Celestia raised the sun over Ponyville, the same as she always did. This spring morning, like so many mornings in the happy bustling town, was almost perfect. Birds chirped, a pleasant breeze rustled colorful trees, and ponies on their morning errands runs trotted to and fro, greeting friends and neighbors alike with broad smiles and full hearts.
Holy shit, Long Fuse hated it here.
Twee. That was the word on his word-a-day calendar that best described his hometown. Overly quaint. Overly pleasant. Overly cute. A town where everyone knew each other and even the stray cats were cuddly.
Long Fuse didn’t want cuddly cats or chirping birds or friendly neighbors. Long Fuse had two burning desires in this world, the first and foremost of which involved a lot of explosives. As much as possible.
And therein lay the problem. With a dynamite cutie mark and a black eye from too many chemistry experiments going haywire, Long Fuse was a stallion with no outlet and, if he had to admit it, no prospects. There weren't a lot of jobs that fit his life’s calling that he could think of. The EUP supposedly had a bombardier division, one that was defunct for over a century. The Wonderbolts had openings for pyrotechnicians but, in Equestria’s ongoing effort to put down the little guy, it required a college degree. Like someone needed to go to school for something like that, unbelievable.
His last option, at least as far as he understood it, could be working for the railroad. Celestia knew that new rail lines at least required a lot of explosive clearance. But they also demanded a mandatory psychiatric evaluation, and while he didn’t quite know what was going on in his head, he knew it probably wasn’t anything good. So that bridge had been burned, and he didn’t even get to use any gunpowder to do it.
But all that didn’t matter. Because now he had found the book. The little black book with such wonderful recipes. Maybe. He honestly had only tried out the instructions on one of them, spending his nights tinkering with it and closely following each step to finally build his masterpiece. That it was also the only explosive he had ever made that (probably) worked, didn’t matter to him. He’d get better over time, it was his destiny. All his destiny needed was a suitable target.
And so, on a nice spring day, Long Fuse decided to blow up the Cloudsdale Weather Factory. He figured it had it coming.
The way the instructions described it, the slightest bit of actively charged magic would set the bomb off. Perfect for an earth pony to handle, and most importantly he figured that all the… weather… magic… stuff. The weather factory stuff.
Whatever.
The point was that there was probably enough magic being handled there that once the package arrived, it would go off, and nobody would suspect him. All perfectly planned.
There was only one matter left: Getting the bomb to Cloudsdale in the first place. It’d be a bit difficult and a bit suspicious if an earth pony showed up to a pegasus city. Thankfully, Ponyville had a post office. A post office he visited regularly, for no reason in particular.
Certainly not to chat up a certain with fluffy hair, toasted marshmallow fur, and a clover cutie mark.
Oh ho, he was on a hot streak today, luck-wise. There she was at the counter, smelling like cinnamon and paper. He wasn’t quite sure if the post office employed exclusively pegasi as couriers, but Lucky was certainly the only one that mattered to him.
Well, except when he needed a patsy for his plot.
“Heya, sunshine,” he flashed Lucky what he hoped was a winning smile. It wasn’t particularly a good one, he didn’t smile a lot. It might get a bronze medal, as far as smiles went. “Derpy working today?”
The pegasus blushed. “Sure is sugar, you need her for anything?”
“Nah, just curious, I’m mostly just here to ship—” he lifted the box carefully out of his saddlebags. “Something special, right to Cloudsdale.”
“Hey careful, don’t shake it!” He shouted, trying to take the package back. “It’s really—”
Explosive? Nope, don’t say that. Pretty sure mailing a bomb was still a felony, twee town or not.
Volatile? No, there was a form for that (he had read it while sitting in line), and he didn’t want to draw suspicion to himself.
“It’s fragile,” he said finally. “Really fragile.”
Word-a-day calendar to the rescue, once again.
“Oh, you should have said something beforehand,” Lucky ducked behind the counter, popping back up with the package that was now labeled FRAGILE in big red letters and a little slip of paper. She popped the package precariously in the parcel bin behind her, which another pegasi wheeled to the back of the office and off to whatever mysterious rituals and preparations mailmares performed. Long Fuse had fantasies about what went on back there. A lot of fantasies.
“Mister Fuse? Your tracking ticket?”
Huh?
“Oh, uh, right,” he took the slip with his teeth, cursing his overactive imagination. “Do I really need this? I’m shipping a package out.”
“Most ponies like to at least have confirmation that what they sent arrived okay. I can take it back and throw it out if you—”
“Nope, nope, that’s fine,” he blushed a bit. “I’ll uh. I’ll keep it.”
“Perfect!” She beamed at him. “Thanks for using the post office!”
“Yeah. Y-you too,” he muttered, stepping away from the counter and quickly trotting outside, his heart beating in his chest for more than one reason.
It had finally happened.
He took a deep, long sigh of relief. It was all he could do to avoid giggling to himself. Of course, it would all be coming together perfectly. Why would this twee little town suspect anything? It’s not like anyone bothered asking him what he was doing. It’s not like he’d tell the truth if they did. But now?
He had the package.
He had the target.
And finally, he had the scapegoat. Right on cue, a rush of feathery wings fluttered past him, a mailbag wrapped around her as she left on her afternoon rounds, right on time and—
And…
And the pegasus carrying that package was very clearly not Derpy Hooves. The pegasus carrying that package was the last possible pegasus that he would ever want carrying that package.
Long Fuse was pretty sure his eyeballs had bulged out of his sockets enough to nearly knock his glasses off. He rushed back into the post office, rushing up to the mare on the counter who was very clearly not Lucky.
“Why aren’t you the one delivering packages?!” he shouted.
“Oh, I was on break,” Derpy smiled happily.
“But you’re not on break now!”
“That’s right, now I’m working the counter!”
“Right, but why are you not the one delivering packages?” Long Fuse repeated, emphasizing each word in the hopes that it’d sharpen them enough to pound the point through the pegasus pony’s brain.
“Because… I’m working the counter?” Now Derpy just looked confused. “Are you here to mail anything?”
“Just– Argh, never mind!” he galloped out the door, following the direction he thought Lucky had flown.
“Okay! Have a nice day!”
First things first, he had to calm down. She hadn’t gotten to Cloudsdale yet, the fact that the sky wasn’t on fire was his first clue. Still, though, she could be anywhere in Ponyville. Plus she could fly, but maybe she wasn’t up in any of the cloud homes yet?
Right. Rounds would probably be done with the closest delivered first, so he had time.
But then there’d be multiple pegasi out delivering mail across town, how would he even find her?
“Oh shit, right!” Long Fuse nearly facehoofed. “The tracking ticket!” He fished it out, holding it with his teeth as looked down at the letters below him.
It was just a bunch of gibberish, a series of letters and numbers repeating over and over again. It felt a little warm in his mouth, too, like.
Dammit. Of course, it was magic. But it had to be magic anypony could use right? It’d seem weird to have given him the ticket in the first place if that wasn’t the case. But then what did he even have to…
He needed help. Dammit. Again.
“Excuse me, excuse me, hey lady!” He trotted over to the nearest pony he could find, a nearby flower seller at her stall. She turned, happy to see what she hoped was a new friend and beamed.
“Hi, how can I—”
“Can you tell me how to work this?”
Her smile faded, and she looked down confused at the piece of paper the stallion had between his teeth. She shot him a confused look.
“Don’t you know how to read mister?”
“Not that, I know how to read, I mean the—” He shook his head.
“You know what, forget it,” he said, taking off back towards the post office. She just shrugged.
“Yeah sure, don’t buy any roses. What do I even have a stall for?”
“Derpy!”
“Hi, welcome to the post office, how can I— Oh hi again mister, do you need to deliver a package now?”
He scrambled up to the counter, fishing out the tracking ticket and trying his best not to panic. “How do I work this thing?”
“Is this your tracking ticket? You can’t use it if it isn’t your tracking ticket, you know,” she smiled at him.
“What? Yes, it's my tracking ticket! I was just here!”
“But you didn’t mail a package—”
“I d— I was just— How do I work the damn ticket?!” He screamed, causing her to seize up and huddle down.
“Y-You just need to put a bit of a magical charge through it. If you’re a unicorn your horn is fine, if you’re a pegasus you can just touch it with your wing, see?” Shivering under his glare, she tapped the ticket with one feather, which caused it to glow. The ink shifted, suddenly pointing in a random direction, with a little blurb about the package’s current status (unexploded, thankfully).
“I’m an earth pony!”
“Oh. You just uh—” Derpy paused. “The bottom part of your hoof? Yeah.”
Of course, he’d think to carry things with his teeth first rather than checking with his hoof.
He rushed back out of the post office again.
“You’re welcome by the way!” Called Derpy.
He had to keep stopping to set the ticket down and tap it, the damn thing didn’t update in real-time, and each time he did the direction and location changed. She was on the move, and she moved fast.
Well, faster than him. He was an earth pony, not a running pony. But maybe he could catch up, she wouldn’t be running away from him, right? Just to her latest…
Another refresh and this time the location stayed the same. Of course! She’d have to stop to drop off a whole thing of letters, that gave him some time.
He picked up speed, as much as he could while still keeping an eye on the ticket’s direction. Round the corner, past city hall, up Horse Avenue and taking a left at Horse Lane, and sweet Celestia she was still there and still not blown up!
“Lucky!”
The pegasus turned towards him, smiling and blushing a bit. If he wasn’t in a blind panic he might think about that a bit.
“Mister Fuse, did you need something else?” She waved. “You know Derpy’s working the counter now, I think you were asking after her?”
“Not that, I need to see that package I gave you, like…”
“What?”
He spat the ticket out, holding it in his hooves and up to her as he tried to think of what he could say to get the package back without arousing suspicion and—
And her mail bag was glowing.
Glowing.
He suddenly recalled the instructions for how to detonate his bomb. Particularly the part about how getting close to a small charge of magic would set the bomb off.
Like the magic that was currently infused in his tracking ticket.
“Lucky!” he shouted, all too late. There was a huge puff of pink cloud and what sounded like a few Hearth’s Warming Day crackers being opened. Confetti went everywhere.
Long Fuse couldn’t watch the rest. He wouldn’t bring himself to watch the rest. He also couldn’t because he had just been blasted with a massive blast of cotton candy smelling… fog? Smoke? It was blindingly pink. What a world, what a cruel world that would clash his love of combustive annihilation with the only mare he’d ever love and rip them both away from him and–
He paused his pathetic internal mourning to look over at the expected carnage as the smoke cleared. But instead of a puddle of gore or two fried pegasus wings, there was just one dazed mare. Still alive.
“Shit! I mean… You’ve okay! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to…” Finally, he noticed that she was covered in a LOT of pink sparkly stuff, and some sort of pleasant-smelling slime.
“Huh,” he realized. “I made a glitter bomb.”
“What?” Lucky looked dazed. That explosion might have been relatively harmless but she probably had trouble hearing.
“It’s a glitter bomb,” he repeated, dumbfounded. Lucky just looked over to him, trying to rub some of the slime and sparkles out of her eyes.
“A glitter bomb? W-Why would you glitter bomb me?” Lucky had tears in her eyes. Celestia, that look could break a grown stallion’s heart. “I thought… I thought—”
“I didn’t mean to! It was meant to be a real bomb!”
Wait. Crap.
“You tried to actually bomb me?!”
“No, I mean— You weren’t supposed to deliver that package, Derpy was!”
“You tried to blow up Derpy?!”
“What? No— I mean— I mean she was supposed to deliver the bomb to Cloudsdale’s weather factory and that was meant to get blown up and she’d get implicated!”
Both of them sat there. Suddenly, Long Fuse realized with a start what he had just said (crap, again) followed by—
“You tried to frame Derpy in a terrorist plot against Cloudsdale?!”
She was hitting him with her mail bag now, shouting a lot of things about him and the kind of pony he was and a lot of other things about him. He didn’t think anyone in Ponyville knew that kind of language. He didn’t know that kind of language, come to think of it. Each drubbing of her bag came with a new statement, usually about his parentage.
“I… can’t… believe… you— you—”
Well, at least he had her full attention now.
Ponyville had a jail. That was nice to consider, in some way. It was distinctly not twee. He’d have to see if his word-a-day calendar had a word for the opposite of twee. Maybe. He definitely wasn’t going to go to the library and check out a dictionary to look for it, because that would mean dealing with yet another overly enthusiastic mare wanting to help.
Still, after being beaten into an apologetic puddle by the girl of his dreams and dragged off by the local constable (it was another not-twee revelation that Ponyville even had law enforcement, even if he chafed at the authority of it all), he found his mood remarkably less foul than it had been. Lucky wasn’t dead, he still had a roof over his head, and he had actually managed to interact with a member of the opposite sex in what he considered a vaguely constructive manner.
Speaking of which, he opened his eyes, noticing that his jail cell now had a visitor. He probably could have guessed who it was from the warm smell of paper and cinnamon. She looked like she had just taken a bath and used a lot of shampoo.
Yeah, he had totally nailed this.
“Good to see you again sunshine,” He flashed a smile, a few teeth missing where she had brained him with a sack full of packages. “Come to pay a conjugal visit to Ponyville’s most wanted?”
The pegasus outside the jail bars just raised an eyebrow. “You don’t actually know what ‘conjugal’ means, do you?”
“It’s… not on my word-a-day calendar.”
“Of course, you have a word-a-day calendar.”
“Yeah!” He tried to give what he hoped was a cool look. “I’m pretty well read, you know.”
“Of course, a real bookworm,” she just looked unamused. “Why else would you be carrying this?” She reached into her carrying bag and pulled out a thin black book. Long Fuses’ ears perked up.
“Oh, sweet, my manual for bom—” a rare moment of sudden reflection made him hesitate. “I mean, yeah, that’s my book. I must have dropped it when I was—”
“When you were arrested.”
“Yeah, that.”
“After I beat the stuffing out of you.”
“Did I deserve it?”
“You did.”
“Cool,” he flashed what he hoped was another cool smile.
She paused. “Mmm-hmm. Tell Mister Well Read, where did you find this book exactly?”
Long Fuse shuffled his hooves around. “In the trash.”
“In the trash where?”
“Outside of Sugarcube Corner.”
“And when was this?”
He thought, hoping something here might get him out of jail. “Last… Wednesday?”
“You don’t read Ponyville’s notice board, do you?”
Ponyville had a notice board? “Must have slipped my mind.”
He flashed a smile. Lucky just gave him another blank look. “So you missed the entire big flyer about Pinkie Pie hosting a class on homemade pranking.”
“Homemade… pranking?”
“She gave that book out afterward. Evidently, somepony threw theirs out. You go digging through other ponies’ garbage a lot?”
“I thought it was a book about how to overthrow the government.”
“It’s called the Anarchist’s Cookbook you imbecile! It has silly muffin recipes!”
“Ohhhh,” enlightenment dawned on the stallion’s face. “So that’s why I saw Derpy reading it.”
“Did you even—” she facehoofed. “Did you even read the entire book?”
“Only the bomb recipes.”
“There’s one bomb recipe.”
“Which I read.”
“You…” What did she even say to that besides the obvious? “You are quite possibly the stupidest stallion in Ponyville.”
“Oh,” his face fell, then immediately brightened up again. “Well, are you into that?”
Lucky just sat there, dumbfounded. Finally, she stepped forward.
“Are you telling me this was all some weird romantic overture?”
“Well—”
“Because please, please for the love of Celestia tell me you didn’t try to blow up Cloudsdale in an attempt to impress me.”
“I mean, if you found it hot then totally.”
Lucky facehoofed. She was doing that a lot lately, she found.
So this was why he hung around the post office so much? Luna above, why did he also have to be good-looking, in his own idiot way? You know what, she could work with this. She let out a long, forlorn sigh, already sort of regretting what she was about to get herself into. “Listen, Long Fuse…”
“What’s up?”
“If you promise not to try and carry out any more terrorist plots—”
“Well, I really can’t since apparently I don’t know how to build a bomb.”
“I am SAYING that even if you CAN build a bomb,” she leaned in closer. “That if you do NOT build a bomb…”
“Uh-huh?”
“Since apparently, someone has to keep an eye on you…”
“Yes?”
“If you promise not to do anything stupid like this again, and I mean ever again…”
“Can you get to the point already?” He backtracked. “Sorry.”
“If you’re a good stallion, you can come over to my house and…” She tapped Pinkie’s prank pamphlet. “You can make me a recipe from your government-overthrowing book.”
“Me make you a recipe? At your house?”
She shrugged, and for once she blushed. “I uh… I don’t know how to cook.”
“Well if it’s muffins it’s baking, not cooking,” clarified Long Fuse.
“I don’t know how to do that either.”
“Right,” his eyes lit up. “Sure, I can do that.”
“Then it’s a date.”
“Hell yeah.”
“And no more bombs.”
“No more glitter bombs. Got it.”
“No more bombs period, Mister Fuse.”
“Right… Pick you up at 8 pm?”
“Do you even know when you’re getting out of jail?”
“Before 8 pm, I assume?”
She sighed. “Fine, 8 pm sharp.”
“Awesome.”
“I’ll see you around, Long Fuse.”
“Same to you, sunshine.”
As she fluttered out of the jail, Long Fuse walked over to the uncomfortable bed, laying down and putting his forelegs behind his head.
He grinned to himself. “Yeah, I totally nailed that.”
Author's Note
Thanks to Toonwriter for the proofread.
