An obedient Little Macintosh sits quietly at your side while you finish the tub. You had told him earlier he could play while you finished the water, but he had disregarded your offer and decided to keep you company. Nevertheless, it was nice to see somepony who actually wanted to participate instead of act like a brat.
When the tub was three-quarters full, you turn the faucet knobs off and turn to the patient farmer colt to your side. "You ready?" you ask. Little Mac nods in confirmation, and in your head you could just hear his signature "Eeyup".
You reach down to pick up the big-for-his-size colt with utter failure. Little Macintosh's name, you find out, never quite fit him when he was young, for each time you wrapped your arms around his waist to lift him, you strained every muscle in your arms. You eventually quit your useless attempts and stare back at the expressionless earth colt. "Well, we sure are at a problem here, huh?" you sigh to the unspoken foal, who keeps his gaze as if in order to agree.
Macintosh (you decide to drop the "Little") turns towards the tub and contemplate his next move. Then, with all force possible in his hind legs, he jumps up and onto the rim of the tub, almost getting in. He then, to your amazement, musters the upper-hoof strength to pull his not-so-little body over the side and into the water, where he makes a thud and splash. Some lukewarm water splashes onto you, but you rub most of it off, remembering other times when your shirt had gotten wetter.
Satisfied with the clever colt's problem-solving skills, you begin the first step of his bath. Grabbing a bottle of apple-scented shampoo, you squirt some of the hair soap into your opposite palm. Then you place your soapy hand on Macintosh's orange mane and begin to lather it through. This process takes you longer than you thought it would, for even though the mane was short, it was messy and dirty, due to past hours spent in the fields of Sweet Apple Acres playing.
"Wow, you're a dirty little pony, aren't you?" you ask jokingly. Macintosh looks up to you with a sheepish grin. You laugh at the little colt's innocence, causing him to emit a single cute giggle.
The sunset orange mane is finally finished cleaning after a minute, turning the suds from a dull grey to its normal color. You reach your hands into the water and lift up a fair amount in two cupped palms. Then you bring the water over Macintosh's red head and release it, sending the liquid through his hair and back to its brethren below. You continue this process, also known as rinsing, for four more cycles before the short orange hair is fully suds-free.
With the first half done, you have the red colt lift his flank so you could continue whilst you squirt another palmful of shampoo into your hand. You repeat your previous step of lathering on the little crop of hair known as Macintosh's tail. The tail, like its brother, is dirty and messy, and too takes longer than you expected. Forty seconds of lathering later, the tail is ready to be rinsed.
Grabbing another two-hands full of bath water, you begin the last step of rinsing. Pouring the water over the tail, you fake only three cycles, the shortest it has ever taken you (then again, he did have the shortest tail you'd ever seen on a pony. You figure this to be due to the fact that he was a natural-born worker, and that longer tails would get in the way). You feel a little glad that the colt hadn't taken long to clean.
Because he had been so cooperative, you reach behind you and produce a little rubber duck for Macintosh to play with. You place it in the water, saying, "There ya go." Macintosh stares blankly at the toy, and then at you, and back to the toy, and so on. You sigh at the failed attempt to amuse the colt and turn to the door to go and find another toy for him to play with.
You search through the toy chest in Macintosh's room for an alternative. After a minute of searching, you find nothing that looks good enough to play with while in the bath. Giving up, you leave the sky blue room and return to the bathroom, where from outside the door you could hear a few faint splashing sounds.
When you enter the bathroom, you are somewhat surprised at what you see. Macintosh, who is normally quiet and keeps to himself, is playing with the rubber duck he had moments before turned down. You smile at the cuteness, even going so far as to say, "Aww." Macintosh hears you with a startle and turns his head towards you. He quickly shoves the duck behind his back and pretends to clear his throat. Even though he was naturally red, you could see he was blushing.
Even after a moment's time of trying to convince him that play was okay, Macintosh still doesn't return to his past playtime. You give up trying to get him to act cute again and unplug the bath tub. You tell Macintosh that the bath was over, and he nods in understanding. Jumping with his front hooves over the edge, the red colt is able to make it over the rim and onto the ground, where he lands front-chest-first onto the ground with a thud. He stands up and shakes his head, showing he was all right. This pleases you, seeing as how you didn't want to bandage up a big colt like Macintosh right at the moment.
Grabbing the towel next to you, you bring it to Macintosh's mane and start to dry it. After the short orange hair is dry, you move on to his torso and hooves, and then his super short tail. When he is all dry, you put the towel away and kneel down to the colt.
Rubbing your hair through his messy yet clean mane, you tell him, "You can go now, Mac." Macintosh obeys and exits the bathroom to continue his daily activities. You clean up a few more things and follow the red foal to see what he was doing.
Later on, you're relaxing in the nice Equestrian sun that Celestia had raised that day, when all of a sudden you hear a crashing sound that scares the living Tartarus out of you. Jumping up out of your chair to see what had caused the ruckus, you find a small, surprised Macintosh standing yards away with a tree stump at his rear and a fallen apple tree behind that...
1742857 She will be happening sometime. Don't worry.
That. Was. AWESOME!
Destroying trees at such a young age.
D'aww!
You must really like Little Mac.
Equestrian sun?
Hm...interesting...
Big Mac is still big (get your head out of the gutter) no matter how little he is
Gonna keep an eye on this!
No co-op with Granny Smith? Well maybe she was busy.
Still excellent as always!
1746155 Sir, your chapters have produced many lulz, and I hope it stays that way.
1746304 Maybe he didn't know her back then.
1726748
Whovian? Perfect.
Commence rapid fire of awesomeness!!
i1355.photobucket.com/albums/q714/mufffinpatrol/el9p2sjpg.gif
Remember that time you made me laugh? All the way from chapter 1 to now, and in future chapters?
So does this take place before the Applejack one? And if it does, do all the chapters follow a sort of linear path where the dude experiences all of this in order. If that's the case, then does Macintosh remember the time a dude gave him a bath when he was bathing Applejack and Applebloom? Or is it some other person bathing him this time altogether? Or maybe....
Dammit man, I need my supply of vitamin HAM.
When we gonna get Nightmare Moon!
...What happened to Scootaloo?
Looks like thats how Lil' Macintosh gets his kicks.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1726748 im right there with you, im just a little into the matt smith episodes, and while hes good, hes nothing compared to tennant
One night I'll have to sit down and read all these with a hot chocolate...these sound and seem way too adorable to pass by!
YES! CHAPTER!
1746704 She's next after her episode this Saturday.
1746514 These do happen in a linear path for them. However, they were too young back then to remember you, and no one reminded them of you, so you were forgotten. However again, Big Mac does remember your co-op with AJ, but he is normally quiet and doesn't mention it. Because, y'know, why would he? Or maybe he did before or after the bath. That's for you to decide.
1746217 Alrighty then...
1746173 Yeah, I kinda do like Mac. He's just so... mysterious.
1746730 *starts singing The Who*
1746824
Huh.
Never heard that opinion before.
1746909 Well, the way I see it he's an important character who, at the same time, is a wild card. He's also the king of Hetero ships, when you think about it.
While I'd suggest doing Thunderlane or Rumble next, I'm not sure how accurately one could do them, since they've gotten very few lines.
So how about Scootaloo with Rainbow helping?
1747070 I've already established this a million times. I'm not mad, just saying...
Scootaloo will be alone and up next after the next episode.
1747089 Sorry about that. My fault for not looking.
1747096 It's okay. Everyone does that for some reason.
1746924
Well, and homo ships.
All non-lesbian ships.
Usually.
Well, sometimes.
You had to have answered this at some point but I don't really wanna look through all the comments.
What are we? Are we some time traveling brony? Are we the Doctor? Or is this something like Assassins Creed where we're looking through our DNA's past and are seeing that our ancestors all washed ponies?
1746824
So, these are all linear from the pony's points of view, but they just don't remember you? Really?
Considering you're some kind of eldritch abomination/alien, I'd figure getting washed by you would be pretty memorable to these little ponies. I say eldritch abomination because that's what a human would seem like to a pony - a minotaur with tentacular apendages on it's forehooves.
1747382
You, good sir, are a standard person who is apparently, completely forgettable. See the comment I responded to above.
1747442
But that's the thing, if this really is linear from the pony's points of view, then how the hell did 'we' wash Celestia and Luna when they where foals and still be the same guy?
1747474
We are Timeless, much like they are.
Good chapter and, sorry about this, but...
I LOST THE GAME!!!
Troll face, activated.
1746824
I should probably clarify. I was wondering if this was a River Song deal, where two people experienced events in different contexts. It's kind of hard to explain, like is he going from one chapter to another like we would in our day to day lives, or are these all out of context snippets of his hobbies?
Either way, I like over thinking the ethics and workings of a story about bathing ponies. WTF is wrong with me?
Welp. I was linked to this earlier today and was intrigued by the concept, and now I've read all that I need to to reach some conclusions about the story, I think (I read all of the main six chapters, the Princess chapter, and the Lyra and Vinyl chapters).
So. What do I think? Well, I think that the chapters do get repetitive fairly quickly. And although I think a lot of that has to do purely with the concept you're working with, there is one thing that you do in your writing that has been bothering me to no end. That being: telling us the amount of time it takes for each step. If it were done once or twice, it could be considered a minor detail; however, you seem to toss out numbers every chance you get. "Mane took 45 seconds", "Tail took 2 minutes", "30 seconds of lathering", etc. etc.
Why do we need/want to know this? Chances are, we probably don't. It's just unnecessary detail and only serves to clog the writing with unneeded information.
And there are several other inconsistencies (or some bits that are just confusing) that bother me. For one thing, what sort of knowledge of these ponies does the main character have? They seem to have a sufficient knowledge of show/fandom-related things--such as being able to reason that Applejack and Big Mac's parents must still be alive because Applebloom wasn't born yet; or Lyra's human fascination--yet they are genuinely shocked when Pinkie ignores physics in the first chapter.
And beyond that, what sort of setting is this placed in? Is each chapter in the same house (do all the ponies live together in the same house?) or are we assuming that the main character is in each character's respective house when they give them a bath? Why are we there bathing them in the first place? Are the parents/guardians out of the house? Are they out watching a movie or something? These are details that I wanna know about. Details that could give each chapter a little individuality and actual content, rather than just telling us how long each of the pony's manes and tales took to wash and rinse.
Also. Random side-thought: is it Big Mac, Little Mac, or Lil Mac? Because you've used all three. :B
Yeah. I know. I'm demanding a cohesive, alternate universe and a complex, integrated plot from a bunch of 1k-word one-shots about bathing ponies. I'm silly like that sometimes. I just think that this could have been a really awesome story, but as it is, it's just kinda... "D'aww. Ponies in the bathtub."
Anyway. Rambling. Ho jeez.
1747718 imgs.xkcd.com/comics/anti_mind_virus.png
1749341 Huh, I guess you're right about that. Usually I just use the time to fill up space and, to some extent, make the reader feel as though this really is happening. I'll try to see if I can stop this and use another filler, like, as you said, where you are and why.
1749424 That's okay. I didn't need sleep tonight anyways.
1750553 Well, we have Barbie dolls here, right?
1747802
Thanks.
I change mine every week, and this is the first Luna one.
It looked pretty cute.
1746824
Well, I think I got a pic for you...
this is the part that strikes me your a sitter for foal and fillies that is over 4000 years old and can tell the future and I have to say good show sir jolly good show
1752487 I follow Beavernator. In fact, he was kinda an inspiration, especially for that very pick (congrats, you found the reference)
1752783
img-cache.cdn.gaiaonline.com/61abc71d46732ee81f51d053c7db1080/http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww283/Adamantyx/14381-fluttershy-yay.jpg
1749484
YOU LIE! The only way to win the game is to completely forget about it, and if you completely forget about it you will never know you won.
1749424
You deserve to burn in the deepest pits of Tartarus for all eternity for posting that picture. All spiders in the universe should join you as well.
>Scootaloo
>Babs Seed
>Nightmare Moon
>King Sombra
Surprised nobody mentioned him yet...
1753489i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/327/043/a42.jpg
1753812
Actually, several people mentioned King Sombra. I know, because I was one. And there was at least one person before me to.
I can just hear a small higher pitched "Eeyup." in my head. Its adorable.
1753477 Or be Norman. We don't know how to lose. Seriously, we can't do it... Too much armor? Or maybe it has something to do with us selling our souls for more kickassery?
Diagnosis: (Big) Macintosh is made of Dark Matter.