There were some questions that one simply did not ask Applejack and Rainbow Dash. These included, but were not limited to: 'why did you drop out of Flight School?', 'why can't you do math?', and most importantly, 'who started it?' A brief summary of every argument the two had ever been in would read as follows: somepony started it, they failed to finish it, feathers had been ruffled and lassos had been twirled, then suddenly there was massive amounts of property damage and nopony really knew who had caused what.
Twilight meditated on this as she sat squashed between two ponies who, fifteen minutes ago, had mutually stopped talking to each other and found themselves forced to default to shouting instead. Applejack was explaining, with no small amount of cursing for punctuation, that fishing was indeed a sport. Rainbow Dash maintained that fishing was a sport in the same way that bowling pins were a cake ingredient, but that she would beat Applejack at it anyway. Twilight, on the rare occasion she found space to speak, carefully reminded the two that the single-seat boat they had insisted on renting was currently carrying three mares and a dog, and that perhaps somepony should teleport over to the riverbank and follow on foot to decrease the weight. Winona alternated between barking, sitting on things, and treating Twilight to the best example of doggy breath that she was ever likely to encounter.
Above them, two enormous fishing rods arched skywards like strange wooden fins, and to the sides of them their oars, comically short, barely managed to scrape along the surface of the water with each tug. Between them was about two thimblefuls of personal space per pony, give or take two thimblefuls in Twilight's case whenever one of her friends decided to gesticulate for emphasis. Altogether, it was an interesting sight.
Eventually, however, they found a spot on the river that Applejack and Rainbow Dash both agreed would be excellent for fishing, and proceeded to row right past it into one that looked like a dumping ground for alchemical waste. Rainbow Dash blamed Applejack, Applejack returned the favour, and Winona reduced the jam sandwiches Twilight had packed to a fine red smear on the bottom of the boat. Twilight, meanwhile, wondered precisely what manner of fish they would find in such a blighted spot. Looking at the shadows dancing on the murky surface of the water, she was convinced that they had more fins than really fit the job specification of being a fish.
"I'm telling ya, we gotta go with flies for bait. That's why they call it fly fishing!" Rainbow Dash argued hotly, upon deciding that rowing back to the pristine spot five minutes away was a waste of time and that they should start fishing now.
"And here Ah thought it was because of all the pegasi that get dumped in the lake," Applejack snarled, and gave the boat a wobble. "Worms is the way to go. Ah know. Ah asked Fluttershy about it."
"Oh, yeah. Great plan, Applesmack. I can just imagine how that conversation went," Dash replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm, before switching into an uncannily good take on AJ's accent. "'Say, sugarcube, Ah know ya love all of the animals and want to keep 'em all outta harm's way. Well, Ah'm goin' out next week to jam a piece of metal through a fish's mouth, yank it out of the water so it can't breathe, then hit it with an oar, all because Ah think fishin's a sport and Ah want to beat Dash at somethin' before ah die. What do y'all think'd be the best way to go about it?' Can't imagine she'd wanna sabotage that little ambition in any way."
"But Rainbow Dash," Twilight cut in, "Fluttershy feeds fish to her otters. If she doesn't fish herself, how does she get them?"
For a moment, Dash was visibly and audibly stumped. Applejack gave Twilight a grateful nod, and started throwing smug looks at her pegasus companion.
"How the hay am I supposed to know? Maybe the fish draw straws and whoever gets the shortest gets to throw themselves into Fluttershy's hooves to be devoured by otters? They probably think she's some sort of crazed blood god and disaster will strike if they don't keep her appeased!" Dash protested.
"Uh-huh," Applejack replied. This, for anypony in the know, was a clear signal that they had reached what AJ called the tippin' point, the moment in which some part of Rainbow Dash's argument became stupid enough that AJ felt justified in retroactively ignoring the rest of it. As Applejack had made clear many times, she did not entertain arguments from silly ponies. "Worms it is. Now, Twilight, what'd be the best way to get these worms onto the hook?"
Twilight started. Up until now, her job seemed to have been to get jostled, make feeble attempts to break up arguments, and be sat upon by Winona. Suddenly, she was being asked to provide help. Help that, with a dog on her head and jam sandwich remains perilously close to her nose, she was in no position to provide.
"Well...You just sort've jam them on, right? It ain't rocket science, AJ," Dash replied loftily, and Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as the bit passed from her.
“An' how y'all just gonna 'jam them on'? Pretty hard to do with just yer hooves, Ah'll reckon. And Ah sure ain't puttin' worms in my mouth.”
Dash blinked twice, before fluffing her wings and looking meaningfully at Twilight. “Well, luckily, I invited somepony with magic along.”
“Oh, no. I was quite happy at home, thank you very much. I'm not murdering worms for you two,” Twilight said in her stern teacher voice.
“What? Then what are y'all even here for?” AJ asked archly. “It ain't like this is a big boat, Twi. We need all the space we can get.”
Twilight took a deep breath, and reminded herself that violence was almost never the solution, especially when the proposed recipient of this violence was far more athletic than you. She didn't want to go fishing. They'd just burst into the library, assumed she knew something about it and hauled her off to the worst boat rental service in the world. The jam sandwiches hadn't even been for them. She just liked jam sandwiches, and if she wanted to eat a picnic hamper of them by herself it was nopony's business but hers.
“Y'know,” Dash said slyly, “It isn't murder if it's by accident. How about me and AJ start with the tickling, you spit the worms while you're distracted, and we can tell the nature police that it was all a misunderstanding?”
Winona barked, which was good because it meant nopony had to say anything, and Twilight didn't want to say anything because she was frankly terrified. She'd just been party to a discussion about murder with two of her best friends in a small riverboat in a secluded spot, and somehow she wasn't yet dead or in jail.
Finally, AJ snapped. “Fine! Ah'll do all the work, just like Ah have been this entire trip!”
“Hey! I did half the rowing! The big half!”
“An' it was your half that got us into the plot-hole of the dang river!”
“My half was fine! If you weren't doing your little wussy strokes, we'd have balanced out! Geez, AJ, we were rowing a boat, not stirring a cup of coffee!”
“At least Ah can stir a cup of coffee, without throwin' it all over the floor and on the table and over 'Shy-”
“That was one time, and you know full well that we were having earthquakes that day-”
“Oh yeah. Real convenient, that the one time in livin' memory we have us some earthquakes is also the one time that you were making your own dang coffee instead of making everypony else do it, and also the one time you weren't flyin' about like a concussed sparrowhawk!”
Twilight began to very seriously contemplate throwing herself in the river. Rivers, as an environment, had their pros and cons. A pro was the fact that it was very difficult to hear underwater, and thus she wouldn't know what ridiculousness was going on in the boat. A further pro was that it would wash the sandwich residue and dog slobber out of her mane. There was only one con, but as cons went, drowning was a big one. When Twilight next looked up, she found that Winona had already dove into the river and swum to the opposite bank, and was now chasing butterflies quite happily.
“Yeah? Well, you know what I'm gonna do, AJ? I'm going to catch myself a huge fish, a really big one, and then I'm gonna turn around and hit you with it!” Dash yelled, and took up her rod. “Twilight, what's the biggest shark you can catch in this river? Because we're getting one!”
“Oh, so y'all are gonna catch a shark, huh? Well in that case, Ah'm gonna catch m'self a whale!” AJ replied, and did likewise.
“Yeah? Well if you catch a whale, I'll catch a whale shark! Beat that, AJ!”
“There's no such thing as a whale shark. Y'all are just delusional!”
Twilight's brain began to overheat with the stress of deciding what to correct the first – the idea that whale sharks didn't exist? The idea that a small, freshwater river ecology could suitably sustain anything Rainbow Dash would call a shark? Or the idea that there were whales in the river, because water displacement would mean that if there was a whale, the river would almost certainly have made its way into the fields and ruined the crops everypony depended on to survive?
Fortunately, the decision was wrested from her hooves as an awkward, sullen silence descended upon the boat, filling the space that Winona had recently vacated. Dash had begun to shake her line erratically, while AJ had opted for a staring contest with the river. Twilight sighed (they only had two rods), and eased herself gently into the tedium. Although the situation was hardly ideal, at least the sun was shining, the breeze was cool, and the river provided a relaxing soundtrack of slow-moving water. The riverbank had been mown recently and provided the smell of fresh-cut grass, and altogether there was something very relaxing and lazy about the place.
“Shhh. You're scaring the fish,” Dash hissed quietly after ten minutes had passed with nopony talking.
“Y'know what's scary?” AJ asked in a very mellow tone, apparently calmed by the act of fishing. “Swans.”
“What? Swans aren't scary, you dope,” Dash replied, but it was affectionate. She spoke in the voice that very old friends used with each other.
“Sure they are. Ah got bit by a swan, once, when Ah was a filly. They're bigger'n you think they are, and mighty quick to anger. Sharp beaks, too.”
“Yeah, I guess swans could be trouble,” Dash conceded, almost philosophically. “Hey, you know what else is scary?”
“The diseased and corpulent husks of the living descending into the rotting maw of Tartarus, the faint lights of their souls serving only as will o' wisps dancing between the teeth of the damned?” Twilight asked.
AJ turned around to look at her, raising an eyebrow. “Y'all gotta stop reading dictionaries in the outhouse, sugarcube. It rots your brain.”
“Hey, do you think fish race each other? Like, have swimming contests and stuff? That'd be cool. Y'ever think there's fish versions of us?” Dash asked.
“Pretty hard to twirl a lariat underwater. But Ah don't see why not.”
“But then there'd be a Fluttershy fish that's scared of water and lives on dry land instead. And a Pinkie fish, that just doesn't make any sense. Oh, and a Rarity fish, that won't shut the hay up about how much corsets improve your figure.”
“This daydream is going in a pretty weird direction, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said with a yawn. Now that the argument had stopped, the whole fishing thing wasn't so bad. She liked dozy little conversations like this. Of course, really, she should have been taking notes about how friends interacted, but that could wait. No doubt she'd remember to do so when she got home.
“Is that a boat?” Applejack asked, setting down her rod and peering at a speck on the horizon.
Dash scrambled across the boat and started squinting. “No way. Who'd be dumb enough to come to this part of the river? Besides us, obviously.”
“Well, it looks pretty boat shaped. Ah'm thinking that if it goes on water like a boat and it's shaped like a boat, it's probably a boat.”
“Twi, are there any fish that look like boats?” Dash asked.
Twilight pondered the question. “Well, maybe, but that's just because a lot of shipwrights make their boats to be like fish. Fish are pretty good at slipping through the water, so the logic is that if you copy the shape-”
Winona, done chasing butterflies for now, decided that it was an opportune time to throw herself into the river, paddle noisily to the boat, climb in, and flop limply into Twilight's very limited personal space, supplying the ever-popular fragrance of wet dog. This task achieved, she shook herself vigorously, depositing the bit of the river that she had purloined directly into the bottom of the boat.
“Wow, you're actually right for once, AJ. It is a boat,” Dash said, after flying into the air for a bird's eye view. “Can you see who's rowing it? They're just dots from high up.”
“Uh… Well, either Ah'm going plumb loco, or it's 'Shy and Pinkie. Looks like Rarity's on board, too.”
Dash's face fell. “Oh, horseapples! It's the Nature Police! Quick, hide the fishing rods. And the bait. In fact, hide the entire boat. We want nothing to do with this. Twi, do you remember the story? You only killed those worms 'accidentally'.”
“I didn't kill any worms at all!” she protested.
“Yeah, but AJ did, and she can't lie to save her life! 'Shy will eat her alive! You gonna let one of your best friends take the rap like that?”
Twilight glowered at the pegasus, and turned her sarcasm dial up to number eleven. “What, let my friend take the consequences for something she actually did? Consequences that probably aren't even going to be that bad? Why would I even think of such a thing?”
“I knew you'd see it my way. You got any fire? We should burn the evidence.”
“You want to set the boat on fire. The boat that we're sitting in. The boat that is currently in a large body of water. I can't see how that could go wrong in any way,” Twilight said flatly.
“Y'all can do what ya like. I'm carryin' on with the fishin',” AJ said with a shrug, and settled back down with her rod.
Slowly, like a remorseless wooden harbinger of the apocalypse, the boat carrying Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie moved closer. Very slowly, in fact. Actually, it seemed to have gotten caught on some reeds, but then Pinkie drew forth an outboard motor from regions unknown and sticky-taped it to the boat. Then the remorseless wooden harbinger became akin to a remorseless wooden barracuda, but with somewhat more screaming – most of which consisted of “Where are the brakes?!” and other such variants. As it turned out, there were none, and the next thing anypony knew there was a rather large crash as one boat hit the other.
“Oh, my. I'm so glad we caught up with you. I'm very sorry, but you can't fish here today. It's the mating season, and you'll disturb the delicate ecosystem in this… oh…” Fluttershy began, but her nerves simply couldn't take the strain of the crash. Her legs locked up and she toppled over into the bottom of the boat.
“Hello, ladies!” Rarity trilled. “We brought a picnic hamper, and also some hats. You simply must wear them.”
“Uh, Rare? These ain't fishin' hats,” AJ pointed out, as three homburgs levitated over to their boat and attempted to jam themselves onto any head they could find.
“Of course not. Fishing hats are simply the least fashionable garment I could care to imagine. These are better,” the unicorn sniffed.
“Arr! I am the Dread Pirate Pinkie!” Pinkie said, jumping up sharply and almost catapulting Rarity into the drink. She was not wearing a pirate hat, a peg leg, or an eyepatch, all of which made her declaration even more surreal. “I've come to plunder your booties! Especially Dashies', but especially Twilight's!”
“But Pinkie! I don't have any booty!” Twilight protested desperately.
“Yeah, you just keep tellin' yourself that, Twi. AJ, get over here and prepare to support your captain. No way am I letting Fluttershy and Pinkie plunder my booty. In fact, I'm going to be the plunderer, and they're going to be the plunder-ees!” Dash yelled.
“Say, sugarcube. Do y'all know what 'subtext' means?” AJ asked.
Rainbow Dash shook her head, which was all the time that Pinkie needed to launch herself from one boat to the other and crash bodily into the pegasus. What happened next took only seconds to unfold: the two started to wrestle, which rocked the boat far more than it was designed to be rocked. Applejack began swearing copiously. Winona casually jumped off the boat and swam to the bank again, her homburg still perched jauntily on her little dog head. And Twilight? Twilight simply wasn't quick enough, her hooves getting tangled in the mess of fishing line and bait and jam sandwiches that littered the bottom of the boat. Before she knew it, she was underwater and the boat was very upside down indeed. She could almost hear the fish laughing at her as she fought her way to the surface.
It would not have been an overstatement to say that Twilight was unhappy. She was cold, she was wet, and she was covered in all sorts of pondweed, and algae, and things she didn't even want to think about. She had a tablecloth draped over her shoulders, and she was sitting on the bank of the river, listening to Rainbow Dash and Applejack recount – in excruciating detail – every single sentence of every argument they'd had to Fluttershy and Rarity, who were still enviably, heartbreaking dry.
“…and the worst thing is, the whole trip was a bust anyway. We didn't catch a single fish, and now all the bait's in the river,” Dash moaned.
“I'm sure all the fish are grateful for the extra food. Although, I'll have to make sure they don't overbreed and predate too heavily. Oh my…” Fluttershy sighed. “I'm just glad we managed to get everypony out of the river so quickly.”
“Yeah, there's the fish and all that, but we had a bet and now we don't know who would have won,” Dash said sourly. Twilight's stomach turned.
“Ooh. A bet? Were you betting for candy or cake, or maybe for a parrot or a balloon or-”
“No, sugarcube. We was bettin' for chores. If Ah caught the biggest fish, Dash and Twi were gonna help me work the farm tomorrow,” AJ explained to Pinkie.
“And if I won, I was gonna make Twi do that wing spell thing so they could help me with weather duty.”
“I never agreed to any of this,” Twilight announced, her eye twitching. Dash and AJ looked at each other.
“Ah thought you told her about all this?”
“I thought you told her!”
“So, let me get this straight. Today, you two burst into my house without invitation, roped me into going fishing with you when I didn't want to, and then, to top it all off, enrolled me in a bet without telling me. Have I gotten that right?” Twilight asked, far too calmly.
“Darling, are you alright?” Rarity asked. AJ and Dash looked at each other again, this time with mounting panic.
“Uh...We, uh, thought you knew. I mean, you can't expect to go on the fishing trip without being a part of the bet, right?” Dash asked hopefully.
“Aha. Ahahahaha,” Twilight laughed, in the tone of a pony whose patience had just expired. “Girls, could you come with me for a second? I have something to show you.”
For the third time AJ and Dash exchanged glances, this time wearing expressions of absolute terror. Nevertheless, they followed mutely as Twilight led them closer to the riverbank. They watched in apprehensive silence as she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began to do magic. There was a muffled pop, a splash, and then suddenly there was a fish, encapsulated in its very own perfect sphere of water, levitating just above Twilight Sparkle's head.
“Now, girls. What do you notice about this fish?” Twilight asked, worryingly cheerful.
“Uh…It's… Green?” Dash tried.
“Why yes, Dash. It is green. Do you know what else it is? It's the only fish any of us have caught today, which makes it the biggest fish. Therefore, I win the bet. And do you know what that means? It means that tomorrow, you two will be cleaning my library, while I do the work I would have gotten done today if you two hadn't dragged me along on this fishing trip,” the unicorn said pleasantly, her face set in a rictus grin.
“Ooh! Twilight, can I help clean the library too?” Pinkie asked. Twilight's face softened.
“Yes, Pinkie. You can help too, if you really want to. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to buy a pack of marshmallows, and then I'm going home so Spike and I can roast them together,” she said, and, with a sharp flash, was gone.
There was silence in the clearing as Fluttershy and Rarity pointedly withheld their judgement on the precedings. Winona shook herself dry and sent droplets of water flying all over AJ and Dash, and Pinkie followed suit. Eventually, Rainbow Dash spoke.
“Geez, what was her problem? We invited her out on a fishing trip, didn't we?”
“Y'all really are lookin' to get punted back in the river, ain't ya?” AJ deadpanned.
“Oh, cram it, Applesmack. It's your fault for saying fishing was a sport in the first place. If you hadn't done that, none of us would be in this mess.”
“First of all, fishin' is a sport, and second of all, if y'all hadn't been so cheap with renting the boat, we might not have got dunked in the river-”
“At least I'm not afraid of swans! 'Oh, no, Ah'm Applejack, and Ah'm a big wuss who can't row and wets the bed because of a stupid bird!'”
“Oh yeah? Well at least Ah ain't a...”
Then sex happened. The end.
Author's Note
This is a silly, purile, pointless story. It's bad, and I should feel bad. But I don't, so joke's on you, internet!
