CRISIS: Equestria - Divergence

by GanonFLCL

Chapter Twelve: Confection

Pinkie wasn't really sure what to make of the strange array of treats that sat on a plate in front of her. They certainly looked like the typical sorts of confections that she was used to seeing—cupcakes, cookies, eclairs, etc.—but they were all a little… off.

They didn't smell quite right, for one thing; they just lacked that sugary sweet smell that came with all the baked goodies Pinkie loved. The textures were all off, too; the chocolate frosting didn't quite look like chocolate, and the whipped cream was flat and smooth, not light and puffy.

But the tastes, okay, those were pretty darn close. They weren't the best confections that Pinkie had ever tasted, but they certainly tasted close enough to the real deal that if not for her nose and eye for the details, she'd have been fooled completely.

It was still just a little bit off, though, meeting her standards just fine but not soaring above them. None of the treats were quite sweet enough, and they didn't have the same consistency at all. She'd eaten the cookie with a spoon like it was made of gelatin, for crying out loud.

"Good, right?" asked Cinnamon Swirl, the owner and proprietor of this establishment, The Sweet Spot.

The other mare was about the same age as Mrs. Cake back home, and roughly as well-rounded in figure. Her coat was a lush cinnamon brown, true to her name, and her mane a pleasant two-tone blend of chocolate and mocha. Cinnamon also wore a straightforward white chef coat and matching hat, both of which had colorful smudges on them.

Pinkie herself, incidentally, had changed out of her mishmashed outfit and into a cute little off-white waitress ensemble, complete with an apron. She'd liked her colorful, zany clothes at first, but she knew that such an outfit had no place in the kitchen or if she was going to be working in a pleasant little sweet shop like this, and so she'd enthusiastically switched it up. The new clothes would be hers once she was officially hired, and Pinkie would treat them right.

"They're super tasty," Pinkie said, licking her lips to get the not-quite-chocolate off. "A bit different from what I'm used to, but I like 'em! Pretty darn close to the real thing."

Cinnamon nodded. "That's right, Lockwood said you were from the southern continent. They use all sorts of authentic ingredients down there, don't they? No synthetics?"

"Yup! I really like what you made here, though, Miss Swirl. Like I said, it's almost as good as the real thing, and I mean that in the nicest, bestest way possible. I bet if you got to use real sugar and chocolate, you'd be the greatest baker in all of Equestria!"

"Well then, I'll take that as a compliment."

The interior of the shop, at least the front half, reminded Pinkie less of a bakery and more like a coffee shop. There was a glass counter loaded with assorted treats that were already prepared—donuts and danishes, mostly—with a cash register on top. Several small tables with chairs were carefully tucked into every nook and cranny available so that customers could sit and eat if they wanted to. Big windows looked out onto the street outside, which was already bustling with activity.

"Now," Cinnamon said as she turned and led Pinkie back into the kitchen proper, "your job here at The Sweet Spot is twofold. First and foremost, you will be operating the cash register, which means that you'll be taking orders and delivering them to customers on a daily basis. You're sure you can handle that?"

Pinkie snapped her hoof up in a brisk salute. "Ma'am, yes ma'am!"

"You're absolutely sure? It means you're going to be dealing with a lot of ponies every day, dealing with every single request and complaint they have, collecting payments and potentially issuing refunds, answering questions, chatting them up to make them feel at home, and just in general providing exemplary customer service. I ask again, Pinkie: can you handle that?"

Pinkie knew that Miss Swirl wouldn't ask twice unless it was really important, and if it was really important, Pinkie also knew that she'd put her all into it, and when she put her mind to something, that something got done.

"Absotively posilutely! I'm the friendliest face in the whole wide world, Miss Swirl. You can count on me to provide the best customer service ever."

"I certainly hope so," Cinnamon said with a grin. "We're getting close to the middle of the winter quarter, and that means the holiday season, and that means lots of catering. Now, I always take on extra help when the holidays are coming around, but let me be clear: this is a temporary position, and if you're not up to par, I'll find somepony else. Got it?"

"Got it," Pinkie said with a serious nod; her game face was on at maximum power at this point.

If Miss Swirl didn't believe her after this, well, Pinkie didn't know how else to prove it. She was utterly confident in her abilities to make ponies happy with her service, and had never met a pony yet that wasn't satisfied with the kind of service she could provide.

Okay, sure, sometimes ponies said she might be just a little overbearing, but it was always better to be too friendly and too attentive rather than being completely absent, right? It wasn't her fault that some ponies weren't aware of their surroundings and were easily surprised when she leapt out of bushes to deliver cupcake orders.

"Now, as for your second duty: when we're getting backed up with orders and you're not working the front of the store, you're going to be back here with me putting orders together," Cinnamon continued, gesturing to the fully-stocked kitchen. "Since you're not from around here, I take it you don't know how Dolor products work?"

Pinkie stroked her chin; it was true, she didn't, but she had a little to go on. "Well, so far all that I know about them is that depending on how you store and prepare them, they get all sorts of different flavors. I guess that's how you made it taste like cookies and cupcakes even though they don't taste like that plain?"

"That's exactly right. It's a complicated, precise process dealing with all sorts of different factors. Every single aspect of preparation makes a difference. But it's one thing for me to tell you, and another for me to demonstrate. Take a seat, this'll take just a moment."

Cinnamon then retrieved a number of small, stainless steel cups from around the room, each containing a spoonful of the familiar Dolor Red paste that Pinkie had grown accustomed to seeing by this point. She grabbed some from the refrigerator, some from the cabinet, others she scooped out of different pots on the stove, some she took out of the oven, and one she took out of the freezer. She loaded up a tray with the various cups and set them on the counter in front of Pinkie.

"Each of these bits of Red have been prepared differently," she continued. "Just to give you an idea of how big of a difference there is in how things are done, I want you to taste them all and I'll tell you how they were made. And here." She set a big glass of water on the table too. "Wash it down between samples so that you don't cross-contaminate flavors."

Pinkie blinked as she looked at the twenty or so different little cups, then nodded. "Okie dokie lokie! Which one should I start with?"

"Make it simple: start from the top left and go row by row, like you're reading a book."

Pinkie nodded, grabbed the first cup, and ate the paste inside without using the provided spoon. It tasted of overly-ripe cherries, which Pinkie knew by now meant it was straight Dolor Red right out of the tube, and that had been stored in the cabinet beforehand.

Next was what tasted like tart cranberry sauce. Cinnamon explained that that meant it had been stored at room temperature just like the prior batch, but then it had been blended and allowed to sit for an hour.

Next was the refrigerated batch, which tasted like strawberries. Then was a batch that had been chilled in ice water, which tasted like watermelon. The frozen stuff tasted like raspberries. When these three were blended and left to sit on the counter overnight, their flavors apparently changed to resemble bell peppers, tomatoes, and pomegranates, respectively.

Pinkie was astounded that the exact same spoonful of paste could change flavors so erratically.

Then came the cooked batches, and that's where Pinkie's mind was blown, because now the flavors started getting more interesting and complex.

For example, a refrigerated, blended batch that was simmered in a pan retained its bell pepper taste but now tasted like roasted peppers. If a little water was mixed in, it changed flavors completely to that of somewhat spicy chili peppers, which could then be simmered in turn to taste like roasted red chilis similar to the kind Pinkie enjoyed on her pizza.

If baked for one hour at 250 degrees, the straight-from-the-tube batch tasted like cherry pudding; 300 degrees made it taste like cherry pie; 350 degrees, cherry cobbler. Similar things happened when the other batches were baked, changing their flavors into more complex versions of themselves. Yes, even the chilled batch changed from plain watermelon into what Pinkie could only describe as varieties of roasted watermelon, which was not at all what she expected and was also not at all unpleasant.

The only thing noticeable about all of the flavors was that they were blander than Pinkie was used to, even more so than what she'd tasted earlier, and it was just plain paste as far as she was concerned. By the time Pinkie was done, though, she'd run through an entire gamut of red-colored flavors, some of them sweet, some spicy, some savory, but all of them strikingly familiar.

"And that's just the plain Red all by itself," Cinnamon explained once Pinkie finished off the last of the batches. "When you start mixing in other colors, the flavors change even more, but probably not in the way you'd think. For example, you know that red and yellow paint mix together to make orange, right?"

Pinkie nodded.

"Well, Dolor Red and Dolor Yellow mixed together do not taste anything like Dolor Orange. Now, you tell me why that's perfectly logical."

Pinkie nodded again. "Makes perfect sense to me! Cherries and bananas don't make oranges, silly."

"Exactly right. Sometimes the flavors don't blend quite right and you get weird combinations where you can taste the two flavors separately, like the cherries and bananas we just mentioned. But, if you were to refrigerate the Red…?"

"It would mix with Yellow to make strawberry-banana! Like those smoothies I like from that little corner store near Rarity's boutique!" Pinkie exclaimed with a rapid, understanding nod. "Cool!"

"Very cool. Now, we don't get all of the flavors in existence, of course," Cinnamon explained with a shrug. "For example, I know they've got something down south called a… grapefruit? Have you ever seen one? I've only seen pictures."

"Oh, yeah, I know all about grapefruits. They're kind of pink on the inside, and they squirt real good if you poke 'em with your spoon at breakfast and then your eye starts burning." She paused. "Ooh, do you have to mix Red with White to get pink stuff? There's isn't a Dolor Pink, is there?"

Cinnamon shook her head. "White and Black don't mix quite the same way as the other colors, actually. But no, there's no Pink. We can't get the grapefruit flavor until Dolorcorp decides to experiment with Pink someday, but that's a long ways off since Black is their newest flavor and they're trying to promote it."

"Aw, phooey. No Pink means no grapefruit, dragon fruit, or guava-flavored stuff. Well, how do White and Black work, then?"

"White is a flavor enhancer; on its own it tastes like mostly white foods, like marshmallows, vanilla, and whipped cream, but when mixed with other colors, it helps to enhance the flavors and give them different textures."

To demonstrate, Cinnamon took a little cup of frozen White out of the freezer, and mixed it together with the strawberry-flavored Red out of the fridge, then passed it to Pinkie, who scarfed it down like all the others.

"Ooh! Strawberry ice cream!" Pinkie chirped, her ears perking up. It was actually pretty decent strawberry ice cream, at least as far as flavor was concerned. Her tongue was all confused tasting it without the creamy texture, though.

"Now, that's what White does," Cinnamon continued. "Black, on the other hoof, is typically overpowering unless it's straight out of the tube, which just adds a licorice taste to certain other flavors, but otherwise doesn't combine too well. When mixed with other flavors after being heated, though…"

She took a scoop of liquidized Dolor Black from one of the small pans on the stove, poured it into another refrigerated batch of Red, and passed it over.

Pinkie ate it, and licked her lips enthusiastically. "Mmm, chocolate-covered strawberries, and really fresh ones too, with rich dark chocolate! Neat!"

"So, as you can see, there are practically thousands of different combinations of different flavors, and a lot of them are rather difficult to memorize. Sometimes the portions matter, too. Add too much Black to that last combination, and you've basically just got chocolate with a distant hint of strawberry somewhere; too little, and you can't even taste the chocolate."

"It sounds complicated, like you said, but I'm looking forward to trying out all sorts of different things!" Pinkie said with a bright smile.

Cinnamon shook her head. "Oh, there's no 'trying out' anything, here, sweetheart."

"Huh?"

Cinnamon gestured to the wall of the kitchen behind Pinkie, where there was a large recipe guide to every single item that the establishment served, from the chocolate eclairs made with proper portions of Black, White, and Yellow, to the strawberry-pineapple shortcake made of Red, Yellow, and White. Every recipe had precise instructions for how much of each ingredient and how those ingredients were stored, as well as how long to cook them if needed, and then how to mix them together. Just like regular recipes, really.

"The Sweet Spot has a particular set of items that we sell, and I only adjust the menu during certain seasons, like adding pumpkin pie in the autumn quarter, and peppermint bark in the winter quarter. I typically remove items that don't have high demand after about a year, and after the last ten years my menu has pretty much hit the point that I'm not making any changes."

Pinkie tilted her head. "So… no trying out new things? What if you could make something that everypony really, really liked, and just needed to find the right combination? That's how real ingredients work."

Cinnamon gave Pinkie a sad smile. "Believe me, sweetheart, I've experimented with all sorts of different recipes out there, but Dolor products aren't like authentic ingredients. If you change too much in a recipe, you don't just end up with variations of a recipe, you end up with a totally different recipe. Too much Yellow in the eclair turns it into chocolate-covered bananas; too much Red in the cherry jubilee turns it into chili pepper ice cream. Get it?"

Pinkie considered that and as much as she didn't like to admit it, it seemed to be the truth: the Dolor things didn't work like a regular recipe did. If she was making cornbread at home, for example, different grinds of cornmeal would change the texture or color of the final product, not suddenly turn her concoction into corn-on-the-cob or creamed corn.

Pinkie realized that meant if a certain Dolor color didn't exist the flavors it provided were impossible to make. And that meant that until they brought out the newest color, Black, the entire city of New Pandemonium had been denied easy access to chocolate for who knows how many years.

That was pure evil. What kind of mad pony allowed that sort of thing to happen?!

"Got it," Pinkie said with a nod. "No tweaking the recipes, no messing around. You run a tight ship around here, Miss Swirl."

"Excellent, you're a fast learner so far."

"I try!"

"Now, seeing as we've got about thirty minutes before I open up shop, and I've got most of the early-morning products done, let's say we have ourselves a little trial run and see how well you can put together… hmmm…" Cinnamon tapped her hoof on one of the recipes on the wall. "Strawberry cheesecake."

Pinkie saluted. "On it!" She grabbed a spare chef hat from nearby, zipped over to the prep table after grabbing what she needed, rolled her shoulders, and set to work.

"♫All you have to do is take a cup of White stuff,

Add it to the mix!

Now just take a little something else—not cream puffs.

A bit of Red, just a pinch!

Baking these treats is such a cinch,

Add a teaspoon of some Yellow!

Add a little more, and you count to four,

And you'll never feel so mellow!

Cheesecake! So sweet and tasty!

Cheesecake Don't be too hasty!

Cheesecake! Cheesecake, Cheesecake, CHEESECAKE!"

When she was done, the little plate on the counter was now topped with what looked like a genuine slice of cheesecake marbled with strawberry swirls and drizzled with a little more strawberry syrup.

Cinnamon raised an eyebrow. "Wh-what was with the singing?"

"Hmm? Oh! I just like singing sometimes, especially when I'm trying to get a groove going," Pinkie giggled. "Though it was kind of tough rearranging some of the rhymes to fit with the ingredients. The whole 'White stuff, cream puff' bit was a bitch of a stretch, I think, but hey, you try altering established lyrics on the fly."

She then waved her hooves over her creation. "Anyway, ta-da! What do you think?"

Cinnamon hummed and nodded as she looked over the slice of strawberry-cheesecake-shaped Dolor paste that had been arranged on the plate. "The presentation is excellent, I will certainly give you that. Yes, this is some grade-A professional work here just on that alone; I haven't seen anypony put together a presentation like this in years.

"But what really matters, of course, is the taste…"

She took a spoon and scooped some of Pinkie's mixture up, popped it into her mouth, and swallowed it down. She nodded appreciatively as soon as she was done.

"Hey… hey, alright. That is one perfectly-done product, Pinkie. You followed the recipe to the letter, though I think you might've added just a little more Red than what was called for. But I still like it. Well done."

Pinkie beamed. "Thanks! So, am I hired?"

Cinnamon nodded, a wide smile on her face as she took another bite. "Oh yes, you are definitely hired."

Pinkie pumped her hoof. "Yes! Score one for the Pink! Ooh, I can't wait to tell Dashie! She'll be so proud of me!"

Cinnamon glanced at the clock on the wall. "Well, now that that's all settled in, it's just about time to open the store. Go ahead and take your position at the register and we'll get this day started, shall we?"

"Ma'am, yes ma'am!" Pinkie said with a brisk salute.

*****

Pinkie had always considered herself an eager-yet-patient pony with a heart of gold that could attend to a customer's needs better than anypony in the whole wide world. Ponies all over Ponyville adored her fun-loving, personable attitude, her eager, friendly demeanor, and her outgoing, lighthearted disposition; those were all words that Twilight had used to describe her at one time or another, and they were good words, and so she would use them too.

She always knew the best ways to make somepony smile. She was the sort of pony that could turn a frown upside-down with the same kind of masterful insight and dedication that a world-famous detective would use to solve the biggest mystery of the century. Even on the rarest of occasions, when somepony had a seriously-serious reason to be sad, Pinkie knew how to keep them from falling apart at the seams.

If she could get Cranky to open up and accept her friendship, she could do the same with anypony.

And so, despite being in a world where it seemed that every other pony had a scowl and a bad attitude, where most folks were too busy, too stressed, or too aggravated to even think of cracking a smile, Pinkie managed to find a way to at the very least make them smile in their hearts, if not upon their faces.

All it took was a little patented Pinkie Pie personality, passion, perseverance, and playfulness, and even the stodgiest of fuddy-duddies would be able to go about their day with at least a tiny spark of happiness.

"Hey, you gave me the wrong change!" shouted an angry pegasus stallion as Pinkie handed him four bits from the till.

"I did?" Pinkie said, glancing down at the four bits. She even counted them aloud, "One, two, three, four… hey, you're right! There should be five! Hang on a second."

She roughly smacked the side of her head a few times until another bit somehow popped from out of her ear and landed in the stallion's outstretched hoof.

"There it is!" Pinkie said with a beaming smile. "Must've gotten stuck in there! Sorry about that."

The stallion glanced at the bits in his hoof, then at Pinkie, then just pocketed them and nodded before taking a seat while he waited for his order, all of anger washed away like mud with a water hose.

Later, a unicorn mare complained, "I ordered a slice of blueberry pie with extra White on top." She displayed her order, a slice of blueberry pie with plenty of chilled White on top, the perfect substitute for whipped cream. "This is not enough White."

Pinkie hummed and nodded, then pulled a can of real whipped cream out of her mane and sprayed some on top of the slice. "Say wheennn~"

The mare watched in surprise, clearly having never seen authentic whipped cream out of an aerosol can before. She was so stunned that she almost forgot to tell Pinkie to stop when the pie was piled high with cream.

"There you go!" Pinkie giggled, putting the can back in her mane. "My treat. Just don't tell anypony," she added with a wink.

"Th-thanks," the mare said, digging her spoon into the cream to give it a taste. Her eyes opened wide in the telltale surprise that meant she'd enjoyed what she just ate. "Wow. Did you guys do something different with the White today?"

Pinkie shook her head. "Nope! Must be your imagination. Maybe the satisfaction of a job well done is making it taste better?"

"Right…" the mare muttered as she walked off, continuing to snack on the pie.

This continued on through most of the day, though not every customer had a complaint, and in fact very few did. Some ponies ordered their food with very particular instructions, which Pinkie knew weren't going to be followed when they got back to Cinnamon Swirl because they would basically ruin the product. It was a classic case of ponies ordering their food without understanding what made the food work in the first place.

Pinkie's favorite was a teenaged earth pony mare that ordered a blackberry cheesecake with no Yellow, easy on the White, and to substitute the Blue with Purple, which Pinkie knew altogether would make her order into a blueberry pie. Cinnamon Swirl had laughed out loud when she saw the order ticket, said something about "idiot kids", then followed the proper recipe.

The customer gave her compliments to the chef and ate it down without complaint.

*****

By the time Pinkie was done with her shift, she felt a satisfying mix of pride and exhaustion. The sheer number of customers at The Sweet Spot absolutely dwarfed the amount that she was used to from Sugarcube Corner, but the fact that she was able to get through every last one of them without a single unsatisfied customer lit her heart on fire.

Pinkie was very much a believer in the idea that one should leave places better than how they found them. She figured that if she kept this up, then by the time she and her friends had gone back home maybe New Pandemonium would be a happier place. After all, when somepony was happy, they tended to spread that happiness around; happiness was contagious, and Pinkie was patient zero.

A few hours after lunchtime, The Sweet Spot was ready to close, so she and Cinnamon headed out after the latter made sure everything inside was off and put away.

The surrounding neighborhood was, like most of Central Plaza, relatively nice compared to how Pinkie had heard other parts of the city described. The Sweet Spot itself was a cozy little shop in the wall along one side of the street, tucked in tightly with a bunch of other shops and businesses to the sides and above it; their immediate neighbors were a horseshoe store and a pharmacy.

"You did very well, Pinkie," said Cinnamon with a grin. "I think you're gonna do just great here. Maybe tomorrow we'll get enough of a rush that you'll get a chance to try making some stuff out in the back with me."

Pinkie blinked. "That… that wasn't a rush? I must've served over a hundred ponies today!"

"Yeah, it was pretty slow, wasn't it? That's okay, I get slow days every now and then during the holiday season. Some folks just aren't grabbing their gifts and treats yet, but they will."

"Wow! That must be a lot of ponies.”

Cinnamon finished shuttering up the windows and locking them up. "Hey, if you can, stop by early tomorrow, yeah? I think you'll want to take a crack at making the peppermint bark; it's our best seller."

Pinkie tilted her head. "Oh, sure. What time's early, anyway? I just realized that I never checked out the store hours."

"Don't worry about the store hours, that's only important to the customers. As for me, I usually like to start the first batch of baking for the breakfast treats—the donuts and such—by seven o' clock at the latest so that I can open up the shop at nine."

"Okay, that's no problem, I got here at eight today, so that's just an hour difference," Pinkie said with a shrug and a smile. "No biggie, Miss Swirl."

"Oh, no, that's just when I start the actual baking process. I usually have to spend about an hour or so before that cleaning and sanitizing the utensils and stations, as well as preparing all of the ingredients for quick access. I get here around five o'clock to get started. I want you here no later than six."

Pinkie's jaw dropped. She knew that bakers like the Cakes got up early to prepare and make the first batch of goods for the day, but she'd never been a part of that early morning routine before. She was usually just delegated to the lunchtime and closing time rushes so that the Cakes could take a break. In fact, the last time that Pinkie could remember waking up at that early of an hour was when she still lived with her parents and worked on the rock farm.

"Pinkie? Can you be here at six or not?" Cinnamon asked.

Pinkie shook off her surprise, then quickly nodded. "Ma'am, yes ma'am! You can count on me, Miss Swirl! I'll be here with bells on!"

"Good… though, maybe forget the bells," Cinnamon said with a smile. "Get used to those hours, by the way. I'll probably have you get here around that time for as long as you're working here. We're gonna be getting to the holiday party catering season within the next week or two and I'll need all the hooves I can get."

Pinkie nodded again. "You got it. So, I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yup, see you tomorrow, Pinkie. Enjoy your evening."

"You too."

With that, Cinnamon waved Pinkie off and headed down the street towards wherever it was that she lived, leaving Pinkie alone in front of the store with nothing more than a small box with a couple of treats to take home, as well as a larger box with all of her old clothes, except the roller skates. Pinkie was keeping those; the rest she was thinking about donating.

Pinkie took a deep breath. "Welp, I guess it won't be all bad. If the Cakes can do it, so can I." Then, she suddenly gasped. "Wait! This means I'll get to wake up at the same time as Applejack! Yes! We can be early-morning buddies!"

With that thought in mind, Pinkie giggled with joy and bounced—yes, bounced, with the roller skates on—her way down the street though crowds of ponies, heading off on the hour-long roll—hour-long bounce?—towards Southeast Point.

*****

Pinkie hadn't memorized any street names just yet in Central Plaza, but she had a nose for things when it came to a sense of direction; in other words, her nose knew just where she needed to go, so she followed her nose, which was naturally very easy to do since it was right on the front of her face. Now, it would be strange if she were following her tail, but she wasn't, thank you very much. That only happened once.

As she rounded another corner that her nose was telling her to go around, Pinkie bumped right into somepony as she came down from a bounce just as made to spring back up. The impact sent her box of treats flying into the air, its lid somehow popping open all on its own in comical fashion, all of its sweet, tasty contents miraculously soaring upwards in a perfectly straight line.

Pinkie fell back on her butt with an "oof!", and stared in shock and horror as the sweets toppled upwards. She scrambled to get to her hooves, but in her haste, the roller skates made that quite frankly impossible, turning her legs into a veritable tornado beneath her.

The box came tumbling down, followed by the sweets one-by-one.

Luckily, there was another pony there to catch the precious cargo, the one that Pinkie had bumped into. The box fell into her hooves first, followed by each of the sweet treats with perfect timing and precision; the other pony didn't even need to move to catch the whole batch in one go.

"Phew…" Pinkie breathed. "Thanks! You saved my—"

Pinkie now got a good look at the other pony, and did so with a wide-eyed stare of sheer bewilderment.

The other pony was a mare, like her, and an earth pony, also like her. Her coat was a pretty shade of pink, just a little darker than Pinkie's, and her straight-combed mane and tail were a different shade of pink, also just a little darker than Pinkie's. Her eyes, though, those were the exact same shade as Pinkie's.

The mare wore what Pinkie could only describe as a schoolfilly uniform, with a black jacket over a white top, a plaid gray tie, a ridiculously—no, scandalously, as Rarity would say—short, pleated plaid gray skirt, as well as a pair of thin white stockings on her hindlegs which were particularly tight at the top.

The other mare also had a look of bewilderment as she stared at Pinkie, holding the box she'd just caught steady in one hoof.

The two of them just stood and stared at one another for a long moment, frozen in time. Other ponies scooted around them as they went about their days, grumbling about a couple of weirdos blocking traffic.

The other mare spoke first. "Uh… hey. You dropped this," she said as she passed the box over to a now-stable Pinkie.

"Oh! Thanks!" Pinkie said as she took the box. All of the treats inside were safe and sound despite their impromptu air time, so she shut the box and breathed another sigh of relief. "Sorry about bumping into you. I wasn't watching where I was bouncing. You saved my life! I mean, my dessert!"

"Hey, no problem, nothing's broken," the other mare said with a grin. "You're not hurt, are you? You took quite a fall."

Pinkie waved that thought off with her hoof. "Naw, I'm fine. I landed right on my butt, and I've got a lot of cushion back there, like a big ol' bowl of gelatin." She emphasized the point by hopping to her hooves—steadily this time—and giving her rump a little shake. "Woo! Look at it wiggle!"

The other mare raised an eyebrow. "Damn, girl, you've got some serious junk in your trunk."

"Thanks! My friend Dashie says I could bounce a bit off it. Say, what's your name, Miss-Looks-Just-Like-Me-But-Not-Quite?"

"I'm Red Velvet," the other mare said, offering her hoof.

Pinkie gasped as she took the other mare's hoof in hers and shook it vigorously. "Oh. My. Goodness. I love your name. Those are my favorite cupcakes!" She gasped again. "Oh! Your cutie mark is a cupcake, too! Perfect!"

"Thanks! What's your name, then, Miss-Also-Looks-Just-Like-Me-But-Not-Quite?"

Pinkie hadn't stopped shaking the other mare's hoof yet. "I'm Pinkie Pie! Nice to meet you! Say, are you getting a huge sense of déjà vu right now? Have we met before? And no, it's not just the fact that we look alike talking here, I really feel like we have."

Velvet shook her head, but had a curious expression on her face. "I'm pretty sure that we haven't, but you're right! It's like… there's this little feeling in the way, way back of my head that's telling me we've met before. Total déjà vu. Ooh, maybe we were friends in a past life? Or enemies? Lovers? No, not that last one."

"Ooh! Ooh! I've got it!" Pinkie said, raising her hoof in the air. "We're long-lost twin sisters, separated at birth! That's gotta be it. I mean, look at us: exactly alike. Same pretty faces, same blue eyes, same cute hoofsies, same rockin' tushies. You just style your mane differently from me, that's all."

Velvet glanced back at her butt briefly. "Huh, yeah, I guess my tush is rockin'." She turned back to Pinkie. "So, where were you headed off to in such a hurry that you bumped right into me?"

"Me? Oh, just heading home from work."

"You live around here?"

"Yup! At Southeast Point, actually, which isn't far at all. Speaking of which, I really oughta get going, or I'll be late for dinner with my friends." She waved. "It was nice meeting you Long-Lost-Twin-Sister-That-Was-Separated-At-Birth!"

Before Pinkie could bounce away, Velvet grabbed her hoof. "Whoa, wait! Not so fast, Pink."

Pinkie proceeded to bounce a bit slower. Not as in taking slower bounces, but as in slow-motion straight out of the movies. "Yeah? What's up?" she asked, her voice also slowed a bit to match her pace.

"You said you live at Southeast Point?"

"Yeah?"

Velvet smiled and pointed at herself. "I live at Southeast Point, too."

Pinkie returned to normal speed and stopped moving. "Really? You do?"

"Yeah! My sisters and I just moved in this morning. I'm just taking a walk around the neighborhood to scope it out, y'know? Find what kind of joints there are to eat at and stuff."

"Wowie! What an incredibly convenient, lucky circumstance that doesn't seem at all suspicious! You wanna walk back there together with me? I mean, you can walk, and I can roll." Pinkie rolled in place on her skates to demonstrate.

"Sure! Uh, one thing though."

"Yeah?"

Velvet pointed the opposite direction that Pinkie had been bouncing. "Southeast Point is this way."

"Oh? Huh." Pinkie scratched her head. "How'd I get that mixed—" She gasped, and stared cross-eyed at her nose. "Nose! You weren't leading me home, you were leading me to my new friend, you big goofball! I mean, thanks, but yeesh, what if we got lost?"

Velvet blinked. "What's all this about your nose?"

"Nothing." Pinkie did an about-face and started bouncing again. "Come on, Red, let's get home!" As Velvet turned around, Pinkie went cross-eyed again, pointed at her snout, and whispered, "We'll talk about this later, Nose."

As the pair walked—no, Velvet walked, Pinkie rolled—they got to talking, of course, because that's just what you did when you were walking or rolling with a new friend so that you could get to know them better. Pinkie told Velvet all about her new job, and how much she enjoyed baking and making ponies happy, and how much she loved parties, and how much she loved her friends.

Velvet just seemed to nod along to most of it, but occasionally Pinkie noticed her getting distracted by something elsewhere, glancing back at other ponies as they walked by or glancing at the other side of the street.

"Hey Red, what's got your attention, huh?" Pinkie asked.

Velvet jerked to attention. "Huh? Oh! Sorry, was I distracted?"

"A little bit, yeah. You just started staring off into space for a minute there, and I was in the middle of talking about how this one time I threw a party that was so much fun that we accidentally got the Ponyville Fire Brigade called on us."

"Oh. Sorry," Velvet said, sheepish as… well, a sheep.

"You said that already. So what's got you so distracted, huh? I'm not… gulp, boring you, am I?" she asked with an exaggerated gulp.

"No no, it's not that," Velvet said, waving her hooves.

"So what is it?"

"Him," Velvet said, pointing off towards the other end of the street.

Pinkie raised an eyebrow and looked, but couldn't see anything that could possibly be more engaging than the Fire Brigade story. "'Him'? Who? What? Huh?"

Velvet rolled her eyes, then grabbed the top and bottom of Pinkie's head to turn it in the direction she herself was looking. "Him."

Pinkie found herself staring across the street at a rather buff-looking white-coated stallion that was in the midst of washing the one of the storefront windows. He wasn't wearing much besides a button-up shirt that was currently very much unbuttoned and soaked with water. Every swipe of the squeegee across the window made the stallion's muscles tense and bulge, easy to see through the wet shirt.

"That guy?" Pinkie asked. "What about him?"

"What do you mean, 'what about him'?" Velvet asked incredulously. "He's a total hunk. Look at him! Don't tell me he doesn't do a little something for you?"

Pinkie shrugged. "I don't see what the fuss is about."

Velvet's jaw dropped. "Do you need to see an eye doctor or something? Maybe that's why you had no idea you were going the wrong way earlier: you need to get your eyes checked."

"Pshaw, that's silly. My eyes work great!" Pinkie said, briefly crossing her eyes. "I just can't see what about him's got you distracted. You find him attractive or something?"

"Uh duh," Velvet said, biting her lip.

"Ah, okay, I get it then. I know I get googly-eyed like that when I see somepony I like. So what are you waiting for? Don't let me keep you, girlfriend," Pinkie said, gently slapping Velvet's shoulder. "Go introduce yourself!"

Velvet groaned and rolled her eyes. "Nah, it'd just be a waste of my time. I live with my sisters right now, right? Well, we've got a couple of ground rules for living together, one of which is 'don't bring any dudes home'. It's not fair! I've got needs! Sexy, carnal needs!"

"Aww, I'm sorry to hear that," Pinkie said, gently rubbing Velvet's back. "I mean, if you need a workaround to take care of those things, you could always bring a mare home with you, right? I hear this city is allll about loopholes, and let me tell you sister, that's one heck of a loophole."

"Eh, sorry, no go on that one. I'm one hundred and ten percent not into mares like that, and definitely not desperate enough to get curious about it." Velvet shrugged and sighed. "It's alright. One of these days, I'm gonna get my own place, and I'm gonna bring studs home whenever I want!"

Pinkie leapt up and cheered, "Yeah! You go, girl!"

"So anyway, sorry about getting distracted. I'll try not to let my eyes wander around the sausage buffet we've got going on out here, no matter how hungry I am."

"It's okay, Red, I've got no problem if you're window shopping for dudes while we're hanging out. We can talk later." Pinkie gasped. "Ooh! You should come to dinner with me and my friends! I'm sure that they'd love to meet you." She gasped again. "Ooh! You should bring your sisters, too! If you guys live at the same building we do, I'm sure we'll be seeing lots of each other!"

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure we will," Velvet said with a smile. "I'm sure we will…"

Pinkie smiled. "Boy, that didn't sound foreboding at all!"

Comments

[RoboRed]

I'm 90% sure that "deja vu" might have been a callback to the other story.

[shyguy7829]

I've always wondered about the Dolor products ever since they were introduced. It was nice to learn how they are prepared.

[Alphamon_Ouryuken]

Did not expect these two to get along that well...

[Teraunce]

Talk to the fourth wall breakers to recognize this is a retread.