Chapter 6
Shedding that jacket of Rarity's made Dash feel twenty
percent lighter--she could barely stop herself from racing up
into the weird currents twisting around the open spaces between
all Canterlot's little towers. "The unicorns must do mosta the
weather stuff around here," she told Pinkie Pie as they trotted
into the streets, the Day Palace behind them shining like a
jewel in the morning sun. "The air's itchy with magic!"
Pinkie nodded. "Like my uncle Zebulon used to say, 'When
in Canterlot, do as the Canterlotians.' Except I don't think
'Canterlotians' is really a word."
Dash gave her a sideways glance. "Where are you getting
all these uncles from?"
"The usual places." Pinkie pointed her snout at the sky.
"It's OK if you wanna wing it, Dashie. I'll be fine down here."
And as much as the wind was tickling her, teasing her with
its odd swirls-- "Naw." She tossed her mane like she didn't
care. "Maybe after we get done with this whole saw thing I can
take a spin around." A thought made her brighten. "Or later
when I head up to the Citadel! I mean, did you see?? Captain
Destrier?? Knowing who I was?? He gave a talk once at flight
school about joining the guard and said he turned down the
Wonderbolts--turned them down!--so he could serve Princess
Celestia! That's, like, either the coolest thing ever or the
craziest! I can't wait to meet some of those guard ponies and
see what their HQ is like!"
Pinkie had started skipping. "You know what I like best?
The way it smells here!"
Dash blinked. "Smells?" She tipped her head back, took a
few whiffs. "It just smells...I dunno, clean, maybe."
"Exactly!" Pinkie did a quick little spin, and Dash
couldn't help grinning at the startled stares she got from a
couple of unicorns walking the other way along the shiny white
pavement of the street. "This is where the fresh laundry scent
goes when it's done with the laundry! And when cookies cool
down? The smell packs its bag and moves in here!"
"Uhhh,..." Dash looked around a little nervously. "You
aren't gonna sing, are you?"
Pinkie flashed a giant grin. "D'you want me to?"
"No!" It came out louder and faster than Dash had
intended, but Pinkie didn't seem insulted; she just shrugged and
kept skipping along the street.
Dash followed, but she still couldn't help wondering what
the city would look like from the air. Down on the ground, it
seemed really spread out, a lot of rolling grassy hills that the
streets wound around, shops and cafes scattered here and there,
all the towers twisting up ev'rywhere with windows and balconies
at random intervals: maybe those were apartments? Off among the
hills sat other buildings--they looked more like mushrooms to
Dash since she couldn't really tell how big they were, not from
down here at least.
It just wasn't right, seeing things from a ground-bound
angle like this! Aloft, it was so much easier to shift around,
to see things from every side, and with Canterlot, well, the
city changed a lot, she knew, depending on whether you were
flying in low from, say, Ponyville, or wheeling past high above
like the patrols she'd done out of Cloudsdale during flight
school.
From below, for instance, the city seemed to perch on the
side of the mountain like an eagle's nest, but really, that was
just the two palaces sticking out on the city's south side. It
was only from above, in fact, that a flyer could see that the
mountain wasn't really a mountain, that it was the cone of a big
dead volcano, that the real city of Canterlot stretched up along
the walls inside and spread out onto the fertile valley in the
middle.
That was the best part as far as Dash was concerned: the
way Canterlot was like two things at once. She just couldn't
see how ponies could really appreciate that if the only angle
they saw it from was down on the ground all the time! And while
she'd flown over the top of the city, she'd never had a chance
to swoop around inside the crater before. She sighed, turned to
Pinkie...and blinked at the big floppy white hat her friend was
wearing. "Where did you get that??"
"Like it?" Pinkie took a few mincing steps like she was a
model on a runway. "A guy back there was selling them. I
woulda got you one, but you were all spacing out and I didn't
wanna bother you."
Dash looked back, saw an earth pony pulling a cart full of
hats up the road toward the scattered towers they'd been walking
through, and realized they'd come down onto the flatlands at the
center of Canterlot, the unicorn city almost lost on all sides
in the morning mist rising around them.
Another bad thing about poking around on the ground like
this: It let her mind wander too much!
Shaking her head, she focused forward and found that the
area ahead looked a lot like Ponyville: buildings square and
plain, the trees and flowerbeds giving the place a much earthier
smell than the rarefied air Pinkie had been going on about when
they'd been further up the slope. Ground Town, Captain
Destrier's lieutentant had called it, the place where the earth
ponies who tended Canterlot's fields lived. And maybe where
somepony had the saw that had cut through the beam at the Day
Palace...
Time to unleash her secret weapon. "OK, Pinkie." Dash
waved a hoof at the cluster of shops and houses before them.
"Where d'you wanna go first?"
"Hmmmm..." Pinkie scrunched up her face. "Let's see."
Suddenly she reared back on her hind legs, spun around with her
front hoofs flailing. "Eenie meenie, chili beanie baked with
three-cheese tortellini! Doughnuts, coffee, tea, and milk to
eat with breakfast or its ilk!" She screeched to a halt
pointing at a storefront down the street, its window displaying
hats just like the one she had on. "Not there!" Pinkie scowled
at her hoof and shifted it to point at another building, tables
set up out front, more tables showing through a big picture
window with a stack of pancakes painted on it. "There!" And
she galloped across the street.
Rainbow Dash grinned and took off after her. Random Pinkie
Pie might be, but when she started spinning, twitching, and
pointing, it usually meant something.
This time, though, the scent of pancakes, eggs, and hash
browns frying made Dash think maybe it was hunger that had
guided Pinkie's aim. Not that Dash would turn down a bowl of
maple syrup with some oats floating in it: it'd been hours since
breakfast.
Pinkie bounded right in, Dash following to hear her shout,
"A double good 'good morning,' sir! What've you got with
chocolate in it??"
Stepping inside, Dash saw an older dun-colored earth pony
wearing a white apron blinking at Pinkie from the other side of
the counter, the whole wall behind him--and all the walls, she
saw as she looked around--decorated with old farming equipment:
buckets with the bottoms knocked out; wash tubs and butter
churns; most of a plow a lot more rickety than the one she'd
seen Big Mackintosh drag around Sweet Apple Acres.
"For breakfast?" The pony behind the counter rubbed his
chin, then winked at Pinkie Pie. "I reckon I could mix a couple
spoonfuls of chocolate syrup into some cream of wheat."
"Yes, please!" Pinkie slid into a place at the counter,
her tail waggling like Applejack's dog Winona when Dash would
bring her biscuits.
The guy turned to Rainbow Dash. "And you, ma'am?"
From here, Dash could see his cutie mark was a pancake
flipping, so she nodded to the grill along the back wall. "I'm
guessing pancakes're the house specialty?"
He grinned. "Pancake by trade and Pancake by name."
Reaching under the counter, he brought out two bowls, poured
water into them from a jug, and slid them in front of Dash and
Pinkie. "One short stack coming up!"
"Make it a tall," Dash said. "It's been a long morning."
"Hey!" Pinkie jumped a little and turned her head quickly
from side to side. "It is morning!"
Dash lapped at her bowl. "Ever since sunup, Pinkie."
"Well, whaddaya know??" She winked at Dash, then turned a
confused expression toward Pancake, pouring batter onto the
sizzling grill. "So how come we're the only ones in here having
breakfast?"
The pony sighed. "Used to be full ev'ry morning from the
Night Ministry letting out--a lotta those ponies live over in
North Ridge, see, so they'd pass right through here coming and
going to work. We still get the day crew stopping by for supper
on their way home, but, well, hardly anybody wants pancakes for
supper."
"Huh." Dash tried to sound like she was just making
conversation. "Hadn't really thought about it, but I guess
Princess Luna closing the Night Ministry musta ruffled a few
feathers 'round here." She shook her wings at him when he
turned to blink at her.
He shrugged, turned back, flipped the pancakes halfway to
the ceiling, grinned at them landing perfectly back on the
grill. "Folks adjust."
"Pssst!" Pinkie hissed, and Dash scowled at her. Just when
she had the suspect on the ropes with her probing questions!
She was about to tell Pinkie to keep quiet when Pinkie pointed
to a section of the wall above the plow parts. "I don't spy
with my little eye something beginning with 's!'"
Dash could only stare at her friend. Pinkie pointed again,
and Dash swung her head around to look at the wall. A curving
stretch of paint along the top of it did seem to be a slightly
darker color, and...was the bottom of the curved shape jagged
with little teeth instead of smooth like the top? In fact-- "A
saw!" she whispered.
Pinkie put a hoof to her mouth and turned back to Pancake,
drizzling chocolate syrup over the bowl of mush he'd dished out
of a big pot on the stove. "Gee, Mr. Pancake," Pinkie said in
such a girly voice, Dash almost laughed, "I'll bet you know
ev'rypony in this whole valley--prob'bly in this whole city!"
Pancake grinned again, flipping Dash's order onto a plate,
sliding it and Pinkie's bowl onto a serving cart, and pushing it
along the counter to where they were sitting. "You been here as
long as me, you get to know a lotta folks, all right."
"Hey, yeah!" Dash thought she knew where Pinkie was
heading. "So if we were, say, looking for somepony to do some
work for us--just regular, like, work work, chopping and hauling
and cutting and sawing and like that--you'd prob'bly know folks
we could hire!"
He pushed the bowl onto the counter in front of Pinkie. "I
might just. There's--" Hoofs clattering in the doorway stopped
him, and Dash looked back to see four ponies rush in, two pegasi
and two earth ponies, each pair looking so alike, Dash could
only guess they were brothers and sisters. "Now that's timing!"
Pancake said, his voice full of smiles. "These gals was just
looking for some folks to help 'em out."
"Really?" the earth colt said, no smile anywhere near him,
the cutie mark on his ash-colored hide a big ax. "Turns out
we're looking for a pink pony who just bought one of Hatrack's
hats. He said she told him to send the bill to Princess Luna at
the Night Palace 'cause she was her new Minister of Laughter."
Dash swallowed, the other ponies pretty big and unhappy-
looking, too, the air suddenly smelling like it did just before
a thunderstorm. "Uhh," she said, trying to throw together some
sort of story about how Pinkie had always had that hat, but--
"That's me!" Pinkie cried out, spinning from her place at
the counter to stand in front of the four frowning ponies.
"Pinkie Pie, at your service!" She put a hoof to her chin.
"And I hafta say, the four of you look like you could use a
laugh."
"Oh, don't worry," said the pegasus filly, a little
stylized tornado on her dusty-white flanks. "We're gonna have
all kindsa fun here in just a couple seconds." And she tensed
up, unmistakably about to launch herself directly at Pinkie.
Which was all Dash needed to see. Leaping forward, she
beat her wings hard against the air, zipped over Pinkie's head
so close, she felt that mop of a pink mane tickle her stomach,
and bowled into the tornado pegasus with exactly enough force to
knock her onto her back and slide her along the tile floor
straight out the door, Dash following along to press her snout
right into the surprised filly's face. "You wanna talk?" Dash
said. "Let's do it outside, huh?"
"Hey!" came a cry from inside, and Dash heard the
unmistakable ruffle of wings unfurling; springing up and
sideways, she easily dodged the pegasus colt, a red and yellow
streak that banked wide through the air above the shop across
the street and started heading back toward her.
"Don't!" she shouted, but it was too late; side slipping
again, she tried to stomp the colt as he rocketed under her, the
same sort of surprise on his face as she'd seen on his sister's,
but Dash knew it wouldn't help. She could only shift the angle
of his trajectory by maybe an inch, not nearly enough to stop
him from smashing right through the plate glass window of
Pancake's diner.
She followed in his wake, saw him sprawled along the
counter, his face in Pinkie's chocolate mush, Pinkie herself
dodging the kicks aimed at her by the brother and sister earth
ponies. "You guys are really good dancers!" she was saying.
"Better than your pegasus friend, at least!"
The pegasus groaned, Pancake shouting, "My window!"--
And another shout rang out from the street: "Freeze, all of
you, in the name of the Equestrian Home Guard!"
Snapping around again, Dash saw Captain Destrier and four
uniformed pegasi landing in front of the diner, six flashes of
light resolving into unicorns also wearing the familiar white
and gold armor.
Stay cool, Dash, she thought, then out loud, her voice not
even cracking: "Hey, captain! Just in time to join the party!"
Captain Destrier cocked his head, his hoofs crackling the
shards of glass as he stepped inside. "Well," he said, looking
around. "I can see that Minister Applejack's idea to follow
you, Minister Dash, was indeed a sound one." He gave a whistle.
"Guards! Take all these ponies into custody!"
"What??" Rainbow Dash stared at him. "You're arresting
us??"
A sigh, and Captain Destrier put a hoof to his forehead.
"Not you, ministers..."
"Oh." Dash gave a little laugh. "Right."Chapter 8
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