Glorified

The next morning, I met up with my friends at Cheesy-Pie Café, aka ‘the bakery.’ Well, the ones who were free and still in Ponyville, anyways. Cotton, Cheesette’s older brother, ended up going to college in Las Pegasus and still had to work until the end of the month. He’s the opposite of Haze in that he’s the only pegasus in an entirely earth pony family. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, but he’s always ‘fun’ to be around. I wouldn’t exactly call him a good guy though.

Triple Ace, also known as Ace, was my fellow (former?) classmate, a pegasus with a talent for shooting. It’s not really a question of what though, dude can hit anything with anything. It's kinda scary. I always thought my mom was lax with me, but Miss Scootaloo started taking Ace to the shooting range from age eight and on. I’ve been a few times and my accuracy is average, but I can’t hit anything without both hooves on the gun.

Liberty Apple, his girlfriend and also our (former) classmate, was an earth pony with her own talent for shooting, albeit in a different class. She has absurd eyesight, better than even griffons, and can see from very, very long distances without assistance from something like binoculars or a telescope. Her specialty is long range, and unlike the rest of us, she’s also academically gifted.

Finally, Pearl Belle, Miss Rarity’s daughter, was the last of our friend group and former classmates. I say ‘our’ friend group, but she’s sort of part of everybody’s friend group. Her talent isn’t very explicit with her cutiemark being her namesake, but she seems to just get along with everyone no matter who. She does have this annoying habit of making everything about herself though.

The four of us sat at a rounded corner booth at the back of the café across from the counter. Seats were either pink or brown vinyl over stools or booths connected to metal tubes painted in matte white with pastel sprinkles painted on them. Everything was situated on a black and white checkered tile floor that was polished neatly and reflected the tan waffle cone like ceiling tiles that looked almost engraved up above. The windows had been drawn on, advertising new desserts, coffees, and sandwiches that the café offered. It was a bakery and one could get cakes and all that here too, but they did a little of everything.

“So I’ve got…” Cheesette checked the order before passing things out, “One chiffon frappe with the strawberry cheesecake—”

“That’s me!” Pearl raised her hoof.

“I know it’s you. Take your stuff,” Cheesette replied indignantly. “A black coffee with a hay and cheese croissant—”

“Eeyup,” Liberty confirmed.

“Two chocolate éclairs with the strawberry cream filling—”

Ace rubbed his hooves together in anticipation.

“And the Cheesy Pie special for my special cheesy-pie!” She gave everyone their food, set her own plate next to me, then took off her apron and sat down with us. “Mom, I’m taking my break!”

Half-covered in flour, Miss Pinkie popped her head out from behind the counter. “Okay, Cheesy. Cheese! Mind the counter!”

She disappeared and the masculine interpretation of Cheesette came out from the back and took her place, before coming to stand by the rest of us while no one was in line or waiting on anything. With their colors, curly pink manes with yellow coats and blue eyes, they were clearly twins. With his facial hair and muscular body versus her curvy softness, they couldn’t have been any more different. He pulled a chair next to our booth. “Slow day today, considering school’s out now.”

“I’ll say.” Cheesette concurred. “I’m not sure I really need to take my break with this kinda traffic.”

Pearl sighed, sipping at her frappe. The cream was almost as white as her coat, but the color of the drink looked more like her mother’s violet mane than her own denim blue. “Must be nice, being able to work for your mother.”

“What, y’all get in a fight again?” Liberty asked.

Pearl crossed her forelegs and leaned back in the booth seat. “I wouldn’t call it a fight per se, it’s nothing like it could’ve been.”

“But an argument nonetheless,” Ace added.

“Well, yes. Do your parents really ‘get’ streaming, Cheesette?”

She swallowed her pie. “I think Dad gets it, but Mom is always a little slow to adapt. Sometimes, she comes and asks me about the MeTube deposits into my account, and I have to remind her that I get paid for it. My follower count shot up a few months ago, so she gets scared seeing a whole bunch of money just come out of nowhere.”

Cheese rubbed at his forehead. “Why are you still working here again?”

She glared at her brother. “Because, even if I wasn’t getting the money, working gives me things to talk about when I stream. I’m not some endless well of creativity, I’ve gotta have something outside of me to talk about.”

Ace finished sucking down the last of one of his éclairs. The pink cream of the doughnut on his lips stood out against his dark brown coat and bright orange mane. “Working like us common folk to try and understand our plight. A true pony’s hero.”

“Envy makes you stupid, Ace,” Chesette shot.

He rolled his magenta eyes. “I got plenty of stupid as it is, I don’t want your job.” Ace turned to Pearl. “So, is that what you’re fighting about this time? Steaming?”

She shook her blue ringlets. “Oh, heavens, no. Mother bought me everything I needed to get set up, I wouldn't be doing it at all if she hadn’t encouraged me in the first place. There are two problems really. First, she wants me to advertise all her new lines.”

Liberty frowned. For being our age, she had a lot of thinking lines on her bright orange coat under that curly red mane. “Don’t’cha already do that? It’s not like ya buy clothes like the rest of us.”

“Yes and no. She wants this to be official with all the branding and a real ad to be made and played on my streams. I do wear her clothes—Why wouldn’t I? They’re Mother’s clothes—but that’s just how I live my life. I don’t have to be polite about it or say all the buzz words or campaign for her or anything like that. I wear them because I like them, and that’s all there is to it. Nopony wants me tiptoeing around what are essentially my normal outfits.”

“So,” I said after having finished my melty cheese pie, “it’s not that you don’t want to, it’s just that it’s not what you’re used to, and you’d have to adjust for basically nothing, right?”

She nodded her curly blue mane. “That, absolutely.”

Ace narrowed his eyes at me. “Awful thoughtful for our Prism. You still stuck on the whole Wonderbolt thing?”

I pushed his shoulder. “Dude, I didn’t bring it up, you shouldn’t either.” I deflected back to Pearl. “So that’s one, what’s the other problem?”

Pearl rolled her eyes. “Oh, she wants me to go to college in Manehattan.”

We all blinked. “That’s kinda more important than the sponsor thing, isn’t it?”

She huffed. “I have no intention of going, so I can’t see why it would be.” She lit her horn and dipped her fork into her cake.

Chesette, having finished her pie now, pointed a hoof at her. “So, like usual, the thing you pretend is the problem isn’t, and the real thing you’re fighting over gets one line and no second glance.”

Pearl ate her cake, savoring the flavor. “It doesn’t deserve a second glance. It’s a pit for burning money. Whether I stream or I model, going to college is simply a waste of my youth while I have it.”

“The worst thing ya ever learned at my aunt’s orchard is how damn stubborn ya are, Ah tell ya what,” Liberty commented. She turned to Ace. “How’d this fight go with yer Ma, Ace?”

He raised his hooves. “Hey, don’t point feathers at me! I don’t have, like, a career picked out already. To be totally honest, I have no idea what I want to do with myself now that school’s out, but like, that’s also why she’s making me go because I really don’t know what else to do.”

Cheese lowered his pink brows. “Do we not all have cutiemarks? I thought that was kind of the point of these things, to point us in the right direction.”

“And what,” Pearl motioned to Cheese, “does a canary on a perch imply that you should be using your talent for which can also serve as a living and a career that can feed you and possibly a family down the line, Mister Pie?”

Cheese groaned. “Ugh, don’t call me that! That’s Grandpa’s name. And besides, I could work at an aviary, or a pet store, or even in animal rescue like Miss Fluttershy. I’m good with birds, so that’s where I tend to look. I work here because I actually want to go to college and my chosen field does require a degree and further study. I mean, I’m really just going so I can get into vet school, but you know.” A customer walked in through the door. “And I’m also still on the clock, so I’m gonna have to dip.” He turned around. “Welcome to Cheesy Pie Café, what can I get you?”

Back at our table, the drinks and plates were all nearly empty. “My brother is kinda right though,” Cheesette added.

“Yeah, but, like,” Ace began, “my talent isn’t exactly something that ponies need all that often. At best, I could use it to perform trick shots or something, and at worst I could enlist, but it’s not like ponies really need a good shot around here. I could try for competitive shooting, but that’s only going to get me so far. Even if I was the best in the world, it’s not gonna make me money unless I can perform with it, and I’m really not much of a performer in the first place.”

Pearl slapped a hoof on the table. “And I’m no better off than you! At least in that department. What even is a ‘pearl bell’? Pearls are never used for anything but accents! My musical talent is no more than average, and if you ask me, I’m only good at dealing with all kinds of ponies because I had to for most of my life. It’s not like that’s someone I wanted to be, now and forever.” She pulled her hoof back and crossed her forelegs, letting out a sigh as she did. “However, unlike you, I’ve already got a career path. I can stream until I become irrelevant, and I can switch to modeling since I’ve already got name brand recognition. Why, I could even do both at the same time! I have my own means, I don’t need a degree!”

Liberty nodded. “And so the real argument comes out.” She leaned back and crossed her hind legs, running her blue-green eyes over all of us. “Here’s a question ta y’all anti-college kids: what do ya do when yer first plan don’t work out?”

Cheesette frowned. “What do you mean if it doesn’t work out? I’m kinda already established. And it’s not like I can’t go later if I want to change careers all the sudden.”

“Sure ya are,” Liberty assented, “but what happens if you’re five years down the road and somethin’ comes up and ya lose it all? Say the platform ya work on dies or ya have ta move somewhere else and ya have ta rebuild or start from scratch. What do ya fall back on?”

She lowered her brows and wrapped her hooves around my neck. “My husband?”

Ah, my little cheese. “So do we go to the chapel now, or…”

She put her head to my cheek. “We can talk about setting dates, but you’ve gotta get your Wonderbolt thing all settled before any of that.”

I groaned. She’d basically just said we could finally get married and still this Wonderbolt thing hangs over my head. “Maybe I should just refuse. This has all been nothing but a headache.”

“But you love to fly!” Cheesette practically shouted. “Why would you give all that up just because it’s a little annoying now?”

“That’s also related ta the point Ah was makin’.” Liberty cleared her throat. “We were all born around '09, right? Every one of us is about eighteen, and the trainin’ wheels are comin’ off. Pearl, Cheesette, is there any reason at all that ya couldn’t stream and get a degree at the same time?”

“It’s a waste of my time and money?” Pearl answered. “Didn’t I already say that?”

Cheesette thought a little harder though. “I mean, I work here, but I guess that’s not really something I have to be doing.”

Liberty sat up and pressed her hooves together on the table. “So, really, there’s nothin’ stoppin’ ya. Ya can’t bet on these websites bein’ around forever, and ya never know when the next new thing is gonna come by and push y’all off ta the side. Makin’ connections and meetin’ ponies at college is a good way ta open doors fer yerself.

“In yer case—” she turned to Pearl “—it’d make yer mother happy and ya could take business, marketin’, or accountin’ classes ta figure out how best ta use that money, make yerself not so dependent on Mommy’s purse.”

Pearl’s eye twitched. “Who in the world said I was dependent on—”

Ignoring her, Liberty then turned to Cheesette and me. “And in yer case, maybe you’ll find somethin’ else ya wanna do. It ain’t like it’s gonna cost ya much ta go ta the community college here, even if ya do let Prism churn yer butter here in a year or so.”

Cheesette’s face flushed. Mine probably did the same. Images and sound effects flooded my mind. I had to cross my hind legs. “P-please don’t use a metaphor like that.”

She cleared her throat. “Y-yeah, what he said. S-still, I’m not really against becoming a mom and streaming on the side or whatever. It’s not like I do IRL stuff like Pearl does. Nopony knows what I look like.”

I grabbed her hoof. “Y-you’d be a mom?”

She put her cheek in her free hoof. “Well, only if it’s yours.” Then she looked at my lap and turned the other direction. “But not right at this moment. We’re in public, babe.”

I let go of the hoof, covered myself and hunched over. Too much excitement in the middle of the day at a café. “R-right…”

Pearl gave us a bleak stare. “The cheesecake here is too sweet. I think I need to go puke.”

“What was that about churnin’ butter, sugarcube?” Ace threw a wing around Liberty with a smile and a wink.

She pushed him off. “Y’all ain’t gettin’ nothin’ if ya don’t pass yer entrance exam.”

His ears shot up. “So you’re saying there’s a chance?”

“With your scores? Doubt it.”

Pearl rolled her eyes. “Ugh, colts.”

Liberty glared at Pearl. “When was the last time ya saw my cousins?”

Her pupils shrank. “Y-your cousins? Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?”

“Ya know exactly who Ah mean.”

“I couldn’t possibly! There’s what, twelve of you just between the three families in Ponyville?”

“Just because Malus ain’t Ma’s son don’t mean he ain’t my brother.”

“My apologies for forgetting one of the two sets of identical twins in your family.”

Liberty tilted her head. “Oh, no, because ya’d never forget the other ones.”

“Of course not! Stout and Cider are—”

Liberty smiled deviously and leaned in. “Well? They’re what, sugarcube? Why don’t ya tell me what they are.”

And now she’d really dug herself a hole to fall in. Eyes firmly on the table, Pearl said, “Perfectly fine young stallions.”

Liberty turned to Ace. “Can ya believe it? Them? Perfectly fine young stallions?”

The other pegasus shook his head. “It’d be easier to believe if one wasn’t making homemade hard cider at the ripe old age of nineteen, and the other hadn’t applied for the position of bartender at one of the District 7 bars recently.”

Pearl narrowed her eyes. “A bar!? Which bar!?”

Cheesette rubbed her hooves together. “So you’ve settled on Stout, huh?”

“Gah!” Pearl covered her face, even redder now than Cheesette and I.

Liberty leaned on the table. “You’re so easy it should be a crime, sugarcube. Goddess help ya.”

“Ya know,” I began, “you really should just tell your mom the real reason why you don’t want to leave Ponyville. She’d probably understand. She’s been helping me with this whole sponsor thing all this month.”

“I could never!” Pearl slapped her hooves to her cheeks. “Oh, Goddess among us, do you know the kind of fit she’d throw if she knew the truth? ‘You can’t throw your career away for a boy! Think of all the things you have to give up to be somepony’s mother! It’s perfectly fine for you to get married after you realize your dreams.’ She’d never let me hear the end of it!”

Liberty and I shared a glance. “Does… does that sound like Miss Rarity to you, Liberty?”

“Uh, no…” She turned to Pearl. “Have ya ever talked ta yer ma about this?”

Pearl rolled her eyes. “Of course not! Anything she ever hears ends up in everyone else’s ears, you know that! Mother is a gossip-spreading machine! If I told her, then they would find out and-and-Ah!” She covered her head. “No, no, no! I won’t do it, you can’t make me!”

Cheese came back to the table with our bills. “Honestly, you might as well talk to Mom or Miss Applejack at that point. I mean, they’d find out if you told your mom, but she probably wouldn’t find out if you talked to them about it.

“Yeah,” Miss Pinkie said, having joined our table at some point, “you can talk to me about whatever it is. Rarity is always the last pony we tell about anything for a reason.”

Cheese nearly jumped out of his skin. “Geez, Mom!”

“That’s right, Cheese, I am your mom!”

He rubbed at his temple. “I’m going to take my break.”

“Okay, Sugarpie.” She looked to her daughter. “You’re up if anypony comes in.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So,” Miss Pinkie began, “what were we discussing that we should keep from Rarity?”

Pearl staggered. “Prism doesn’t want to join the Wonderbolts!”

Miss Pinkie and I were taken aback. “Bro!”

“You don’t wanna be a Wonderbolt, Prism?”

Now I was in the hot seat. “Uh… well, I do, but…”

She scooted her chair closer to Cheesette, then leaned back, crossing her hindlegs while holding a plate with a piece of chocolate cake on it. “Look, Prism, Sugarpie, let me see if I’ve got the gist of your problem in my head straight.” She took a bite, chewed for a bit, swallowed, then set the cake down on our table. “You passed a test you really shouldn’t have, you’re on the line with a whole lot of money you really shouldn’t have, and your dreams are being held hostage by an old Wonderbolt who wants to turn you into somebody else, right?”

I frowned. “Did you get all that from Mom or Miss Rarity?”

“Who said I only had two sources?”

“Right.”

Miss Pinkie cleared her throat. “Dreams are like souffles. When you’re young, you can have a lot of them, and having even one come out right is more than most ponies expect. However, when you grow up, you might discover dreams you didn’t even know you had, dreams that are a lot more attainable. Sometimes, you realize your dreams have come true long after the fact. Life can be kinda funny like that.

“However, dreams can also disappear in a flash. Ponies don’t last forever, and neither will you. If you want to keep that souffle standing, you’ve got to take it out of the oven at just the right moment. Too slow and it burns, too fast and it falls. It also helps to be realistic. Not everypony can make that perfect souffle, so what you should do right now is attempt to lower the stakes hanging on this line, and then bite the hook before it reels back up. Whether your souffle stands or falls, you don’t have to bake forever.”

Cheesette totally understood that and I didn’t really get as much of it as I should after spending over a decade around this mare. I looked to her for help.

“I gotcha, babe,” Cheesette said. “You’ve got an opportunity that you really can’t pass up here, but rather than just take it at face value, you should try to negotiate the contract down and stick it out for a while. You’ve always wanted to be a Wonderbolt, so why not give it a year and see how it goes?”

Miss Pinkie raised a brow. “Is that not what I said?”

“Mom, you talk like Grandpa does sometimes.”

“I don’t speak in rock metaphors, come on.” She ate the last of her cake and Cheesette sighed.

“No, Mom, you speak in baking—”

A timer dinged in the back and Miss Pinkie sprang up. “Well, I have to go take the cake bases out. I hope that helps!” She hugged us both and disappeared as fast as she had appeared.

“Baking metaphors.”

To be completely honest, that sounds like really good advice. I’ll take it and try to get in touch with Miss Rarity after talking to my parents later. But first, “Dude!”

“I’m sorry, I panicked!” Pearl covered her face.

“That was not cool! You threw me under the bus!”

“I know! I didn’t mean to, honestly.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m gonna tell your mom.”

She clasped her hooves together. “Prism, please, you don’t have to do this.”

“I think I do.” I picked up Cheesette and flew us over to the counter.

After setting her down, she ran around to the other side to ring me up. “You really shouldn’t pick me up and fly off like that so suddenly, you know.”

“Prism, darling, you’re not really going to talk to Mother, are you?” Pearl called as the rest of the group began exiting the pink booth in the corner of the café.

Cheesette pulled up what I owed and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “You’ll melt my butter like that.”

A shiver ran down my spine. As long as this Wonderbolt thing gets solved, then I can have what I really want. “Then we should set some dates because I’m gonna do a lot more than melt it.”

“Bad!” She kissed me long and hard, then pulled away. “That’ll be $6.50, Mister Wonderbolt.”

I frowned. “Come on, you’re making me get yours too?”

She didn’t even flinch. “And just how much are they giving you for that contract again?”

“Just because I have it doesn’t mean I want to spend it.” I took my phone from around my neck and pulled up the pay app. “You owe me for this.”

She scanned the QR code and charged my account. “So, were you thinking next year? Or maybe even further out than that?”

I grabbed her hoof. “What’s wrong with tomorrow?”

“Complaining about paying for my lunch and then he has the audacity to ask for my butter the next day? There will be no cheesy pie for you before you get this all settled, and that’s final.”

Ace, Liberty and Pearl just stared at us in amazement. The young stallion shook his head. “Dude, guys, I can’t deal with all the food metaphors anymore, can I just pay my tab and go without all the flirting?”

We smiled at each other, kissed one last time, and then I headed for the door. “See you tomorrow!”

“Go get ‘em, Babe!”