she pointed at the side of the can. The tip of her feather brushed on what looked like a fish, with only the tail partially visible and the rest covered by rust. “It’s most likely seafood, if I had to guess.”
“Speaking of which, it’s almost lunch time.” Izzy drummed her hooves on the floor and tilted her horn at the clock. “Why don’t we just open it? If it’s food, we can share it! It’s not like you’re planning to dump it straight into the trash without seeing what’s inside, right?”
As if on cue, Sunny’s stomach growled like a wolf, and she grinned sheepishly when the others giggled at her expense. Not Hitch, though. He just smiled and rolled his eyes.
“Okay, fine,” he said as he rummaged through their groceries. “Help me set the table. Izzy, you open the can—by sanitary means, thank you very much! There’s a can-opener in one of the drawers there.”
The others hummed in agreement, and Sunny found herself swept up in a brief whirl of activity as everypony washed their hooves and prepped for lunch. Before long, they had the dining table set with plates of bread, biscuits, salad and jars of various spreads. Izzy, meanwhile, had acquired the mandated can-opener and practically bounced on the spot as she waited for Pipp to finish addressing her audience.
“Hey there, Pippsqueaks! It’s your favourite five-pony gang again, bringing to you a live un-canning of some Surströmming. No idea what that is, but hey, it’s probably some traditional earth pony seafood that we’re about to try!” said Pipp as everypony huddled around Izzy for the livestream.
Well, everypony except Hitch.
He raised a hoof. “Uh, that might be a little too close for—”
Sunny hooked a foreleg around his shoulder and cut him off with a gentle but firm tug. “Oh come on, it’ll be fine!”
Once they were all in view, Izzy’s horn flared as she magically pressed the sharp point of the can opener to the bulging metal. “Okay, here we go. Three… two… one!”
Sunny remembered it starting with a sound.
There was the expected scraping noise of metal piercing metal, followed by what her brain could only identify as the sound that ponies made the day after eating the Chilli and Onion Taco Special at King Sombrero’s. Whatever Surströmming was, it did not appreciate being violated with a can-opener, and its vengeance was swift and spurty.
They gasped or yelped as it sprayed droplets into their faces, and Sunny had a few seconds of stunned silence to observe a mixture of pinkish-brown fluid, foam and meaty fibre bubbling out of the hole in the can.
Then, Sunny sniffed the air.
It had an almost pleasant aroma of salted fish or seaweed at first, but that was quickly overtaken by something reminiscent of the insides of her rollerblade shoes when left unwashed for too long. Another second passed, and the fumes graced her nostrils with a rapid series of odours in quick succession: bad milk, old gym socks, rotten eggs, that dead fish floating in the tide pool for the last few days, and finally, the actual next-day product of somepony’s encounter with the Chilli and Onion Taco Special in the outhouse.
Her stomach, initially tantalised by the promise of seafood, instantly twisted itself into a knot at the betrayal and pushed bile up her throat in retaliation.
Sunny retched in perfect unison with her friends.
Izzy’s magical grip on the can-opener flared up, wrenching it with so much force that it tore a couple of inches along the seam of the can before flying off to embed itself into the wall. Her magic then fizzled out and surrendered the can to gravity, allowing the resulting impact on the table to splatter more of its wet, chunky contents at them.
“Aagh! It’s in my mane!” Pipp shrieked, somehow managing to keep her phone steady whilst haphazardly fanning her wings and beating a hasty retreat from the table.
“What is that? What the hay is that smell?” Hitch reeled back, covering his mouth with a hoof as his cheeks ballooned out. “Hurghg!”
“Oh, oh that reeks.” Zipp’s eyes watered, and her cheeks had turned a sickly shade of green as she staggered away from the table like a drunk mare. She then tripped on a box and toppled to the ground, where she began dry-heaving.
Sunny scrunched her muzzle, but it didn’t help with the smell. The insides of her nostrils burned with an acrid, salty tang—had she sucked some of it up? She snorted and blew strings of mucus out, but it barely provided any relief.
“Your magic!” she cried, turning to Izzy. “Seal it in a bubble or something!”
Izzy didn’t answer. Instead, she simply slumped until she sat on her haunches, then flopped onto her back with all four limbs splayed out, staring at the ceiling with her mouth open. Her tongue hesitantly cleaned some flecks of the can’s contents from her lips, and her pupils immediately shrank to pinpricks.
“Izzy! Are you okay?”
One eye twitched, and she murmured, “I have tasted the Abyss, and behold, it tasted me back…”
“Girl, snap—urp!—snap out of it!” Hitch gurgled as he tottered on all fours. “We need your magic to clean up the spill and put it back in the can!”
Izzy shook her head to clear the glassy look from her eyes, but she still didn’t acknowledge anypony’s presence. She simply closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and then raised one hoof in the air and waved it around as she vocalised notes like a singer practicing for an audition.
“Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi…”
Followed by what sounded like an attempt to evict her tonsils.
“Huergh-huargh-hargh-pluergh-urgh-blargh!”
Hitch groaned. “We’ve lost her.”
It was up to Sunny, then.
She gritted her teeth and marched towards the can, swallowing hard to suppress her gag reflex as the fumes besieged her nostrils afresh. She grabbed the can and then went to the window as quickly as she dared, wincing as some fluid dribbled onto her hoof.
Wrenching the curtains aside, Sunny stretched her foreleg back to hurl the can into the sea…
“Wait!”
The weight vanished from her hoof with a tinny clank, and Sunny whirled around to find Hitch in possession of the cursed object.
She blinked. “Again? What the hay?”
“You can’t just toss this out there where it can poison the environment. Think of the wildlife!” he cried, gingerly placing it back on the table. He gagged a little, wiped his mouth on his upper leg, and then flipped an upside-down bowl onto the can. “Until we know what it is, we need to keep it secured in here until I can call for a hazmat team.”
As if on cue, a passing squirrel cheerfully leapt onto the windowsill. It barely managed to chirp a greeting before it uttered a strangled squeak, and it promptly scampered away after dropping an appropriately-themed parting gift.
Hitch slammed the window shut. “See?”
Sunny opened her mouth to argue, but taking in that deep breath made her stomach send up another wave of bile.
“Hear that, colts and fillies?” Pipp gasped dramatically at her phone whilst rinsing her mane in the kitchen sink. “We might’ve accidentally contaminated ourselves with a deadly chemical! Or a horrible disease!”
“Hey, that’s not confirmed,” Hitch called out. “But until it is, it’s my duty to ensure it doesn’t leave this place, so—”
Zipp cut him off with an especially raspy dry heave as she leaned against a chair for support. After a few seconds of heavy breathing, she glared at him and said, “What about us, you big goof? We’re already in here!”
Hitch cantered somewhat unsteadily to the phone and dialled away. “I was getting to that. I—oh no. Why’s the line dead?”
“Phone’s down until the guys come to fix the wiring tomorrow, remember?” Sunny rasped.
Hitch scowled, then turned to the sink. “Pipp? Can you get City Hall on that?”
“Sorry—blech!—would love to, but Vodapone still hasn’t integrated with your network.”
“Oh, drat.”
“Forget it,” said Zipp as she launched herself towards the front door.
“No!”
Hitch broke into a gallop and somehow managed to slam into the door before Zipp could lay a hoof on it. He then sat on his haunches and spread out his forelegs to bar the way, saying, “You can’t leave! We’re all contaminated with this stuff, and who knows what might be unleashed on the unsuspecting populace if it gets loose? There may be casualties!”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Zipp growled. Sunny could practically hear her eyes rolling. “I’m not planning to waltz into town and start kissing ponies. I just want to get some fresh air. Quit acting like it’s a zombie virus.”
Hitch’s eyes narrowed. “The colour of your face suggests otherwise. Also, as the sheriff, I’m exercising my authority to declare this lighthouse a quarantine zone.”
“Princess. You’re outranked.” Zipp flared her wings. “I demand passage.”
He snorted and lifted his butt just to thump it back onto the floor for emphasis. “Wrong hierarchy. Denied!”
“Ah, young love…” said a nasally voice right next to Sunny.
Sunny stifled a whinny and whirled around, vaguely aware of more snarky remarks being exchanged between the sheriff and princess. “Izz? You’re back!”
Izzy tilted her head. “Back from where? I didn’t go to the bathroom…”
It took Sunny a moment to realise why she sounded like she had a cold; her horn was glowing as it projected a tiny purple dome that covered both of her nostrils. She then needed another moment to shake off that tiny bit of envy. Unicorns and their borderline cheaty magic…
She shook her head and sighed. “Never mind. Let’s just…”
She blinked.
Sniffed the air, just a tiny bit.
“Is it just me, or is the smell not as bad as when we first opened it?” she asked, sniffing again.
The salty aroma still stung the insides of her nostrils, but this time, she could smell more of the fish than its less savoury accomplices. Her stomach tentatively rumbled at the prospect of recognisable sustenance, though some queasiness still remained from the all-too-fresh memory of betrayal.
Pipp, who’d been streaming her sister’s altercation with Hitch, switched the camera to selfie mode and paused to brace herself. She scrunched up her muzzle, took a whiff… and then grimaced as she said, “Huh. She’s sort of right… Not great. Not terrible. Like the dumpster truck passing your house after collecting your trash.”
Sunny slowly plodded back to the table carefully lifted the bowl off the can. A fresh wave of briny scent filled the kitchen, but once again, it didn’t have quite the same punch as the first wave.
Her stomach rumbled.
She turned to Izzy. “You got some of it in your mouth, earlier. What’d it taste like?”
Izzy blinked slowly and licked her lips. “Fishy.”
Sunny flicked her gaze to the artwork of fish on the can, then looked back at her and deadpanned, “You don’t say.”
“But I do.”
“I—you…” She shook her head and huffed. “I mean, can you elaborate on that?”
Izzy tapped a hoof on her chin as she gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. Then, a bright smile broke out on her muzzle as she shook her head and said, “Nope! I don’t think I will. I mean, I could… but I’m not sure if my sanity can take it. I think it’s got a restraining order on my brain.”
“Right. Forget I asked,” she muttered.
“Already done!”
Sunny rolled her eyes and looked at the can.
If she squinted just right, the glistening chunks looked like they could go on a sandwich.
More stomach rumbling followed.
Well, she was hungry…
And, aside from the funky smell, the evidence kinda suggested that Surströmming was food…
Her dad wouldn’t have kept it around if it was dangerous, right?
Only one way to find out…
She reached out and scraped a small chunk from the lip of the can onto her hoof, and then raised it to her muzzle.
It was fish, all right. She could see the characteristic lines of musculature in the pinkish meat, and that hard disc was probably the gill flap. Tiny bones stuck out at odd angles from the lump like hair, and one silvery side of the meat still had some scales on it. And to top it all off, the meat had a thin layer of pale froth left over from the can’s fluids.
Some part of her rebelled at the thought of putting it into her mouth, but she couldn’t help thinking that there must’ve been a reason ponies had gone to all the trouble of packing it like a can of sardines. Sardines were pretty good, so…
“Do it.”
Sunny blinked and found Pipp watching her from across the table, slowly dripping water from her partially wrung-out mane as she aimed the phone’s camera at her.
That grin looked a little too wide and displayed a little too much teeth as she fluttered her wings and chanted, “For the fans. The content must flow!”
Why was she friends with these ponies, again?
She opened her mouth…
“Whoa-whoa-whoa, what are you doing?” she heard Hitch cry, followed by the pounding of hooves on the floor.
Sunny popped it into her mouth just as he tripped on something and crashed into the table with a yelp.
Then, her world shrank until it was confined to her mortal body.
At first, she felt as if she’d crunched down on a salt lick. Then, her legs nearly buckled when the flavours exploded across her tongue and sent a miasma slithering up into her nostrils from the back of her throat.
Salt. Seaweed. Old cheese. Rotten eggs. Fish. Curdled milk. All marinated in sweaty socks.
Her stomach clenched, but she fought down her gag reflex and focused on the few flavours which didn’t threaten to bring up everything she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours for a party on the floor.
Fish.
Tasty fish.
Very tasty fish.
Stronger than any she’d had before.
Honestly, the real problem was just the smell. If she pretended her nostrils didn’t exist, it wasn’t too bad.
She chewed. Soft, almost mushy. But still recognisable as fish meat, though the bones had gone soft and crumbled between her teeth.
She swallowed. It went smoothly down her throat and settled as an almost comfortable weight in her stomach.
A couple of blinks later, Sunny’s world expanded to include the rest of reality.
Hitch was standing beside her, whilst Pipp, Zipp and Izzy observed from the other side of the table.
Zipp did look a little less green, probably thanks to the way she held up a wing to press her feathers across her nostrils. Sunny wondered if she’d perfumed her feathers, or if they were actually useful for filtering out scents.
“How do you feel?” asked Hitch.
Sunny licked her teeth and smacked her lips to re-sample the flavour. “Fishy. It’s really strong. Probably needs something bland to… cushion it a bit. Bread and mayo, I think. And lettuce, lots of lettuce.”
She reached out and loaded her plate with suitable goodies to create the perfect sandwich for restraining the salty wrath of the meat.
“You’re kidding,” Zipp deadpanned. “You’re kidding, right?”
Pipp waved aside her remark with a wing. “Shush! Don’t distract her.”
“Does this count as assisted poisoning?” asked Izzy as she tilted her head. “Because I feel like we should be staging an intervention.”
Hitch raised a foreleg like he was about to slap the sandwich out of her hoof, but apparently thought better of it and set it back down whilst biting his lip.
When Sunny took a bite of her creation, the slightly watery sweetness of the lettuce, the starchiness of the bread and the creamy mayo did a great job of absorbing the worst of the odours wafting from the fish meat, and they also tamed the saltiness to something actually enjoyable. She chewed slowly, savouring the mixture of aggressive and soothing flavours, then swallowed and hummed with a faint smile on her muzzle as it sated the hunger in her belly.
She grinned. “You should try some, guys. It’s actually not bad when you eat it like this.”
“Now, that is the face of somepony who has experienced enlightenment!” said Pipp to her phone. She then glanced at Sunny again and shrugged. “Or cosmic horror. Take your pick.”
“It’s got her. There’s no going back…” Izzy murmured.
“I’m serious, everypony. You get used to it.”
“You know, there’s the possibility that our senses are just tuning out the stink because we’ve been stuck in it” – Zipp turned and scowled at Hitch, careful to keep her feathers in place over her nostrils – “for so long that our brains are just denying reality to protect us. That goes double if you put it in your mouth.”
Sunny frowned, but before she could come up with a retort, Pipp’s phone chimed.
“Oh, would you look at that. It turns out that Surströmming is actually food.” Pipp tapped on the screen and held it up for everypony to see. “One of our new earth pony Pippsqueaks found this pic in an archive, and it’s pretty much a perfect match—it showcases brands that’ve gone out of business in the last century.”
“Hmm, I wonder why…” Hitch muttered.
Sunny peered at the screen. The can looked almost exactly the same as the one on the table, except that it didn’t have years of wear and tear on its surface. Without all that rust covering the artwork, she saw that the fish tail was actually connected to the torso of a pony.
Was that just a brand mascot, or were seaponies actually real?
Never mind. Mystery for another day.
She shook her head to clear it and smirked at Hitch. “See? It’s safe to eat.”
“I stand by my caution. You can never be too careful,” Hitch said, narrowing his eyes. “I’m more concerned about the fact that you decided to eat it before we got proof that it was actually food…”
“Well, I’m happy it worked out for you, at least!” Izzy piped up as she magically lifted several slices of bread and fruit onto a plate, which she then carried off to the couch in the living room. “I’m just gonna sit way, way over here, where it’s safe.”
Pipp panned the camera over to her. “Aww, you’re not gonna have any?”
“Nope! Already did, and I know a Mayonnaise Incident waiting to happen when I see it.”
Pipp panned again. “Sis?”
Zipp simply glared.
Pipp wasn’t fazed in the slightest. If anything, her smile only got wider and sweeter. “Come on, for the fans? The heir to the throne wouldn’t be defeated by food, right? Hypothetical scenario: one day you’re invited to visit a foreign nation and had to try their weird cuisine—what’re you gonna do? Might as well get some practice now, right?”
“If any foreign nation served me this, I’d conclude that they were trying to assassinate me,” Zipp growled.
“But what if they’re already friends with us, and we didn’t want to offend them?”
Zipp scowled at her for several seconds. Then her wings drooped, and she grimaced when the odour regained access to her nostrils. “Fine. Just one bite.”
They watched as she fixed herself a sandwich similar to Sunny’s, and then sliced it diagonally from corner to corner.
She tossed one half to Hitch. “If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.”
Hitch caught it on reflex, then stretched his leg out and angled his neck away when he realised what he was holding. “This isn’t a duel.”
“It is now, sheriff. I’m throwing the horseshoe. Defend your honour!”
Hitch stared at her with a creased brow, as if he was solving some complex equation in his head. Then, his shoulders slumped as he sucked in a deep breath and sighed. “Well, if it’s not you, it’ll be Sunny, wouldn’t it? I guess it won’t kill me to try…”
“Famous last words…” Izzy’s voice faintly drifted from the couch.
They faced off for moment, sizing each other up, before finally biting into their half-sandwiches at the same time. They maintained eye contact as they chewed, but their gazes rapidly lost focus as their jaws slowed, until they dropped their sandwiches, covered their mouths with their hooves and scrambled towards the waste bin, knocking aside several boxes and scattering packing peanuts all over the floor in the process.
They bumped their heads together as they spat into the bin and dry-heaved into it for twenty seconds straight.
“And here come the likes and upvotes…” said Pipp as she gleefully recorded it for posterity.
Zipp groaned and clung to the bin as if it was a life-preserver amidst a shipwreck. “Ugh. I’m done. This is the culinary equivalent of necromancy.”
“Yeah…” Hitch stuck his tongue out and dribbled strands of saliva into the bin. “Sunny, whatever the reason you can enjoy that, you must’ve gotten it from your dad. It’s probably the reason he had it in the first place. You couldn’t pay me enough to eat that again.”
“What about a kiss from a princess?” asked Pipp. She panned the camera and swept a hoof dramatically towards Zipp, waggling her eyebrows. “That princess, to be specific.”
Hitch’s and Zipp’s eyes widened, and they stared at each other for several seconds before they both turned to Pipp and said, “Shut up!” in unison.
Sunny couldn’t help giggling along with Pipp as their faces developed shades of red to go with the green.
“That’s not a no-o-o!” Izzy sang from the couch.
Hitch flushed even more and stuck his whole head into the bin, whilst Zipp glared daggers at her sister and muttered, “This is payback for ditching you at the concert, isn’t it?”
Pipp smiled at her phone and tossed her matted mane. “And that, Pippsqueaks, is why you never cross a content creator, especially when she’s your sister!”
That got a snort from Hitch, followed by another bout of gagging. Zipp, on the other hoof, apparently didn’t feel like contesting the point and simply shared in his misery, hugging the bin for dear life.
Sunny decided that enough was enough, so she took the can and stowed it in the fridge where it couldn’t spread any more of its odour—but only after pulling out a slimy strip of fish and stuffing it into another sandwich. She set it on the table, then went over to help Hitch and Zipp get back onto their hooves. Meanwhile, Pipp had finally taken pity on them and ended the livestream.
“Feeling better?” she asked as she passed them a pair of napkins.
“Yeah. Good thing it doesn’t last too long,” Hitch mumbled as he wiped drool from his chin. “Five more minutes, and I think I’ll be okay.”
“Brains in denial…” Zipp muttered as she fanned her wings to further disperse the smell.
Pipp giggled. “Look on the bright side: you wouldn’t believe how many new followers we got from today alone!”
“Yeah, sure.” Zipp pumped a hoof feebly. “Woo hoo…”
With the offending can and its contents out of the way, they could finally sit at the table and eat lunch properly, albeit in relative but companionable silence. Hitch and Zipp just needed to start off with some tart stuff like lemonade and oranges to get their appetites up and running again, and it didn’t take them long to dig into the standard fare like Pipp and Izzy. Sunny remained the sole consumer of Surströmming at the table, periodically getting sidelong glances and shudders from the others whilst she savoured the rich mixture of bread, veggies and cheese wrapped around a core of super-salty fish.
However, once they got to dessert, a thunderous series of knocks on the front door shattered the tranquillity of their meal.
“Hitch, are you in there? This squirrel friend of yours wouldn’t stop harassing me until I got here! What’s going on?”
Sunny got up from her seat and hurried to open the door, where she found a scowling Sprout standing on the porch, along with a squirrel nervously fiddling with its paws as it sat on the grass several strides behind him.
“Oh, hello, Sprout,” she said.
She didn’t want to be mean, but that janitor’s jumpsuit somehow looked much better on him than his customary deputy sheriff’s bandolier.
His eyes narrowed, and he pointed a hoof at her. “Don’t hello me, Sunny. Where’s Hitch? I need him to get this dumb squirrel off my flank. Something fishy’s going on here, I can feel it!”
She bit her lip and tapped her hooves together nervously. “Funny you should say that…”
Sprout sniffed, then sputtered and attempted to cough up a lung.
“Wha—what the hay? Did… something die in your house?” he cried in between wheezing breaths.
The squirrel squeaked and hopped around in a panicked circle on the grass.
Sunny opened her mouth to reassure them that everything was okay, but her stomach had other ideas. She froze for a moment, then grimaced as a massive bolus of air swelled its way up from her belly and into her throat. She tried to gulp it back down, but it simply refused to retreat and eventually burst out of her mouth as a gurgling belch.
Her breath stank of decay and regrets, and she could’ve sworn that a passing fly just dropped right out of the air. She cleared her throat, and then did a double take when she saw that she’d given Sprout a very literal windswept manestyle.
“Oops. Excuse me!” she said.
Sprout’s eye twitched.
“Sprout?”
He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, with his glassy, unblinking eyes turned skyward. The squirrel clapped its paws to its cheeks and squealed, then turned tail and fled, bounding over the grass like it had a hawk diving after it.
Sunny simply stared at Sprout, vaguely aware of the sound of approaching hooves, until Izzy arrived on the scene and said, “Wow. Did you deck him in the snout?”
“What? No!”
Sunny spun around as the others crowded at the door and stared at Sprout’s limp body. He was still breathing, but that didn’t make him look any less of a victim.
The silence stretched, until Pipp broke it with a cheerful click from her phone’s camera and said, “Boom. Headshot, and a one-hit K-O. Earth ponies pack a mean right hook, all right!”
All eyes turned back to Sunny.
“Umm… that’s not what it looks like,” she said, gesturing helplessly at him with a hoof. “It was an accident!”
“It’s okay, Sunny, we get it.” Zipp smirked and made air quotes with her feathers. “Accidents happen to guys like him all the time. It’s uncanny, really.”
“I’m serious!” Sunny rubbed the back of her neck and grinned sheepishly. “I, uh… I kind of burped in his face. On accident.”
More silence.
Then, Hitch facehoofed and groaned. “See? I told you there would be casualties. I knew it!”
“Does it really count when it’s him, though?” Pipp wondered aloud.
“Yes, yes it does,” Hitch grumbled as he sat next to Sprout to check his pulse.
Izzy giggled and said, “Well, he should consider himself lucky it didn’t come from the other end!”
Nopony else added to that comment, but Sunny noticed the sisters discreetly taking a step away from her, ears slightly flattened. Izzy still had her muzzle barrier up, so she didn’t have to worry about a sudden and unexpected release.
“It’s safe now, guys.” Sunny patted her belly for emphasis and then snorted when they all looked at her doubtfully. “If you’re that worried, I’ll yell if I feel another one coming, okay? That should give everypony enough time to hit the deck.”
“Great, you’re now classified as a weapon of mass destruction.” Hitch sniggered as he draped one of Sprout’s forelegs over his shoulder. “Sunny with a chance of total pandemonium. I hope you’re happy.”
Sunny snorted and playfully thumped him on the shoulder, but she did give the last part of his remark some thought whilst she helped hoist Sprout onto his back. She slowly closed the door, watching the others chat and laugh as they placed him on the couch and returned to finish dessert. Then, with practiced ease and precision, she reached out to straighten the picture frame by the door.
If Dad could’ve seen how they were spending the day, he probably would’ve been laughing along with them. Sunny smiled and trotted to re-join them at the table, bouncing with each step.
She was happy, all right!
Author's Note
You can ~~blame~~ thank Dan for the existence of this story. 
Only finished now because I'm a slow-ass writer. 
