Beach Filler Episode (OPEN)

[Gildarts]

“Oookaaayyyy, that was all a little awkward and stuff, so can I go next?” Pinkie Pie said, smushing her hooves together and rubbing them like a maniacal genius.

Molly nodded and Piqui’s eyes eagerly awaited the thrilling tale the excitable pony would spin. She grinded the sand away from her magenta hooves and still was sporting a sugar belly the size of a pregnant mare’s. Pinkie loomed closer to the cackle from the fire, playing with the dark atmosphere around her and using it to contrast her face with dramatic, theatric, villainous shadows.

“Imagine, there was one pony, in charge of running the Royal Gala, a ball full of every kind of pony in Equestria. Dukes and princesses and queens! This one pony had to organize the whoooleee venue, assure that all sorts of pony cultures were accommodated and all diets too, someone doesn’t like apples and dessert is apple pie? This pony’s gotta have several back-up plans! It is really very stressful sometimes, for this uh, pony, but anyway, as a party planner, her job was to make sure everything was running swiftly.” Pinkie Pie cleared her throat.

“Well,” Her shimmering pony eyes narrowed, “It was the day of the party and the pony was checking off the list of her entire scroll of things to be completed when she found, waltzing through the venue, that the back-up cakes for people who don’t like apple pie hadn’t been delivered yet!” Pinkie Pie delivered this line with the execution of a horror-telling master… Only thing was, her audience was waiting for a different, more bloody consequence, like in Ash’s story with the dead people.

“Eh hem!” Pinkie cleared her throat, “The cakes had not arrived to the party and it was due to start in five minutes!”

Molly gasped, “But what is our pony party planner hero going to do!”

Piqui blinked. There was a look of bewilderment throughout the crowd. Gildarts wondered why the pony couldn’t just summon the cakes and others were wondering why this was considered scary. Well, stories were all about tone.

“I’m glad you asked! Well, while the horrific part of the story ends there, that pony saved the day by tracking down the cake people, whose wagon had actually gotten a broken wheel, so she helped them fix the wagon and then hitched herself in, tugging the cakes all the way to the party, and just in time for… Dessert!” Pinkie Pie smiled with glee and Molly and Piqui clapped. The rest followed suit politely, whether it was for Pinkie Pie’s sake, or to not be strangled by the Strongest Prime, it was hard to say. But the courtesy was shown, and that was that.

“Your turn next Piqui,” Molly volunteered her.

“Hmmmmmmmmm!” her whiskers quivered as she contemplated.

“Alright, I think I’ve got one,” the chocolate and cream cat sat higher on her perch. “This is a story about how someone tried to steal my fish. My fish.” The cat reaffirmed, “I was out in the forest of the Tangled Green, catching fish with the poles set up around the circumference of the lake. I’d had several nibbles and caught a basketful. I was looking forward to having a wonderful feast for dinner when someone real ninja-like came around behind me and swiped my basket!”

“Well, you all know how wrong it is to steal someone’s well-earned fish, I invested time in that!” Piqui stated pridefully.

“How dare they!” Gildarts agreed, he was a fisherman himself. It had helped calmed his mind in its raging storms of crash magic.

“Thank you for understanding Gildarts, so as you can imagine, I was super mad, but me? Chasing after a full fleet of ninjas unarmed through the forest, their own terrain? I needed back up. I needed: Bullfrogs. I spoke to them, told them of my crisis and they allied with me, they too, are enemies of the ninja, who frequently catch the frogs not only to eat, but to concoct some sort of medicinal remedy to help cure people of… Some sickness, I don’t know. Anyway, so the bullfrogs, you know, are big enough for me to ride, so I get on the back of one, and I lead my army straight into the enemy’s village. I didn’t know how many had rallied against me to thwart me and steal my fish so I charged and found the likely culprit, hanging off his arm was my basket with the cute little paw print designs along the side.”

Piqui took a breath, “So I confronted him, saying that that was MY basket, and that those were my fish he’d stolen. And you know what he said? DO YOU?!” there was rage in Piqui’s voice. So far, the moral of the story was never get on a cat’s bad side.

“The ninja had the nerve to tell me there was a baby inside the basket. Human baby. On top of my fish. Talk about gross! Imagine the mess and stink! I couldn’t eat those fish! Anyway I didn’t believe him, so he showed me. Mentioned that it had fallen out of his arms and that my basket had saved the child’s life. He apologized for stealing, and I refused to take my fish back. So me and my bullfrog army recruited the ninjas of the village to all fish with me. Long story short, the haul was massive, I got more than enough fish to last me weeks and… At the end of the day, I ended up going back to their camp and having a great big feast with them. We laughed about the prior misunderstanding.” Piqui said with a knowing smile, as she looked at the various faces of primes and secondaries surrounding her.

“As a matter of fact… It looked almost exactly like this. We’d cooked around a campfire and laughed until the moon rose and the stars were twinkling high above.”