It was a beautiful sunny day at a public space in Cloudsdale. Almost like a park, but without any trees, as they didn’t grow well in cloud. Precipitation was quite rare there, as it happened. But defying the spirit of bright sunny days, two one-time characters were arguing with a moderate amount of anger over who loved a particular flavour of doughnut more.

“Oh, did you just say you think you’re the number one fan of Iced Strawberry™?” She actually said the ™.

“Yeah, I think I am. I certainly appreciate all the maths they had to go through to balance out the icing with the artificial strawberry to satisfy sophisticated tastes like my own, as directly opposed to your philosophy of a—what word can describe it—sickly amount of icing on every doughnut being appropriate. Seriously, what’s even the point of the strawberry flavouring if you just want ludicrous amounts of icing to overpower it anyway?”

“To overpower it? Are you suggesting that I can’t appreciate or even detect any taste even vaguely subtle? And I ponially think the balance of all the ingredients on Iced Strawberry™ doughnuts is absolutely perfect, they delivered exactly what the consumers wanted and didn’t get anything wrong.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. I totally believe that knowing your previous comments about Mocha.”

“Well, I love and understand Iced Strawberry™ infinitely more than you ever could with your limited experience in doughnut studies.”

“Oh, you want to play the misused infinity game? Well, I love it tan(90°) plus one.”

“Hey, you can’t add one to that! It’s not even defined!”

The “tangent of ninety degrees” one threw a punch, the other then tackled her, and a hooffight broke out. The kind where both the participants are wimps and so the fight could conceivably go on for hours without either of them being injured. Fortunately, a few minutes in, this happened:

“Hey,” said a random passerby, “A fight about doughnuts! That sounds much more interesting than this aimless walking I’m doing!”

“Hey,” another noticed at the same time, “That dust ball-generating fight looks like a much more efficient method of exercise than this aimless walking.”

This happened many times over, often with flying instead of walking, and before 90% of polled Equestrians knew it, half the town were in one huge hooffight. There was one specific incident of a pony joining which interests especially, because the incident was Rainbow Dash.

“Hey,” she said, “Is that a fight? That sounds much more fun and new than than this aimless flying I’m doing!”

She came down to earth, literally, except it was Cloudsdale so not literally.

“Is there a point to this fight?” she said into the cartoon dust cloud. “Like, do I have to pick a side, or is it just a free-for-all?”

Immediately after she said that, she noticed a lemonade stand-type desk in her peripheral vision several metres away. Behind the desk was a cream-coloured stallion of build so average it was actually remarkable that nothing was noticeably deviant. She walked over to the desk.

“Rainbow Dash?!” he said. “Holy crap, Rainbow Dash! Can I—”

“What’s this fight like and how can I join?”

“You have to decide whether you think the Iced Strawberry doughnuts you can get from Torus Café are flawless or if they’re perfect instead.”

“Well, they’re not an absolute historical masterpiece of food, but there’s nothing really wrong with them, so... flawless, I guess?”

He took a black headband from under the desk and held it out. Rainbow took it and donned it. He then hooved her a clipboard with paper and pen. “Sign this.”

She signed it without perusal or hesitation and he took the signing-related items back.

“No flying. If you get your headband torn off, you have to leave, in which case I guess you’re allowed to fly. If you collect five headbands, return them here for fabulous prizes!”

“I thought this was just some riot, why am I signing stuff?”

“It’s like how every sport started out as a foals’ game.”

“That doesn’t—”

“Get going, there’s a line.”

She looked over her shoulder and saw that a line of three others had developed, and so she went heroically off into the dust cloud.

Hours later, ponies joining because they had an opinion or wanted a spider ring, leaving because they had to go to work, or being dragged away by one of a few volunteers for being unconscious or dead, dusk came. The signup pony’s watch beeped, prompting him to take a megaphone from behind the desk.

“The first annual Torus Café DoughnutBrawl is over,” he said. “You have eight seconds to stop killing each other, under penalty of not getting prizes.”

Everyone stopped fighting and instantly went into a grid formation.

“I thought this was just called the Cloudsdale doughnut riot of 2011,” a mare said effortlessly despite her lack of teeth.

“That’s because the two ponies who started it were shills and the entire riot was secretly a publicity stunt.”

And so all the Cloudsdalese were mad for a few days about their passion for spontaneous riots being taken advantage of, then forgot about it. Next Chapter: Chapter 4½: Fun Clopfic Times Estimated time remaining: 18 Hours, 23 Minutes