If This Was A Mature Story, I Could Have Called It 'Last-Minute Clopping'
It was considerably easier to wake up before Sun-raising during winter and on the days when she didn't have weather coordinator duties, Rainbow treated avoiding that sad fate as a challenge.
But this day was something of an exception.
Her current alarm clock went off while it was still dark out, and found its faithfulness to duty repaid through the typical medium of exchange: namely, the impact from an irritated forehoof which brought it that much closer to becoming her previous alarm clock.
The cyan limb shook itself a few times. Languidly stretched, testing the joints for flexibility, range of motion, and near-future ease of pulling the foreleg back under the blankets. It was winter: pegasus magic meant Rainbow's house had the heat sealing of a thermal fortress, but general principles still said to keep everything under the layers until summer.
The pegasus yawned. Briefly considered opening her eyes for just long enough to see where the clock had landed this time, once again considered marking a bullseye on the vapor wall, curled her wingtips and got ready to slip back into dream --
-- it's Hearts And Hooves Day.
She was almost sure about that. She knew she had the day off and without work to consider, there was no way she would have set her alarm to go off so criminally early without a cause.
Rainbow, with her eyes still closed, engaged in a series of mental gymnastics. Most of the effort was spent in trying to pin down her current place on the calendar, and she only succeeded after measuring the time since her last pay voucher and using that to project the endless wait until the next.
...it's Hearts and Hooves Day. (Which, according to the Weather Bureau's schedule for both Ponyville and Canterlot, meant clear and cold: the snow which had been deposited on the ground two days ago wasn't going anywhere.) Gotta get up. Six limbs reluctantly began to shift, with multiple layers of blankets distorting accordingly. Be there before noon. Maybe before ten, because earlier is better.
The universe, caught by surprise in the presence of fully unexpected heresy, completely failed to catch fire.
Everypony said it was important to do it early. Which was completely true, for a fairly small and rather reluctant to speak value of 'everypony'. The perfect H&H gift. Given to the recipient at what's gonna be the perfect time. And I need to get up because I have to find somepony who'll wrap it for me. Maybe Twilight or Rarity. She stretched again. Hate wrapping. Mouth tastes like glue for a day, or until I find where that last piece of tape stuck to my teeth. Somepony else can wrap the gift.
Where did I put the gift?
She searched her memory. No perfect results flew forward to present themselves in open pride.
...where did I put the gift?
What did I get for a gift?
Plumbing the depths now. Decades of Wonderbolts statistics were inelegantly shoved aside because for the next few seconds, they were a little less important --
-- Rainbow's eyes opened. This was a requirement. You couldn't blink in sheer horror unless your eyes were open first.
I didn't get a gift.
THERE'S NO GIFT.
Her wings flared out at the same moment when her legs desperately kicked against the mattress, and blankets flew in all directions.
...it was just common sense! Everypony (same previous value) had told her that the gift needed to be perfect, although they'd been oddly unwilling to provide her with a few helpful examples. Think about having to find the perfect gift too much and you would start to stress. So if you didn't think about it at all, then stress wouldn't occur. That was basic logic! Dump all thought into the mental subbasement because instinct was usually superior anyway, and then her subconscious would be working on the problem. Eventually, it would have offered up a solution, and then she would have totally gone out and paid for anything which her remaining fraction of salary allowed.
So the fact that she hadn't gotten anything meant her subconscious had been lying down on the job, and how could any part of that be Rainbow's fault? It was her brain, and multiple previously-unfair small claims court judgments seemed to believe she had very little control over what it came up with.
Also, her time was very important. She had a lot to do. For example, there was sleeping. You needed to sleep in order to live, so sleeping had priority. Napping added to total rest time and meant you lived longer. Also, there was eating. You couldn't forget eating, at least not for long. And then there was time with friends and stunt practice and somewhere way down the list was doing work so the pay vouchers would continue to come in, and what about the missions? What would happen if she got called to a Bearer mission while she'd been doing something so silly as shopping?
...actually, that probably would have looked really impressive to everypony else in the area, especially if somepony had come get her. Teleporting a Heroine Of Equestria off to glory in public had to leave an impression. But it also would have disrupted the store. Possibly even scared the herd. So not having shopped for the gift was just Rainbow being responsible. Retroactively.
Except that now it was Hearts And Hooves Day, it was the holiday already when her subconscious had been sleeping on its one important job for nearly two moons, and the recipient...
...gotta make an impression, have to get this right, everypony says so...
She was still in her bedroom. The lights had been activated, all the better to allow magenta eyes to stare at everything in it with increasing desperation. Her wingtips were fluttering, she was breathing too fast, her ears were going back --
-- I've still got a few hours. Even with the travel time, there's some left over. And I can just break the speed limit on my way in. It's not as if anypony checks that part of the air path anyway.
There's still time.
Anypony can get the perfect gift when they've got moons to plan.
Her breathing began to slow.
You have to be special to pull it off this fast.
And if there was anything Rainbow truly knew about herself, it was that she was very special indeed.
She only had a few hours. She also had priorities, and so the first thing she did was check the charge on the heat lamps around Tank's terrarium. Fresh water was put out, and she left a carefully-molded kale heart in front of the snoozing shell because in three minutes, the day was going to shift into being all about making the ideal impression on a first-time gift recipient (and it was the first gift Rainbow was going to give, the recipient didn't know anything was coming from her at all and Rainbow had to get it right) -- but just now, it was about caring for those you loved.
And once that was done, she began to pursue the practical route. Namely, she started to shop, and did so in a place where everything was free.
...well, previously paid for. But right now, that counted. Because she was supposed to be giving the recipient a personal gift, and what was more personal than something Rainbow already owned? That was all stuff which she'd already found worthy! It was like opening up a courtroom where all of the verdicts had been predetermined, and that reminded her that she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about having the judges for the crash site damages cases greeting her by name while asking about how Tank was doing --
-- anyway, she owned lots of stuff! And it had to be great stuff, because she owned it! So...
One of my Wonderbolts rookie cards?
Actually, the recipient probably had one already. Possibly several, which might range across a good number of the original variants because an excited rookie had experienced some trouble with remaining still for her first photo shoot: the resulting blurs were numbered accordingly. But then Rainbow remembered that gifts were normally accompanied by cards of some kind, and smoothly decided to swap in one of her own because that was one less thing to shop for. Then she signed it, making sure to keep her mouthwriting uniquely illegible because that would both prove the scrawl's source and help the card appreciate in value. The recipient would probably appreciate that.
She technically lost four seconds to snickering at the perceived pun, but considered them to have been well-used.
Cooking equipment felt like a potentially suitable gift. The recipient traveled a lot, and that meant home-cooked meals were at a premium. Rainbow personally enjoyed such meals, and so spent two minutes examining her own kitchen before remembering that she owned very little in the way of kitchen appliances. Because Rainbow truly loved a home-cooked meal, and made sure to have the majority of them at somepony else's home.
Out of the kitchen, clearing the area just before the encrusted dish which had been sitting in the sink since autumn tried to take a snap at her. Back to the bedroom.
None of Rarity's dresses. We're different sizes. And Rarity might get annoyed. 'I need to check your measurements for the fifth time' annoyed. Needle-annoyed.
Can't replace those books. Not with the editions involved. Plus I don't know what she reads and I literally do not have time to teach her how awesome this stuff is.
Literally do not have time...
...is that another pun?
'I literarally do not have time...'
Check with Twilight on pun.
She snickered anyway. Her gaze fell upon the dresser next to her bed, and the hoof-shaped carved notch which allowed her access to a favorite drawer.
...maybe...
Yeah! What's more personal than a toy?
Rainbow's subconscious was presumably still snoozing on the job. Her survival instinct, which seldom found any chance to truly express itself, desperately surged towards the control center of her brain.
...maybe that's a little too personal.
I mean, I don't even know what she likes. Not everypony has the same taste in toys.
Plus I'd need to clean it first.
A lot.
...and then somepony would have to wrap it.
Which would probably still be Rarity.
Or Twilight.
Awkward...
She turned away from the slightly-sticky drawer notch.
Nothing in her house seemed to be suitable for gifting. It was mostly all just coming across as hers and for the first time, that didn't feel good enough.
Still time.
I had a thought back there...
And now Rainbow was speeding through the winter darkness of predawn in Ponyville because seriously, what was better than homemade food? And having it made in somepony else's home wasn't a problem, because there had already been love and consideration and care put into its creation. Nopony had said any of that needed to come from Rainbow.
She wasn't the only pony out and about, of course. Moon was raised early in the winter, Sun turned up late, and none of it ever seemed to affect commuting hours. Multiple residents had done the same thing as she: kicked on a winter jacket (although hers had wings fully exposed, and she'd taken saddlebags because she'd need to carry whatever she got) and headed outside. It was just that most of them were presumably heading towards work, and she was just going to pick up a gift for a very special recipient. The perfect gift.
...she'd chosen her destination before launching from the cloud house, and was beelining directly for it.
It's the perfect idea. For the perfect gift.
Why were so many other ponies heading the same way?
Nopony else is gonna come up with a perfect idea.
Fast-moving, wide-eyed, galloping ponies, with their hooves crunching through the remnants of plowed snow...
They shouldn't have thought of the same thing --
Rainbow accelerated.
As far as Rainbow was concerned, Sugarcube Corner sold homemade food. The Cakes lived in the building. That totally counted. And the residents started their workday early, because tradition said the bread rose with Celestia and profit meant you needed to be capable of feeding ponies before the Canterlot commuters got on the first train. They were also likely to be open for the holiday, because H&H oddly wasn't the sort of occasion where everything shut down and you could get some really good napping time in because there was absolutely nothing else to do. So it made perfect sense for Rainbow to go there.
Based on the visual evidence, it had also made perfect sense for at least fifty other ponies.
Rainbow stared down. Retook the count, and then reconsidered. Maybe seventy. She was only seeing the outside portion of the herd, and wasn't sure exactly how many could fit comfortably inside the bakery.
Ninety?
Or uncomfortably...
I could try to cut the line.
Several dozen ponies, all of whom seemed to have rather rudely picked up on both the thought and the sound of a wing flare at the same time, glared up at her. Every last one located her instantly, and they all seemed perfectly willing to rename the holiday in her honor. Homicide By Hooves Day probably had something going for it, although Rainbow wasn't sure what the cards would look like and when it came to gifting hoofblades, the practical limit was four.
She only had a few hours to work with. Actually being alive to experience them felt important.
I could try to have the business end of the line come to me...
She didn't swoop towards the door. Instead, she carefully forfeited a share of altitude, keeping the descent purely vertical, remaining at the back of the herd while making sure she stayed just far enough up so that the earth ponies would have some trouble jumping at her. Started the hover, and took a chance.
"PINKIE!"
Most of the herd managed to chorus on the soft groan. The remainder rather more wisely busied itself with getting out of the way, and a blur of curls raced down the resulting aisle.
The baker came to a stop about a body length in front of Rainbow. The curls stopped flouncing, and did so unevenly. Portions of the tail were sagging. A cloud of flour detached itself from the mare's fur and fell onto cobblestone in her place.
"What?" the harried baker yelped, and Rainbow almost pulled back. "It's Hearts And Hooves Day, Rainbow! Unless it's a mission or a personal problem which needs a scroll or something really really important like me forgetting your birthday, I've got to get back in there! I can't let the Cakes deal with this crush on their own! And I know I didn't forget your birthday --"
"-- it's the holiday!" Cyan forehooves, which seldom had to deal with the imposition of a street, were free to frantically gesture. "I need a gift! For a special somepony!"
Pinkie blinked.
"...you have a special somepony," emerged at the surprisingly low speed of stun. "A special somepony."
Rainbow thought it over.
"Sort of."
"You," Pinkie repeated. "And you're just telling me now, for the first time, on this day --"
"-- it's the only day!" Rainbow quickly insisted. "It's... Pinkie, she's lonely. Everypony says so. That she doesn't have anypony, and this day..." She nearly looked away. "...when you don't have anypony, it can kind of hurt. So this is the day when I wanted to give her a gift. The perfect gift. So she wouldn't feel so lonely any more. And I'd make a good impression, and when you make a good impression, it can mean..."
The hind hooves weren't in contact with stone either, and shuffled awkwardly in the air.
"...it might mean everything," she finished. "It could mean being in the lead. And she travels a lot --"
"-- she --" Pinkie valiantly tried.
"-- so I don't think she gets a lot of home cooking. A sampler could really help. Not too big a platter, because I've gotta balance it all the way to her. Plus it can't have a lot of calories because she watches her figure." The pause was actually thoughtful. "She said something about everypony watching her figure already and she's just the one doing it from the inside. So if you just put something together for me and bring it out --"
The baker took a breath.
"Rainbow," she carefully began as the herd, watching all of it, began to lower its collective vocalization into the danger range of Murmur. "It's Hearts And Hooves Day --"
"-- I know! And I came here first! After I left my house. Do you wrap?"
"-- and ponies place their orders moons in advance! About a fourth of the ones here are coming to pick them up! And the rest are here because they didn't get anything until the last minute, they forgot, and they just show up because they're hoping we'll have something left over! It's always like this on the holiday, Rainbow, like this every time, and I know how much we all prepared this morning, I counted ponies on the way out to you, and I'm not going to have anything left! We never do! There's just enough for the ponies who were already here!"
She briefly glanced backwards. Winced.
"Minus three," she told the crowd. "Four if you count Rainbow. Unless you have a preorder which I wasn't there for, because otherwise I would have remembered you placing it. That's a margin of error. Up to -- three. But all of those are waiting for pickup. It's just the last-minute stuff which is going to run out. Again."
The herd, temporarily distracted by trying to figure out exactly which three members were supposed to be trying for something else, switched into a sort of low rumble. Rainbow stared. A desperate dual summoning cry of "PINKIE!" emerged from the bakery.
"I've got to get back in there!" Pinkie shouted, and the curls blurred through the start of the turn. "Rainbow, I want to help you, but I can't!" With a degree of open offense, "And you didn't even tell any of us that you've finally got --"
"-- just make me something fresh after the crowd clears!" Rainbow yelled. "I can wait a little while --"
"-- we're out of flour!" the blur protested. "Out of everything! We made as much as we had supplies for, as much as the cases hold! We sell out every year and then the Cakes take the rest of the day off because they're each other's special somepony and they still mean it! Rainbow, I'm sorry, I am, but it can't be me or them!"
Ponies moved. The aisle reopened. Desperate hooves pounded towards the bakery, and the final words were blasted backwards above a hard-lashing tail.
"And you should have gotten something before this!"
The baker vanished. Rainbow's hover faltered. The herd stared at a confirmed intruder.
"If you leave right now," one of the mares half-hissed, "it'll only be three who don't get things. Unless they have preorders." The unicorn briefly checked over the rest of the group. "We should count off preorders."
The herd nodded. Stared at Rainbow, and began to mutter again. Forehooves made scraping motions against fragments of snow.
The 'being alive' thing still felt important. Plus having a gift sent postmortem clearly required having something to send first.
Rainbow left.
She had friends and when it came to sourcing the perfect gift, all of them were a lost cause. The library was out because even if Rainbow could solve the book problem, anything she got there eventually had to go back. Rarity was always going to insist on measurements (up to six times) and when it came to pets, the recipient traveled a lot. With animals, that didn't exactly make her an ideal companion and making the right match for a better candidate was known to take more hours than Rainbow had. Fluttershy was out.
...actually, Rainbow felt herself to have a pretty good idea for a match already...
...no. Tank had this stubborn insistence on being a boy. Besides, even if he'd had the common sense to change his mind, any resulting Tankette wouldn't have had a special someone of her own. The eggs wouldn't have been fertilized.
No pets. But Rainbow had still been stuck on thoughts of food, so --
-- oh, come on! You're the one who keeps saying that it's just about the perfect edible! And the right cultural -- cultist -- cultivar would be great for an athlete! So why are you slacking off just when I actually need you, Miss Workaholic? Why isn't there anything for sale? You could totally bring something out to me if you really wanted --
-- what do you mean, 'apples don't grow in winter'? And whose fault is that?
...
...oh.
...no. Totally not my fault. Because you could obviously have a really big greenhouse or something if you wanted to and -- look, I don't make the schedule! I just enforce it! Ponies should understand that. Instead of blaming me for all of the cold. And snow. And just glaring at me while their forehooves are nudging this huge snowpile together because they're gonna kick it at me over and over until my poor feathers just get soaked with the white stuff which still isn't my fault and Applejack, whatcha doin'?
And then it was back to Ponyville. After her wings stopped dripping.
It wasn't the sort of holiday which had every shop closed. But far too many were, probably because the owners wanted to spend that time with their special somepony instead of, just by way of priority sorting, making sure Rainbow found the chance to create happiness. And then they could close. But no, most of them hadn't even opened, presumably because they didn't care about perfect gifts. Or Rainbow.
She kicked on a few shop doors. Just the places where she saw lights on, of course! Even if that included those shops which had their owners living above them, it still counted as lights on for the store, right? Just to see if they would open for her. In the name of Hearts And Hooves Day --
-- oh.
Yeah. Sorry about the timing.
Really wasn't looking at the curtain shadows you two were making. Just the light. Swear.
Well, now that you're out of bed anyway, how about you open the front door and --
-- there were a lot of oddly-moody ponies around on a holiday which was mostly meant for love. And a really surprisingly amount of accurately-kicked snow. (Ponyville had become collectively accustomed to aiming at a speeding target.)
Okay, there were a few stores open. But most of those were pointless! Rainbow's intended recipient had quills, and she knew that because when said recipient was dealing with Rainbow, she'd been known to bite a few in half. And when it came to the rest of that shop, you couldn't carry a sofa in saddlebags.
The central difference between a Daring Do-described castle siege and what was happening to the most standard gift sections of Barnyard Bargains was the lack of uniforms. (Rainbow was willing to let aisle endcaps substitute for ramparts.) However, just about all of Cookery had been left untouched, and that gave her twenty minutes of frantic browsing before realizing that she didn't understand what half of it did. However, she did get to see that the store's greeting card section had been fully wiped out, and proudly considered herself to be ahead of the game there.
The crowd at Bon-Bon's place was worse than the one at Sugarcube Corner. Rainbow risked cutting the line and, for her trouble, won temporary custody of a bon-bon. This was immediately followed by winning the personal attention of Bon-Bon, and Rainbow wasn't sure if any pun was involved there. But when it came to getting banned from the candy shop again, there was a surprising number of kicks.
(One. When Bon-Bon was kicking you out, it took one impact and somehow, that always came as a surprise. But if you needed to reach a higher number via average, you just factored in the snowflakes in the Rainbow-receiving plow pile.)
It was all costing her time. Ponyville didn't seem to have anything she could use, and Rainbow needed to travel anyway...
This Canterlot pharmacy claimed that it never closed. It was open during every hour under both Sun and Moon, which gave the capital's ponies that much more time to commit copyright infringement on what had been Rainbow's brilliant idea -- and, as much to the point, should have been hers alone. It was the concept which said there still had to be something left on the shelves in a never-closed store after a major purchasing rush made by those who didn't have good reasons to totally-not-actually-procrastinate. Anything which hadn't been claimed by obvious scavengers had to be an item which was so special as to take an equally special pony to fully recognize its superior qualities. And Rainbow knew she was special.
A special pony, trying to find the perfect gift for a recipient who was just a little bit lonely --
-- except that the store had been open for the whole of the holiday, including those parts which Luna had personally ushered in. And during that entire time, criminal ponies had taken Rainbow's brilliant idea and blatantly committed copyright infringement. She was entirely certain that she was owed a significant number of bits, and perhaps some of the judges who asked after Tank would be willing to award them. It was just a matter of finding out who to sue. In Rainbow's experience, ponies usually had no trouble in working out that part. Especially when their answer somehow turned out to be her.
She still had a few options, of course. But the candy was gone. Most of the gift sets had been wiped out. Nosing over a first aid kit was a possibility, but it just didn't feel like a considerate one. Anypony could get a first aid kit and as far as Rainbow was concerned, a pony who was about to sue her for having a crash site tear up their garden could at least let her use a few bandages first. She needed a gift which demonstrated some thought, or at least a really quality level of instinct. An offering which said the recipient meant something to Rainbow...
Nearly all of the gift sets were gone. Those which remained seemed to be focused on three subjects: the primary was Perfume, but the secondary meant Princesses and as soon as the palace caught the distributors, everything would move into Cease & Desist. The alicorns famously didn't license their likenesses for retail products, and that meant anything hosting a poorly-rendered image of either sibling was a knockoff.
Rainbow started at the burnt-orange blotch which substituted for Sun on the elder sibling's poorly-rendered hip, and furiously contemplated the injustice of it all.
Knockoff palace stuff.
Nothing with Bearers.
I should have at least had a Flaking Soap On A Really Brittle Rope set by now. That would show some respect.
She peered closely at the closed box which hosted the Princess Luna Perfume Collection. Some complicated tooth work allowed her to get one edge slightly open, and then she got her snout just close enough to work out a few of the contained scents. These included rotten cabbage, decayed eggs, and a number of other things which were suitable for setting on fire.
Rainbow decided to ignore the Celestia box, because that probably had the ignition chemicals. Anyway, perfume wasn't a good choice for the recipient. Air friction might be enough to start the blaze.
She tried a few more aisles, finally got a visual bead on the store clock, cursed at the numbers a few times until they dug in from sheer offense and refused to move backwards on her behalf. And then she left, overflying a dozen desperate hoping-to-be-consumers on the way.
There's gotta be something. I can try some places in the Heart, because the high-end stores have to be open. But I've only got so many bits, and so much time. The shopping core of Canterlot was well to the opposite from where she needed to go, and flight speed limits were more strongly enforced in the capital.
This isn't fair.
Why are all these ponies shopping now?
This should just be my time --
-- and that was when she spotted the brightly-painted tarp atop the metal frame in the little vacant lot, proudly announcing its message to any desperate pegasi who might have somehow happened to be in the area.
GET YOUR LAST MINUTE H&H DAY GIFTS HERE!
Rainbow, feeling she had very little to lose, diverted towards it.
She was wrong.
You didn't get very many vacant areas in Canterlot, especially within the retail sections of the city. Land prices were at a premium, and even rentals were exceedingly high. However, the signs hidden at the far edges of this particular lot said that the land had recently been fully paid for, and the reason they were now hidden was because they also said who had fully paid for it. But this was a holiday, and the current occupants were relatively sure that the actual owner wasn't going to turn up.
It was the sort of outdoor operation which had been designed under a given set of principles: to sell in a hurry, to depart even more quickly while leaving no traces and then, if anything happened to have gone wrong, you had the option to deny you'd ever been there. The metal frame of the tarp helped establish the sales borders, but the tarp itself... well, that had a few features. Advertising to pegasi was one of them, but the central purpose in blocking out the warmth of Sun during winter came from the creation of shadow. It was hard to make out the fine details of the products. Pockets of carefully-arranged darkness obscured helpful information like expiration dates, the sticker-covered names of failed startup companies which were listed on warrants across the continent, and the features of the two stallions who were operating the whole thing.
They were standing near the heater. Both were on the tall side. Their hips were exceptionally narrow: something which would have been all the more visible if not for their mutual insistence on wearing fairly bulky pants. One had fur of dull green, with the other bearing muted red: however, the lingering stink of fur dye was exactly the same. Each was an expert on multiple subjects: this included a doctorate-level education in Falsehoods, Denial, Spurious Claims, Making Expertly Wrong Change, and Hey, Look Over There! However, much to their mutual dismay, Getting Away With It was still a work in progress.
The stallions were operating an outdoor last-minute gift operation for Hearts & Hooves day, because you had to do something to keep your horn in the game after the last round had gone bad. Besides, it was a way to raise money for the next enterprise.
They both saw the mare fly in. And for a moment, neither moved.
She landed, because she was just that desperate. Unfortunately for the stallions, the action of touching down took out a central source of profit. They'd posted a sign which announced that anything knocked to the ground by errant wings had to be paid for, and she'd let her hooves contact stone before ever reading it.
The mare didn't look at them. (They were almost praying that she didn't look at them.) Instead, she began to trot around the makeshift narrow aisles, nosing at things here and there.
"This stuff's expensive," she muttered.
There were many gifts under the tarpaulin roof, and the only one that wasn't prepared to backfire was the one which the mare possessed for overwhelming understatement.
"Supply and demand!" tried the older of the brothers: experience allowed him to pretend towards enthusiasm.
"We certainly have the supply!" attempted the younger. "But the demand is yours!"
She nosed around a little more.
"I think someone crossed out a store logo on this box," she said.
"Did they?" asked the older, because it was always best to ask a question for which you could outright deny the answer. Besides, when you'd shoplifted a product with the intent of reselling it at a massive markup, blacking out the text which identified the source was just common sense.
She raised her head. Both nostrils flared.
"You've got a lot of flowers," the mare observed. "Still overpriced."
"But look at what they can do!" gushed the younger. "Aren't flowers just the perfect Hearts And Hooves Day Gift! And ours are special!"
"So special!" chorused the older brother. "Look at them, young miss! See how they change colors, right before your eyes! Eternally fresh, at least until your loved one decides to eat them! And then the taste will be outstanding!"
A puff of grey vapor drifted in front of his jaw. He ignored it because there was a Customer present and, if she got a good look at him under a stray beam of light, a potential Problem. Besides, it was Canterlot. There were plenty of pegasi in the capital and when it came to random bits of vapor, this seemed to indicate the potential for strays.
"Where did you get the flowers?" the pegasus asked the two unicorns. "And why are they changing colors, anyway?"
"Greenhouses," said the younger, because acquiring the stock had meant breaking into six of them.
"Zebra potion treatments," added the older. Which had been a single stop, and thus should have possessed fewer than four locks. The brothers truly didn't understand why people weren't more trusting.
The pegasus thought about that.
"More ponies should have greenhouses," she snorted. "And then I'd have apples."
The brothers twitched. The mare kept moving. Looked at the Sale! signs for far too long, because some lies required a little more time to fully take in.
"It's the last hours where you can sell this stuff at all," she noted as another puff of vapor went by: this time, it skirted the prismatic tail. "Shouldn't that make it cheaper? You don't want to be stuck with it when the holiday's over."
"There are other holidays," the older grandiosely offered.
"But only one special somepony to impress," the younger reminded her. "And you do want to be impressive... don't you?"
She turned. Looked directly at them. An intense magenta gaze went over their features, shifted across winter-bundled bodies towards covered hips and hidden marks, as the siblings did their best not to bolt --
-- and the next puff of vapor went directly past her snout.
She blinked. Slowly turned her head, tracking where it had come from...
"...those flowers," the mare softly declared, "are giving off clouds!" And moved directly for them, eyes now locked on pale blue blooms and the grey mist which rose from the petals: the latter hovered near the flowers for a few seconds, then gathered into the puffs before moving away. A few of the larger ones could now be heard to softly crackle. "Wow...!"
The brothers briefly displayed a rather visible expression of mutual stun. She missed it.
"If there was ever a flower which said 'give me to a pegasus...'" the mare half-whispered. "Why didn't you show me these in the first place? Especially when you've just got this one bunch left?"
"Well," the younger tried to rally, "they're for the special customers --"
He managed to stop there. There was no point in putting a sales pitch up against that expression, because the mare's very being was now radiating the fact that she was the most special customer imaginable and if they couldn't see that, then she was about to make it their Problem.
She took a step towards them --
-- chimes range through the air. One of the nearby clock towers was going off.
"...almost out of time," the mare muttered: words which, under normal circumstances, would have tripled her upcoming price. "I'll take these." With a tiny snort, "At least flowers don't need wrapping."
The elder brother forced a nod. Made himself step forward, smoothly collected her bits while still being disturbed enough to give her back the correct amount of change...
She squinted. Her gaze roamed across his shadowed features again.
"You look familiar," she said, and those horrifyingly-focused eyes stopped on the mustache.
"Well," the older sibling jovially said, "there's only so many combinations of features and builds in the world, aren't there? I bet even a mare as pretty as yourself looks like a lot of other mares!" Which was when he recognized that he was potentially on the verge of suicide. "Equally pretty ones, of course!"
It didn't help.
Her snout wrinkled: a common sight in the presence of fresh fur dye. She looked him over again.
"If anything goes wrong," she told the brothers, "I'm coming back."
The bundle of flowers was packed into saddlebags, and the mare flew away.
There was silence for a moment. The sounds of Canterlot drifted under the tarp. Some of the vapor backwashed away from the fast-flying mare and tickled sibling snouts.
"Brother?" the younger began.
"Yes, brother o' mine?"
"Was the potion -- supposed to do that?"
"Don't know. Couldn't read most of the notes we stole." He paused. "You know, if zebras were more considerate regarding the enterprising small businesspony, their written language would be mostly pictograms."
"So it's really their fault," the younger decided.
"Doubtless," the elder conceded. "Not sure she'd see it that way, though."
"Did you... recognize her?"
"Yes.
"Did she recognize us?"
"Not yet."
Very carefully, "Is she going to come back?"
"Absolutely."
"TIME TO GO."
"Brother o' mine," the elder said as he raced towards the cashbox, "we should have been gone three 'brothers' ago."
The young mare slowly trotted into the office, and the left hind leg carefully nudged the door shut behind her..
It was the first thing the somewhat older pegasus behind the desk noticed. Rainbow was trotting. Something which indicated that the matter was perceived as being very serious indeed.
Puffs of vapor were emerging from the left saddlebag. The older mare wondered why. When it came to magic, this was a strange time to be showing off -- well, a strange time for anypony who wasn't Rainbow, but --
"Everypony says you're lonely," Rainbow softly said.
Both of Spitfire's eyebrows went up. It wasn't from shock. This level of unsubtlety had a way of negating gravity.
"Do they?"
"I just wanted to show that... I was thinking about you," Rainbow gently offered. "With a gift. The perfect gift. Something which would make a good impression. It might mean everything, right? It could even put me in the lead..."
Her head tilted back towards the left saddlebag. The lid was flipped...
The captain of the Wonderbolts stared at the bouquet. At the pale blue miracles which had just been deposited on her desk, and the little crackling clouds which rose from their petals. Some of the vapor was beginning to spark.
"I saw these and I thought of you," Rainbow quietly told her. "Because you can make storm contrails when you fly, and these just do it on their own. I didn't ask what the species name was. But maybe they're Spitfires. I hope you like them, and... that you think of me when you look at them. That I've made a good impression."
The older mare was still staring.
Rainbow watched, and did so for exactly the amount of time required for her limited patience to run out.
"So you'll give me the formation lead at the next show?"
It was too blatant. Far too open. But as Spitfire had already learned over a mere few moons, it was also Rainbow.
"I will give this gift," the captain politely announced, "all of the consideration it deserves."
There was a long pause.
Finally (and very reluctantly), "I don't know what that means --"
"-- Rainbow," Spitfire firmly ordered, "there are ponies in line behind you. Go outside and tell the next one to wait two minutes before coming in. And close the door when you leave. But stay at Headquarters. We'll talk later. I do want to find out where you got these, at the very least. And there might be more discussion than that."
"...I'll hit the commissary," the rookie said.
"Do that."
The sleek cyan form vibrated in place for a second before risking the turn. Slowly moved towards the door, and opened it unto the sight of sixteen hopeful, sympathetic, and extremely gift-bearing pegasi.
The squad captain waited until she heard the click of the latch before releasing the withheld snicker.
Spitfire wasn't in a relationship. She had no real desire for one. When it came to sex... well, she was a Wonderbolt. She could have a pony waiting for her in every venue stop, or pick up new ones along the way. Sex was just about built into the uniform and when you were the captain, ponies eagerly formed a line. You didn't need toys when you had living volunteers.
But she kept it to the fans, because picking up somepony at work was unprofessional. Oh, she would take a squad member with her to public events: that way, there were two Wonderbolts present. And when it came to social companionship, she had her favorites. But sex with a squadmate? That was completely off the table. She knew her ponies, and locker room gossip meant she also knew that most of them had Issues. A category which very much included Rainbow, who hadn't been around long enough for too many tales to spread -- but Spitfire had seen the mare in action enough times to get an idea of the potential sexual style. Something which probably centered around her rookie huffily insisting to the police that the position/maneuver she'd spontaneously invented during the act would have totally worked if the other pony hadn't been so inconsiderate as to just go and die.
Spitfire wasn't in a relationship, because she didn't currently feel the need. But she did like getting gifts. And there were rumors that she was lonely, which just showed how good she was at planting them. So Hearts And Hooves Day turned into a parade of those who wished to make her feel a little less lonely -- and had also been told that those who gave the best things just might find themselves headlining at the next venue.
It wasn't as if it hurt anypony.
She took a vase out of a desk drawer, because Rainbow hadn't been the first over the years to go with flowers. Placed the blooms, put the vase on one wooden corner, then spent a few seconds in admiring the arrangement -- minus the card, because she had twelve of those.
She really did need to track the source. The Official Flower Of The Wonderbolts. That was a whole new level of marketing.
"Next," Spitfire called out, and the door opened.
Soarin casually trotted in, and she noted how full his saddlebags were. The poor dear always made an effort, and he was genuinely good company: that was the reason why he was her go-to plus-one for stuffy gatherings of nobles. But she would still never sleep with a squadmate, and when it came to Soarin... well, the stories could be summarized in three words: 'Ten seconds. Flat.'
The smiling stallion looked at the flowers. Several little clouds sparked all the faster.
"Woo," emerged as a compliment. "That's gonna be hard to top. So anyway, this time around, I thought I'd get you some --"
Two of the sparks touched.
The Wonderbolts only had a few things in common with the Bearers. For starters, neither group was officially part of Equestria's military -- but either one could be called in by the palace to serve, if the needs required. And members tended to move towards explosions.
There had been fifteen Wonderbolts waiting in line outside the office. Most of them had managed to crowd in, and thus had a perfect view of blast-blackened fur, a stained uniform, and the dark spot on the desk where a vase had once been.
Their captain took a breath. A few lingering portions of the once-orange mane fell out.
"I don't see Crash," the mare far too peacefully observed.
"S-s-she..." Fleetfoot stammered. "She -- said she hadn't eaten all day. Took off straight for the commissary. Probably got out of hearing, because she was gone in --"
"Then. Go. Get. Her."
Half of the squad exited. Most of the rest tried to check their captain for injuries, and were pushed back by the force of her irritation: something which was being generated by a mare who'd just been forced to reconsider her previously-harmless gift policy. A singed Soarin considered the matter in full, then made the executive decision to majestically slump over and take a nap until such time as the real chase could begin. Resting up helped. After all, the brothers already had a decent lead, and there was something about spotting that they were being chased by a full squad of Wonderbolts which encouraged ponies to move all the faster.
But that was in the near future. A little deeper into Hearts And Hooves Day. The holiday not just about love, but special someponies.
And in so many ways, Rainbow was very special indeed.
