The Misadventures of Minnuette

Loyalty of Rainbow Dash

You would be an absolute liar to say that at one point or another in your life all appendages and simple features of your body have not been useful. At this point in time it would seem as though four of these are useless to a pony who is being interrupted from her walk back to Sugarcube Corner, and these four appendages all happen to have hooves on the end.

A cyan blur sped through Pinkie Pie and the blow had made her begin to see rainbows. This isn't figurative, of course, as more than seven different, vibrant colors truly were held before her eyes. Just a moment after having been swept off her hooves, she recognized what had happened, only to fail to regain the use of four appendages as a figure loomed above her, holding her down. She giggled as she recognized the sight of her good friend Rainbow Dash standing on her, having pinned her down just a moment before.

Rainbow would have liked to tickle her friend to bring forth her Element of Harmony, but well before she had thought to do so Pinkie had regained her hoofing, although she had struggled against the laws of physics to do so just before. Rainbow was less caught off guard, however, than Pinkie had been when she tackled her, and she turned around to see the earth pony gleefully standing on all four hooves with a smile on her face.

"Rainbow Dash, hi! You surprised me! I was just walking back to Sugarcube Corner when you knocked the wind out of me! What's so important?" Pinkie finished speaking just six and a half seconds after her friend had turned around.

"Hey Pinkie, I saw you talking to... one of the, um, local dentists about an hour ago. Are your teeth finally starting to fall out from the cake you've been eating over the years?"

"Oh, don't be silly Rainbow! I brush my teeth every mornight!"

"...Huh. You know, it's not all that strange not knowing what exactly a mornight is. So what were you doing talking to her?"

"I tooold you not to be silly! Why do you have such a bad habit of doing that?" After a half second of Rainbow not responding to her, brows furrowed just a bit, she continued: "You do realize that I know everypony in Ponyville, and I don't just mean strangers; she, like everypony else, is my friend, and I have a right to talk to my friends!" Pinkie's slight frown broke into a big grin as she began a brisk trot towards Sugarcube Corner once again. She knew she had to return by five-thirty to begin mixing up her batch of Eggnog which she was preparing a month early for Hearth's Warming Eve. Pinkie would hold high festivities each and every year and there was typically quite a lot of food, all of which relied on her being able to have the time to prepare it all.

Rainbows frown, however, didn't dissipate as she erected her wings, taking off with a blast of wind followed shortly by Pinkie's path being blocked by the mare who didn't quite want her leaving the conversation so abruptly. "Well, in that case, why don't you ever talk about your friends? It always seems like you're so self-centered, you never want to talk about anypony else!"

Pinkie's frown came back easily as well and she looked Rainbow in the eyes; "I am so not self-centered! Don't you remember how happily eager I was to listen to the story you told about your own cutie mark, despite the story being aimed towards the Cutie Mark Crusaders? Oh, and don't even begin to forget about that time when--" Pinkie was interrupted by Rainbow's taking hold of the conversation.

"Pinkie, I'm not talking about the people you are having your conversations with, I'm talking about everypony else that you know and why you won't talk about them near me! It seems like I only know eleven ponies in ponyville, you never want to tell me about any of your other friends!"

It was Pinkie's turn to take a silent moment to think, but she didn't let Rainbow take hold of the conversation. "Well, duh! Don't be a silly filly, you know I wouldn't talk behind the backs of other ponies."

Rainbow brought a forehoof to rest on her forehead as the pink mare continued walking once again, but this time she wouldn't be interrupted. It's strange, Rainbow thought, Pinkie just called me 'silly' three times and in the end she ended up being far 'sillier' than me for her ideas on how to maintain friends. She's good at it, but wow, she should really loosen up a little to try to avoid hurting others' feelings. Rainbow Dash suddenly took to the air as she finished her thought.

"Really, Rose? It's just dirt!"

"Agh, you simply don't understand, Colgate! The flowers absolutely must have clean soil to live in, and I spent the last of my bits to get a hold of that bag, and now... look at it!" Not a moment after spitting her dilemma into Minnuette's face she started bawling her head off, tears flowing out of her eyes in deep rivers of salty fluid and begging for sympathy from the unicorn.

What it appeared to Minnuette was that Rose was planting a patch of, well, roses to allow them to grow in the spring. The issue with this was that she had bought a bag of dirt to plant them in, but when she'd gotten home she had realized she actually bought sand and now she was out of bits and needed her help. What surprised Minnuette the most was that it wasn't even winter yet; was it really possible for her to run completely dry of money? "Well, seeing as you haven't exactly opened the bag yet, I'd say you could run back to where you bought it and trade it for the soil you'd intended to buy."

Rose's face lit up like a lightbulb. "Of course! Haha, wow, where even is my common sense today?" Where is it any day, Minnuette thought? "Hey, you wouldn't mind coming along with me to help me out, would you?"

Oh, great, yet another one of these adventures. "Oh, well, why not? I hadn't been planning to do anything else this afternoon, of course," Minnuette drifted of speaking as she nonchalantly pranced out of the flower pony's home.

Practically sprinting to catch up in the matter of a second, Rose bumped into another pony before being able to voice her gratitude. What did come of her voice on the other hoof was a loud, "Oof!"

The pegasus took a step back at getting knocked into, and quickly muttered, "Hehe, oops. I... think you should look where you're going, Rose."

The earth pony merely stepped around the pony, uttering "You're right, sorry about that!" She kept walking, oblivious to the fact that Minnuette stood in place, eyeing the pegasus that now was standing on the sidewalk.

"Ah, you must be Rainbow Dash, you came in for a checkup four months ago!"

"Yeah, uh, Colgate, we need to talk."

"Oh, please don't call me that, it's what my friends call me in the office. My real name is Minnuette." She looked over Dash's shoulder to see Rose prancing around a street corner, out of sight.

"Okay, that's nice and all, but I saw you with Pinkie Pie a couple of hours ago coming out of Sugarcube Corner. Pinkie isn't smart enough to understand that I want to know what you were talking about, and why she never tells me about any of it." The pegasus still held a confused expression on her face, hoping she could find some answers.

"Well, you have to understand that Pinkie is a strange mare. Sometimes I'm not sure how she can live restrained to the laws of physics."

"Yeah, I get that. So what were you talking about?"

"Pinkie wanted me to tell her about how I got my cutie mark. After I got off work I went to Sugarcube Corner to get a snack and she sure seemed excited to see me. Is there anyone in Ponyville she doesn't know?"

"Ugh, no. You really need a better understanding of that crazy pony; she's the embodiment of the Element of Laughter! She is happy for everyone who lives here, even those who... aren't ponies. Once she even spent a whole week trying to get a grumpy old donkey to lighten up to her." As the two ponies talked, they'd begun to walk down the sidewalk opposite the direction of the earth pony who they completely forgot about.

"So what exactly makes Pinkie so special to you that you want to know why she wasn't telling you about who she's talked to?"

"I, if you didn't know, am the Element of Loyalty. All six of us are real great friends, but Pinkie is different. Her crazy ideas and my awesome skills work great together, we hang out and pull hilarious pranks on people!" Rainbow seemed to be beaming with joy. "She also makes a pretty nice audience when I'm practicing for the Wonderbolts and Fluttershy isn't there to watch me." A note of shame rose in her voice as she spoke the name of the yellow pegasus.

"You practice for the Wonderbolts, huh? I honestly wonder how a pegasus like you could possibly get accepted, you feed off the love of your friends!"

"Hey, I caught that! You called me a changeling! And besides, I do have a job, you know. Right now I'm the captain of the Ponyville weather team! I'm sure to be able to get a spot in the Wonderbolts!" Rainbow understood where the conversation had been heading, and didn't want to have to kick a whole bunch of clouds like she did to show Twilight Sparkle how awesome she was.

"I wouldn't exactly hold my breath, Rainbow... not until you're the captain of the Canterlot weather team, if you understand where I'm going."

"Hey, I could surely get a job there! The only problem is, I'd rather stay in Ponyville with my friends. After all, this place is way better than Canterlot could ever be in my mind!

Minnuette was doubting where she was leading this conversation; she had been ever since Rainbow got going on how she wanted to be a Wonderbolt. She'd gotten to her house, she'd get the conversation to end. "Well, that certainly is a nice thing for you to say... you certainly seem loyal to this town," Minnuette paused what she was saying to open her mouth wide and let out a deep yawn, "and such a nice town it is... such wonderful homes..." Minnuette's horn glowed with a faint cyan aura as she lifted a key from a nearby bush, oblivious that Rainbow would know where it'd be the next day. "I hope to be able to talk to you tomorrow, but I'm just gonna stay home and think about what's happened today.

Minnuette looked into Rainbow Dash's eyes. "Actually, you can come inside, and I'll start making dinner. You can't possibly get back home before it's freezing outside!" It was true, too, the sun was setting on Ponyville earlier as it often did as the year came to an end.

Rainbow wordlessly agreed. Minnuette seems like a nice mare, spending the night at her house doesn't seem like too big of a deal. Hopefully we'll get to talking more and I'll make a new friend... and possibly learn more about Pinkie Pie.

Minnuette was thinking just the same, and she used her magic aura once again to close the door behind her as she entered her home behind the rainbow maned pegasus.