Chapter 26

Carousel Boutique, Ponyville

It had been some time since Aurora had been with her own kind, especially concerning the male variety. So it wasn’t surprising that the atmosphere she felt around Spike was considerably awkward. She wasn’t even sure why she wanted to hang out with him, it was something done on impulse. Hopefully this wouldn’t turn out like that one time she attended one of the dragon migrations near Las Pegasus.

“Huh…I didn’t know Rarity had a dragon assistant.”

Spike waved his claw. “Nah, she doesn’t have one. I’m Dusk’s assistant. He runs the library here in Ponyville. Rarity went away on some trip, so she asked me to look after her sister.”

“So what exactly do you do?”

“Well, I organize the books; clean the shelves, cook and all sorts of various tasks.”

Aurora giggled. “Hah, so you’re a pony’s butler?”

Spike blushed. “I-I’m not a butler! I’m his number one assistant.”

“Yeah, yeah keep telling yourself that.”

“Hmmph! What’s your job then, miss high and mighty?”

Aurora puffed out her chest. “I’m Trixie’s magic partner!”

“Oh…and what does a ‘magic partner’ do exactly?”

“I help her to perform tricks and set up stage props. I might occasionally clean up too.”

Spike grinned. “And you called me a pony’s butler. What you do isn’t that different.”

Ignoring Spike’s sarcastic comment, Aurora padded over to a coffee table. Upon inspecting it, she found that a book was lying on top of it. Her eyes lit up when she discovered the most recent issue of Pony-Ball Z, an issue what wasn’t supposed to come out for another two weeks.

Aurora nuzzled the book. “Oh my gosh *squee*! This is book thirty four. H-how in the world did you get your claws on this so soon?”

“Eh…I didn’t know you liked manga so much. Well if you really want to know, it’s because Dusk has a special arrangement with some of the Neighponese publishing companies. The library usually gets most of the issues at least three weeks prior to release.”

“What are you kidding? I love manga! I usually read them when we’re traveling from town to town. C-could I possibly…read it?”

Spike waved his claw. “Yeah, sure if you want to. I just got done reading that about a half hour ago.”

Spike couldn’t help but chuckle as the dragoness plopped onto the floor, eagerly devouring the book. He had to admit that she looked absolutely adorable with her pink tail swishing back and forth. Luckily Sweetie decided to show up just then, stopping Spike’s thoughts from straying into more dangerous territory. The drake thought it was odd though, for the filly looked like she had been crying.

“Hey what’s wrong?”

Sweetie poked him in the chest. “Spike you jerk! You didn’t tell me that show was gonna be so sad.”

Spike rubbed his neck. “Oh yeah…heh I honestly forgot about that. Actually the funny thing is, Dusk cried like a foal when he first saw it. So umm…don’t feel too bad?”

“I guess so, but I still would have liked a warning.”

Aurora giggled. “Don’t worry kid, even I cried when I watched Madoka. I’m even willing to bet that ol’ Spike over here shed some draconic tears of his own.”

Spike blushed. “I did not! At least…not very much.”

“Why do males always try to so macho about everything? Can’t they just admit that they have feelings?”

“B-because it’s embarrassing Aurora.”

“Oh really? Well I just admitted that I cried during the show and you don’t see me turning into a tomato.”

“But that’s because you’re a ma-err…I mean dragoness. They’re supposed to cry at sappy stuff.”

Aurora shook her head. “Spike you have a lot to learn about females. Yes, we do cry sometimes but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to. We’re not always looking for the biggest, strongest, Alpha male who thinks emotions should be suppressed at all times. Sometimes we want a guy who can connect with us…ya know?”

Spike’s fins sagged. “Oh…sorry. It’s kind of hard to learn about these kinds of things when you've lived with a stallion your whole life.”

“Well then consider yourself lucky to have me around. I’ll teach you all you need to know about impressing females. Why don’t we start with dating? More specifically, where to treat your lady for a bite to eat.”

Sweetie raised her hoof. “Oh I know! You could always go to Sugarcube Corner. I love eating sweets, so I’d be happy if a colt bought me some goodies from there.”

Aurora nodded. “Ah an excellent idea! I need to head back over there anyway, so we can burn two villages with one flame. Come along Spike, you’re going to treat me!”

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Sugarcube Corner, Ponyville

Discord stood in front of one of the ovens with a malicious grin. He was already in a good mood from pranking Rainbow Dash and Gillian so it didn’t really bother him that Pinkie asked for some help around the shop.

Under normal circumstances he would have found baking a hassle, considering he could just summon any kind of food he wanted using chaos magic. Always one for the dramatic, he levitated a white chef’s hat onto his head while whistling a jaunty tune of his own creation.

Pinkie on the other hoof was busy opening one of the ovens to retrieve some cranberry crumble muffins. As she set the tray onto the counter, one of the muffins became enveloped in a blood red aura. A few seconds later it sprouted a pair of doughy appendages, along with a lemon shaped like a top hat.

The muffin hopped out of the pan and began to dance on the counter, singing a showtune while twirling a candy cane. Once the baked treat was done dancing it hopped back into the pan, returning to normal. Pinkie turned around to see Discord waggling his eyebrows at her.

“Hahaha you should have seen the look on your face! The dancing muffin trick never gets old.”

Pinkie snickered. “I guess it was pretty funny, but you really should stop playing pranks and start baking. Mr. Cake will be really upset if we don’t complete this batch for tomorrow morning.”

“Pfft fine, but all work and no play makes Discord a dull draconequus.”

“You’re not a draconequus silly! You’re a pony now.”

“Oh…right. Well whatever, the sentiment still remains the same. Now what, pray tell, am I to be creating my bubbly bouncing baker buddy?”

“Hmm how about we start you off with something easy? One of our most popular pastries during breakfast has to be cheese croissants. All you have to do to make them is whip up some sweet cream cheese and some dough. Super-duper easy and scrumptious!”

Discord’s eyes sparkled. “D-did you say CHEESE!?”

“Yeppers I sure did. Now first we have to…”

Pinkie yelped in surprise as the entire shop was showered with various types of cheese. Blue cheese, cream cheese, cheddar, provolone, every kind of cheese anypony could want. The mare was a fan of occasional mischief but there was a time and place for that.

She took her job very seriously and Discord was making it very difficult to accomplish anything at the moment. She became particularly annoyed when a gooey blob of nacho cheese started to run down her mane and onto her snout. Discord's horn continued to glow as summoned even more delicious dairy product, cackling to himself.

“Cheese! FREE CHEESE FOR EVERYPONY!”

Pinkie gnashed her teeth. “Discord…could you please stop making it rain cheese? Some ponies are tryyyyying to get some work done.”

“But my dear, don’t you love cheese?”

Pinkie growled in response, which made Discord cough nervously. “Oh well I guess some ponies are lactose intolerant. What a shame…”

Pinkie took a deep breath. “Ok, now can we please get to baking? I know I don’t have much room to talk when it comes to focus, but I really need you to right now. Pranks can be fun but not when you do them all the time.”

“Fine Grumpy Pie, I’ll work. Sheesh, you act like somepony stole your sweet roll.”

Pinkie went about the business of wrapping the muffins in foil wrappers. Once that task was complete, she moved onto some sugar cookies. Those had been baked earlier in the day and the only thing they needed was icing. She went to grab a tube of vanilla icing, when it suddenly came to life.

The nozzle positioned itself right in front of her face and blasted her with a shower of icing. Pinkie grabbed a nearby dish towel and wiped the sticky mess off of her face. Once she was sufficiently clean, she could hear Discord howling with laughter.

“Looks like you took quite a thick, sticky, load. All in a day’s work for you huh?”

Pinkie’s vision began to cloud with tears, equal parts frustration and hurt. “That’s it Discord I’ve had enough! I tried to be nice to you. I tried to be understanding. But all you’ve done is harass me and everypony else! It’s no wonder nobody wanted to be your friend. YOU DON’T KNOW WHEN TO STOP! Get out…now.”

Discord waved his hooves. “Hey it was only a harmless prank. You can’t possibly be that upset. I mean sure the icing did look like cum so I thought it was funny to compare it to…”

“Discord…just stop. You need to go.”

“Oh come on Pinkie, do lighten up a bit. Look I promise I’ll get to baking toot sweet!”

Pinkie threw a muffin pan at this face. “NO! OUT!”

Discord was unceremoniously deposited on his rump outside of Sugarcube Corner as Pinkie slammed the door. With a roll of his eyes he shook the dust off himself via magic. He trotted towards the direction of the Everfree without any specific destination in mind. Why was it that every time he just wanted to have a bit of fun, everypony would get angry at him? He was the very embodiment of mischief and chaos; it was in his nature for Faust’s sake!

His brooding was interrupted when he noticed Princess Celestia and her precious student making their way towards the library. They seemed to be amicably chatting amongst themselves, like an old married couple. In Discord’s opinion they might as well have been married, that stupid unicorn practically treated her as a surrogate mother…but was there something more to it?

Celestia acted very causal around him, even going so far as to trot around without her regalia. Other than that, the only thing that struck him as odd was that the monarch’s mane was…purple? When in the seven hells did that happen? Was an ethereal multi-hued mane not good enough for her anymore? Discord’s brain suddenly came to a grinding halt when he saw the two start a rather intense make out session. Sweet chaos...did Tia just pop a wingie? Deciding he had enough of all of this nonsense, the unicorn teleported away to brood for a while.

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Aurora, Sweetie and Spike opened the door to Sugarcube Corner. They were expecting one of its pink coated residents to greet them with a bounce in her step…but instead they found her slumped over one the tables slowly eating a piece of chocolate cake. The mare only grunted, barely acknowledging their existence.

Sweetie nudged Pinkie’s side. “Hey, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Pinkie sniffed. “Yeah…”

“Would you mind telling us about it?”

“Don’t really wanna talk about it.”

Aurora rubbed her chin. “Hmm…Trixie acts just like this whenever she gets upset. Although…her binge eating is several times worse than a single piece of chocolate cake. One time she got kicked out of an ‘all you can eat’ buffet in Las Pegasus because the owner got a bit upset over how much food she was shoveling down.”

Spike tried not to laugh but still ended up snickering, earning him a glare from Sweetie. “Strange eating habits aside, are you sure you can’t tell what’s got you so depressed? You’ve cheered us up so many times Pinkie, the least we can do is try to do the same for you.”

“Alright…if everypony must know, it’s about Discord. I’m upset with him.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised. I mean the guy is a complete jerk; all he seems to care about is alleviating his boredom.”

Pinkie sighed. “Tell me about it. He can be kind of fun sometimes like when he pulls pranks but it starts to get really annoying because he doesn’t know when to stop! Even I know that there are times when you need to be serious, like when you’re trying to do your job.”

Aurora scoffed. “What a schmuck! I bet Discord’s like that because he’s never had to work a day in his life. It must be nice to have chaos magic, so you can just poof whatever you need with a snap of your claw.”

“But that wasn’t even the worst part. It was when he….uggghhh it makes me so upset just thinking about it! I shouldn’t say it, ‘cause it’s not appropriate for Sweetie.”

Aurora put her claw on Sweetie’s back. “C’mon let’s go outside for a bit.”

“But if we leave how can I help Pinkie?”

“Look Sweetie, this sort of problem isn’t meant to be heard by young ears. Besides, Spike and Pinkie have known each other way longer than I have so I probably wouldn’t be of much help.”

Sweetie’s ears drooped. “I guess so…”

“Tell ya what. How about I get you a snow cone while we wait?”

“Alright, but you’d better get me the deluxe tropical cone!”

Once Sweetie and Aurora were well out of sight, Spike turned his attention to the distraught mare. He was actually quite flattered that Pinkie considered him mature enough to discuss her problems. Often times he was lumped in with all the fillies and colts, because of his small stature. In reality he was only a few years younger than Dusk Shine. Due to his excellent education and constant exposure to books he was mature, if a bit on the naïve side.

He might not have been an expert concerning the emotions of females but he owed it to Pinkie to at least try to understand. And so with a deep breath, the drake held her hoof.

“Pinkie, I didn’t want to embarrass you earlier but you looked like you had been crying.”

“That’s because…I was. I’m not sure if Discord even realized that what he did was hurtful. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me.”

“What exactly did he do? I mean…it must have been pretty bad if you couldn’t say it in front of Sweetie.”

Pinkie blushed. “You’re gonna think it’s silly.”

“Hey now, it can’t be that silly if it’s upsetting you this much. I promise I won’t laugh.”

“Well…it happened when I was trying to bake some cupcakes. Discord thought it would be a brilliant prank to shoot icing in my face. Normally I wouldn’t care that much but it was what he said afterwards that really upset me.”

“Ok, so what did he say?”

“He basically insinuated that I was a w-whorse.”

Spike’s eyes widened. “Oh…OH! It all makes sense now. The icing sort of resembled ermm…*cough* stallion…stuff, so it looked like you had just…damn that’s pretty bad.”

“Maybe you might think that I’m overreacting to a prank but what he said really hurt my feelings.”

“No, I don’t think so Pinkie. He shouldn’t have said something like that, especially when he doesn’t really know you all that well. Even if he did, that still would have been a terrible thing to say.”

“Spike, I’m going to tell you something that I’ve only ever told my sisters about. It’s a secret of mine that I really don’t like sharing…but I think it will help you to understand why I feel so angry and sad.”

Spike twiddled his claws. “Umm ok.”

“As you may know, I was raised on a rock farm during my foalhood. But what you might not know is that my family belongs to an old Equestrian religion known as the Priory of Stone. According to the laws of the priory, my parents had to be very strict concerning discipline amongst my sisters and I.”

“I’ve never even heard of that. I guess I’ll have to ask Dusk about it.”

“Yeah…it’s not widely practiced anymore, kind of an earthpony sort of thing. Anyway, I wasn’t always so cheerful and happy like I am now. Life on the farm was about as fun and exciting as watching paint dry and…it was exhausting too. I was so happy to finally get my cutie mark; because I was secretly dreading it would have something to do with rocks. But…my parents weren’t quite so happy about it.”

“That’s terrible! Why I would…”

Pinkie pressed her hoof to Spike’s lips. “Just let me finish. Like I said they weren’t happy but they supported me anyway. The real problems started to happen once I got back to school. You have to understand that I lived in a really small town where most of the ponies had rock related cutie marks. Everypony in school started giving me strange, if not outright hostile looks once they saw the balloons on my flanks. It wasn’t long until the bullying started. At first they sort of just laughed at me, thinking it was a silly thing to have partying as your special talent. Sure I was a little sad when they said those things but…it was nothing compared to what happened later.”

“What happened?”

“They began to believe that since I was into partying, that I was also a loose mare. A lot of the colts approached me, asking me to do all sorts of dirty things with them. At first I thought they were just joking but then it became more frequent. Eventually it got so bad that everypony started thinking that I was some cheap whorse. I couldn’t take it Spike…so one day I just ran home, locked myself inside my room and cried.”

“Pinkie, I had no idea…”

“Of course you wouldn’t have, I’ve never told anypony about this except for my family.”

“What did you do after all that?”

Pinkie’s voice began to crack. “The only thing I could do…I left. After I cried myself to sleep, I woke up the next morning and decided to get away from that place. Believe me Spike, it tore me up inside because I still loved my family but I couldn’t live like that anymore. I was just so…different from everypony else, I needed to start over somewhere fresh. It had to be somewhere nopony knew me. That’s how I ended up moving to Ponyville.”

Spike gently stroked her mane. “It all makes sense now. What Discord said really hurt you didn’t it?”

“*Sniff* It did…all because I haven’t completely gotten over my past. I feel so stupid Spike! I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with him, he couldn’t have possibly known about what happened back then. But still, he could use some lessons in manners.”

“You know what I think Pinkie? I think you have a letter to write to the Princess and maybe an apology too. Who knows, maybe if Discord understood your situation he might be more willing to apologize as well.”

A ghost of a smile appeared on Pinkie’s muzzle. “O-ok, that sounds good. Oh and Spike? Thanks for listening; it means a lot to me.”

Spike wrapped her in tight hug. “You’re welcome.”

Author's Notes:

Alright, so after much delay here is chapter 26. I had originally intended to release this on the 5th of October but...things didn't quite work out that way. I just recently got a new job and as a result, the hours I now work are far more "intense" than my previous job. Again, I apologize for the month long hiatus and hopefully I'll post at least one or two more chapters this month.